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More war years?
Will the next four years really be ‘more of the same’?
PETER TAAFFE looks at the implications of Bush’s victory on world relations.
THE US ELECTIONS will have come as a big disappointment to
all those worldwide hoping for a defeat for the hated Bush regime. With
majorities in both houses of Congress, Bush has already indicated that he will
fully exploit this situation to implement a programme of further concessions to
the rich at home and a continuation of his plundering imperialist agenda abroad.
"I have earned new political capital", he announced to his first post-election
press conference, "and I intend to spend it on what I told the people I’d spend
it on".
While in no way diminishing the complications of Bush’s
victory, at the same time it is wrong to exaggerate what Bush is capable of
doing internationally. Bush and the neo-conservatives are like the Bourbon kings
of old; they forget nothing and learn nothing. No adventure or further military
intervention, as Iraq demonstrates, is beyond this gang. But as Iraq also
illustrates, they will conjure up colossal forces of opposition both at home and
abroad.
The election has not decisively altered the balance of
forces or the relationship of the US to the rest of the world. Kerry and the
Democrats indicated in advance that their criticisms of Bush were largely of
style rather than substance. This was not how the mass opposition to Bush viewed
the matter. Bush’s defeat would have seen perceived as a repudiation of the
neo-conservatives’ concerted military strategy – ‘pre-emptive strikes’, endless
war and the semi-militarization of US society – by the American people. This
would have been particularly the case for the million-fold and unprecedented
anti-war movement, both in the US and worldwide, which developed in response to
the war. It would have been seen as partial ‘compensation’ for the inability of
the anti-war movement to stop the war in the first place.
But Bush’s victory will not give him a licence for ‘more of
the same’ over the next four years. On the contrary, the failure of US
imperialism in Iraq and the catastrophic consequences for its position that have
flowed from this, are decisive in hemming in and restricting the Bush regime’s
options. In place of military assertiveness and intervention, in effect Bush
will be compelled to carry out fundamentally the very same policy promised by
Kerry, of ‘containment’ of Syria, Iran and North Korea, rather than serious
military efforts to overthrow them.
This does not preclude either military ‘surgical strikes’ by
the US or action on its behalf by a proxy – for example, Israel – against ‘rogue
states’. In 1981 Israel bombed the nuclear facilities of Iraq under Saddam,
while Reagan launched missile strikes against Gadaffi’s Libya and invaded
Grenada. The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by Israel could not be ruled
out. Even that, however, depends upon the internal political situation within
Israel itself, which is much more volatile than when it acted against Iraq, as
well as in the US. But in the light of the failure in Iraq, war against Iran and
occupation is not feasible. Iran’s population is nearly three times the size of
Iraq’s and, despite the illusions in the attractiveness of US living standards,
would arouse Iranian nationalism, reignited by the 1979 revolution, which is a
vital ingredient in the make-up of the country. Despite the intense mass
opposition to the Islamic ‘hardliners’, in the event of a US intervention the
population would undoubtedly fight against this.
This does not mean that the US and the world will return to
a more ‘tranquil’ era like that prior to Bush’s first term. The coming to power
of Bush in 2000, surrounded by the neo-cons and ideologically buttressed by the
Judeo-Christian fundamentalist right, ushered in a new era of unilateralism, of
American nationalism and imperialism on a world scale. The stunning military
power of the US was on display in the fireworks of ‘shock and awe’ in the first
wave against Iraq. But in the ‘second war’ against the insurgency opposing the
occupation, the limits of this military might have also been on display. Even
according to Bush, the US has ‘more will than wallet’. In other words, its will
to act as ‘world policeman’ in the ‘war on terror’ is undermined by a weakened
economic situation. Yet the US’s ‘will’ will also be shown wanting in the
quagmire which Iraq has now become.
Economic base undermined
THE ESCALATING MILITARY costs, together with the paucity of
manpower, will test even the world’s only military superpower to breaking point.
As one commentator, Peter J Petersen, writing in Foreign Affairs, pointed out:
"For most of US history, going to war was like organising a large federal jobs
program, with most of the work done by inexpensive, quickly trained recruits.
