a defence to a previous article

 Thank you for commenting on this blog and I do apologise for the late response to your argument.  I also would hope we can develop a healthy debate in the course of the future. However, I have to add that this post was not intended as prosaic bias towards American people rather a critique of American power politics over the last thirty years. These configurations within the global economy have produced internal contradictions which have undermined key geo strategic interest, which is vital for the U.S to sustain its comparative advantage it has enjoyed over the last thirty years. Also I have to apologise both for the article, as it lacks clarity and for the non positivist approach yet in the case of the later I don’t think I could have augmented the logic of imperialism with capital accumulation.

however in the defence of my position I want to start by highlighting two contrasting statments by leading us foreign policy advisers both of whom lead the war the plans for a project for a new american century.    

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Francis Fukuyama, 

It is my view that in a longer historical perspective, al-Qaida will be seen as a mere blip or diversion. Bin Laden got lucky that day and pulled off a devastating, made-for-media attack. The United States then overreacted, invading Iraq and making anti-Americanism a self-fulfilling prophecy … Since 2001 the most important world-historical story has been the rise of China. This is a development whose impact will almost certainly be felt in 50 years’ time. Whether anyone will remember Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida at that remove is a different matter

Zbigniew Brzezinksi

 Europe is alienated, Russia and China are more assertive, Asia is organising itself, Latin America is becoming ‘populist and anti‑American’, and the Middle East is inflamed by religious passions and anti-imperial nationalisms. That isn’t the end of it. Iran is dominant in the Persian Gulf, Pakistan is volatile and has nuclear weapons, there is a global political awakening, and the tertiary‑educated youth of the Third World are now ‘the equivalent of the militant proletariat of the 19th and 20th centuries’.

Intelligence specialist George Friedman wrote:

The conquest of Iraq will not be a minor event in history: it will represent the introduction of a new imperial power to the Middle East. The United States will move from being an outside power influencing events through coalitions to a regional power that is able to operate effectively on its own. Most significant, countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria will be living in a new and quite unpleasant world.4

This is contrary to US strategy in the document ‘Iraq: Goals, Objectives and Strategy’, prepared by US officials in August 2002. According to this document the aim of war was not only to topple Saddam Hussein, but also to build a stable pro-US regime that preserved the Ba’ath-dominated bureaucracy, while Washington turned its attention to Iraq’s neighbours, Syria and Iran.  

Yes, you are correct in your assumption that China did win the 3 billion oil contract with Iraq even Russia was prioritised over Europe. This would seam to completely contravene every aspect of my argument.  Yet to understand this bizarre turn of event we have to look at the abject failure of the Iraq war in regards to American strategic objectives. This comes in the form of the now infamous neo cons doctrine “project for a new American century” this out lines the dangers of china economic power and its strategic ties to the Middle East.

However, before I will analyse the manifestations of this document in relation to American foreign policy. We need to look at the key strategic failures in Iraq by the coalition forces that were so cataclysmic that by  default, Iran has become a major geo-strategic power in the region. it is quite obvious that the invasion that the strategy for the Iraq war was not only aimed at disciplining chine’s economic expansion it was also to used silence Iran and Syria.

The entrenchment of U.S. expansionism in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq brought a wave of resistance that undermined U.S strategic ambitions. Latin America grew bolder with revolutions both in Venezuela and in Bolivia directly challenging US regional power something, which hasn’t occurred since 1820s with European intervention. China began to assert it self into the affairs of Africa and in Asia. in the middle east Iran has become a regional power only matched by Israel and Hezbollah affectivly pushed Israel' excursion out of Lebanon in 2006. these are contrary to American foreign policy objectives, which has largely almost exclusively subdued any resistance to both its global economic expansion and its global military encroachment.

Yet, how did this occur in such a short space of time, how was it that American foreign policy expansion was largely untarnished for the last thirty years. It is clear that the adventurism into Iraq has complete undermined all these historical certainties. yet to understand this their needs to be an explanation of the Iraq’s Baathest state, which subdued and assimilated so many wide ranging movements from the secularist left  to radical Islam into the infrastructure of the Baathest regime. The policy of coercion and consent was a absolute necessity under the reign of Saddam Hussain, as it alienate militants form large sections of society and then surgically removed them with brutally suppression,

This is in particular importance to Iraq communist party, which had long been the biggest threat to Iraq bourgeois interest, Saddam and to every colonial power that ever had the misfortune of tacking an interest in Iraq’s affairs .the reason why I focus on this political convergence is that Iraq from the 1940 to the 70s was largely secularist. In deed the greatest threat to US interests in the Middle East in this period was indeed the secularist movements ranging form populist left nationalism to communism.

