Three years of war in Ukraine: a spiral of chaos, massacres and militarism

The war in Ukraine is today the clearest expression of global imperialist chaos involving at various levels the great imperialist powers, the countries of Western Europe and others such as North Korea and Iran. Many bourgeois experts, as well as all the groups in the proletarian political milieu except for the ICC, see this situation as a step on the road to World War III. In their view we are currently witnessing the coalescence of two rival imperialist blocs centred on the two most powerful world players: the United States and China. In contrast to this analysis, the ICC considers that the situation expresses the inability of the two great world powers to impose themselves at the head of two disciplined imperialist blocs. The global leadership of the greatest power today, the United States, is increasingly contested, while China has not been able to aggregate even the beginnings of an imperialist bloc. Moreover, the United States is weakened politically by the growing divisions between the Republicans and Democrats - with the Republican leader quickly confirming, before and after his re-election, his ineptitude not only as a commander on the world stage but as an organizer of even the country's most basic affairs. An example of the ‘subtlety’ of his character is his threat to annex Greenland even though the United States already exerts effective control of the territory through its military base in the north.

The fact that the proletariat in its largest concentrations is neither defeated nor ready to be sent off for a Third World War does not contradict, as is clearly demonstrated by the reality in Ukraine and elsewhere, the reality of smaller wars involving even central countries of capitalism.

A product of the decomposition of capitalism, the present global chaos carries with it serious threats to the survival of humanity. Indeed, the gangrene of militarism and war is evident across the world today, from the Baltic Sea to the Red, and from East Asia to the Sahel. The Cold War nightmare of nuclear annihilation is revived in Moscow's threats of nuclear escalation and the possibility of Western troops being sent to the Ukrainian front. We do not face the threat of a Third World War, but of the proliferation of multiple wars intensifying in an uncontrolled manner, in Ukraine and throughout the world. Three years after the beginning Russia's ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, a decisive conclusion seems as far away as ever – with only a bloody and destructive stalemate, governed by an unrelenting scorched earth policy, prevailing.

A war of decomposition which can only bring death and destruction to the belligerents

During the global expansion of capitalism in the 19th century war could be a means of consolidating capitalist nations - as was the case for Germany during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, or of contributing by force to the expansion of the world market – as in the case of the colonial wars which opened up new markets for the most developed nations and thus promoted the development of productive forces. In the 20th century, these wars gave way to colossal imperialist confrontations for the redivision of the world, with the First World War in 1914 marking the entry of capitalism into its phase of decadence. In decadence, permanent war between the various imperialist rivals has lost all economic rationality, becoming capitalism’s way of life. The horror and destruction of the First World War was  repeated and amplified in the Second, with each rival imperialism seeking to secure their global geostrategic position through alliances behind one or another imperialist leader: “Faced with a total economic impasse, with the failure of the most brutal economic ‘remedies', the only choice open to the bourgeoisie is that of a forward flight with other means - themselves increasingly illusory - which can only be military means." [1]. Such has been the evolution of war over the last two centuries.

But with the fall of the USSR the discipline of the imperialist blocs established after the last world war has been broken. We are now witnessing a rivalry of each against all, with each power seeking to assert their interests at the expense of all others, whatever the cost. Endless wars are being waged (Libya, Syria, Sahel, Ukraine, Middle East), bringing only massacres and economic devastation and ecological destruction. The current massacre in Gaza, a city now in ruins and with much of its population exterminated, is a blatant example of this, as is the war in Ukraine. A scorched earth policy prevails and “Après moi le déluge”[2].

Putin launched his ‘special operation’ in Ukraine in 2022 - after occupying Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014 - in an attempt to preserve Russia’s status as a global imperialist power against the encroachment of NATO to its very doorstep, with Ukrainian integration threatened next, following Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999 and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 2004.

In order to entice Russia into a war that could bring its already fragile economy and military power to its knees, thus neutralising its imperialist pretensions as a potential ally of China - the United States' main global adversary - the Biden administration had made it clear that there would be no possibility of American troops being deployed to defend Ukrainian land. In his farewell speech on January 13th to the State Department, Joe Biden gave himself a pat on the back for this trap set for Russia: “compared to four years ago […] our adversaries and competitors are weaker […] Iran, Russia, China and North Korea  are now collaborating; this more a sign of weakness than strength” [3].

