Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 12
March 21 – Revolutionary Marxists are duty-bound to unswervingly and relentlessly expound and promote the Leninist theory of the inevitability of imperialist war. This, however, is to be strictly differentiated from the fatalism about war in general which is characteristic of bourgeois pessimism.
Revolutionary Marxists disdain pessimistic bourgeois theories precisely because they aim to paralyze the masses and stifle their creative initiative. Marxism-Leninism teaches also about the inevitability of the intervention of the masses into the historical process and their revolutionary capacity to transform a historical situation to suit their own needs and thereby take destiny into their own hands. None of this, however, means that revolutionary Marxists should close their eyes to impending grave dangers and thereby deprive themselves of the ability to look grim reality straight in the face.
It is with this thought in mind that one has to examine the ominous significance of Carter’s speech at Wake Forest University on March 17, which marks a new and most dangerous escalation in the arms race and a giant step in the direction of imperialist war. It is the most ominous and the most threatening development in U.S. foreign policy since the Carter administration took over.
A careful reading of the speech shows that, contrary to some sources, it was not merely calculated to assure Carter’s ultra-right militaristic opponents that he was not going soft on the Soviet Union. It was a definite decision to embark on a new course, one which if not arrested by tremendous mass popular intervention could lead straight to a catastrophe for the country and the world.
In a decade which has been so full of international crises, rising armaments, and the prosecution of foreign adventures such as in Vietnam, one more bellicose, jingoistic speech by the chief executive of the American ruling class might not seem like anything new. Such an impression, however, would be a grave mistake.
As Carter himself states, his speech is based on a “recently completed major reassessment of our national defense strategy.” His speech ends with the conclusion that although “arms control agreements are a major goal as instruments of our national security, this will be possible only if we maintain appropriate military force levels,” which he says earlier in his speech must be increased.
If the U.S. and the USSR read “balanced, verifiable agreements,” this could “limit the costs of security and reduce the risk of war,” he adds. “But even then, we must – and we will – proceed efficiently with whatever arms programs our security requires.” And the requirements as outlined are virtually astronomical in cost and in number of weapons.
Furthermore, Carter threatens to put in hock America’s “great economic, technological, and diplomatic advantages to defend [U.S. imperialist] interests and to promote our [imperialist] values.”
What accounts for this astonishing plunge by the Carter administration into a virtual state of hostility with the Soviet Union? One must go beyond the scope of Carter’s speech and examine the most recent international developments. These seem to push the Carter administration into the strategy of neutron bomb brinkmanship.
It could scarcely be lost on the world community of the working class and the oppressed that Carter’s saber-rattling came in the midst of one of the cruelest and most massive aggressions against an oppressed people in the Middle East. Over the past two decades, the only formidable obstacle, besides the Arab masses themselves, which the U.S. has had to reckon with there has been the Soviet Union. This is absolutely incontestable.
But it is not the USSR which controls the oil fields in the Middle East. It is Exxon and its six sister oil companies which, in spite of all the nationalizations, etc., are still in control.
The brutal invasion of Lebanon by the Israelis must be seen against this background. Closing one’s eyes to that deprives the observer of understanding the basic drive of the U.S. in the struggle to control the Arab lands. It is because of their vast oil interests that the U.S. and its Western imperialist allies have trained, armed, financed, encouraged, and in a hundred-and-one other ways sought to maintain and expand the puppet state of Israel as a principal counterweight against all the oppressed Arab countries and, most of all, the Palestinians.
Israeli forces today occupy land in four foreign countries – Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and south Lebanon. No small country with such a total lack of raw materials and meager population could possibly engage a hundred million Arab people unless it had the military, economic, financial, and diplomatic support of the imperialist powers, most of all the U.S.
This is what has to be understood as Begin meets with Carter amidst the wildest speculation about basic disagreements, divergences, and irreconcilable differences over strategy with regard to the Palestinians. Here it is well to remember what Sadat himself used to say before he embarked on his Jerusalem adventure when he thought that he could replace Israel as U.S. imperialism’s main prop in the Middle East: that the U.S. hold “99 percent of the cards,” by which he meant that the Israeli regime held only 1 percent of the cards as against the massive control by the U.S.
There are those in the U.S. imperialist establishment who believe that it is possible to displace the Israeli puppet state as the fundamental lever of U.S. imperialism in the Arab world and substitute Egypt, which in turn would be able to exercise military control over the rest of the Arab world. This, however, overlooks the fundamental difference between Israel and Egypt.
