Iraq and the New World Order

May 5, 2003.

"The new world order, with the United States as not only the mightiest power on earth but also the heart of the entire international system, has become a reality. For better or for worse, there is no stepping back from that now." [1] These words appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday in a review of a book about the U.S. military. For the sake of argument, let's suppose they are true. Whoever governs the US governs the world -- not, of course, by the consent of the governed, but by economic and political arrangements ultimately backed by the threat of military invasion.

Who is it, then, that governs the US and thus the world? Never have the words of Marx and Engels been more true: "The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole [capitalist class]" (Tucker 475). More precisely, the executive branch of government manages the world on behalf of the most politically powerful sections of capital, the dominant corporate and financial interests. The political group that runs the government, the Republicans in Washington, do what advances their own interests and those of their corporate patrons. They are not thinking small, and they are not thinking short term. They are aiming at long-range world hegemony. They want an Empire that will last.

It's not yet clear that the US will succeed in its conquest of Iraq: the resistance of many Iraqis to the American presence there is pretty fierce. But the goals of the conquest are clear. A recent article by Bertell Olman in Z Magazine lays them out [2] :

1) Oil: The Bush oligarchy wants direct control over a country whose proven oil reserves are second only to those of Saudi Arabia. American oil giants own none of this oil now. How much do you think they will own one year after the war? Direct U.S. control over Iraqi oil will not only put the profits of selling the oil and servicing the oil fields into American hands, but will also put the U.S. Government in a position to effect the price of oil by determining how much of it is put onto the market at any one time and to secure the dollar's position as the currency of choice in the purchase of oil by other countries.

2) Secure the water supplies - not often mentioned - with which Iraq is blessed and all surrounding countries are to some degree dependent.

3) Establish American military and political power in a major Arab country in the heart of the middle-east for an indefinite period to help ensure the existence of friendly governments and market economies throughout the region.

4) Provide a rationale to expand the military budget and with it the profits of the arms industry, which includes the oil industry.

5) Help make Americans forget that we lost the war in Afghanistan, whose main objective was not to remove the Taliban but to destroy Al Queda and capture Ossama Bin Laden.

6) Upstage the media attention given to the failure of the Government's economic policies (unemployment up 35%, stock market down 34 %, etc. and etc. since Bush took office) as well as the high level financial scandals in which both Bush and Cheney have been implicated.

7) Create an atmosphere of permanent crisis with its side-bars of fear and patriotism that will help the GOP to push through the rest of its ultra-conservative political agenda and win the next presidential election.

Well what about that "ultra-conservative political agenda" for the domestic front? The international and the domestic are, of course, connected. An article by David Moberg which was read recently on this program by the Well-read Red makes this clear: How is the war, the reconstruction of Iraq and the expansion of the military going to be paid for? Not by the corporations and the rich: the Republicans propose nothing but tax cuts for them, so guess who's left with the bill? But this shift of the tax burden to the less affluent has huge consequences. Government at all levels will have less money to spend on programs—including education, health care, legal defense for the indigent—as we know all too well here in Oregon. The money governments do have comes disproportionately from those least able to pay. So state and local governments are under pressure to cut costs and therefore programs. Huge deficits could threaten even social security and Medicare. As government services deteriorate, people are less willing to pay for them. And so it goes. The state withers away at the bottom, as a provider of human services, while massively increasing its capacity to project police and military power from the top to keep people in line both at home and abroad. If the Republicans now in charge continue down this road—and we are already a long ways down that road—the Executive of the Modern State will have dropped all pretense to be anything other than an instrument of class rule. Our job, as moles, must be to make this clear to people, so that these words of Marx and Engels will become undeniable:

It becomes evident that the bourgeoisie [that is, the capitalist class] is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society (483).

I began by quoting a NYT book reviewer who wrote, "The new world order, with the United States not only the mightiest power on earth but also the heart of the entire international system, has become a reality." A power of that magnitude cannot be safely controlled by a narrow interest group. One of those truisms that happens to be true is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Corruption is not order but violence. It is inherently unstable and temporary. It will not last. The only world order we can finally live with is one where there is no ruling class. This is the goal we must keep before us as we challenge the current regime in Washington.

I'm Clayton Morgareidge for the Old Mole Variety Hour.

[1] Dmitri V. Trenin, "A Warrior Nation to Keep the Peace," New York Times, 4/30/03, p. B8

[2] Bertell Olman, "Why War With Iraq? Why Now?" Znet, February 23, 2003.