The United States Project for Global
Hegemony
The Workers' Party of Ireland has produced an interesting, detailed
yet succinct analysis of the origins and results of Bush and
Blair's war on Iraq. Spectre is pleased to bring its readers
the full text, which can also be downloaded as a pdf. file from
the site where it originally appeared herel
Foreword
The Workers' Party of Ireland joined with millions of people
throughout the world in opposing US and British plans for a
war of aggression against Iraq. This war took place at a time
when the United States was simultaneously engaged in aggression
in Latin America, actively seeking oil concessions in Asia and
Africa and issuing threats against Cuba, the DPR of Korea, Iran,
Syria and various other sovereign states throughout the world.
These provocations occur at a time when, through the process
of globalisation, capitalism represents a renewed and continuing
threat to the livelihood of millions and to the freedom of independent
sovereign states to control their own political, social, economic
and cultural affairs. Power has shifted to a US-centred unipolarity.
The United States has a massive
military arsenal and proposes to develop further weapons of
mass destruction. It is the undisguised ambition of Bush and
his neo-conservative ideologues to establish unchallenged US
global dominance.
These changed conditions may give rise to an understandable
but nonetheless unjustifiable pessimism in the face of US economic
and military might. But empires wax and wane. The war in Iraq
has raised public consciousness of the pernicious role of the
USA in world affairs.
There is hope for the future but that hope depends on a proper
analysis of global conditions and the current trends in capitalism.
It also relies on the expression of a clear political and ideological
response that is capable of forming the basis of a programme
of political action, not solely in opposition to US attempts
at global hegemony, but also for the
transformation of society and the world.
G. Grainger
International Committee
The Workers’ Party of Ireland
Background to War: The
Developing World and the Struggle for Progress
In 1964 at Geneva the developing countries formulated their
demands for the international economic order. The concept of
a new international economic order was officially launched at
the IV Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned
Countries in Algiers in 1973 and was formulated in 1974 in the
UN General Assembly Declaration on Establishing the New International
Economic Order. At that time developing countries highlighted
the wide gap between economically developed and under-developed
countries.
They were acutely aware that national independence would remain
incomplete unless economic independence was achieved. It was
clear that developing countries had suffered myriad socio-economic
difficulties arising from centuries of backwardness, colonial
domination and exploitation by foreign monopolies. In short
it was recognised that continuing under-development was a direct
result of domination by the industrial capitalist world. While
70 per cent of the population of Asia, Africa and Latin America
had only 30 per cent of the world income they were also the
source of 80 per cent of the raw material and agricultural exports
of the world. However, despite the richness of their resources,
their share in the world industrial product was less than 7
per cent.
The assertion of economic independence by the developing countries
took a number of forms, involving an insistence on national
sovereignty over natural resources, raw materials and primary
commodity exports. This battle was at its most acute when, in
1973, the Organisation of Petroleum Producing Countries [OPEC]
took the decision to raise the price of crude oil. These countries
also proclaimed the need to establish equity in international
economic and commercial relations between developing countries
and the developed capitalist world. The task of socio-economic
transformation in the developing countries required the democratisation
and modernisation of education, the expansion and improvement
of medical and health care facilities and the nationalisation
of key industries and utilities to prevent the outflow of profit
and to secure control over the economy. The creation of a viable
state sector, the funding of education, health and social welfare
facilities, the assertion of control over primary commodity
exports, all effected a challenge to the existing world economic
order and its political adherents.
The Rise of the New Right
The 1970s were also accompanied by political demands in the
capitalist countries for fiscal restraint. There was a concerted
attack on public spending and the trade union movement. Cutbacks
in education, health and social spending were commonplace.
In 1976 the British Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis
Healey, approached the International Monetary Fund for a loan.
Strict control over inflation and a marked reduction in public
spending were among the conditions for assistance. In Ireland
the 1973-77 coalition government of the Fine Gael and Labour
parties presided over rising unemployment, cutbacks in public
spending, sell-off of natural resources, and calls for wage
restraint.
The providers of funds for loans to countries in crisis were
not imbued with the spirit of international solidarity or humanity.
They were strictly in the business of profit and increasingly
loans were tied to ever more stringent conditions. This coincided with the
growing influence of monetarism as a school of economic thought.
Friedman and his acolytes argued that government intervention
in the economy should be minimised and that a change in the
money supply directly affected and determined production, employment
and price levels. Friedman and Hayek were advocates of the unrestrained
so-called "free market". Hayek, a long time enemy
of socialism and state planning, believed in the erosion of
trade union powers and the privatisation of the money supply.
He considered that only "free markets" powered by
self-interested individuals could produce a rational economy
and intelligently organised social behaviour.
There was a strong distaste for equality and social justice
implicit in this philosophy. Hayek declared: "
... a spontaneously working market, where prices act as guides
to action, cannot take account of what people in any sense need
or deserve, because it creates a distribution which nobody has
designed, and something which has not been designed, a mere
state of affairs as such, cannot be just or unjust. And the
idea that things ought to be designed in a ‘just’
manner means, in effect, that we must abandon the market and
turn to a planned economy in which somebody decides how much
each ought to have...."