The former is an oppressing nation. But Egypt is an oppressed nation, along with all the other Arab countries. Thus it is not simply a question of changing puppet regimes for a more reliable tool of imperialism. The Israeli regime is an extension of U.S. military power. Only in the eventuality of the Israeli regime becoming completely debilitated as a result of economic erosion, mass migration, and unacceptable military casualties, would that possibility arise. At any rate, at the present time the Israeli regime is expanding and not contracting in spite of internal corrosion.
No one should be fooled by the fact that the U.S. introduced a resolution at the UN which called for the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from south Lebanon and for installing a peace-keeping force in the battered area. This resolution is a shameless and cynical maneuver by the U.S. and its co-conspirators. The resolution doesn’t even condemn the Israeli aggression. It doesn’t set a timetable for them to get out. Nor does it affirm the rights of the Palestinians in the struggle for self-determination and an independent state.
Carter’s tough talk was made virtually on the eve of the Security Council meeting. One of its purposes was to see to it that the socialist countries, mainly the USSR, did not veto the resolution. It’s significant, however, that the USSR, while abstaining, nevertheless condemned the Israeli aggression and condemned the Sadat conspiracy with the U.S. The Soviet Union abstained, its delegate stated, out of consideration for Lebanon, and probably other Arab states, who requested UN intervention to get the Israelis out of their country.
As seen through the eyes of the oppressed people of the Middle East, and especially the Palestinians, the Carter Wake Forest University talk was a provocation to the USSR and an attempt to intimidate it for rendering military and political support to the just cause of the Palestinians. The timing of Carter’s speech and his posturing on an aircraft carrier was deeply symbolic, as all the militarists known that aircraft carriers are meant for the struggle against oppressed peoples, whereas nuclear submarines and intercontinental missiles are aimed against the USSR.
If Carter’s talk was meant to terrify the Soviet leadership and make it roll over and die, it certainly doesn’t look like it succeeded, from the response of the Soviet press. And, according to a brief item in the March 18 New York Times, the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower, with President Carter aboard, was followed by a Soviet vessel which was observing the U.S. warships engage in combat exercises.
Carter ruefully remarked in his talk that the USSR “is now second in the world in naval forces.” But the Soviet Union is not belligerent, is not warlike, and has attempted to pursue a peaceful policy to keep the imperialists at bay. A socialist country which lost 20 million lives in World War II and experienced massive intervention as well as civil war promoted by imperialist forces is not likely to endanger its security by adventures or provocations, nor will it succumb to threats of force and violence.
Nevertheless, it is extremely significant that the Soviet Union, according to a March 14 story in the New York Times, in recent weeks began “to provide sensitive information on the size and composition of its strategic missile arsenal to American negotiators at the Geneva talks.” The U.S. was said to welcome this first move to establish what it called a “joint strategic weapons inventory.”
This easily could be regarded as a significant concession by the USSR in the interest of reducing tensions since it was the first time since the arms negotiations got underway in 1969 that the USSR had been willing to give such details to an implacable adversary. And the U.S. officials have regarded this concession as removing “an important obstacle to achieving an agreement later this year.”
On the contrary, it seems to have emboldened Carter and the Pentagon. More than anything else it reveals the unbridled and militarist character of the administration. The administration is not merely concerned with the strategic arms limitation (SALT) talks. It is much more concerned with the international adventures of U.S. imperialism and whether the Soviet Union will bend to the will of the U.S. ruling class in areas all over the world.
The Middle East is only the most critical at the moment and most important from the viewpoint of the vast and fabulous oil empire the U.S. still controls there. That’s where some of the most advanced weapons systems of the U.S. are deployed. Is it any wonder that the Israelis used the F-15s, one of the most advanced planes in the U.S. arsenal. And why? They weren’t necessary against the poorly equipped guerrilla army and a defenseless population.
The Pentagon wanted to see how the F-15 performs in combat. This is a valuable means of gauging its effectiveness, even where there aren’t the highly sophisticated SAM missiles which the USSR had given to Vietnam, for instance.
But the Middle East is not the only area. The Horn of Africa is another region which the U.S. is desperately seeking to clobber into its orbit by force and violence. It wasn’t the USSR which was the financial and economic patron saint to Haile Selassie for twenty years. The USSR’s relations to Ethiopia were of a minimal, diplomatic character. Even the aid to Somalia was of little significance by measures of the global character of the struggle against U.S. imperialism.
Then a tremendously profound revolution overthrew the imperialist-controlled regime of Haile Selassie. Having carried out vast revolutionary reforms which entailed the expropriation of the landlords and the destruction of large elements of what the Ethiopians call the feudo-bourgeoisie, the new government was forced to execute collaborationist elements in the officer corps. It was then inevitable that a break with U.S. imperialism and the ouster of its military mission would follow.