Today, it is more like a NASA moon launch, entailing a massive logistical tail
supporting a professionally managed and swiftly depreciating body of high-tech
physical capital. Just keeping two divisions engaged in ‘stability operations’
in Iraq for one week costs $1bn; keeping them engaged for a full year would cost
the entire GDP of New Zealand". Weapons procurement programmes, which fell in
the immediate post-cold war period to about $50bn a year in the mid-1990s, are
scheduled to rise to over $100bn a year by 2010 – more than the previous ‘real
dollar’ peak in the mid-Reagan years.
At the same time, the US is facing severe imperialist
overstretch. Even with ‘help’ from the worn-out military reserve and National
Guard this cannot prevent the armed forces from being stretched. In December
2003, only two of the army’s ten divisions were both uncommitted and in a high
state of readiness. Moreover, this bloated military expenditure is not
underwritten, as it was in the past, by the overwhelming economic strength of US
imperialism. The US is now borrowing over $600bn per year from the rest of the
world to pay for the overall deficit funding of Americans’ consumption of goods
and services, and for US foreign aid transfers, and this figure is projected to
rise. This unprecedented current account deficit is paid for through direct
lending and the sale of US assets to foreign businesses, from stocks and bonds
to corporations and real estate. The US imports roughly $4bn of foreign capital
each day, half of that to cover the current account deficit and the other half
to finance investment abroad. This deficit is higher than under Reagan in 1987,
when the dollar’s value fell by a third and the stock market suffered its ‘Black
Monday’ plunge. This situation cannot be sustained indefinitely.
These economic trends portend a possible significant global
power shift away from the US. Militarily it remains overwhelmingly the only
superpower on the globe. But, given the growing underlying economic weaknesses
of the US, to some extent this presupposes that the rest of the world will
‘share the burden’ for maintaining this military might. This was the case in the
first Gulf War of 1990-91. European and, particularly, Japanese imperialism were
willing to underwrite the cost of that war. This changed with the coming to
power of George W Bush. The political and military doctrine which has underlined
his regime is "military pre-emption, falsely called prevention". (Foreign
Affairs) That policy has been dragged into the quagmire of Iraq and thereby
discredited, not least amongst the bourgeois critics of Bush and the neo-cons.
As in Vietnam, only more so, there is no visible Iraq exit
strategy for US imperialism at the present time. The bourgeoisie, neither
imperialism nor the weak dependent Iraqi bourgeois, including the leaders of the
different bourgeois parties, can not show a way out of the catastrophe. The
January elections – if they go ahead – will solve nothing. If anything, they
could enormously compound ethnic conflict, which is held in check, to some
extent, by the common enemy of the US and its occupation forces. The horrific
possibilities for massive sectarian conflict, however, were indicated by the
recent slaughter of 40 Iraqi army conscripts by al-Zaqarwi’s forces. The latter
are based upon Sunni and foreign Arab fighters. Their victims, on this occasion,
were all Shia. On the other hand, it has now been announced by those around
Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, who represents the majority of the Shias, that a
common list of ‘Shia Islamist parties’ has reached ‘preliminary agreement’ to
run a single list of candidates in the January elections. This could pave the
way for a conservative religious, Shia-dominated ‘parliament’. This would be the
first time since the creation of Iraq in 1920 that the Shia Arabs would be able
to take ‘control’.
The Sunni population, particularly the privileged layers
within these groups, would not sit back and accept this with equanimity. Nor
would the Kurds. The break-up and subsequent Balkanisation of Iraq is posed in
this situation. This, however, would not be contained within the borders of Iraq
but could draw in, on the side of either the Sunnis or Shias, the neighbouring
countries of Iran, Saudi Arabia (which could also face civil war and possible
break-up), Turkey and Syria.
‘International law’
THE REPURCUSSIONS OF Iraq will endure for the next period.
Even Kerry stated before the election that it would require another 40,000 US
troops to defeat the ‘insurgency’, although this would not be enough even for a
temporary stabilisation. The Bush regime tested out the possibility of other
capitalist powers militarily ‘sharing the burden’, perhaps through participation
in a ‘United Nations force’. However, the worldwide collapse in the ‘legitimacy’
of the US in the wake of the Iraq war is unprecedented and means that it has not
received support up to now.