The monetarist philosophy was closely associated with the military
coup in Chile, which overthrew the democratically elected government
of Salvador Allende with the backing of the United States and
the CIA and with the subsequent violent repression, mass killing
and military dictatorship. In 1979/1980 two important politicians
of the new right came to power. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan were both imbued with the philosophy of the monetarist
economists and set about the task of putting the theory into
practice. Although each adopted different monetarist approaches
both rejected the concept of full employment and embarked on
an attack on the concept of the welfare state. Both were in
favour of privatisation, smashing the trade union movement,
and massive cutbacks in public spending. The concepts of equality,
social justice and the redistribution of wealth were
rejected.
The coming to power of Thatcher and Reagan reinforced the enthusiasm
of the neo-conservatives for their world-view. Neo-liberalism
became the new economic orthodoxy supplemented by a conservative
social policy. In reality the ultimate economic performance
was poor. Industrial infrastructure declined and collapsed.
Workers wages stagnated. The US national debt increased. In
Britain there was a massive transfer of assets from the public
to the private sector and control of key industries & national
utilities - communication, power and transport - was placed
in private hands. Taxation was reduced; dividend and foreign
exchange controls removed; the trade union movement was subjected
to ideological and physical assault; civil and political liberties
were threatened; and inequality and poverty increased.
The uncompromising philosophy of neo-liberalism was promoted
globally. By the early 1990s developing countries that had previously
believed that their under-development was due to colonial domination
and exploitation by foreign monopolies were being told that
their problems were due to the insufficient practice of capitalism
and that IMF loans were conditional upon adoption of the capitalist
model of development and the rigorous imposition of structural
adjustment programmes regardless of the hardship imposed on
their people or the sacrifice of national sovereignty.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and many of the Socialist countries
greatly assisted the spread of the doctrines of free market
capitalism. Laissez faire economics now became the dominant
global ideology marketed by some of the most powerful states
in the world. Developing countries which had been able to trade
with the Soviet Union and Socialist countries found their options
diminished. There were fewer powerful states able to project
and promote a different world view and to challenge the pervasive influence
of global capitalism. Developing countries which had embarked
on a programme of national independence and socio-economic transformation
based on a socialist model of development no longer had the
protection of powerful and influential friends. The international
balance of power was dramatically changed and there was a shift
to a US centred unipolarity. Nowhere was this more acutely demonstrated
than the diplomatic battle to wage war on Iraq. Reasoned argument,
a balanced contemplation of the issues and the evidence, international
legal norms, humanitarian considerations and the objections
of the majority of the world's states and peoples counted for
naught. Civilisation gave way to barbarity. This is the vision
of America's unipolar world.
United States Policy towards Iraq
On 8th February 1963, in the course of a fascist coup, the Ba'ath
party came to power in Iraq. This coup was characterised by
its extreme brutality towards the progressive and revolutionary
forces which had played a leading role in the struggle against
colonialism and monarchical rule and which had fought to defend
the gains of the July 1958 Revolution. Since the overthrow of
the monarchy in 1958 the Iraqi Communist Party had always sought
to consolidate and advance the gains made at that time. Despite
repression and execution of members carried out by the Ba'athist
government, the Communist Party of Iraq, in order to defend
the interests of workers and national sovereignty took part
in a national government under the Ba'athists. When the crisis
was overcome the Ba'athists reneged on their pledge to work
with the communists and other progressives. They concocted accusations
that the communists were organising cells in the armed forces.
The Ba'ath Party used this accusation as a pretext to arrest,
torture and murder many communists.
It is now clear and well documented that the CIA was directly
involved in these activities and supplied to the Iraqi regime
the names and addresses of Iraqi communists and progressives
for execution. As the US created, nurtured and supported Osama
Bin Laden and the Taliban, so it was with Saddam Hussein.
By 1985 Iraq was the world's leading importer of arms. The British
government and the US, both entirely cognisant of the nature
of the Iraqi regime, were major suppliers of arms to Iraq. Neither
government was bothered by the fact that Saddam Hussein was
a brutal dictator. Indeed both the US and Britain are long-standing
supporters of murderous dictatorships across the globe. To this
day both these governments support one of the most oppressive
racist states in the Middle East, a state with a long record
of invasion and occupation of neighbouring states, human rights
violations and which possesses weapons of mass destruction,
namely, Israel. Despite this and despite numerous UN resolutions
the US has not demanded the disarmament of Israel. On the contrary,
it has repeatedly used its veto to block any UN action against
Israel even to the extent of blocking UN human rights
monitors.
The author Dilip Hiro has asked the question: "As Iraq's
use of poison gases in war and in peace was public knowledge,
the question arises: what did the United States administration
do about it then"? He supplies the answer: "Absolutely
nothing. Indeed, so powerful was the grip of the pro-Baghdad
lobby on the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan
that it got the White House to foil the Senate's attempt to
penalise Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical
Weapons to which it was a signatory". He points out
that the Pentagon had first-hand knowledge of Iraq's use of
chemical agents during the Iraq-Iran war and that a US Defence
Intelligence Agency Officer actually toured the battlefield
with Iraqi officers where he saw zones marked off for chemical
contamination.
Although the US continually refers to the use of poison gas
against the Kurds at Halabja, it does not mention that when
this atrocity was revealed Washington refused to condemn it.
