The coming attack on Iraq is the latest in a series of wars waged by
the US government – including the first Gulf War in 1991, the attack
on Yugoslavia and the bombing of Afghanistan. But many more people than
before have understood the real motives for the war and are therefore
opposing it.
This is a vital change. Not only would an attack on Iraq kill thousands
of Iraqi people but, if successful, it will be far from being the last,
or even the biggest, aggressive war envisaged by the US. In his ‘axis
of evil’ speech, George W. Bush has already named North Korea and
Iran as potential future targets. The Pentagon ‘nuclear posture
review’ document in 2002 named a hit list of countries against
which Washington is prepared to use nuclear weapons including Iran, North
Korea, Libya and China. At the end of February, responding to a question
from the anti-war MP Alice Mahon, Tony Blair declared that after Iraq,
North Korea was next.
The backlash in the Middle East and elsewhere against an attack on Iraq
will inevitably lead to an upsurge of terrorist activity affecting Europe
and the US. These, in turn, will be used as a pretext for future wars.
In the medium term, and most seriously of all, the US is spending tens
of billions of dollars on an anti-ballistic National Missile Defence.
This is to lay the ground for the possible launch of nuclear wars on
countries, in particular China. In short, a successful US attack on Iraq
will be a stepping-stone to a whole series of aggressive wars launched
by the US. It is therefore vital not only for Iraq but for the whole
world that the US is stopped now.
Precisely because the attack on Iraq is the biggest act of US aggression
so far, a corner has been lifted on the real motives and driving forces
of the US administration. The aim of this pamphlet is to make clear the
real reasons for the US attack on Iraq; to show its place in the series
of wars waged by the United States – in what can be described as
an era of permanent US aggression; to analyse why Blair is acting as
a crucial ally of the US despite being confronted by a clear majority
in Britain against the war; to show the link of war with Iraq to other
reactionary developments such as the rise of racism and the fascist right;
and to show how this and future wars can be opposed.
War on Iraq: the US’ lies
Every declaration made by the US administration to justify an attack
on Iraq is a hypocritical lie.
Weapons of mass destruction
Allegedly Iraq is to be attacked because it possesses weapons of mass
destruction. In reality, so far the inspectors on the spot have found
nothing. The ‘dossiers’ produced by the US and Britain
claiming to show Iraq possesses any significant numbers of weapons
of mass destruction are a farce – as shown by the revelation
that the ‘British intelligence’ information on the issue
was drawn from a US student thesis. Indeed, after 10 years of sanctions,
Iraq certainly has far fewer weapons of mass destruction than many
other states in the region — in particular Israel, which possesses
over 400 nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them. If the US
administration’s motive was to attack a country in the Middle
East with weapons of mass destruction its number one target would logically
be Israel — of which, on the contrary, the US is the biggest
supporter. Finally, a justification of ‘possessing weapons of
mass destruction’ to be made by the US is particularly ridiculous
as that country’s government possesses many times more weapons
of mass destruction than any other.
Democracy and human rights
The second US argument is that the war is a fight of democracy against
a dictatorship in the form of Saddam Hussein. But some of the closest
allies of the US in the Middle East are dictatorships – starting
with Saudi Arabia. Israel’s façade of democracy does not
apply to the Palestinian population both inside Israel and in the occupied
territories which Israel illegally seized by force in 1967. The US
itself supported Saddam Hussein for most of the 1980s. More widely,
the US has one of the longest records of supporting dictatorships in
the world – including such prize specimens as Franco in Spain,
the Shah of Iran, Samoza in Nicaragua, and the South African apartheid
regime, until the fall of the latter became inevitable. US imperialism
has systematically acted to try to impose reactionary regimes in countries
liberated by popular revolutions: undermining Castro in Cuba, intervening
to overthrow Patrice Lumumba in Congo, militarily intervening in El
Salvador, invading Grenada and many other places.
Defence of human rights is another variant of this argument. Again, not
only does the US defend and support states guilty of gross human rights
abuses — where it is in the US’ interests – but the
US’ own human rights record at home makes this argument laughable.
The US’ enthusiastic use of the death penalty – in Texas
alone, under George W Bush’s governorship 152 people were killed – has
been condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Commission for its
use of the death penalty against children and those with mental illness.
