Never say oil
Truth, it seems, is not just the first casualty of war. It’s also the
first casualty of preparations for war. In the days of open
imperialism, if a state felt that its “vital interests”, i.e. the
economic or strategic interests of its capitalist class, were at stake
it simply went to war. Certainly, at least if another major capitalist
Power was involved, certain minimum diplomatic niceties had to be met
such as sending a 24 or 48 hour ultimatum, to allow embassy staff to
withdraw but that was the only requirement.
After the Second World War the victorious Powers decided to establish a
legal framework for future wars. They hadn’t been so rash as to
promise, as they had during the first world slaughter, that this had
been a war to end all wars and so the UN Charter was drawn up.
Basically, this makes war as an instrument of foreign policy illegal
under international law unless certain conditions are met. States are
still allowed to go to war if they consider that their “vital
interests” are at stake (that’s the main let-out clause; the other is
“self-defence”), but they have to demonstrate this to the UN.
So, when the Bush/Cheney regime in America decided that the vital
interests of its capitalist class required the overthrow of the saddam
regime in Iraq, they had to come up with a more internationally
acceptable reason than the real one of wanting to control an
alternative source of oil should the Saudi princes be toppled and to
control territory where they could install bases near to both the
Middle East and the Caspian oilfields. Other UN members, some of whom
had their own imperialist reasons for not wanting America to take over
Iraq, would not have agreed. So the would-be aggressor states decided
to play the “weapons of mass destruction”
card.
Western
governments sponsor dictators around the world - and are responsible when
they fly off the handle
The US and British governments probably knew very well that
Iraq didn’t have such weapons and that the primitive ones it had once
possessed had been destroyed after the last Gulf War. After all, Bush
and Blair would hardly have sent their troops in to face certain death
from chemical and germ warfare if they thought that Iraq really had
such weapons. The Iraqi regime helped their case by dragging its feet
over the matter, but it had probably concluded (rightly, as it
happened) that America and Britain were going to invade anyway and
presumably decided that allowing some doubt as to whether it might have
some weapons of mass destruction was the only chance it had of
dissuading the attackers.
The Bush/Cheney regime couldn’t care a fig about the UN in his
State
of the Union address.In January Bush baldly declared that the US didn’t
need permission from anybody to go to war to protect its “vital
interests” but Blair, ever the unctuous hypocrite, does.
Revelations by Claire Short, who was a cabinet minister at the time and
supported the attack on Iraq, show that the British Labour government
was prepared to go to great lengths to try to secure UN approval,
including listening in on the Secretary General’s phone conversations.
When Short revealed this, the whole Establishment turned on her: how
dare she reveal the dirty tricks of “our” brave secret service! They
must be allowed to do such things to protect Britain’s (read: the
British capitalist class’s) vital interests! No doubt, they did other
things too, such as trying to bribe or blackmail African or South
American ministers and ambassadors but we’ll never know. Under
capitalism where a democratic principle such as the right to full
information conflicts with “vital interests“, it’s the democratic
principle that is ditched.
In any event, it didn’t work. The UN did not back the US/British attack
on Iraq, so they had to make do with invoking the other let-out article
in the UN Charter, relating to “self-defence”. Bush let the US media
put about the lie that there was some connection between the
saddam regime and Al Qaeda even though Bin Laden hated Saddam as much
as Bush. Blair let the British media put it about that Iraq had
missiles that could be filled with lethal germs and sent to rain down
on British troops in Cyprus (all the papers printed maps showing this
possibility).
It now turns out that this claim about missiles was untrue and people
are demanding an enquiry into whether or not Blair and his ministers
knew it was untrue and on whether or not Blair “took Britain into war”
on the basis of false or falsified information. But this is all a
side-show. It was not missiles of mass destruction that was at issue in
the war, but oil. In fact, all this fuss about the (non-existent)
weapons of mass destruction is a diversion from the real reason why
America and Britain attacked Iraq. Lord Hutton never even mentioned the
word “oil” once.
In this sense it is irrelevant whether the information supplied and
given out about weapons of mass destruction was accurate or not. This
was just the reason invoked to be seen to be complying with the UN
Charter. It was not the real reason for the war.
Of course when you don’t tell the truth there’s always a strong risk
that you’ll be found out. Blair has been. From his point of view, it
might have been better if he had told the truth from the start
that America and Britain went to war for economic and strategic reasons
related to oil; that it was a threat to their vital interests that the
second largest oil field in the world should be controlled by a
unpredictable and hostile regime such as saddam’s; and that they wanted
to install a more compliant set of rulers in Baghdad.
Once Iraq had been invaded and easily conquered (peashooters aren’t
very effective against machine guns, since that was the scale of the
difference between the two sides), and the saddam regime toppled,
Blair, Shaw, Blunkett and the other Labour leaders came out with
another justification for the war: to overthrow a nasty dictator.
saddam was indeed a nasty dictator but, quite apart from the fact that
this wouldn’t have made the war any more legal in terms of the UN
charter (the UN charter doesn’t outlaw dictators), this too can’t have
been the real reason as there are plenty of other nasty dictators
around. The Saudi prices for instance, but America and Britain did not
propose a war to overthrow them; they are allies and friends, nice
dictators. A nasty dictatorship is alright provided it poses no threat
to the vital economic and strategic interests of the capitalist class
in America or Britain.
Before Bin Laden was ever heard of (except by the CIA operatives
training him for guerrilla warfare in Russian-occupied Afghanistan),
two nasty dictators were running neck-and-neck for the most evil person
in the world. One was saddam Hussein. The other was Colonel (though,
surely, he must be a Generalissimo or Field Marshall by now) Gaddafi.
He’s done all the things saddam did, and perhaps more. But now that
he’s agreed to call off his challenge to US world domination (no doubt
he doesn’t want to end up living in a hole in the desert), he’s OK.
It’s against Britain’s “vital interests” now to call him a nasty
dictator. It is even rumoured that Blair’s next foreign trip is going
to be to Libya, so he can shake Gaddafi’s blood-stained hands or
rather so they can both shake each other’s blood-stained hands. What
hypocrisy!
But what’s so special about Gaddafi? Yes, you’ve guessed it.. He’s not
just any old tin-pot dictator. The power and wealth of his regime
derive from sitting on an oil-field, which US capital is anxious to
modernise so as to increase the world supply of oil.
The fact is that the foreign policy of capitalist States isn’t, and
can’t be, based on “ethical” considerations. It is based on what the
old 19th imperialist Lord Palmerston called “interests” and what his
counterparts on the Continent, Metternich and Bismarck, called
“Realpolitik”. The UN Charter is just a scrap of paper. All it
has done is forced governments to be even more dishonest about the
reasons they go to war.
Adam Buick
Socialist
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