Contribution of Workers Party of Ireland

Dear comrades,

The Workers Party of Ireland conveys greetings to all our comrade parties in European Communist Action and conveys its thanks to the New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN) for organising this event.

Imperialist “peace” is never neutral. It is a temporary stabilisation of domination, extraction, and coercion. Peace under imperialism is not the opposite of war; it is the preparation for the next.

Inter-imperialist conflict reflects deeper contradictions - economic crises, competition for markets, resource scarcity and geopolitical rivalry. These “developments” are not random or purely military; they are expressions of the underlying imperialist struggle for hegemony. Imperialist peace is “peace at gunpoint” - a coerced, unstable situation.

Workers and oppressed peoples have no interest in either imperialist war or imperialist peace. The slogan “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” (Lenin’s formulation) reflects the idea that the only progressive outcome is the overthrow of the system that produces both war and peace as forms of violence.

Imperialism, whether in its war or “peaceful” phase, destroys peoples and the planet. In the imperialist system, war and peace are not opposites but alternating methods of enforcing the same domination. For communists, the task is not to choose between these two phases but to expose and oppose the system that produces them both. 

The devastation of war is only the most visible moment in a continuum of coercion, extraction, and domination that persists even in times labelled as “peace.” In liberal narratives, peace is often imagined as a neutral or benevolent state, a condition in which violence is absent and diplomacy prevails. Yet for communists, peace under imperialism is never a stable or equitable arrangement. It is a temporary situation maintained by force, economic pressure, and political subordination. The “peace” that imperialist powers impose is not the absence of violence but its displacement - away from open battlefields and into the economic, social, and political structures that keep militarily weaker nations dependent and vulnerable.

This “peace” is marked by unequal treaties and trade arrangements; military bases and security agreements that guarantee compliance; financial instruments including debt, sanctions, conditional loans that discipline states and peoples and political interference and military threats that ensure favourable regimes remain in power.

In this context, peace is not a respite from open violence but a reconfiguration of it. It is the period in which imperialist states consolidate gains, reorganise alliances, and prepare for the next confrontation.

When contradictions sharpen - over markets, resources, spheres of influence, or geopolitical advantage - the façade of peace collapses. War erupts not as an aberration but as the logical extension of imperialist competition. Lenin’s analysis of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism remains relevant: the concentration of capital, the dominance of finance, and the division of the world among great powers create conditions in which conflict is inevitable.

Battlefield developments, therefore, cannot be understood in isolation. They are symptoms of deeper structural tensions which involve economic crises that push states toward external expansion; critical rivalries between blocs seeking to reshape the global order; competition over energy routes, minerals and strategic territories and the manufacture of domestic narratives that make militarism a convenient distraction or supposedly “unifying” force.

The destruction wrought by war is not a deviation from imperialist peace but its culmination. What peace leaves standing - exploited labour, dependent economies, militarised borders - war finishes off with bombs.

In the period between open hostilities and negotiated pauses, ceasefires, truces, and “peace processes” are frequently celebrated as diplomatic breakthroughs. In reality, however, these represent little more than a rebalancing of forces. They freeze conflicts without resolving their root causes, entrenching inequalities and legitimising the very structures that imperialism has produced. Such imposed “agreements” preserve the dominance of the monopolies; impose conditions that limit state sovereignty and independence; create new mechanisms of surveillance and control and leave underlying social and economic contradictions untouched.

The USA is locked in competition with capitalist China and Russia and other capitalist states including Israel, Saudi Arabia, India and Brazil which opportunistically force agreements with other powers in pursuit of their capitalist interest through competing alliances such as BRICS or the QUAD alliance.

Competition between competing imperialist blocs in Ukraine has produced a vicious and dangerous war where the working class (Ukrainian and Russian) is bearing the cost. 

Since we last met the U.S. has intervened in Venezuela and has built a huge military presence in the Caribbean imposing an imperialist threat not only to Venezuela but also to Cuba and to all of Latin America.

Israel’s slaughter in Palestine continues with the so-called peace by gunpoint backed by the U.S., the European Union, NATO and the reactionary Arab states siding with the aggressors in their war crimes against the Palestinian people.

The United States’ military assault on Venezuela (and the death of the Cuban citizens in that assault) has immediate and far-reaching consequences particularly for Cuba, sharply escalating threats to the island’s sovereignty, security and economic survival.

The executive order signed on 29 January 2026 by US President Trump, which unjustifiably declares Cuba as an “extraordinary threat” to the national security of the United States and authorises new sanctions against any country supplying oil to Cuba in circumstances where Cuba is already facing a severe energy crisis as a result of the long-standing US blockade must be unequivocally condemned. We must stand with Cuba, its people, Party and government.

The European Union’s war preparations, in its rush to war, is echoed by the British government’s war mongering rhetoric repeated by its Prime Minister Starmer at yesterday’s Munich meeting where he made clear that even in the event of a peace deal in Ukraine “we” must be ready to fight. 

Ireland has historically been militarily neutral, but it is far from politically neutral. In recent months the Irish government, which on 17th March will go on its annual pilgrimage to Washington to pay homage to the U.S., has proposed measures aimed at further deepening Ireland’s involvement in the preparations for war despite clear public opposition to such measures. The Irish government proposes to remove the “triple lock” mechanism, which has been a precondition since 1960 for the approval of troop deployment. To meet the triple lock requirement, three bodies must approve the deployment: the UN Security Council or General Assembly, the Irish government, and the Dáil, the directly elected lower house of the Irish parliament.

Communists reject the false dichotomy between imperialist war and imperialist peace.

Both are designed to maintain the oppression inflicted upon the working class and oppressed peoples. In war, workers are sent to kill and die for interests that are not their own. In peace, they endure exploitation, austerity, and political repression.

Lenin’s call to “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” was not an idle slogan but a strategic recognition that the only progressive outcome of an imperialist conflict is the overthrow of the system that produces it. The choice is between “socialism or barbarism”. The rotten capitalist system offers no path to lasting peace. Only through the overthrow of the social order and the dismantling of imperialist alliances and military blocs can peace be attained.

Lenin always emphasised that the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly and that a monopoly, once it is formed and controls thousands of millions, inevitably penetrates every sphere of public life, regardless of the form of government.

(Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism) Lenin also made clear that capitalism’s transition to the stage of monopoly capitalism is connected with the intensification of the struggle for partitioning the world.

The proposition that “Their war destroys everything that their peace left standing” is an indictment of the capitalist system and an endorsement of Lenin’s correct analysis of the nature of imperialism. It reminds us that the brutality of war and the injustices of peace are two faces of the same system.

For communists the struggle for peace cannot be separated from the struggle against imperialism. Capitalism creates the competition between the imperialist powers and their monopolies for the division and redivision of the world. It has produced multiple crises intensifying conflict between and within states, sharpening inter-imperialist rivalries, unprecedented global migration and refugees, pandemics and climate change.

These developments have witnessed the rise of fascism and the far right which advocate authoritarian “answers” that scapegoat minorities and the oppressed, whipping up nationalist reaction.

Capitalism offers unbridled wealth to the minority while subjecting the majority to exploitation, oppression and deprivation. The opportunists and reformists have no solution. In the struggle against the monopolies, in the fight against imperialism and imperialist war, in the battle against fascism and reaction it is the communists, guided by revolutionary theory and practice, who will lead the way to the emancipation of the working class and the creation of a new and better society.

Gerry Grainger

International Secretary

Workers Party of Ireland