Imperialism by any name
The U.S., the 'United Nations' & Iraq
By Fred Goldstein
Secretary of State Colin Powell has been globe
trotting and working overtime to negotiate a United Nations
resolution on Iraq acceptable to France, Germany and Russia.
His goal is to give some "legal" cover for other governments to
send troops and money to bolster the crisis-ridden U.S.
occupation regime, which is under daily attack from the Iraqi
resistance.
The struggle between Washington and Paris over the terms of
the resolution and the prospect of UN intervention has drawn
sections of the anti-war movement into their own debate over
this question. Some sections have gravitated to the position
that the UN should be given the administration of Iraq in order
to replace or dilute the power of the U.S.-created Coalition
Provisional Authority.
The much-publicized pronouncements by French President
Jacques Chirac--that there must a rapid transition to Iraqi
"sovereignty" and the UN must occupy a "vital role" in the
political process and reconstruc tion effort--are now being
adopted, with variations, by sections of the movement.
Some of the openly social-democratic forces are simply
signing on to an imperialist solution. Others argue that the
most urgent task is to weaken and end the Pentagon's harsh
absolute rule and that the Iraqi state has been smashed and
society so fragmented under the occupation that Iraqi
self-determination cannot practically apply right now. Some
have even drawn the conclusion that "Bring the troops home" is
an incorrect slogan.
Thus, there is a search for some illusory third way that
seeks to avoid imperialist oppression, but in fact leaves the
imperialists as the dominant force in Iraq, directly or
indirectly.
War and sanctions with UN label
A simple exercise of near-term memory should be sufficient
to utterly reject a UN takeover as the solution in Iraq. It was
under UN auspices that world imperialism and its clients, led
by the Pentagon, carried out a 42-day air war against Iraq in
1991 that destroyed its basic infrastructure, including its
water supply system, and killed an estimated 200,000 people.
Iraq was left poisoned with radiation from thousands of
depleted-uranium shells.
And it was the UN that approved the 13-year sanctions
regime. This was a true cam paign of mass destruction. It
killed an estimated 1.5 million people, including 500,000
children, many of whom died because medicine, water
purification instruments and chemicals, and other basics were
embargoed. For most of those 13 years, the U.S. and British air
forces carried out regular bombings in the so-called no-fly
zones, under the false but unchallenged claim that they were
acting pursuant to a UN resolution.
And finally, it was the UN Security Council that after the
latest war passed the resolution legalizing Washington's role
of Occupation Authority for one year, acquiescing in its
military, political and economic control over Iraq. The
occupation status is renewable after a year based upon
consultation.
France, Russia, Germany stood to lose by
war
All this seems to have been obscured since last March, when
the UN Security Council tersely refused to sanction the Bush
administration's unilateral, unprovoked war of colonial
aggression against Iraq. With U.S. imperialism supported only
by its underling, Tony Blair of Britain, the Security Council
has since been viewed as an "anti-war" force by some.
In reality, the post-war struggle between France, Germany
and Russia on the one hand and Washington and Lon don on the
other over the role of the UN is a continuation of the pre-war
struggle that led to the final refusal to endorse the war.
In the political sphere, this is a struggle by the leading
imperialist powers of continental Europe to contain Washington
in its drive to strengthen its absolute world domination, as
outlined in the Bush National Security Strategy document of
September 2002.
In the economic sphere, where the tensions are greatest, the
resistance in the Security Council to the war was really a
resistance by French, Russian and German transnational
corporations to being displaced or shut out by U.S. corporate
power, enforced and protected by the Pentagon.
The French oil giant TotalFinElf had a $4-billion contract
to develop Iraq's Majnoon oil field. Russian oil giant Lukoil
had a $20-billion contract to drill the West Qurna oilfield and
Zarubneft had a concession to drill the bin Umar oilfield.
These companies had spent years working out these agreements.
In addition, Iraq owed Russia between $7 billion and $12
billion. Their only hope to execute the agreements and recoup
their loans was to have the sanctions lifted. Once the Pentagon
moved and the Baathist regime was overthrown, the U.S.
authorities would take control of Iraq's oil and finances and
would inevitably cut down or totally exclude their rivals.
German interests in Iraq were considerable. According to an
article in the Washington Times published back on Feb. 20,
"direct two-way trade between Germany and Iraq amounts to about
$350 million annually, while another $1 billion is sold via
third countries." Iraq was prepared to "give priority" to
German companies at the annual Baghdad trade fair in November
2001, in order to encourage German opposition to the war and
deepen the split with Washington, according to the Times. "Some
101 German companies were represented at the Baghdad
exposition, including companies offering air-conditioning
equipment, energy and transportation services, cosmetics,
textiles and other products."
In addition, as revealed in the 12,000-page arms declaration
that the Iraqi government gave to UN weapons inspectors in
December 2002, German corporations were "the market leaders in
supplying Iraq, even in the decade after the Gulf war,"
continued the Times. The document listed "80 German firms" as
suppliers of weapons and industrial devices. Iraq's debt to
Germany was undisclosed but was said to be significant.
The French, German and Russian governments were stalling for
time, for more inspections, for overflights, for any means to
stop the war and lift the sanctions--not out of concern for the
Iraqi people but because they did not want to lose their stake
in the profits.
