[Peace-discuss] From the Left

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Now here's something I support without much reservation.  It was written
in the midst of the invasion of Iraq and is remarkably prescient.  The
geopolitical analysis and recommendation seem to me to be correct, too.  
--CGE]

New Left Review 21, May-June 2003

***The American expedition to Baghdad, and world-wide reactions to the new
imperium. From mass demonstrations against the war to the diplomatic
hypocrisies colluding with it. The UN as framework of blockade and
intervention yesterday, and mask of reconstruction tomorrow.***

TARIQ ALI

RE-COLONIZING IRAQ

On 15 February 2003, over eight million people marched on the streets of
five continents against a war that had not yet begun. This first truly
global mobilization -- unprecedented in size, scope or scale -- sought to
head off the occupation of Iraq being plotted in the Pentagon. The turnout
in Western Europe broke all records: three million in Rome, two million in
Spain, a million and a half in London, half a million in Berlin, over a
hundred thousand in Paris, Brussels and Athens. In Istanbul, where the
local authorities vetoed a protest march in the name of "national
security", the peace movement called a press conference to denounce the
ban -- to which ten thousand "journalists" turned up. In the United States
there were mass demonstrations in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and la
and smaller assemblies in virtually every state capital: over a million
people in all. Another half a million marched in Canada. The antipodean
wing of the movement assembled 500,000 in Sydney and 250,000 in Melbourne.

On 21 March, as British and American forces headed across the Iraqi
border, the long quiescent Arab street, inspired by these global protests,
came to life with spontaneous mass demonstrations in Cairo, Sanaa and
Amman. In Egypt, the mercenary regime of Hosni Mubarak panicked and
arrested over 800 people, some of whom were viciously maltreated in
prison. In the Yemen, over 30,000 people marched against the war; a
sizeable contingent made for the US Embassy and had to be stopped with
bullets. Two people were killed and scores injured. In the
Israeli-American protectorate of Jordan, the monarchy had already crushed
a virtual uprising in a border town and now proceeded to brutalize
demonstrators in the capital. In the Arab world the tone of the streets
was defiantly nationalist -- "Where is our army?" cried Cairene
protesters. In Pakistan the religious parties took full advantage of the
pro-US stance of the Muslim League and ppp to dominate antiwar
mobilizations in Peshawar and Karachi. Islamists in Kenya and Nigeria did
the same, though with more effect: the American embassies in both
countries had to be evacuated. In Indonesia, over 200,000 people of every
political hue marched through Jakarta.

Less than a century ago, over eight million votes had been cast for the
European Social Democratic parties of the Second International, inspiring
the only previous attempt at co-ordinated action to prevent a war. In
November 1912 an emergency conference of the International was convened
beneath the Gothic arches of the old Cathedral in Basle, in an effort to
avert the looming catastrophe of the First World War. As the delegates
entered they were treated to a rendering of Bach's Mass in B Minor, which
marked the high point of the gathering. The Socialist leaders, German,
British, French, pledged to resist each and every aggressive policy of
their respective governments. It was agreed that, when the time came,
their parliamentary deputies would vote against war credits. Keir Hardie's
call for an "international revolutionary strike against the war" was
applauded, though not put to the vote. Jean Jaurès was loudly cheered
when he pointed out "how much smaller a sacrifice a revolution would
involve, when compared to the war they are preparing". Victor Adler then
read the resolution, which was unanimously approved. It concluded: "Let
the capitalist world of exploitation and mass murder be confronted by the
proletarian world of peace and international brotherhood."

