Rice’s diplomatic disaster

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has taken on an impossible task in her trip to Beirut, Ramallah, Tel Aviv and Rome: to put together through diplomacy a formula for a long-lasting domination of Lebanon. The problem is, the formula was based on Israel having crushed Hezbollah.

Her dilemma is that—despite the deep suffering the U.S.-Israeli terrorist offensive has imposed on the Lebanese population—this offensive has been unable to defeat or even seriously wound the Lebanese national liberation movement.

Imperialist diplomacy, like imperialist war, has as its objective the subjugation of colonies and the subordination of its rivals. Diplomacy includes additional layers of lies. But it is possible to see beyond these lies to examine Rice’s trip and piece together the facts behind it.

A look at the last few weeks of U.S. diplomacy indicates the following:

The U.S. and Israel together planned a broad offensive against Hamas and Hezbollah long in advance—shown by the 100-percent pro-active diplomatic backing of Bush for the Israeli offensive and the immediate and unconditional U.S. support with words and vetoes in the Security Council.

U.S. client states that usually have to sound hostile to Israel in public—the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, for example—were lined up beforehand against Hezbollah. At first, they did not even demand a cease-fire.

The U.S.’s NATO allies, who often keep a public distance from Washington even though they support the U.S. and Israel against the liberation movements, put up no serious opposition to the Israeli attack at first, nor did they criticize it, instead calling it an attack on “terrorism.”

Everyone was lined up for a rapid Israeli victory in Lebanon.

But the victory hasn’t happened, so Rice’s trip had to change. Washington and Tel Aviv were forced to improvise diplomatic initiatives as a substitute for military success.

Originally, Rice’s trip was supposed to include visits to Riyad in Saudi Arabia; Amman, Jordan; and Cairo, Egypt. These were canceled. The regimes there, which originally believed they could get away without an outcry against the Israeli invasion, are now embarrassed to be seen in the same photo as the U.S. representative. Saudi Arabia is now demanding a cease-fire.

It may already be too late for these imperialist clients to avoid being completely discredited by what the mass of their countries’ people rightly see as a betrayal of the struggle for Arab liberation from imperialism and Zionism. The disgrace of these client regimes is another setback for imperialism.

Even Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, put in office with heavy U.S. support, and whom Rice might have expected would welcome a defeat for Hezbollah, said that Lebanon had more to fear from the Israelis than from Hezbollah.

In Rome, the U.S. turned to NATO to make up the occupation force on the Lebanese border. The NATO countries support this, but only in theory. In fact, France says the NATO troops must be under United Nations control. Germany says there must already be a cease-fire in place. Britain is already stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reports from Rome late on July 26 said most countries objected to the U.S. refusal to demand an immediate cease-fire, which allows Israel more time for air and ground attacks on Hezbollah. Despite Rice’s isolation on the question, however, the group reached agree ment on an apparently meaningless resolution for a UN force that no one expects could really enforce a truce.

To the White House, the U.S.-Israeli plan for rapid conquest must have looked good when viewed on the computers of the Pentagon’s War Room or presented in the essays and lectures of U.S. neo-cons and Israeli hawks. It was “shock and awe” all over again. Like the expectations for a rapid and trouble-free occupation of Iraq, however, these plans underestimated the role of the masses and repeated the imperialists’ inherent racist contempt for oppressed peoples.

In both Iraq and Lebanon, instead of a submissive population they have found a boiling cauldron of resistance headed by skilled and determined guerrillas.

This U.S. diplomatic setback does not mean, however, that the suffering of the Lebanese has diminished, nor the dangers of a greater war and increased turmoil have receded. It is more likely that Tel Aviv will expand the invasion in the hope of defeating Hezbollah. It is also perfectly conceivable that the Bush-Cheney White House may look for a way out of their setbacks in Iraq and Lebanon by expan ding the war to another arena where the Pentagon can employ its overwhelming and destructive air power, for example to Syria and/or Iran.

These are dangers the anti-war movement must be alert to at present, and are a reason why the ultimate goal of this movement should be to disarm the greatest terrorists: world imperialism with its headquarters in the U.S.