Since 1980 the US has carried out the greatest number of executions of
child offenders – a total of 17. In the context of the build up
to war on Iraq a discussion has developed within US political circles
and in journals such as Newsweek over whether torture should be made
legal.
The economic reality of US society corresponds to Bush’s hypocrisy:
more than 30 million Americans live below the official poverty line,
and the US has refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child. Bush has just announced a new tax plan involving the abolition
of taxes on dividends (company profits) which will deliver $89,000 a
year to the highest earning one per cent in the US. Bush has attacked
his critics as being exponents of class warfare.
To believe the US attacks any country in order to defend human rights
or because it is a dictatorship is ridiculous in light of this record.
Neither, as we will see, will the US install democracy in Iraq. Instead
it will install a new dictatorship that will renegotiate oil contracts
in favour of United States companies.
The United Nations
The US claims that it will attack Iraq in order to enforce United Nations
resolutions. This is a particularly ridiculous argument as the US has
made clear that it will attack Iraq anyway even if the UN does not
vote for it – thereby itself violating UN resolutions! Once again,
the main violator of UN resolutions in the Middle East is Israel – which
has waged wars to steal land from its neighbours and still illegally
occupies Palestinian and Syrian land. As with weapons of mass destruction,
if the goal of the US were to enforce UN resolutions its first target
would be Israel.
And, of course, the United States itself has a long record of ignoring
UN resolutions and international treaties where they conflict with its
interests. The US has torn up the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
to develop national missile defence, declared the Kyoto Treaty on climate
change dead, refused to ratify the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty
signed by 164 nations, rejected the Land Mine Treaty signed by 122 countries,
rejected an International Criminal Court having jurisdiction over US
personnel and defends its abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay by classifying
them as ‘illegal combatants’ a novel term not recognised
by international law and coined to try to get around criticism of its
illegal holding and treatment of these prisoners.
As none of the claimed reasons for attacking Iraq bear scrutiny, it is clear that these are not the real US motives. The real reason for the attack, as we will show, is to seize control of Iraqi oil. The real motivation becomes even clearer when war drive against Iraq is seen within the overall dynamic of US policy.
How the United States uses its military superiority
The United States claims that its military policies are ‘defensive’.
In particular, throughout the ‘Cold War’ period from World
War II until the break up of the Soviet Union the US claimed that it
was simply ‘defending the world against Communist aggression’.
Events since 1991 have revealed this to be a lie. The break up of the
Soviet Union left the US with no serious military challenger. But since
then US administrations have deliberately sought to gain greater and
greater military superiority over any other country. Its policies, in
short, are aggressive not defensive. The US administration’s aim,
as shall be shown, is to try to create international economic dominance
and unilaterally compensate for the problems of its own domestic economy.
Current US military threats against Iraq are simply a continuation of
the type of policies pursued for over a century. The US is the world
leader in development and use of nuclear weapons: it is the only country
to have used nuclear weapons in war – when it bombed the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 incinerating 140,000
people. US military forces sprayed 72 million litres of the chemical
Agent Orange in a war on Vietnam that killed 1,900,000 people. The US’ chemical
weapons are still poisoning the Vietnamese 27 years after bombing. The
US used depleted uranium weapons in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan – radioactivity
from which will effectively last forever and has caused horrific health
and genetic conditions. The US is developing a new generation of biological
weapons including biological cluster bombs and antibiotic-resistant anthrax
in defiance of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The US has an
unparalleled record of invading not only its immediate neighbours — Panama,
Cuba, and Grenada — but many other countries. In each of these
wars, the US has sought to conceal its real aims beneath hypocrisy and
lies.
The US’ record of pre-emptive strikes
The US defends its right to a strategy of ‘pre-emptive strikes’.
This is not a new strategy. As far back as 1986, when Ronald Reagan bombed
the Libyan capital Tripoli, the official justification given by the State
Defence Department was that it was self-defence against future attack.
In the same year self-defence was rejected by the International Criminal
Court as justification for the US’ action against Nicaragua. The
US has used the world situation after 11 September 2001 to codify this
as a basis of US policy. In the 2002 White House document The National
Security Strategy of the United States the US declared that: ‘America
will act against…emerging threats before they are fully formed,’ and ‘While
the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the
international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary,
to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively against
such terrorists’.
