CUBA SOCIALISTA. Revista Teórica y Política.
Editada por el Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba

05

Liberation imperialism? Imperial wars and the Precedency of Iraq

An imported and the people by an imperial war
into the body bombed „democracy“  

Sabah Alnasseri

Introduction

1. Since the fordist era the south represents a strategic depth for the handling of conflicts between and among metropolitan states, which was called deputy wars in former times. This is a dimension of the Americanisation of global balance of power, the most effective form of cementing, reproduction and regulation of national rule structures qua ex-territorializing of interest conflicts: waging war outside of the own rule terrain. 

2. Certainly all colonial and imperial states have their military conflicts outside, led in the colonies and in the international zones, but the war returned home in crisis situations and intensified competition pressure, as the case was in first, between the world wars and until the second world war: an organic crisis which led later to a hegemony crisis of bourgeoisie rule in the centres. 

3. The American fordisation means the reproduction of colonial experiences in new forms and thus intensified internationalization: Never again war in the own house! 9.11. 2001 provoke the fears of the polit-military classes in the metropolises highly that the „war“  could return again to the centres.  This had to be erased very fast from the memory of metropolitan species and be re-designed positively:  Fear of the attack of „outside“  and not the return of own muck production.  Fears functioned here not only disciplining in the sense of techniques of power, but as productive power of the militarization and re-nationalization, i.e. as racist, ethnical, moral, religious, gender-specific and selectively used and legitimized force relation: Ever the national state was not as popular in the age of the globalization in such a way as since the 9.11. 

4. The sharpness and the extensivness of war waging of the imperial north states articulate the feverous attempt of these States of not only localizing the war in the south:  It reveals the fear of the political classes before the fact that the event from the 9.11. in the consequence fastened from Seattle and Genova would raise know questions about the shattered legitimacy of these classes and about the organic correlations between the global crisis, neo liberal conquest strategies of strong states and barbarised conditions on a worldwide scale.  Questions, which should not be posed, politically articulated and might become culturally explosive. 

5. Thus the war against the so called global terror reveals itself as a war under a politically decoupled, economically criminal and ideologically medieval elite, all and without exception –  from Bin-Laden to Bush, Blair, Putin and CO –  represent the nuclear fusion of this explosive development, they tell the same fairy tale and hence write the same story.  Nothing in this formation points on a way out of the crisis, in the opposite:  they became a crisis. 

6. As every other imperial war the new war on Iraq began with a big lie. Not only the indicated general reasons (Iraqi means of mass destruction, terror connection etc.)  were wrong, but the constructions of the acute-threatening, absolutely bad were from the beginning hollow phrases. And what begins with lies, continues as such. 

Liberation Imperialism

7. In this war no fights should take place, no confrontations and no battles. The dead risk is up to the people. These should be then brought up under a occupied government to self responsibility and to self governing. But they must pay the price of the durable presence of the occupying powers in various forms and/or they practice their self governing with the political and military control of imperial powers. 

8. Likewise it should not become a war in the classical and in the sense of the anti-terror and/or the private war waging à la war lords, but a new era of the „strategic“ war waging:  imperial wars of “liberation”. War powers were “less” around naked death and destruction, in the opposite they stressed the straight humanitarian and civilian (sic!) sides of their warfare. This was legitimized by the self certainty, to have „Democracy“  and „Freedom“ on the own side and by the arbitrary recourse to “free” the suppressed, in their names the occuped powers spoke, whose will was absorbed and the war was led for their “liberation”. The suppressed do not appear on the political stage. Their agreement is presupposed simply and their will for liberation is usurped for the purpose of legitimation of the war waging. 

9. This neoconservative invasion and power philosophy, which knows to use the military advantage in their competition to other global powers for individual goals, should be finally bombed through by the creation of fait accompli with a self-righteous and imposed doctrine. 

10. I will try to reconstruct, as how this imperial project produced itselves politically, diplomatically as medial and how it was militarily bombed through and what are the consequences of this war on Iraq and the Region of the Middle East. 