Invoking the US’s violation of so-called ‘international
law’, the European bourgeoisie in particular, backed up by an avalanche of
bourgeois professors, have sought to ‘prove’ the divergence of Bush and his gang
from at least the formal approach of the governing group of US imperialism since
1945. The threat posed then by a different social system, Stalinist Russia,
forced US imperialism, despite its preponderant military power, to take account
of the vital interests of its allies. This was sanctified by the US-inspired
United Nations Charter. In contradistinction to the crude postures of capitalist
powers previously – Germany’s chancellor during the first world war declared
that the treaty guaranteeing Belgium’s neutrality was merely ‘a scrap of paper’
– the UN’s charter obligated states to "refrain from the threat or the use of
force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".
Exceptions were possible where force could be employed, either by individual
states or by collective defence against armed attack.
This concept of ‘international law’ is, of course, shot
through with hypocrisy and contradictions. For Marxists, law is always
ultimately class based. However, the bourgeoisie, in seeking to capture the
support of its own people and world ‘public opinion’, needs its armed actions to
be sanctified by such ‘moral’ precepts. In reality, as the commentator Robert
Kagan has pointed out: "It was not international law and institutions but the
circumstances of the cold war, and Washington’s special role in it, that
conferred legitimacy on the US, at least within the West. Contrary to much
mythologising on both sides side of the Atlantic these days, the foundations of
the US’s legitimacy during the cold war had little to do with the fact that the
US helped to create the UN or faithfully abided by the precepts of international
law laid out in the organisation’s charter. Washington reserved the right to
intervene ‘anywhere and everywhere’ as was shown in the Vietnam war, not
sanctified by the UN, or by the recent war in Iraq. In both cases however, the
standing of the US plunged and its legitimacy was severely undermined as a
result". The neo-cons agreed with Kagan, with John Bolton, Bush’s
Under-Secretary of State for arms control, declaring before Bush came to power:
"It’s a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when
it may seem in our short-term interests to do so because, over the long term,
the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are
those who want to constrict the United States". (Insight, June 1999)
His brutal assertion of US unilateralism has been put into
practice by the Bush regime with massively damaging results. It is widely
perceived now as the main ‘rogue state’ on the planet. Recent opinion polls have
underlined the massive unpopularity of the US worldwide, with only a majority in
Israel and Russia in favour of the US. This disapproval is at its highest in
Europe with 76% opposed to US foreign policy, a 20% increase from two years
before.
The hatred of the US, however, is probably deepest in the
Arab world and amongst the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. In alarm, bourgeois
commentators have pointed to the fact that hostility to the US goes beyond
religious radicals who are ‘the left-wing fringe’ but has penetrated deeply into
the popular culture. The attack on Afghanistan and the terrible suffering of the
Palestinians and Iraqis have reinforced this mood. While Israel has occupied
this position previously, the US did not in the past receive comparable hatred
at all levels of Arab society. It is, of course, at its most intense amongst the
working class and poor peasants, and often connected in the minds of the masses
with the corrupt Arab regimes which have been compliant in the humiliation of
the Arab peoples at the hands of the US. It has widespread ramifications for the
region but, particularly, for the mood of the popular masses.
Syria and Iran
IN THE WIDER Middle East, the threat of Bush to repeat the
military excursion into Iraq in an attack on Syria, for instance, subsided
before the election. Even the US-backed Syrian exiles have, it seems, abandoned
their dream of riding to power on top of American humvees. "Up to the summer of
2003", wrote Fared Gaghadry, founder of the US-based Reform Party of Syria (who
seeks to play the same role as Ahmed Chalabi did in Iraq), "we still believed
the military option was a good option and it could be used in Syria. Today I
believe the military option is not an option. International opinion would oppose
it. Syrians would oppose it. Americans would oppose it". In other words, the
failure of the US in Iraq has compelled US imperialism and its acolytes to
reassess their perspectives for Syria.