Even after this the US still did not stop the sale of American
military equipment and technology to Iraq.
The 2003 Anglo-American war against Iraq was an unjust and unnecessary
war. It had nothing to do with the war against terrorism, nor
the protection of human rights. It certainly had nothing to
do with the liberation of Iraq. The US Survey Team Report, issued on 2nd October
2003, confirms this. Months later, no weapons of mass destruction
- the pretext for this illegal war - have been found. The peoples
of the world were always aware that the US and Britain would
go to war. The UN was never more than a fig leaf for them. The
idea that UN approval was an important factor in their consideration
is mere cant. The U N was only worthy of consideration if it
was prepared to do the bidding of Bush and his fellow Crusader,
Blair.
The headline in the leading article in the London Independent on Sunday on 16th March 2003 put the position succinctly:
"America wants war, all the rest is window dressing".
There has never been any doubt that the US intended to attack
and invade Iraq, with or without the sanction of the United
Nations. In his State of the Union Address on 28th January 2003
Bush made a declaration of aggression against Iraq. In a speech
riddled with rhetoric, false sentiment, jingoism and lies, Bush
left it clear that a war was inevitable. The spineless toadying
of Blair and his thoroughly disingenuous approach to the United
Nations demonstrates contempt for diplomacy and international
law.
After 12 years of rigorous sanctions and persistent UN inspections,
we were still expected to believe that Saddam Hussein continued
to possess massive amounts of chemical and biological weapons,
without a shred of proof being produced. Is it not reasonable
to expect that if the Iraqi government had such weapons of mass
destruction they might have used them in an attempt to survive?
Is it not unusual that with Iraq being overrun by foreign troops
they are still unable to find these weapons? Is it not the reality
that this was a pretext deliberately contrived and utilised
to justify this imperialist war of plunder?
In an article published in The
Guardian newspaper on 29th November 2001 Hans von Sponeck,
UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq, from 1998 and Denis
Halliday who held the same position from 1997 to 1998
wrote: "The UK and the US have deliberately pursued a policy
of punishment since the Gulf War victory in 1991. The two governments
have consistently opposed allowing the UN Security Council to
carry out its mandated responsibilities to assess the impact
of sanctions policies on civilians. We know about this first
hand, because the governments repeatedly tried to prevent us
from briefing the Security Council about it. The pitiful annual
limits, of less than $170 per person, for humanitarian supplies,
set by them during the first three years of the oil-for-food
programme are unarguable evidence of such a policy ... Despite
the severe inadequacies of the permitted oil revenues to meet
the minimum needs of the Iraqi people, oil revenues earned from
1996 to 2000 were diverted by the UN Security Council, at the
behest of the UK and US governments, to compensate outsiders
for losses allegedly incurred because of Iraq’s invasion
of Kuwait. If this money had been made available to Iraqis,
it could have saved many lives".
These policies led to the death of 5,000 - 6,000 children every
month in Iraq - imposed by the very people who are now trying
to convince the world that this war was for the benefit and
welfare of the Iraqi people.
Wars for Oil
In 1917 Britain invaded Mesopotamia and occupied Iraq. Following
the break-up of the Ottoman Empire the League of Nations gave
Britain a mandate over Mesopotamia in 1920. Resistance to British
control was brutally suppressed. In 1921 the British Colonial
Office created an artificial border across southern Iraq, carving
out the nation of Kuwait.
From the outset, the US expressed close interest in Iraqi oil.
In 1931 the Turkish Petroleum Company was reconstituted as the
Iraq Petroleum Company in which British and US companies had
a substantial interest. In 1941 Britain intervened militarily
in Iraq to overthrow the government of Rashid Ali Gailani.
In 1951 Dr Mohammed Mossadegh came to power in neighbouring
Iran. He soon made clear his intention that Iran would exercise
control over its oil resources and nationalised the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company. Within two years Mossadegh was deposed and the
infamous Shah of Iran was installed in his place with the active
support and assistance of the CIA. The US helped the Shah
establish SAVAK, the notorious and brutal secret police.
The US is the largest importer of Iraqi oil and the seizure
and control of Iraq's acknowledged 112 billion barrels of oil
reserves and its 250 billion of potential reserves represents
a significant coup. In doing so the US hopes to satisfy the
requirements of its oil thirsty economy and to neutralise the
Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC].
An examination of the backgrounds and close links to the oil
industry of the leading dramatis personae in the US administration
is also enlightening. In 1995 Dick Cheney became CEO of Halliburton
Company, a Dallas based oil giant. This company, in turn, owns
Brown & Root Services, a company which specialises in providing
logistics for the US military around the world.
George Bush, Senior, moved to Odessa, Texas in the late 1940s
and he became involved in the oil industry. He recognised the
implications of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This move had
the effect of increasing Iraq's oil reserves from 11% to 20%
of the world total. It was this factor, rather than the Iraqi
incursion per se, which motivated the 1st Gulf War.
George Bush Jnr., followed his father into the oil business.
He started his own oil and gas company in the 1970s, setting
up Arbusto Energy. This venture was not a success and in 1983
it was saved from failure when it was purchased by Spectrum
7 Energy Corporation. Spectrum was, in turn, acquired by Harken
Energy Corporation in 1986. Bush and his partners received more
than $2m of Harken stock and he became a director of, and a
paid consultant to, Harken. In June 1990 Bush sold two-thirds
of his Harken stock for a 200% profit. Just one week later Harken
announced a $23.2 million loss in quarterly earnings.
