First, not only do I not deny the apparent motivations as you outline below (which you are far better informed than I am) I confirm them as they sound similar to what I would expect. This explains the US move well enough - that for me is not the problem. The real question is historically what does this move made by the US actually represent.
>From asking this historical question, which is very different from finding motivation for what is done, we need to ask ourselves also a separate number of questions which aim to put this particular war into a greater context. In this sense we are not so much disagreeing but talking at cross-purposes.
The immediate cause for the intervention is in all probability as you present it, a "traditional" grab for terrorities in order to secure resources (classic imperialism expressed via a particular state and its allies in conjunction to forms of parrochial capitalist interest). I hope this is an accdeptable formulation of what you are saying in general. In this the US has often been brutual in past and also devious in getting its way and on the surface Afghanistan looks like a simple variation on theme.
S11 may be viewed from this perspective as a convenient excuse for an interest that was already formed for the area. The two combined give an apparent cause and an immediate cause, which seem to give a sufficient explanation.
Now, the particular charactisation of the war as handled by the great minds of the White House, if I am not stretching things too far, would from your point of view be accidental and idiot president served by a similarily endowed administration and apparently by like limited military minds.
For me this is not incidental, but an essential characteristic. It goes hand in hand with handling the intervention in a way that destablises the very regimes so carefully fostered as oil puppets. It also seems to follow on from the logic of the Gulf-war where in the last instance the US was faced with the possiblity of installing a new regime in Iraq and backed away from the prospect in fright (odd because the very nature of that war would have made this a fairly predictable problem). Now in pursueing new oil inspired venture, rather than simply straining these semi-colonial assets the US seems oblivious to the obvious threat its actions are posing - more to the point it seems committed to bringing them to breaking point.
In any Imperial policy this is usually avoided at all costs (grab one piece but lose all the others, is not an Imperial gamble lightly taken) moreso when there is not even another imperial force to compete with. This is very very odd.
Which brings me back to Bush Jnr (in Australia often referred to as, The Shrub). In his hamfisted way his international program seems to have but one aim - destroy international protocols and re-establish US unilateral actions as the final arbitrator (what is in effect santified by the Security Council and the veto in the UN). He has to be bellicose and crude, he has to be a runt fascist, for the essential cause is not oil, but maintaining world dominion for a single state against not other states, but an internationalising bourgeoisie. The fundemental contradiction is between an old system not yet dead and a new emerging system not yet fully born.
In this the particulars of Afghanistan (the particular type of conflict, the particular contradictions and gambles involved) make sense. Unless the US can establish unilateral action as the final judge, it is gradually being sucked into international civility which will inevitably down-grade its status (its freedom to be a super-power). Hence unilateral military action itself becomes an ongoing necessity, hence Bush has been looking for a milirtary show long before S11. Because the action is its own ends, because it does not have military objectives outside itself, it naturally has to foster a conflict which in its own terms is irresolvable (this is where the war on Drugs and Terrorism meet).
The US may win in Afganistan, get its pipeline, it may also be able to maintain its puppets, until the next self-inflicted crisis. In otherwards it has become an Ancient Regime doomed to crisis no matter what it does. In an odd form of recapitualation I tend to see both in US public opinion, politics and its internal social conduct as a return to its imperial origins, to the cowboy-like early imperialism of the 1890s (this is a strong impression, not an argument as such - the jingoism is reduced to mere symbols without intellectual content, very different to the struggle against "communism", or for "democracy" in an earlier age - cons but sophistocated ones capable of being argued which none of the present shomozzle is).
For us then understanding current events means understanding the oil motivation but mixed into greater historical contradictions. This view effects my understanding on just what we should be comentating on and what we should be raising, it especially concentrates on what we mean by peace in this context. US withdrawal without having resolved these deeper issues is not peace, it is a pause in a much bigger battle.
Peace as an aim - and it is an achievable aim, is not the end of war as such, wars will crop-up for a variety of other reasons, but the end of unilateral super-power aggression. I say this is achievable, not because capitalism has changed its spots, but rather this particular form of force is in its death throws.
Hence the political conclusion that the US has but two alternatives, wake-up to itself and embrace a real world governance of international affairs, or suffer a defeat and collapse of the whole Imperial enterprise (if not in Afganistan then in some future conflict). I much prefer the former, but unfortunately the latter seems to be what the US is locked into.
