Category Archives: Imperialism

Ukraine (6) – A proxy imperialist war

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Photo: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office on Monday, April 25, 2022, from left; U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, April 24, 2022,(Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

Covert action has been a favoured means of waging war since at least the start of the first Cold War, with such covert action often part of what has been variously termed vicarious or proxy warfare.  It has been used by Empires for a long time, employing the resources of their conquests, such as the British with Hindu Sepoys, Nepalese Gurkhas and the French with Algerian Berber Zouaves.  In the middle of the 19th century Britain ruled India with almost 278,000 troops of which only around 45,000 were European

From the Truman administration onwards the typical US intervention into other countries has also involved economic and financial sanctions, with the proxy element involving the demand that third countries implement these measures as well.  These are usually followed by clandestine or ‘special’ operations and then conventional war; the preferred agency of the CIA thus became involved in over 900 major covert actions between 1951 and 1975.

The supposed advantage of this approach is that it is less expensive in terms of money, troops and political capital.  The proxy war being waged by US imperialism today shows all these features except on a much larger scale.  Almost an entire, and relatively large, country is being employed as a proxy – unless one believes that the US is really concerned with the independence of the Ukrainian state and not the significant degrading of Russia.  The US has demanded that every other country impose its economic and financial sanctions even to the point of incurring massive damage to their own economies.

While proxy wars are supposed to be less expensive the sheer scale of this one involves massive cost, which however is incurred unequally.  The arms and energy industries, especially in the US are doing just fine.  Massive political propaganda has improved the political position of US imperialism, at least in the West, including the subordination of much of what passes for the Left in these countries, so that in this respect as well the proxy war has fulfilled its function. Whether this continues to hold good is another matter.

The first Cold War appeared to make direct war between the US and Russia unthinkable because of the risk of nuclear escalation, but the US has sought counterforce and nuclear primacy strategies that would supposedly make a nuclear war winnable in some meaningful sense.  The potential escalation involved in this proxy war is therefore greater than previous conflicts.

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In a review of three books on proxy warfare In the London Review of Books Tom Stevenson notes that ‘America is the world’s most prolific sponsor of armed proxies’ and that it ‘has done most to develop the proxy war doctrine.  In January 2018 the US military introduced the ‘by-with-through’ approach. It was the work of J-2, the intelligence directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: ‘the US military must organise, resource and train’ local forces and ‘operate by, with and through’ its ‘partners’ and ‘nations that share our interests’ (note that the word ‘proxy’ is avoided in favour of more anodyne terms). Using proxies has been common practice for the CIA for decades, but the J-2 doctrine describes an increasingly common style of war.’ 

He noted when writing (in the second half of 2020) that ‘around half the US troops in Afghanistan are technically mercenaries: they are deployed for private profit.’  In Iraq in 2008 the US had a proxy army of 103,000 ‘Sons of Iraq’ fighting in Anbar.  In Afghanistan the US trained over 50,000 mujahedeen, providing nearly $3bn in aid between 1979 and 1989.  As the CIA Director William Casey put it: ‘Here’s the beauty of the Afghan operation . . . Usually it looks like the big bad Americans are beating up on the little guys.  We don’t make it our war . . . All we have to do is give them help.” 

The current war has been precipitated by Ukraine seeking to formally join NATO while securing the approval of US imperialism for its security strategy aimed at the conquest of the Crimea, which Russia considers its own territory. Nancy Pelosi, before the provocative visit to Taiwan, said after a visit to Kyiv and a meeting with President Zelensky, that America stands “with Ukraine until victory is won.” US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

US objectives are therefore not limited to those internal to Ukraine but to requirements in relation to Russia, its economy and security, and the balance of power between it and both Russia and China, to which the US quickly turned its sights on the pretext of the Ukraine war.  There can be no doubt that the amount of military aid provided by western imperialism has materially affected the dynamics of the war with the effect of turning almost the whole of Ukraine into a proxy for its own interests.

Since these interests are truly world-wide the potential for a global conflict is obvious, even the pro-war left acknowledges this danger while cheerleading Ukrainian armed forces.  This awareness does not translate into opposition to the war itself but only to the imposition by the US and NATO of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and the open introduction of their troops on the ground.

It appears therefore that the only inter-imperialist war that can exist for this Left is one that creates the immediate potential for a nuclear exchange.  This currently has the effect of allowing an underestimation of the potential for this happening through anything short of direct kinetic combat.  Even the right-wing RAND corporation presents scenarios in which US intervention can trigger direct warfare with the potential use of nuclear weapons.  Others were noted in the previous post.

It has been argued that there has been no nuclear war between the United States and Russia because conventional war between them is also inconceivable.  Except that it has reasonably also been suggested that direct conventional war between them has not occurred because no conflict between them has occurred that has involved the vital interests of both, and from which therefore neither can retreat.

NATO membership of Ukraine, with the possibility of stationing long-range missiles within a short distance from Moscow, coupled with an avowed policy of a direct conventional attack on territory claimed to be part of Russia containing its Black Sea fleet, would obviously seem to involve vital strategic Russian interests.  That this scenario has precipitated aggressive Russian action can be a surprise to no one.  To pretend therefore that only Russia is responsible for this war lacks any credibility.

Russia has time and time again warned that Ukrainian membership of NATO is a red line. Putin in 2008 ,after the summit in which NATO declared Ukraine would become a member, said that “we view the appearance of a powerful military bloc on our borders . . . as a direct threat to the security of our country.”

It does not matter whether Russian action is morally reprehensible and should be condemned.  It is not the job of socialists to right the moral wrongs of world capitalism and the states that it comprises.  The job of socialists is to argue and fight for a new society in which such wrongs are abolished, and this means starting from current society and seeking how it can be changed.  This is the subject of the long series of posts on this blog on Marx’s alternative to capitalism (here for example), which relies on the independent social and political organisation of the working class across the world supported by other oppressed and exploited classes and layers of the population.

This will not be done by defending the prerogatives of capitalist states on the grounds that they have provoked invasion by other bigger capitalist powers, or the idiot view that we should defend their right to join imperialist military alliances.  We should oppose both the Russian invasion and the participation of western imperialism because only this identifies the sources of the war and the enemies of workers suffering from it directly and indirectly.

Gilbert Achcar of the Fourth International says that the war in Ukraine is not an inter-imperialist war because such a war ‘is a direct war, and not one by proxy, between two powers . . .’    In the last couple of decades the phenomenon of imperialist proxy wars has had a resurgence and the most significant wars of the last few decades have all been proxy wars of one variety or another, either originating or developing as such, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and others.

It does indeed matter that US and NATO imperialism is not attempting to impose a no-fly zone or placing large numbers of troops on the front-line but refusal to call this an inter-imperialist proxy war has led to a position in which the actions of US/NATO imperialism is supported (through supply of arms) and the actions of the reactionary proxy (the Ukrainian state) are openly celebrated.

The war in Ukraine has brought the proxy mode of war increasingly adopted by imperialism to a new level, not only because of the scale of the war and the military support provided, not only because the proxy is a large state and is directly fighting Russia and not some Russian proxy, but because it involves the perceived vital interests of Russia.  We need only consider the response of US imperialism if Russia was pouring weapons into an anti-US Mexico that had declared its intention to reconquer Texas to appreciate the view of the Russian capitalist state. We can now see the provocation involved by successive reactionary Ukrainian governments including putting the objective of NATO membership into the constitution guided by an increasingly ultra-nationalist ideology.

Understanding that what we are seeing is an imperialist proxy war leads us to oppose both US imperialism and the Russian state and in doing so strengthens the independent political position of the working class.  If the road to freedom lies in appealing to the assistance of either US imperialism or Russia the working class will never learn to look to itself.

Back to part 5

Ukraine (5) – The role of Western Imperialism

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http://www.voanews.com

In the debate between Gilbert Achcar of the Fourth International and Alex Callinicos of the International Socialist Tendency, Callinicos sets out what Achcar’s view is on what constitutes an anti-imperialist war – ‘a direct war, and not one by proxy, between two powers, each of which seeks to invade the territorial and (neo)colonial domain of the other, as was very clearly in the First World War. It is a ‘war of rapine’ on both sides, as Lenin liked to call it.”

