9/11 and After

What are the changes in the world situation since the 9/11 attacks?

9/11 was undoubtedly a worldwide turning point. It gave US imperialism, through the presidency of George W Bush, the opportunity to actually implement long-discussed policies of its neo-liberal wing. Their plans go back ten years before 9/11 with the ideas of people like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz outlined in the ‘Project for a New American Century’. The elements of that policy were for a new assertive hegemonic world role for US imperialism. They were looking for a pretext to use the colossal military might that US imperialism had accumulated.

Because American imperialism is the only real superpower on the world arena at the present time, with the demise of the Soviet Union, the neo-conservative wing of American capitalism was concerned that this power was not being effectively used to enhance its world position. The pretext for achieving this was, of course, 9/11. Evidence has been produced since then which shows that the neo-conservatives around figures like Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were, in the first few hours after 9/11, actually trying to convince Bush to use the attack not to invade Afghanistan in the first instance but to go after Saddam Hussein.

Their plans were temporarily thwarted by those like Colin Powell and the more ‘cautious’ wing of the American bourgeoisie. Powell argued that if Osama bin Laden was proven to be the organiser of the attack on the twin towers, if then this incident was utilised to attack Iraq, this would not be seen as legitimate in the eyes of either the American people or the rest of the world. That is why, amongst other reasons, they decided to attack al-Qa’ida’s base in Afghanistan. This facilitated a change to a more assertive role for US imperialism. However, we should not forget that the Clinton administration was also interventionist in the 1990s, bombing Serbia/Kosova, as well as Sudan. But it was not as naked or as brutal as the Bush regime. The Clinton administration tried to cover up the role of US imperialism under (Woodrow) Wilsonian ‘liberalism’, capitalist ‘humanitarianism’. Clinton sought to go through multilateral agencies like the United Nations wherever that was possible. Bush brutally broke away from this in the aftermath of 9/11 and it created a new world situation.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we produced a lot of analytical material (available on the CWI website) in which we pointed out that US imperialism would adopt a pre-emptive strategy bolstered by its military prowess; it now accounts for 50% of world arms expenditure. There has never been a military power with such dominance in the history of the world, not even during the ‘Cold War’. Then Stalinism counter-balanced the US. So this was a new situation.

The US was initially successful in the war in Afghanistan largely because the forces which they faced, the Taliban, refused to fight before the war had got under way. It was an easy victory. It actually fostered the idea that it was possible to gain a victory by air power alone. Yet the whole of history in the modern era has shown that, by itself, air power alone is not sufficient to guarantee a military victory. That was underlined by the events in Lebanon during the course of the recent war. After Afghanistan, in a quite blatant fashion, the ground was prepared for an intervention in Iraq. Many people, including some who were Marxists and Trotskyists, were blown off course, destabilised or disorientated by the events of 9/11. There was pessimism in the neo-colonial world and the advanced industrial countries that this colossal power of US imperialism could be defeated. Afghanistan was the third war which they had won after the Gulf War of the early 1990s and Kosova. It looked as though the American juggernaut was unstoppable from a military point of view. The evidence was there which appeared to show that. We went to great pains in the documents of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) to show the limits of that power. It is one thing to defeat a discredited regime like Saddam Hussein’s in the 1991 Gulf War after he occupied Kuwait. World public opinion was against him. But Iraq in 2001 was a different proposition because what was being proposed was not just the use of air power or a police-type operation but a full military invasion and occupation.

A big discussion took place in our ranks on whether it was possible for Bush junior to go ahead with the invasion. The American bourgeoisie was split on this issue. In fact, even the Republican Party establishment did not believe that Bush would be prepared to actually engage in this war. We predicted that if he did invade, the USA would be drawn into a quagmire. We used the example of Vietnam as a warning to the US. It has some application to Iraq but there are also some profound differences. So the situation following 9/11 represented a big change. It underlined the fact that the US was the mightiest power militarily on the globe. It would use 9/11 to enhance its position and change the balance of forces in its favour, and seek to reverse all the defeats, if it could, which it suffered in the past. It wanted to destroy the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ which existed in the US peoples’ consciousness; that never again should a US foreign military invasion and occupation be launched. The Iraq War was deliberately framed to break that and to some extent it appeared originally as though that had been achieved. But we predicted that there would be Arab nationalist resistance in Iraq, irrespective of Saddam Hussein.