Hakki this may help to make my cryptic comments clearer, when I said that the most important element may not be what the US does or does not do. Outside the US, the political aspect is much easier to apprieicate - we need to destroy the alliance base of the US, if we cannot desuade it, then it must face the results of its unilateral actions alone. Tearing apart the international support for the US is at any rate happening naturally, what is becoming clear is that the very emotional arguments sustaining the war drive in the US are not cutting ice elsewhere, widespread cyncism and out and out opposition is welling up from the ground, even occassionally breaking out in the closely controled environment of establisment political parties.
For good reason niether the British nor Australian parliaments debated militarily joining witht he US, nor can there be public debate on the issue, but these are band aids, for nothing can stop the rise of dissidence (and much of it very far removed fromt the left). The humanitarian crisis will further divide the populations of the allies (it is already doing so), the racist hysteria whipped up here against refugees has already created a backlash, which cannot help but become mingled with anti-war sentiments. It is not only the hegemony within Middle Eastern states that is looking shaky, social and political hegemony within long-term military allies such as Australia is none too healthy either.
At a time when no substantial left-wing exists in my country, when the media has used unprecedented measures of pro-American propaganda and where domestic politics have turned dramatically in recent years to the right, when, in otherwords, things on the surface have never looked better for a US venture there exists deep cracks within the social frabric which had not previously existed. I do not expect the Australian public will accept using our special forces as murder squads, nor any casualities amongst our troops - the split between the state and the citzenry has never been this pronounced.
So my point is not disagreeing with your analysis but the urgent need to supplement it.
The other thing to remember, is that the international bourgeois class are not simply Americans transposed on a grander vista, indeed the dominance of America has been a burden on the other sections of this class which have a variety of national backgrounds and residual loyalities. American dominance in international politics does not serve them particulaily well, American exceptionalism (one set of rules for everyone except the US) does not give this capital sufficient room to develop and the criticisms of it are not difficult to hear, from Europe, Japan and elsewhere. It is true that at the moment though much of capital has escaped the confines of any particular state, a significant section of it has its hind-legs planted in US soil and is advantaged by this - this is the essence of the contradiction itself.
HAkki I apologis for another lengehty posting, and you must forgive me for not addressing the specific points you raised - my difficulty was my substantial agreement with them, besides which you obviously know more of the ins and outs of the oil topic than I could ever hope to muster. The real argument is about the level of the dominant contradictions (never an exclusive proposition).
Greg Schofield Perth Australia
--- Message Received --- From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 14:50:50 +0200 Subject: RE: "Drawing the Enemy in Deep" A Speculation
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: RE: "Drawing the Enemy in Deep" A Speculation
|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
|| [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Greg Schofield (...)
|| There are a couple a smal misunderstandings (granted that this
|| is based on a good deal of agreement) so if you forgive me I
|| would like to pick these details up.
And thanks for participating in this discussion which will allow us to collectively get to the bottom of whatever the hell the ruling classes are pulling on us this time.
(...)
|| There are other interests in oil, the archaic proped-up regimes
|| which act as agents for the old US oil gaints, is not
|| necessarily the way that modern international capitalism would
|| like it made available. Good as it may be for some sections of
|| capital it is not necessarily what capital in general requires.
It sounds like you’re saying modern capitalism doesn't like to do business with banana republics, proxy regimes, dictatorships, etc. Since when? What is Saudi Arabia? What is Zaire, Indonesia, Nigeria, Myanmar? Why have 11 US and 24 other Western conglomerates splashed out over $100 billion for oil and gas projects in the dinky dictatorships of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan?
During the Clinton years, US conglomerates encountered moderate resistance from NGO’s, the government, and congress when taking advantage of the lawlessness in the periphery of the global politico-economy. During this period, Dick Cheney became the flag-bearer and chief architect of USA*Engage[1], a coalition of over 300 companies of which 30 are active members, the principal being Halliburton (Dick Cheney, CEO). This lobby was successful in obtaining congressional and government support for lifting sanctions against delinquent regimes that its members had business dealings with, and in obtaining federal and World Bank funds that would further their business interests to the detriment of competing (non-US) companies and opposing governments (such as Russia and Iran). The lobbying power of this coalition suggests that it enlisted the government’s support at every level, such as the effort to bolster and win over the Taliban for the Unocal pipeline deal, the cessation of Syrian support for PKK guerillas (which allowed the construction of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline), the support for Chechen guerillas via Saudi Arabia to subvert Russia’s control over Caspian oil distribution, the promotion of Azerbaidjan to de facto NATO membership through the “Partnership for Peace” arrangement, and the Centrasbat military exercises as a demonstration of US support for Central Asian dictatorships. There is every reason to think that it was this coalition that was brought to power by last November’s vote rigging.
