Tariq Ali on the UN Security Council
Capitulation to Washington
In January, February, and early March
this year, in response to the pressure from millions of people all over the
world demonstrating in the streets against Washington’s planned war on Iraq,
the United Nations Security Council declined to pass a resolution authorizing
the war, despite tremendous browbeating, including a major speech to the UN by
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (full of lies), and despite the demonization
of France by the U.S. media and political leaders for not agreeing to a war. Of
course the U.S. government, supported mainly by the Blair government in
Britain, went to war anyway. Now that the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq is an
accomplished fact, the French, German, Russian, and Chinese governments, who
all have representatives on the Security Council (three of them with veto
power), have completely caved in to Washington, passing a resolution that in
effect retroactively authorizes a war that the vast majority of humanity
opposed. For the information of our readers we reprint comments on this
development by Tariq Ali, a British author of Pakistani background who has long
been a leading figure in the antiwar movement. His article, edited for our readers,
originally appeared in the Guardian (London) for May 24. Tariq Ali’s
forthcoming book, Bush in Babylon: Recolonising Iraq, will be published
by Verso in the autumn. He can be reached here.
Business as usual
The UN has capitulated. Now let the
north’s plunder of the south begin again
Unsurprisingly, the UN Security Council has
capitulated completely, recognized the occupation of Iraq, and approved its
recolonization by the U.S. and its bloodshot British adjutant. The timing of
the mea culpa by the “international community” was perfect. Yesterday, senior
executives from more than 1,000 companies gathered in London to bask in the
sunshine of the reestablished consensus under the giant umbrella of Bechtel,
the American empire’s most favored construction company. A tiny proportion of
the loot will be shared.
So what happened to the overheated rhetoric
about Europe versus America [and about the “new Europe” as against the “old
Europe” of France and Germany]? Berlusconi in Italy and Aznar in Spain—the two
most rightwing governments in Europe—were fitting partners for Blair while the
Eastern European states, giving a new meaning to the term “satellite” which
they had previously so long enjoyed, fell as one into line behind Bush.
France and Germany, on the other hand, protested
for months that they were utterly opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq. [German
Prime Minister Gerhart] Schröder had owed his narrow reelection to a pledge not
to support a war on Baghdad, even were it authorized by the UN. [French
President Jacques] Chirac, armed with a veto in the Security Council, was even
more voluble with declarations that any unauthorized assault on Iraq would
never be accepted by France.
Together, Paris and Berlin coaxed Moscow too
into expressing its disagreement with American plans. Even Beijing emitted a
few cautious sounds of demurral. The Franco-German initiatives aroused
tremendous excitement and consternation among diplomatic commentators. Here,
surely, was an unprecedented rift in the Atlantic alliance. What was to become
of European unity, of NATO, of the “international community” itself if such a
disastrous split persisted? Could the very concept of “the West” survive?
Such apprehensions were quickly allayed. No
sooner were Tomahawk missiles lighting up the nocturnal skyline in Baghdad, and
the first Iraqi civilians cut down by U.S. Marines, than Chirac rushed to
explain that France would assure smooth passage of U.S. bombers across its
airspace (as it had not done, under his own premiership, when Reagan attacked
Libya), and wished “swift success” to American arms in Iraq. Germany’s
cadaver-green foreign minister Joschka Fischer [of the German Green Party]
announced that his government, too, sincerely hoped for the “rapid collapse” of
resistance to the Anglo-American attack. Putin, not to be outdone, explained to
his compatriots that “for economic and political reasons” Russia could only
desire a decisive victory of the U.S. in Iraq.
Washington is still not satisfied. It wants to
punish France further. Why not a ritual public flogging broadcast live by
Murdoch TV? A humbled petty chieftain (Chirac) bending over while an imperial
princess (Condoleezza Rice) administers the whip. Then the leaders of a
reunited north could relax and get on with the business they know best:
plundering the south [that is, the former colonial world in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America].
The expedition to Baghdad was planned as the
first flexing of a new imperial stance. What better demonstration of the shift
to a more offensive strategy than to make an example of Iraq. If no single
reason explains the targeting of Iraq, there is little mystery about the range
of calculations that lay behind it. Economically, Iraq possesses the second
largest reserves of cheap oil in the world; Baghdad’s decision in 2000 to
invoice its exports in euros rather than dollars risked imitation by Hugo
Chávez in Venezuela and by the Iranian mullahs. Privatization of the Iraqi
wells under U.S. control would help to weaken OPEC.
Strategically, the existence of an independent
Arab regime in Baghdad had always been an irritation to the Israeli military.
With the installation of Republican zealots close to Likud in key positions in
Washington, the elimination of a traditional adversary became an attractive
immediate goal for Jerusalem. Lastly, just as the use of nuclear weapons in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki had once been a pointed demonstration of American might
to the Soviet Union, so today a blitzkrieg rolling swiftly across Iraq would
serve to show the world at large that if the chips are down, the U.S. has, in
the last resort, the means to enforce its will.
The UN has now provided retrospective sanction
to a preemptive strike. Its ill-fated predecessor, the League of Nations, at least
had the decency to collapse after its charter was serially raped. Analogies
with Hitler’s blitzkrieg of 1940 are drawn without compunction by cheerleaders
for the war. Thus Max Boot in the Financial Times wrote: “The French
fought hard in 1940—at first. But eventually the speed and ferocity of the
German advance led to a total collapse. The same thing will happen in Iraq.”
What took place in France after 1940 might give pause to these enthusiasts.
The lack of any spontaneous welcome from Shias
and the fierce early resistance of armed irregulars prompted the theory that
the Iraqis are a “sick people” who will need protracted treatment before they
can be entrusted with their own fate (if ever). Such was the line taken by
David Aaronovitch in the Observer [London]. Likewise, George Mellon in
the Wall Street Journal warns: “Iraq won’t easily recover from Saddam’s
terror,” [adding that] “after three decades of rule of the Arab equivalent of
Murder Inc., Iraq is a very sick society.” To develop an “orderly society” and
re-energize (privatize) the economy will take time, he insists. On the front
page of the Sunday Times [London], reporter Mark Franchetti quoted an
American NCO: “‘The Iraqis are a sick people and we are the chemotherapy,’ said
Corporal Ryan Dupre. ‘I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold
of a friggin’ Iraqi. No, I won’t get hold of one. I’ll just kill him.’”
No doubt the “sick society” theory will acquire
greater sophistication, but it is clear the pretexts are to hand for a mixture
of Guantánamo and Gaza in these newly occupied territories.
If it is futile to look to the UN or Euroland,
let alone Russia or China, for any serious obstacle to American designs in the
Middle East, where should resistance start? First of all, naturally, in the
region itself. There, it is to be hoped that the invaders of Iraq will
eventually be harried out of the country by a growing national reaction to the
occupation regime they install, and that their collaborators may meet the fate
of former [pro-British] Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said [killed in the 1958
revolution that overthrew British-installed King Faisal and temporarily ended
neocolonial U.S.-British control of Iraq.]
Sooner or later, the ring of corrupt and brutal
tyrannies around Iraq will be broken. If there is one area where the cliche
that classical revolutions are a thing of the past is likely to be proved
wrong, it is in the Arab world. The day the Mubarak, Hashemite, Saudi, and
other dynasties are swept away by popular wrath, American—and Israeli—arrogance
in the region will be over.