Iraq, Somalia ... Clinton's US offensive Why we need anti-imperialist movement
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
MORE ROCKETS on Moghadishu, missiles on Baghdad and threats by Clinton to 'annihilate' North Korea. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the United Nations has become a rubber-stamping agency to sanction the latest US military adventures.
The cruise missiles on Baghdad were widely interpreted as an attempt to boost Bill Clinton's sagging popularity at home. But they were more than that. The military offensive of the US worldwide has a precise political objective. It is far from being an outburst of militaristic irrationality.
Tariffs
What is behind the rockets and missiles can be seen most clearly in the recent G7 summit in Tokyo. There Clinton went on a big offensive against Japan, demanding not only that country's tariff walls come down to admit more US goods, but he went further and in effect demanded a restructuring of the whole Japanese economy.
In a TV speech he told the Japanese that their leaders were cheating them by forcing them to buy more expensive Japanese goods, and that they should end their high-saving and low-wages economy.
The G7 summit was far from being the victory for free trade and growth which the media portrayed. Indeed it was the continuation of the vicious three-way conflict between the US, Japan and the European Community, which is the reason why the endless 'Uruguay Round' of trade talks is never completed.
The US wants Europe to auto-destruct the Common Agricultural Policy to allow in American farms goods; it wants Japan to allow in its manufactures, and indeed to buy American rice and beef. US demands are endless and outrageous – the Japanese have got to eat more beef, and less fish and vegetables to satisfy US export needs.
Now what exactly has this economic offensive got to do with missiles and rockets? To see that we have to probe a little deeper into the economic offensive itself.
The background is the 25-year decline of the American economy and the rise of Japan and Europe's strongest economy, Germany. American predominance in the world lasted just a few decades, at least as far as its economy is concerned.
Borrowing
In the 1980s Ronald Reagan started a new scheme for dealing with this problem. Huge borrowing from Japan and Europe financed a big expansion of the US economy, but it led to enormous problems.
Budget deficits mounted and the US economy sucked in imports leading to a huge trade deficit. And high interest rates hit domestic industry. Borrowing is no long-term solution.
As a result Reagan and then Bush went for the military option, and this was spurred by the collapse of the Soviet Union. War, in Clausewitz's famous phrase, is the continuation of politics by other means. The US may be failing economically, but by using its military might it can set the political agenda for much of the world.
The frenzied military operations of the Pentagon and State Department make the US the key player in many parts of the world. The missiles on Baghdad are part of the fight to drive the Europeans out of Middle East markets.
Part of the political-military offensive is aimed at extracting tribute from other states to finance US global operations.
For example, it is now certain that the US made a substantial profit from the Gulf war, with billions being extorted from Germany, Japan and the Gulf states. The US military machine is being made leaner, fitter and cheaper – and others are being forced to pay for part of it.
Every US military intervention brings droves of diplomats, 'experts' and businessmen in its wake. The 'drugs war' in Latin American, utilising thousands of US troops to do useful things like wipe out the livelihood of thousands of Peruvian and Bolivian peasants, was all about cementing the whole region into US political and economic priorities.
Korea
The intervention in Somalia gives the US clout in the whole of the Horn of Africa. The huge garrison in Korea means the US cannot be ignored in the far east.
US military and political dominance gives absolute control of the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The world's key economic institutions to respond to the economic demands of the United States.
The timing of the new offensive is not an accident. The 1980s saw a big debate in the US political elite about how to respond to economic decline. The decision was to act now, to engage in a furious offensive, before it was too late.
The US offensive has been helped by the difficulties of its main rivals. Germany has become bogged down in the economic and political costs of rapid re-unification. This in turn has slowed down the European Community economies. Japan is riven with crises over political corruption, and has its own economic recession to cope with.
One thing is certain – the US military-political offensive will be pursued with utter ruthlessness. The collateral damage, the corpses which pile up, are of no account. The balance sheet is staggering: 200,000 killed in the Gulf war was just for starters.
Muted
Internationally the response has been very muted. When Reagan bombed Libya in 1986 there were mass demonstrations. Today there is hardly a murmur. This crisis of anti-imperialism in the West has to be addressed by the left.
During the Vietnam war, and even over the conflicts in Central America, the politics was easier to explain. There the United States was fighting liberation movements, which whatever the criticisms of the left, could be supported. In Iraq and Somalia this is not the case. UN sanction to these operations deepens the confusion.
But attacks on Iraq and Somalia make things a thousand times more difficult for real liberation movements in the third world, deepens the threat to Cuba and is a blow at the possibility of social advance worldwide.
That's why even limited protests against the current upsurge of military barbarism are a crucial starting point for rebuilding a movement which can, as happened during the Vietnam war, place real constraints on imperialism's freedom of action.