However, with the defeat of Nassarism in the Yom Kippur war with Israel marked an end to both popular left nationalist sentiments and the state building apparatus of nationalisation, which was effectively known as state capitalism. undoubtedly this was corrupt even violently suppressing left wing militants both in the work place and in academic circles, yet it did distribute wealth form the core to periphery.  this also coincided with the failures of the more militant left in the beginning of the second civil war in Lebanon 1978.

The communist parties in the Middle East retracted into stagnation and eventual defeat. This is best show in Iraq where key militant workers, student and the poor became disenfranchised with the left alternative to US strategic ambitions for the region. Saddam Hussain used the stagnation of the left by co opting the communist party into the rank and file of the Baathest party. This meant that the left in Iraq was held tightly bound to the interests of Saddam, which negated the communist party of Iraq from having any leverage in wider society to enact change.

 Devoid of a political alternative, the Dawha party filled the void: this promised an alternative that replaced the dogma of the western traditional thought of left and right and replaced it with radical Islam. Although this didn't in any way alter the contradictions within capitalism. it none the less used this to radically alter the discourse of western based philosophy in the Middle East with one, which was apparently more generic to Muslim faith. No where in the middle east is this shown more distinctly than the rise and influence of radical Islamic into previously categorised secular states. this is seen Lebanon with the creation of Hezbollah, Iraq with CSIRI more importantly it was key component in the Iranian revolution.

The extent of the co-option of the Iraq communist party is show quite dramatically in 1977 during the Kabbalah uprising when communist forces moved with Saddam to smash Dawha movement. The intention was to silence this radical formation yet all it did was to further escalate the speed and penetration of the movement into large section of Iraq society. Although this movements was brutally suppressed during the Iran and Iraq war it replaced the traditional left, as the main means to organise and mobilise the disenfranchised into action.

This was a  familiar trend, which was occurring all over the middle east during the 70s and 80s which is fundamental to understand the power vacuum that enveloped  Iraq once the infrastructure and security forces of the Baathest regime were dismantled. However, more importantly history shows that the Shia clerics during the British lead occupation of the 1920s organised the greatest resistance to the British invasion only months after the occupation began. Contrary to the maligned bias of religious fanaticism presented in the media during the Iraq war there was deep seated sense of national identity, which was carved out during the British occupation.

This was a key factor in the resistance of Iraq during the war, which the US did not recognize or was impervious to the historical warnings of the past.  However, a key feature, which the US forces rather fortunately stumbled upon is that there is a hierarchy in the Shia faith, which is not be confused with the dogmatic structures of Catholic Church.  In Shia faith any Malja (senior cleric) can choice independently the direction of their teachings. This can and often is, contradictory to other senior clerics so it’s not bound by one hierarchy over lord, like the pope in Rome.

 However, there are procedures, as such the rise of al Sadr popularity was contradicted by the hierarchical structure of the Shia faith. although Al-Sadr inheriting a large congregation form his father after his execution he lacked the seniority of an Ayatollah and had to bow to the pressures of Shia faith. this placed  Ali al-Sistani  who is one of the most important clerics in the Muslim world to have grater influence of Shia resistance particular undermining any hope of national based resistance for the whole of Shia faith. this coincided with the conservative nature of his politics even stating quit emphatically that clerics shouldn’t get involved in politics and even complained to the provisional council about the speed of the elections.this would be a familiar pattern in the war a contradiction that put Al Sadr and al Sistani a logger heads in key moments in the war.

This is an important development mainly due to radical composition of the Dawha party in the 70s. However years of repression and defeat had tuned the Dawha party and the militant wing SCIRI into mimicking the policies of the occupation force. Yet although character of the Middle East has transformed the radical composition of politics from secularist left to radical Islam these radical reconfigurations are also susceptible to conservatism. The greatest contradiction of radical Islam is that it proposes to inoculate the civilisation of the west without reconfiguring the nature of capitalism drive for exploitation. So it appears, as a radical brake with convention in its structures and democratic practices yet these structures are all prone to the market expansion.