He then criticises this view – ‘This definition, which requires an inter-imperialist war to be one where both sides are seeking to conquer each other’s territory, doesn’t even fit the Second World War. British and French imperialism weren’t interested in seizing German territory, but in hanging onto their already overstretched empires. And Hitler wasn’t particularly interested in these. It was eastern Europe and the Soviet Union he was after.’

Callinicos finishes by saying that ‘The properly Marxist approach is to recognise that the present situation involves both an inter-imperialist war by proxy and a war of national defence on Ukraine’s part.’  It is not clear whether his proposed fight for national defence includes reconquering Crimea or the already separated parts of the Donbas.

Achcar writes that ‘the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the second defining moment of the New Cold War in which the world has been plunged since the turn of the century as a result of the US decision to expand NATO.’  Yet this ‘defining moment’ of a new Cold Ward is held not to define the war in Ukraine, the veritable front-line within it.  Still, he does not shy away from stating its importance, even if he gets the nature of it completely wrong: ‘the fate of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will determine the propensity of all other countries for aggression.’

He opposes NATO ‘boots on the ground or the imposition of a No-Fly Zone from a distance’ and states that as a matter of general principle, he is against direct military intervention by any imperialist force anywhere. Asking for one of them to clash with another is tantamount to wishing for a world war between nuclear powers, he says.  Indeed so, but are we not also opposed to indirect ‘military intervention by any imperialist force anywhere’?  Not according to Achcar.

In a further article Achcar answers the following question – ‘Wouldn’t Ukraine’s standing up against the Russian invasion benefit NATO?’ – by saying ‘“so what?” Our support to peoples fighting imperialism shouldn’t depend on which imperialist side is backing them.’  To which the only rational answer is – how can a people be said to be ‘fighting imperialism’ when it is backed by a rival imperialism? And here, to be specific, we are talking about an independent capitalist state seeking to join by far the largest imperialist alliance!

In reply to the further question ‘Isn’t the ongoing war an inter-imperialist war?’ he answers:

‘If any war where each side is supported by an imperialist rival were called an inter-imperialist war, then all the wars of our time would be inter-imperialist, since as a rule, it is enough for one of the rival imperialisms to support one side for the other to support the opposite side. An inter-imperialist war is not that. It is a direct war, and not one by proxy. . .’

Since he believes that only a direct war between the US/NATO and Russia (and presumably China) is an inter-imperialist war then he must believe we have not seen an inter-imperialist war since World War II, and not between these protagonists, also perhaps excluding the Korean War in which China could hardly be considered imperialist but Russia was involved, leaving aside the question whether this too could be seen as imperialist since it was part of the Soviet Union.  

Since indirect intervention in Ukraine is not an imperialist war then all the too numerous to mention indirect wars, not to mention covert actions, by the US and others must not be considered imperialist war either.  From concern that we label too many wars as imperialist, which is itself rather strange if we consider imperialism to dominate the world, he has arrived at his happy conclusion that very few wars can be characterised as imperialist.

His response might be that one-sided imperialist interventions may be cited as imperialist wars but his argument is about an inter-imperialist war, although in the case of the war in Ukraine such a response would fail his argument.

Of course, the scope and scale of indirect imperialist intervention is relevant to considering whether and to what extent a particular war can be considered imperialist and thereby its political salience.  But this applies to Ukraine in which it is impossible to argue that both Russia and the US/NATO are not involved.  The sheer scale of Western imperialist intervention in Ukraine does not permit its intervention to be considered secondary. 

The major Western powers have publicly supplied over $14 billion in military aid, which is over two times the defence budget of nearly $6 bn of Ukraine in 2021, and excludes other promised funding nearly three times this amount, and no doubt other military support that has not been openly revealed.  Since these words were written Biden has promised even more lethal aid.  In addition, unprecedented sanctions must be regarded as war by other means and have historically preceded open conventional warfare.

The military aid follows years of increasing cooperation with NATO including training of its armed forces, their participation in the NATO occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and military exercises with NATO forces within the country. The US has directly impacted on the war through intelligence and real-time targeting of Russian forces and assets while it would be naive to believe that Western special forces have not been inside the country during the war.

The view that we are not witnessing an imperialist proxy war can lead to blindness to the assistance already given, both visible and hidden, and to the real possibility of escalation, which is at increased risk given what has already been committed.  It should already be noted that the nature of the weapons delivered by the US and other NATO powers is increasing in power and sophistication with the potential for fighter aircraft to be provided now under consideration. The debate is therefore not simply about an academic political characterisation of the war.  

Unfortunately, it is to be expected that much of the pro-war left will follow Western imperialist escalation, as it already has, not only because this is the logic of their political position of prioritising support to the Ukrainian State but because of an acquired emotional commitment. One only has to note Facebook posts in which so-called Marxists proclaim their gloating over Ukrainian advances to realise what counts for those with this commitment.

A recent examination of the potential routes to further escalation notes the following:

‘A Ukrainian law recently signed by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy gives Polish citizens the rights similar to those of Ukrainian citizens. This could serve as legal cover for thousands of Polish soldiers to enter Ukraine, don Ukrainian uniforms, and using NATO-supplied Western equipment begin fighting against Russia’s forces. When proof of any such gambit emerges – as it inevitably will – Russia could decide to hit Polish targets in response, bringing NATO into the war more directly in one form or another.’

The writer notes that ‘The Kharkiv advance was organized on the basis of: NATO training of tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces; massive Western weapons supplies to Kiev (e.g., see https://www.ustranscom.mil/cmd/usp.cfm); the NATO Central Command’s and Western intelligence’s deep embeddedness into the Ukrainian forces; NATO-designed counteroffensive tactics, strategy, and plan; large numbers of former Western soldiers and officers participating in the operation; possible participation of Polish officers and troops . . .  Retired former U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor has asserted that NATO officers form a military staff that is directing much of the Ukrainian war strategy and tactics.’

Back to part 4

Forward to part 6

Ukraine (4) – Supporting Ukraine and Opposing NATO?

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People before Profit protest outside Russian embassy in Dublin

There is a second set of errors in what I have called the pro-war left, involving not only those who explicitly support the capitalist Ukrainian state but those who claim that in addition to this it is necessary to also condemn and oppose NATO.

A previous series of posts have demonstrated that the arguments put forward by Gilbert Achcar of the Fourth International are not consistent with a socialist approach to the war.  He and Catherine Samary consistently understate the significance of the role of NATO and the US, and in the case of Samary reach for arguments that are the equivalent of a magician’s misdirection.

The latter, for example, insists that the primary issue in the original enlargement of NATO following the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 was concern among rival imperialisms to retain some sort of control over Germany, and not opposition to Russia. (It is, by the way, relevant to note that Germany is now claiming its role is to take the lead in European security and what role other than opposition to Russia?)

This argument by Samary is not serious but inadvertently revealing.  The unity of Germany under NATO firstly required removal of massive numbers of Soviet troops, and the later enlargement of it across Eastern Europe nails any illusion that this was not an anti-Russian move.  A united Germany was a concern, but all the more reason to strengthen the European Union and further the project of a single currency.

NATO membership would further constrain the independent initiative of Germany as Samary appears to admit, which tells against any argument that Ukrainian self-determination, in the sense that she argues it, is compatible with the current embrace of that country by NATO; an issue she wishes to render scarcely relevant to the nature of the war.

Similarly, she claims that Russia was not under threat from NATO and that Putin’s main concern was with the colour revolutions against corruption, including potentially against himself.  For her, the actions of Russia must never be framed as defensive in any way or a reaction to western actions.  So, the possibility of taking control of Donbas and Crimea was primarily to boost his popularity while strengthening Russia’s international position.  This happened when it did because Putin was not previously in a position to be aggressive, while the earlier catastrophic collapse of the Russian economy in the 1990s and its diminished geopolitical power were the result of Boris Yeltsin and an act of Russian self-determination. The war in Ukraine today is not therefore a reactive one but an active aggressive war explicitly against Ukrainian independence.

Some of these points are correct in themselves, it is a question of how far they go in explaining the origin and nature of the war.

Once again the selection of relevant factors ignores the blatantly obvious anti-Russian nature of NATO and its increasingly threatening enlargement, all the more possible and unnecessary precisely because of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact; the collapse of the Russian economy due to Western imported shock therapy; US  interference in internal Russian politics in favour of Yeltsin, and following him the initial attempts by Putin to form some sort of partnership with Western imperialism rather than confront it as an enemy.