And indeed, Russia's position has been considerably weakened by the war - a blatant refutation of the outlandish theories according to which the protagonists of the war can all benefit from possible ‘win-win’ effects: unrealistic imperialist expansion, a better geostrategic position, economic gains, control of energy sources... none of this can be found in the smoking ruins of eastern Ukraine for either party.

On the borders of the former USSR, there are other signs of Russia's loss of influence over its ‘satellites’. In Georgia, which has been a candidate for admission to the European Union since 2022, the victory of the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party (sic) was denounced as a fraud and triggered a Georgiamaidan (modelled on the Ukrainian Euromaidan in 2014) against Russia's attempt to regain influence in the country. Of similar significance are the demonstrations against Russian investments in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia, culminating in the storming of the region’s parliament[4]. These retreats in the Caucasus region are compounded by Armenia's withdrawal from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in favour of an agreement with rival Azerbaijan - which has recently been cooled by the ‘collateral damage’ of the shooting down of a civilian airliner by Russian missiles[5].

But the weakening of Russia's geostrategic position has also led to an expansion of imperialist war thousands of kilometres away from Ukraine, in Syria. Moscow was, along with Hezbollah and Iran, the main supporter of the terrorist Assad regime which, in return, supported Russian intervention in Africa[6] and allowed the establishment of air and naval bases in Syria – granting important access to the Mediterranean. But Russia was forced to abandon its support for the Assad regime - in Trump's words “because the Russians were too weak and too overwhelmed to help the regime in Syria because ‘they are too busy with Ukraine’”[7]. Such a decline in the authority of the imperialist godfather, even if Russia can maintain its military bases in Syria or negotiate new relations with Libya, will certainly have an impact on the Kremlin's credibility with the African states it is trying to win over.

Russia is currently spending around 145 billion dollars on defence, the highest figure since the collapse of the USSR. In 2025 this expenditure is expected to increase by 25% to 6% of GDP. War already accounts for a third of the Russian state budget. Putin boasts about his arsenal and missiles - challenging the United States with the launch of a new hypersonic missile, the ‘Orechnik’ - and never misses an opportunity to remind people of his stockpile of nuclear weapons, which has led to speculation that he could use them as a deterrent by dropping an atomic bomb in the Black Sea. Such threats reflect the embarrassments of Russian conventional military power. It is estimated that the Kremlin has already used 50% of its military capacity in the war in Ukraine without having achieved any of its objectives. Furthermore, “most of the equipment Russia is sending to the front comes from Cold War arsenals, which, although large, have been considerably reduced”[8]. And much of this equipment requires Western technology.

One of Russia’s main problems is recruiting cannon fodder from the population, a difficulty Ukraine is facing as well for that matter. Reports indicate a daily loss of 1,500 soldiers on the front line for the Russian army. Putin has even had to call on more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers. While in Moscow and other major Russian cities the war initially went unnoticed, their inhabitants now live in fear of drone strikes and forced conscription.

Russia’s economic situation

The war in Ukraine has certainly led to an increase in production and low unemployment rates. But the war economy is consuming the resources of the entire country and already amounts to twice what is allocated for social spending. However, insofar as the purpose of war production is destruction, i.e. the sterilisation of capital that cannot be reinvested or reused, the apparent economic advantages do not pull up the economy as a whole, but rather plunge it further into crisis.

In fact, for this year, growth forecasts are barely 0.5 to 1.5%, close to recession, leaving the population facing bleak economic prospects: “The civil economy is faltering. The construction sector is a case in point: due to falling demand and soaring costs (the price of building materials rose by 64% between 2021 and 2024), the pace of new housing construction has slowed considerably. Other sectors in difficulty include freight transport, exacerbated by the slowdown in the rail network; road transport, with rising fuel prices and a shortage of drivers; mineral extraction; and agriculture, once the pride of Mr Putin's government. Overall, exports are no longer a source of growth. Domestic consumption continues, but the outlook is clouded by rising prices. Officially, inflation in Russia in 2024 stood at 9.52%”[9].

