By Fidel Castro

Thursday March 6, 2003

These are hard times we are living in. In recent months, we have more than
once heard chilling words and statements. In his speech to West Point
graduating cadets on June 1 2002, the United States president declared:
"Our security will require transforming the military you will lead, a
military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark
corner of the world."

That same day, he proclaimed the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike,
something no one had ever done in the political history of the world. A
few months later, referring to the unnecessary and almost certain military
action against Iraq, he said: "And if war is forced upon us, we will fight
with the full force and might of the United States army."

That statement was not made by the government of a small and weak nation,
but by the leader of the richest and mightiest military power that has
ever existed, which possesses thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to
obliterate the world's population several times over - and other
terrifying conventional military systems and weapons of mass destruction.

That is what we are: dark corners of the world. That is the perception
some have of the third world nations. Never before had anyone offered a
better definition; no one had shown such contempt. The former colonies of
powers that divided the world among them and plundered it for centuries
today make up the group of underdeveloped countries.

There is nothing like full independence, fair treatment on an equal
footing or national security for any of us; none is a permanent member of
the UN security council with a veto right; none has any possibility of
being involved in the decisions of the international financial
institutions; none can keep its best talents; none can protect itself from
capital flight or the destruction of nature and the environment caused by
the squandering, selfish and insatiable consumerism of the economically
developed countries.

After the last global carnage in the 1940s, we were promised a world of
peace, a reduction of the gap between the rich and poor and the assistance
of the highly developed to the less developed countries. It was all a huge
lie. We had imposed on us an unsustainable and unbearable world order.

The world is being driven into a dead end. Within hardly 150 years, the
oil and gas it took the planet 300 million years to accumulate will have
been depleted. In just 100 years, the world population has grown from 1.5
billion to over 6 billion people, who will have to depend on energy
sources that are still to be researched and developed. Poverty continues
to grow while old and new diseases threaten whole nations with
annihilation. The world's soil is being eroded and losing its fertility;
the climate is changing; the air that we breathe, drinking water and the
seas are increasingly contaminated.

Authority is being wrenched away from the United Nations, its established
procedures are being obstructed and the organisation itself destroyed;
development assistance is being reduced; there are continuous demands on
the third world countries to pay a $2.5 trillion debt that cannot be paid
under the present circumstances, while $1 trillion dollars are spent in
ever more sophisticated and deadly weapons. Why and for what?

A similar amount is spent on commercial advertising, sowing consumerist
longings that cannot be satisfied in the minds of billions of people. Why
and for what? For the first time the human species is running a real risk
of extinction due to the insane behaviour of the very same human beings,
who are thus becoming the victims of this "civilisation".

However, no one will fight for us, that is, for the overwhelming majority,
only we will do it. Only we can save humanity ourselves with the support
of millions of manual and intellectual workers from the developed nations
who are conscious of the catastrophes befalling their peoples. Only we can
do it by sowing ideas, building awareness and mobilising global and North
American public opinion. No one needs to be told this. You know it very
well. Our most sacred duty is to fight, and fight we will.

Fidel Castro is president of the Republic of Cuba. This is an edited
version of a speech delivered to the Non Aligned Movement summit in Kuala
Lumpur.