11. A project, which contains both classical imperialistic moments and exhibits new imperial elements. The consequence of it is among other things a global militarization of the political culture, the media, the humanitarian work etc., which was driven in front since the Gulf war 1991 and since the Kosovo war of 1999. War powers gave them now a bio political face. Not around the hearts and minds of the people raves the fight, but simply around their bodies. The people are commanded, imprisoned and taken as a hostage of the imperial war of “liberation”. 

War preparatory phase

12. If it is true that we have to do with a new era of world politics in the case of Iraq and this due to the past development with a serie of imperial wars in the south, a dismantling of peripherial states and restructuring of their rule conditions according to the interests, expectations, conceptions and goals of imperial powers, then the Iraq war and the postwar order can be determined as a break, a break in the past development. 

13. If the Afghanistan war represents an appropriation of geo strategic and economic (both oil and drugs, the latter for the financing of secret official international missions) bases, then the war in Iraq and the post war order are fights for  collective expropriation and new appropriation of strategic resources in the broadest sense, which is contested mainly by four nuclear powers (Russia, Great Britain, the USA and France) and in that the weakest link, Germany, with view of a seat in the security council of the UN posits itself tactically as an anti-war power and was expecting through this certain concessions in post war deals:  Anti-war logic as an purpose-instrumental, profit-maximizing position in the concert of the fittest. 

14. The militaristic (broader)Nato strategy on one side, the diplomatic battles under the strong states and the political and economic differences in the integration and the exclusion of Southern States on the other side refer to the basis interest conflicts and to the imperial contradictions. 

15. On the one hand this is the ex-territorializing of the costs of the contradictions and interest conflicts from the own imperial states, on the other hand there is the conflict about different strategies of crisis management of global crisis situation, a situation, which  can hardly be brought under control through a certain state, nor can it be contained in a certain region or a certain field.  This requires collective, pluralistic and diversely strategic solutions. 

16. The arms and oil priorities, as the two columns of the hegemony project of the Bush administration supply certainly a very self-interested-protectionist and shortened answer to a complex crisis situation. Itself all metropolitans states are in fact united that both the interest conflicts ex territorialised, that the costs of its internal treatment of contradictions would be shifted upon peripheral states, the safety device of energy sources and commercial routes gains absolute prioritiy, and geo-strategic bases are to be occupied, with it ends certainly the interest identity between the Anglo-Saxon camp and the European mainland and under the national states of the latter. 

17. This is the programmatic border of Kautskys Ultra imperialism, which Lenin criticized once. Apart from the interest identity however clearly latent conflicts show up between the imperial states: The disarmament and destruction of Iraqi weapon industry (produces on the basis more differently, with one another competitive technologies from the metropolises) before the war concerned for example less the "pacification" of Iraq. 

18. The diplomatic scene was controlled rather by the competition around military-technical knowledge, over a strategic new positioning and around the employment of the military potentials. For it the twelve thousand-pages was exemplary, from the USA censored Iraqi disarmament dossier and the questioning of Iraqi scientists before the war. 

19. The dossier did not only contain the names of European and US-American armament companies and suppliers of means of mass destruction, but it concealed naturally much more. For the USA the UN inspections were already a phase of the war waging. 

20. The exposure of secret knowledge and of junctions of the Iraqi war machine served the USA and Great Britain to lower the assumed high war costs preventing.  Anti-war powers on the other hand represented the UN supervisors as guarantors of the peaceful disarmament and they transformed the supervisors into "human shields" of the security council and the international diplomacy. Meanwhile Iraq with its silent tactics expected not only to gain time, but also deterrence. 

21. The horror scenario was provoked from France, Germany and Russia with their own interests - which competed with the US-American and British interests - diplomatically. The war around Iraq developed so to a crystallization point of interest conflicts. In the post war order again it comes to a fight for strategic resources in the broadest sense and for competitive ideas on occupying. 

22. Belonging to the war preparatory phase is also the embargo imposed on Iraq from 1990-2004, which is in the sense of the post war order of central importance. 