It states: ‘The United States has long maintained the option of
pre-emptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security.
The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction— and
the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend
ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the
enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our
adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively.’
In short the United States claims a right to commit acts of war unhindered
by international law in the name of ‘justice and human rights’ – with
the US claiming the sole right to be judge, jury and executioner on these.
Unsurprisingly actions against such ‘violations of human rights’ are
pursued vigorously against countries with policies seen by the US as
conflicting with its interests and are not pursued if a country is a
US ally.
A classic example is when the US destroyed a major pharmaceutical warehouse
in Sudan in 1998 – which supplied around half the country’s
pharmaceutical supply. This was called ‘counter terrorism’.
If the same happened to the US, it would be called terrorism.
This doctrine of ‘pre-emptive strikes’ is a further development
in a more unilaterally aggressive US policy. The war on Yugoslavia, for
example – which took place outside of any framework of international
law – was used to elaborate a doctrine of unilateral US-led military
action, outlined in NATO’s strategic concept of April 1999. This
provides for offensive NATO military action with or without the endorsement
of the United Nations, anywhere in Western Europe, Eastern Europe or
the former Soviet Union.
US military dominance
US military spending dwarfs the rest of the world. The US increased its
military spending to over $380 billion, making total military spending
total more than the next 15 countries put together. Predicted spending
for war on Iraq alone is $110 billion – excluding the costs of
occupation.
In Iraq the US plans to use its overwhelming military superiority to
crush and then enforce colonial rule over a country which is impoverished
by sanctions. The US war plan – revealed in the New York Times
on 2 February – includes more than 3,000 precision-guided bombs
and missiles being dropped on Iraq in the first 48 hours, followed by
a two-pronged ground invasion with Special Forces being flown in by helicopter
to seize the oil fields.
The US has made explicit that it is prepared to use nuclear weapons in
a war on Iraq. A list of targets has been drawn up by Stratcom, the Pentagon’s
nuclear planning wing in a ‘theatre nuclear planning document’.
US stealth bombers designed to deliver new ‘tactical’ nuclear
weapons are being prepared for use on the British colonial territory
of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
The United States’ longer term military project is to develop ‘full
spectrum dominance’ over land, sea, air and space, to overpower
any future rivals, in particular China. It is developing an ultimate
weapon of war: national missile defence (NMD) or ‘son of Star Wars’.
The programme is designed to intercept and destroy mid-air ballistic
missiles and is being created to allow the US ‘first strike’ use
of nuclear weapons against other countries without fear of retaliation – that
is, to launch nuclear attacks. The project, which could cost up to $1.2
trillion is already starting a new nuclear arms race. Britain is colluding
with the US by allowing the use of spy bases in North Yorkshire as part
of the tracking and interception system.
US imperialism cannot bring democracy to Iraq
The US has attempted to justify its attack on Iraq by pointing out that
Saddam Hussein is a repellent dictator. Indeed he is. His overthrow and
bringing to justice by the Iraqi people for his crimes would be highly
desirable. But no support can be given to the war on these grounds because
the US has no intention of replacing Saddam Hussein with any democratic
regime.
The contrast between Saddam Hussein and the US is that between a repellent
local protection racketeer and the central leaders of the Mafia. The
numbers killed by Saddam Hussein are tiny compared, for example, to the
victims of the US in Vietnam. If there was a real trial of international
war criminals first in the dock would be Kissinger, Bush, Reagan and
the other leaders of the US who between them have killed literally millions
of people. The idea that the situation will be made better for the people
of Iraq by removing a ‘local bandit’ and placing the country
under the control of ‘organised crime’ is absurd.
If the United States is seeking to justify war on Iraq because Hussein
is a monster, we should ask what the US’ response was when 6,800
Kurdish Iraqis were gassed at Halabja in March 1983. The answer is they
continued to support Hussein as an ally in the US’ proxy war with
Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni. Where did Iraq’s chemical weapons
come from? There is substantial documentation to indicate a ‘witches’ brew’ of
pathogens was supplied to Iraq during the 1980s when the US backed Saddam
Hussein. Anthrax, botulinum toxin and gangrene, West Nile virus, and
Dengue fever shipments were government-approved (Newsweek, 1/9/02).
