[Militant No. 1006, 31 August 1990, p. 8 and 9]
Lynn Walsh looks at the effect on the world
The forces for war in the Middle East are in place. The massive build-up of US weaponry and troops continues day and night.
For the moment US president Bush appears to have stepped back from the brink and negotiations under UN auspices have begun. Nevertheless, as French president Mitterrand said. the US has entered “the logic of war’.
Bush and his advisors are hoping that Saddam will be ousted by officers who will retreat from Kuwait. thus avoiding the need for a military assault. But they are unmistakably prepared for war – and war is still the likely outcome.
Through decades of plunder and intervention. Western imperialism has created a cauldron of crisis in the Middle East. Once again, in defence of its power and profit. US imperialism threatens to plunge the region into war.
Naturally workers in Britain and elsewhere are deeply concerned about the fate of Saddam’s hostages. But if there is war hundreds of thousands will face death. destruction and untold suffering. Responsibility for the crisis lies with the capitalist powers. above all with the US, and socialists everywhere must totally oppose imperialist intervention. It is shameful that the Labour leaders unctuously endorse the policy of Bush and Thatcher.
But neither can socialists give support to the brutal military-police dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, which upholds the power and wealth of a self-seeking elite. His and similar regimes have compounded the problems of the Arab peoples. The labour movement in the West must give its support to the workers and other exploited classes of the region, the only forces capable of cutting through the spiral of crisis and war.
The UN secretary-general has begun a round of negotiations. This, however, follows a Security Council decision to allow the use of force “when necessary” to make sanctions effective. For the time being Iraqi ships appear to be submitting to inspection by Western warships. But a single incident could trigger hostilities.
The build-up of US forces, the biggest operation since the Second World War, in itself makes war more likely. Having sent a massive task force. Bush will be under more and more pressure to send it into action. US and other Western armies cannot be left sitting in the desert indefinitely. And how can Saddam retreat? As with Galtieri and the Falklands. his own survival is at stake. If Saddam believes that a US strike is inevitable. he may try to pre-empt it.
Whether there will be war no longer depends purely on the calculations of Bush, Saddam. or other leaders. When contending navies, armies and air forces are mobilised, events take on a momentum of their own and many unquantifiable factors are thrown into the balance.
Whoever makes the first move, all-out war in the Gulf region would mean barbarous. devastation. There would be an explosion in the Middle East, with world-wide reverberations.
The idea that the US can carry out a rapidly effective ‘surgical strike’. as advocated by ex-US secretary of state Kissinger, is an illusion.
The US has superior weaponry, particularly with aircraft and missiles. They could rapidly knock out many key installations in Kuwait and Iraq.
But to retake Kuwait. this would not be enough. The US would have to completely smash Saddam’s military machine. This would require a massive offensive against Iraqi forces both in Kuwait and in Iraq itself. The ‘surgical strike’. would rapidly escalate into an all-out offensive.
This is recognised by US strategists. The warships and lightly armed intervention forces sent in at the beginning are being reinforced with an enormous concentration of ground forces.
There are probably about 60.000 ground forces in position. By mid-September there will probably be over 150.000 US troops there: the minimum required for any attempt to take Kuwait.
The US leaders are hoping that if they amass overwhelming military odds against Saddam, they will be able to induce a rebellion from within the Iraqi officer corps. There have been reports of several recent plots against Saddam, with execution of those involved. No doubt the CIA is doing its best to foster splits within the Iraqi army.
If Saddam holds onto power, however, the build-up of US and Western forces will force Bush to take a decision.
An offensive against Iraq will mean a bloodbath. The eight-year Gulf war between Iraq and Iran, which cost a million lives, showed the terrible destructive power of modern ‘conventional’ weaponry. An advance by the US to occupy Kuwait would incur an appalling death toll.
Offensive action by the US. Moreover, would provoke mass resistance, among the Iraqi population, which could lead to slaughter on a worse scale than the Iran-Iraq war. The use of barbaric chemical weapons cannot be ruled out.
The weight of material resources favours the US. Iraq is isolated and the embargo will probably deprive Saddam of most of the vital food and goods Iraq has to import. The US can pour in reinforcements and supplies.
If there is a long siege, however, the commitment will become a serious burden on the faltering US economy. Prolonged fighting particularly with heavy casualties of US soldiers and pilots, would provoke a mass opposition within the US. as during the Vietnam war. Nevertheless, in the short term, the strategic balance favours the US.
Military victory, however, even if achieved quite quickly, would not solve all the US’s problems. What if Saddam were smashed – the underlying aim of US policy? A new regime would take over a mountain of problems. To the extent that they depended on US backing they would face the hostility of the Iraqi masses.
US imperialism would find itself with another shaky client state on its hands, with very poor prospects of surviving the shock waves which will follow the present crisis.