The establishment of a US military presence with permanent
bases in Afghanistan, however, has undoubtedly alarmed the mullahs who control
the Iranian regime. This is just part of what one commentator correctly pointed
out is "the most extensive realignment of US power in half a century". Part of
this realignment is the opening of a second front in Asia. No longer is the US
confined to bases on the Pacific Rim of the Asian continent; today it has made
significant moves into the heart of Asia itself, building a network of smaller,
jumping-off bases in Central Asia. The ostensible rationale for these bases is
the war on terrorism. In reality, this is an excuse to enhance the economic and
strategic military power of US imperialism, with the US seeking decisive control
and influence over the oil resources and pipelines in the region.
The Iranian regime also undoubtedly sees this as preparation
for US-backed attempts to overthrow it. It is the real raison d’être behind the
pressure exerted by both the US and Europe over Iran’s nuclear programme. The
US, having unilaterally designated Iran as part of the ‘axis of evil’, has
deemed that Iran’s nuclear programme, even if for professed peaceful energy
reasons, cannot be allowed to continue. Yet, even according to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for ‘peaceful
purposes’. The problem is that the same process can be used to develop nuclear
weapons. This shows that the nuclear option is inherently unstable and cannot
prevent the development of weapons of mass destruction, even if a strict
‘inspection’ regime is undertaken.
The setbacks for the US in Iraq, together with the cowering
and retreat of the ‘reformists’ around Iranian president Khatami, have
strengthened the resolve of the dominant right-wing group of mullahs in Tehran
to hold out against US pressure. The European capitalists are worried that Iran
could opt out of the non-proliferation treaty. It could then go on to develop a
bomb – probably a necessity in the view of Tehran, particularly against the
background of the nuclear bombs possessed by Israel – thereby occupying a
similar intransigent position as North Korea. After all, impoverished North
Korea, on the brink of breakdown, has rattled its nuclear weapons with implied
threats to use them against South Korea and Japan.
This highly unstable situation again underlines that the
neo-con strategy of Bush, rather than defeat ‘evil’, has actually reinforced the
possibility of nuclear Armageddon, at least in some regions of the world. Kerry
indicated a more ‘pragmatic’ approach, signalling a preparedness to negotiate
with Tehran, to ‘normalise relations’ with the Iranian regime. He even offered
that if Iran closed down its nuclear facility the US would "supply nuclear power
and contain the nuclear material that is created as a result". In seeking to
mollify the Tehran regime he also indicated that the US under his control could
arrive at a mutually agreed settlement to crack down on both al-Qa’ida and the
Peoples’ Mujaheddin Organisation (MKO – the Iranian former guerrilla group
allied with Saddam against the mullahs). Bush, on the other hand, while
declaring this organisation to be a ‘terrorist’ group, gave it protection under
the Geneva Convention as ‘non-combatants’. In other words, the Bush regime is
prepared to use all opponents of the Iranian regime – no matter how
‘reprehensible’ previously – to weaken and ultimately bring it down. As stated
earlier, any attempt to use armed intervention against Iran would meet not just
with resistance from the ayatollahs but the mass of the Iranian people. At the
same time, the Iranian working class, increasingly in opposition to the
conservative regime, has yet to move decisively to overthrow it. Waiting in the
wings in the event of a meltdown in Iran is the son of the former shah, who
promises a new ‘secular’ regime.
North Korea
APART FROM IRAN there are a number of other flashpoints with
the potential to flare up, resulting in dangerous conflicts. One ‘hot spot’ is,
of course, North Korea, originally threatened by Bush with ‘preventative
action’, which even he was forced to soften in the wake of the failure in Iraq,
as well as the fact of the acquisition of nuclear weapons by North Korea.
The intransigence of North Korea flows from the history of
negotiations with the US over its nuclear potential. The framework agreement of
1994, in exchange for the freezing and dismantling of its Russian-designed
reactors capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, granted the lifting of
the 50-year economic embargo, as well as the normalisation of relations. North
Korea also demanded that the US commit itself to a formal agreement not to use
nuclear weapons against it, the supply by the US of proliferation-resistant
nuclear reactors, as well as an interim supply of oil. The Bush regime broke
this interim agreement and demanded that North Korea unilaterally disarm. The
sheer hypocrisy of this has been underlined recently by the revelation that
South Korea, under the aegis of the US, has had a secret nuclear programme
greater than that of North Korea’s!