The impact of war and sanctions
If the United States had real concern for the human rights of the people
of Iraq, they would have stopped the UN sanctions which have blocked
imports under ‘dual purpose’ restrictions, including baby
food, bandages, incubators, medical materials including swabs, syringes
and gauze, toothpaste pencils, paper and school books for children.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright revealed the US leadership’s
real views about the people of Iraq on national television. To the
question ‘how do you feel about the reports that half a million
Iraqi children have died because of sanctions?’ she responded ‘it’s
a hard choice, but we think the price is worth it’.
Far from aiding the people of Iraq war will be used against them in both
the short and long term. War on Iraq is predicted to kill thousand of
innocent Iraqi civilians – but this greatly depends on the direction
of any conflict. The indirect impact of war could be much more severe.
Medact estimate ‘total possible deaths on all sides during conflict
and in the following three months will range from 48,000 to over 260,000’.
The UN estimates 500,000 people could suffer serious injuries during
the first phase of an attack on Iraq; 10 million Iraqis may require assistance
in the immediate aftermath of war; two million people may be internally
displaced. Christian Aid say chronic hunger could result if the UN Oil
for Food programme, which feeds 16 million people in Iraq, is unable
to continue. Over the long run the US aims to install a new dictatorship
in Iraq – but one subordinated to the economic interests of the
US.
Globalisation: how the US sucks capital from the rest of the world
If none of the claimed motives of the US in attacking Iraq stand up to
examination, its actions are explained perfectly by the economic problems
of the US in general and its desire to control Iraq’s oil in particular.
The US presents itself as the most competitive economy in the world – a
model for every other country to follow. Its British defenders parrot
that line. The editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott, for example wrote
in 20/21 Vision: ‘There is a basic paradox about American leadership
that is likely to make it essentially benign… That is the values
it espouses and seeks to establish overseas would, if adopted by other
countries, make those countries stronger.’
The reality is the reverse. The US economy for the last thirty years
has been increasingly uncompetitive. Its balance of payments deficit,
at $460 billion a year, is 5 per cent of GDP, and at $1.3 billion a day.
It entirely dwarfs that of any other country.
In order to finance this deficit, and protect itself from the internal
political destabilisation that would flow from dollar devaluation, the
US has to arrange the world economy to enable it to attract $1.3 billion
of foreign investment every day via the stock exchange.
Globalisation is simply the means the US uses to achieve this – that
is, to create the conditions where capital can flow out of other countries
into the US. Emmott claims that: ‘Globalisation is simply the voluntary
adoption of international capitalism.’ But, in reality, opening
up countries so that their capital can be utilised by the US rather than
themselves is not in the slightest voluntary. The US uses both economic
threats, and if necessary military force, to ensure the resources of
other countries are utilised in its interests and not theirs.
The economic mechanisms the US uses to open up other countries’ economies
include its domination of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Trade Organisation (WTO). The policies of the IMF have been a failure
for the countries that have adopted them – as shown in such spectacular
economic catastrophes as in Russia, South East Asia, Brazil, Argentina
and many parts of Africa. The United States, however, continues to foist
IMF ‘recovery’ programmes on countries because the core of
these is always opening up their financial markets so that capital can
flow out to the United States. The WTO is used to protect US trade interests
in areas such as agriculture while opening other countries up in areas
such as financial services in which the United States is strong.
In the case of a country such as Iraq the US faces a problem that means
it cannot rely on purely economic instruments. As a major oil producer
Iraq would have no need of any IMF/US backed financial programmes if
it were allowed to export oil freely. The US has no adequate economic
leverage over Iraq. It therefore uses its other major weapon – military
force.
The US dependence on oil imports
We have seen above that the US claims that it is attacking Iraq to eliminate
weapons of mass destruction, install democracy, and uphold the authority
of the United Nations make no sense. All facts fall into place, however,
once it is understood that the US is attacking Iraq in order to gain
control of its oil.
Oil plays a specific role for the United States within the world economy.
It is the one commodity that the US is forced to import in large quantities.
