IMPERIALIST SCHEMES AROUND PAKISTAN

[GM110] [This report, from our Genoa Meeting in May 2011 [GM 110], should have appeared in the previous issue of Communist Left].

The report on the war in central Asia and on the growing inter-imperialist tensions in the area would hardly be complete without mentioning the recent episode of the “spectacular” killing of Bin Laden who, on the wanted list since 9/11 but never found, seemed increasingly phantom-like. He was found holed up in a villa in Pakistan, hostage of the Pakistani services, and, perhaps, handed over by them to the Americans when it happened to suit them. On May 2nd, following an incursion into Pakistani territory, to the city of Abbotobad, 60 kilometres north of Islamabad, the “prince of terror” was supposedly killed by a highly specialised team from the special forces. For some reason the young soldiers, transformed from sappers into gravediggers, dragged the body to the helicopter (the undamaged one) and then dropped it onto the bridge of an aircraft carrier which was heading off shore, from which it would be hastily dumped in the sea. If it wasn’t about the dead we were talking it would be laughable.

We Marxists are not interested in dwelling on the dramatic details, of which there is already a huge amount to numb the minds of the masses and to divert them from the main questions. In fact, the American action could have been entirely staged, with Osama actually living in a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia, or, more likely, he’s already been dead for years. And there are those who maintain, intelligence specialists included, that Al Qaeda has never been more than a tiny circle of amateur conspirators, and that the romantic myth of it leader was a deliberate creation, backed up with remote-controlled virtual appearances. Maybe on this occasion the scrupulous American administration managed to resucitate him.

In any case, for the time being everything else has paled into insignificance: the withdrawal of the ‘regular’ troops from Afghanistan due to begin in July; the war in Libya; the immense United States deficit, and also the general strike a section of the American workers are starting to call for with increasing insistencea.

What is useful to understand instead is the way the war has evolved and the changes in the relations between the various imperialisms which have entered the lists: the United States, China, Russia, England and Germany, and between the large and densely populated states in the area: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and India. The Afghani-Pakistan region is now one of the world’s strategic nerve centres, adjoining the gloabl demographic and economic barycentre. How will the war evolve in this unstable but highly populous zone? Will the U.S.A withdraw from Afghanistan? How will it go about it? And above all, why now?

There isn’t just one reason but certainly the main one is to do with confronting the USA’s domestic problems, and particularly the dire state of the country’s economy, still in the grip of a financial crisis, whose underlying causes are more evident than before, whereas production remains stuck in the doldrums.

By passing the 2010-2011 Finance Bill, whose main provision is slashing health care, Congress has, for the time being, prevented the State from going bankrupt. The cuts will hit millions of proletarians, causing the already high unemployment figures to rise even further. But the ‘savings’ made by the Finance is nothing compared to the federal debt of around 14 thousand billion dollars, whcih is near the borrowing ceiling of 14, 294 billion. Last May the secretary to the American Treasury, fearing the country would default, invited Congress to urgently raise the upper limit on borrowing “to protect the credibility and the credit of the United States and avoid catastrophic consequences”.

The truth is, over recent years capitalism’s global economic crisis has proved a far more serious and concrete threat than the much publicised Islamic brand of “international terrorism”. This is clearly showed in the rebellions sweeping through North Africa and parts of Asia, where the part played by the iconic Osama and islamic fundamentalism has been absolutely negigible.

Osama was an enemy who was not only useful to American imperialism, for whom he represented fundamentalist Islamic terrorism: the new enemy to replace the rival Russian capitalist imperialism. He represented an enemy useful to all the capitalisms in that he helped postpone the prospect of class struggle, by feeding into the myth of a conflict between civilizations.

But despite the fact that “enemy number one” is now dead and at the bottom of the ocean, the American Congress has renewed its declaration of war on the World, authorising the use of lethal force in any conflict whatsoever, with no set boundaries and no clear enemy. The declaration updates the one passed on September 18, 2001, against the smoking backdrop of the twin towers massacre. But if the old version, invoking the right to self-defence, had authorised the use of military force “against nations, organisations and persons responsible for the attacks launched against the United States (…) with the aim of preventing further acts of terrorism”, the new one anticipates a war without end, without borders, and paves the way for a new world war, a new global massacre; the one palliative solution for the incurable ills of capitalism.

The chances of the United States reducing its military commitments abroad are small. This is not just because the international equilibrium is very delicate, but because for stars and stripes capitalism war is a vital necessity, as indeed it is for all capitalisms, great or small, old or new.