Imperialism’s preparation for war—stepping up its moves toward an invasion of Iraq

By Diana Howell, 1 February 2003

For the past many months Washington has been stepping up its moves toward an invasion of Iraq. Each week the Militant has reported on the facts of this buildup: from the U.S.-British bombings of Iraqi air defenses and communications facilities to the large-scale war exercises and troop deployments in the region.

The U.S. rulers’ decision to assault Iraq was made some time ago. The sham debate in Congress was never over whether to carry out this war, but how best to justify it and sell it to the population. As always, the Democrats in Congress have fallen in line behind the White House to carry out the course of imperialist war supported by the U.S. ruling class.

The moves toward war have little to do with the current occupant of the White House. Much less are they the brainchild of a supposedly rightist administration, as some apologists for the liberal wing of imperialism argue. The Bush administration speaks and acts on behalf of the dominant, mainstream forces of the American bourgeoisie. This drive toward war is the natural course of democratic imperialism, as every U.S. imperialist war has been, from the two world wars to Vietnam (and most have been conducted by a Democratic Party administration).

These brutal actions by Washington grow out of weakness, not strength. They are a response to the long-term decline of U.S. capitalism, as the billionaire families seek to reverse the trend of dropping profit rates. Today they unfold at a time when a worldwide economic depression has begun, including in the United States. In face of this situation, the U.S. rulers have begun to carry out a series of wars over control of the world’s natural resources—from oil to cocoa, gold, coal, iron, fishing, bauxite, bananas, lumber, and other sources of wealth. And this drive puts them in competition with their imperialist rivals in London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Ottawa, and elsewhere. This drive toward plunder abroad is the counterpart to the assault by the bosses on workers and farmers at home—the attacks on workers’ social wage, speedup on the job, layoffs, and police crackdowns.

Less and less able to rely on semicolonial regimes, Washington is increasingly compelled to use its own troops to defend its class interests. The savage assault on Afghanistan and establishment of a U.S. protectorate there was a prelude to the next target—Iraq. Imperialism’s goal is control of the entire Mideast and its resources. Oil-rich Iran, where a popular insurrection overthrew the U.S.-backed monarchy in 1979 and dealt a lasting blow to imperialist domination, remains a much bigger prize—and obstacle—for them.

Washington has made it clear from the start that it plans to launch a bloody attack on Iraq with or without the UN stamp of approval. The political cover provided by the United Nations Security Council—with the added bonus of offering arms inspections as one more justification for war—was simply icing on the cake and a foregone conclusion. While the posturing by Paris and other European powers reflect their competition with the U.S. rulers, these imperialist governments cannot stand up to Washington’s military superiority. In the end, they lined up behind the UN war resolution because they do not want to be completely cut off from the billions of dollars in oil and natural gas in Iraq and the rest of the Mideast.

Lord Browne, chief executive of British Petroleum, put it most bluntly when he called on Washington to assure a level playing field for the British oil companies to get a piece of the oil wealth of an foreign-occupied Iraq. His real slogan is: We want our share of blood for oil!

V.I. Lenin, the central leader of the Bolshevik party and of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, had an accurate name for these imperialist powers. He called them civilized hyenas whetting their teeth over the natural and human resources in the world.

Today, the civilized hyenas in Washington are preparing to use naked force against the peoples of the Mideast to try to strike fear among any who stand in their way. But despite their arrogant pretensions—and the fear they instill among bourgeois and middle-class layers—their image of omnipotence is a fake. Their greatest obstacles, which have yet to be taken on and tested, are the workers and farmers both in the United States, the Mideast, and worldwide. Time is on the side of our class, not the exploiters. A prolonged period of revolutionary political education in action will begin to offer working people the opportunity to learn the lessons of the history of the revolutionary working-class movement, and to chart a course that leads to workers power and to the defeat of imperialism worldwide.