23. I would like to approach it from another, up until now displaced perspective. 

Embargo:  Imperially forced mass murder

24. The embargo against Iraq was imposed in August 1990, in order to protect the Kuwaiti property, meant oil. Thereby Iraq possibilities of oil sales on the world market were blocked. After the “liberation” of Kuwait the embargo made no more sense. This has nothing to do more with the disarmament and control of Iraq. Why the embargo remained then maintains, particularly since starting from mid of the 90's and with the introduction oil for food program the oil revenues was controlled and distributed by the UN. 

25. In other words: The Iraqi regime did not have a direct control of these incomes and thus over quantity of the sold oil.  Accordingly the height of the incomes for the disarmament of Iraq was already irrelevant for a long time. 

26. The only sense lies in the rearrangement of oil production in favour of the allied, above all Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the USA: As the Iraqi contingent fell at oil sales to both former and as thereby these could double their deliveries, they could diminish thereby their war debts and set their reconstruction as well as its high armament in course, about which primarily American and British companies profited, and not least to finance the American and British military bases in the Golf.  The Iraqi people escaped thereby in the 13 years approx. 300 billion dollar. 

27. In addition to that the embargo led to de-industrialization, deregulation and debureaucratization with a simultaneous redistribution of social capital in favor of the clans and cliques. This caused on the one hand a ruralisation and thus to a re-feudalisation and led on the other hand to a grey -, law and nonregulated, urban economy, which depends mainly on day labourer, land and migratory workers, woman and children work, in short, a mode of production based on general slavery and exhibited courses of Pauperism and total pauperization of Europe of the 19. century. At the same time the number of the millionaires in Iraq increased tenfold. Depopulation in form of emigration, refugee and escape were the results. 

28. The embargo against the Iraqi population and the war document not only the absolute failure of international policy, illustrate not only the powerlessness and helplessness of the UN, but forces above all a social-chauvinist, imperial bio politics. In short, the embargo can be seen as a presumed, international mass murder program –  Hundred of thousands of children died at the consequences of the embargo evenly so many are crippled for the lack of medicines and because of bad health supply.

Old oil in new pipes: Cantonisation of Iraq

29. In the process of the war symbolic centres of power were occupied and economic and military-strategic zones were bombarded, in order to create a new property and control regime. While by a tendentious statistics of the murdered civilians humanized war was promoted as a medial event outwards and as a propaganda inwards, war powers tinkered at installing a form of the future administration.

30. The diplomatic tactics of the situation betrays beyond the current condition the attempt of a new order of the Iraqi state and the region: The neoconservative federalism means not the maintenance of the Iraqi state, but a cantonisation of Iraq, whose “unity” can only be ensured by a multiple control regime (militarily, economically, politically etc.). This does not rule out the installation of a formal, appropriately built up Iraqi „government“. 

31. The provisory government council used by the American civil Administrator Bremer is symptomatic. First of all it has more advisory functions than it could meet actual decisions. This meets still in fact Bremer with his right of veto, which can override the decisions stated by the council. 

32. Secondly, mainly the war opponents of the Iraqi opposition are represented in this council, whose members were appointed by Bremer. Third, the constellation created thereby is less political than rather ethnical-religiously, which must affect fractionating on the Iraqi people and on however form of state which can be developed: The ethnical-religious dispatching cemented thereby politically and thus conflict-loaded. 

33. The transitional phase of possibly two years could create the existing conditions for the further development in this direction, which can be reversed with difficulty, if it not comes in this transition period to multiple political shifts (resistance, politically effective arguments over the future of the country, concrete articulation of demands by basis-democratic forces etc.). 

34. What now occurs, political murder, internal parliamentary group fights for political supremacy, arbitrary appropriation of political key positions, acts of revenge of forces of the fallen regime, creation of gangsters -, bandit and militia groups to discipline the subaltern politically by the respective conservative and liberal groups of opposition as well as the forging of political alliances with tribalistic forces, which ought to help the social position of this conservative liberal forces to political dominance. 

