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The recent bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan are placed in context by the following two articles written in the early 1990s. Babu shows them to be an integral part of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. He also questions the use of words such as "fundamentalism" and "terrorism". In the second article he reveals the economic forces behind the Gulf War and urges Third World leaders to take positions: "they no longer have the excuse that they will be mistaken as pro-Soviet or pro-US. They can only be and be seen as... for the oppressed or against the oppressed".
THIRD WORLD CONCERN ABOUT 'HUMANITARIAN' INTERVENTIONS A.M.Babu PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE January 11 1993 Third World countries are concerned about the new US policy of "humanitarian" intervention which they see as a serious post-cold war threat to their newly won sovereignty. As potential victims of this new US posture either as "terrorists", "fundamentalists", "bandits", "looters", "war criminals", and now in the case of China as "cannibals" , or as any other suitably demonising epithet, many Third World leaders and intellectuals are consulting and debating on what actually lies behind this US/Western posture. The wholly unnecessary massive intervention of more than 20,000 US soldiers in Somalia to counter a handful of looters and gunmen is seen as a pretext seeking to establish a precedent in international law to enable the US to intervene in any Third World country in the future with impunity. Rakiya Omaar, a respected Somali human rights activist, formerly of Africa Watch, but now fired because of her opposition to the US intervention in her country, wrote recently in the Guardian (in London): "US military intervention in Somalia had followed a gross misrepresentation of the situation in the country". She and her colleague Alex de Waal, also fired, stressed in the article that "three quarters of the country is relatively peaceful, with civil structures in place" ; that the famine was confined to scattered rural pockets, and that "most of the food is not looted" . That Save the Children has distributed 4,000 tons in Mogadishu without loosing a single bag. Other agencies that work closely with Somalia suffer rates of 2-10 %, because they consult closely with Somali elders and humanitarian workers. In Europe a serious debate is raging among liberals and the political left on the true interpretation of this new US policy. Some see the Somali invasion as a public relations stunt staged by a beaten and discredited president who pardoned those who would have blown the whistle on his role in the Iran-Contra crimes. Others see the key foreign policy question in 1993 as not about Saddams and Somalia but about what to do "about the Americans". Is anyone in the world still capable of restraining American power? Yet others see it as an "imperialist police action" couched in the rhetoric of humanitarianism and human rights and mandated by a cowed and pliant United Nations. They allege that this is a new style of American imperialism, first perfected in the Gulf War. Those who support the new doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" argue that it is an appropriate response to some of the Third World dictators who shamelessly exploit the doctrine of their inviolability of national sovereignty to shield their domestic persecution from outside sanction. Third World countries view the UN as the new instrument of US foreign policy. The Secretary General, former Egyptian foreign minister, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, is seen as an agent of the US, who has allowed the White House to dictate the reorganisation of the world body "down to the appointment of its most senior executives". Sudan is feared to be a potential future target of US "humanitarian" intervention. Already the war in the south of that country, which has been going on intermittently since independence in 1956, is described as a war of "Muslims against Christianity" and the new Sudan leaders as influenced by Muslim "Fundamentalists" and engaged in a "campaign of terror and conquest" of their own country. This is seen as a media image manipulation to create a Third World demon of the west in Sudan's Omar al-Bashir. He is already said to be receiving "substantial military and economic aid from Iran, including military advisers and troops", and that "thousands of Mujahideen fighters have joined Sudan's jihad against the Christian south". This kind of reporting is usually accompanied by pictures of starving southern Sudanese as victims of the northern Muslims. All these, it is feared by the Third World are necessary ingredients for a US "humanitarian" invasion in Sudan. It is a well-known fact in the Third World that since the end of World War Two, every US president from Truman to Bush, has had to have a Third World leader as a demon. Saddam is still in power - will Clinton create his own demon in Bashir to save Egypt and Algeria from Muslim "fundamentalism", or will the left-over Saddam do, with all his maverick and tricky tendencies?
NON-ALIGNMENT IN THE POST-GULF WAR ERA A.M. Babu INQILAB Summer 1991 The Bandung Conference in 1955 brought together for the first time 29 Afro-Asian leaders of the newly liberated countries of the two continents - among them the People's Republic of China which had emerged 6 years earlier from a revolution which had shaken the world. The Conference drew up five principles which would guide these countries future cooperation and struggles. The main objectives of the new movement were anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism and in order to establish good working relations, the conference laid down principles of mutual assistance, of mutual benefits in economic and trade relations, of no foreign military bases in any of the member states, and respect for each other's sovereignty. All this became known as the Spirit of Bandung. This new Spirit projected the two ex-colonised continents on the world arena for the first time in history as a diplomatic force to contend with. On all important questions, especially that of the liberation of the remaining colonies, they all spoke with one voice and voted as a bloc at the UN meetings and other councils of the world. China was denied its rightful seat at the UN (because the US vetoed the application insisting that the tiny island of Taiwan legitimately represented China) but China's influence in world politics and with liberation movements continued to expand. The Soviet Union and the USA were, in the meantime, locked in a life-and-death struggle to attain nuclear parity. After exploding the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended World War II in 1945, the US began to flex its muscles and was bent on using nuclear blackmail to advance its objectives of economic and diplomatic domination of the world. To counter this the Soviet Union in turn embarked on developing nuclear capability and the means of its delivery. The race was on. Once the Superpowers attained parity in armaments and means of delivery, the threat of nuclear blackmail receded. Britain, France and China later developed their own independent nuclear capability but because of their limited size they could not pose a threat to world peace or embark on the diplomacy of nuclear blackmail. The passive approach to diplomacy As the struggle between the Superpowers continued to gain momentum and the establishment of military pacts and bases continued to spread, the Bandung countries sought to establish a new morality in international politics.This morality emphasized reliance on diplomacy rather than on force as a means of resolving international disputes. To be effective in this approach the Bandung countries had to be seen to be neutral in superpower struggles. Thus the doctrine of "non-alignment" or "positive neutrality", was born. The emphasis was henceforth to be on co-operation and reconciliation, even with imperialism, rather than confrontation. China backed out of this passive approach to diplomacy, arguing that the relationship between poor countries and the rich was one of exploitation and not a relation of equals. Only vigilance and unrelenting struggle would ensure the survival of the oppressed countries and enable them to develop the capacity to put their countries on a path of genuine progress and national independence. Oppressed countries could not co-exist with imperialism which must be opposed and resisted by every means possible, including force. However, practically all of the "non-aligned" countries were already aligned with the West in all but name. Instead of developing independent national economies, they were all tied as appendages to Western economies, and consequently what scientific and technical development that came our way was of the kind that was designed to serve already developed countries and therefore unsuited to our real development needs. Every effort at development by the "non-aligned" countries, consequently, resulted in impoverishing their economies and their people while enriching Western economies. The more these countries resorted to borrowing from Western banks and governments in order to make up for what had been extracted from their economies to the rich coffers of the West, the more their independence was compromised. Stuck to their diplomacy of "co-operation and reconciliation", they continually gave up not only their national prestige, but in many ways their sovereignty too was gradually being eroded. Diplomacy of "reconciliation and co-operation" became diplomacy of "compromise and capitulation". Henceforth, poverty became the hallmark of these countries and they came to be known collectively as the "poor countries". Their diplomacy correspondingly made a 180-degree-turn, from that of challenge to that of "accommodation". Without real independence and national prestige the diplomacy of the Bandung Spirit disappeared; instead of being a diplomatic force to be reckoned with as envisaged in Bandung, they became collectively at best a diplomatic nuisance. By the 1970s, "non-aligned" countries' economies became even worse, as Europe and Japan were emerging as new world powers at the expense of Africa and Asia respectively. Cheap African resources, extracted at considerable cost to African people's well-being, supplied Europe's re-industrialisation, and the meager foreign exchange which went back to the continent was immediately squandered away in the importation of useless manufactured goods, from luxury goods for the elite to trinkets of one kind or another. The same was true for Asia vis-a-vis Japan, with the exception of the so-called Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs) which were reduced to the role of staging centers in Asia for Japanese and US multinational corporations' manufacturing enterprises in the area, utilizing Asian cheap labour and market outlets in the region for their products. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc The Soviet Bloc in the mean time was being pushed out of the center of world economic activity. With the "non-aligned" countries firmly siding with the West in everything except the rhetoric of non-alignment, and the US stepping up its economic boycott of socialist countries, the Soviet Bloc could not participate in the dynamic economic development of the 1960s and 1970s that the West was going through. The nature of the Soviet economic model, handed down from the Stalin era, emphasized heavy industry at the expense of light industry and agriculture - or in Marxist terms emphasized Department I at the expense of Department II. This denied the Soviet economies the benefits of light industries and agriculture; ie., rapid production turnover, profitability, innovation in technologies which serve people's immediate needs, a market for heavy industry and, most important of all, rising standards of living of their people. The Soviet Union, thanks to its massive nuclear arsenal remained a superpower without a superpower economy. The collapse of such an economy was predictable. The Chinese foresaw it way back in 1965 when they pointed out the imbalances inherent in the Soviet model (1). The success of the counter revolution in the Socialist Bloc was the result of a combination of various factors but the principal one was the economic mess. The "Reformers" made the situation even worse by rushing to adopt and implement the "free market" model in economies which were based fundamentally on diametrically opposite principles and economic laws. Having been left out of European dynamic development; seeing their standard of living worsening; prompted and encouraged by Western propaganda and intelligence operatives, the East European masses revolted and wanted to be joined to the rest of Europe before the 1992 European economic unification. Unfortunately for them, it is not going to be an easy passage. In all likelihood, Eastern Europe will become the focus of massive exploitation for a long time to come, while Europe will be plunged into a prolonged period of economic and political instability with Germany, the industrial giant of Europe playing a dominant role. With the virtual collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the Cold War came to an end in favour of the West, and especially the US. The post war bipolarity in world affairs which to a certain extent worked in favour of "non-aligned" countries, was replaced by a unipolar world dominated and often dictated to by the US. The Soviet Union, the erstwhile Superpower, has been reduced to the status of a by-stander, helplessly witnessing world events take a momentous turn while its diplomats tour Western capitals, from US, Japan and Germany, right down to Spain in search of financial aid. Nowhere has this pathetic spectacle been more humiliatingly obvious than in the recent Gulf crisis. The US conceived, initiated and executed the war in the Gulf with the virtual connivance of the Soviet Union, inspite of the fact that it was obvious to everybody that America was using the UN to advance its imperialist interests. Why the Gulf War happened To understand this phenomena, we must begin by defining what the Gulf War was not about. Anglo-American propaganda kept harping on that the war was being fought on behalf of the United Nations and of the "international community" in order to restore respect for international law, to "punish aggressor Iraq" and to reestablish the "legitimate" rulers of Kuwait to their throne. This was utter rubbish. Before the notorious UN Security Council Resolution 678 (which was interpreted as authorising the Americans and their allies to use force) was rammed through, the Americans had already rushed scores of thousands of their soldiers and equipment to Saudi Arabia to "prevent Iraq from occupying" that country. In other words, the transfer of massive US forces to Saudi Arabia was a bilateral arrangement between the two countries to defend Saudi Arabia. It had nothing to do with liberating Kuwait, nothing to do with UN resolutions and much less to do with safeguarding international law. Soon after when the event had turned into a bloody war, it was clear that by rushing troops and deadly weapons to the area, the US had initiated the first step to war long before anybody thought of Resolution 678. That is to say US imperialism had made up its mind to fight Iraq with or without UN support. And if Iraq had been a military lightweight like Grenada or Panama, past experience has shown that the US would have attacked the country without bothering to go to the UN. We can therefore discount the notion that the US was fighting Iraq in order to restore respect for international law. That was not the purpose or motive of this war. In fact the 'International Community', on whose behalf the US was ostensibly fighting this war, cannot trust the US with the task of policing the world when the policeman's own record for breaking international law has long since reached scandalous proportions. If the US was not fighting to restore international order, then it must have been fighting to safeguard its own global military strategic interests vis-a-vis the other Superpower. Not at all. As we have seen these considerations were relevant during the era of bipolarity in world politics but not now. In a uni-polar world the Middle East has lost its strategic significance militarily. Well, did Bush killing Iraqis in order to bring about a New World Order, as he has proclaimed? Not on your life! The beyond-the-war rhetoric garbage is the standard stock-in-trade of the imperialists when they enter any predatory war. On the eve of every major imperialist war the world has been bombarded with such high-sounding "visions". US President Woodrow Wilson entered World War I in 1917 with the declaration that the US intervention in the war would "establish a new world of harmony", democracy, and self-determination, secured by the League of Nations. We know what happened after that war! There was neither harmony, nor democracy or self- determination; only their opposites emerged with the advent of fascism and Nazism. Franklin Roosevelt, the US President during World War II, entered that war by declaring that out of the ruins of the war would emerge a "concert of great powers, institutionalised in the Security Council, and dedicated to the maintenance of global order and security". Instead throughout the post-World War II era, the US used the UN as an instrument for advancing US foreign policy interests which included bullying third world countries which resisted US domination. Harry Truman, post-World War II US President, on the eve of the US's war of aggression against the Korean people, declared that his "determination to phase down aggression would set an example that would deter future aggression". John Kennedy too made similar rhetoric to start aggression against the Vietnamese people, and so did Lyndon Johnson in his own Texan style to justify further intensification of this aggression. The American masses have always been bamboozled into going to war and dying for imperialism with their eyes fixed on the future and not on the torments they inflict in the present. What Bush is saying is not new. The world has heard it before. It is obvious even to a child of ten that Bush could not have been laying the foundations for a "New World Order" by attempting to bombard the Iraqis out of existence - which is what is meant by the American phrase "carpet bombing" by B-52s. In Vietnam they used the phrase "saturation bombing", it meant the same thing: exterminating populations by massive cluster and anti-personnel bombs. That is the task for which the B-52s have been designed and manufactured and that is their "operational purpose" overseas - hitherto used entirely against the people of third world countries. So what is Bush up to in this US aggression against the Iraqi and Arab people? Is it to ensure Israel's survival? Not even that. Israelis have been taking care of themselves as US surrogates fairly well, as long as Uncle Sam continued to pour in money and sophisticated armaments. They don't need the presence of the paymaster to emphasize the point too vigorously to "embarrass our Arab allies". Has the US been fighting for the Middle East oil then? No, not directly. It is not the fear of who controls the Middle East oil reserves that has sent the US to fight in the Gulf. Whoever controls them will have to sell the oil to the world market; nor is the US seriously concerned with rocketing oil prices since, as an oil-producing country it stands to gain from the price rise. The US cannot be frightened out of its wits in this way even by the prospect of OPEC coming under the control of Iraq, for OPEC too must do business with the West to survive since it is their biggest and still expanding market. Also with the Soviet Union entering the world market with unabashed gusto, its vast oil reserves - now at the disposal of its western partners - will counter the power of OPEC to dictate oil prices. No, it is not the fear of who controls the Middle East oil reserves which has sent the US to fight in the Gulf - it is the fear of who controls the money from the oil. 'Dollar hegemony' and Arab radicalism The real and underlying motive of the war was to preserve the dollar hegemony in the world economy which is being threatened by Iraqi nationalism. It was US imperialism itself which was at stake here, and the US would do anything including the nuclear bombardment of Iraq to ensure its survival. US imperialism has been facilitated not by physical conquest of colonies but by the dominance of the dollar as the international medium of exchange since the end of World War II. The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 which established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had ensured the status of the dollar to be "as good as gold", and artificially fixed the price of gold at $35 per ounce to pave the way for the dollar's dominance in the financial and banking system throughout the world outside the socialist bloc. The US government and US multinationals thoroughly abused this dollar privilege, the former printing many more dollars than the US economy could support in goods and services or in gold reserve and the latter lavishly investing it overseas, mostly in Europe in the aftermath of World War II. The result was that the world was awash with dollars without any equivalent material backing. In order to prevent this inflationary crisis re-entering the US economy, the then (1972) US President Richard Nixon decided to release gold from the dollar and allow each to find its real value in the market. As financial speculators lost confidence in the dollar panic ensued and the rush to buy gold sent its price rocketing from $35 to $200 almost overnight. (The price of gold now hovers between $350 and $400 per ounce). A year later, after the 1973 Middle East war (2), these financial speculators shifted their dollars from gold into buying oil which promised quick profit. The "unwanted dollar" , ("unwanted" because no government accepted responsibility for it), which until then was known as the Euro-dollar now became the Petro-dollar by virtue of the fact that most of these dollars were now used for speculation in oil purchase and sale. This helped to send the price rocketing as happened earlier with the price of gold. When these dollars came pouring into the Arab Sheikhs' coffers, their backward economies could not absorb them. There were no local industries to invest in and the Sheikhs had no plan for serious industrialisation. So the Sheikhs recycled them back to the West, mostly as dollar reserves. The Kuwaiti Sheikhs, being proteges of Britain, put most of their reserves in Britain and it became the most significant reserve which backs Sterling and the Bank of England internationally. If the Kuwaiti Sheikhs withdraw their money today (current estimate $100 billion) Sterling will immediately collapse as an international currency with devastating consequences to the British economy. But the bigger stake is with the Saudi reserves which is wholly in dollars and under the control of Uncle Sam. (The current estimate of the Arab Sheikhs dollar investments in the West stands at $680 billion). This ensures US dollar domination in the world economy and also helps the US's battered economy. Currently as a result of supply side economics - Reagonomics in the US and Thatcherism in Britain - both countries economies are in a serious recession which can easily slide into slump and then depression. The only hope for survival of both economies is via the Arab Sheikhs' reserves which allow US and UK policy makers room for manoeuvre in the face of fierce challenge from Germany and Japan, the erstwhile enemies of the allies. For instance the US can get away from its enormous internal and external debt and the balance of payments deficit simply by manipulating interest rates as long as the dollar remains the principal international medium of exchange. (3). Once the dollar loses that status the weakened US economy will be in the most serious predicament. Its dominant role in the world economy which it enjoyed since the end of World War II will be seriously undermined. The Gulf war in which hundreds of thousands have perished was about preventing this from happening When Bush talks about the New World Order he really means the preservation of the old order dominated by the almighty dollar, and the institutions which have sustained it mostly at the expense of the Third World - the World Bank, IMF, GATT etc. The threat to imperialism posed by Saddam Hussain lay in his challenge to the old order in the Middle East. This imminent threat of Arab radicalism lies in the financial and monetary spheres of imperialism. Production and exchange are two aspects of the struggle for changing relations of production and the establishment of socialist relations. Proponents of Arab radicalism in the Middle East unlike in Asia or Africa can harm dollar hegemony, initially even without changing their own internal relations. They can do this simply by withdrawing their financial and monetary backing to the dollar and sterling and sharpening the contradictions between imperialist countries e.g. Britain and America vs Europe or vs Germany or Japan. If radical Arabism takes over control of the vast petro dollar reserves from the docile and reactionary Sheikhs and transforms it into Petro- Dinar or Petro-Riyal, liberated from the dollar hegemony, US imperialism will face its most direct and immediate threat much more imminent than that posed simply by ideological challenge which is latent and based on long-term projection. Radical Arabism can, for instance, establish strong links with the rest of the third world with a view to forming world-wide economic relations based on objective economic complementarity of the oppressed countries. It can embark on a massive development of productive forces in the Arab world and form loose economic alliances with Germany or Japan in order to benefit from their technology. This prospect is seen as the worst possible scenario in Washington at a time when these two industrial giants are already challenging the dollar hegemony in their own way even without the help of Arab radicalism. The future of 'non-aIignment' What should be the position of the "non-aligned" countries in the light of this new and unstable situation? Are they to remain "non-aligned" indefinitely without being clear about non-aligned between whom and whom? Or are they to be termed "South" in contrast to "North" which is the current term for imperialist countries; but south of what, or north of what? Will the new battle cry be for a "New International World Order" and "Debt Forgiveness" or would they utilise this volatile world situation to assert a new agenda for the oppressed countries, which include radical Arab nationalism to influence the course of events in favour of the oppressed? Non-alignment in the post-Gulf War era is certainly dead; it was killed or burnt alive by the US napalm and cluster bombs against Iraqi soldiers, mostly Kurds, for whom the West is now shedding crocodile tears. The shock waves of the aftermath of the Gulf war, the hypocrisy and lies the West resorted to in an attempt to justify their unjust war, should make even the most politically illiterate among the "non-aligned" leaders aware once more that imperialism is alive and shooting. What should the "non-aligned" leaders do now? Well, in September this year Foreign Ministers of the "non- aligned countries" will be meeting in Accra, Ghana, to prepare the agenda for the summit of their Heads of State and Government, most probably to be held also in Accra. it will be the first post-Gulf War meeting of this kind. In the interests of our own survival and the survival of our future generations this is the time to intensify the struggle, not for the mythical New World Order, but for capturing the political initiative in a world-wide crusade against imperialism. The post-World War II period had offered the historic opportunity in 1955 for Bandung to capture the political initiative to lead the political and diplomatic crusade which helped speed up the liberation struggle of African and Asian countries. That liberation turned out to be a mere juridical independence. What remains to be won is economic, social and cultural independence. Leaders have no longer the excuse that they will be mistaken as pro-Soviet or pro-US. Now they can only be and he seen to be pro-people or anti-people; for the oppressed or against the oppressed. Those who are genuinely for the oppressed people must struggle to turn the Accra meeting into a revival of the Bandung Spirit in our post-Gulf War epoch. Let them come out with a clarion call of the "Accra Spirit". History is in favour of the oppressed, more so now than at any other time in the past era. Seize the Time!
NOTES 1. See Lectures on Political Economy, Peking 1965. The Chinese had rejected the model imposed on them by Soviet experts. They developed their own more relevant socialist model in tune with people's consumer needs in a country with a large peasant population. 2. In the autumn of 1973, Egypt launched an attack across the Suez canal in order to recapture parts of Egyptian lands occupied by Israel in its war of aggression against Egypt in 1967. This became known as the 1973 Middle East war or the Ramadan war or the Yom Kippur war. 3. If the US raises by 1% the interest rate on the dollar all third world countries who transact their international business in dollars will have to pay billions of dollars extra to borrow the now more costly dollar. Similarly in servicing their foreign debt, the interest payments will now be higher. It is like the experience which the British public are going through with a high interest rate on the pound which is causing many bankruptcies- a slump in the construction industry and recession in the economy which at the same time keeps the pound strong. If the British chancellor can bring down inflation via a high interest rate at the expense of the British people so will his American counterpart but in his case he will be trying to stabilise the American economy at the expense of the third world countries.
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