THE ONGOING deployment of imperialist forces in the region of the Arab-Persian Gulf has already reached a level unequalled since the war of aggression in Indochina. Tnis formidable multi-imperialist war machine is preparing to go beyond the stage of blockade to that of direct aggression against Iraq.
THE warmongers in Washington, London, Paris and elsewhere are attempting to outbid each other every day in making the most sinister and bloodthirsty threats. It had seemed that the days when a John Foster Dulles could suggest the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam were over. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The current debacle of Stalinism, paralyzing to a large extent the deterrent force of the USSR, gives a free hand to the audacity of US imperialism and its partners.
Parallel to this, what is at stake is the reorganization of the imperialist military system, the future of NATO and of an eventual integrated and autonomous European "defence". The United States wishes to illustrate its point of view in this debate.
Nothing can justify the complicity with imperialism shown in this conflict by the bureaucrats in Moscow and Beijing. Whatever the limits established by the "international legality" under whose banner the imperialist forces of intervention are parading while it is at their disposition, it can escape nobody that this concentration of US troops, with their impressive panoply of the latest destructive technology of the electronic warfare era, is being deployed for offensive purposes.
The imperialist hawks do not hide their true objective, which cannot be accommodated through compromise solutions — the crushing of Iraqi military power.
US seeks to reimpose hegemony
Their motivations are several. Imperialism is demonstrating, for the benefit of the entire world, that it will not tolerate the growth of regional powers with ambitions contradictory to imperialist interests. Practices which the great powers casually permit everyday — occupation, annexation, violation of United Nations resolutions — are strictly forbidden to those who are not members of their club. At a time when US imperialism feels itself more than ever master of the world, it wishes to make its military hegemony felt in the most brutal and peremptory manner.
It is doing so with all the more enthusiasm in the current conflict, where it is intervening to protect its privileged clients, the oil sheikhs of the Gulf, monarchies whose existence and maintenance is dependent on world imperialism.
The billions of dollars of oil revenues pocketed by these regimes, the most corrupt and anachronistic on the planet, are diverted from the immense needs of the Arab populations, of whom the great majority are sunk, like the rest of the Third World, in poverty and distress.
In the most scandalous and revolting manner, these billions are deposited or invested in the imperialist economies. They are, at the same time, put outside the reach of all subversion in the oil producing regions. At a time when world capitalism faces the beginning of a new recession, these sources of capital are all the more precious to it. The conflict taking place has moreover come at an ideal time to furnish an easy explanation for the imperialists and for all their clients concerning the developing economic crisis.
Once more, the oil exporters, the Arabs in particular, are designated as the source of evil in public opinion. This makes it possible to hide the fact that the tendency towards recession was present before the new Gulf crisis and that the "new oil shock" is considerably exaggerated, given the relatively modest recent increases, up until now, in the price of oil. This effort to intoxicate the masses, on the basis of warmongering and dramatic speeches evoking the war against Hitler, provides the justification both for the austerity measures implemented at their expense and the exception made for the military budgets.
The crowning irony of the affair is that the regime of Saddam Hussein has survived largely thanks to those who portray it today as a new Hitler and who, only yesterday, treated it as an ally.
The ferocious dictatorship in power in Iraq was encouraged by the imperialists in its insane war against Iran. It is only because of the support of the imperialists, France in particular, the USSR and the Gulf oil sheikhs that Iraq was able to resist the Iranian counter-offensive from 1982 onwards, and come out of the war with an unscathed dictatorship and a disproportionately powerful army. Where were those who today deploy their troops for the Emir of Kuwait when the Kurdish people of Iraq suffered a war of extermination waged with poison gas by Saddam Hussein?
The Arab workers and those of the entire world have nothing to gain from a war between the executioner of Baghdad and the potentate of Kuwait, supported by the Saudi monarch, and the Arab regimes in the pay of the latter two and imperialism — such as the Egyptian regime, currently being rewarded with largesse for its complicity. They must refuse to serve as cannon fodder in such a war, either for the ambitions of Saddam Hussein or for the interests of his adversaries.
But in sharp contrast to this, in the face of the imperialist intervention, the workers of the region and of the world cannot remain neutral.
Resolute fight needed
Their interest is to fight resolutely for the withdrawal of the imperialist troops, in order to prevent a carnage whose price the entire people of the world will pay under one form or another. In the case of confrontation, they must fight for the defeat of imperialism, to dissuade it from pursuing its policy of aggression against the peoples of the third world.
Revolutionaries must mobilize urgently and energetically for;
• the immediate withdrawal of the imperialist forces from the Gulf region;
• the ending of the blockade imposed on Iraq and the release of its overseas assets;
• opposition to all costs of military intervention, immediate annulment of arms expenditure and of austerity measures imposed on the masses.