By August 1914 these worthy sentiments had crumbled before the trumpet
blast of nationalism. The programmatic clarity displayed at Basle
evaporated as the tocsin rallied the citizens of each state for war. No
credits were refused; no strike was called or revolution fomented. Amid a
growing storm of chauvinist hysteria, Jaurès was assassinated by pro-war
fanatic. While a brave, bedraggled minority gathered unnoticed in the
Swiss town of Zimmerwald to call for the imperialist war to be turned
"into a civil war, against reaction at home", the majority of Social
Democratic leaders stood stiffly to attention as their supporters donned
their respective colours and proceeded to slaughter each other. Over ten
million perished on the battlefields of Europe to defend their respective
capitalisms, in a conflict that saw a new Great Power make its entrance on
the world stage. A century later, the United States of America had seen
off virtually every rival to become the lead -- often, the solo -- actor
in every international drama.

The eight million and more who marched this year were not mobilized by any
International, nor did they share a common programmatic outlook. From many
different political and social backgrounds, they were united only by the
desire to prevent the imperialist invasion of an oil-rich Arab country in
a region already riven by a colonial war in Palestine. Instinctively, most
of those who marched did so because they rejected the official
justifications for the bloodshed. It is difficult for those who accept
these as "plausible" to understand the depth of resistance they provoked
and the hatred felt by so many young people for their propagators. Outside
the United States, few believe that the fiercely secular Ba'ath Party of
Iraq has any links with al-Qaeda. As for "weapons of mass destruction",
the only nuclear stockpile in the region is situated in Israel; and, as
Condoleezza Rice herself had pointed out in the final year of the Clinton
administration, even if Saddam Hussein had such an arsenal, he would be
unable to deploy it: "If they do acquire wmd, their weapons will be
unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national
obliteration". [1] Unusable in 2000; but three years later Saddam had to
be removed by the despatch of a massive Anglo-American expeditionary force
and the cluster-bombing of Iraq's cities, before he got them? The pretext
not only failed to convince but served rather to fuel a broad-based
opposition as millions now saw the greatest threat to peace coming, not
from the depleted armouries of decaying dictatorships, but from the rotten
heart of the American empire and its satrapies, Israel and Britain. It is
awareness of these realities that has begun to radicalize a new
generation.

The imperial offensive

The Republican Administration has utilized the national trauma of 9.11 to
pursue an audacious imperial agenda, of which the occupation of Iraq
promises to be only the first step. The programme it seeks to implement
was first publicized in 1997 under the rubric, "Project for the New
American Century". Its signatories included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Zalmay Khalilzad, Elliott Abrams and Dan Quayle,
as well as such intellectual adornments as Francis Fukuyama, Midge Decter,
Lewis Libby and Norman Podhoretz. The American Empire could not afford to
be complacent with the end of the Cold War, they argued: "We seem to have
forgotten the essential elem­ents of the Reagan Administration's success:
a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future
challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes
American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the
United States' global responsibilities." The language of this coterie,
compared with the euphemisms of the Clinton era, is commendably direct: to
preserve US hegemony, force will be used wherever and whenever necessary.
European hand-wringing leaves it unmoved.

The 2001 assault on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon was thus a gift
from heaven for the Administration. The next day, a meeting of the
National Security Council discussed whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan,
selecting the latter only after considerable debate. A year later, the
aims outlined in the "Project" were smoothly transferred to the "National
Security Strategy of the United States of America", issued by Bush in
September 2002. The expedition to Baghdad was planned as the first flexing
of the new stance. [2] Twelve years of UN blockade and Anglo-American
bombing had failed to destroy the Ba'ath regime or displace its leader.
There could be no better demonstration of the shift to a more offensive
imperial strategy than to make an example of it now. If no single reason
explains the targeting of Iraq, there is little mystery about the range of
calculations behind it. Economically, Iraq possesses the second largest
reserves of cheap oil in the world; Baghdad's decision in 2000 to invoice
its exports in euros rather than dollars risked imitation by Chávez in
Venezuela and the Iranian mullahs. Privatization of the Iraqi wells under
US control would help to weaken opec. Strategically, the existence of an
independent Arab regime in Baghdad had always been an irritation to the
Israeli military -- even when Saddam was an ally of the West, the IDF
supplied spare parts to Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. With the
installation of Republican zealots close to Likud in key positions in
Washington, the elimination of a traditional adversary became an
attractive immediate goal for Jerusalem. Lastly, just as the use of
nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had once been a pointed
demonstration of American might to the Soviet Union, so today a blitzkrieg
rolling swiftly across Iraq would serve to show the world at large, and
perhaps states in the Far East -- China, North Korea, even Japan -- in
particular, that if the chips are down, the United States has, in the last
resort, the means to enforce its will.

