1. THE present concentration of imperialist troops in Saudi Arabia, on the coast and in the waters of the Persian-Arab Gulf, the Oman sea and the Red Sea, is unequalled at least since the American war of aggression in Indochina. The fact that backup troops from Arab, Muslim or Third World countries — up to and including the Argentine military — have joined the mobilization, does not change its imperialist nature.
The leader and organizer of this formidable build up is American imperialism. Its first concern is to confirm United States military supremacy in a world where the debacle of the Stalinist states has left the US freer than ever to do as it likes. Today, the Third World has become the main target for their "deterrence".
The hawks in the White House and the Pentagon have found an ideal opportunity to decisively overcome the "Vietnam syndrome" which, only yesterday, checked their aggressive momentum. Grenada, Lebanon and then Panama were the stepping stones on American imperialism's way to recovering its role as world policeman, ready to intervene to prop up the imperialist order wherever it is threatened.
2. Preceded on this path by the Chinese regime, the Soviet bureaucracy is today a direct accomplice of the imperialist project. Confronted by very serious political, social and economic problems in the USSR itself, the Kremlin bureaucrats are today begging for imperialist economic aid. In exchange, as the Helsinki summit has once again illustrated, they have abandoned all opposition — however minimal — to the plans of their new financial backers.
This unprecedented collusion, a sign of the decrepitude of the bureaucratic system, has been made plain at the UN Security Council. The five "big powers" at the UN were unanimous not only in condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, but also in endorsing the blockade decreed by the imperialists, including legitimizing the use of their intervention forces to impose it. At Helsinki Gorbachev effectively acquiesced in advance to the American aggression which was being feverishly prepared.
3. The new imperialist crusade against Iraq has nothing to do with any "international rights" that it claims to be upholding by force. Even from the most formal point of view, so-called "international rights" cannot be arbitrated by the select club of big powers seated permanently in the UN Security Council. Each of these great powers can, by its right to vote, block any resolution from all the other countries in the world. Thus, the resolutions of the Security Council express nothing more than a consensus between the great powers.
No credit whatsoever can be given to these "upholders of law and order", who mock these same "international rights" blithely and every day. No credit whatsoever can be given to these "judges", who use different criteria depending on whether those who contravene these "rights" or those who suffer from such acts figure or not among their clients.
Their hypocrisy is utterly flagrant; there are many peoples who can testify to this, including in the region where the imperialist intervention is now taking place. Here Kurds, Lebanese and Palestinians know what to think about the big powers' guarantees of "international rights", not to mention the application of UN resolutions.
4. The imperialist powers' pretence of defending "democracy" against the despotic dictatorship of Saddam Hussein is even more laughable. How many tyrants have been installed and maintained all over the globe by the imperialist states?
Only yesterday, the Iraqi tyrant himself — whose regime has not changed its spots one iota — was still their respectable ally when he fought against Iran and didn't hesitate to gas the Kurdish population. Today, these so-called ardent upholders of "democracy" are intervening against Iraq in defence of an anachronistic regime that is at least as undemocratic — that of the Emir of Kuwait. And their base is a state — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — that is the least democratic and most reactionary (particularly in relation to women) in the world.
And this is not to mention the reinforcements from Third World countries such as Syria, Argentina or Pakistan, members, as everybody knows of the proud circle of "democrats".
5. Even the most pernicious explanation being sold to consumers in the petrol-importing countries — according to which the goal of the imperialist intervention is to stop Iraq from increasing oil prices — is in fact nothing but deceit. The present increases in petrol prices — the new "oil shock", whose real scale has been deliberately exaggerated — has nothing to do with the annexation of Kuwait by Iraq.
Iraq wants nothing more than to export as much oil as it can produce, a policy which could only contribute to maintaining low prices given that the world supply of oil exceeds demand. If there is an "oil shock" which is feeding speculation on the world market, it is caused by one thing only — the embargo on Iraqi-Kuwaiti oil exports decreed by the big powers.