Currently the US uses 20 million barrels of oil a day of which half,
10.6 million barrels, is imported. US dependency on oil imports is increasing
and by 2020 the US is likely to import two thirds of its oil requirements.
Iraq possesses over 10 per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves – second
only to Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, given the run down of exploration
in the last decade the real figure is probably significantly higher.
Iraqi oil production costs are amongst the lowest in the world - $1 a
barrel compared to $2.5 in Saudi Arabia and $4 a barrel in the US and
North Sea.
Current Iraqi oil production is around 1.5 million barrels a day. However
417 new wells are envisaged and planned investment of around $20 billion
would lift production to around 6 million barrels a day within five years.
In the long run the potential may be even greater as 55 of Iraq’s
70 proven fields are not yet developed.
The problem for the US is that the contracts for this development have
been given to French, Russian and Chinese oil companies – TotalFinaElf,
Lukoil, Zarubezneft, and the China National Petroleum Company. Due to
the US’s hostility to Iraq no United States oil company holds an
oil development contract in Iraq. Therefore, as Larry Goldstein, President
of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation put it: ‘If we go
to war, it’s not about oil. But the day the war ends, it has everything
to do with oil.’ Or as a leaked Deutshe Bank report put it, the
US company Exxon-Mobil would be in ‘pole position in a changed
regime Iraq’.
It is therefore possible to predict with certainty what will occur. The
US attack on Iraq will not be followed by the installation of democracy.
But it will be followed by the renegotiation of the oil contracts in
favour of US oil companies. The US goal in Iraq therefore may be summarised
very simply. It is to replace one dictatorship by another dictatorship
that will renegotiate the oil contracts in favour of the US.
The US prepares to confront China
An attack on Iraq, although it will be the biggest US war since Vietnam,
does not represent the final stepping-stone in United States’ ambition.
Even control of Iraqi oil will not be enough to put out the fires that
are raging at the base of the US economy – its inability to create
an internationally competitive economy without reducing the living standards
of the US working class to the point where that would destabilise political
support for the US administration. In particular the US sees the new
rising economic power of China, which is bringing over a billion people
out of extreme poverty, with an economy growing twice as fast as that
of the United States, as a threat to its global dominance.
The US’ economic crisis therefore means that it is forced to see
each individual war as a stepping-stone to a bigger one. Thus the bombing
of Afghanistan was used as a pretext to start the new aggression against
Iraq. The US also used this attack on Afghanistan to install new military
bases around the world – in particular in the Central Asian states
of the former USSR. The US, having established military bases in Saudi
Arabia, will install them in Iraq through the war.
As the US already has strong armed forces in Japan and South Korea, the
establishment of military bases in the Middle East and Central Asia allows
it to try to encircle China from both the West and East.
Any US war with China would, however, inevitably be nuclear – no
conventional armed forces could attack the more than a billion people
of China. To defeat China the US must be able to launch a nuclear attack
on it without suffering equivalent retaliation. It is for this reason
that the US is spending tens of billions of dollars to attempt to construct
a ‘National Missile Defence’ system that will prevent intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from being able to strike the United States.
This is aimed to break the ‘balance of terror’ that ensured
nuclear arms were not used during the Cold War and to allow the US to
launch nuclear attacks.
Even if a US anti-missile shield were capable of preventing ICBMs from
striking the United States, which is highly doubtful, it would not, of
course, prevent them hitting other countries. Britain in particular would
be a target as its Fylingdales radar base, and other facilities, are
crucial for the US anti-missile system – a fact beginning to dawn
on public consciousness.
Israel and the United States
Israel plays a critical role in US policy in the Middle East. As already
noted the greatest weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East are
Israel’s. Israel acts as the US’ proxy in the Middle East.
It has invaded Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories
ceded to Jordan and still illegally occupies the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
To suppress an increasingly vocal Palestinian population, Israel resorts
to ever more atrocities. One of the most recent, filmed by an Israeli
TV station, is where soldiers play ‘Russian roulette’ with
Palestinians, forcing them to pick a card which determines whether they
will be killed, have bones broken, teeth pulled out or their property
destroyed.
The current prime minister Ariel Sharon heads a regime which murders
children: replying to young people throwing stones with bullets and tanks.