The official pretext for the war, that it was vital to eliminate Iraq's
fearsome weapons of mass destruction, was so flimsy that it had to be
jettisoned as an embarrassment when even famously subservient un
inspectors -- a corps openly penetrated by the CIA -- were unable to find
any trace of them, and were reduced to pleading for more time. This will
not prevent their "discovery" after the event, but few any longer attach
much importance to this tattered scarecrow. The justification for invading
Iraq has now shifted to the pressing need to introduce democracy to the
country, dressing up aggression as liberation. Few in the Middle East,
friends or foes of the Administration, are deceived. The peoples of the
Arab world view Operation Iraqi Freedom as a grisly charade, a cover for
an old-fashioned European-style colonial occupation, constructed like its
predecessors on the most rickety of foundations -- innumerable falsehoods,
cupidity and imperial fantasies. The cynicism of current American claims
to be bringing democracy to Iraq can be gauged from Colin Powell's remarks
to a press briefing in 1992, when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff under Bush senior. This is what he had to say about the project that
is ostensibly now under way:

"Saddam Hussein is a terrible person, he is a threat to his own people. I
think his people would be better off with a different leader, but there is
this sort of romantic notion that if Saddam Hussein got hit by a bus
tomorrow, some Jeffersonian democrat is waiting in the wings to hold
popular elections [laughter]. You're going to get -- guess whatâ --
probably another Saddam Hussein. It will take a little while for them to
paint the pictures all over the walls again -- [laughter] -- but there
should be no illusions about the nature of that country or its society.
And the American people and all of the people who second-guess us now
would have been outraged if we had gone on to Baghdad and we found
ourselves in Baghdad with American soldiers patrolling the streets two
years later still looking for Jefferson [laughter]." [3]

This time Powell will be making sure that Jeffersonian democrats are flown
in with the air-conditioning and the rest of the supplies. He knows that
they may have to be guarded night and day by squads of hired American
goons, like the puppet Karzai in Kabul.

Old mastiffs and new satellites

On the one side, a vast popular outcry against the invasion of Iraq. On
the other, a US administration coolly and openly resolved on it from the
start. Between them, the governments of the rest of the world. How have
they reacted? London, as could be expected, acted as a blood-shot adjutant
to Washington throughout. Labour imperialism is a long tradition, and
Blair had already shown in the Balkan War that he could behave more like a
petty mastiff, snarling at the leash, than a mere poodle. Since Britain
has been bombing Iraq continuously, wing-tip to wing-tip with America, for
as long as New Labour has been in office, only the naive could be
surprised at the dispatch of a third of the British army to the country's
largest former colony in the Middle East; or the signature paltering of
House of Commons "rebels" of the stamp of Cook or Short, regretting the
violence but wishing God speed to its perpetrators.

Berlusconi in Italy and Aznar in Spain-- the two most right-wing
governments in Europe-- were fitting partners for Blair in rallying such
lesser EU fry as Portugal and Denmark to the cause, while Simitis offered
Greek facilities for US spy planes. The East European states, giving a new
meaning to the term "satellite", which they had previously so long
enjoyed, fell as one into line behind Bush. The ex-communist parties in
power in Poland, Hungary and Albania distinguished themselves in zeal to
show their new fealty-- Warsaw sending a contingent to fight in Iraq,
Budapest providing the training-camps for Iraqi exiles, even little Tirana
volunteering gallant non-combatants for the battlefield.