The collapse of Stalinism in Russia and Eastern Europe,
together with the move towards capitalism in China, has resulted in a meltdown
in North Korea, with some reports putting the number of people dying of
starvation in the 1990s as three million, one in eight of the population. This
catastrophic situation compelled North Korea to move towards the introduction of
a market and a curtailment of central planning. Many measures seen in the last
stages of Stalinism in Russia and Eastern Europe have been introduced, with the
self-financing of factories, control in the hands of local managers to hire and
fire at will, and their right to choose what they produce. Despite this up to
five million people no longer earn enough to feed themselves.
This makes for a very unstable cocktail in the Korean
peninsula, which the measures of the Bush neo-con regime have enormously
aggravated. Even the Chinese, who have the greatest influence over North Korean
leader Kim Jong-Il, have so far failed to persuade him to scrap the nuclear
weapons programme in exchange for security guarantees and aid to the collapsing
economy. Incredibly, US vice-president, Dick Cheney, said on his visit to the
region in April 2004, "time is running out for a negotiated resolution to the
crisis". Force is completely ruled out in an attempt to overthrow the North
Korean regime, for the reasons explained above, so presumably this implies that
the US – under Bush – would resort to economic sanctions. However, even this is
dangerous given the economic situation facing the North. A collapse of the
regime there would see a mass influx of starving North Koreans into the south,
which would in turn be plunged into the economic abyss. The irresponsible gang –
from the point of view of imperialism – which rules the White House, risks such
a situation through its policies. The ex-Stalinist clique controlling the North
is capable of the most uncontrolled, adventurous actions. They threatened Japan
by firing a missile over its main island, Honshu, and into the Pacific Ocean
beyond.
China: ‘strategic competitor’ or ‘partner’?
NORTH KOREA IS just one particularly explosive ingredient in
the Asian ‘theatre’, in which the US rubs up and clashes with the interests of
emerging giants such as China, India and Japan. China is obviously on the rise,
but so are India and other Asian states which are boasting growth rates which
outstrip Europe and the US in particular. China’s economy could be double the
size of Germany’s by 2010, with some estimates predicting it could overtake
Japan, currently the world’s second largest economy, by 2020. A certain amount
of caution is required however. Japan was also spoken of in a similar way to
China today in its ‘potential’ to overtake the US on the basis of its growth
rates of the 1970s. Like Japan at the end of the 1980s, China shows all the
symptoms of ‘overheating’, with colossal overcapacity, bad loans, etc, which
could result in a crisis on the scale of the South East Asian crisis of 1997-98.
These economic considerations apart, China plays and will continue to play an
important role in world relations, particularly in regard to relations between
the competing powers in Asia.
The emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India, has
had serious repercussions in the region. Historically, China and Japan are
rivals and have never been powerful at the same time. In the past, China was
strong while Japan languished in poverty, but for the last 200 years Japan has
been more powerful than a weak and, under imperialism, dismembered China. At the
same time, India and China have, in the recent past, been at loggerheads and
still have a 42-year-old border dispute. Each distrusts the other and competes
economically and in terms of influence for control of the region, access to
energy resources, security of sea lanes and over the islands in the South China
Sea.
There are many potentially explosive territorial conflicts
throughout the region. Taiwan, of course, is the most dangerous example. A
‘destabilising’ missile race between China and Taiwan looms. The Taiwanese
government has stoked the fires of conflict with China by trying to push through
an $18bn programme to buy arms from the US. The Taiwanese prime minister has
called for the development of an offensive missile system, warning China: ‘You
fire 100 missiles at me, I fire 50 at you. You hit Taipei and Kao-hsiung, I at
least hit Shanghai’. This caused outrage among the Chinese elite, with the
People’s Liberation Army urged by the Chinese president, Hu Jin Tao, to ‘seize
the moment and do a good job in preparing for a military struggle’. China has an
estimated 610 missiles pointed at Taiwan, an increase of over 100 in a year.