Thus, those who are inflaming public opinion in their countries against Saddam Hussein as the devilish instigator of world inflation are quite simply pulling the wool over the eyes of consumers. They, and they alone, could bring down oil prices to their previous levels by lifting the blockade imposed against Iraq.
6. The imperialist governments, and that of Washington in particular, know that there are difficult times ahead economically. The Gulf crisis offers an undreamed-of scapegoat for the recession, the indications of which were mounting inexorably in the USA well before the Gulf crisis. The same goes for the austerity plans that several European governments are endeavouring to implement. The difficulties facing the capitalist economies, like those facing state-controlled economies that are undergoing privatization, are from now on to be laid at the feet of Saddam Hussein, who is accused of making prices zoom up.
Workers in the imperialist countries are being asked to make sacrifices in the name of the crusade that their governments are carrying out. It is the height of dishonesty: they are being asked to tighten their belts at a time when millions are being squandered to bring Iraq to its knees.
Social spending is being cut, but military spending remains intact — when it is not being increased. An answer has been found to fend off the pressures, based on the detente in international relations, for a drastic reduction in military spending.
7. The immediate objectives of the imperialist intervention are two-fold: reestablishing and consolidating the imperialist order in the Gulf region, and neutralizing or destroying the Iraqi military potential that is today threatening this decades-old order. World imperialism has an obvious and considerable interest in maintaining the oil sheikdoms that it has created or contributed to creating in this part of the world.
These states, or mini-states, dispose of far greater resources than they can invest in their own countries, which are mostly under-populated, arid and deserted, when they are not simply miniscule. Thus, in general, most of their oil income becomes "surplus capital".
Far from being put at the disposition of the peoples of this region where, as elsewhere in the Third World, poverty and unemployment are rife, these "surpluses" of capital are placed in the imperialist economies in the form of bank deposits, real estate or the acquisition of holdings. They also serve to finance the imperialists' budgets, such as the American budget with its enormous accumulated deficit, through the purchase of Treasury Bonds.
8. To begin with, the mini-oil states of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar were so many staging posts established by the British empire on the flanks of the Arab peninsula during the last century. The discovery of the "black gold" concealed beneath their land led British imperialism to establish states whose frontiers corresponded to the extension of oil concessions accorded by London to imperialist companies.
They also wanted to separate these riches from the populous adjacent regions, from which they were previously indistinguishable. The tribes who installed themselves there thus found themselves in a privileged position, benefitting from the royalties — minimal at the beginning — paid to them by the oil companies. In the same way, these tribes found themselves entirely dependent on imperialist protection, with their oil reserves well-guarded.
At the time of its "independence" in 1961, Kuwait had only 300,000 inhabitants; the "independent" UAE in 1971 had 180,000; and Qatar, the same year, even less. These populations were already largely made up of immigrants excluded from the profits reserved for the "natives".
The oil boom that began in 1974 led to a massive influx of immigrant workers, whose proportion reached 60% of Kuwait's population and 75% of that of the UAE. These immigrants live in very precarious conditions, subject to all sorts of harassment and discrimination. A majority of them, notably workers from South and South-East Asia, are there uniquely with a temporary status. Moreover, the "natives" themselves have very unequal access to state wealth and to the exercise of political rights, where they exist (only 10% of Kuwaiti citizens enjoy the right to vote, something that is symbolic of the situation with respect to other rights).
The notion of the right to self-determination, when it is applied to the privileged minorities formed by the citizens of these states, excluding the majority of those who live and work there, is a pure mystification. It is not about the freedom of their "natives" to live as they like.
In fact, it is all about their freedom to enjoy the wealth flowing underground all by themselves, to stop their workers and the adjacent populations getting their hands on it and about recycling the "excess" revenue that results from this state of affairs into the imperialist economies.
But in any case, whatever one's point of view on the applicability of the right of self-determination in these particular and limited cases, this right must mean first and above all that it is for the people of the region to settle their own problems, without external interventions that they massively reject.