The real motive for this war might therefore be gleaned by an
examination of a report commissioned by James Baker, the former
US Secretary of State under George Bush Snr and submitted to
Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, in April 2001 - five months
before the terrorist attack on September 11. This report makes
interesting reading. It advocates a policy of using military
force against an enemy such as Iraq to secure US access to,
and control over, the oilfields of the Middle East. It
suggested: "Iraq remains a destabilising influence to ...
the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East".
The document indicates that the US is facing the biggest energy
crisis in its history and that the energy sector is in a critical
condition. It notes that US allies in the Gulf have become less
inclined to lower oil prices and that Iraqi oil reserves represent
a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets
and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade. Finally, it
recommends the use of military intervention as a means of resolving
America’s energy crisis.
It is no coincidence that the United States is also implicated
in the abortive attempts to overthrow the popular President
of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. The US buys approximately 1.5 million
barrels of oil per day from Venezuela. Chavez is a popular President
who has sought to introduce progressive constitutional, political,
economic and social reform in his country to the benefit of
its poor. Venezuela has also lobbied OPEC to introduce production
cuts in order to boost oil prices. Chavez also attempted to
forge links with other progressive forces in Latin America,
including socialist Cuba. All this proved too much for the US
and, in measures reminiscent of its deep involvement in the
overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende in
Chile and its repeated attempts to intervene in the internal
affairs of Cuba, it has engaged with the rich and powerful in
Venezuela in an attempt to overthrow the popular government
of the marginalized and poor.
The Build-Up To War:
Leading Characters of
the US New Right
Richard Perle was Chair of the Defence Policy Board, appointed
by Donald Rumsfeld. In March 2003 Perle was exposed in the New
Yorker magazine for his involvement in a group which invests
in companies involved in defence and "homeland
security" defence contracts and the vast profits to
be made in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. He is also a
member of the Board of Advisors of the so-called Foundation
for Defence of Democracy. This is a right-wing, pro-Israel group.
He is a Board member of the Jewish Institute of National Security
Affairs and has long-standing contacts with the Israeli government
and Israeli business interests. He was previously a former assistant
secretary of defence for international security policy in the
Reagan administration and has been criticised for receiving
substantial payments to represent the interests of an Israeli
weapons company. He has been a paid lobbyist both for Turkey
and Israel. Perle has served as a director of Autonomy, a company
carrying out work for the US Defence Department producing intelligence
software and which has openly stated that war sells more software.
Perle is one of the major neo-conservative figures behind Bush.
He has actively advocated a perpetual global war in pursuit
of US interests and a revised UN Charter which would effectively
endorse a "new set of security arrangements". It is
Perle who pushed the spurious allegations of the link between
Iraq and al-Qaeda. He has also conceded, in effect, that the
weapons of mass destruction argument was no more than a pretext,
stating: "For many
months our senior administration officials were persuaded that
we had to talk narrowly of weapons of mass destruction because
regime change was not authorised under the United Nations Charter
... there would have been lawyers who will say that regime change
has not been contemplated under the United Nations Charter.
And the answer to that is that we need to revise the United
Nations Charter."
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Defence Secretary, is another of
the hawkish figures in the Bush regime. He has been an open
advocate of the war against Iraq. At the University of Chicago
he was the protégé of Albert Wohstetter, the conservative nuclear
strategist. In the 1970s Wolfowitz was an opponent of detente
with the Soviet Union. He is an unrepentant proponent
of US unilateralism and war. These figures represent a dangerous
threat to
international peace and security and international law.
In an article in the Sunday
Business Post on 1st December 2002 the author and journalist
Alexander Cockburn wrote: "The National Security Strategy
delivered by President Bush to Congress on 21st September had
a briefer formulation: 'a distinctively American internationalism'.
The stage is set for pre-emptive interventions, far more blatant
than the old CIA-organised coups of earlier decades. ...
The basic aims of American international strategy have changed
barely at all since the end of the Second World War.The difference
is in the degree of frankness with which the brute realities
of world domination are disclosed".
The Workers' Party of Ireland joined the tens of millions of
people worldwide in condemning and opposing this Anglo-American
war of aggression against Iraq. The US unleashed this war in
an attempt to re-colonise and establish direct US control over
Iraq and its natural resources; to bolster and protect the repressive
Zionist state of Israel; to consolidate its influence in the
region and to further its quest for unchallenged global hegemony.
Manufacturing the Evidence
In January 2001, the outgoing Secretary of Defence, William
Powell, told Bush: "Iraq no longer poses a military threat
to its neighbours". Scott Ritter - a former UN weapons
inspector in Iraq and a self-declared Republican and Bush voter
in 2000, has clearly stated that Iraq's chemical, biological
and nuclear capabilities were destroyed in the years after the
Gulf War and that since that time Iraq had been prevented from
obtaining the ingredients needed to make new weapons.
The US and Britain have long insisted that they have solid evidence
that Iraq has restocked its chemical and biological weapons.
