For more than a year now not a day has passed without a new act of barbarism in the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. The age-old ideologies of Palestinian nationalism and Israel Zionism, more than half a century after the inception of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war, continue to fuel havoc in this region. The spectacle is absolutely appalling. On one side, radical Palestinian militants blow themselves up together along innocent victims in suicidal terrorist attacks; suicidal armed confrontations against an adversary thousands of times better armed and organized; children, women and desperate young Palestinians aiming to kill at random, so long as the victim is a Jew. On the other hand, rubble, destruction and death caused by all-powerful Israeli state terror displayed with cynical impunity and total disregard for human life. On both sides populations living in fear, hating each other and ready to kill, poisoned to the core by the nationalist ideologies of their respective dominant classes.
This is today the situation in this region where a decade ago "a new era of peace" was announced with so much fanfare by the world bourgeoisie. Nothing more than a spiral of interminable violence, which threatens to escalate at any moment into a full-blown war.
The so-called "civilized" democracies of the US and Europe would like us to believe that they have nothing to do with the current events in the Middle East, that they have encouraged peace and that if it has not worked out is due to the radical terrorist Palestinian groups, or the policies of Arafat's PLO, or the Israel radical right wing politicians. Nothing is further from the truth. Although in the context of capitalism there is no solution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict, the imperialist maneuvering of the great imperialist powers for influence in the Middle East has always been a major factor in the exacerbation of political violence that characterized its history.
"Pax Americana" in the Middle East in the 1990's
The collapse of the Stalinist regimes at the end of the 80's and the beginning of the 90's brought with it the disappearance of the imperialist blocs that had divided the world since the end of WWII. This upheaval has had profound consequences in the Middle East. For decades the US and the USSR, as a means to secure influence in the region, had supported this or that bourgeois clique or state on their respective petty imperialist rivalries against their neighbors. The collapse of the imperialist bloc lead by the USSR and the diminished imperialist stature of Russia profoundly upset the interimperialist relationships between the countries of the region. Countries like Syria and bourgeois factions like the PLO suddenly found themselves without a godfather to resort to for money, weapons and political influence. Meanwhile, as Russian influence vanished, the American bourgeoisie established itself as the dominant imperialist power in the region.
The 1991 Gulf War, launched by the US as a means to demonstrate to its potential imperialist rival its willingness to defend its imperialist world hegemony, strengthened even more the grip of American imperialism in the Middle East. Through the ruthless killing of hundred of thousands of people, a new imperialist relation of forces among the local bourgeois cliques in the region emerged from Operation Desert Storm. Iraq, before the war a local imperialist power to be reckoned with, was reduced to the stature of a "nobody" in the region; the PLO, punished for backing the wrong horse during the war, descended one step further into political bankruptcy, particularly as some of its traditional sources of financial support from other Arab states dried up; Syria, on the side of the winners, was granted Lebanon as a reward for its services, plus a promise of negotiations on the status of the Golan Heights, currently under Israeli occupation; Saudi Arabia was rewarded with upgraded military "aid" -and a US military base in its soil-for its role as crucial center for the American military operations.
In the face of these changes in the Middle East political situation, and as a centerpiece of its strategy for reinforcing its position as imperialist master of the region, the US bourgeoisie pushed for a political compromise between Israel, its most trustworthy ally in the region, and Israel's traditional Arab foes. Through this compromise Israel's right of existence would be recognized by its historical enemies, while the Israel bourgeoisie would made its own concessions, among which the most important would be its acquiescence on the creation of Palestinian state in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West bank
Since this "Pax America" was announced through the showcase of the so-called "peace conferences" in 1991, and the Oslo agreements between Israel and the PLO in 1992, the American ruling class consistently stuck to this policy, despite the switch from Republican to Democratic control of the White House. Even the present Bush administration, which seems to have now abandoned the idea of creating a Palestinian state, had up until very recently stuck to this same strategy. However, the present sudden US government support for Israel's current policy of reneging on its compromise on the Palestinian question seems to be more than a spur-of-the-moment event. In fact this policy change is a well thought out response to both the difficulties that the US has faced during the last decade in its struggle to maintain its dominance all over the world, and to the need for adjustment in US policy in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 events.
The revamping of American's imperialist strategy
Since the disappearance of the interimperialist relations that determined world politics in the Cold War era, the US has been faced with the reality that it not longer controls Western Europe. In fact its ex-allies in the old Western bloc have been the main challengers of its world dominance. Thus the US has been struggling for the last decade to defend and strengthen its hegemony in the areas outside Europe that are strategically vital, such as the Middle East, the Balkans, the Horn of Africa, and now Central Asia.