Israel has used gunship helicopters, bulldozers and tanks to destroy
schools and homes, shell hospitals and ambulances. It has massacred over
2000 Palestinians since September 2000, many of whom were children. The
scale of the disparity of power in this struggle is demonstrated by the
Palestinian death toll being four times that of the Israelis. Under Sharon,
Israel has stepped up its assassination and imprisonment of Palestinian
leaders in an attempt to politically behead and defeat the Palestinian
struggle.
Sharon wants to repeat the terror waged in 1948 and again in 1967 which
forced Palestinians to flee their homes. The Israeli state was based
on ‘ethnic cleansing’. The waves of Israeli ‘settlers’ who
are taking further land illegally and by force from Palestinians are
vital to Sharon’s project to make any Palestinian state impossible
to achieve. Ariel Sharon’s re-election as Israel’s prime
minister sends a clear signal to the Palestinians that a war against
Iraq will be used as a mandate to further escalate the assault on them.
Yet the US is not threatening Israel but supporting it. Israel relies
on massive political and financial support from the US. Israel has defied
many UN resolutions, is guilty of numerous breaches of the Geneva Convention
of Human Rights and of using chemical weapons, of torture and collective
detention.
The terrible atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jewish people
in the Holocaust were cynically used by imperialism to establish Israel
in 1948. Via maintaining tight quotas restricting the numbers of Jewish
refugees into other countries, imperialist powers stood by while Nazis
practiced genocide. Under pressure from anti-colonial struggles worldwide,
including in the oil-rich region of the Middle East, the plan of the
imperialist powers was to create a state in the Middle East completely
dependent on and loyal to western imperialism. Thus Israel came into
being, and is today armed to the hilt by the US.
The Blair government and the war
The common political caricature of Tony Blair and his current in the
leadership of the Labour Party is that they are cynical pragmatists – motivated
by opinion polls, focus groups and what will allow them to win the next
election and remain in government. Quite the opposite is the case: Tony
Blair and the New Labour political current represent one of the most
ideologically driven, right wing leaderships of Labour ever. This has
been revealed to all by Blair’s approach to a US war on Iraq. Public
opinion is massively against war, overwhelmingly so if there is no UN
resolution and with nearly half of the population currently opposing
war even if there is a second UN resolution for military action. Opposition
on Labour’s backbenches, in the trade union movement, within Labour’s
electoral rivals, and across European social democracy is immense. Yet
Blair is has been solidly unequivocal in his support for US foreign policy – as
he was on Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
Blair has spelled out his orientation: engagement with the European Union,
and for the subordination of European to US imperialism. In his tail
ending of the United States, Blair is simply following the established
British international stance. But in an era of growing inter-imperialist
tension, this has a very precise meaning. In his speech to Labour’s
1999 conference Blair explained that ‘Britain has the potential
to be the bridge between Europe and America’, and has proceeded
to be the leading exponent of US foreign policy interests within the
European Union. His ‘Third Way’ ideology is perfectly consistent
with this. Blair urges a recasting of the Socialist International – the
organisation of social democratic parties – to create a new international
with capitalist forces like the US Democrats. His key allies today in
Europe are not with social democracy but with Aznar and Berlusconi. Domestically
he strives to emulate the US economic model, to shore up an uncompetitive
economy with low levels of investment by rolling back the welfare state,
privatising public services and attempting to drive down working class
living standards.
This programme has provoked substantial political opposition – which
has succeeded in forcing some concessions and blocking some of its excesses,
such as the rise in health and education spending the government was
obliged to make after two years sticking to Tory spending limits. A wave
of new left trade union leaderships have been elected against Blair’s
agenda and right now, across the labour movement and more widely, masses
of people are beginning to question how billions of pounds can be spent
on a war a majority oppose, while firefighters are denied £8.50
an hour, students face top up fees and the railway system falls apart.
