What is the most ominous development as regards the war crisis in the Middle East?
It is not the new resolution of the UN Security Council, onerous as that is, holding Iraq liable for damages in Kuwait. That could be taken in stride by the Iraqi government and by the anti-imperialist forces throughout the world.
What ought to alarm all those who oppose U.S. intervention in the Middle East but who cling to the hope of a peaceful solution through the UN Security Council is the blunt fact that the five permanent members of the Security Council have convened its Military Staff Committee for the first time in years. How is this consistent with the search for a peaceful solution? Doesn't it contradict the very mission of the Security Council as a diplomatic tool rather than a military one? Or are we going back to the good old days of the Korean War and of UN intervention in the Congo, when the U.S. manipulated the UN?
This is the account given in the New York Times of Oct. 30:
The five big powers with permanent Council seats sought to reinforce [the] implicit threat of force today by convening the Security Council's military advisory body at the highest level in United Nations history.
For the first time the United States sent a three-star general from Washington to represent the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a meeting of the Security Council's Military Staff Committee, called to review the situation in the Persian Gulf and the efforts there to enforce the trade embargo against Iraq.
Lt. Gen. Michael Carns, Director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, was joined by Col. Gen. Bronislav A. Omelichev, First Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff, who came from Moscow for the talks, and by Vice Adm. Alain Coatanea, a senior French naval officer from Paris.
China was represented by Maj. Gen. Du Guanyi, the head of its delegation to the committee, and Britain by Maj. Gen. Edwin H.A. Beckett, head of the British Defense Staff in Washington.
Several delegates addressed the Council in terms that suggested that a decision to use force might not be far away.
What is this military committee? What is its function? Where has it been all these many years when the imperialist West was intervening in Asia, Africa and Latin America? Where was it during the Vietnam War, three Arab-Israeli wars, the U.S. interventions in Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and so on?
Why is this military council being revitalized when it has been a dead letter all these years?
It is true that in some of the conflicts of the imperialists in the Third World, military attaches have been dispatched to act as mediators and to see that a cease-fire is observed. But these advisers have always been chosen from other countries like Sweden and India, not the five big veto powers.
Why has this group now been convened without an explanation of its function? We thought that the issue of military cooperation of the big five was finally settled, at least insofar as the USSR was concerned, when the Bush government went over the head of the Soviet government and invited its Chief of Staff, Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev, to come to Washington and discuss military coordination with Gen. Colin Powell. The answer given by the Soviet Chief of Staff was clear and unambiguous. The USSR was only for a peaceful, diplomatic solution. No need for military cooperation, when only diplomatic means had been agreed to.
Now we learn that the five are meeting for military cooperation.
The Security Council is supposed to deal with diplomacy, not with coordination of military forces. Will it be denied that this is what the committee's mission is? The five big powers — the U.S., the USSR, China, Britain and France — have gotten together, presumably to coordinate or discuss a military attack on Iraq.
However, Gorbachev is reported to have said during his visit to Paris this week that a military solution would be unacceptable. This again confirms the vacillations of current Soviet diplomacy.
Worse still is Gorbachev's suggestion that Saudi Arabia take the initiative in the peace process. This can only be understood as a sick joke. At the moment, Saudi Arabia is a country fully occupied by U.S. armed forces. It is engaged in an utterly inhuman act of evicting half a million Yemenis from its territory, some of whom have lived and worked there for decades, leaving them destitute for no other reason than that Yemen had the temerity to abstain from the Security Council's votes against Iraq.
Why is there no outcry against this cruel and inhuman act, which is on a par with what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians?
Meanwhile, the U.S. buildup continues, under the pretext of stopping Iraqi aggression. But Iraq is not about to attack U.S. forces, unless of course the U.S. has already opened up a provocative military assault. Every message that comes out of Iraq shows a more and more conciliatory tone towards a diplomatic solution. It welcomes peace initiatives.