They say that this has been revealed by intelligence from spy
satellites, spies and defectors. Where is it? Why have expert
and experienced inspectors not found these weapons in 12 years
of inspections? Why did the inspection teams under the control
of Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei find no such evidence?
Why have the US and Britain not produced the evidence they say
they have? Why did the British government need to rely
on a 12 year old plagiarised and doctored post-graduate thesis
and why did the US government need to rely on a satellite photograph,
which has been effectively rubbished by Hans Blix, if there
was genuine evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass
destruction? And why, most importantly, has no such evidence
since been found? To suggest that there is a genuine basis for
the belief that Iraq had a stockpile of chemical, biological
weapons and a nuclear capacity flies in the face of powerful
evidence to the contrary (evidence reinforced by the interim
report of the US Survey Team) and must cast serious doubt on
the motives of those forces which argued for a war against Iraq
and their accomplices.
Equally spurious was the charge that Saddam Hussein supported
al-Qaeda. Even the most cursory understanding of the Ba'ath
ideology and the broadly secular nature of Iraqi society exposes
the falsity of this proposition.
In his State of the Union Address Bush asserted that Saddam
Hussein was a brutal dictator who "with
great potential wealth will not be permitted to dominate a vital
region and threaten the United States".
Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves and it was
the deeply repugnant Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State
from 1973 to 1976 and latterly appointed by Bush to head an
inquiry into the events of September 11, who said: "Oil is much too important a commodity
to be left in the hands of the Arabs".
The 2003 War in Perspective:
The War on Iraq and Principles of International Law
The United States of America, armed with the planet's most numerous
and devastating weapons of mass destruction, together with the
compliant Tony Blair, contrived and initiated a war of aggression
against Iraq, contrary to the wishes of the United Nations and
the peoples of the world. The mightiest superpower on earth,
having failed to bully, bribe and buy the votes of sovereign
nations on the Security Council to secure their compliance,
launched a war against some of the poorest people in the world
- a people already devastated by international sanctions, the
1991 Gulf war, constant bombardment and the murderous tyranny
of the Iraqi regime. Having demonstrated contempt for
the UN the US embarked on yet another war in pursuit of global
hegemony.
There can be no equivocation about this war. It was illegal,
unnecessary and entirely contrary to the norms and principles
of international law. The warmongers failed to rally broad international
support for their enterprise. The United Nations and the peoples
of the world were against this war.
The development and growth of international law has been based
primarily on the establishment and preservation of world peace.
The fundamental objective of the United Nations is the maintenance
of international peace and security.
The idea of prohibiting wars of aggression was set out in a
number of documents of the League of Nations, including the
draft Treaty on Mutual Assistance adopted by the League's Assembly
in 1923 and the Declaration on Aggressive Wars adopted by the
Assembly in 1927 in which aggressive war was described as "an
international crime".
The Treaty of Paris [the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 27th August
1928] was the first multilateral international treaty which
contained the principle of prohibiting aggressive wars. This
principle was further developed in the Charters of the Nuremberg
and Tokyo International Military Tribunals. On 11th December
1946, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the
United Nations General Assembly confirmed that the principles
contained in the UN Charter and the verdict of the Nuremberg
Tribunal are principles of existing international law.
The U.N. Charter stipulates that the primary objective of the
United Nations is the maintenance of international peace and
security. Article 2(4) of the Charter also provides that all
members of the United Nations shall refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial
integrity or political independence of any state or in any other
manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.
This provision is now regarded as a fundamental principle of
customary international law and, as such, binding on the international
community.
The 1965 Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention
in the Domestic Affairs of States made clear that no state has
the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason
whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state.
The principle was further elaborated in the Declaration on Principles
of International Law adopted in 1970, which states that a war
of aggression constitutes a crime against the peace. This Declaration
prohibits, inter alia, any action constituting a threat to use
force or the direct or indirect use of force against another
state and further prohibits the military occupation of the territory
of a state as a result of the use of force in violation of the
UN Charter. The 1970 Declaration recalled the duty of States
to refrain from military, political, economic or other form
of coercion aimed against the political independence or territorial
integrity of any state - an approach further endorsed by the
United Nations General Assembly when it approved the Charter
of Economic Rights and Duties of States in 1974.
The United Nations was, as set out in its Charter, explicitly
created to "save succeeding generations from the scourge
of war". By virtue of the provisions of the Charter
of the United Nations a state or states may use armed force
against other states in two cases only:
1. When participating
in measures taken in compliance with resolutions of the Security
Council for preventing or avoiding the threat to peace and suppressing
acts of aggression or other violations of peace - These are
measures taken by the United Nations Organisation.
2. When executing the right of individual or collective self-defence
in the event of an armed attack. It is only in these second
circumstances that a state, whether acting alone or in an alliance
with other states, can act against the aggressor without the
express sanction of the UN.
When a state takes it upon itself to displace a regime of which
it disapproves by force of arms this is clearly aggression prohibited
by international law. Accordingly, any attack by the United
States or its allies against Iraq which was not expressly sanctioned
by the United Nations and which was not on foot of an armed
attack by Iraq on the United States, and, which was, in any
event, unnecessary and disproportionate, is in violation of
the established norms and principles of international law and
constitutes an international criminal act. By permitting and
facilitating the US war machine the Irish government was complicit
in that crime. It is not in doubt that Saddam Hussein was a
tyrant. The United States was well
placed to know.