The USSR invaded neither Somalia nor Ethiopia. It has been the desperate need in the struggle against imperialism and reaction which caused the leaderships in both countries to seek the assistance of natural anti-imperialist allies, the USSR, Cuba, and other socialist countries.
Carter’s blustering attack on the USSR as a “menace” in the Horn of Africa is a barefaced falsehood. The Carter administration and its imperialist allies for seven long months kept an internal censorship over the world imperialist press while they armed, aided, and assisted the Somalis to invade Ethiopia in an effort to dismember the country and bring down its revolutionary regime. It ended in a singular failure for the imperialist powers and all the Arab reactionary regimes which assisted and helped the imperialists in this adventure.
The Middle East and the Horn of Africa are the basis for Washington’s most recent escalation in the struggle against the USSR. It is the imponderable and insoluble problems that imperialism faces there that make up the objective basis for the more recent attack. All the talk about Soviet military buildup in Europe is mere camouflage.
There is no threat from the USSR to Western Europe. That is a lie. The threat is to the imperialist fortunes in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa and in southern Africa. And the threat comes from the mass revolutionary action of oppressed people, not from the USSR.
The position of these same Western imperialists in southern Africa has been clearly unmasked. The Africans introduced a resolution in the Security Council denouncing racist Ian Smith’s internal settlement as a fraud and a deceitful maneuver to deprive the Zimbabwean people of their right to be represented by the Patriotic Front, which has fought and continues to fight a war of liberation against the racist Salisbury regime.
Under the guise of abstaining, which countries are really giving backhanded support to Ian Smith’s internal settlement conspiracy? The Security Council vote showed it was the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, France, and West Germany. And who supports the Patriotic Front? The USSR, its socialist allies, and the oppressed people and working class of the world.
Who opposed real economic sanctions against the Vorster regime in South Africa? The very same imperialist alliance headed by the U.S. Just as they have banded together in a diplomatic conspiracy in the UN, so they are banded together in a military alliance in NATO.
The same imperialist forces which conspired against Ethiopia are also conspiring against the Zimbabwean people, the people of Azania, and indeed of all of Africa. It is this which forms one of the cornerstones in the strategic assault concocted by the Pentagon and which seeks to divert the attention of the masses and direct it against the USSR.
The Carter talk was a departure from what was supposed to have been a new, more relaxed and restrained attitude to the USSR just a bare few months ago. It was on the initiative of the U.S. that a joint U.S.-USSR communique was reached on the Middle East which included a commitment not only to a comprehensive Middle East settlement but a guarantee of “Palestinian rights” which Carter later amplified to mean a homeland.
What happened to that “new approach”? It retrospect it can only be surmised that it was a diplomatic ploy, that in reality the Carter administration had been maneuvering with the Israelis and the Sadat government for a separate deal which would exclude the Palestinians. From this resulted Sadat’s Jerusalem adventure.
It was not, as we indicated at the time, a mere personal failing on the part of Sadat. Nor was it even solely dictated by the acquiescence of the Egyptian bourgeoisie. As Sadat later stated, it was to avert a confrontation with the Israelis that he undertook this treacherous journey.
We stated then that objectively Sadat was aiming at a Munich deal. His Jerusalem visit was part of a diversionary tactic to divert the Israelis away from a confrontation with the Egyptians and towards the Palestinians. It is to be remembered that Chamberlain and Daladier made a deal with Hitler to divert him from an attack on the West and egg Germany on toward the East, toward the Soviet Union.
Now the inevitable has happened. None other than Sadat’s foreign minister has had to proclaim that the assault upon the Palestinians in south Lebanon was in the nature of an “attempt at genocide.”
This could scarcely augur well for Sadat himself. His policy has proved bankrupt. The expansionist character of the Israeli puppet state, which is a military extension of the Pentagon, has again asserted itself in yet another occupation of foreign territory, which could only have been done not with just the acquiescence but with the full consent of the U.S.
Therein lies the conspiracy between the Israeli regime and the Carter administration, notwithstanding any and all disagreements, notwithstanding any resolutions that are passed by the UN, and notwithstanding that the Israelis may withdraw as they have withdrawn from other areas only to remain politically or militarily predominant there.
It is under the stress of these circumstances that one must view with deep concern the violent assault upon the USSR and the new emphasis on U.S. arms buildup that is contained in the Carter-Brzezinski-Pentagon threat.
Last updated: 11 May 2026