Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 05:08:24 +0100 (MET)
Subject: M-G: War against Iraq averted (for now); reply to Juan F.


War against Iraq averted (for now); reply to Juan F.
[Posted: 25.02.98]

[This is sent to besieged M-G mailing list and to newsgroups.]

It's a good thing the war plans against Iraq came to nothing,
at least for the time being. The protests by many people in
the USA and elsewhere must have contributed importantly. The
imperialists cannot just do whatever they want.

In a posting on 22.02, "The desperate war plans against Iraq",
I commented on a forwarded posting by Juan F., as I thought;
in fact it was on two comments that he himself had added, and
he he's replied - we both agree on opposition to the war
plans.

The two things we're discussing, Juan - you took them up again
in your reply - are: Inter-imperialist rivalry (if any) in this
context, and the question of whether it is (was) to some extent
a matter of "blood for oil".

On the first point, I said that there wasn't much of such rival-
ry seen in this context, that Germany is quite obedient to the
USA and that Japan militarily is relatively weak. You replied:

>What I was talking about was the grumbling that started
>coming from Germany and Japan about being cut out of the deal 
>when Iraqi war "reparations" were being discussed because they 
>did not commit troops.  Parts of the German ruling class, if I 
>recall correctly, then began to push for a strong EuroForce 
>with power to be committed offshore if need be.  It never got 
>off the ground due to opposition from other European Union 
>member states who feared [....]

It seems to me the US imperialists sometimes are trying to
picture Germany and Japan, which today have as good as no
military potentials whatsoever to intervene far from their
own territories, as if they were still the big powers and
rivals to themselves of, say, the WW II period. This is not
the case, as a check-out, for instance, of some books on armed 
forces of the world will show. 

In Europe, the one among the medium-sized powers of today that's
in any more important way acting independently of the US rulers
is France, while both Great Britain and Germany are sticking
very closely with them as underlings. You must have gotten the
wrong impression altogether on this. Not even France today could
dream of "independent" intervention in the Midle East; the bour-
geoisie of that country was showing some (mild) opposition to 
bombing because of some economic ties of its own, no more.

Neither of those European countries today plays any role in the
world today that's even distantly comparable to that of the
USA - if and when there's military intervention, they may pos-
sibly join in, with some (perhaps even only symbolic) contri-
buting forces, no more. The discussion on independent European
forces (recently) have always been centred on the possibility
to defend against Russian (formerly Soviet) military threats
in Europe itself without being dependent on the USA for this.

In fact, there was a direct threat recently by the US defence
minister: "If you European states won't help us out in the
Gulf, then perhaps we won't want to help protect you any more
against possible Russian threats in Europe". *That's* the way
things go today. In some German bourgeois forces are "grumbling"
about "being cut out of" some "booty" from the Gulf, that's
rather powerless and "empty" grumbling.

By "blood for oil" you meant, you say, that it's better that
some people in the USA are thinking in *such* terms, on a pos-
sible new Gulf war, than "sorry 'we' didn't beat'em enough last
time".

Yes, absolutely! On this we agree. 

You mean an anti-war, solidaric thinking instead of a jingoist,
labour-aristocratic one - that of some people who're bribed by
some of the imperialists' superprofits into going along with
them.

But what I was talking about was something else: The fact that,
even if people's thinking, and opposing, that the imperialists
are out for "blood for oil", is a good thing so far, those im-
perialists are *not* really out for that. 

It's good that people are having solidaric intentions. But
they need to understand the facts of the present world as
well.

Present-day imperialism has degenerated so enormously far that 
it to a large extent *doesn't even want* oil, it doesn't even 
want industries etc. That is, some very important ones among its
leading forces don't want these things, since they "risk 
bringing revolution". "Not too many industries, too many wor-
kers, too strong a working-class!". (This only very roughly "ex-
plained" by me in this manner.) In this they of course come into
conflict with the capitalist process of making profits. But 
there it is, they fear the peoples so much that they'd rather 
destroy things just to keep on to their power in the world, to 
keep on to *some* (the bulk) of their profits. 

This whole thing is a very important factor in the world today
on which most of those forces which are calling themselves
"Marxist" are saying absolutely nothing - which once more
shows how completely phony they are. Not so few of them even are
supporting these arch-reactionary anti-industrial, anti-people
stands, under such pretexts as "protecting the environment"
(which this is not about at all) etc.

Long ago, when the KPD/ML(NEUE EINHEIT) in Germany was still 
Marxist, they wrote about it. And in recent years, I've made 
some postings on this theme too, based in part on what I've 
learned from that party. For now, i can only refer you and 
others to these earlier postings of mine on this subject. I 
intend to send more on it too.

Rolf M.

[For (ex-)M-G: This post measured at 5.5 kB]



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