And once more the argument is revealing.  Apparently Russian shock therapy was an act of self-determination and since her false application of this principle supposedly adds legitimacy to it, we are left with the view that this was an internal Russian matter. Nowhere is it viewed as arising within and out of the class struggle within Russia, almost always implemented by internal forces, but often on behalf of outside imperialist powers and institutions such as the US, EU or IMF.

Yet nowhere is the loss of political sovereignty by Ukraine through the demands of these organisations given any consideration as impairing the ‘self-determination’ of Ukraine, nor are classes within that country assigned responsibility for the imposition of austerity, repression, and submission to the demands of the IMF, EU and NATO.  Neither is the development and growth of separatist tendencies in the east of the country granted any legitimacy through their resulting to a great degree from the repressive actions of the Kyiv government.

Instead, the growth over the years of support within Ukraine for NATO membership is blamed on Russian aggression, which is only partially true, but with no account taken of the reactionary Ukrainian regimes that have pushed membership even when the majority of the Ukrainian people opposed it, or been so divided that its pursuit could only lead to deepening division and exposure to long-standing Russian threats.

The Fourth International (FI) In the shape of Gilbert Achcar has debated Alex Callinicos on the nature of the war here and here.  The international Socialist Tendency (IST) to which Callinicos belongs and which is represented by the Socialist Workers Network in Ireland, the political leaders of People before Profit, published an early statement on the war.

The IST is strongly critical of the FI’s refusal to condemn the intervention of NATO and its general disregard for its role. This leads them to make many valid criticisms and take a stand against NATO’s provision of arms to ‘Ukraine’ as well as to western sanctions.

Unfortunately, they share other positions with the FI that makes their overall position something of a contradiction.  Similarly with their support for Brexit it has the flavour of having your cake and eating it.  So, they claim that ‘for Ukrainians it is a war of national self-defence’ while ‘at the same time from the side of Western imperialist powers led by the United States and organised through NATO it is a proxy war against Russia.’  One is immediately propelled to ask – so which is it?

What is it from the side of the international working class – from those in China, India, Africa, Europe etc?  It’s difficult not to keep on recalling that Alex Callinicos wrote a book about Postmodernism, from which the IST position seems to be inspired – the nature of the war depends on where you are, i.e. reality is dependent on your viewpoint.

The IST statement says that ‘the war is both an imperialist invasion of a former colony and part of an inter-imperialist conflict between the US and Russia with their allies. We are against both imperial powers. We express our solidarity with the Ukrainian people, supporting their right to resist the invasion.’  Elsewhere Callinicos has said that the war is one of national defence by Ukraine and therefore is justified, and that ‘it would indeed be good if the Ukrainian people were able to drive out the Russian invaders.’

The only way to reconcile this contradiction of being both a justified war of national defence and an inter-imperialist one (and even this would not justify support for the Ukrainian state) is to claim that the Ukrainian state is somehow independent of western imperialism.  We have already seen in this series of posts that this is not credible.  Indeed, the IST statement itself claims otherwise: ‘The inter-imperialist character of this conflict is confirmed by the policy of the Kyiv government, which is to draw the West into the shooting war.’

So, the policy of the Ukrainian state is actually more reactionary and dangerous than that of the US and NATO.  So where is this war of national defence?

When it comes down to it, the approach to the war is not so different between the IST and FI, with the IST saying that ‘The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February was an act of imperialist aggression and a violation of the Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination.  . . . We express our solidarity with the Ukrainian people, supporting their right to resist the invasion.’  The IST thus have the same mistaken take on the demand for self-determination as the FI, from which all else seems to follow.  Except for the IST all else doesn’t follow, which is good, but only because that makes their position more contradictory, if better than that of the FI for it.

If the war really was one of justified national defence, if it were some sort of colonial possession, it wouldn’t matter from whom ‘Ukraine’ got the weapons to fight its war, providing it could retain its interests independently of western imperialism, but the IST doesn’t make this distinction.  Instead, Alex Callinicos says that ‘. . . the Western imperialist powers are instrumentalising the Ukrainian national struggle against Russian imperialism for their own interests.’

On this the FI is more consistent but at the price of complete capitulation to western imperialism.  The FI also proclaims its opposition to NATO, just as does the IST, but neither thinks its role therefore makes the war by Ukraine a proxy one fought on behalf of western imperialism, using its money, its weapons and for its political objectives.

Of course, opposition to NATO arming Ukraine allows the IST to avoid the charge that NATO must exist for it to play this ‘progressive’ role and that is no small thing.  But willing the end – a Ukrainian victory – without willing the means is deceitful.

What would be the result of a Ukrainian victory but a strengthened reactionary regime in Ukraine and a strengthened western imperialism threatening Russia even more immediately and closely?  And this assumes that the perceived vital security interests of Russia would not have beforehand led to the use of tactical nuclear weapons and the potential for nuclear conflagration.

The politics of the IST are not so different from that of the FI.  Both start from ‘anti-imperialism’ and the ‘right’ of independent capitalist countries to their own reactionary policies even if, as I have said before, it lands them in the shit.  Neither start from the independence of the working class, including from the capitalist state no matter what its form. Lenin long ago gave the answer to those who think they can combine an imperialist war with national liberation as we set out in a previous post. 

Back to part 3

Forward to part 5

What sort of Anti-War Campaign (1) – A question of tactics?

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This image is an advertisement for a Ukraine Solidarity Campaign meeting in Ireland

The war in Ukraine has revealed deep divisions amongst those describing themselves as Marxists, with references to Lenin and Trotsky aplenty and rebuttals against them quoted from the same sources.  It is however necessary to study this debate and read the references if you want to make any pretence at being a Marxist, while those who are not may learn why the arguments are important to human emancipation and an end to war, and not just this war.

Unfortunately, for some ‘Marxists’ this debate is unnecessary, as argued here.

The authors write that they ‘started by outlining in some detail the differences on the left about Ukraine. We outlined the now well-rehearsed arguments about: relative importance of NATO expansion versus Putin’s imperial project, supporting the armed resistance or de-escalation/no arms from the West, [and] is it an inter imperialist war or a just war against an imperialist invader?’

All pretty important in determining one’s attitude to the war you might think.  But no: ‘the discussion about how to build a mass anti-war movement on Ukraine should not depend on this level of argument involving principles and political analyses about history and the current invasion. No, building a movement here is about tactics.’ (emphasis added – Sráid Marx)

There are two aspects to this.  One is sheer dishonesty.  The movement they want to build is built on political analysis and principles, or some might more accurately say on their abandonment, but this is the less interesting aspect.

The second are the questions around what principles – that they no longer want to forefront – are correct and how they should be fought for, because the nature of these principles determines the nature of any anti-war campaign; something that should be obvious.

It is not possible to divide these aspects except conceptually, so it is possible to argue with people who will respond to the charge of capitulation to imperialism (in the form of NATO); and the charge of refusal to support an independent working class position (through their support for the Ukrainian state, its armed forces and its reactionary leadership), that this is simply not true.  These people claim that they do oppose NATO and do support the interests of the Ukrainian working class. But first things first, might be their response.

Unfortunately, these people will then continue to parrot support for ‘Ukraine’, the ‘Ukrainian people’ and the ‘Ukrainian resistance’, as if Ukraine is not a state, a capitalist state, and a corrupt capitalist state that socialists would not defend or support in peace but are asked to do so in war.  Likewise, the ‘Ukrainian resistance’ is made up primarily of the Ukrainian state’s armed forces, incorporating fascist units, with mass support for these armed forces in Ukraine making as much difference to its class nature as mass support for the British army in 1914 did for its imperialist character and its defence of Empire.

As for the formulation of principles and political analysis based on the ‘Ukrainian people’: is this people uniquely undivided by class, with their separate class interests?  Where did all the oligarchs go?  Is there no working class in Ukraine?  Did Marx declare ‘people of the world unite!’; call for the self-emancipation of ‘the people’ and analyse the origin of surplus value in the exploitation of ‘people’?  Do Marxists today call for ‘people’s’ control of production? Or does all this stuff have no application anymore?