This would be sufficient in a ten-hour barrage to wipe out most of Taiwan’s
defences before Taiwan’s US ‘ally’ could respond. Taiwan has upped the ante with
president, Chen Shui-bian, implying that it could hold a referendum on Taiwanese
independence.
The position of the US on this issue and in relation to
China is contradictory. For 30 years, it has been the policy of US governments
to couple the recognition of one China with a sanctimonious call for a peaceful
resolution of the Taiwan question. But, with the issue not resolved, the US
under Bush has provided the island with even more sophisticated military
equipment. The fear is that if Taiwan steps over the line of ‘provisional
autonomy’ and opts for independence, or if China loses patience, the region
could explode into war. Involved here is the attitude of the US towards the
emergence of China. A discussion has taken place in the ranks of the ruling
class whether to treat this giant as a ‘strategic competitor’ or a ‘prospective
partner’. For 50 years after 1945, the US was the major stabilising force in the
Pacific, enforced largely through its military presence and alliances with Japan
and South Korea. The US ruling class is haunted by the prospect of this
domination being supplanted, for instance, by a new strategic alliance between
China and Japan, rather than the ‘parallel relations’ with the US.
Japan, on the other hand, immediately faced by a rising
China, and with North Korea armed with nuclear weapons which are rattled
occasionally in its direction, is more insecure than previously. It has
therefore looked towards the development of a new missile system with US aid,
coupled by an attempt by the Japanese bourgeoisie to lift the constitutional
limits on the development and deployment of its military forces. At present, US
policy appears to be one of ‘soft containment’ of China, while seeking
intensified co-operation, including military co-operation with India as a
counterweight to China. Beijing is also seeking to modernise its military forces
with a new military doctrine focussing on countering the US, particularly in
high-tech, stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and precision guided bombs. The US
is suspicious of China’s decision to expand its military budgets, which it
perceives as an attempt to roll back the influence of the US in East Asia. While
the economy continues to develop – mutually benefiting China, the US and India –
these powers can rub along. But the possibility of military clashes, some of
them serious, is rooted in the situation developing in Asia.
A new world situation
RUSSIA UNDER PUTIN, still retaining its nuclear capacity,
has also begun to play a more assertive role in defending its interests,
especially in its ‘near abroad’, its satellites in the old soviet ‘empire’. Its
main economic advantage is, of course, in oil, which has almost trebled in price
in the last five years. This has allowed the Putin regime to bask in the
illusion of ‘prosperity’ but in reality the cream of the oil boom has been
siphoned off by a handful of gangster capitalists to the advantage of a few
urban areas such as Moscow, which has now more billionaires than New York. While
certain privileged layers have been allowed to share some of these spoils, the
great mass of the Russian population are still mired in indescribable poverty.
The Putin regime, more clearly than Yeltsin’s, expresses the
imperialist appetites of the new Russian bourgeoisie. A new ‘cold war’ is in the
making with, for instance, a doubling of the number of spies of the FSB
(formerly the KGB) in some countries, to a figure equal to the numbers employed
under Stalinism. Putin has also reasserted Russia’s right to a presence in its
‘near abroad’, re-establishing bases in Central Asia and the Caucasus as a
counterweight to those established by US imperialism. Putin’s policy remains a
mixture of seeking accommodation with the US – he praised Bush and hoped for his
victory in the 2004 elections – while at the same time opposing attempts at US
penetration into areas such as Georgia and elsewhere. It is possible that the
Chechen conflict, in the cocktail of national disputes in the Caucasus, could
itself trigger a war, for instance between Georgia and Ossetia, that could set
off a wider conflagration.
We have now entered an entirely new world situation, with
growing opposition to capitalism and imperialism, first in the
anti-globalisation movement and then in the powerful anti-war opposition.