The USA and the Violation of Human Rights
In late March 2003 the US State Department released its latest
global report on human rights. With that special hypocrisy and
shameless arrogance reserved for an imperial power the US condemned
"stress and duress" interrogation techniques by others
as a form of torture. It makes no reference to the al-Queda
suspects killed in US custody in Afghanistan nor to those held
indefinitely, without trial and without access to lawyers, at
Guantanamo Bay.
The hypocrisy is further typified by the manner in which the
US treated Iraqi prisoners of war. They complained and alleged
a breach of the Geneva Convention when they suggested that the
Iraqi authorities paraded US prisoners of war but did precisely
the same thing themselves. They began to dream up devices to
circumvent the Geneva Convention and to ship Iraqi prisoners
to Guantanamo Bay where they would be deprived of human rights
and access to any form of justice as have the al-Queda and Taliban
prisoners before them. As George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian
on 25.3.'03: "Suddenly, the government of the United States
has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging
an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking
to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the
world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in
front of the Iraqi television on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the
US defence secretary, immediately complained that ‘it is
against the Geneva Convention to show photographs of prisoners
of war in a manner that is humiliating for them’...This
being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic
convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence
department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were
he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural
life".
At a time when the US professes to espouse democratic rights
throughout the world, bearing in mind the dubious circumstances
of the last US Presidential election, its blatant disregard
for democratic rights and elections in Yugoslavia and its attempt
to undermine the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the
US characterisation of the Pakistani government which operates
as a military dictatorship and which banned key parties from
participation in the 2002 elections as "reasonably representative"
would be remarkable were it not for the fact that the US has
a long and disreputable history of supporting brutal, repressive
regimes across the globe. This report also states, without the
slightest hint of irony, that there were no political killings
during the year by Israel.
The Media and the War
The Iraq war once again highlighted the role and power of the
media, and the Murdoch-controlled media in particular, in pursuing
the overtly right-wing, neo-liberal and expansionist policies
of the US government and US big business. The central importance
of the Murdoch media in preparing a population for war by parroting
Bush/Blair speak on 'weapons
of mass destruction';
by attacking the 'failure of the UN' to deal with Saddam Hussein;
by undermining and belittling the UN weapons inspectors; by
gratuitously attacking the French and German presidents and
people; by demonising not only Saddam Hussein but the entire
Iraqi people, cannot be forgotten. That many other media organisations,
including the BBC, willingly and deliberately acted as conduits
for government propaganda is to their eternal shame.
The cosy relationship of the media and the military is further
demonstrated by the practice of 'embedding' journalists. This
practice, where journalists get to live out some John Wayne
fantasy by being in the front line with 'our boys' further erodes
any public confidence in mainstream media. (Can we imagine the
government and establishment outcry if journalists were to be
'embedded' in industrial strikes, factory sit-ins, or anti-globalisation
demonstrations?) The other side of the media coin was the attempted
news blackout both inside Iraq and from Iraq by the US/UK military
and the physical and murderous US attacks on al-Jazeera.
The mainstream media also, for the most part, sought to sanitise
the war. There were, however, notable journalistic exceptions.
On 27 March 2003 the Irish Times recorded: "There were
body parts and pools of blood on the pavements of ash-Shaab,
a working class suburb of north-west Baghdad yesterday, after
a US aircraft is believed to have fired two missiles into a
busy shopping and residential area". Two nights earlier
US aircraft had attacked the residential area of A'Adhamiya.
Robert Fisk, one of the most impartial and experienced journalists
working in the Middle East, reported that even the walls in
the Al Noor hospital were shaking as the survivors of the market
slaughter struggled for survival. The US has targeted journalists
for death as it did in the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia.
It is noteworthy that of all the journalists/ camera crew/ photographers
killed in Iraq by the US that none were 'embedded'.
The Post-War World
Post-War Iraq
And what of post-war Iraq? Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary
of Defence, proposed the establishment of a US protectorate
in Iraq similar to the imperial mandate exercised by Britain
after its invasion and occupation of Iraq in 1917. These proposals
fail to take into account the religious, ethnic, social and
political diversity of the Iraqi people. They fail to understand
popular resentment of occupation and imperial control.
Iraq is devastated, not only by the current war, but by the
effects of the Iraq-Iran war, the 1st Gulf war and 12 years
of crippling sanctions. The civilian infrastructure, power stations,
water treatment plants, hospitals, schools require vital and
immediate investment. The US Agency for International Development
has drawn up plans for reconstruction. The vast majority of
the contracts will go to US firms. One of the main beneficiaries
will be the Texan oil services company Halliburton, previously
headed by Dick Cheney, US Vice President.
The US has ordered 17 banks in the US to hand over $1.7bn in
frozen Iraqi government assets and has requested eight other
countries to seize some $600 million and hand it to the US.
The White House has threatened to prevent foreign banks doing
business in the US if those banks refuse to turn over these
funds to American control. Ultimately, the US will turn a tidy
profit on this war.