France and Germany, on the other hand, protested for months that they were
utterly opposed to a US attack on Iraq. Schroeder had owed his narrow
re-election to a pledge not to support a war on Baghdad, even were it
authorized by the un. Chirac, armed with a veto in the Security Council,
was even more voluble with declarations that any unauthorized assault on
the Ba'ath regime would never be accepted by France. Together, Paris and
Berlin coaxed Moscow into expressing its disagreement too with American
plans. Even Beijing emitted a few cautious sounds of demurral. The
Franco-German initiatives aroused tremendous excitement and consternation
among diplomatic commentators. Here, surely, was an unprecedented rift in
the Atlantic Alliance. What was to become of European unity, of NATO, of
the "international community" itself if such a disastrous split persisted?
Could the very concept of the West survive? Such apprehensions were
quickly to be allayed. No sooner were Tomahawk missiles lighting up the
nocturnal skyline in Baghdad, and the first Iraqi civilians cut down by
the Marines, than Chirac rushed to explain that France would assure smooth
passage of US bombers across its airspace (as it had not done, under his
own Premiership, when Reagan attacked Libya), and wished "swift success"
to American arms in Iraq. Germany's cadaver-green Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer announced that his government too sincerely hoped for the "rapid
collapse" of resistance to the Anglo-American attack. Putin, not to be
outdone, explained to his compatriots that "for economic and political
reasons", Russia could only desire a decisive victory of the United States
in Iraq. The parties of the Second International themselves could not have
behaved more honourably.

Farther afield, the scene was very similar. In Japan, Koizumi was quicker
off the mark than his European counterparts in announcing full support for
the Anglo-American aggression, and promising largesse from the beleaguered
Japanese tax-payer to help fund the occupation. The new President of South
Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, elected with high hopes from the country's youth as
an independent radical, disgraced himself instantly by offering not only
approval of America's war in the Middle East, but troops to fight it, in
the infamous tradition of the dictator Park Chung Hee in the Vietnam War.
If this is to be the new Seoul, Pyongyang would do well to step up its
military preparations against any repetition of the same adventure in the
Korean peninsula. In Latin America, the PT regime in Brazil confined
itself to mumbling a few mealy-mouthed reservations, while in Chile the
Socialist President Ricardo Lagos -- spineless even by the standards of
sub-equatorial social democracy -- frantically cabled his Ambassador to
the un, who had irresponsibly let slip the word "condemn" in chatting with
some journalists, to issue an immediate official correction: Chile did not
condemn, it merely "regretted" the Anglo-American invasion.

In the Middle East, the landscape of hypocrisy and collusion is more
familiar. But, amidst the overwhelming opposition of Arab public opinion,
no client regime failed to do its duty to the paymaster general. In Egypt
Mubarak gave free passage to the US Navy through the Canal and airspace to
the usaf, while his police were clubbing and arresting hundreds of
protesters. The Saudi monarchy invited cruise missiles to arc over their
territory, and US command centres to operate as normal from their soil.
The Gulf States have long become virtual military annexes of Washington.
Jordan, which managed to stay more or less neutral in the first Gulf War,
this time eagerly supplied bases for American special forces to maraud
across the border. The Iranian mullahs, as oppressive at home as they are
stupid abroad, collaborated with CIA operations Afghan-style. The Arab
League surpassed itself as a collective expression of ignominy, announcing
its opposition to the war even as a majority of members were participating
in it. This is an organization capable of calling the Kaaba black while
spraying it red, white and blue.