This struggle to defend its world supremacy, although not a total failure, has not prevented the US challengers from advancing their own imperialist cards, as shown for instance in the growing influence of Germany in the last decade in its historical hunting grounds of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Increasingly the US has found it necessary to rely on brutal force to defend its threatened hegemony, and to stand alone against the rest of the world. The perspective of 'every nation for itself' that has characterized the impact of capitalist decomposition on international relations, in which each nation plays its own card, now includes even the US, the world's only remaining superpower. This bellicose position, openly defended by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the World Economic Forum in New York this winter, only fueled criticism and opposition from the US's erstwhile allies in Europe. The unflinching support of US imperialism to the war campaign of its most reliable Middle Eastern ally, Israel, reflects the American commitment to war and bloodshed as the lynchpin of its foreign policy.
The 'Axis of Evil'
As Uncle Sam looks furtively for a new victim in its never-ending war against international terrorism, Pres. George Bush coined a new term in his State of the Union address in January when he spoke of the "Axis of Evil," comprised of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. This sobriquet, yet another attempt to cloak the current war effort in the same patriotic clothe as World War II, is of course absolutely ridiculous. The Axis powers were an imperialist bloc, an alliance for war against a rival bloc, the Allies. There is no alliance between these three demonized states; in fact, Iraq and Iran are adversaries.
This verbal trial balloon for future military attacks triggered an even greater flood of criticism against US policy from European powers have been making overtures to Iran and Iraq, for example, and are opposed to the new US offensive. Even from the American perspective, the new line is contradictory, at least in regard to Iran, for example, which actually cooperated with the US in the Afghanistan war, and had been earning praise in the US media for its actions. Once the war ended, it's true that Iran started to try Uncle Sam's patience with its efforts to maintain its traditional sphere of influence in western Afghanistan. But it was the Israeli capture of a vessel carrying 50 tons of illegal Iranian munitions, supposedly being shipped to the Palestinian Authority, which served both as the pretext for US support to Israel's campaign of annihilation against the Palestinians, and put Iran in the "evil" dog house.
The American commitment to military action was made clear in Bush's State of the Union speech, when he said, "My hope is that all nations will heed our call, and eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own…But some countries will be weak in the face of terror. And make no mistake: if they do not act, America will." The future that capitalism offers humanity is one of militarism and terror, in which human life is expendable, and destruction a cold political calculation. The notion of an "axis of evil" may be questionable, the "excess of evil" oozing from decomposing world capitalism is all too apparent. It is only the struggle of the working class that can block this bleak future that capitalism promises.
ES
It is no surprise that the worst impact of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the ensuing ideological campaign would be found in the US, where the events were particularly traumatic for a working class that had not experienced war on its own national territory since the Civil War (1861-65), except for Pearl Harbor – which had occurred in Hawaii, some 2,000 miles from the American mainland. Prior to Pearl Harbor the last significant foreign attack on the US was the British burning of the White House and the Capitol during the War or 1812-15. The success of US imperialism's ideological campaign in the first weeks after the attacks is difficult to exaggerate. Whatever its confusions and disorientations since the revival of class struggle at the end of the 1960s, the proletariat in America has been defiant and distrusting of the state, willing to undertake militant struggle, to confront the police if necessary, and even, at an elementary level, to put the unions into question. The American proletariat, despite its historical and political weaknesses, has consistently echoed the struggles of the international proletariat over the past 33 years. The overnight transformation of this battalion of the world proletariat into a patriotic, flag-waving mass, susceptible to the worst racist attitudes and manipulation by the state was an unnerving phenomenon, and for weeks, made the defense of proletarian internationalist principles in the face of this barbaric ideological onslaught completely against the current.
No matter how sober we must be in our recognition of the success of the ideological campaign in the US, it is clear that the historic course towards decisive class confrontations has not be reversed. For one thing, the historic course is not determined on the basis of the momentary situation in a single country, even if it is the most powerful economic nation on earth. On the contrary, it is determined on a global level, particularly in the main capitalist countries that have the greatest concentration of the proletariat. On this level, it is clear that the situation in other countries in no way paralleled that in the US. Furthermore, even in the US, there is growing evidence that the setback in class consciousness is not permanent, but transitory. There is a clear tendency for workers to return to the proletarian terrain to defend their class interests, and not to be dissuaded from class struggle by the demands of patriotism and the war.