Bill Clinton is a multilateralist of the Zbig school. Zbig’s bigness is due, let’s remember, to his setting the Afghan trap for the Soviets. The master gameplayer who brought down the USSR then went on to formulate the thesis of a lopsided “Grand Chessboard” with only one king, where the game consists in keeping it that way: A “benign American hegemony” [2]. Zbig’s preferred strategy is to form regional or bilateral alliances that will give the non-US parties the feeling that their interests ar being looked after, and that they are the US’s “partner”. However, if the US plays well, all regional alliances including the EU will ultimately “expand the range of American influence” [3]. This is a game that the Great Conciliator Clinton excelled at.
Today’s GOP, however, hampered by a latent racist, Darwinist, and anti-intellectual (in a word: fascist) ideology, still practices old-style imperialism, or tries to. It commands and coerces, and frequently ends up backtracking with pie on it face. Its current Afghanistan campaign is based on the illusion that the dominance over this strategic area that Clinton’s “soft power” (a Zbigism) failed to achieve, can be had by brute force. Cheney made his personal fortune by turning Halliburton into a mini-state and using US federal money, US intelligence, and the US military to get what he wanted from weak states at the outer edges of the global system. He described the big prize he covets to some executives in 1998: “I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian”.
The Cheney-led coalition has been led to believe by its high priest that oil politics doesn’t have to be complicated. Speaking to the Cato Institute [4], Cheney said “The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is”. As for the political instability in those regions, Cheney said that he doesn’t “worry too much about it”.
|| I am not sure what is at play here, nor its ultimate direction,
|| I am sure that the post-war oil compromise is under pressure
|| from a variety of forces - the very thing that Bush wishes to
|| pepetuate may have avery limited sell-by-date.
The game is:
1. US dominance over Central Asia to prevent the formation of an anti-US coalition involving any combination of Russia, Iran, and China. This is Zbig’s widely accepted game plan. This involves, among many other things, setting up one or more large US military bases. 2. Protection of upstream US oil investments in Azerbadijan, Khazakstan, and Turkmenistan from Wahhabite fundamentalist "blowback" (the international guerilla terrorists trained by the CIA in Pakistan&Afghanistan, indoctrinated in Saudi Wahhabism and funded by Saudi oil money). These guys have their rear bases in Afghanistan and get their money through Qaeda. 3. Control of China’s and India’s oil supply, and making max bucks via the Afghan pipeline.
All of the above - not necessarily exhaustive list - require a stable, friendly government in Afghanistan.
|| What is striking about everything to do with Bush Jnr's war is
|| the inepitude, the lack of any decisive aims - it seems a case
|| of strategy following rhetoric. If the whole thing is viewed
|| ala Vietnam style intervention then we are looking at the
|| supreme capitalist state in action, the unity of national
|| financial capital, vast imperial monopolies and the US state in
|| a territorial acquistion - this is not the case. Nor are we
|| even looking at a desperate attempt to preserve the status quo
|| in the Middle East (the established territories) ala Bush Snr.
||
We are looking at a latent fascist mind-set trying to play the global game, and fucking up miserably. Cowboys trying to play Clinton's game, thinking they can do a lot better by just shooting the place up and grabbing the loot.
That’s it for now, more to come.
Hakki
[1] Kenny Bruno and Jim Valette, Cheney & Halliburton: Go Where the Oil Is, http://www.essential.org/monitor/mm2001/01may/may01corp10.html [2] Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Geostrategy for Eurasia”, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 1997. [3] ibid. Brzezinski advocated US support for EU expansion, which would prevent Europe from becoming so politically integrated that it could act as a bloc against US interests, while plugging in even more countries on a network already controlled by the US. [4] The occasion was a conference on the theme of “current and potential conflicts between US foreign policy and the liberty and well-being of American citizens”. Cato clarified what it meant by “liberty and well-being” and _which_ US citizens it had in mind: “the freedom of Americans to trade, invest and communicate with the rest of the world”. Jon Flanders, “Gas, Oil, and Afghanistan”, http://members.localnet.com/~jeflan/jfafghanpipe.htm