On 9th April 2003 Cheney spoke from the White House. He spoke
of his sorrow at the deaths of the Anglo-American troops "in
defence of our country'. He expressed his condolences to the
embedded journalists killed in the conflict, and he told the
world that the oil fields had been protected. There was not
one word of regret for the innocent men, women and children
maimed and killed by the Anglo-American murder machine.
The military-industrial complex that has already profited from
the destruction of this war, as it does from all wars, will
profit further from re-stocking the arsenals of death. Their
corporate friends will profit from the reconstruction. As usual
the US will reap the benefits and the rest of the world, including
the impoverished Iraqi people, will pay. Under these plans the
United Nations will be reduced to a glorified aid agency while
the US remains firmly in control. The Bush regime has made that
clear. The National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, stated:
"It would only be natural to expect that ... having given
life and blood to liberate Iraq, the coalition would have the
leading role".
The US proposes a period of direct US colonial administration
while they put in place a US client, an Iraqi Hamid Karzai -
a man synonymous with the US government’s ambition to install
compliant subordinates throughout the globe. The world does
not hear much of Afghanistan now after the US war against that
impoverished state. We do not yet know the full extent of the
Afghan casualties or the damage to its infrastructure. We do,
however, know that there is no democracy in Afghanistan, that
there is still a fundamentalist anti-woman clique in control
instead of the secular society which existed before the US installed
the Taliban regime. We know also that the Americans have their
pipeline - the real reason for that war.
The US and the UN
There is another major cause for concern - the blatant attempt
by the US not merely to sideline, but to destroy, the authority
of the United Nations.
The Workers' Party of Ireland, in our document entitled "Internationalism
in the 21st
Century" adopted by the Annual Delegate Conference dated
18th November 2000,
stated: "Fundamental to the objectives of the United Nations
was a recognition of the sovereignty and independence of the
member states...It also became clear that the concept of self-determination
was not confined to political independence but also included
the rights of peoples to determine their own political structures;
to use, exploit and proclaim permanent sovereignty over their
natural wealth, resources and economic activities and to govern
the control of foreign investment within each national jurisdiction...The
United Nations Organisation has played a major role in developing
international law, fostering peace and co-operation among peoples
and countries and establishing constructive mechanisms for the
resolution and settlement of disputes... The voice of small
nations and liberation movements expressed in the United Nations
General Assembly eloquently proclaiming the goals and principles
of self-determination, decolonisation, independence, sovereignty,
territorial integrity, the non-use of force in international
relations and respect for the UN Charter and principles of international
law came into conflict with the plans and strategies of the
neo-colonialist and imperialist powers...As far back as the
Reagan administration the United States engaged in an attempt
to sabotage and downgrade the role of the United Nations and
international agencies...Simultaneously, the US was defaulting
in its subscription
payments to the United Nations."
The agreement at Bretton Woods which established the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund created a global monetary
system which tied national currencies to the US dollar and provided
the basis for US domination and control. While technically the
IMF and World Bank were regarded as specialised agencies of
the UN, in practice the power was and is held by the world's
richest nations, particularly the US. Every President of the
World Bank has been from the US. Instead of assisting and promoting
development the World Bank and the IMF became bailiffs for America's
largest banks, chasing poor developing countries caught in a
web of spiralling debt. Through the use of structural adjustment
programmes, which imposed severe restrictions on countries seeking
further loans, these institutions placed private corporate interests
in control of whole national economies.
The Unipolar World
The economic global power realignment consolidated by the IMF,
World Bank and World Trade Organisation under the leadership
of the US has been underpinned by the vast military power of
America. Economic globalisation, the corporatisation of the
world order, the subordination of national economies and natural
resources to US interests, the continuing indebtedness of the
developing world and inequitable trade relations, the increasing
spread of US military bases worldwide daily reinforces the reality
of US power.
Power over issues of education, health and welfare, over matters
of life and death, is transferred from sovereign nations to
multinational corporations and power elites in the unrepresentative
and undemocratic Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral
Commission and the Bilderberg Group.
Charles Derber in his book People
Before Profit writes: "There are now more than
45,000 corporations worldwide, with 300,000 affiliates. But
the top 200 global companies ... dominate the world economy
and are the heart of global business. ... Their profits
exploded 224 per cent between 1983 and 1997, a far faster rate
than the 144 per cent growth in the world economy as a whole
during the same period. Their sales are bigger than the combined
economies of 180 of the 190 countries of the world, and eighteen
times the combined income of the world's 1.2 billion poorest
people. The sales of the top 200 account for more than 25% of
the entire output of the world economy."
In September 2000, President Fidel Castro, following his participation
in the United Nations "Millennium Summit" addressed
a crowd at New York"s
Riverside Church. He told the crowd: "... humanity
is about to begin the 21st century in extremely difficult and
extremely troubling conditions ... in more than 100 countries,
the per capita income is lower than it was 15 years ago. In
the Third World there are 1.3 billion poor people. In other
words, one out of every three inhabitants lives in poverty.