Tony Blair – and those parts of British capitalism behind his pro-US
stand – is aiming to use everything possible to limit and divide
this rising opposition. The new era of colonialism which some of the
think tanks around Blair openly advocate is prettified with terms like
an ‘ethical foreign policy’. These ethics have seen the biggest
rise in British military spending for 20 years: in July the government
announced an increase in the defence budget from £29.3 billion
in 2002, to £32.8 billion by 2005-6. Fears of terrorism have been
whipped up. And racism is being cynically encouraged: the tabloid media
has merely followed the lead of ministers in unleashing a wave of vile
racist propaganda, some of the first results of which, as new statistics
in February 2003 showed, are a sharp rise in racist attacks, and the
successive election of BNP councillors – now totalling five – in
the north of England. The most sickening hypocrisy is churned out: the
bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan is defended by Blair on the basis of
their human rights records, while refugees from these countries – the
two biggest sources of recent refugees – are vilified and often
denied asylum.
One of the key tasks facing socialists is to do everything possible to
expose, oppose and defeat this whipping up of racism.
Fighting racism
The wave of racism being used in an attempt to weaken the opposition
to war is in one sense nothing new. Racism is a tried and tested tool
of imperialism to assist its wars – portraying those to be attacked
as less than human, unable to safely be left to determine their own future
and many other variants. The lurid racist campaigns of tabloids like
the Sun’s which is promoting a petition against asylum seekers
and ran a headline ‘Round ‘em up and kick ‘em out’ on
the eve of a by-election in Mixenden, Halifax, where a BNP councillor
was subsequently elected is unfolding on a stage already set by the tone
and content of government policy. The demonisation of Muslims and asylum
seekers aims to divert attention from the war as the most important issue
confronting the country, obscure the real reasons for war, to divide
the anti-war movement and to intimidate the Muslim community.
Ministerial statements linking asylum seekers to terrorism and carefully
staged armed arrests and raids under the new anti-terror laws echo the
way in which the Prevention of Terrorism Act was used in the 1970s and ’80s
to terrorise the Irish community in Britain against any involvement in
opposing Britain’s occupation of Ireland. This has, of course,
been accompanied by yet further tightening of Britain’s policy
on asylum – through the Immigration Nationality and Asylum Act,
plans to extend the list of countries considered ‘safe’ and
threats to withdraw from the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees and the
European Convention on Human Rights.
This cynical boosting of racism has been taken up yet more explicitly
by the Conservative Party, the most right wing section of the press and
has assisted the election of five BNP councillors elected in recent months.
Fighting this racist offensive - and the rise in racist attacks that
will inevitably accompany it – is therefore a key task of those
who want the anti-war movement to succeed. This includes challenging
every instance of racism used to weaken the anti-war movement such as
the proposal by the political current Alliance for Workers Liberty to
exclude the organised representatives of the Muslim community from the
anti-war alliance which they argued at the recent Stop the War Coalition
conference, and in NUS. Any concession to racism must be totally opposed.
The new scale of opposition to war
For the first time in decades, the United States finds itself in a minority
on the world stage and facing massive internal opposition plus majority
opposition in Western Europe. Against the US’ primary war aim of
gaining direct and total control over the second largest supply of oil
in the world are the competing oil and trade interests of Western Europe
and those of Russia and China. Despite the usual attempts to use its
economic and military weight blatantly to bully and bribe its way to
a second UN resolution, it is struggling to construct an international
alliance capable of facilitating war and providing camouflage for the
US’ war aims. The opposition to war on Iraq which has emerged is
the largest since the Vietnam War. The scale of mass protest both reflects
popular opposition to the war and is fuelled by deep divisions amongst
imperialist powers.
Alarmed at the results of galvanising international opinion against the
United States, sections of the US bourgeoisie argue for tactics more
seriously aimed at creating an international coalition for war. To this
end, some US Democrats have called for a delay in the timing of war.
The European capitalist class is divided in its attitude, with the most
US leaning forces – including Berlusconi, Aznar and Blair – supporting
the US’s drive to war. The leaderships of the main European social-democratic
parties oppose war under the pressure of overwhelming opposition from
the electorates and ranks of social democracy and trade union members.
In Germany – the dominant European capitalist power – the
SPD’s anti-war line reflects opposition by significant sections
of German capital. A huge proportion of German public opinion opposes
war.
In Britain, while the Conservative Party maintains its traditional support
for US foreign policy. Even there, those more inclined towards European
capital such as Chris Patten and Kenneth Clarke have expressed reservations.
