WAR ALLIANCE WOBBLES, PROTESTORS AMPLIFY US PROBLEMS
At the United Nations Security Council on Friday French Foreign Minister Dominic de Villepin openly rejected US pleas for action against Iraq in favour of the Franco-German plan to beef up the weapon-inspection regime in Iraq. Villepin's comments came after Inspector Hans Blix, despite US attempts to twist his arm the other way, gave the Iraqi regime a relatively positive assessment. A humiliated Colin Powell was left blustering as the pro-war camp drew support only from Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. Meanwhile the German council chairman Joschka Fischer, permanent members Russia, China and France supported more diplomacy.
The Security Council vote - coming after France, Germany and Belgium vetoed US plans to lend Nato support to Turkey - shows the Atlantic ruling class in disarray. Since taking office the Bush administration has sought to renegotiate the terms of international cooperation taking America's national interest as the explicit guide. 'Foreign policy in a Republican administration will ... proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of an illusory international community,' wrote Condoleezza Rice, in Foreign Affairs, January 2000. Since September 11, 2001, the US has sought to reforge the international community as an American-led 'War on terror', to the increasing dismay of their European rivals. At the Security Council those conflicts came to a head.
Without the Franco-German alternative there would have been demonstrations against the war, but the open divisions amongst the big five brought the protests into a new league altogether. European anti-Americanism, sanctioned from above, found its legs in more than 600 cities across the world: London - 1,000,000 demonstrators*, plus 30,000 in Glasgow and thousands in Belfast; Italy - 1,000,000; Spain, 1,000,000; Australia - 200,000; Syria, 200,000;Paris - 100,000; Iraq - 100,000 and even New York saw 100,000.
The leaders of the great powers have found it impossible to contain their differences, in part because they have less sense of the dangers that mass mobilisations contain for negotiating elite cooperation. Bush, Chirac and Schroeder have all talked themselves into a conflict with no idea of how to get out of it. In comparison to the war mobilisations of the twentieth century Saturday's demonstrations were a stroll in the park. But like the protests against the siting of American cruise missiles in Europe in the 1980s, public protest has accelerated the European breach with the US. For America, a bullish war-cry has been exposed as bluster. Tragically, that makes strikes against Iraq more likely: human sacrifices to US esteem.
* Police estimate 750,000; organisers' estimate, 2,000,000
NEW LABOUR ON A KNIFE-EDGE
It should be no surprise that the largest of the worldwide anti-war demonstrations was in London. The huge demonstration was a powerful expression of the self-defeating character of Tony Blair's war policy.
Although the demonstration was called by a coalition of left-wing, religious and peace groups, the overwhelming majority of demonstrators were from the New Labour voting professional classes. Until recently they have supported a right-on prime minister who has not stinted in exaggerating the problems of criminal violence at home and terrorism and instability abroad, he has also proclaimed his support for European ideals and backed the Kyoto accords over greenhouse gas emissions. Yet now Blair seeks himself to do terrible violence in the Middle East, pursuing a course which is, at the very least, more destabilising than maintaining the status quo. And in all this he sides with the White House gas guzzlers against the EU in what is widely perceived to be a war for oil.
It is precisely because the protestors give voice to the same reactionary themes of fear and anti-Americanism that underpin key New Labour positions that the anti-war mood is politically dangerous for Blair. Doubtless he is banking on overwhelming American force producing a quick Kosovo-style victory in Iraq to restore his credibility. But the tensions in New Labour's politics especially in relation to Europe are near to breaking point. -- James Heartfield
http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/james1.htm