And none of this can be compensated for by any supposed economic gain from the occupation of eastern Ukraine. First of all, the country has no great wealth to offer. The ‘crown jewels’ of the Ukrainian economy - notably electricity production, agriculture, rare earth deposits and tourism - have been destroyed by the war: “Even if the war ended tomorrow, it would take years to repair the damage and return to pre-war levels”[10], say the thermal power plant engineers themselves. The bombing of nuclear power stations nearly caused a catastrophe more devastating than Chernobyl and demonstrated the precarious state of the plants. As for the soil, when it is not directly littered with mines or flooded by the destruction of dams, it is highly polluted[11] - with the same being true of the Black Sea.

A destructive war that can only lead to ruin for the contending parties, and massacres for the population

Despite the prospect of a truce announced by the new Trump administration, the war can only continue and worsen. Between the 2014 occupation of Crimea and the 2022 launch of the Russian invasion, there have been hundreds of negotiations and ceasefire agreements without any break in the spiral of irrational destruction. Russia itself is threatening to collapse in the long term. Moreover, for Putin, ending the war without having won it would mean his own end and a country plunged into chaos, just as continuing it means only more ruin and death. The same applies for Zelensky and the Ukrainian ruling class. Faced with the threat of the country being divided between Russia and Poland/Hungary, the war is for them a necessity of survival, even while its continuation means the desertification and depopulation of the country.

In Ukraine the war has had devastating consequences[12], leading to an exhausted economy weighed down with heavy military spending. It survives almost entirely thanks to Western financial and military aid. A dependency paid for with increasing hardship for a demoralised and exhausted population (there have been more than 100,000 desertions according to Zelensky, with as many as 400,000 according to Trump) which is asked to make more and more sacrifices every year. In April 2024 the Ukrainian army lowered the age for forced conscription from 27 to 25 and when Zelensky appealed to the ‘solidarity’ of Western democracies to better arm his troops, they demanded (statements by Rutte, NATO Secretary General, or US Secretary of State Blinken) that he lower the conscription age to 18. Blood for steel!

But the implications of this war go beyond the two immediate belligerents.

The war in Ukraine is stimulating militarism and chaos in the countries of the European Union

The ultimate motivation for the Ukrainian trap, as we have seen, lies in the confrontation between the United States and China. But it has also created complications for the European ‘allies’ of the United States. With a major military conflict on their doorstep, NATO countries were temporary drawn behind the American godfather - but also into infighting amongst themselves.

Germany first and foremost, reluctantly drawn into a common front with the Americans, has suffered the full brunt of the war even without being a direct belligerent. It has been forced to rebuild its diplomacy after decades of ‘Ostpolitik’ (opening up to the East) not only with Russia but also with Hungary, Slovakia and others who it pampered economically in its imperialist expansion following German reunification in 1990, and which today support Putin's regime[13]. The war in Ukraine has had disastrous consequences for the German economy, with a rise in energy supply costs weakening its industrial competitiveness, deepening its recession, triggering inflation and exacerbating social discontent. But above all, Germany has been burdened by the direct costs of the war. Germany took the lion's share of the financial aid provided by the European institutions to the Zelensky regime – making the second largest contribution in terms of military aid[14]. And it did so reluctantly, as evidenced by the tensions within, and the eventual collapse of, the coalition government when Chancellor Scholz abandoned his plan to reduce military aid from €7.5 billion to €4 billion by 2025.

And despite all this waste in a war that is a veritable abyss, the fact remains that Germany is unable to strengthen its imperialist position. Indeed, while the conflict in Ukraine has reinforced its image as a major economic power (it is still the world's fourth largest economy), it remains a real military dwarf. The German bourgeoisie is struggling to react to this situation. Just three days after Russian troops entered Ukraine in February 2022, Chancellor Scholz announced a special €100 billion fund for defence spending in parliament, in what the politicians themselves called “the turning point”. Since then, he has embarked on a frantic race to develop Germany's own armaments industry and draw up strategic plans that would enable German troops “not to limit themselves to national defence, but to be operational [...] in any scenario, in any part of the world”[15].