Perhaps we are now being asked to believe that the interest of the Ukrainian working class is currently aligned with that of its state, which is aligned to that of NATO and imperialism, in which case the primacy of class struggle disappears when these forces go to war.  Marxism is fine but in war it’s first things first and this means it’s a question of tactics – ‘building a movement here is about tactics.’

‘All those fine analyses will have no impact outside a narrow group of lefties if we are unable to build a mass audience’ says the article, so it is a question of ‘how do we mobilise the biggest number of people so that we have an audience where we can put forward our respective arguments about the nature of Putin’s Russia or the role of NATO?’

So, what is the problem with this approach? – apart from the fact that it dismisses the role of principles and political analysis, which should really determine the nature of the campaign, its demands and its objectives. These unfortunately are dismissed as ‘a shopping list of correct demands’.

But let’s leave this aside for the moment, because there isn’t a single problem with it, there are many.

It is based on the idea that the task is to build a campaign on the lowest political level; that this is politically adequate, and then – having enticed this ‘mass audience’ into the theatre – it will thank you for telling them that they will be entertained by a different show.

It forgets that the lowest political common denominator is still a denominator.

You think this is unfair? Well in the next post we will look at the statements that justify this judgement.

Forward to part 2

Imperialism and Ireland

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In the last post Boffy alerted me to a debate he has had on imperialism, the last few comments of which brought up the question of Ireland and its relationship to imperialism, and it is on this I want to make a few remarks.

He asks – “Does Ireland today conform to the ideas portrayed in Lenin’s “Imperialism, of a colony? Has development in Ireland been held back, by foreign investment or has it been advanced?”

On the first question the answer is partly yes – at least the North-East of the country, Northern Ireland – is a colony.  It is a part of one country ruled by a larger foreign neighbour that has not been integrated into the larger conquering territory, witness the howls of rage at the DUP supporting a Tory Government when not the slightest notice is taken when this Party is lauded for peacemaking in Ireland by being in government.

A settler-colonial population has historically claimed superior social and political rights over the native population, including most importantly, the claim that it needs a separate state because the native Catholic Irish cannot be trusted not to discriminate against Protestants the way Unionist Protestants have discriminated against them.

Sectarian social and political practices have been carried out that have been variously allowed, sanctioned and enforced by the British rulers.  When resistance to this erupted, the British State employed its superior force, armed the local settler colonial population and facilitated some of the worst sectarian atrocities by paramilitary thugs based in this population.  In the worst period thousands of Catholics moved in order to escape potential pogroms.

Even today the marking of territorial conquest is expressed through segregated residential areas with flags flown and footpaths painted to denote sectarian control.

A lot of this is widely recognised but the label colony is avoided in order to legitimise the role of the British, the role of the colonialists and the role of the erstwhile resistance to this British rule which has now accepted the partitionist framework.  It is also less easily appreciated because the native population are white West Europeans and could not have been, and generally have not been, subject to the barbarity of darker skinned native populations in other parts of the world.  The Great Famine, an Gorta Mór, is a major exception.

An English leftist, working for a while in Belfast in the 1980s and attending a meeting, noted that the ‘war’ that was taking place was indeed ‘low intensity’ and comparatively few people had or were being killed.  It was noted by a comrade of mine that while this was true the conflict was remarkably prolonged and protracted.  The two are undoubtedly related, but it is also the case that the North of Ireland is a small place and scaled up the scope of the violence looks less meagre.

But for all the reasons that the North is a colony the Southern Irish state is not.  It is as independent a state as any small Irish state could be.  As I have noted before, the last trappings of foreign British rule, including the oath of allegiance to the British monarchy and ownership by Britain of certain Irish “treaty’ ports, is history.

Some ‘anti-imperialists’ reject this level of independence and want a ‘real’ independent Irish State, one that can only come from being what is called a Workers’ Republic.  In fact, behind this ideal of ‘real’ independence lies Stalinist notions of state socialism, which involves nationalist politics and nationalisation, in other words it is much more likely to involve state capitalism.

What it isn’t is socialism and a Workers’ Republic.  It’s also utopian because there can be no independence, in the sense of a self-determining autonomy, for an Irish State within globalised capitalism.  It also has no support, as the tiny level of support for the Irish State leaving the EU demonstrates.  As for a real Workers’ Republic, it will enjoy much greater integration and unity with its neighbours than the current Irish State, so if you’re supporting socialism in order to be a ‘real anti-imperialist’ and have ‘real independence’ you’re backing the wrong horse.

These considerations matter for the approach of Irish socialists to the fight for socialism.  Whoever thinks that anti-imperialism is the banner under which to organise the whole Irish working class has to explain what national liberation content there is for Southern workers who face their own state and not a British one.  On this score, the answer to Boffy’s second question – “Has development in Ireland been held back, by foreign investment or has it been advanced?” – is that it has been advanced.

In the debate, Phil remarks that “In Ireland the pro-Moscow Sticks (Workers Party) supported imperialist investment for precisely the reasons you give. But the choice was not imperialist investment or no investment. Completely missing from that approach is the overthrow of capitalism. Not waiting until some magical figure of output has been reached and the industrial working class has grown to be a certain percentage of the population. All thanks to imperialism.”

Ignoring the irrelevant flourish of the last two sentences, and the fact that we are nowhere near approaching socialist revolution in Ireland, as a real, concrete and practical proposal in the here and now, in the sentence before these, Phil will know that it’s not just the Workers’ Party that supports multinational investment in Ireland – everybody does!

As the political joke goes, the difference between the Official Republicans and the Provisionals is merely a matter of timing; Sinn Fein do not now oppose this investment.  And neither does the social-democratic left, in the guise of the small self-proclaimed Marxist organisations, who signal their acceptance of this investment by proposing only that the low corporate taxation especially set to attract this investment actually is 12.5%; that the tax rate does what it says on the tin and is not lower than this headline rate.

The real question at issue is whether the struggle for socialism must be prosecuted under the banner of national liberation.  Those who say yes have taken last years’ centenary anniversary of the founding blow for national liberation as the guide for future action.  As I pointed out in a series of posts beginning with this one, the 1916 Rising did not itself pose a solution to the division of Ireland and neither has any nationalist or republican struggle since.

A purely democratic struggle or revolution could on paper offer a solution to the undemocratic abomination that is partition and the sectarianism that passes both for the problem and the solution in the North.  A truly democratic platform would be enough to indict the colonial Northern state but what would it offer to Southern workers.  Even a classic capitalist democracy in Ireland would destroy sectarianism and destroy the power of reactionary unionism but it would offer little to Southern workers.

What is required in Ireland therefore is the strengthening of the working class, and the prominence today of foreign capital, and the country’s history and current reality of foreign state intervention, should make it blindingly obvious that the alternative is not any sort of nationalism, under the banner of ‘anti-imperialism’ or not, but the international unity of Irish workers with their class brothers and sisters across Europe.  The idea that Irish workers will overthrow Irish capitalism because they want to get rid of foreign imperialism is utter nonsense.  Southern workers won’t go to war to fight British imperialism in the North and they won’t go to war to drive out multinational companies.

The stages involved in increasing the strength of the Irish working class include building stronger and more active trade unions; cooperative production that visibly heralds the alternative to capitalism, and a working-class party that expresses the best impulses to political independence among Irish workers, no matter how under-developed that may currently be.  It also means clarity on the nature of Irish reality and the lessons to be learnt from the history of the Irish and international socialist movement.

Ireland – the Apple Republic part 1

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apple_tax_european_union_sept022016The decision of the European Commission to require the Irish State to collect €13 billion in unpaid taxes, plus a potential €6 billion in interest, from US technology company Apple made headlines across the world.  Special tax arrangements, which appear not to have applied the State’s already low 12.5% corporate tax rate, led to an effective tax rate on Apple of 0.05% in 2011 and 0.005% in 2014.  Two tax rulings in 1991 and 2007 allowed an Irish company to book Apple sales across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India in Ireland and attribute profit on these sales to a “head office” which was stateless, had no offices, had no employees and existed only on paper.

The Irish State has decided to appeal the ruling, as has Apple itself.  Apparently preventing the State from abjectly prostrating itself in front of Apple is an assault by the European Commission on the sovereignty of a small nation.  It supposedly calls into question Irish tax policy while the Government frantically claims that the ruling affects the arrangements of no other multinational.

