The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History by J Smith Page A

established pillars of the system in the struggles against the workers’ movement and the liberation wars, and they cannot be pulled down without provoking general social upheaval. This opens up the possibility of transforming the relative weakness of the anti-imperialist struggle in the West European center into a strong-point in the international struggle.
    As to the imperialist system overall, its global restructuring project can only succeed if its plans for the imperialist center unfold relatively smoothly and quickly without encountering any serious, radical resistance. Given the international contradictions, any disruption caused by the anti-imperialist struggle here would prevent this project from succeeding. Imperialism would have to bring its massive power to bear to impose solutions at home and abroad, which would result in a unified international class war being waged around the world at a higher, more intense level. That is to say: it would bring about a renewed struggle to smash the imperialist system. This is the starting point from which we struggle. And it is our awareness of this opportunity, of our power, and of the option that only we here have—and, as a result, also anawareness of our responsibility—that pushes us to establish and build the anti-imperialist front here.
    THE REVOLUTION IN WESTERN EUROPE HAS BECOME A CORNERSTONE OF THE GLOBAL CONFRONTATION.
    In the context of the international class war, the imperialist offensive in Western Europe, which depends on the FRG, is essential to ensuring the functioning of the global system of domination and capitalist reproduction. On the other hand, from our point of view, the development of the front in the center to resist this is of vital importance in order to be able to counter the current tendency for the global liberation process to get derailed by the East-West contradiction, and to break through the constraints caused by developments at the level of the state in those countries that have achieved national liberation.
    Western Europe is the point of intersection between East and West, between North and South, and between state and society. So the centers themselves are both the launching pads and the bases for restructuring projects. It is here that they must attempt to develop the necessary military power to pressure the socialist states and the national liberation struggles, as well as to develop the economic power necessary to get a grip on the internal waves of economic and social crisis. It is also from these bases that imperialism must intervene to dominate and integrate the emergent developing states. And—as a precondition for all of this—domestic political unity must be imposed; if there is not a consensus, there must at least be peace on the home front. In this sense, imperialism has been forced back to its centers. Using all its resources, it must offensively and aggressively impose the global reactionary project at all levels and with maximum force in the center.
    Medium-range missiles, neutron bombs, conventional weaponry, concentration and centralization of capital, rationalization, plans for massive unemployment, turning humans into simple extensions of machines, the inevitable forceful shaping of energy policy based on its use as a weapon of war on the global market, the destruction of social structures to serve the interests of the police and big capital, exploitation of the means of subsistence, training programs functioning as factories, police, justice, prison, etc. are the initial blows in this militarily conceived offensive. This is the iron vice squeezing all sectors of society in the metropole, which long ago made it irrelevant whether or not we want the front in the center—the war has already begun. The only question today is whether there will be a revolutionary front to oppose the reactionary offensive.
    This is what is behind the emergence of the anti-imperialist front in the center. Its