The strengthening of German militarism is a clear expression of the development of ‘every man for himself’ - one of the main characteristics of capitalist decomposition - following the dislocation of the frameworks which had maintained discipline following the Second World War. Faced with the war in Ukraine Germany and France are apparently on the same side but ultimately have contradictory interests. Even Macron, who tried at the beginning of the war to maintain a special channel of communication with Putin, chose to be among the first to offer the possibility of using Ukrainian missiles on Russian territory, and to send French soldiers to the frontline in the event of a ‘ceasefire’. This is what Macron proposed to Zelensky and Trump at the recent summit under the blessed domes of Notre-Dame. Along with the UK, the Nordic and Baltic countries, France is among the most intransigent on the conditions to be imposed on Putin for ‘peace’.

This rise in militarism is affecting every country, from the smallest to the largest, and it will be accelerated by the intensification of imperialist chaos. Trump's call for NATO countries to increase their defence budgets to 5% of GDP is hardly original - in fact, they have already increased defence spending significantly since the Wales summit in 2014[16]. The NATO Secretary General has stated that “They think strong defence is not the way to peace. Well, they are wrong”[17]. And the next NATO summit, to be held in The Hague in June, is expected to raise the target to 3%.

The ‘danger’ of the Russian bear, which has shown all its clumsiness and weakness in the war against Ukraine, is inspiring increased arms expenditure amongst its neighbours, even while a recent Greenpeace study shows that NATO countries, excluding the United States[18], already spend, between them, almost ten times more on defence than Russia. The trigger for the arms race is precisely the fact that NATO is no longer what it used to be. And this is leading the major powers to be caught in the crossfire: either give in to Trump's pressure (by increasing the contribution to the NATO budget), or bear the ‘security’ expenses alone. The result: more economic crisis, more conflict, more militarism and more chaos.

The same trend towards fragmentation that can be observed on the imperialist level can also be seen within many states, with the emergence of powerful populist political formations which act against the interests of national capital as a whole. We saw it in Great Britain with Brexit, we see it in Germany with the AfD, and we see it at its peak in the United States with the election of Trump.

And now... Trump

As we have explained in our press, the recently re-elected American president is not an anomaly, but an expression of the historical period[19]: the final stage of decadence, that of capitalist decomposition, characterised by the global tendency towards fragmentation and ‘every man for himself’ within the capitalist class. The expression of this tendency towards dislocation is seen in the decline of American leadership, a consequence of the disappearance of the discipline of the imperialist blocs that had ‘ordered’ the world following the Second World War.

Faced with the decline of its hegemony, the United States has attempted to react[20] with the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now, as we can see, indirectly with the war in Ukraine. But these attempts to ‘reorganise’ the world (in the interests of the United States, of course) have resulted only in more chaos, more indiscipline, more conflict and more bloodshed. By trying to put out the fires of protest from its rivals, the United States has in fact become the primary and most prolific of the pyromaniacs. This has not prevented the United States from losing its authority, as evidenced by the recent situation in the Middle East, where powers such as Israel or Turkey (the latter also being one of NATO's most powerful members) are playing their own cards in Palestine and Syria.

Trump is not of a different nature to Biden and Obama. His core strategic objective is the same: to prevent the rise of China, the main challenger to American hegemony[21]. Where there are divisions within the American bourgeoisie is on how to handle the war in Ukraine. Biden chose to invest a lot of resources in economically and militarily exhausting Russia, thus depriving China of a potential strategic ally, both in terms of military capacity and geographical extension. On the other hand, Trump does not see the mutual collapse of Russia and Ukraine as strengthening the position of the United States in the world, but rather as a source of destabilisation that diverts American economic and military resources from the main confrontation with China.

That is why he boasted for months that he would end the war in Ukraine the day after his inauguration. Of course, he never went into specifics on how he would go about it. But what is clear is that any peace plan would in reality only plant the seeds for new and more deadly wars. Even an immediate ‘freeze’ of the conflict would be perceived by the belligerents as an unacceptable humiliation. Russia would have to give up part of Donbass and Odessa. Ukraine would have to accept the ruin of its economy and the loss of territories, without any compensation and with no guarantees that hostilities would not soon.