The appeal is to protect Ireland’s reputation although being dragged kicking and screaming to apply your own laws without discrimination, while defending cheating other countries of tax revenue, is apparently good for it.  The appeal is to prove that the Irish State is not a tax haven although a tax rate of 0.005% would appear to be a decent definition of one and defending it would appear to be open acknowledgement of it.  The Irish Government seeks to defend its prerogative to set an (in)famous corporate tax rate of 12.5% but does so by defending a 0.005% rate.

€13 billion is a big number and is the biggest judgement in the history of EU competition law – the cumulative total of all EU cases involving repayment of illegal state subsidies over the past 15 years is less than €11 billion – and it has been imposed on Apple, the world’s biggest company by market capitalisation.

One explanation given for all this is that the Irish state is dominated by imperialism and plays its natural role as an obsequious supplicant to multinational capital.  This is ok as far as it goes but it doesn’t go far enough, either in explaining or in providing the grounds for an alternative.  If we start with the latter – an anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland to make the natural resources of Ireland the property of the Irish people isn’t a solution.

For a start, the main natural resource of Ireland is its people.  In fact the growth of technology, and companies like Apple, demonstrates that it is the knowledge and skills of workers which is the key to the most dynamic sectors of the economy.  So it is harnessing the power of workers that is the key to economic development in Ireland as elsewhere, not minerals under the earth or the factory building which house the most modern production.  The machines that power this production are obsolete within years; simple ownership of them does not guarantee the future unless workers not only own them but have the knowledge and capacity to continue to revolutionise their development.

Secondly an utterly subordinate role for Irish capitalism does not explain how it allowed itself to become the vehicle for depriving other European countries of tax revenue, which the EU ruling now gives the latter an avenue to pursue.  The ruling signals that although other EU states may not have liked the Irish State’s low corporate taxation regime, it was not such a problem if it remained relatively marginal.  After all, they’re all engaged in tax competition in one form or another as one facet of inter-state and inter-company rivalry.

The problem for the Irish is that they prostrate themselves disproportionately to the US, who don’t so much mind the role of Ireland as a tax haven since it is US tax rules which permit Ireland’s role of in tax avoidance and also still allows the US to take a cut if and when the profits are eventually repatriated, perhaps as a result of some tax amnesty.

The Irish State has thus put itself in the middle of a bigger competition between EU and US capital and however much it might be “closer to Boston than Berlin” and wallow in its generations of emigrant’s ties to the old sod, the Irish State is part of the EU.  Its facilitation of US companies through an effective tax haven can only be permitted so much success before the bureaucracy of the EU proto-state decided that it had gone too far.  The Irish are therefore not just functioning as a subordinate client to imperialism but play a particular role in inter-imperialist rivalry.

And it would be wrong to characterise this role as something anomalous to the normal functioning of capitalism.  Apple had over $215 billion in cash and assets sitting outside the US as of June this year, sitting there avoiding US taxation.  It has been estimated that this is only part of $1.4 trillion sitting offshore of the US, all avoiding tax and perhaps waiting for an amnesty and a nice big deal.

It has been estimated that about half of all lending and deposits originate in Offshore Financial Centres(OFCs), about half of which are also tax havens.  The Irish State comes in 9th on the list in terms of size of tax haven, behind the Cayman Islands, which is the largest, and Switzerland and the Netherlands, which are 7th and 8th respectively.  These OFCs account for receipt of about 30% of the world’s foreign direct investment and themselves originate a similar amount.

While the tax rulings in 1991 and 2007 were based on Apple’s proposals to the Irish State, there is nothing anomalous about this either.  The British ‘Guardian’ newspaper reported last Thursday that  “the government has effectively privatised tax policymaking and enforcement . . . a working group consisting entirely of representatives from GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls-Royce, Eisai pharmaceuticals, Syngenta, Shell, Dyson, Arm, KPMG, Vectura and AND Technology Research drafted what eventually became known as the Patent Box legislation. They secured a special tax concession worth over £1bn a year for large corporations.”

The EC ruling on Apple has been described as “a watershed” and liberal Irish commentators have argued that it’s a wake-up call – that the Irish State’s success, based on attracting multinationals through tax breaks, is not a strategy that will stand the test of time.  The Irish State and its apologists claim that their tax policy is actually an industrial policy, which should be regarded as a purely national issue, but if this were so then we would expect the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Jersey to be thriving centres of industrial production.  Their brass plate companies and those in Ireland shown how ridiculous this rebranding exercise really is.

Some states benefit from tax competition and some suffer losses.  The EU bureaucracy attempts to set rules that do not allow discrimination against European companies as if the European Union was one capitalist state, which it isn’t (yet).  The state aid case against the Irish State is not therefore a bolt from the blue.  Since 2000 there have been 400 state aid cases and 225 cases involving tax advantages across the EU.  The Irish State, as a fully paid up member of the EU, has approved European Commission investigation of the tax arrangements of fellow EU states.

In October last year the EC concluded that Luxembourg and the Netherlands had granted tax advantages to Fiat and Starbucks respectively and in January concluded the same in relation to Belgium’s treatment of at least 35 multinationals, mainly from the EU, amounting to €700 million that should be collected.  The EC is currently investigating Luxembourg and its relations with Amazon and McDonald’s.

Capitalist states therefore both cheat and enforce laws against cheating.  They both protect big business and tax it in order to pay for itself.  Mostly however they tax small businesses and workers to provide the services and infrastructure that allow society to operate and function, one that functions and operates according to the laws of capitalist accumulation.

Forward to part 2

A footnote on the pathology of imperialism part 6

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article-1246958-08136931000005DC-434_634x410Belfast Plebian

We sort of know from the historical record that there have to be potential economic rewards reaped by intervening in conflicts in the region, but as Syria has very little oil and gas compared to some of the others, some political scientists have concluded that the war must be about future access to fresh water.

There has always been more to imperialism than mere economic determination, there is the question of State of power and what that ultimately means. The politics of States in conflict concerns itself with power, yet political theory has trouble explaining what this actually amounts to. The working definition is that a viable State must hold a monopoly on power and no political regime can afford to give it up without a fight, so what is happening in Syria is a tug of war over State power. It is less about the type of regime i.e. a democracy or oligarchy than it is about State power.

What type of political regime comes to hold State power in Syria is of some importance to the people of the region but less so for the external interveners, none of them have democratic intentions or credentials, especially the democrats who form the Western interveners, the recent example of Egypt proves it. The western powers have been nearly coming to blows over who gets to sell the military regime military and police equipment.

Most people say they are sickened by politics, some complain about government policies, some about financial corruption, but everyone is sickened by the lies that come with politics. A few political theorists, for example Hannah Arendt cling to a romantic account of a life dedicated to public service or politics.  She respected, even admired, those statesmen dedicated to politics but still thought it necessary to account for the super abundance of lies that stain the reputations of them all

She once made an argument that philosophers, starting with Plato, had too much sway over our understanding of politics; that they held a negative viewpoint about it, and were too preoccupied with finding the truth to bother with the nonsense of it all.  She worried that if good people refused to care about politics the very worst would have their way with it. She felt that the European Jews suffered so much at the hands of Hitler and Stalin because they wanted to know as a people who took no part in politics. The philosopher Blaise Pascal explained the existence of the works about politics coined by Plato and Aristotle by reminding us that ‘this was the least philosophic and the least serious part of their life . . . they wrote of politics as if they had to bring order into a madhouse.’

What I found most interesting about the Lance Armstrong documentary was the part the intelligent telling of lies played in shaping the story. His story started out with one major lie known about by a few friends to get the cheating process started and it just got bigger and more elaborate.  All sorts of friends had to be inducted into a growing web of lies, new lies to cover up for gaps in the old ones. It is interesting, that I did not think he was abnormal in the psychiatric way of having a personality disorder until near the end of his career as a champion, until he started telling lies on national television about others including friends. It seems that abnormal behaviour does not show up much as any sort of failure in logic or rationality, or an inability to cope with life or anything feeble like that, rather it came to attention just as a proliferation of lies. People began to wonder why there is so much lying taking place.