The Liberal Democrats – the party most closely inclined towards
the concerns of European capital – are at least opposed to a war
without explicit UN backing, and have publicly backed the 15 February
demonstration with Charles Kennedy announcing on 10 February that he
would personally be joining the march. While Tony Blair is the leading
European supporter of George W Bush – succinctly termed ‘the
foreign minister of the United States…no longer the prime minister
of Britain’ by Nelson Mandela – war is opposed by the majority
of trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party, more than 100 Labour
MPs and the bulk of Labour Party members. The Green Party, Scottish nationalists
and Plaid Cymru all oppose war on Iraq. The demonstration on 28 September
2002 was the biggest anti-war demonstration for decades, with expectations
that the 15 February march will be the biggest in absolute terms at least
in British history.
Overwhelming opposition among the populations of the Middle Eastern states
has meant that the US’ client regimes, particularly Saudi Arabia
and Turkey, have been forced to carefully weigh the risks to their leadership
of supporting the US and thereby frustrating public opinion, in some
cases as strong as 98 per cent against war.
The serious international and domestic divisions within the bourgeoisie
lead to the very unusual airing of arguments against war in the media.
In contrast to previous wars, access to information about the US’ real
agenda is available though mainstream television, radio and newspapers.
The propaganda campaign for war is undoubtedly being waged – and
should be understood to include racist bile being pumped out by tabloids
like The Sun – but to a much less total extent than that seen in
other recent imperialist wars. Even issues previously hidden – such
as the motive and effects of the first Gulf War – are now being
exposed. Sections of the media openly parody US war claims: when Colin
Powell held up a vial supposedly illustrative of biological weapons being
hidden by Iraq, BBC Online ran a mocking caption competition; Rory Bremner’s
satirical review pumps out an explicitly anti-war message mocking US
and British claims, on prime time TV.
The liberal imperialism which has been used to prettify all recent imperialist
interventions therefore has been paraded to prepare the ground for war
on Iraq – but finds itself much more openly challenged. It has
found its ‘leftist’ champions – Rushdie, Aaronovitch,
Hitchens and others – but these are relatively isolated voices.
A new anti-war movement
The new movement in Britain against war on Iraq has taken a quite different
scale to that mobilised against war on Yugoslavia or Afghanistan. Unprecedented
numbers and layers of people are seeing through the hypocrisy of the
United States and are prepared to protest against it.
The protests against the US attack on Yugoslavia were determined but
relatively small, international capitalism was relatively united, and
the left significantly divided – in large part deceived by the
propaganda war which demonised the Serbs and which had taken place for
a decade before the ultimate military assault.
The protests against war on Afghanistan were of a much larger scale and
character – which were notable given the fact that they took place
in the aftermath of September 11 and the way in which this was used by
the US to attempt to justify its war. They incorporated a new radicalised
layer of young people who for the first time in large numbers had understood
the link between US military aggression and its economic domination of
the world. This section of the opposition built on the new anti-globalisation
movement.
This opposition is now added to by the established peace movement, the
emerging anti-war movement, sections of the rank and file of the Labour
Party and of the left. The second new and extremely important element – large
sections of the British Muslim community which had begun to be organised
and mobilised on a qualitatively greater scale than anything previously
seen. This new mobilisation British Muslims helped produce last September’s
biggest ever demonstration in opposition to war.
With many more opposing war on Iraq than have opposed any recent US military
aggressions, the opportunity to consolidate forces for the anti-war movement
which will be needed against the wars to come must be grasped to the
fullest extent. This means doing everything possible to try to extend
the reach of the anti-war movement. No individual country can withstand
the full might of US imperialism and its allies, all need international
solidarity. The task of the anti-war movement is to give voice to the
largest opposition to naked US aggression in decades.
This means supporting the Stop the War Coalition and CND and helping
to strengthen the broad-based peace movement, supporting the No War on
Iraq Liaison group and efforts by anti-war MPs to consolidate the widest
cross party opposition to war. It also means doing everything possible
to encourage the new generation of young people mobilising against imperialism’s
war drive. Increasingly it means fighting against the attempt to use
racism to weaken the anti-war movement and intimidate the newly mobilised
layers of the Muslim population.
Finally, it means developing the clearest possible political understanding
of the roots and ultimate aims of US imperialism’s military aggression.