More than a desire for peace, it is the imperialist interests in each nation that prevail. Russia refuses to accept any plan involving Ukrainian integration into NATO. Zelensky, for his part, is calling for a ‘peacekeeping force’ of 200,000 men on the line of contact. But recent experiences of ‘peacekeeping forces’ in the Sahel countries (where France, the United States and Spain ended up giving way to the pressure of the guerrillas armed by the Russians) or in Lebanon (where UNIFIL simply looked the other way in the face of the Israeli invasion), show precisely that the mythology of ‘blue helmets’ as guarantors of peace agreements belongs to a past of discipline and ‘order’ in international relations which has been rendered obsolete by the advance of capitalist decomposition. In reality, what the United States is planning to do is to drag its NATO allies, and especially the European countries, into the Ukrainian quagmire[22] under the protection, in the most gangster sense of the term, of the technological resources and authority of the US army. The current wars offer no perspective of the establishment of strong coalitions behind one or another belligerent which could make it possible to avoid the prospect of new conflicts. On the contrary, they are wars of irreconcilable positions that generate new conflicts, new scenarios of chaos and massacre.

Capitalism is incapable of stopping war. Only world revolution offers an alternative for humanity

The scenario towards which we are headed is neither one of peace nor World War III. The future that capitalism offers us is generalised chaos, the proliferation of tensions and conflicts on every continent. Militarism and war are increasingly encroaching on all spheres of social life - from trade wars of economic blackmail, to disinformation warfare in cyberspace, to devastation which is being wrought upon the natural world, and above all to the increasing attacks on the living conditions of the population, especially the proletariat in the large concentrations of Europe and America, in order to feed the war machine. When the illustrious Mark Rutte was asked where he intended to find the billions of euros needed to increase military spending, his answer could not have been more arrogant and explicit: “The aim is to prepare the population for cuts to pensions, healthcare and social systems in order to increase the defence budget to 3% of the GDP of each country”[23].

The main victim of this whirlwind of chaos, wars, militarism, environmental disasters and disease is the global working class. As the main supplier of cannon fodder for the armies of the countries directly at war, but also as the main victim of the sacrifices, austerity and misery demanded by the maintenance of militarism. In the article we published on the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine[24], we emphasised: “The bourgeoisie has demanded enormous sacrifices to fuel the war machine in Ukraine. In the face of the crisis and despite the propaganda, the proletariat rose up against the economic consequences of this conflict, against inflation and austerity. Admittedly, the working class still finds it difficult to make the link between militarism and the economic crisis, but it has indeed refused to make sacrifices: in the United Kingdom with a year of mobilisations, in France against pension reform, in the United States against inflation and job insecurity.”.

This climate of resistance in the face of the progressive deterioration of living conditions continues to express itself, as we have seen recently in the strikes in Canada, the United States, Italy and more recently in Belgium[25], where resistance to cuts was expressed even before the implementation of the new austerity plans. Of course, this break with the passivity of previous years does not imply that the proletariat as a whole has become aware of the link between the deterioration of its living conditions and war, or of its ability to prevent the ruin towards which capitalism is inexorably drawing humanity.

It is also true that, at the level of numerically very small but politically very important minorities, reflection is developing on the prospects that capitalism can offer and on the development of a revolutionary alternative by the proletariat. We have already seen this in - despite all its limitations - the Prague Week of Action[26]. But we also see it, for example, in the frank and fruitful debates that are taking place in our public meetings, which are seeing growing levels of participation. It is with the weapons of its struggle, its unity and its consciousness that the proletariat can bring down capitalism. Today, we are certainly witnessing capitalism move further along its path towards destruction - but we can alco see a slow and difficult development towards that other future, that of revolution.

 

Hic Rhodes/Valerio.

30.01.2025

[1] “War, militarism and imperialist blocs in the decadence of capitalism”, Part 2, International Review 53.

[2] Although the origin of this expression is uncertain, the phrase is associated with Louis XV who, aware of the mediocre political legacy he was leaving to his successor, did not care, so that the phrase is interpreted as “whatever happens, even if it's the end of the world, I don't care”.

[3] Extract from Le Monde, 15 January 2025.

[4] “Even longtime Russian satellites have become a headache for Putin. Take the small but spectacular case of Abkhazia, the breakaway region of Georgia: in November, faced with a plan that would have given Russia even greater influence over their economy, Abkhazians stormed their parliament and brought down their government.” “The Cold War Putin Wants”, Andrei Kolesnikov, in Foreign Affairs 23 January 2025.