If we follow the story as a political one, we can say that in democracies, political logic or rationality sometimes goes in the same direction.  A few lies are told to get things moving, maybe some lies are thought necessary to become party leader, then some more serious lies are told to get elected into government, and when in power the politician begins to tell even more lies and the longer they stay in government the more the lies accumulate, until in the end they are often denounced as an out and out liar. How many successful political careers now follow the same path?  The question comes up, why does the quantity and quality of lies keep increasing until the day comes that the public demand a fresh start in the form of a new government or a new political leader?

If we think about the Lance Armstrong case things began on a big lie from the start, although this is not always applicable in politics. What happens is that the rationality, or political wisdom is not well founded at the beginning and then quickly falls apart in a welter of contradictions, or the rationality comes up against the tough reality of the world and can find no solution.  When reason can find no solution the lies begin to substitute for the rationality. The more inadequate the reasoning is, the more lies come to dominate. This might explain why governments fall prey to the need to steadily increase the quota of lies, when the policies that seemed to be grounded in rationality are defeated by reality governments do nothing else but invent lies to cover for the failure.

Imperialist politics comes out worst on this score; as I pointed out earlier the very theories of international relations seem to sanction lying from the very outset. The plan by the western governments to change the regime in Syria has failed, so we are into the failure and lying on an epic scale phase. Recent history is about to be rewritten to suggest that the western governments never wanted to get rid of the Assad regime in the first place, that they never encouraged the foreign fighters, that they were only ever in this conflict to smash Islamic State.

It is still the case that terms borrowed from a relatively unproven science called psychiatry are not generally used to describe the political field. The language of political theory is very stale.  Going right back to Aristotle almost every modern science began with an attempted revolution against this one philosopher. The first to oppose his conclusions were the Astronomers; then the Physicists overturned his physics, especially Galelio and then Newton; then the biologists overturned his account of animals and plants, here especially Darwin. Then in around 1910 the new theories of mathematical logic, starting with Frege, and Russell dethroned his syllogistic logic and his dialectic of categories; it is perhaps surprising that the revolution in logic came so late on. Then closer to our time, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger opened up a tribal battle against the metaphysics of Aristotle or his first philosophy.

What then happened with the politics and the economics of Aristotle, was he not also demolished here? Well in one sense he was but in another sense he was not. The Englishman Thomas Hobbes made the argument that in politics ‘Aristotle was the worst who ever wrote’.  When it came to the choice of ancient Greeks he much preferred the historian Thucydides to the philosopher Aristotle. This estimation is prevalent to this day in that the realist theory in international relations claims to find its own inspiration in Thucydides’ history. However in the mind of Hobbes, none of the ancients were of sound calibre because they had no proper conception of what science is and it was only after Galileo Galilei discovered how to apply mathematics to natural things that we really found out what science could become

It was Hobbes who thought that he was the one in the best position to knock Aristotle down from his ruling perch concerning political and legal education. He hoped to have his own works replace the ones of Aristotle in the best schools and universities. One can also make the case that Adam Smith and his students intended to do the same thing with regard to the science of economics. There could be no science without the imitation of the mathematical method, this is what Hobbes taught. He claimed that his own deductive account of politics was the future because it was based on knowledge of axioms.

The difficulty facing Hobbes and Smith was twofold; Aristotle did not believe that politics, ethics and economics could become a science in the modern sense. This philosopher thought that in science you must let your expectations be determined by the object to be studied.  Some objects are more resistant to scientific research than others and these included human objects.  He did not say that knowledge concerning politics and economics was never to be had, only that the knowledge we do have does not have all the attributes of theoretical knowledge.

The second difficult is that the deductions made in modern social science owe their worth to the fact that the object being studied is skipped over in favour of delight with the method deployed in the study. The followers of Aristotle argued that the new scientific method was implicitly idealist, meaning that the conclusions that are reached are due more to the method used than the object to be understood. This complaint is particularly strong in regard to modern mathematical economics that many believe has lost sight of the object to be understood. Also it was said that if Hobbes succeeded were Aristotle had once failed, then how come hardly anyone beyond his own lifetime agreed with the conclusions he made concerning the nature of good Government. The books of Aristotle were taught in the best schools for 700 hundred years, those of his opponents barely lasted for 50.

The problem we find with Aristotle is not that he did not pass down to us a sound method for the scientific study of politics and economics, rather he did not tell us much about the part played by unsupported dogma in science and crucially about lying and propaganda in political life. The enemy of truth in philosophy is error, the enemy of rationality is incoherence or contradiction, it is not deliberate lying and its soul mates conscious deception, propaganda, advertising and the PR machine. You will not find in the works of the philosophers an account of how these important things came to play such a central role in political life. The small drop of knowledge we have gleaned from the unproven science of psychiatry is of very recent origin, although it might be of some use if it can give us an insight in the twisted world of lies and deceit.

Finally it is not the case that capitalism and its economy is not something that cannot be understood within the bounds of normal reason. There is a rational core in capitalism and even in imperialism that is predictable. We can go a long way in understanding the power struggles of States on the world stage by just following the money. However we have become so used in recent years to following the story of the successes of imperialism that we have forgotten that it sometimes fails. It has failed in Iraq, in Afghanistan and is failing in Syria. When imperialism fails we are often confronted with an aftermath of immense destruction.

This aftermath is also to be easily found in the three failures mentioned. It is the pathology of political failure that we have been concerned with here not with the rationality of the success. The pathology of failure is not just about violence and destruction it is also about lies and deception on an epic scale. And in one way the lies and deception are more important than the violence and destruction, because to move on to the next struggle you have to make people think the previous one was not so bad after all.

I for one am not convinced that the western governments have for one moment really accepted that they got things drastically wrong over Iraq, for a little while they merely pretended that they got it wrong, Tony Blair and George Bush made fools of us all, especially concerning the weapons of mass destruction. They can always offer the sceptical voters a revised or false account of the reasons for the failure, with the rider that we will get it right this time. Lies are very important in politics.

concluded

A footnote on the pathology of imperialism part 5 – sectarian war in Syria

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Sectarian STRATFOR Map of Syria

By Belfast Plebian

Over the summer months we were given to believe by reports in the western media that a more suitable, moderate army might be recruited and equipped to fight in Syria, the army of the oppressed Kurds. For a few months we listened to upbeat stories about how the Kurds were pushing back the Wahhabi fighters, of pictures of liberated Kurdish women not secluded in veils but dressed in military uniforms. This only lasted as long as NATO’s ally, Turkey refrained from attacking the positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PPK) and destroying the Kurdish People Protection Units

At the recent G20 gathering to discuss, supposedly, how to beat back Islamic State, we find the same western politicians standing shoulder to shoulder with the political leadership of another ultra conservative Sunni Islamic Party, only this time of a rediscovered ‘moderate’ one, the justice and development party or the AKP, led by what the English Guardian Newspaper likes to call Turkey’s dependable strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The recent election in Turkey took place at the same as a massive military onslaught on the Kurds was taking place, crossing the international border into Syria. The raid was so big that the Strongman had to go the Americans to plea for a renewal of his diminishing stock of bombs. The strongman is so committed to beating back the Islamic State their fighters were able to explode two massive bombs directed against the AKP and other non-sectarian political opponents during the election campaign

The party of the strongman supplies and equips its own legion of fighting Sunni sectarians across the border called the Ahrar al Sham. The strongman then ordered attacks on Rojava, the free part of Syria held by the Kurdish forces. It was reported in the Wall Street journal that Washington wanted it to be known that it was anxious to keep the territorial ambitions of the Kurds in check to fit with the interest of its NATO partner Turkey, and suddenly stories in the western media supportive of the army of the oppressed Kurds quickly faded away again.

It is generally accepted that Turkey is also buying oil and gas on the cheap from Islamic State. So it seems that the Kurds are not to be the West’s fabled boots on the ground after all. More and more the western governments are looking at Turkey as their agent of change in the region; we will have to wait to see how this turns out.  On the face it one might expect the western diehards to recalibrate their order of priorities, given that they have no willing army to substitute for the seventy thousand Wahabbi mercenaries already fighting and failing in Syria. The conflict is no longer a noble one, between the ‘just’, protesting on behalf of democracy and the ‘unjust’ who want to retain the dictatorship, it is an ignoble anarchy of competing local, regional and imperial interests all wrapped up in a frightful sectarian garb.