About face for the USSR
The ruling bureaucracy of the USSR, following Gorbachev’s policy, has given the US a free hand in the Middle East.
Previously under Brezhnev, Moscow armed client dictatorships, like Saddam’s, as levers for the bureaucracy’s influence and prestige in the region.
That policy had nothing in common with socialist internationalism, which entails support for workers’ struggles. The Iraqi Communist Party, loyal to Moscow’s Stalinist line, was brutally suppressed by Saddam.
However Gorbachev’s turn towards pro-capitalist market policies within the Soviet Union has been accompanied by a growing accommodation with imperialism on the world arena. The economic crisis in the Soviet Union, aggravated by the enormous burden of a military machine trying to match the United States’, makes it impossible to carry on the policy of arming and subsidising Third-World clients.
The Kremlin has dropped the policy of trying to maintain Syria’s military parity with Israel. This change lies behind Assad’s latest turn: friendly approaches to Mubarak, previously denounced for his pro-US, pro-Israeli stance, and the sending of a token Syrian force to Saudi Arabia.
Syria’s eclipse as a regional power only underlined the growth of Saddam’s military power and has fuelled his ambition to dominate the region.
The Soviet Union is now supporting the UN position and says it has withdrawn its advisors and back-up to the Iraqi military. This has provoked criticism from some of the military leadership, who see their points of strategic support being abandoned.
Recently increasing support from the West to confront Iran has made Saddam increasingly independent of his Moscow patrons. Nevertheless. half his $13 billion arms imports came from the USSR, which Iraq still owes £3.8 billion for arms credits, not likely to be repaid now.
The present situation underlines the cynical opportunism of the bureaucracy. In the past they supported regimes like Saddam’s, as much against their own exploited toilers as against imperialism. Now, under the guise of support for international law and the UN, they are allowing US imperialism virtually unlimited scope for intervention. Echoing the Kremlin’s revived confidence in the UN, some sections of the labour movement are calling for all action to be left in the hands of the Security Council. But the UN is really the Dis-united Nations. incapable of reconciling national antagonisms and fundamental class conflicts. The present unity will not outlive the Gulf crisis.
Bush naturally welcomes the legitimacy bestowed on US policy by the UN. US strategists fear the mass reaction in the Middle East and elsewhere which would be provoked by US military intervention.
They also know that there will be growing opposition at home if there is a protracted conflict. Far better, then, to have responsibility shouldered by the UN.
Their declarations of undying support for the UN Charter are pure hypocrisy. Two of the US’s main allies have been illegally occupying territory for years: Israel has occupied Arab lands since 1967: Turkey has held the northern part of Cyprus since it invaded in 1974.
Bush himself ordered the illegal occupation of Panama and was serving under Reagan when the US was conducting illegal covert operations to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Bush has already made it clear that if UN endorsement falls short of the US’s vital strategic aims, the US will act unilaterally. As the possibility of an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia has receded, powerful US and other forces have been built up in the area and the Security Council has ratified the use of force to uphold the economic embargo. Bush has said the US will not go beyond UN policy.
But if the US comes to the point when it considers military action imperative. Bush will order such action with or without UN approval. At the moment neither the USSR or China are raising objections. Other members of the Security Council do not support Saddam’s attempt to force up oil prices.
But it is still early days. Military action and especially a radical reaction among the masses of the Arab states to any military assault on Iraq will shatter the UN’s apparent unity.
Should we support Saddam?
As he is now confronted by the threat of military intervention by US imperialism, whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the working class internationally, should the Iraqi regime not receive the support of the world labour movement? Such a position would ignore the real character and role of Saddam’s regime.
The Ba‘athist regime, a Bonapartist dictatorship from the beginning. was actually helped to power by the US in 1963. It has throughout maintained its rule through repression: deportations, imprisonment and executions.
It is responsible for genocide against the Kurdish people. No independent. democratic organisations of the working class are tolerated.
The country’s enormous oil revenues have been used to enhance the wealth of the elite. especially Saddam’s ruling circle, and to build up a military state.
After the Iranian revolution. which threatened US interests in the region. the US once again stepped up support for Saddam – building his military machine still further. His invasion of Iran, in clear violation of the UN Charter, did not deter the US from backing him.
The war against Iran was not waged in defence of vital interests of the Iraqi people. Since the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam has struck a deal with the Iranian government over the border supposedly at the centre of the conflict – a cynical about-turn on a ‘principle’ which cost a million lives. One of Saddam’s conditions. moreover. was that Iran should stop supporting the Kurds.
Now the Rafsanjani leadership in Iran – not without opposition from the fundamentalists – is trying to take advantage of the new situation to move towards friendlier relations with US imperialism. The Iranian government wants assistance from the US to rebuild its shattered economy, while the US, bitten by its former pet, is reappraising Iran’s potential as an ally. This is realpolitik – policy decided by the pursuit of wealth and power, unencumbered by any inconvenient principles.
The real issue at stake for Saddam in the Gulf war was his regime’s power and prestige and his ambition to dominate the Gulf region. He can now abandon the war’s formal aims because, with the US’s help, he has already achieved his real aim: to become the dominant military power of the region.
The US is intervening for its own ends. It in no way follows from this, however, that Saddam is defending the interests of the exploited masses of the region.
Initially Saddam may arouse support from those oppressed by the client-regimes of the US. But he represents a national Bonapartist elite, not the interests of the Arab masses.
He has ousted a corrupt, autocratic royal clique in Kuwait but he subsidises and supports the Hashemite monarchy of Hussein in Jordan – one reason for the latter’s reluctance to strictly enforce sanctions against Iraq, despite his nominal support for UN policy.
Military confrontation of the US by Saddam, for instance, will not bring about the defeat of Israel and return the occupied territories to the Palestinian people. The national and social liberation of the Palestinians and the Arab people generally depends on their own mass struggles – anathema to a military-police dictator like Saddam.
Saddam’s military adventure, itself rooted in the contradictions created by imperialism, will throw the region into renewed turmoil. Even it the US is able to defeat Saddam militarily, imperialism will face new upheavals.
Regimes on which the US has leaned for support. like Mubarak’s in Egypt and Hussein’s in Jordan. may go down in the maelstrom. Mass revolutionary movements may be sparked off in the aftermath of war, if the crisis comes te war: but that will be as a by-product of Saddam’s adventure, not the result of a strategy that is in any way progressive.
The long-term cost
Oil has gone above $32 a barrel, the highest price since 1982. In real terms, this is still half its peak price in 1974. OPEC is in disarray. Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have already indicated that they will unilaterally increase output and reduce prices if OPEC does not agree higher output quotas.
Such action would tend to counteract the effects of lost output from Iraq and Kuwait due to the UN boycott. However pump prices are going up in the West because the big oil companies. despite massive stocks built up while prices were very low, base their current retail price on the cost of replacing their stocks today and tomorrow. As after the 1974 and 1979 price rises, they will no doubt boost their profits considerably.
Higher pump prices. in turn. will quickly lead to higher transport and production costs, accelerating inflation in the advanced capitalist countries – and having a devastating impact on the debt-ridden underdeveloped countries.
World stock markets have seen big falls because of fears about oil supplies. Military intervention by the US, aimed ultimately at securing oil supplies, could actually lead to the serious disruption of supplies and even to the destruction of oilfields in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. OPEC apart. shortages would then push up the price of crude oil.
Although much smaller than the first two ‘oil shocks’, the current rise – together with fears about future supplies – could be “the final straw which tips the US economy into recession,” says the Financial Times.
A prolonged military presence in the Middle East. already costing an estimated $1 billion a day, will cancel out the ‚peace dividend’ from the scaling down of US forces in Western Europe.
A military operation against Saddam would be an even bigger drain on US government finances, With or without war, it is likely to be a considerable time before the forces now being sent to the Gulf can be scaled down.
The present crisis underlines the fact that, militarily, the US is still the world’s predominant super-power. This is emphasised by the decline in the USSR’s capacity to intervene on the world arena.
Economically, however, US capitalism no longer enjoys the undisputed primacy it had after the Second World War. It has lost the massive lead it had in productivity and technical capacity. and is now rivalled by Germany and Japan. which have not been burdened by massive arms expenditures.
The assertion of US military might in the Middle East will sharpen the contradiction between US imperialism’s strategic power and its weakened economic position.
Ultimately US workers, who have already suffered over a decade of falling living standards, will pay the added cost of military intervention.
Bush’s policy may appear popular for the moment. But there are no quick, painless, inexpensive solutions for US imperialism.
The effects of Bush’s Middle Eastern policy within the US, especially when bigger tax bills go out and if body bags begin to arrive from the Gulf, will rebound on the ruling class. Bush is helping to create the conditions for a massive movement of the US working class in opposition to the policies of big business.
Saddam may well come to regret his latest military adventure. But for US imperialism, despite its super-power might, renewed involvement in the Middle Eastern cockpit will prove far more painful and costly than Bush and company can imagine. The region is a cauldron of volatile materials waiting to explode and the shock waves will shake the whole capitalist. World.
The bloody role of imperialism, aggravated by the crimes of the region’s puppet dictators, leads to one conclusion: only the working class can pull society out of the quagmire of poverty, oppression and horrifying war.
We oppose the intervention of the US and other capitalist powers. We give no support to Saddam’s police state or to rival dictators, We stand for a democratic and socialist Iraq. Only an internationalist programme can provide a way out of the national traps created by imperialism. We therefore stand for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.
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