[5] “Armenia, once Russia’s ‘strategic partner’ in the Caucasus—a country that was under Moscow’s protection and strongly dependent on Russia in several economic sectors—has been forsaken in the ashes of its recent war with Azerbaijan: in the fall of 2023, Russia could do little more than stand out of the way, as well-armed Azerbaijani forces seized the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and, seemingly overnight, expelled more than 100,000 Armenian Karabakhis. Now, Armenia is concluding a Charter of Strategic Partnership with the United States and seeking to join the European Union.” “The Cold War Putin Wants, Andrei Kolesnikov”, in Foreign Affairs 23 January 2025.

[6] “Russia provided [...] material and diplomatic support that enabled military officers to seize power by force in Mali in 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022, and Niger in 2023 [...] it also sends weapons to Sudan, prolonging the country's civil war and the resulting humanitarian crisis, and has provided support to the Houthi militias in Yemen”. “Putin's Point of No Return”, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Michael Kofman, in Foreign Affairs, 18 December 2024

[7] “America Needs a Maximum Pressure Strategy in Ukraine”, Alina Polyakova, in Foreign Affairs, 31 December 2024

[8] “Ukraine's Security Now Depends on Europe”, Elie Tenenbaum and Leo Litra, Foreign Affairs, 3 December 2024

[9] “95% of all foreign components found in Russian weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield come from Western countries”, “The Russian Economy Remains the Putin's Greatest Weakness”, Theodore Bunzel and Elina Ribakova, Foreign Affairs, 9 December 2024.

[10] See the articles in International Review 171 and 172.

[11] See the article in International Review 172.

[12] See International Review 170 for the Report on imperialist tensions.

[13] ibid

[14] By February 2024, the United States had provided 43 billion euros and Germany 10 billion (twice as much as Great Britain and almost four times as much as France).

[15] Speech by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on 12 December to the heads of the NATO Military Committee.

[16] The very ‘pacifist’ Spanish government has increased its military budget by 67% over the last decade.

[17] “To prevent war, NATO must spend more”. A conversation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. carnegieendowment.org 12.12.2024

[18] Christopher Steinmetz, Herbert Wulf: “Wann ist genug genug? Ein Vergleich der militärischen Potenziale der Nato und. Russlands". Published by Greenpeace. See also ‘Think big and do big.’ Quoted in Le Temps de la mentalité de guerre.

[19] See “Trump's triumph in the United States: A giant step forward in the decomposition of capitalism!”, ICConline, November 2024, where we explain why he is also an active factor in the accentuation of this self-destructive process.

[20] “Our primary objective is to prevent the emergence of a new rival” (Extract from a secret 1992 document of the US Department of Defence attributed to Paul Wolfowitz - neocon Under Secretary of Defence from 2001 to 2005 - published by the New York Times and of course denied by all administration officials). In "La géopolitique de Donald Trump", Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2025.

[21] See the “Report on Imperialist Tensions” in International Review 170.

[22] "The European coalition's military deployment would require a major land component of at least four or five multinational combat brigades combined under a permanent command structure. The troops would be stationed in eastern Ukraine and would need to be combat-ready, mobile and adaptable to Ukrainian conditions. A strong air component including combat air patrols, airborne radar to detect aircraft or missiles, ground-based air defences and rapid reaction capabilities would be needed to prevent Russian bombing and air raids. Some of these systems could be operated from air bases outside Ukraine. Finally, a maritime component could help secure overseas lines of communication, but under the Montreux Convention, which governs passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits, Turkey would first have to allow a limited number of Western warships into the Black Sea.” (“Ukraine's security now depends on Europe”, Elie Tenenbaum and Leo Litra in Foreign Affairs, 3 December 2024). In other words, Russia's occupation of Donbas would ultimately have led to an occupation by European countries... By NATO.

[23] “The time of the war mentality” on https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/fr/news/detail/9801

[24] See 'After Ukraine, the Middle East: capitalism’s only future is barbarism and chaos!', World Revolution 399

[25] See 'Prague Action Week: Some lessons, and some replies to slander', ICConline.

[26] See 'An international debate to understand the global situation and prepare for the future', ICConline.