More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger;
and 790 million of them live in the Third World. ... More than
840 million adults are still illiterate and the vast majority
live in the Third World. ... Life expectancy in sub-Saharan
Africa is barely 48 years. That is 30 years less than in the
developed countries. ... A full 99.5 per cent of all maternal
deaths take place in the Third World ... More than 11 million
boys and girls under five years of age die every year in the
Third World from diseases that are largely preventable. That
means more than 30,000 every day, 21 every minute ... And all
of this is happening at a time when, throughout the world 800
billion dollars are put into military spending, 400 billion
are spent on narcotic drugs, and a trillion dollars are invested
in commercial advertising. By the end of 1998, the Third World's
external debt amounted to 2.4 trillion dollars, that is, four
times the total in 1982 ... Between 1982 and 1998, these countries
paid over 3.4 trillion dollars for debt servicing, in other
words, almost a trillion dollars more than the current debt.
Far from decreasing, the debt grew by 45 per cent in those 16
years ... Despite the neo-liberal discourse on the opportunities
created by the open-trading system the underdeveloped countries,
with 85 per cent of the world's population, accounted for only
34.6 per cent of the world exports. That is less than in 1953,
despite the fact that their population has more than doubled.
... Money is no longer used primarily in investments for the
production of goods; it is used in currencies, stocks and financial
derivatives in the desperate pursuit of more money, directly,
through the most sophisticated computers and software and not
through productive processes as was historically the case. This
is what the much trumpeted and infamous process of neo-liberal
globalization has brought about".
As Derber points out, between 1960 and 1980 average per
capita growth globally grew 83 per cent, while in the period
of neo-liberal globalisation it fell to 33 per cent and the
gap in personal income between the developed and developing
worlds tripled between 1960 and 1993.
In his book, The Shield
of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History, Philip
Bobbitt, who served as a senior advisor at the White House and
held several senior posts at the National Security Council writes:
"The United States can benefit ... because we are well
placed to thrive in a globalised political economy. Indeed a
globalised society of market states plays into and enhances
American strength to such a degree that it worries some states
that the United States will become so dominant that no other
state will be able to catch up with it. In many quarters, globalisation
is so deeply identified with the United States that it is anxiously
perceived as an American cultural export".
The Socialist Response
The social democrats cannot address the issues raised by globalisation
nor the US quest for global hegemony since they have effectively
endorsed the neo-liberal project and refuse to challenge the
existing political and social order by taking the means of production
into public ownership. The leadership of the social democratic
parties are content to work with and for the interests of capital.
We must recognise that the greater the move towards globalisation,
the greater the need for an international socialist movement
capable of articulating a comprehensive response. This will
involve a detailed analysis and constant evaluation of the situation
in each country and region; an assessment of the possibilities
arising from the problems and contradictions inherent in global
capitalism and an ability to make the necessary adjustments
to deal with circumstances as these develop, taking into account
the information acquired from the experience of the working
class, new forms of social struggle and changing processes of
capital accumulation.
The threat to the social and economic conditions of workers
and small farmers and the escalation of imperialist war has
sharpened the ideological struggle and provides new conditions
for building class consciousness and preparing workers for political
action.
The fight for democracy, the battle to establish control over
the institutions and events which control the day-to-day lives
of working people remains an inseparable part of the struggle
for socialism. It is, as Lenin counselled, the task of Communist
and Workers' parties to be ahead of all in raising, accentuating
and solving every general democratic question.
What is to be Done?
It is ever more important to reassert the dynamic of socialism
as a viable alternative world vision. It is time for a co-ordinated
ideological counter-attack. It is the duty of the Communist
and Workers' parties to proclaim again the vitality of Marxism
as a critical theory; an unparalleled critique of capitalism
and exploitation; an analytical device for the investigation
and evaluation of current political, social and economic conditions
and, above all, a programme for political action and the transformation
of society and the world.
Ideological struggle is not conducted in the abstract. It is
necessary to analyse and assess current developments in capitalism;
to enunciate a reasoned response and to relate this critique
to the actual conditions and struggles experienced by working
people and the real possibilities for change. We must repeatedly
make clear that neo-liberalism and laissez faire capitalism,
far from encouraging growth and development as is suggested
by its proponents, hinder progress and innovation and impoverish
the peoples of the world.
Socialist internationalism remains a fundamental plank in the
programmatic platform of Communist and Workers' parties. This
principle involves active solidarity with the socialist countries,
with genuine liberation and social movements, with fraternal
parties and progressives throughout the world and is an enduring
weapon in the struggle against imperialism and the battle for
peace, democracy, national independence and socialism.
In a world that is increasingly globalised in terms of communication
it becomes necessary to articulate a global socialist presence.
This will entail the co-ordination of day-to-day struggles;
the exchange of information; regular and productive conferences
and meetings and theoretical seminars on issues of mutual concern
and the practical organisation of research and organised political
activity.
It is the task of the Communist and Workers' parties to develop
a programme and strategy, taking into account the conditions
in each region, which promotes and advances the interests and
demands of the working class and which provides a basis for
united mobilization around common campaigns. It was Lenin who
made clear the responsibility of the revolutionary party: " ... the real task of
a revolutionary socialist party: [is] not to draw up plans for
refashioning society, not to preach to the capitalists and their
hangers-on about improving the lot of the workers, not to hatch
conspiracies, but to organise the class struggle of the proletariat
and to lead this struggle, the ultimate aim of which is the
conquest of political
power by the proletariat and the organisation of a socialist
society." [V.I
Lenin: "Our Programme";
Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp 210-211].
The Workers’ Party
of Ireland
