Iraq and Asian 'tigers': Two crises, one system
By Fred Goldstein
The world is witnessing two crises that are
separated geographically and different in form but have the
same malignant cause: monopoly capitalism in its most
aggressive stage.
The Iraqi people have been forced to watch day by day as the
biggest military and industrial power in the world relentlessly
marshals a massive naval and air armada offshore in the
Gulf.
Iraq was attempting to build a modern, industrial
society-perhaps the most socially progressive in the Middle
East from the standpoint of the status of women, religious
tolerance and social benefits. But Washington and its junior
partners in London decided Iraq's sovereignty was an
intolerable obstacle to their domination of the Middle
East.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, millions of workers in
Indonesia, south Korea, Thailand and the rest of East Asia are
being hit with the bombs of unemployment and hunger. Just as
Washington and London have moved in to the Gulf with aircraft
carriers, the International Monetary Fund has moved into Asia
with its austerity programs.
The methods of action are different-military force versus
economic strangulation. But the goals are the same-profits and
domination.
Indonesian food rebellions
In the Indonesian city of Kendari, in the province of South
Sulawesi, 10,000 people flooded into the streets on Feb. 19,
according to Agence France Presse. There was a full-scale
rebellion against rising food prices and hoarding by
merchants.
Troops were called out after four days of rebellion and
attacks on 35 major businesses. One banner read, "We need to
eat and that is why I have taken to the street."
Demonstrations and food riots involving thousands have taken
place in at least 25 Indonesian cities since Jan. 8, when five
food shops were attacked in the East Java town of Jember.
Troops have killed five people.
The wave of shop seizures began shortly after the
International Monetary Fund, in return for loaning out $40
billion, compelled the Indonesian government to abandon
massive, labor-intensive public works. This threw a number of
banks into bankruptcy, starting a wave of layoffs.
Close to 2.5 million people lost their jobs in just a few
months.
The workers and middle class of south Korea are being pushed
to the wall in the same way. In return for $53 billion in
loans, the IMF made the government shut down banks and
conglomerates, institute austerity programs and pass a law
permitting mass layoffs.
Even before the law was passed, layoffs increased four-fold
in January.
The militant union movement is in a great struggle over how
to combat the layoffs. But the Kim Dae Jung regime, like that
of Suharto in Indonesia, is enforcing layoffs under IMF
orders.
A similar crisis exists for the workers in Thailand after a
$17 billion IMF loan to the ruling class.
IMF over Asia
The IMF represents the world's imperialist banks, but is
dominated by the United States. It intends to make sure that
the international bankers get their money back, with
interest.
Before the crisis, the imperialist financiers were competing
to finance every kind of profit-making scheme in Asia:
manufacturing, real estate, stock speculation, whatever. The
bankers in New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, Bonn and Rome asked
no questions when they thought they could make a killing.
But when capitalist overproduction saturated the markets,
the bubble burst. Currency speculators made a profit driving
down the currencies of oppressed Asian countries. Then the
bankers quickly withdrew all credit and demanded repayment.
This economic aggression bringing suffering and hardship to
millions in Asia is carried out by the same multinationals that
are trying to conquer Iraq.
Chase Manhattan, Citicorp, Bankers Trust, BankAmerica, J.P.
Morgan and others that financed the Asian "tigers" are
completely intertwined with the giant oil monopolies-Exxon,
Unocal, Mobil, Texaco-and with the military
corporations-Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, General
Dynamics-that are struggling to reconquer Iraq.
Oil, Iraq and the Baghdad pact
From an historical point of view it is no accident that the
United States is allied with British imperialism in the
struggle to deny Iraq its sovereignty.
In 1955, the United States and Britain engineered the
Baghdad Pact, the Middle East Cold War version of NATO. The
pivotal regime in the pact was the corrupt feudal monarchy of
Iraq's King Faisal.
The alliance was set up to counter the growing Arab
anti-colonial revolution. That revolution soon became
undeniable, when militant Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser
nationalized the Suez Canal.
In 1958 the U.S.-British puppet regime of Faisal was
overthrown in a progressive bourgeois-nationalist revolution.
At that time Standard Oil of New Jersey (precursor of Exxon),
Socony and Anglo-Iranian owned the lion's share of Iraqi
oil.
Iraq nationalized these companies in the early 1960s.
The Iraq revolution also dissolved the Baghdad Pact. That
was a severe blow to Anglo-U.S. imperialism.
Oil companies have a long memory. With no more USSR to
protect nationalist Arab regimes, the monopolies now dream of
getting back "their" oil.
As the U.S. imperialist strategists see it, they must
destroy Iraqi sovereignty, either by sanctions or war or both.
Because if Iraq retains the ability to make its own decisions,
it may well deal with the French imperialists or with the
Russian would-be-imperialist regime of Yeltsin, both of which
are rivals of Washington.
In fact, the ugly war crisis in the Gulf is heavily driven
by United States determination to get total domination of the
region in order to shut out its imperialist rivals,
particularly the French and the Russians. They both have oil
deals pending with Baghdad. Iraq could be a lucrative market
for them once it freed itself from sanctions and could get oil
revenues.
The tensions are aggravated by the Asian crisis. World
capitalist markets are constricting at the very moment that the
introduction of new technology in pursuit of profit drives
capitalist production forward at ever faster rates.
This was reflected sharply at the last G7 conference. The
United States, in a bloc with the Europeans, rudely lectured
the Japanese imperialists on why they should stop exporting to
the West to solve their economic crisis and instead buy U.S.,
European and Asian goods.
Washington wanted Japan to relieve the pressure of world
capitalist overproduction, which has shown up in the U.S. trade
deficit with Japan to the tune of $60 billion last year.
Foreign policy an extension
of domestic policy
It should come as no surprise that the Clinton
administration has shown such utter ruthlessness in dealing
with the peoples of Iraq, Indonesia and south Korea, even to
the point of military adventurism.
President Bill Clinton demonizes Saddam Hussein. But didn't
he demonize poor mothers in order to pass the brutal
legislation that destroyed welfare?
He demonized Black youths in order to justify his so-called
anti-crime bill with its new jails, more cops and death
penalty.
He demonized Arab people at the time of the World Trade
Center bombing to push his so-called "anti-terrorism" bill,
which virtually abolished legal and civil rights for any
undocumented person.
It is an axiom that foreign policy is an extension of
domestic policy. In this, Clinton has shown great
consistency.
The growing world tensions-military, political and
economic-and the consequent mass suffering in the Gulf and Asia
have their roots in the system of imperialism, in the
domination of finance capital. The struggle against war, racism
and unemployment must begin with the struggle against
capitalism and imperialism.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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