Here the old colonialist-imperialist powers have been thinking that a great new day is dawning for them. They could unite in a secret agreement to divide the oil wealth of the Middle East, break up OPEC, and share out the world markets and resources among themselves on the basis of the destruction of the Iraqi regime.
This would give them the military and political leverage necessary to subdue the Arabian peninsula as a potentially significant regional power in world affairs.
Headed by the U.S. military-industrial complex and the big banks, the imperialists formed a united front that stretched from Tokyo to Denmark. Such unity is rare among them. Didn't they conduct two bloody imperialist world wars among themselves, as well as innumerable counterrevolutionary insurrections and interventions abroad? Thus, this new coalition seemed like a singular accomplishment.
History littered with secret deals
Of course, agreements among the world's biggest capitalist monopolists and transnational corporations are not precisely new. Even in the midst of the First World War, the imperialist powers of France, Britain and Czarist Russia arrived at a secret agreement (the Sykes-Picot agreement) on dividing the Arabian peninsula among themselves. That was in 1916, before the U.S. entered the war and challenged the secret agreement.
The contradictions among the imperialists are so severe because each is attempting to appropriate superprofits at the expense of the others. These superprofits are of course obtained from the blood and sweat of the exploited and oppressed peoples both at home and abroad.
It is rare for them to attain unity not only because of the severity of these contradictions but also because of the instability of the capitalist system, which careens between so-called capitalist prosperity and economic crisis. So it was something of an accomplishment that, after Iraq's intervention into Kuwait, they put together a formidable coalition of imperialist powers able to whip the UN Security Council into line, along with some of the Arab regimes that have been supported by U.S. imperialism for a long time with money and military equipment.
It must be borne in mind that an imperialist alliance is one thing, while an alliance of Arab states to support a struggle against Iraq is another. The latter is an alliance of imperialist stooges from oppressed countries where the governments represent the compradore bourgeoisie, that is, the bourgeoisie that accommodate themselves to the needs of the imperialists rather than to the needs of the workers and peasants at home. Such alliances are most susceptible to a revolutionary overturn once military struggle really begins.
What Baker found on his trip
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker's visit this past week to all the Arab states and to the imperialists abroad made it clear that while they are united in their objectives, they are fearful of the actual military offensive which the U.S. is preparing on such a gargantuan scale.
Of course, each of the imperialists is counting on getting something in return for their agreement to support the U.S. plunder of the Arabian peninsula. What each has been promised has not been revealed as yet. But it is safe to say that the French imperialists, for one, believe they didn't get enough and have once more found it necessary to distance themselves from the U.S.
China is not an imperialist power and has been virtually embargoed and isolated by U.S. imperialism since the crushing of the counterrevolutionary Tiananmen uprising a year and a half ago. However, it has joined in limited cooperation with the imperialists, agreeing to go along with all the UN Security Council resolutions. In return, many of the restrictions the imperialists had imposed on China have been lifted. That's the quid pro quo for China.
The leaders of the USSR, now in the midst of their biggest crisis since they began the attempt to transform the Soviet system into a bourgeois state, have been collaborating closely with U.S. imperialism. Yet they find it impossible to go beyond supporting the U.S. through UN resolutions (10 of them).
The Pentagon tried to go over the heads of the Gorbachev administration and deal directly with the Soviet military when it arranged a meeting between the military chiefs of the two countries, generals Mikhail Moiseyev and Colin Powell. But Moiseyev used the occasion to announce to the press that there should be no military intervention in Iraq.
The Japanese imperialists, who originally offered troops, ran into a storm of opposition from the population, which was reflected in the parliament. So great was the uproar that they have scaled down their participation to economic, humanitarian aid.
It is not known what subterranean efforts the Pentagon is making at economic and political intrigue to get the allied imperialists to support military action. But the scale of the U.S. military effort has scared them because it shows that the U.S. is moving heaven and earth to be in a position where it will be able to take everything for itself.
Fear of an Arab explosion
Just as important, the imperialists fear massive revolutionary struggles by Arab workers and peasants. Might not the guns in the hands of the Arab soldiers be turned against the very regimes they are supposedly fighting for--and against the imperialist armies of the U.S. above all?
Broad anti-war sentiment in the U.S. (surprisingly strong at such an early stage) was made visible when the Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East organized the Sept. 13 rally in New York City's Cooper Union, followed by mass demonstrations around the country on Oct. 20.
These are the factors which have impelled war hawks like Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and semi-hawks like Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to suddenly remember that Congress must vote for a war before the president has the right to launch it.
It's true that when thieves fall out, honest people have a chance to come into their own. But it would be a grave error to believe that the present-day Congress, composed mostly of senators and representatives directly linked to the bosses, bankers and military-industrial complex as a whole, would be able to convene a session to actually stop a war in the Middle East and withdraw the troops.
Congress never stopped a war
What happened in the Vietnam war? Congress did nothing to end it. The U.S. was thrown out of Vietnam after millions were killed by Pentagon guns, bombs and ships. The war finally ended after a brilliant military victory by the Vietnamese, which was also helped by the mass pressure of the anti-war movement here and around the world.
Congress talked but did nothing. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon--two Democrats and a Republican--all talked peace but continued the war until the very last soldier was out.
This war is not fundamentally different from any of the imperialist wars conducted in the past. What is different, however, is the potential for a revolutionary overthrow of those Arab regimes supporting the imperialist powers.
An oil glut?
In the U.S. itself, the hundreds of thousands of layoffs, including at the big banks, show that the economic crisis is underway. But there's also an oil glut. USA Today reports (Nov. 13) that "some experts [are] saying the world is on the verge of an oil glut ... [because of] sluggish economies worldwide."
What's the answer? The daily quotes an oil industry consultant as saying, "The only way the glut will vanish is if war breaks out in the Middle East."
Thus the imperialists are making a linkage between the war and the economic crisis. But the workers also see them as linked--that the rich, having taken their jobs and economic security, now want to take their lives.
These factors are leading to a truly formidable resurgence of the labor movement and of the oppressed nationalities, which are tending in the direction of a united anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist front.
The hawks hope that if Congress convenes, it will actually authorize the war rather than stop it. The so-called opposition in Congress and among the bourgeoisie generally would prefer to attain their objective peacefully, through economic strangulation like embargoes, even if that causes the death of hundreds of thousands. They want economic warfare as against military warfare.
All the more necessary is it for the anti-war movement to demand an end to the strangulation of the Arab masses through economic warfare, and spread the message that nothing less than complete withdrawal of U.S. forces will stop this war.