You said the left after 9/11 was confused and did not understand well what was happening. It was quite clear that until the summer of 2002 the anti-globalisation movement was growing very quickly. Afterwards, there were other big demonstrations but the movement began to decline after 9/11 and after that there was a rightward movement. But I think the anti-war movement before the Iraq War was something different from the anti-globalisation movement. The movement in Italy was very big, not only the people who participated in the meetings, actions, etc., but in the general mass … for example, we had the experience of flags in windows everywhere; ‘peace, peace, peace’, in their millions. You can still see thousands today when you arrive in Italy. But after a downturn in the movement when the war began, they realised they could not stop the war. The reformist parties began to say, yes we were against the war but now there is a war and we are for democracy, for a new society in Iraq and for democratisation but we are against the occupation. What do you think about the situation in general of the anti-globalisation and anti-war movement?

We would agree with your general point, which affects not only Italy but has a general relevance to the anti-war movement internationally. The anti-globalisation movement went through ups and downs. In the first instance it was a reaction against capitalist globalisation worldwide, the neo-liberal policies that went with it and the threat of war, destruction of the environment, etc. In the aftermath of 9/11 there was shock. Let us remember that the European bourgeoisie was initially uncritical of US imperialism, summed up quite dramatically in a headline in Le Monde which said: ‘We are all Americans now’. This was a huge departure from the usual critical stance of the majority of the European bourgeoisie and particularly the French bourgeoisie towards the US. 9/11 did allow the relatively quick victory in Afghanistan. There was not the same reaction to this event even in the anti-war movement which was at quite a low ebb in Britain. But with Iraq and the lead-up to the war, which was quite protracted, it became clear that Bush and Blair were telling lies about weapons of mass destruction. There was growing bitterness and anger, and a complete swing in public opinion against the war, although the mood differed from country to country.

In the US, because of the enormous power of the media and of the presidency, as well as the Democrats’ capitulation to Bush, there was an overwhelming majority in favour of the war, There was also a significant minority opposed. But the majority said, ‘Well, we have had a quick victory in Afghanistan, our troops are there, so we should support them.’ In addition, there is always the tendency for the population to support ‘our troops’ in the first instance, even when they are critical of a war. That then turns into its opposite if the war goes badly, as is the case with Iraq today. But a huge movement built up against the Iraq War which culminated in the 15 February 2003 worldwide demonstrations. In London, we had the biggest demonstration in history, bigger than the anti-poll tax demonstration, larger than the Chartists’ demonstrations of the first half of the 19th century. It reflected the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population was opposed to the war. In fact, Blair actually discussed with his own family, it has been revealed since, that he would probably have to resign from the government, such was the huge wellspring of opposition to the war from below in Britain.

There were ebbs and flows even in this movement. Once the war began, even though two million had demonstrated, a certain acquiescence set in. One of the reasons the movement did not succeed was its one-dimensional pacifist character, not just of the people who participated – it is natural that workers and the middle class would immediately, in the first instance, say ‘we want peace’ – but of its leaders as well. The leaders of the anti-war movement in Britain kept the movement within very narrow limits. Some did pose the question of a general strike but in a very demagogic fashion. You cannot just organise a general strike on the question of war without serious preparation. Because of that, although opposition to the war has grown, the anti-war movement in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq was not as large as before. Since then, it has gone through a number of ebbs and flows, as the situation has worsened in Iraq.

There exists a paradoxical situation now. There is greater opposition to the war in the US and Britain in particular. The majority is now opposed to the war. There are overwhelming majorities against the war in Europe and yet the participation in the anti-war demonstrations is not on the level that it was in 2003. Why? It is because there is a feeling that demonstrations, in and of themselves, are not sufficient. We need to get rid of the pro-war government – or at least the leaders like Blair – we need a clear class policy to take the anti-war movement forward.

A US Conspiracy?

The second question may be strange but deals with the decline of the movement. In the last months there have been many books, discussions on the internet and also, two weeks ago in Milan, 150 people attended a film which claimed that the US organised 9/11 themselves or that they knew, like Pearl Harbor when it was known the Japanese would attack. What do you think of this theory? Is it a sign of the decline of the anti-war movement and what do you think about terrorism?

I would not necessarily say it was a manifestation of the decline of the anti-war movement because there is a lot of prima facie evidence that US imperialism was hoping and preparing for some kind of event like 9/11. As we said earlier, this would give them the pretext to realise the international programme of neo-liberalism. However, I do not think, unless there is conclusive evidence to the contrary, that this was the same as Pearl Harbor. There is an ongoing controversy over this event, but most people who have examined the situation at the time of Pearl Harbor would agree and have understood that Japanese imperialism was manoeuvred into the war by US imperialism. Japan relied on oil and this was choked off by the US, forcing Japan to resort to war. US imperialism had prepared the ground for some kind of attack by Japan which would give them the excuse to enter the Second World War. That is the most likely scenario of what happened around Pearl Harbor. I agree with Gore Vidal, the American writer, who has produced some very telling material on this.