Although there have been important industrial movements of the proletariat,
particularly in Europe but not exclusively, nevertheless it has not yet come
forward clearly and openly under its own banner. Moreover, the situation is
complicated in some areas of the world now by the existence of right-wing
political Islam, often accompanied by terrorism. In the aftermath of 9/11, this
has assumed the role of bogeyman that Stalinism played in the past for
capitalism and imperialism. The danger posed from terrorist attacks or incidents
is grossly exaggerated by imperialism for its own ends. It needs the ‘imminent
threat’ of attack from a foreign ‘devil’ in order to justify bloated military
expenditure, and the introduction of anti-democratic, repressive measures, to
hold the working class in check.
Al-Qa’ida is not an equivalent of Stalinism, nor does it
possess an all-powerful international network of ‘terrorists’. It is more of a
‘holding company’ that franchises out its authority to small groups like that of
al-Saqqwat in Iraq. In some respects, in its methods if not in its origins – bin
Laden and his group hail from the privileged layers of Arab society – they are
amazingly similar to the anarcho-terrorists of the past. The latter believed
that by spectacular actions this would ‘electrify’ the masses, leading to the
overthrow of dictatorial regimes. The Egyptian ideologue of bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahari,
who envisages al-Qa’ida and its co-thinkers as a ‘jihadist vanguard’, seeks to
mobilise the Arab masses for the establishment of an Islamic state worldwide.
This attempt to establish a new worldwide ‘caliphate’ is
completely utopian in the modern era. These methods were employed unsuccessfully
in Egypt, and spectacularly so in Algeria and elsewhere in the Muslim world. The
pro-jihadist methods often alienated those it was meant to attract, as in Egypt.
The massacre of foreign tourists at Luxor by the Islamists led to a collapse in
the local economy and their complete discrediting. The same, only on a much more
bloody and widespread scale, is the case in Algeria, where the ‘Muslim masses’
have been caught in a vicious crossfire between the military and the
increasingly isolated terrorist groups, which have turned on each other. This
does not mean to say that right-wing political Islam is, as yet, completely
discredited. The worsening of social conditions, as well as the national
humiliation of the Arabs at the hands of imperialism and its stooges in the
Middle East, still provides fertile soil, for instance in Saudi Arabia, which
could result in the overthrow of the House of Saud and a new ‘Islamic state’
established, echoing some of the ideas of al-Qa’ida. As yet, in the eastern
branch of Islam, in Asia as a whole, terrorist ideas and methods have not yet
established a firm foothold. But a continued worsening of the conditions of the
masses could lead to a new front for Islamic terrorism opening up in the region.
A Kerry presidency would have probably attempted to
undermine the social base of the terrorists and right-wing political Islam by
courting the more ‘moderate’ wing. Bush may try to restore US prestige by
similar methods while still pursuing the ‘war on terror’. He will probably also
attempt to set different brands of Islam – the Shias, the Sunni and the Sufi –
against one another in a repetition of the age-old methods of divide and rule by
imperialism. Not least of the factors that will determine the success or
weakening of Islamist ideas will be the re-emergence of the labour movement and
socialist and Marxist ideas. At the same time, there can be a class
differentiation within Islamic parties and formations as we witnessed during the
Iranian revolution.
September 11 was an important turning point, as are the US
elections. But it is the underlying objective situation which will be decisive
in shaping the consciousness of the broad mass of the population and
particularly the working class. Big events, in the economic sphere, socially and
politically, will develop in the next period. Already, out of the
anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation and anti-war movements a new consciousness
has developed. This is not yet of a broad socialist character. But an important
layer of workers and youth have begun to draw socialist and revolutionary
conclusions. Even in the US elections, the underlying situation reflected a big
polarisation which can take a more conscious form in the next period. Socialism
and Marxism are now going with the grain of history after the difficult
struggles of the 1990s to maintain a revolutionary pole of attraction. The
election of Bush will not stop this. On the contrary, he will act as an
unconscious ‘recruiting sergeant’ for socialism. His actions, both at home and
abroad, will further radicalise the new generation, prepare a huge revolt of the
workers and poor peasants in the neo-colonial world, and provoke a mighty
resurgence of the working class, not least in the US itself.
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