European powers scheme to regain position through
UN
The struggle today over transferring authority to the UN in
the post-war period is really about trying to regain positions
lost. A March 25 dispatch in the April 17 edition of
Alexander's Gas & Oil Con nections, a widely read industry
publication, said: "Worried that it could be shut out of
business deals in post-war Iraq, France is drawing up plans to
win French companies access to lucrative oil and reconstruction
contracts, officials said. The government is determined that
French companies will be part of the rebuilding of Iraq,
despite President Jacques Chirac's opposition to the war."
The publication reported that "a meeting between France's
most powerful business federation, government leaders and the
French-Iraq Association for Economic Cooperation was scheduled
for April 3." It went on, "France opposes any U.S.
reconstruction plan that would sideline United Nations
development agencies, multilateral organizations and
non-governmental aid groups."
Thus the French ruling class was plotting to get back into
Iraq when the war was still on. And a key to their plan was to
use the United Nations. The same can undoub tedly be said for
the Russian and German bosses and bankers. Their problem was
that the rapid dominance of the U.S. in the air and ground war
quickly gave the Pentagon a lock on the entire operation in
Iraq. All the other imperialists were shut out. Even those U.S.
firms that were not closely tied to the Bush administration
were being shut out, not to speak of the French, Russians and
Germans.
So dominant was the U.S. after taking Baghdad that the UN
Security Council pas sed the above-mentioned resolution to
ratify the U.S.-British occupation and "grant" them complete
financial, political and economic control over Iraq for 12
months.
Iraqi resistance opens door
But the Iraqi resistance has turned the tide. With the U.S.
military suffering casualties daily and with general hatred of
the U.S. occupation growing--along with mass unemployment,
poverty and social disintegration in Iraq--the French, German
and Russian governments and business magnates are trying to
utilize Washington's crisis to push their way back into Iraq
via the UN. Their motivation is now even greater. Before the
war they were constrained in their profit taking by the
independent government of Iraq. Now they will deal with a
compliant colonial regime that will multiply their profits.
As things stand now, the U.S. Agency for International
Development is giving out the contracts. It is handing out
billions to Dick Cheney's cronies at Halliburton and its
subsidiary Brown & Root; to Bechtel, Fluor, Stevedoring
Services of America and MCI-WorldCom, among others. More U.S.
firms are greedily lining up to cash in on the $87 billion
Congress is about to vote on.
The other imperialists want to change that around. They want
UN agencies to grant contracts under the supervision of the
Security Council, meaning that U.S. and British monopolies will
have to share with French, Russian and German capitalists. This
would be the wedge by which these rival bandits could force
their way into the picture. They need to be on the ground in
Iraq with authority and access to the political and economic
process. Only in this way can they make their connections,
build their own factions, and take part in shaping the puppet
colonial administration. Above all, they want to keep their eye
on the development of the oil fields.
Security Council: a group of predatory
powers
The argument over whether the UN should take over Iraq is
completely obscured by the very term "United Nations." First of
all, what is meant is really the UN Security Council. But the
Security Council is not an independent entity. UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan must do what he is told by the U.S.
government or other imperialist governments. He has no genuine
authority. The Security Council members--aside from the
People's Republic of China, which is not taking part in the
horse trading--are independent imperialist states, each with
its own predatory interests.
Keeping that in mind, and eliminating the obfuscating term
"UN," the two sides of the argument reduce to the following:
Should Iraq remain in the exclusive grip of the Pentagon, its
corporate masters on Wall Street and the U.S. oil industry,
along with their junior colonialist partners in London--or
should the Iraqi people be set upon by the entire collection of
imperialists in the Security Council and be picked apart and
exploited by a "multilateral" gang of corporate cutthroats
operating through an international front agency?
In either case, the Iraqi people would still be subjected to
super-exploitation and domination by imperialist capital. In
either case, the Iraqi people would be denied true sovereignty
and self-determination.
The role of the anti-war movement is to fight to get U.S.
troops out of Iraq and to oppose the sending in of any other
occupation troops under the guise of "peacekeepers." The
absolute precondition for the Iraqi people to regain their
independence and sovereignty as a nation is to expel
imperialism and its instruments of military, political and
economic power from their country.
It is certain that the Iraqis will never get sovereignty
through a puppet regime that has decreed that the world of
international capital has the right to purchase 100-percent
ownership of any enterprise in the country, except for its oil.
Most of the anti-colonial movements of the 20th century
struggled to limit the penetration of capital from the
imperialist powers. This was elementary national self-defense
against economic enslavement. The 1958 revolution in Iraq was
the beginning of the struggle to bar the door to foreign
corporate takeover. Now that door is wide open.
Bring the troops home!
How the Iraqis will reconstitute themselves after the
terrible blows of imperialism, the destruction of their
independent state, and the devastation to their national
development delivered by the war and occu pation cannot be
known now. Whether they can find a way to soon bridge the gaps
and unite in the face of imperialism in order to rebuild, or
whether there is to be strife and conflict until the situation
is resolved, only the future will tell.
One thing is for sure. The only type of leadership that can
regain the sovereignty and independence of Iraq is one that
will emerge in the struggle against imperialism, not one that
collaborates with it. Whatever hardships they may endure, it is
for the Iraqis to determine their own future, free of the
pernicious influence of imperialism. The role of the anti-war
movement is to get imperialism--whether in its "unilateral" or
"multilateral" form--off the backs of the Iraqi people.
Reprinted from the Oct. 9, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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