35. Under a control regime created by occupying powers the economic basis of the state, oil, becomes shifted by the introduction of private ownership structures and thus the redistribution of this social capital in favour of war winners (such as wealthy annuitant Iraqi, British and Americans). 

36. Thus the regional weight of the state is not only weakened, but this would be a big impact against the OPEC, whereby possibly becomes its earlier end announced. Meanwhile a dollar zone could develop, an important location advantage in the global competition in this most important energy area of the earth.  The cantonisation means at the same time the revaluation both of neo-feudal elements on the inside and the position of the small states (gulf monarchies, Jordan, Israel etc.) and therefore an increasing pressure is exerted on the big states (Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia). 

37. The cantonised Iraq as alternative to Saudi Arabia means not only a military and economic shift in the strategic calculation of war powers, but also a cultural-religious:  The revaluation of the Iraqi Shiite Pilger cities in Najaf and Kerbela against the Sunnite Mecca, whose impact does not only mean a cultural hit in the face of Saudi Arabia, but against the sunnitic dominated Arab space generally. Politically this means a heavy setback for Arab-nationalist forces, is it shaped islamitic, pan-arabist, socialist etc. 

38. From this follows: Not the democratization of the region by Iraq would be to be expected, but a conservative regionalization of the cantonised state, that quasi monarchist and neo-feudal conditions dominate on the inside. These elements are not only favoured by that revaluation of the small states, but also by the tribalistic regime developed in the last (embargo)years in Iraq, on which the future political organization of the cantons supports itself. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria will voluntarily be subjected to the obligation forced by the precense of war powers: If they want to survive politically, then they must orientate themselves toward this pan American imbedding. 

39. This applies also to the Palestinians, who are to be disciplined military and politically by the „Road-Map“.

40. The war on Irag broke an axces, which was in the forming between Iran, Iraq and Syria – and probably Turky with its Islamic government – and which could have reinforce the position of Syria, Libanon and Palestine in face of Israel.  

41. In short: The USA and Great Britain are around their own national interests and this would be best to ensure in a weak, decentralized and in at least three zones divided Iraq. This would equal a civil war around power and zones of influence of rivaling oppositional forces, which makes the military precense of the occupying powers “on-the field” necessary. 

42. And this is exactly the goal, i.e. control of economic and geo-strategic bases and not the territorial integrity of the country, which means again a change of the equilibrium in the regional balance of power and means therefore further instability, makes evenly the American-British military precense necessary in the long term and pushes the region into an arms race.

43. Not the democratization of the country and with it the whole region is thus the aim of the occupying, as much more a long continuing crisis situation, which expands on several states of this region and provokes therefore further conflicts. This means, after the classical colonialisation a comprehensive restructuring of the entire region, within the framework of processes of denationalizing and de-terittorialization.

44. Last but not least: Because the occupying powers are systematically frgamenting the countray and provoking internal conflicts of different actores – also from the outside – so that no broader national and international ressistence could be formed agianst these powers, one has to demand the absolutly, unconditionally and immediately withdraw of the imperial powers from Iraq. Not the UN, the EU or whatsoever should step on their place, but solely the Iraqi people, who know their problems best, should manage their present and future in a collective, democratic and emancipatory sense. 

Result

45. We have to do here with a power strategy, which is infinitely open to the right (so-called the willing) and which aims at undermining and readjusting of the principles of the international and state politics (legal as territorial) and which implies dictatorship, authoritarian, archaic up to neo-fascist elements. 

46. This strategy aims at the inauguration of an authoritarian-democratistic regime, in which international institutions and organizations of the fordistic era are degraded to clean convoy, to unpleasant tasks and clearing up of dirt work.  Here a world power intends with the support of the willing a new restructuring by the creation of fait accompli with self-righteous and/or convinced doctrine, a neoconservative revolution in worldwide scale! 

47. Iraq, that is the experimentation field and the test attempt of this imperial strategy.

That is why: No pasaran!

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Mayo/2004