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From International Viewpoint, No. 97, 21 April 1986, p. 28.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
AS WE GO to press, the threat of a US military strike against Libya continues to hold the world on edge, Washington’s European allies themselves have been showing acute signs of the jitters.
There is good reason for worry. This is probably the first time since 1914 that a situation is being created in which any terrorist incident could be used as an excuse for launching a major military action by a great power.
The Zionist state launches such strikes all the time which tend to lead them into deeper and deeper waters. The bombing of the Iraqi nuclear project is the most lurid example of this. There is now an indication that this line may be extended even further.
A major Indian news magazine, India Today, reported in its April 15 issue that Israel had approached New Delhi with a request for secret refuelling facilities in Jamnagar so that it could bomb the Kahuta nuclear installation in Pakistan and put an end to the “Islamic bomb.”
The US attacks launched from the Gulf of Sidra at the end of March against Libyan radar bases apparently had a similar objective. The only thing that the United States seemed to gain from the exercise on the military level was that it proved that the missile systems Qadhafi bought from the Soviet Union were of no use against the more advanced US electronic means of warfare and that it could put the Libyan guidance systems out of commission any time it wanted.
Politically, the threats against Qadhafi appear to have two objectives. One is to force the Soviet Union to back off from supporting Third World regimes in collision with the United States. While Washington might win certain concessions 4n that area, as it has in the past, it clearly cannot force the Soviet Union to desist from such practices in general. That would go against the USSR’s fundamental interests.
The detachment of Third World countries from direct subordination to imperialism has been one of the major factors protecting the Soviet Union from Western military threats.
The second political objective, however, gaining the backing of US public opinion for military intervention abroad, was apparently achieved, at least temporarily and on a limited basis.
The support shown for Reagan’s warlike gestures by public opinion polls in the United States seems to reflect two ideas. The first and the most important is that “international terrorism,” identified with Qadhafi as well as other Arab states and movements, is a threat to ordinary Americans. The second is that such “outlaw” regimes and movements can be punished at little or no cost to ordinary people by superior US firepower operating from a distance.
Both of these ideas are false. The world is becoming more dangerous all the time for all its people – not just Americans – because of poverty; because of the pitiless exploitation of the masses of the Third World, who are increasingly pushed to the point of desperation; and because of a massive military build-up aimed at preserving an intolerable status quo.
What Reagan calls “international terrorism” is the tiniest part of these threats.
Moreover, it is the United States itself that has built up a really massive terrorist apparatus in its attempts to suppress the struggles of Third World peoples – Green Berets, “covert warfare,” political assassination teams to “terminate with extreme prejudice” local agents and allies that become an encumbrance.
Who knows how many and what other regimes have employed such people. The United States has trained a whole layer of professional killers ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder, regardless of any ideological considerations whatsoever, to say nothing of national loyalties.
Most importantly, what is fundamentally wrong with “punishing” acts of “state terrorism” by military operations is that bombs and bullets have no political convictions. They can be used equally by rightists, leftists, criminals, uncontrolled individuals and lunatics – for all sorts of reasons. Under the best of circumstances, it can be very difficult to determine responsibilities.
When terrorist acts are used as a pretext for military action by great powers, “terror” is really out of control.
The Austro-Hungarian government, in 1914, used an act carried out by a very radical petty-bourgeois nationalist group as a pretext for war against Serbia and Russia, because it chose to view that act as part of general nationalist agitation backed by these two governments.
Reagan portrays Qadhafi as the sponsor of “Terrorism” by all sorts of groups in an evident attempt to get a blank check for repression against many struggles. In this respect, the Libyan leader’s braggadocio and wild threats, raising the specter of strikes against southern European targets, are politically useful to him. But in fact what this reflects is the narrow nationalism and military base of the regime.
Qadhafi’s Libya is not a revolutionary regime, such as Nicaragua, which uses wholly different methods and through them has won important sympathies, not only in Western Europe, but in the United States itself.
There is no way that the Qadhafi regime can build any kind of an international movement, or be a significant factor in an international movement against imperialism, exploitation, and oppression.
Just as clearly, the US imperialist government cannot be allowed to get away with any action on the pretext that it is interested in “punishing terrorism.” Over the past decades, it has used all sorts of excuses for launching wars against rebellious Third World peoples, the most infamous example being the “Tonkin Gulf” incident. If it gets away with making terrorist acts a cause for war, it has a blank check for intervening any time it chooses.
It is essential to mobilize as much opposition as possible to US military threats against Libya. Far more than the Qadhafi regime, or even the rights of Libya, is at stake. The rights of all oppressed peoples are at stake, and the survival and future of humanity.
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Last updated: 22 January 2020