Syria is currently divided into at least four political territorial units. There is the part still held by the ‘Arab Socialist’ regime that is being backed by Iran and Russia. There is the part held by Islamic State that is being facilitated by Turkey and still being financed by sectarian backers in the Sunni Gulf States. There is the part that is in the hands of the partners linked to the western allies who still call themselves the Free Syrian Army, even though there is no unified army command any longer, and is endorsed in some fashion by the International Community i.e. the UN humanitarian agencies. Then there is the part that is in the control of the Kurdish factions, which have now to become self -sufficient. I don’t know how it will all turn out.

It should be mentioned that with this example I have only emphasised the strategic pact operating between the Western governments and the Wahabbi theocracy of Saudi Arabi, yet there is another side to the imperialist intervention, the pact between the Theocracy in Iran, the Arab Syrian dictatorship and the ruling element in Russia. The patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has claimed that Russia is waging ‘a holy war’ to preserve Christianity in Syria, a view backed by Putin. The Iran regime has called for a worldwide Shite jihad to protect the sacred religious sites of the believers in Syria. The Islamic Republic of Iran has rallied thousands of foreign fighters to protect the golden domed Sayyeda Zaynab Mosque of Damascus which is said to contain the remains of the granddaughter of the Prophet, and who is also the daughter of the martyred third imam Hussein. As many as 5,000 Lebanese Hezbollah have entered the sectarian fight, also thousands have come from Iraq, they all fight under the slogan ‘Bashar is not our concern, it is the Shiites.’ The India media report they think as many as 30,000, Indians Muslims could be involved. For every youtube video and facebook page placed by Sunni fighters there is another put there by the Shiites. If anything the Sunni foreign have met their match on the battlefield at the hands of the foreign Shiite fighters

A footnote on the pathology of imperialism part 4 – Wahabbi Islam

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wahabimages

by Belfast Plebian

The ruling authority of the Saudi Princes can be traced back to a pact made in 1774 between one dominant Arab tribe and a Shia hating religious sociopath called Muhammad ibn Abdal Wahhab (1702-1792). The encyclopaedia Britannica tells us that :

‘ Abd al Wahhab’s teachings have been characterised as being puritanical and traditional representing the very early era of the Islamic religion. He made a clear stand against all innovations because he believed them to be reprehensible, insisting that the original grandeur of Islam could be regained if the Islamic community returned to the principles as first enunciated by the prophet.’

The pact intended that the clergy would be responsible for all religious-educational matters and the Al Saud warriors would be responsible for all political and military matters, including spreading an interpretation of Islam devised by Add al Wahhab. Unfortunately he describes both Christian and Jewish believers as sorcerers and devil worshippers, although he saved his real hatred for the other Muslim sects ie the apostates.

I am going to defer here to a historian who has written on these matters. I have on my book shelf a best selling book that I bought about five years ago by a historian called Reza Aalan called No god But God : the origins, evolution and future of Islam. He tells us that if it had not been for extraordinary political circumstances, Wahhabism would have passed away as a marginal and superficial sectarian idiocy.

‘Not only was this a spiritually and intellectually insignificant movement in a religion founded principally upon spiritualism and intellectualism, it was not even considered true orthodoxy by the majority of Sunni Muslims. Yet it had two distinct advantages, first it had the good fortune to emerge in the sacred lands of the ARABIAN PENINSULA, where it could lay claim to a powerful legacy of religious revivalism. Second, it benefited from a willing and eager patron, who saw in its simple ideals the means of gaining unprecedented control over the region. That patron was  Muhammad ibn Saud.’

The historian of Islam then tells us some important facts concerning the alliance between the two men, some of it is legend and untrustworthy but what we do know is:

The two men first met as Abd al-Wahhab and his disciples were tearing through the ARABIAN PENINSULA, demolishing tombs, cutting down sacred trees, and massacring any Muslim who did not accept their uncompromisingly puritanical vision of Islam….Abd al Wahhab’s holy warriors burst into the Hijaz, conquering Mecca and Medina and expelling the Sharif. Once established in the holy cities, they set about destroying the tombs of the Prophet and his first companions, including those pilgrimage sites that marked the birth place of Muhammad and his family…they set fire to every book they could find save the Quran. They banned music and flowers from the sacred cities and outlawed the smoking of tobacco and the drinking of coffee. Under penalty of death they forced the men to wear beards and the women to be veiled and be secluded.’

Then when much of the peninsula had been terrorised ‘they marched north to take their message to the Sufi and Shi’ite infidels. In 1802 on the holy day of Ashura, they scaled the walls of Karbala and massacred two thousand Shi’ite worshipper.in an uncontrolled rage they smashed up the tombs of Ali, Husayn and the Imams, giving particular vent to their anger at the tomb of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima.

What happened next was that the Ottoman Caliph sent a massive army to annihilate the Wahhabis. After some fierce battles, the Ottoman army restored the old order, ‘the Saudis had learned a valuable lesson; they could not take on the Ottoman Empire on their own. They needed a stronger alliance. …The opportunity to form such an alliance presented itself with the Anglo-Saudi Treaty of 1915. The British who were eager to control the Persian Gulf, encouraged the Saudis to recapture the ARABIAN PENINSULA from Ottoman control. To assist them in their rebellion the British provided them with shipments of weapons and gold. Under the command of Ibn Saud’s heir, Abd al-Aziz (1880-1953) the plan worked…After publicly executing 40,000 men and imposing Wahhabism over the entire population, Abd al-Aziz renamed the Arabian peninsular the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia….Here there was no debate between Modernists and Islamists, there was no debate whatsoever. Nationalism, Pan- Arabism, Islamic Socialism- none of these vibrant movements had a significant voice in the Saudi Kingdom. The only official doctrine that was tolerated was Wahhabi doctrine, any deviation was violently suppressed.’  

Now here is another BBC  iplayer film for the reader to take a look, it is called Bitter Lake. It tells us something of the still developing story of the connection between western imperialism and the ideological politics of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. At about 25 minutes in to the film we are presented with colour film footage of a meeting that occurred at the end of the Second World War, in February 1945 on a warship on the Great Bitter Lake, a part of the Suez Canal, between President F.D.Roosevelt and Saudi King Abd al Aziz. The voiceover says and I am paraphrasing a bit:

‘No one could possibly imagine the consequences of this meeting…The King knew that America needed oil ,Roosevelt wanted to forge an alliance between American industry and the Saudi King…The king was aware that there could be dangers posed to the customs and religion involved…we will take your technology and your money and political protection, on one condition, that you leave our religion alone’

wahabbi1

The pact in a nutshell was that America accepted the centrality of an unreformed Wahhabi religion in Saudi Arabia in return for unhindered market access to the oil and gas reserves it required for its industries. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia represents an extreme form of what Leon Trotsky once referred to as the combined and uneven development of capitalism. A peculiar characteristic is the standing side-by-side in the same place of the very modern – advanced technology – and the pre-modern, ancient religion and barbarous customs

There is an aspect of this that is of some importance for our understanding of contemporary culture, the great divide between theoretical science and distribution of useful things. It is still the case with world culture that many societies appropriate all of the practical successes of science e.g. air travel, computer technology, phone technology, medicines, while blocking out all the theoretical innovations of the sciences that makes the many useful things available to everyone

This occurs even in America itself, most Americans are well clued into the various uses of technology, but a substantial number of them manage to completely neglect the theoretical claims of the sciences. The best example is the theory of evolution; in some surveys up to seventy per cent of Americans have dismissed it as real science. It is a happy accident that for such anti-intellectual people making use of the successes of science does not require them to know or care for the underlying theory. One result is that Wahabbis get to use modern technologies while screening their mind off from scientific theory, like evolution or the big bang. In our time we can experience the successes of science and technology without us making any intellectual effort.

The Saudi King and theocracy then decided that the Arab ‘socialism’ of Egypt’s Colonel Nasser was the new enemy to be contained. He had attempted to defy Britain and France by nationalising the largely British owned Suez Canal Company in 1956. The British and the French sent an army to take back the canal after conspiring with the government of Israel to instigate a phoney invasion of Egypt.