The reality of the "international community" -- read: American global
hegemony -- has never been so clearly displayed as in this dismal
panorama. Against such a background of general connivance and betrayal,
the few -- very few -- acts of genuine resistance stand out. The only
elected body that actually attempted to stop the war was the Turkish
parliament. The newly elected akp regime performed no better than its
counterparts elsewhere, cravenly bargaining for larger bribes to let
Turkey be used as a platform for a US land attack on Northern Iraq. But
mass pressures, reflexes of national pride or pangs of conscience prompted
large enough numbers of its own party to revolt and block this
transaction, disrupting the Pentagon's plans. The Ankara government
hastened to open airspace for US missiles and paratroop drops instead, but
the action of the Turkish parliament -- defying its own government, not to
speak of the United States -- altered the course of the war; unlike the
costless Euro-gestures that evaporated into thin air when fighting began.
In Indonesia, Megawati pointedly drew attention to the Emperor's clothes
by calling for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to condemn the
Anglo-American expedition. Naturally, after months of huffing and puffing
from Paris, Berlin and elsewhere about the sanctity of UN authority, the
response was complete silence. In Malaysia, Mahathir -- not for the first
time breaking a diplomatic taboo -- bluntly demanded the resignation of
Kofi Annan for his role as a dumb-waiter for American aggression. These
politicians understood better than others in the Third World that the
American Empire was using its huge military arsenal to teach the South a
lesson in the North's power to intimidate and control it.

Quisling syndrome

The war on Iraq was planned along the lines set out by its predecessors in
Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. It is clear that politicians and generals in
Washington and London hoped that the Kosovo-Kabul model could essentially
be repeated: massive aerial bombardment bringing the opponent to its knees
without the necessity of much serious combat on the ground. [4] In each of
these cases there was no real resistance, once B-52s and daisy-cutters had
done their work. But on hand to secure the right result were also
indispensable "allies" of the targeted regimes themselves. In the Balkans
it was Yeltsin's emissaries who talked Miloševic into putting his head
into the American noose by withdrawing his troops intact from their
bunkers in Kosovo. In Afghanistan, it was Musharraf who ensured that the
bulk of Taliban forces and their Pakistani "advisers" melted away, once
Operation Enduring Freedom began. In both countries, it was the external
patron whom the local regimes had relied on for protection that pulled the
rug from under them.

In Iraq, however, the Ba'ath dictatorship was always a tougher and more
resilient structure. It had received varying diplomatic and military
support from abroad at different stages of its career (including, of
course, from the United States, as well as Russia), but had never been
dependent on them. Confident, nevertheless, that its top command must be
brittle and venal, Washington persistently tried to suborn Iraqi generals
to turn their coats or, failing that, simply to assassinate Saddam itself.
Once all such attempts -- even at the eleventh hour -- proved a fiasco,
the Pentagon had no option but to launch a conventional land campaign. The
economic and military strength of the American Empire was always such
that, short of a rebellion at home or an Arab-wide intifada spreading the
war throughout the region, it could be confident of pushing through a
military occupation of Iraq. What it could not do was predict with any
certainty the political upshot of such a massive act of force.

In the event, the Iraqi Army did not disintegrate at the first shot; there
was little sign of widespread popular gratitude for the invasion but
rather more of guerrilla resistance and -- as civilian casualties from
missiles, mortars and bombing raids mounted -- of increasing anger in the
Arab world. Temporarily, the Crusader armies succeeded in making Saddam
Hussein a nationalist hero, his portraits flourished on demonstrations in
Amman and Gaza, Cairo and Sanaa. At the time of writing, the hospitals of
Baghdad are overflowing with the wounded and dying, as the city is prised
apart by American tanks. "We own it all", declares a US colonel, surveying
the shattered capital in the spirit of any Panzer commander in 1940. [5]
Behind the armoured columns, the Pentagon has an occupation regime in
waiting, headed by former US General Jay Garner, an arms dealer close to
the Zionist lobby at home, with assorted quislings -- fraudsters and
mountebanks like Ahmed Chalabi and Kanan Makiya -- in its baggage train.
It will not be beyond the US authorities to confect what it can dub as a
representative regime, with elections, an assembly and so on, while the
"transitional administration" will no doubt be funded by the sale of Iraqi
assets. But any illusion that this will be a smooth or peaceable affair
has already vanished. Heavy repression will be needed to deal, not merely
with thousands of Ba'ath militants and loyalists, but with Iraqi patriotic
sentiments of any kind; not to speak of the requirements for protecting
collaborators from nationalist retribution.

Already the lack of any spontaneous welcome from Shi'ites and the fierce
resistance of armed irregulars have prompted the theory that the Iraqis
are a "sick people" who will need protracted treatment before they can be
entrusted with their own fate (if ever). Such was the line taken by the
Blairite columnist David Aaronovitch in the Observer. Likewise, George
Mellon in the Wall Street Journal warns: "Iraq Won't Easily Recover From
Saddam's Terror": "after three decades of rule of the Arab equivalent of
Murder Inc, Iraq is a very sick society". To develop an "orderly society"
and re-energize (privatize) the economy will take time, he insists. On the
front page of the Sunday Times, its reporter Mark Franchetti quoted an
American NCO: "The Iraqis are a sick people and we are the chemotherapy",
said Corporal Ryan Dupre. "I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I
get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill
him." The report -- in Murdoch's flagship paper -- goes on to describe how
his unit killed not one but several Iraqi civilians later that day. [6] No
doubt the "sick society" theory will acquire greater sophistication, but
it is clear the pretexts are to hand for a mixture of Guantanamo and Gaza
in these newly Occupied Territories.

United Nations of America

There will, of course, be pleas from the European governments for the un
to take over the conquests of American arms, which Blair, keener than Bush
on unctuous verbiage, will second for reasons of his own. Much talk will
be heard of humanitarian relief, the urgency of alleviating civilian
suffering and the need for the international community to "come together
again". So long as no real power is ceded to it, the US has everything to
gain from an ex post facto blessing bestowed on its aggression by the un,
much as in Kosovo. The months of shadow-boxing in the Security Council --
while, in the full knowledge of all parties, Washington readied the
laborious logistics for attacking Iraq -- cost it little. Once it had
Resolution 1441 in its pocket, passed by a unanimous vote -- including
France, Russia and China, not to speak of Syria -- the rest was décor.
Even France's Ambassador to Washington, Jean-David Levitte, had urged the
US not to go forward with the second resolution: "Weeks before it was
tabled I went to the State Department and the White House to say, 'Don't
do it . . . You don't need it'." [7]

It was, of course, sanctimony in London rather than bull-headedness in
Washington that dragged the world through the farce of further
"authorization", without success. But Levitte's advice spotlights the real
nature of the United Nations which, since the end of the Cold War, has
been little more than a disposable instrument of American policy. The
turning-point in this transformation was the dismissal of Boutros-Ghali as
Secretary-General, despite a vote in his favour by every member of the
Security Council save the US, for having dared to criticize Western
concentration on Bosnia at the expense of far greater tragedies in Africa.
Once Kofi Annan -- the African Waldheim, rewarded for helping the Clinton
Administration to deflect aid and attention from genocide in Rwanda -- was
installed instead, at Washington's behest, the organization was safely in
American hands.

This does not mean it can be relied on to do the will of the US on every
matter, as the failure of its efforts to secure a placebo for Blair made
clear. There is no need for that. All that is necessary -- and now
unfailingly available -- is that the UN either complies with the desires
of the us, or rubber-stamps them after the event. The one thing it cannot
do is condemn or obstruct them. The attack on Iraq, like the attack on
Yugoslavia before it, is from one point of view a brazen violation of the
un Charter. But no member state of the Security Council dreamt of calling
an emergency meeting about it, let alone moved a resolution condemning the
war. In another sense, it would have been hypocrisy to do so, since the
aggression unfolded logically enough from the whole vindictive framework
of the UN blockade of Iraq since the Gulf War, which had already added
further hundreds of thousands dead to the credit of the Security Council
since its role in Rwanda, at American instructions. [8] To appeal from the
us to the authority of the UN is like expecting the butler to sack the
master.

To point out these obvious truths is not to ignore the divisions that have
arisen within the "international community" over the war in Iraq. When the
Clinton Administration decided to launch its attack on Yugoslavia, it
could not secure authorization from the Security Council because Russia
had cold feet; so it went ahead anyway through NATO, in the correct belief
that Moscow would jump on board later, and the UN ratify the war once it
was over. This time NATO itself was split, so could not be used as
surrogate. But it would be unwise to assume the outcome will be very
different.

This is the first occasion since the end of the Cold War when a
disagreement between the inner core of the EU and the United States
exploded into a public rift, was seen on television and helped polarize
public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. But only a short
journalistic memory could forget that a still more dramatic dispute broke
out during the Cold War itself, occasioned by the same kind of adventure
in the same region. In 1956 a "unilateralist" Anglo-French expedition, in
collusion with Israel, attempted to effect regime change in Egypt—to the
fury of the United States, which had not been consulted beforehand and
feared the adventure might open the door to Communist influence in the
Middle East. When the USSR threatened to use rockets to help Nasser,
Eisenhower ordered Britain to pull out of Egypt on pain of severe economic
punishment, and the Tripartite assault had to be abandoned. This time the
roles have been largely reversed, with France and Germany expostulating at
an American expedition, in which Britain -- the perpetual attack-dog --
has joined.

The difference, of course, is that now there is no Soviet Union to be
considered in the calculus of aggression, and overwhelming power anyway
rests with America, not Europe. But the lessons of 1956 have not lost
their relevance. Sharp international disputes are perfectly compatible
with basic unity of interests among the leading capitalist powers, which
quickly reassert themselves. The failure of the Suez expedition prompted
France to sign the Treaty of Rome establishing the eec, conceived in part
as a counterweight to the us. But the US itself supported the creation of
the European Community, whose enlargement today serves its purposes, as
the French elite is becoming uneasily aware -- although far too late to do
much about it. Ill-feeling is likely to linger between Washington and
Paris or Berlin after the public friction of recent months, even if, as we
are repeatedly assured, all sides will strive to put it behind them.
Within the EU itself, Britain's role in backing the US against Germany and
France, while pretending to play the go-between, has exposed it once again
as the Trojan mule in the Community. But the days when De Gaulle could
genuinely thwart America are long gone. Chirac and Blair will kiss and
make up soon enough.

What is to be done?

If it is futile to look to the United Nations or Euroland, let alone
Russia or China, for any serious obstacle to American designs in the
Middle East, where should resistance start? First of all, naturally, in
the region itself. There, it is to be hoped that the invaders of Iraq will
eventually be harried out of the country by a growing national reaction to
the occupation regime they install, and that their collaborators may meet
the fate of Nuri Said before them. Sooner or later, the ring of corrupt
and brutal tyran­nies around Iraq will be broken. If there is one area
where the cliché that classical revolutions are a thing of the past is
likely to be proved wrong, it is the Arab world. The day the Mubarak,
Hashemite, Assad, Saudi and other dynasties are swept away by popular
wrath, American -- and Israeli -- arrogance in the region will be over.

In the imperial homeland itself, meanwhile, opposition to the ruling
system should take heart from the example of America's own past. In the
closing years of the 19th century, Mark Twain, shocked by chauvinist
reactions to the Boxer Rebellion in China and the US seizure of the
Philippines, sounded the alarm. Imperialism, he declared, had to be
opposed. In 1899 a mammoth assembly in Chicago established the American
Anti-Imperialist League. Within two years its membership had grown to over
half a million and included William James, W. E. B. DuBois, William Dean
Howells and John Dewey. Today, when the United States is the only imperial
power, the need is for a global Anti-Imperialist League. But it is the us
component of such a front that would be crucial. The most effective
resistance of all starts at home. The history of the rise and fall of
Empires teaches us that it is when their own citizens finally lose faith
in the virtue of infinite war and permanent occupations that the system
enters into retreat.

The World Social Forum has, till now, concentrated on the power of
multi­national corporations and neoliberal institutions. But these have
always rested on foundations of imperial force. Quite consistently,
Friedrich von Hayek, the inspirer of the "Washington Consensus", was a
firm believer in wars to buttress the new system, advocating the bombing
of Iran in 1979 and of Argentina in 1982. The World Social Forum should
take up that challenge. Why should it not campaign for the shutting down
of all American military bases and facilities abroad -- that is, in the
hundred plus countries where the US now stations troops, aircraft or
supplies? What possible justification does this vast octopoid expanse
have, other than the exercise of American power? The economic concerns of
the Forum are in no contradiction with such an extension of its agenda.
Economics, after all, is only a concentrated form of politics, and war a
continuation of both by other means.

For the moment, we are surrounded with politicians and pundits, prelates
and intellectuals, parading their consciences in print or the air-waves to
explain how strongly they were opposed to the war, but now that it has
been launched believe that the best way to demonstrate their love for
humanity is to call for a speedy victory by the United States, so that the
Iraqis might be spared unnecessary suffering. Typically, such figures had
no objection to the criminal sanctions regime, and its accompanying dose
of weekly Anglo-American bombing raids, that heaped miseries on the Iraqi
population for the preceding twelve years. The only merit of this
sickening chorus is to make clear, by contrast, what real opposition to
the conquest of Iraq involves.

The immediate tasks that face an anti-imperialist movement are support for
Iraqi resistance to the Anglo-American occupation, and opposition to any
and every scheme to get the UN into Iraq as retrospective cover for the
invasion and after-sales service for Washington and London. Let the
aggressors pay the costs of their own imperial ambitions. All attempts to
dress up the re-colonization of Iraq as a new League of Nations Mandate,
in the style of the 1920s, should be stripped away. Blair will be the
leading mover in these, but he will have no shortage of European extras
behind him. Underlying this obscene campaign, the beginnings of which are
already visible on Murdoch's TV channels, the BBC and CNN, is the urgent
desire to reunite the West. The vast bulk of official opinion in Europe,
and a substantial chunk in the US, is desperate to begin the post-war
"healing process". The only possible reply to what lies ahead is the motto
heard in the streets of San Francisco this spring: "Neither their war nor
their peace".

8 April 2003

[1] "Promoting the National Interest", Foreign Affairs, Jan–Feb 2000.

[2] In The Right Man, David Frum, Bush's former speechwriter, argues that:
"An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein -- and a replacement of the
radical Ba'athist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned
to the United States -- would put America more wholly in charge of the
region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe the Romans".

[3] Quoted by Robert Blecher, "'Free People Will Set the Course of
History': Intellectuals, Democracy and American Empire", Middle East
Report Online, March 2003; www.merip.org

[4] When Kanan Makiya was granted an audience in the Oval Office last
January he flattered Bush by promising "that invading American troops
would be greeted with 'sweets and flowers'". The reality turned out to be
slightly different. See New York Times, 2 March 2003.

[5] Banner in the Los Angeles Times, 7 April 2003. Analogies with Hitler's
blitzkrieg of 1940 are drawn without compunction by cheerleaders for the
war. See Max Boot in the Financial Times, 2 April: "The French fought hard
in 1940 -- at first. But eventually the speed and ferocity of the German
advance led to a total collapse. The same thing will happen in Iraq." What
took place in France after 1940 might give pause to these enthusiasts.

[6] Sunday Times, 30 March 2003.

[7] Financial Times, 26 March 2003.

[8] For this background to the war, see "Throttling Iraq", editorial, NLR
5, September-October 2000.

New Left Review 21, May-June 2003