[Socialism Today, No 26, March 1998, p. 2-4]
It now appears most probable, as we go to press, that the US will soon unleash a prolonged air strike against Iraq. The Clinton administration has delivered an ultimatum to Saddam, based on a maximum demand for unlimited scope for the UN weapons inspectors, which the Iraqi dictator is very unlikely to accept. Despite the opposition of Russia, China and France in the Security Council, the US seems determined to unilaterally enforce UN resolutions on the dismantling of Iraq’s programme for weapons of mass destruction. Of the major powers, only Britain, under the craven leadership of Blair, is ready to participate slavishly in a US assault on Iraq. Washington has brushed aside various diplomatic initiatives by Russia, France and the Arab League to find a compromise formula. The issue of Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons, which will not be eradicated by air strikes, is the pretext for an attempt by the US superpower to reassert its global muscle.
Formidable US forces have already been concentrated in the Gulf region. Such a build-up inevitably adds momentum to the political pressure within the US for military action. US imperialism is desperate to reassert its power in the Middle East region, where events have increasingly been slipping out of its control. Clinton’s own desire, amid the Lewinsky crisis, to assert the strength of his presidency, is also a factor.
What are the real aims of US imperialism? What will be the consequences of a US military strike? Air raids alone are not likely to topple Saddam’s dictatorship. Yet, despite all the high-tech weaponry, US air raids and missile attacks will claim thousands of innocent lives, leaving many more wounded, homeless, and destitute. This will arouse a feeling of outrage around the world. But it will provoke an eruption of volcanic fury amongst the peoples of the Arab states, within the wider group of Islamic countries, and throughout the Third World generally. There will not be a third world war, if air raids go ahead, as predicted by Yeltsin in a loose exaggeration. Nevertheless, there will certainly be a sharpening of tensions between the crisis-torn regimes of the region, as well as heightened conflicts within the national states – which may lead to mass protests and the escalation of bloody regional conflicts.
Saddam has recently played a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the US, testing the limits of the superpower’s influence in the region. His dictatorship survived the Gulf War, the biggest regional war since Vietnam. Despite the no-fly zones in the north and the south, and rigorous economic sanctions, Saddam has kept his grip on power. In fact, the extreme suffering imposed on Iraqi people by the sanctions has to some extent played into his hands.
Saddam’s regime, without a doubt, is one of the world’s most vicious dictatorships, relying on systematic repression, and the torture and murder of opponents. But Saddam originally built up his military-police machine on the strength of massive support from the US and European powers, who backed him against Khomeini’s Iran, at that time their main enemy in the region. There is deep revulsion around the world at the development and stockpiling of horrendous chemical and biological weapons. But the technologies being used by Saddam were originally supplied by the Western powers, who turned a blind eye when he used poison gas against the Kurds in northern Iraq and against Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War. Western politicians now denounce Saddam as a ’nasty‘, ‚evil‘ beast – but he is really their sorcerer’s apprentice.
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War or the threat of war is the continuation of policy by other means. But what are the policy aims of US imperialism? US policy has been marked by wavering and confusion, partly reflecting the administration’s internal tensions, but more deeply arising from the intractable problems facing imperialism in the Middle East.
The officially proclaimed aim of the threatened military action is to destroy Iraq’s capacity to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, not the destruction of Saddam himself. Most of the US State Department’s and Pentagon’s senior advisors, however, admit that in practice, it will be virtually impossible to destroy all the chemical and biological weapons, which are stored in secret, at as yet unlocated bunkers. The danger of chemical and biological weapons is the pretext for US action. The first certain result of a US strike, in fact, will be the expulsion from Iraq of the UN weapons inspection teams. The real aim of the US is to inflict the maximum damage on Saddam’s regime. The bombardement, if it takes place, will aim at seriously damaging key elements of Saddam’s military machine, like the Republican guards. Key industrial plants will be targeted to set back as long as possible Saddam’s weapons-making capacity. Off the record, however, many of the top US strategists are hoping that a savage military strike will topple Saddam, or at least prepare the way to his fall.
At the same time, some of the more critical strategists are warning the White House that it would be an illusion to believe that an air strike can easily topple Saddam. There are calls, especially from some Republican leaders, for air raids to be backed up with an intervention of ground forces. Until Saddam goes, they argue, the problem will remain.
There is a large element of political demagogy behind these calls. The US ruling class will not commit major ground forces against the Iraqi regime, for the same reason that Bush halted the advance on Baghdad in 1991. None of the Western powers (with the possible exception of Britain, of course) or the Arab regimes would support an invasion. The US would have to bear the brunt of huge casualties, and also. the cost (whereas the Gulf war was largely paid for by massive levies of German and Japanese capitalism). The ‚Vietnam syndrome‘ would be reactivated with the development of a massive anti-war protest movement within the US.
Even if Saddam’s regime were destroyed, what then? Under conditions of US military occupation, only a puppet Iraqi regime would be possible. For how long would the US be ready to stay in Iraq to prop it up? Rapid withdrawal, on the other hand, would open the possibility of a renewed internal struggle for power.
The fall of Saddam, moreover, would open the possibility of the dismemberment of Iraq. At the moment, there are some signs that US sanctions against Iran are pushing Tehran towards a possible diplomatic alliance with Iraq. But if Saddam’s regime cracks up, both Iran and Turkey would undoubtedly intervene to establish zones of influence or even direct occupation of neighbouring regions of Iraq. Such a development would factor a new explosive element into the unstable Middle East equation.
