07.02.2002

US asserts hegemony

President George W Bush's first state of the union address on January 29 appears to signal a further escalation in the militarisation of US foreign policy that could have serious repercussions on relations between the USA and its European and Middle East allies. Its basic context, of course, was the continuation of Bush's 'war on terrorism' in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'eda continue to provide a useful cover for possible military intervention abroad and a justification for repressive measures at home, in the form of "homeland defence", but essentially they are now yesterday's news. Even though rival warlords continue to fight for control of tribal areas and the regime of the US client Hamid Karzai looks far from secure, effectively the Afghan 'war' has been won, at the cost of thousands of innocent lives. 'Peace-keeping', the most difficult, dangerous and protracted aspect of the enterprise, has been left for Britain and other US allies to sort out as best they can. Shifting the emphasis to action against 'rogue states' and the issue of weapons of mass destruction gives the Bush administration carte blanche to pursue an open-ended strategy aimed at consolidating and extending the USA's global hegemony. At first sight, Bush's speech and subsequent comments from defence secretary Don Rumsfeld indicate that the USA is prepared to undertake unilateral, pre-emptive military action against such 'rogue states', with or without the agreement of those countries who have so far constituted a pretty wide-based, if decidedly heterogeneous and uncomfortable alliance. The problem, however, is sorting out the difference between rhetoric and reality, between concrete intentions and sinister, if somewhat vague, threats. A few things are clear. Within the Bush administration itself there are evidently unresolved contradictions and tensions around the question of the use of military force, rather than diplomatic and economic pressure, but for the time being the hawks - represented principally by vice-president Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld himself - are in the ascendant. The 'doves' (to use this term very loosely) like Colin Powell at the state department, have no choice but to toe the party line. The most obvious indication of the hawks' predominance is the staggering increase in the US defence budget, which is already greater than the aggregate military spending of the next 15 powers, including China, Russia and the UK. By 2007 the USA will be spending some $451 billion on its armed services. Secondly, reaction in Europe to Bush's bellicose utterances has indicated just how fragile the coalition against terrorism actually is. Engaging in unilateral action would split the alliance from top to bottom. Bush's shift was indicated by a lengthy passage in which he denounced the "axis of evil" comprised by three states in particular: Iraq, Iran and North Korea: "I will not wait on events while the dangers gather. I will not stand by as perils draw closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons." In a speech punctuated by 49 standing ovations and 33 outbursts of spontaneous cheering, this statement produced some of the loudest applause in Congress. The reference to "evil" is all of a piece with the Republican administration's intention to depict the USA's quest for total world hegemony as a moral crusade on behalf of us all: "We have been called to a unique role in human events "¦ It will be our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight." Vacuous talk about evil and morality is what one must expect from a president who insists that his cabinet meetings should be preceded by an extemporised prayer from one of his ministers. Back in September, it was to St Paul that he turned for a handy quotation - "Those who are not for us are against us." To be "against" the USA is to demur in the least degree from accepting all that comes out of the mouth of Washington, and woe betide you if you do. On the other hand, if you are a good boy, you get treats in the form of aid, debt cancellation, inward investment and lots of cheap weapons courtesy of the US military-industrial complex. No wonder Pakistan and indeed Iran saw the light. The only significant state not to denounce the September 11 events was Iraq. On the face of it, talk of an "axis" of any kind between Iraq and Iran, two countries that not so long ago were involved in a war that cost more than a million lives, and between whom there remain seemingly inextricable tensions, is a gross absurdity. Why single out these three states as particularly "evil"? According to some reports, Iraq obviously selected itself, but it was deemed impolitic to focus on one state only. Iran, against whom Rumsfeld has made charges of complicity with al-Qa'eda in extricating leading terrorists from Afghanistan and supplying weapons to the Palestinians, was therefore thrown in. But it did not look good from the PR point of view to single out islamic states, so North Korea was introduced as ballast to the cargo of "evil". Not one word was said about Israel, even though its possession of nuclear weapons is in flagrant breech of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Sharon government is an inveterate user of terror and assassination in pursuit of its objectives. Israel is definitely one of the good boys and was the source of much of the intelligence used to justify claims about the ghastly threats that are about to encompass the whole civilised world. To be sure, the regimes in Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang can only be regarded as fundamentally anti-human. Nor can there any reasonable doubt that, insofar as they do not possess them already, they are eager to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, together with the means of their delivery, including intercontinental missiles capable of reaching the USA. Some estimates, whose reliability it is difficult to judge, say that they could achieve such a capability within the next five years or so. Whatever one may think of the USA's ideologically self-serving definition of "rogue states", the possession and the potential use of such weapons by such reactionaries is a profoundly