According to both the foreign minister of Yemen and UN sources, Iraq offered to release all foreigners in return for an endorsement by both Gorbachev and Mitterrand during their Paris summit of a diplomatic rather than a military solution. "Mr. Gorbachev maintained his oft-stated view that a military solution was unacceptable in the gulf crisis," wrote the New York Times correspondent from France on Oct. 29, "but there was no comparable statement from Mr. Mitterrand."
Iraq does not intend to withdraw from Kuwait at the demand of the imperialist powers, but it is willing to discuss with any and all concerned the steps to a truly peaceful solution. That is as far as any government can go which is under siege by all the imperialist powers.
Could all this have happened without the extraordinary turn of events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe? It is plain to the whole world now that the USSR leadership has turned from that of a defender, albeit a limited one, of the oppressed people against imperialism, to a collaborator with the imperialists. That is the most significant aspect of the world struggle as it concerns the Middle East.
From a defender of the oppressed, from an antagonist against imperialism, it has well-nigh become their ally. For the last several weeks Gorbachev's deputy, Yevgeny Primakov, has attempted to broker a deal with Iraq on behalf of the imperialists. He is not acting as a neutral but as a mediator on behalf of the imperialists, which is something else altogether.
If he has come home empty-handed, as is the case right now, it should be no surprise. He is acting as one of the principals involved, who voted every time in the UN Security Council against Iraq — which the imperialists, particularly the U.S., have demanded. He came to speak for the UN resolutions, for the embargo, and also to convey threats of further measures. Primakov's role repeats that of UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, who went to Iraq not as a mediator, not as a neutral, but as a messenger to deliver the ultimatum of the Security Council.
Now, who leads the Security Council? First and foremost, of course, the U.S. If the Security Council were not the representative of the most belligerent, most aggressive imperialist powers, it would have at least rebuked the U.S. for deciding to expand the number of American forces in the Persian Gulf to the tune of 100,000 more troops. That is the very least that should have been done.
Is this not a warlike act? Where is the country which would not look upon such a move in its own region with the greatest apprehension, and prepare necessary measures for defense?
Did the U.S. government even send in writing a note to the UN to the effect that this is what is now in the works? Who in fact is the aggressor here? The imperialist naval armada in the gulf is boarding Iraqi ships in search of so-called contraband. This is a warlike act. All throughout naval history it has been regarded as such. Yet Iraq has permitted the boarding and searching of its ships. Everything that Iraq has done is calculated not to provoke the imperialists.
What is the interest of the USSR and China, both of which regard themselves as socialist?
For decades they took on the role of defenders of the oppressed. In fact, they carried out a long-running debate over the best strategy to pursue in the struggle to overcome imperialism. Why should they now become partners with imperialism in such a venture?
One may say that both China and the USSR are considerable producers of petroleum. That is true. But are they competitors with Iraq? The answer is no. The oil from Iraq is produced at lower costs, and moreover is of a different grade. But even leaving that aside, neither China nor the USSR showed any sign of accommodating with imperialism during the earlier wars in the Middle East in 1967 or in 1973, which resulted in the Arab oil boycott. Rather than join in with the imperialists against the Arab oil-producing countries, they defended them and, on the level of party-to-party polemics, each rivaled with the other in denouncing U.S. imperialism for its role.
The answer is that the domestic changes in the USSR and in China have been of such a reactionary character as to strip them of their revolutionary and anti-imperialist positions and make them willing accomplices of the imperialist powers.
It will be said in response, and very loudly indeed, that both the USSR and Chinese representatives to the Security Council are against the use of force; they are for a diplomatic solution. Oh yes, indeed, they have said that and continue to say it day in and day out. But at the same time they are upholding the position of the imperialists.
Socialist countries have no business whatever joining in an imperialist alliance to condemn an oppressed country. The struggle for self-determination and the class struggle itself are matters for the people in the Arabian peninsula to decide.