9. Thus the invasion and annexation of Kuwait by Iraq cannot be judged through the prism of formal "international rights", based on the division of the world by the big powers.
From a revolutionary Marxist point of view, this question demands a political and social analysis of the actual events and the real stakes involved. Such an analysis reveals that the tyrannical dictatorship of Saddam Hussein has nothing in common with the wishes of the Iraqi people, and nor does it represent their true interests.
This bourgeois bureaucratic regime, founded on the physical liquidation of the organized workers' movement and all political opposition, as well as a permanent war of extermination against the Kurdish people, is attempting to annex Kuwait for its own expansionist interests.
The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq is a continuation of the same logic that previously pushed Saddam Hussein to invade Iran; this is why we condemn it.
The new invasion, moreover, is certainly a direct consequence of the previous one: having been bled dry economically after its long, mad military adventure against Iran, the Iraqi despot had no other choice than either to renounce his military resources and ambitions, and thus bring about his own downfall, or relentlessly pursue them by taking over Kuwait.
10. The very way that Kuwait was annexed is a good illustration of the sort of policies of which this act is the continuation. The invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's army was carried out as an occupation and not a liberation.
It has treated local workers and residents — both Arabs and others — with complete contempt, putting its own men in charge of everything. The occupation has been accompanied by rapes and plundering, to the profit above all of the privileged layers of the dictatorship's apparatus, and a massive transfer of goods to Iraq. Nonetheless, even the Iraqi regime's recourse to large-scale hostage-taking — a choice that reveals its own cynicism — cannot justify the imperialists' actions. The Baghdad Ba'athist dictatorship's seizure of Kuwait's wealth will not benefit the workers or peoples in either Iraq or Kuwait. It only serves to increase the privileges of Saddam Hussein's personal clique and to feed his megalomaniacal plans and ambitions.
It is therefore impossible from the workers' point of view to identify with the actions of the Iraqi tyrant and to support his occupation of Kuwait.
11. In the same way, the struggle being carried out by the Emir of Kuwait to recuperate his position is still less our struggle, even leaving aside the imperialist intervention in his support. Workers cannot take sides between the Iraqi despot and the Kuwaiti potentate. Their interests are trampled underfoot by both powers. The demand from the emir and his protectors for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait in the name of "international law" is being used today to justify the presence of imperialist troops in the region, all the more so because their governments have declared themselves ready to withdraw as soon as Iraq has withdrawn its own troops from Kuwait. The emir's demand legitimizes the embargo decreed against Iraq as a so-called "peaceful" means of making it respect "international rights".
12. In the face of the massive imperialist intervention in the Gulf region and the blockade of Iraq imposed by the imperialist powers, with the backing of the Moscow and Beijing bureaucracies, the central task for all anti-imperialist forces is to do everything possible to put an end to this strangulation.
Outside of the hypocritical claims of the imperialists and their allies, there is absolutely no doubt in our eyes that the same mechanisms being used today to asphyxiate Iraq, and which are being prepared to deal it a devastating blow, will serve tomorrow in other blockades and aggressions against real popular revolutions and anybody daring to defy the imperialist world order.
In this sense, we do not have the least hesitation in opposing all the imperialists' actions against Iraq, independently of the nature of the Iraqi regime.
We are for the immediate and unconditional retreat of imperialist forces and their reinforcements from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of imperialist fleets from the waters of the Gulf, adjacent waters and the Red Sea. In case of an armed confrontation, we are unconditionally for the defeat of the imperialist troops.
We are for an immediate and unconditional end to the blockade imposed on the peoples of Iraq and Kuwait, for the unconditional liberation of Iraqi holdings frozen in the imperialist countries, and for an end to the harassment of Iraqi citizens abroad.
We will work to build urgently the broadest possible international anti-war movement.
The level of collusion with imperialism reached by the Kremlin bureaucrats means that revolutionaries have to redouble their efforts. Imperialism must be prevented from dictating its law to the peoples of the world.