negative phenomenon - just as they are in the hands of imperialism. Nonetheless, some deeply misguided forces on the left (Stalinite elements, as well as Trotskyite groups like Workers Power, spring to mind), rather than calling for the replacement of these repulsive regimes by revolutionary democratic and socialist forces, will be inclined to indulge in their usual knee-jerk response: any regime that is against the USA and, following this logic, against imperialism per se, must be given unconditional support (in WP's case it comes in the form of a so-called 'military bloc'). Forget the fact, for example, that Saddam Hussein is a megalomaniac genocidal dictator; that the 'supreme leader' of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, presides over a brutal, if hopefully faltering, fundamentalist theocracy; that Kim's regime in North Korea has brought death by famine to millions. This is precisely what we found in the recent case of Afghanistan, when some comrades chose to give support to the Taliban purely on the spurious basis that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Such an approach was profoundly mistaken then and still is. The inclusion of Iran in Bush's "axis of evil", whatever brought it about, is a particular piece of nonsense, even from the vantage point of imperialism's goals in the region - something to which even the leader-writers of the capitalist broadsheets cannot fail to draw attention. One would have thought that mere self-interest would have led the imperialists to do all they could to bolster president Muhammed Reza Khatami's struggles for reform. Khatami's extreme cautiousness in tackling the obstacles to reform posed by the fundamentalist clerics is already producing growing impatience on the part of wide strata of Iranian society, especially among the young, who comprise at least half of the county's population. The prospects of a genuine social upheaval, perhaps a real revolution are evident. Yet Bush, rather than giving material and moral aid to the forces of liberal democratic reform - surely the logical step for imperialism to take - prefers to turn the screw, simultaneously giving Khamenei and Rafshanjani ammunition with which to attack the west and thereby to deepen the deep contradictions in Iran itself. It was the inclusion of Iran in Bush's hit list that seemingly caused the most consternation in European capitals, with many of whom Tehran has diplomatic relations. Not only Jack Straw, but Colin Powell himself, spent much time and effort last autumn ensuring that Tehran was 'on side' in relation to the Afghan war. No wonder Powell looked so glum during the state of the nation address. His initiatives in the direction of continuing dialogue with North Korea and more active diplomatic engagement with Iran were blown out of the water by the hawks. In an effort to put Bush's bellicose threats into some kind of perspective, Straw caused some embarrassment in US-UK relations last week by daring to suggest, not implausibly, that the address had, at least in part, a domestic political objective: "I thought the state of the union speech was best understood by the fact that there are mid-term congressional elections coming up in November. You don't need me to tell you that," he told a press conference in the British embassy in Washington (The Daily Telegraph February 2). Predictably, the White House was aghast at Straw's heretical comments, and they also brought him obloquy in the columns of the rightwing press, which cited his statement as evidence that he is out of his depth and needs urgently to be replaced. But the reality of allied misgivings about the direction of US policy goes far beyond mere nuances. Government ministers and spokesmen across Europe have made it clear that if Bush's speech actually means what it says, then they are plainly at odds with the USA's strategy. Even where Iraq is concerned, German deputy foreign minister Ludwig Vollmer made it clear that Germany rejects the accusation that Baghdad has been behind support for international terrorism: "There is no indication, no proof that Iraq is involved "¦ this terror argument cannot be used to legitimise old enmities "¦ the solution cannot lie in attacking [Iraq] militarily." The mood among EU diplomats is to continue multilateral dialogue with the so-called 'rogue states' in an effort to secure diplomatic solutions. Hence, speaking for the community as a whole, EU foreign policy boss Javier Solana urged the US to act multilaterally and not as a "global unlilateralist" (The Guardian February 5). The last phrase is pregnant with meaning, with the recognition of a potential deep split caused by the USA's determination to assert its global hegemony - if necessary without the assistance or agreement of any other state. It is Don Rumsfeld, the most strident mouthpiece of American militarism and unilateralism (to say nothing of the vital economic interests of the US military-industrial complex), who makes the point crystal clear. In the wake of the Bush speech, he stated that Washington would accept "coalitions of the willing" "¦ but future action would not be blunted by doubters or constrained by committee. One of the critical lessons from the war in Afghanistan was that the US had taken the lead and not allowed coalition partners to determine the mission "¦ defending the United States would on occasion require pre-emptive action" (The Daily Telegraph February 1). The message is unambiguous and, if the USA is serious in its threats, then the resulting fissiparation of America's alliances and coalitions with other states is something to be welcomed. It would certainly provide an opening for genuine forces of anti-imperialism. I do not, of course, include in that category those regimes whose 'anti-imperialism' consists of nothing more than the desire to maintain their own reactionary and anti-human hold on power in states where the vast majority of working people are routinely oppressed. Only the revolutionary self-activity of the working class can provide a progressive alternative to the real evils that bedevil so many of our brothers and sisters across the world - not least the global exploitation of capital, brought to bear by imperialism itself. Maurice Bernal