The Workers Party of Ireland condemns the visit of US President Donald Trump to Ireland and the craven attitude of the Irish government towards the visit. 

The US administration is a regime which supports and sponsors despotic states across the world, enjoys close relations with brutal dictatorships, which has demonstrated contempt for the Palestinian people and which cossets and rewards their oppressor, Israel. US imperialism has a long and violent history of intervention in the internal affairs of other states, including in South East Asia, Central and Latin America and the Middle East. The malign legacy of US wars and intervention is still acutely experienced by people across the world and the crises precipitated by imperialist actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have had ruinous effects in those countries and occasioned and accelerated a migrant crisis which has led to untold death and suffering. 

At the time of this visit, the US has unilaterally withdrawn from the nuclear deal with Iran and it is deliberately, provocatively and dangerously heightening tensions with Iran and has initiated the biggest mobilisation of US forces in the Gulf in 30 years increasing the risk of a catastrophic military conflict in the region. 

Meanwhile the US is actively engaged in developing new measures to strengthen the unjust and criminal blockade against Cuba, an open act of aggression designed to deprive the country of resources in a futile attempt to reverse the gains of the Cuban revolution. 

Similarly, in Venezuela the US has very substantially broadened the scope of its aggression against the Bolivarian state by employing draconian economic sanctions, encouraging, financing and supporting attempted coup d’état and, with the assistance of the imperialist European Union, devising systematic plans to isolate it. 

The US maintains the highest number of military bases outside its territory (95% of all foreign military bases in the world). These bases are instruments of imperialist domination and sources of devastating environmental and infrastructural impact on the peoples of the planet, its flora and fauna, through intervention, occupation and war. There are, at present, US military bases in every country in the Persian Gulf except Iran. The abuse of Shannon airport as a US forward operating base in its ongoing international aggression is a deep source of shame. 

The US is the world’s biggest exporter of arms – weapons that destroy, maim and kill, provided for profit regardless of the consequences. In the past few weeks the US administration cleared the way for $8.1 billion in weapon sales for Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. 

Despite the fact that climate change is a clear and present danger for humanity and the world the US administration has turned its back on climate catastrophe and the extinction of species. The foreign and domestic policies of the United States exist to bolster and advance the interests of the capitalist class and to intensify and sustain the power of the monopolies. 

To those who lamely declare that Irish people should welcome Trump despite his policies because he is the US president, we say – Donald Trump is, of course, simply the current face of US imperialism but his visit to Ireland represents an opportunity to express our outrage, through direct democratic manifestations of protest, not merely at what he says but at an administration and a system which represents a real and growing threat to world peace, social progress and humanity. 

Gerry Grainger 

International Secretary 

Central Executive Committee 

Workers Party of Ireland 

5th June 2019