There are now calls from Congressional leaders for the administration to give active, material support, including finance and arms, to opposition groups within Iraq. However a spokesman recently admitted that the US had no assets in the country. The cynical, bungling US support for Kurdish groups in the north and Shia opposition in the south led to massacres by Saddam’s forces. Through the use of CIA ‚advisors‘ the US pursued an inept short-term tactic of simple pushing opposition groups into armed opposition, simply to divert and harass Saddam’s security forces. Meanwhile, Washington tried to court top defectors from Saddam’s machine, police butchers and corrupt cronies who were themselves embroiled in Saddam’s crimes.
Some Republicans are calling for a share of Iraqi assets impounded by the US government to be handed over to the Iraq National Congress, to enable it to mount a struggle for political power. This umbrella group is dominated by capitalist politicians. who were excluded from Saddam’s ruling elite, a gangster coterie made up of Saddam’s family and other cronies. If these ‚democrats‘ ever came to power in the backs of US intervention, they would inevitably be mere stooges of US imperialism. Some of the liberal opposition leaders have undoubtedly suffered at the hands of Saddam’s state. They want to see his downfall, and they no doubt dream of a peaceful, prosperous, parliamentary-style democracy. But, in reality, they are too closely tied with bourgeois interests (business, landlords, merchants) and too far removed from the exploited classes (workers, labourers, small traders, peasants) to achieve a fundamental change.
While cloaking its actions under peaceful, humanitarian aims, US imperialism will intervene only to defend its own interests – the world-wide interests of US and Western capitalism – and will use its own methods, armed force and economic coercion. Saddam, it is true, is a barbarous dictator. But his overthrow is the task of the Iraqi people. They alone can resolve the problems of political repression and economic exploitation in their own society.
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Clinton’s hard line against Saddam for flouting UN resolutions is in marked contrast to US indulgence of Netanyahu’s government. Israel has always flouted UN resolutions. The Israeli prime minister’s recent visit to Washington was a great success: despite the fact that Netanyahu contemptuously dismissed US pressure for him to abide by the Oslo accords, US banks agreed to a new $1.4bn loan to Israel. At the same time, Israel took delivery of the first batch of a new force of the latest US F-151 long-range fighter bombers.
Netanyahu has, in reality, buried the Oslo agreement. He has unequivocally supported further Jewish settlement building on occupied land in East Jerusalem, in total violation of the Oslo accords. His spokesmen have proclaimed that Israel will keep at least 60% of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians still face routine harassment by Israeli security forces whenever they leave the Palestinian enclaves. The only effective part of the accords is that Yasser Arafat gets to collect the taxes in the Palestinian-administered areas, control the traffic, and repress his political opponents. While Arafat has been pressured to concede an amendment to the PLO Charter abandoning Opposition to the state of Israel, Netanyahu has made it brutally clear that he has no intention of conceding the idea of a Palestinian homeland. The army chief of staff, General Shahak, has proclaimed that Israel’s occupation troops will stay in southern Lebanon for ‚another thousand years‘, if it is necessary for Israel’s security.
A mood of profound anger is welling up once again among the Palestinians, which could explode into a movement of mass protest at any time. This is recognised by the Israeli army chiefs, who are preparing for a future campaign, code-named ‚Operation Burning Steel‘, to counter a second ‚intifada‘ uprising. US air strikes against Iraq, with horrendous civilian casualties, could be the last straw, triggering another movement of the Palestinians.
So what happened to the ‚New World Order‘, proclaimed by president Bush after the 1991 Gulf War? The strategic and economic hegemony of the US superpower, Bush claimed, together with the broad coalition of powers including ‚post-Communist‘ Russia, would guarantee world peace and stability. This was a new Pax Americana. Seven years later, the ’new order‘ lies in ruins. The Israel-Palestine peace process launched at Oslo, a crucial concession to the Arab regimes, has stalled – and the US is powerless to break the deadlock. The Gulf War coalition has fallen apart. Yeltsin, whose regime is now based on capitalist relations, is much more determined than Gorbachev to assert the national interests of the Russian state on the world arena. Russia is not prepared to give the US a blank cheque to bomb Iraq. Moreover, Russia, together with France, is currently locked in a dispute with the US over plans for Franco-Russian oil companies to develop natural gas reserves in Iran – in breach of the sanctions imposed by the US.
The military-dominated regime in Turkey is a key NATO ally for the US. Turkish air bases were crucial, logistically and strategically, for the US during the Gulf War. Today, Turkey opposes the use of force against Iraq. In fact, it would like nothing better than the restoration of the Baghdad regime’s control of northern Iraq, in order to repress Kurdish rebels who are mounting raids into Turkey. Apart from Kuwait, no Arab regime has agreed to support a US attack on Iraq. Saudi Arabia’s reactionary rulers, close allies of the US in general, may, when the crunch comes, provide some surreptitious support for US forces. But the Saudi regime is not directly threatened as it was when Saddam invaded Kuwait, and they deeply fear the explosion of mass anger which will be provoked by a military attack on Iraq by the superpower which has allowed Netanyahu to abandon the Oslo peace process.
The US still possesses immense military power. But it is powerless to control the new world disorder which arises from intense national and class conflict. Most of the population of the wider Middle East region live under nationalistic, dictatorial regimes, most of them propped up at one time or another by the imperialist powers. The overwhelming majority of the people of the region, moreover, live in extreme poverty perpetuated by local exploiters and Western capitalists. While threatening war the US superpower claims it is fighting for peace. But without social peace, based on democratic public ownership and control of society’s productive resources, there will be no respite from the barbarities of war.
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