For example, in October, 23,000 public sector workers went on strike in Minnesota, despite criticism from the governor and the media that to strike during a period of such national crisis was unpatriotic, to which the workers responded, "how dare you use these events against us." So strong was sentiment for this strike, that not only did the national union involved directly endorse it , but other unions were obliged to express "solidarity." Other strikes in the post-Twin Towers period include a week long walkout by sanitation workers in Orange County, California; an illegal strike by teachers in Middletown, New Jersey (a suburb of New York) in which 200 teachers were jailed for defying a court injunction to return to work, a strike by teachers at parochial secondary schools in New York; a strike by 4000 machinists at Pratt and Whitney jet engine manufacturing plant in Connecticut; and a one day wildcat strike by several hundred private bus company bus drivers in New York City. The angry response of postal workers to the obvious class bias in the state's handling of the anthrax scare in the US, where Senate and Congressional offices were shutdown for over a month to permit fumigation to destroy the virus, while postal workers at contaminated postal sorting centers were required to continue working, putting their health at risk, was yet another sign that despite the prevailing patriotic climate, workers were capable of seeking their own terrain. These struggles in the US have all ended in varying degrees of defeat, and they occur in difficult circumstances, but more importantly they demonstrate in a very concrete manner that the acceleration of the crisis is pushing workers to reassert themselves as workers, to struggle to regain their confidence in themselves as a class, and to rediscover the power of their unity in struggle.
In other countries, especially in Europe, despite certain success in mobilizing sympathy for the US following September 11, and taking advantage of the situation to introduce measures to strengthen the police and the repressive apparatus, the ideological success of the bourgeoisie has been nowhere comparable to the US. There have been strikes in a number of European countries in the last few months. Meanwhile the global economy has plunged into open recession, which will only heighten the attacks on the working class's standard of living, and build pressure for the workers to return to the class struggle to defend itself.
RP, 30/3/02
After months of warning of a possible economic slowdown, the American bourgeoisie has suddenly acknowledged that its economy has in fact been in recession since last March, based not on the traditional capitalist economic criteria of two consecutive quarters of negative growth, but for the first time based on an admission that rising unemployment can be utilized as an indicator of economic decline. At this level, even though its manipulation of economic data had eliminated the statistical negative growth figures, the skyrocketing unemployment, which the working class understands full well is the paramount indicator of open recession and an attack on its living conditions, made it fundamentally impossible for the ruling class to maintain the fiction that a recession had not yet occurred. The rise of joblessness in the US has been staggering in the past year, with the number of officially unemployed workers in the US skyrocketing in 2001 by 2.6 million, up to 8,250,000, or 5.8 percent of the official workforce. As always the bourgeoisie's statistics underestimate the real picture of unemployment. For example, the bourgeoisie admits that its unemployment figure does not include 1.3 million workers who are "marginally attached to the labor force," by which they mean people who want to work but did not look for a job in the preceding 4 weeks before the latest government survey. Nor does it include the estimated 344,000 "discouraged workers" who have given up looking for jobs that don't exist.
The list of firms announcing massive layoffs grows daily. In January, Ford Motor Company, the world's second largest automaker, has announced plans to cut 35,000 jobs world wide, more than 10% of its workforce. This came after an earlier announcement last year by DaimlerChrysler that it would cut 26,000 jobs (20%) of the Chrysler workforce. Despite the bourgeoisie's propaganda efforts to blame the economic woes on the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Labor Department's figures indicate that only103,000 workers had been laid off as a direct or indirect consequence of the attacks, 42% in the airline industry and 29% in the hotel industry. The other 2.47 million laid off workers lost their jobs due to the workings of the capitalist business cycle. And it was only a few short years ago in the heydey of the Clinton prosperity that the capitalist pundits declared we had arrived at a utopian era of permanent prosperity, that the business cycle had been surpassed.
All of this occurs at a moment when the bourgeoisie has an increasingly restricted margin of maneuver. In 2001, in a desperate attempt to jump start the economy, even though it was still denying there was recession at the time, the Federal Reserve lowered the prime rate 11 times, four times since September 11, to the point in which the prime is less than half the rate of inflation. The US Treasury is literally printing and giving away money to the banks, and still the economy slides deeper into trouble. In this context the scandalous bankruptcy of Enron, the Houston, Texas-based American energy giant, the seventh largest corporation in the US, with close links to the Bush administration, is an ominous reminder that the bubble has burst for the phony prosperity of the last decade which was based on speculation and debt. The disintegration of the Enron employee pension plans that were locked into Enron stocks, which had shriveled from a value of $92 less than a year ago to 34 cents a share, is a warning of what lies in store for other pension plans as the crisis deepens.
Internationalism, 30/3/02
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis