Imperialism looks at wars as an important and necessary element of power, because they strengthen hegemony and, in addition, recharge the economic structure. Hence, it is not surprising that the United States is permanently immersed in wars -declared or not, of high or low intensity, regional or global- and, consequently, is incapable of adopting an authentic and lasting peaceful disposition. In the aftermath of the Second World War, and still within the context of the Cold War, the US never ceased war preparations. All its presidents launched regional wars while, in an effort to disguise its aggressive conduct, the US always hoisted the “in-defence-of-freedom-democracy-and-civilization” flag.
The United States increasingly established its superiority as the Soviet social-imperialism gradually declined and, when it finally collapsed, well-defined forms of US hegemony were revealed with their gloomy splendour. To consolidate its superpower status, successive US administrations from then on rushed to undertake, under the name of globalization, the re-colonization of the planet, imposing everywhere neoliberal demands for open economies so as to make it easy for the US to control foreign markets, plunder natural resources, make secure and profitable investments and super exploit native labor forces.
These designs forced the US to intensify policies that shatter the sovereignty of nations. Without abandoning its traditional, naked interventionism, the US utilizes more sophisticated forms of control with the excuse of presumed battles against evils, which were in fact caused by its own prevailing economic and political system. Counting on the support of a number heads of state, like Colombia’s President Pastrana, to set up these stratagems, and profiting from the pusillanimous attitude of others, Washington dictates at will over the budget management of other nations, their monetary and fiscal policies, conditions for capital investment, and the wage and pension systems. The US also establishes the parameters in other nations for legislation and public policies in key areas, namely justice, security, military forces, health, education, culture and public order. When the US meets with governments that still maintain some national pride and oppose in different degrees these impositions, or when it is confronted with the resistance arising from patriotic sectors of the population, then US administrations resort, according to the circumstances, to pressure, blackmail, economic retaliation, blockages, conspiracies or direct military intervention. No country escapes its outrages.
Commensurate with the scale and reach of the US’s new colonialist policy, is the economic and social disaster produced. Billions of human beings are being thrown into unbearable levels of poverty and misery worldwide. Workers are exploited to the limit and their rights denied, or rights already achieved suppressed; everywhere the vast majorities are deprived of minimum democratic rights and local national producers ruined. Entire sectors of the population are excluded or violently repressed if they resist. In the Third World only a handful of magnates linked to international finance capital take a cut of the widespread plundering, although there are increasing cases where some of them also fall victims to the blows of international finance capital.
In many regions, the US pursues its hegemonic endeavour by promoting the division and dismemberment of countries; arming or causing conflicts between countries, or among sectors of a country’s population; exacerbating ethnic or religious contradictions; trampling on cultures and ancestral habits; undertaking interventionist campaigns under the pretense of fighting crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and “human rights” violations; and even devastating with its bombings the infrastructure and civilian population of nations that for one reason or another do not submit to US dictates.
Within this context, and when with infinite arrogance the Bush Government was giving free rein to the inherent rapacity of this policy of domination, the US felt on September 11 the scourge of a destructive and deadly attack, perpetrated against two symbols of its power: the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York, in which the transactions and administration of a major part of the world financial capital took place; and the Pentagon’s office building, headquarters of the high command of US military operations. Worse than the physical destruction was the fact that the terrorist attack killed thousands of innocent and defenceless people.
The atrocity committed uncovered weaknesses and defects in the national security systems under the responsibility of the military, police and intelligence departments. An alleged invulnerability of the North American nation had been cause for boastfulness by its leaders. This attitude prevailed despite the fact that past terrorist attacks, such as the bombs placed on the basement of the same high towers, or the one in the Federal building in Oklahoma, or assassination attempts on presidents, successful or not, had already revealed deficiencies. US helplessness is even more evident in its domains all over the world, as various earlier attacks against diplomatic quarters made clear.
2
Terrorism often brews up in societies and communities where economic, political, cultural and religious oppression are overwhelming the population. In its barest form, terrorism reduces to visceral responses by persons or groups who try to free themselves from the exasperating social conditions imposed by imperialism and reactionary local governments. It is geared to objectives and people who in one way or the other represent or symbolize this oppression, and not to its causes; for this reason terrorism never produces qualitative changes in the conditions being rejected.
Today we live in a world where more than three billion people survive on less than two dollars a day; where the majority of the population lacks elementary democratic rights and where power and wealth concentrate in an ever smaller upper strata of the society, giving rise to unprecedented inequalities; a world where racial, cultural and religious intolerance is maintained or provoked for economic reasons by the prevailing powers at the world or national level; where imperialism tries to eradicate the struggle for national economic and political sovereignty wherever it flourishes, using all kinds of interventionism. In such world, where in the last decade the globalization scheme led by the US broadens, deepens and refines the abominable scourges that overwhelm the majority of the humanity, can the occurrence of desperate terrorist assaults be something unexpected?
Terrorism, as a modus operandi rationalized by religious or ethnic motivations, or as a fighting method, has of necessity disastrous consequences for the true and more important interests of the society as a whole. When terrorists attempt to replace the collective will and action of the masses of people by resorting to barbaric procedures, they enter into contradiction with the masses, which, hating these methods, end up rejecting them.
In the political terrain, terrorism, more than a wrong tactic, is the negation of all tactics. Those who practice it, by ignoring or disdaining the correlation of forces with the enemy, share in all the other irrational aspects of terrorism. But, importantly, their acts are often not a simple, naïve response to conditions but rather represent clear and destructive opportunistic conduct.
The working class has sufficient ethical and political reasons of its own to oppose and condemn terrorist actions. While being a victim of the stifling modern forms of oppression, the working class does not succumb emotionally due to these conditions. Conscious of being the salt of earth, the working class cherishes a democratic and fair spirit that sets it apart from the methods used by imperialism and dominant minorities. The working class, by its own experience, knows that terrorist methods serve only a greater terror: social and economic catastrophe. The working class recognizes the counterproductive results of terrorism for the steady development of the class struggle specially the one developing in the international arena against imperialism.
A struggle that pursues opposite ends -oppression and revolution- between antagonistic protagonists -imperialism and the people of the world- is carried out with opposing methods. Genocides and murders, material destruction and fascist attempts against the life, rights and freedoms of citizens, methods that are commonly applied by imperialist forces and oppressor classes to impose dictatorship and subjugation, are in nature different from the methods required for the liberation from such oppression.
Unerringly, imperialism takes advantage of the excesses of terrorism to discredit rebelliousness and unleash repression on a major scale. Even worse, imperialism broadens the targets of attack to include national and revolutionary organizations, even entire nations, disguising with anti-terrorist arguments its tendencies toward reactionary, racist, and cultural and religious discrimination.
Given the above considerations, and in the face of the attacks on New York and Washington, it is clear that there are enormous differences between the rejection to terrorism proclaimed by the US government and the rejection expressed by progressive, democratic and revolutionary peoples. To unite with Bush today in condemning terrorism, is equivalent to approve the policies he had been promoting, and currently intensifying, due to the recent events. Not even the condolences for the innocent victims have a similar nature: Washington deplores most the exposed fallibility of US power and the tiny capital losses, rather than the casualties, while people mourn primarily the human losses, acknowledging that they add to the millions of victims -not less precious or less innocent-, that for over a century have been the target of imperialist oppression and slaughter worldwide.
3
From the outset, the Bush Administration outlined gradually but firmly a unilateral policy of disdain toward international accords and of opposition to new initiatives concerning agreements between nations. The US disregarded the current Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Arms Treaty and insisted on the development of the National Missile Defence (NMD); opposed the agreements forbidding the development of chemical and biological arms as well as the production and distribution of small arms; rejected the Kyoto accord on global environmental issues; refused to ratify the Children’s Rights Treaty; boycotted the OECD efforts to control overseas tax heavens; and undermined the recent International Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Thus, the United States made it clear that it would act unilaterally in order to strength its world hegemony. It simultaneously proceeded to increase the defence budget, estimated at US$320 billion, on the pretext of potential attacks from countries such as North Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq, that were labelled as “rogue states,” or from China, defined as a _”strategic enemy.”
In order to justify the military plans and the large expenses needed, the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, began warning, even before taking office, about the “increasing vulnerability” of the United States and the growing danger coming from “people like Osama bin Laden”. Meanwhile CIA Director George Tenet, declared seven months ago that bin Laden and his organization were the “most serious and immediate terrorist threats against North America”. Such assertions revealed the US’s eagerness to configure and make credible a “strategic threat”. With the Soviet social-imperialist state gone, they needed another threat that could give legitimacy to ambitious and expensive military plans. The haste was understandable, if one takes into account that these plans served multiple purposes: the utilization of the US’s great technological development, the increase in the precision and destructive capacity of their war arsenal, the impulse for economic recovery, and the enormous profits for the military industries.
The new imperialist offensive, focused on the development of military power, and with the pretext of a war against terrorism, had not only been announced but also prepared for since long ago. It is symptomatic that the main posts in the Bush Administration are held by military or civilian experts in military strategy, all of them with experience in security issues and defence: Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Kelly and Negroponte.
Besides being intended for the violent consolidation of US hegemony, the military plans constitute an indispensable ingredient of policy responses designed to extricate the US out of its economic difficulties. Fifteen months of slowdown culminating in the current recession have been producing devastating effects on the globalization offensive, the key to the economic boom the US enjoyed over a decade. Aware of the seriousness of the situation vis-à-vis its imperialist aims, the dominant circles in Washington and Wall Street have tried to disguise the recessive trends in order “not to make nervous” the financial investors and avoid a “loss of confidence” that would halt the rhythm of domestic consumption, that until a few weeks ago was the only factor keeping the US from major economic downfall. Amongst the repertoire of measures applied unsuccessfully to stop the decline, one that stands out is the ineffective and recurrent reduction in the interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve.
The United States was experiencing before September 11 a situation of uncertainty that was becoming increasingly worse due to the disturbances of the world economy; the proliferation of world-wide demonstrations against neoliberalism; contradictions with other nations, including growing conflicts with Europe, Japan, China and Russia; the repression of the people’s resistance against the effects of globalization and the attack on the self determination of nations, as is the case of the Palestinian people; and the rejection of the consolidation of US military settlements in economic and politically strategic points in the planet. And then came the terrible blow in New York and Washington.
After recovering from the state of shock caused by the deadly effectiveness and magnitude of the terrorist attacks, the US government councils adopted measures of immediate reaction to face the social and material disruption. The United States also began to design and implement responses that could encompass both the intensification of the general, current national and international policies as well as long-term strategic projects that were on the back burner. Judging by the decisions and results, one can reasonably conclude that the more thorough analyses in these deliberative sessions were geared to refine and intensify US hegemony.
4
As in any time of crisis, Washington’s promulgations in the past few weeks, as well as the weight of arguments and declarations that preceded them, reveal neatly the true character of US leaders and the varieties and objectives of their imperialist policies. Without a doubt, too, the people of the world will examine these policies carefully and find ways to counter them.
The first reaction of the US government was to declare the nation in a state of war. Unable to settle on an enemy, it opted to declare the war against terrorism in general, blaming equally the terrorists and the states that harboured them. Since this formulation still sounded abstract for something as specific as war, the US proceeded then to identify their targets of attack and little by little profiled bin Laden as the main suspect, with the sole argument that he had expressed hostility against the United States and its Middle East policy, and the fact that in the past he had been declared the possible culprit in other terrorist attempts. Since “it is beneath out dignity to declare war against Mr. bin Laden”, the US directed the accusations against a nation and its government: Afghanistan and the Taliban regime. Without any evidence to back up these charges and, therefore, with no legitimate reason, the government headed by Bush unleashed retaliation against a sovereign state, the Afghan nation. The attack, considered the first step of future actions against other organizations and nations -that will be stigmatized with the same measuring stick- will make evident to the world’s eyes the nature of the “civilization” proclaimed by the US after the attack on September the 11th, the same “civilization” that leads the current US re-colonization of the world.
Since the meaning of this “civilization” cannot but be reflected in the terms emanating from the North American leadership, the sole citation of some of them allows a better understanding of what the Bush Government stands for: “I want him (bin Laden) dead or alive”. “We know that God is not neutral”. “Ending states who sponsor terrorism”. “The challenge is to take all the pollsters and all the consultants and put that all aside”. “You need to have on the payroll (of the secret and police departments) some very unsavoury, mean, nasty characters”. “The executive order banning the political assassinations are under review”. “There is no such thing as international law”. “We will direct…every necessary weapon of war”.
In order to prepare and launch the “war against terrorism”, the North American government carefully built a coalition of countries based on the Manichean criteria that either you are with the United States or with terrorism. It used that formulation to obtain support and international legitimacy, suppress the opposition or reluctance to its bellicose behaviour, and obscure the multiple contradictions the US has with other nations.
Many spineless or opportunist leaders have accepted the US appeal, a genuine ukase, falling into a vulgar collaborationism. The range of attitudes contrary to the national interest of their respective countries is wide: British Prime Minister and Social Democrat ideologue, Tony Blair, who resembles a revived and hysteric colonizer screaming from the shadows of the expired British empire, pleaded not to delay the war because of technical or legal questions; the Finance Minister of Pakistan championed the handing over of his country to Washington’s purposes, in exchange for economic benefits, such us “better market access, better treatment on debt rescheduling and more money”; Argentina’s de la Rúa, another Social Democrat leader, gave plenty of support to the US policy while begging for onerous monetary aid to bail out the bankrupt finances of Argentina; and Putin, the Russian, offered help for the US attack against Afghanistan in exchange for obtaining a free hand to squelch the resistance put up by Chechnya and to initiate the Russian reconquest of the Central Asia region, so rich in oil and other natural resources. In contrast, even astounding, the Pope when visiting one of the countries potentially involved in the conflict being prepared by Washington and Moscow, made an exhortation that rejected the fainthearted tone and attitude adopted by not a few heads of state as they bowed to the drumbeat of war: “Kazakhstan, land of martyrs and believers, land of deportees and of heroes, land of intellectuals and artists, do not be afraid”.
Taking advantage of the repercussions of the attacks against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the US Government is gearing to turn the US economy around. Discarding its dyed-in-the-wool faith in neoliberal dogmas, the US administration drew from government coffers large sums for measures designed to rebuild New York, finance the on-going war crusade, defray the domestic security rules that it is implementing, and subsidize the US airlines. In order to confront the emergency, billions of dollars were made available to the big banking institutions to guarantee sufficient monetary liquidity, while the idea of reducing capital and corporate taxes gained ground, something that would produce exaggerated profits for big businesses. An economist like Paul Krugman, free of all anti-neoliberal suspicions, asserted that it “would deliver its benefits mainly to the wealthiest families,… to a tiny, wealthy, minority”.
But none of all this will be enough to overturn the slump. Hopes are pinned on the military escalation, since the core of the “war against terrorism” lies in the fact that it is a powerful factor for reactivation of the economy. Something which has been emphasized, almost as if he felt pleased about the disastrous terrorist attack, by the former Treasure Secretary, Robert Rubin: “The catastrophe will also add stimulus to the economy in the form of substantial new spending by the federal government for security, defence and rebuilding…I believe that what happens domestically and internationally in combating terrorism will have a greater impact on our economy than anything we do now in the economic area”.
And, obviously, to the above you have to add the efforts to keep the dynamics of globalization moving, as framed within the criteria exposed by Alan Greenspan, president of the Federal Reserve: “As a consequence of the spontaneous and almost universal support that we received from around the world, an agreement on a new round of multilateral trade negotiations now seems more feasible. Such an outcome would lead to a stronger global market system. A successful round would not only significantly enhance world economic growth but also answer terrorism with a firm reaffirmation of our commitment to open and free societies”. Also, in what is considered a move within the scheme “countering terrorism with trade”, governmental functionaries are eagerly pressing Congressional approval of unrestricted fast-track authority for Bush to negotiate the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. Congressional authorization of these faculties is being bandied as proof of patriotism.
All of the above constitute clear evidence of the close relationship between the current antiterrorist war campaign and the search for remedies for the dismal performance of the US economy, as well as a renewed boost to globalization. In response, resistance to imperialist wars will be joined with the resistance to globalization policies, opening a period of major mass struggles in the world.
The trumpeted “first war of the 21st century” is nothing but the intensification of the US efforts to preserve its hegemony. That is why Washington’s high ranking officials have emphasized that it’s going to be a long term war, that it won’t be limited to a single military operation, and that it will be waged on all fronts: military, economic, political, financial, diplomatic and intelligence, that is, the same ones the US attends to, burdened in its condition of imperialist power.
It is clear that the characterization of the terrorist attack as an act against civilization, democracy and freedom, serves the purpose of forming a great international coalition led by its victim, the US, and to turn the mourning and the support offered by the governments of most countries into blessings upon any actions the US government might undertake. Since behind these pretensions hides a redoubled effort to consolidate its supremacy, it won’t take long before the growing contradictions between the US and the rest of nations become reactivated.
Compelled to pay attention to the most pressing needs of the population awakened to the risks that emerged from the terrorist attempts, and to take appropriate measures to guarantee social confidence, the US government took advantage of the opportunity to obtain strong internal support for its war policy and, as part of it, to receive carte blanche to suppress or undermine the highly prized democratic statutes stipulated in the Bill of Rights. For its purposes, and following norms of behaviour common to all imperialisms, the US proceeded to fire up a fanatical nationalism, and to exacerbate racism. It promoted a poisoned atmosphere of pro-government fanaticism and put a lot of effort in convincing the people “to shut up and patient”, in order to quash potential future criticism of measures characteristic of fascist regimes: tapping telephone calls and E-mail messages, arbitrary detentions, “witch hunting” campaigns, restrictions to the free movement of persons, indirect pressures against freedom of the press, etc. At the same time, the US rushed to draft bills for Congressional approval that would impose new restrictions on civil liberties.
In the midst of domestic tensions -originated by the increasing concentration of wealth, the arduous exploitation of labour, increased unemployment, and racial and cultural discrimination- the repressive regime that the Bush administration is implementing, while it eagerly promotes the proliferation of despicable chauvinist attitudes, will end up inducing the US people to new battles to regain and maintain their rights and liberties.
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As it happens to every empire, the widening of its conquering campaigns in regions more and more distant from its centre of power, requires it to acquire more and more complex commitments. By dispersing its forces to a greater degree, and expanding its tentacles, the US reaches a point where it becomes highly vulnerable, demanding greater aggressiveness. This appears to be the meaning suggested by Rumsfeld when he situates the military operations undertaken by the US in “the best defence is the attack” context.
The people of the world are not afraid of the anger of imperialist leaders, even if they get ready for wars, or if they launch them. The people do not want wars, but neither will they shrink back in fear, as the peoples of Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam proved when they confronted the wars launched by the US in the past decades, and as the Afghanistan’s people demonstrated when they were violently attacked by the Soviet social imperialists.
In the face of the generalized interventionism in which the US is immersed today under the pretense of fighting terrorism, the people of each nation will redouble their vigilance over their sovereignty and will prepare for a widespread resistance. In Colombia and within this cause, the MOIR will comply with its duty of being a sharp watcher and a brave combatant.
Independent and Revolutionary Labor Movement (MOIR)
Executive Committee
Héctor Valencia, Secretary-General
Bogotá, Colombia, October 4, 2001