An alliance with the imperialists goes against the class interests, not only of a socialist country, but of the world proletariat and oppressed peoples. This used to be ABC for all communists, for all in the progressive, anti-imperialist camp. The change in alignment has come about as a result of reactionary and counter-revolutionary developments in the socialist countries that are reflected in their policies on foreign affairs.
It's true that neither the Soviet Union nor China is willing to overtly join a military struggle on behalf of the imperialists. But they have gone to considerable lengths in mobilizing world public opinion to justify the deployment of U.S. military forces. And while China and the USSR speak about the possibility and the desirability of a peaceful solution, both Secretary of State Baker and President Bush reaffirmed on Oct. 29 that they have under consideration the military option, the use of force against Iraq. They are continuing to build up their troop strength without any pause whatsoever.
Here it is necessary to brush aside some mutterings from the capitalist press regarding possible differences within the ruling class. First, on the side of the ultra-right is the line of Pat Buchanan. Ever since the so-called end of the Cold War he has been promoting a neo-isolationist line of abandoning the military deployment and cutting out most of the aid to Israel, as a way of attaining an accommodation with the Arab puppet regimes.
This line should not fool the working class and the anti-war forces in this country. Its anti-Israeli stance is nine-tenths meant to be anti-Semitic, and its so-called pro-Arab line is built on the sandy foundations that the puppet regimes in the Middle East will endure forever without a revolutionary overturn. This grouping is not taken seriously by any in the ruling class except for peripheral ex-Reaganites like Jeane Kirkpatrick.
When the Midwest was still considered the basis of U.S. agricultural prowess and growing industrial strength, isolationism was an important factor in foreign affairs. That was when you could still talk about farmers in the millions and independent farms were important to agriculture. But that era has been superseded. Today agribusiness is dominated by the chemical, pharmaceutical and fertilizer industries and the big banks. While in earlier years, farm produce was mostly for domestic consumption, today agricultural exports have become of primary importance for U.S. big business and high finance.
Moreover, the agricultural produce of the U.S. has a great deal of military significance. It's a lethal weapon of the Pentagon in the struggle to subjugate small countries with a great deficiency in food. The so-called aid programs to poor countries are a way of tying them to the chariot wheel of U.S. big business and finance.
The Midwest farm belt was the base for the isolationism of Senator Borah before the first World War. Before World War II there was Senator Burton K. Wheeler and his ever-diminishing coterie of supporters. Wheeler relied on the prestige of Colonel Charles Lindbergh, who was mesmerized by the might of the Luftwaffe but had virtually no support in the ruling class for his propaganda.
The more serious problem we have to consider is the illusion that the UN is an international expression of the will of its many member countries, and can have a substantial influence on the direction of aggressive, militaristic imperialism.
The truly progressive anti-war forces in this country have to explain that the UN is a cover for an alliance of all the imperialist countries, extending from Tokyo to Denmark. Their aim is to redivide the world's resources, to deliver a death blow to OPEC as an economic organization, and even more to the political independence of the Middle East. They seek to reassert imperialist dominance, divide the booty derived from the sweat and blood of the oppressed peoples everywhere, and redistribute it in accordance to the new world relationships. That's what the struggle is about.
It would be all to the good if the problem of U.S. imperialist aggression throughout the world could be solved peaceably and justly through the United Nations. Indeed, it would be a very easy and welcome solution. But one just has to view ever so superficially the record of the last half century. Where has the UN ever intervened to stop the U.S. war machine? In Vietnam? Cambodia? Grenada? Panama? Did it ever really solve a problem? The most it ever did was to ratify or validate a victory of an oppressed country against imperialism after the battle had been won, as for instance in Namibia. And even then, the imperialists continue to hang on and try to get back in, often through the UN itself.
It is only the progressive, widespread and relentless intervention of the masses on a truly gigantic scale which can stop the mad adventure of the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, the banks and the Bush administration. The latter is nothing more than what Marx described: the executive committee of the ruling class.
Last updated: 23 March 2018