In the 80’s the International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) – Association of Anti-Fascists, the umbrella organization of former partisans, deportees, Nazi persecuted and their relatives, fighters of the Anti-Hitler coalition and anti-fascists of today’s generations, was provided by the United Nations with the honorary title “Ambassador of Peace”.
This was a visible sign of the acknowledgment for the FIR and their member federations because of their large commitment for peace and against the stationing of nuclear middle-range missiles in Europe together with the peace movement in different countries of Europe.
The FIR is in large concern by the current announcement of the Trump administration to terminate the INF treaty to the prohibition of these weapons. This step will be connected with a new stationing of nuclear medium-range missiles in different European countries and with it the danger of a renewed nuclear arms race.
When the USA and the USSR signed this agreement 30 years ago, it actually led to the scrapping of an entire category of nuclear weapons, in other words to real disarmament. The end of the block confrontation with the dissolution of the “Warsaw Treaty” contributed to the fact that the military tensions in Central Europe could be reduced at times actually.
Already the eastward expansion of NATO and the permanent stationing of troops and offensive weapons near the Russian western border has increased the military tension in Europe.
Now, with the termination of the INF Treaty, this historic achievement of the worldwide disarmament process is to be sacrificed to an insane rearmament and confrontation policy of the current US President Donald Trump and his right-wing conservative government.
The end of the INF Treaty would be more than the termination of a treaty, it would be the end of an international disarmament and arms control policy that has made Europe and the world safer from the dangers of nuclear war. The Treaty has sufficient provisions in case any party to the Treaty should see violations of the INF Agreement. These joint commissions must work. Propagandistic “accusations” do not help.
The FIR and their member organizations see in this contract also today still an important instrument against a nuclear arms race. FIR calls all European governments to use their influence to keep this treaty alive. Together with the peace-movements from different countries, the FIR will become active against a renewed nuclear armament. A world without nuclear weapons remains the goal, not a nuclear equipped Europe. We renew the commitment of 1945: “Never again war!”