Hoping to take advantage of the instability in Egypt the Saudi’s began assisting the Muslim Brothers – who had been expelled from Egypt and from the other main Arab ‘Socialist State’ Syria. Our historian tells us that ‘the Muslim Brotherhood discovered more than just shelter in Saudi Arabia they discovered Wahhabism, and they were not alone. Hundreds of thousands or poor workers from all over the Muslim world began pouring into the Kingdom to work in the oil fields. By the time they returned to their homelands they had been indoctrinated into Saudi religiosity.’

‘Religious adherence to the Saudi model became the prerequisite for receiving government subsidies and contracts. The vast sums the Saudis paid to various Muslim charities, the foundations they established, the mosques, universities and primary schools they built – everything the Saudis did was inextricably linked to Wahhabism. In 1962, their missionary efforts gained momentum with the creation of the Muslim World League, whose goal was the spread of the Wahhabi ideology to the rest of the Muslim world…since the creation of the Muslim World League, the simplicity, certainty and unconditional morality of Wahhabism has infiltrated every corner of the Muslim world. Thanks to Saudi evangelism, Wahhabi doctrine has dramatically affected the religion of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mawdudi’s Islamic Association, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to name only a few groups.’

The next episode brings us right up to date. During the American led 1991 Gulf war to turn back the ‘Arab Socialists’ conquest of Kuwait, then commanded by the dictator Saddam Hussein, a small group of alienated Saudi aristocrats calling themselves al Qaeda began to agitate for to return to the original founding doctrines of Wahhabism and turned against the Saudi Royal family itself, for permitting the corrupt treasure seeking American Crusaders open entry onto the holy land of Islam. They then defied the historical authority of the House of Saud by sending mostly Saudi born suicide fighters to crash civilian airplanes into the Twin Towers building in New York, starting a trans-national holy war against ‘Crusader Imperialism’ that has spread right across the Muslim world.

The Saudi rulers have a political/religious interest in common with the west in seeking to destroy the last bastion of ‘Arab Socialism’ in Syria. Western hostility is based on the fact that the regime is allied to both Iran and Russia. However the fighting boots on the ground that the West requires are all too frequently boots supplied with the stamp of the Wahhabi ideology imprinted on them

Today when the Gulf States are asked to explain their strategy to inquisitive western journalists about the removal of Assad and his regime they maintain that they are only financing and equipping foreign legion fighters who are deemed to be moderate in their religious belief. They say they are not helping Sunni extremists and mention various Sunni armies and militias they are not assisting. The distinctions are of little importance for it is the Wahhabi version of the Islam that unites all the fighters directly or indirectly connected to the Saudi political-religious theocracy. The division of moderates and extremists is a disingenuous western spin on the Wahhabi ideology. Behind the endless strife between many factions, micro distinctions and personal rivalries, there stands an intolerant and sectarian ultra conservative ideology.

Those western governments most engaged in the frequent desert military interventions maintain economic and personal ties to the same Saudi political regime that is primarily responsible for spreading the ultra-conservative Wahhabi ideology across the world Muslim community. The Saudi Princes deposit billions of dollars into western banks and investment funds; they maintain investments in corporations like News International and therefore in Fox News; and they buy up prime real estate like hotel chains, gulf courses and other prestigious sporting assets. At the same time they finance Wahhabi schools, build hundreds of Wahhabi Mosques, insist that only Wahhabi trained clerics staff them, and publish millions of books incubating their own very conservative version of Islam. They are estimated to be spending about six billion dollars per year on spreading educational materials. In September it was reported that the Saudi King had offered to build 200 Mosques in Germany to take care of the religious needs of the new wave of Syrian refugees entering the country.  It may be a good idea for the German government to decline the offer.

This brings me back to war torn Syria. If the Western governments are unable to put fighters on the will resort to all the nefarious techniques of cheating and lying to all participants, manipulating political friends, making political promises they don’t intend to keep, blackmailing strategic allies, rearranging the order of imperial priorities, and even arranging minor carnival stunts like the revenge killing of Jihadi John to save face. Killings ground that they can control, then they will fail to realise their primary ends.  Licensing the Gulf Monarchies to supply a foreign legion of sectarian Sunni fighters is no viable alternative. However the sociopath political leaders of the West are unlikely to quit what they started even though the initial plan has been thwarted. They like this attempt to say to a confused public that we are still on top of all this.

A footnote on the pathology of imperialism part 3 – Libya, Egypt, Syria

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13920919000462_PhotoIThe violence and brutality exploding out of the conflict raging in Syria has a lot to do with the machinations of western politicians, following the rationality of the sociopath, only until now they have been unable to find political enemies and allies as gullible as found in other places. One probable reason for this failure is that all of the possible partners seem to understand that the Western governments should not be trusted. Many of the primary actors realise they have a common interest, so you would think it would be easy to apply the same routine logic to get to the same end as transpired in Libya, but this has not been realised in practice.

The declared interest of the western political sociopath seems on the surface at least to be clear-cut. First to unseat the political regime of Bashar al Assad; second to establish a pro-western political regime in what remains of Syria, a regime that will put in jeopardy the one next door, the theocratic republic of Iran; third to reduce the influence of Russia in the region to an absolute minimum; fourth to ensure that the political neighbour on the other side, Israel does not have to ultimately intervene if Assad looks like being replaced by something much worse.

Despite knowing the ends to be pursued, the conflict gets ever more confused and chaotic. What relationships do the priorities have to each other? Do they even form a rational whole? Can the priorities be changed in order of importance? Finally, reason can easily come to grief when faced with finding the means to bring into being the prospective end.

Something that is not rational and not yet completely irrational comes to fill up the dark space, something resembling the adjustments made by a sociopath when his plans are exposed to obstacles. The common man’s term for it is, of course, failure but imperialism does not recognise failure as a working hypothesis.

The Western allies began this entire political cycle appearing to be uncertain as to how to respond to the democratic Arab Spring. When it appeared to be happening in Libya they made it clear they were in favour of a popular uprising, so they acted to push it on and help it to victory using air power. When the popular uprising occurred in Egypt they were slow to make up their minds.

It seemed to the outside observer that the western governments were in favour because the reporting in the normally obsequious media was generally supportive of the democratic protests against the dictatorship. But those to the wise always thought the western governments were playing a waiting game, knowing the US government had been supplying the dictatorship with dollars and weapons for decades.

It turned out that the western governments were not in favour of plain old democracy in Egypt. They were quite content for the old military dictatorship to come back to power with a new front on the grounds that the evolving democracy was flawed by the presence of a Islamic Party winning the election. So Islamic extremism serves more than one political purpose, in this case it is a rational case against good old democracy.

With Syria, the western governments were more certain what they wanted.  They were in favour of the popular uprising and there is evidence that they had been assisting the opponents of the dictatorship with money and assets for some time. The problem they faced when things took a violent turn for the worse was the old stumbling block of the United Nations and the norms of international law. It was not just that Russia has had a strategic military presence in Syria for years, which could also veto a UN motion facilitating direct western military intervention intended to tip the balance in favour of the popular uprising.  It was also that the regime of Assad constituted something more than a just a personal dictatorship.

His regime was representative of a substantial section of the population, not representative of a democratic majority, but representative of a privileged minority. This meant that merely killing Assad the individual would not bring about the demise of the Baathist regime. What the western governments really needed was some private army on the ground.

So who will be the boots on the ground?

This has been the heart-rending lament of the western governments and their puppets in the corporate media for the past two years. The western governments have attempted to bring about regime change in Syria without it being their own boots.

They asked their allies in the greater region to solve the problem for them. So a free licence to make war was given to the oil rich Gulf States of the wider region, to recruit the fighters to make up a proxy army acting on behalf of the west in Syria. The weapons were supplied indirectly via the famous Lebanese arms dealers.

Just as the fictional James Bond has a licence to kill, the seven dictatorships of the Gulf led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia have a licence to recruit and equip fighters to do battle in designated zones of strategic interest as they already had in Libya.  It was Qatar that largely financed and equipped that one, in its early stage.

In Yemen the Saudi theocracy is fighting another serious war that is also being brazenly supported by the western governments.  What sort of private war made up of foreign fighters is likely if it is being licensed and equipped by the Gulf Kings and the Saudi Princes?  The origins of the Saudi kingdom may just tell us the answer.