If you look at the run-up to 9/11, given the warnings even two months before the event, you could say there is some evidence to suggest that American imperialism as a whole, or an agency of American imperialism such as the CIA or some secret service, or Mossad in combination with American imperialism, prepared for this particular incident. I do not think it is the same as Pearl Harbor, however. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence which shows that the Bush regime took its eye off the ball, was not vigilant, did not consider that Osama bin Laden would be able to carry through an attack of this kind. Therefore it is very unlikely that the US or its agencies were behind this attack. We will only be able to know for certain what the truth is when the secret files are released.

What is true is the majority of the Muslims in the Middle East and worldwide believes that 9/11 was a conscious plot organised by American imperialism in conjunction with Mossad. That is partly because they do not like to think that Muslims could have taken this kind of indiscriminate, murderous action. But I would say that this was an action by al-Qa’ida. It was also revenge, a nemesis, for American imperialism which had created al-Qa’ida in the first instance in Afghanistan. They created a Frankenstein’s monster which came back to haunt them in the attack of 9/11.

The most important thing is what flowed from this event. It has shaped the current situation which has given American militarism and imperialism this opportunity to enhance its material forces to intervene in Iraq. This, in turn, has polarised the situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, where the impression is that Islam is under attack. This has given right-wing political Islam a new lease of life in the Middle East and elsewhere.

You said before that US military spending is now more than all the other countries of the world and you stated that it is the only world superpower, But in your last article and documents you speak about the decline of the US, How do you connect these different statements and explain this relationship?

American imperialism is still the major military power and up to now is still the major economic power, although it has experienced a process of deindustrialisation similar to the whole of Western Europe. In fact, while there still is an important industrial proletariat in Western Europe, nevertheless, one of the consequences of globalisation is the outsourcing of industry, partly to Eastern Europe but in the main to China, a shift in the location of the majority of Marx’s industrial proletariat from the ‘West’ to the ‘East’, which is now the ‘workshop of the world’.

This raises important issues for Marxists for the future. There is the enormous weight of American imperialism militarily and still economically but without the same kind of underlying economic national strength which it had in the past. In 1945, most of the gold in the world was concentrated in Fort Knox and 50% of world production came from the US. In the last two decades, however, there has been a steady decline in the share of domestic industrial production in the US. The result is that America has ballooning deficits including a negative balance of trade on the current account. It has gone from being the major creditor nation and the banker of the world to the biggest debtor nation and is being propped up by Asian capitalism, particularly China.

US capitalism will be caught in a contradiction in the next period. The huge military power and economic weight of the US is increasingly financed by the rest of the world. If the US was any other economy, Italy or Britain for instance, with a 7% deficit on its current account, then the IMF would go in, declare the country bankrupt and introduce an austerity programme! But paradoxically and dialectically, because of the world role of US imperialism, it is using its economic weakness and its military might to hold the rest of the world to ransom to force others to finance this deficit and to give it the leeway to enhance its power internationally. Chalmers Johnson, a perceptive bourgeois commentator on the ‘American Empire’, in a recent book made the point that America is now an “imperialism of bases”. It has 725 acknowledged bases throughout the world. But, in reality, it has an astonishing 1,400 in total. Once it establishes a base, it generally never retreats from it. The only case in the post-war period – apart from China following the revolution ~ where it retreated was at Clark Base in the Philippines because of the revolution there which resulted in the overthrow of Marcos. But in the aftermath of 9/11 they have been allowed back and have now reoccupied the base! So there is this enormous web internationally, linked to the material interests of US imperialism but accompanied by a growing underlying economic weakness.

The limits on American imperialism on the international arena have been shown in Iraq, and also by Somalia in the recent period. Clinton intervened in 1993-94 but American troops were forced to withdraw. Bush has been pursuing a proxy war in Somalia. The government was defeated by the Islamic courts and now we have an Islamic state. The US is now trying to get Ethiopia to attack Somalia. Internationally, everywhere, the US now finds itself if not yet defeated then certainly weakened.

In the US itself, Hurricane Katrina revealed the economic and social ulcer at the heart of American imperialism. Trotsky predicted in the 1930s, in relation to the likely outcome of the looming Second World War, the US would come out of the war as the strongest power worldwide but it would build into its foundations all the combustible material, all the explosive factors of world capitalism. We saw that with Korea, Vietnam and now with Iraq. In effect, the international role of US imperialism will feed into and reinforce its economic decline. This decline is relative at the present time. Will it become an absolute decline and what will be the consequences of that? That is another issue, related to the rise of China and the geopolitical, as well as economic, competition, in particular, of China to American imperialism.

‘European bloc’ and unification

In the European reformist left and in the left in general there is big anti-Americanism and big support for a strong Europe because European states are more humane, their international politics are more pacifistic and we have a longer tradition of culture than the US. Public opinion says we need a strong Europe as a counterweight to the US. Now many people say that the most radical wing of the anti-globalisation movement has been supported by the result of the French referendum. What do you think about European unification and the growth of this kind of ideology in the left, of anti-Americanism but pro-European imperialist? And most importantly, do you think that it is possible under capitalism to achieve the unification of Europe because we saw the referendums in France and Netherlands stopping the process but also during tie Iraq War it was supported by right-wing governments such as Britain, Spain and Italy, and many Eastern European states. So there was a split inside Europe. What do you think of these questions?

The short answer to the possibility of complete European unification under capitalism is a straight no. The second question: because of the opposition of Europe’s population and some of the capitalist governments of Europe, should we be in favour of a bloc between capitalist Europe and China, Russia, etc. against the US? Our answer to that would also be no. This is because we believe the working class on all questions should take an independent class position. We cannot support bourgeois governments when they pretend to or appear to be representing the ‘interests’ of Europeans. We have to point to the real intentions of the European bourgeoisie.

If you look at the split between Europe and the US which took place on the question of the war, it was partly a reflection of the mood of the populations of Europe. It was not an accident that Aznar in Spain supported the war, while his population was opposed, and in the aftermath of the Madrid bombing he was thrown out of office. Berlusconi supported the war and, by a narrow majority it is true, he was ejected from office. Now Blair is about to depart from the scene in Britain in the next weeks or months. One of the reasons for their demise was their support for the war. On the other hand, the French bourgeois government and Schröder in Germany, while being right wing on domestic policy, carrying through neo-liberal programmes, at the same time took up anti-war postures internationally which were reflections of the domestic moods in these countries. The governments of Central Europe such as Poland and elsewhere supported the US in the war – but even in those cases big sections or majorities in society were moving in opposition to the war.

Two processes took place. There was an inter-imperialist rivalry between some of the dominant regimes of Europe and the US. Britain is a bit of an exception – there has been an Anglo-US bloc particularly since the Suez adventure of 1956. After this, the British bourgeoisie decided that they could not afford to be in opposition to US imperialism. Since then, the so-called ‘special relationship’ has existed. But that did not stop Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister in the 1960s, saying ‘no’ to President Johnson’s request for British troops in Vietnam. Why? Because his cabinet would have split apart because of the mass opposition to the war and the different character of the Labour Party then. Blair’s New Labour party is a bourgeois party. With no pressure from ‘below’ – there is no working-class base in the party– he was able to defy public opinion for a period. Because of this alleged special relationship, his government supported US imperialism.

So there was a split between sections of the European bourgeoisie and the US, and also a split within Europe. That is a political split with economic roots as well. We have always opposed even some Marxists and Trotskyists who in the past had the attitude that it was possible in the new era of imperialism for Europe to be united on a capitalist basis. We stand by the original analysis of Marxism, of Trotsky in particular, that capitalism cannot fully overcome the problems of the nation state. Capital in the modern era is not borderless – ultimately it rests on a base in one country or another. The amalgamation internationally into transnationals has been taken a long way; the unification of Europe, in one sense, went a lot further, with tariff barriers coming down, with the creation of the European parliament, etc. We argued when we were part of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) up to 1965 that it could go perhaps a long way towards unification but could not go that extra 10% or so to complete the process.

Capitalism cannot overcome the narrow limits of the nation state and organise the productive forces on a European level while at the same time creating a political unification of the European bourgeoisie. Now the contradictions, in this period of intense international economic competition, have come to the fore. It was shown in the European referendums in France and the Netherlands with the rejection of the European constitution. It was correct to vote against the EU constitution; the French working class understood that this was a step towards further neo-liberal policies. This constitution is so long that very few people have read it! Even the European legislators have not read this constitution, it is so obscure! It is, moreover, like the original Treaty of Rome, which in effect tries to permanently enshrine capitalism. The proposed constitution was an extension of that on a European-wide level. We are opposed to that. It gives legal sanction to privatisation and neo-liberal policies, and is also a step, if they could get away with it, to the organisation of European capitalism against the working class.

So it is not possible for capitalism to overcome the narrow limits of the nation state. They can partially create a European capital market; they have created a customs union. But in the battle over the European services directive and on a whole number of other issues, it has shown that it is very difficult to take that extra step towards the unification of the European bourgeoisie. In other words, I believe in Trotsky’s original analysis in its broad outline that the only way that Europe could be unified from the ‘Urals to the Atlantic’ is by the European working class acting together to establish socialism on a continental scale. We stand for the unification of Europe. We are opposed to a narrow capitalist nationalist opposition to Europe and we oppose those who support right-wing nationalist parties in a common bloc against the unification of Europe. We are in favour of a working class alternative, the idea of a Europe of the working class, of a united socialist states of Europe, the original slogan of the Communist International which is still valid today.