On Feb. 12 President Bush met with defense ministers Tom King of Britain and Pierre Joxe of France. He had earlier met with the Israeli defense minister, Moshe Arens.
These three are considered the principal allies of the U.S. in its coalition for the war in the Gulf. However, while both Germany and Japan are also considered principal allies, they were not invited to attend this conference. The meeting was for the purpose of expressing agreement on the need to continue the massive, truly murderous air offensive against the Iraqi people.
On the same day, the allied imperialists fired tons of explosives from land, sea and air units against the concentrations of Iraqi infantry, armor and artillery in southern Kuwait. The attack was described by the allied military spokespeople as the largest combined operation of the Gulf War.
Surely such an important military effort, considered a prelude to a later ground war, might have been seen as the time to also call in the German and Japanese defense ministers, in order to strengthen allied imperialist solidarity. But this was not done.
Each of the two had previously pledged money as well as materiel to the imperialist venture and the rape of the Arabian peninsula. It is reported that out of $50 billion pledged by Washington's allies, Japan has promised $10.7 billion and Germany $6.6 billion. (Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have each pledged $16 billion — showing who really controls their purse strings.)
It should be noted that considerable hostility has been displayed by the U.S. against the Japanese imperialists for their meager contribution. The British imperialists have been even more vocal in their attacks against West German imperialism, charging a lack of interest in properly supporting the anti-Iraq crusade.
Is it really true that both German and French imperialism are laggards in participating in the collective effort by the imperialists to redivide the Arabian peninsula?
What is the real nature of their relationship to the U.S., and what is their role in the current redivision of the world? Rarely mentioned in the course of the controversy over what role each plays is the fact that neither of them has any oil resources within their geographical boundaries. They are non-oil countries, unlike the U.S. and Britain. (France has historically had connections with oil-producing countries in northern Africa, specifically Libya and its former colony in Algeria. This explains the war over Chad to a large extent.)
Both Germany and Japan, by way of defending themselves against U.S. and British accusations that they should show greater cooperation by giving bigger contributions to the Gulf War, point to the treaties signed at the end of World War II. As former belligerents and principal members of the fascist Axis powers, they are constitutionally prohibited from rearming except in defense.
Of course, in the case of capitalist Germany this is a ridiculously patent falsehood. As a member of NATO, it has been virtually occupied by U.S. and British troops and its military machine has been modernized with a view toward being a belligerent against the USSR.
Japan has argued that it is constitutionally impossible for it to maintain an army except for self-defense, but has nevertheless continued to slowly rearm with the blessings of Washington over a period of time.
But is this the whole truth? Is it true that Japanese and German imperialism are really opposed to making large military contributions in personnel as well as materiel? Not at all. Whoever takes these arguments at face value misunderstands even the most elementary basis for the participation, certainly the cooperation, of these two imperialist powers in the war against Iraq.
One must look beyond the diplomatic rationale for this and come to the real issue — the one that determines their participation in the imperialist alliance in the first place.
One must look to the material interest which concerns both Germany and Japan, for it is the same interest which concerns the imperialists as a whole. They want to know what share of the booty will be parceled out to each of the principal imperialist allies. What morsels will be thrown to the secondary line of bourgeois participants against the oppressed people of the Middle East? What bribes will be given to the officialdom of the client states, the puppet regimes of imperialism?
In this connection, it should be mentioned that King Hussein of Jordan, in his speech on Feb. 7, was the first government official to mention the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916, in which France and Britain in the middle of World War I tried to divide the whole area of the Middle East to suit their needs. The intervention of the U.S. a year later changed the character of the proposed redivision.
None of the capitalist media here have mentioned the relevance of this secret treaty to the present redivision. Workers World has been the only paper to continually bring this up in order not just to demonstrate the collective character of the imperialist intervention today but also to illustrate that the imperialist powers used the Kuwaiti takeover by Iraq as a pretext around which to unite, notwithstanding their sharp divisions and contradictory interests.
Just as in 1916, it is the division of the spoils that is being secretly negotiated today, as new Sykes-Picot treaties are drafted behind the scenes.
The recalcitrance and lack of cooperative spirit that has lately surfaced on the part of Japan and Germany reflects a deep-seated antagonism arising out of the fact that each of them consider themselves the equal of the United States. Japanese capital may even view itself as more than equal as an industrial and technological power.
They would each be only too glad to participate on a more equal basis in order to obtain the requisite share of the booty. Moreover, they too would be interested in proving their military prowess technologically. They would be just as eager to demonstrate the effectiveness of their weapons were they permitted by the U.S. to revise the 1945 treaties which have inhibited them up to this time.
In their eyes they suffer for past sins while U.S. finance capital poses as the repository of moral virtue. All of this is repugnant to countries which, while vanquished powers in an earlier period, have now grown to full stature industrially and technologically but are still accorded an unequal status in such an important military engagement as the collective subjugation of the Arabian peninsula.
The longer the war lasts, the greater the possibility that the irreconcilable contradictions among the imperialist powers will pull them apart. What if the current offensive falls short of the avowed objective of driving Iraq to capitulation? Or what if it pushes the Iraqi regime to the very extreme, forcing them to use chemical weapons, which the U.S. could then use as a pretext for employing its own weapons of much greater mass destruction?
If the war results in mass rebellions, then the U.S., contrary to its own interests, will feel obligated to accord Germany and Japan a greater share and pull them in militarily in order to more effectively deal with the mass insurgencies both in the oppressed countries and also at home.
The hesitation and indecision in the White House before taking the plunge to a ground war is based on the many problems inherent if the ground offensive becomes stalled. If popular uprisings become the order of the day, if new strains and stresses appear in the imperialist coalition, then the entire venture, which seemed such an easy source for a great accumulation of super-profits, could turn out to be their great undoing.
This is not the era of gunboat diplomacy, when the imperialists could subjugate a people by sending a few ships full of Marines. It's the era when the masses have become a formidable factor.
For the first time in history, they have the potential to take into their own hands the wealth they have created. As long ago as 1910, Lenin was able to say that no ruling class can conduct a war, can even carry out its normal function of exploitation in stable, peaceful times without taking into account the preeminent role of the masses in contemporary capitalist society.
Certainly, no big war can be taken on. No matter to what heights technology has risen, imperialism is completely dependent on mass support and involvement. If this is true for the metropolitan imperialist countries, it is doubly, triply true for the vast oceans of oppressed men and women on all continents. The imperialist system cannot operate without them. And least of all can the oppressors conduct a genocidal war in such a key and explosive area as the Middle East without ultimately evoking a torrential storm of resistance.
In its early stages this mass consciousness expresses itself in a struggle for national liberation in which the workers play a key role. That the struggle takes the form of national liberation movements should not obscure for us the fact that the masses have been able to be aroused because of the development of capitalism.
The skill, talent and ability of the masses of Iraqi people in dealing with their own technology, and being able to absorb and utilize the technology from the imperialist countries, shows the high level of their development. What might have taken many decades earlier they've done in a few years.
That is universal today; it is not just a feature of Iraq. It is what made it possible for the Russian, Chinese, Korean and Cuban workers to vanquish imperialism. And while it is a product of the dynamism of imperialism, it will ultimately deliver a death-blow to the imperialists.
Last updated: 19 February 2018