This largely leaves it teachings as purely aspirational almost, like an apologist or liberal assertions on the ideals of western thought yet this conceals the true relations of capitalist accumulation. This manifestation of conservatism and consolidation with American foreign policy objectives by the Dawha party is largely due to market expansionism.  However, the material dislocation of Iraq society with its rising unemployment .crime and poverty found a new avenue to voice these concerns within the discourse of radical Islam dialectically through Muqtada al-Sadr and Madih army that was created in the aftermath of the invasion.

 In early as April 2004 a mass uprising against the occupation exploded through out Iraq district after district reported heavy losses.  The US backed coalition acted decisively to liquidate the threat of Al –Sadr. However, the important build up to this was in Fallujah where four American mercenaries where killed. The coalition demanded the city hand over those responsible when they refused thousands of troops waded into the city. The Shia and Sunni resistance was so immense that it forced the occupation to retreat. Yet more importantly the political back lash to this bound both Sunni and Shia militant together in a unity of resistance. Thousands of demonstrations broke out all over Iraq attacking troops with rocks and guns.

  

The very thing the Coalition thought was unthinkable was happening before their eyes.  Most starkly for the US coalition was when 200,000 demonstrated in Bagdad where both Shia and Sunnis prayed together similar uprising where occurring in   Baqubah, Ramadi, Sadr City, Samarra, Tel Mar and Mosul.  This was reaffirmed by A poll conducted for the Coalition Provisional Authority in May, 81 percent of Iraqis thought that the occupying forces should leave.  This was combined with the Madih army occupying a number of provisional government offices in the Sothern provinces. In Fallujah where the resistance began demonstrators confronted the 2^nd battalion of the Iraq army shots where fired and several solders where injured. Yet more profoundly thousands of Iraq soldiers began to leave their posts and refused to take orders.

The US coalition brokered a deal that gave greater concessions to the Shia resistance in return of stability. This retreat was a constant theme over the next coming months the very organisations they wanted to isolate, where now the very people they were employing to maintain their interest. Yes of coarse, you can say this in the end with restrain any notion of self management and bind them to the U.S coalition, but at the time it drove on a popular wave of resistance which touched off every corner of the Middle East and is argued developed the strategies in the recent Arab awakening.

Again U.S policy advisers announced the imminent capture of al Sadr yet he was able not only evade capture but take the holy city of Najaff, but with a price. the contradiction between Al-Sistani and Al-sadr's Madih army came to the surface. Ayatollah al-Sistani pleaded and used his ranked to demobilise  Al-Sadr Madih army. Yet the humiliating defeat for the US by not only capturing Al Sadr, but actually intensified the resistance shows once again that the U.S backed coalition were actually acelerting the level and depth of the nation wide insurrection.

The coalition then turned to Sadr city to nail the final blow to the Al-Sadr Madih army, where thousands of American troops swarmed into the city. After numerous battles and fierce resistance the US forces were being threatened with retreat. Their only option was to call in a massive air strike although Sadr claimed he would demobilise his troops, to spare the city. yet after a couple of months the U.S. coalition forces lost it battle to control the city when the head of the US backed council was assassinated. This effectively cut off all ties to U.S coalition with the wider population, which allowed Al-Sadr to outflank the US backed forces by retaking the city. this was a massive defeat for the coalition.

On the 22 July 2004 Robert Fisk reports from the independent:

  

‘For mile after mile south of Baghdad, the story was the same: empty police stations, abandoned Iraqi army and police checkpoints and a litter of burnt out American fuel tankers and rocket-smashed police vehicles down the main highway to HiIlah and Najaf.

After these defeats and rising tide of resistance the U.S backed coalition brought in a new strategy one which would ultimately under mine every strategic objective it had before the war. This was based on the intention to undermine Al-Sadr by co opting  moderates, like Ayatollah Ali Sistani into the U.S chain of command .although this did have some initial success it was believed that Ali Sistani would conform to U.S objectives much like Saddam Hussian before the fist gulf war.

This has similarities with the British Malayan experience in deal with a crisis their in 1950, where by a combination of coercion and co option. The British were able to derail the armed mobilisation of the Marxist guerrillas, while promoting leaders that where keen to maintain the strategic objectives of the occupation. The first major victory for the US to drive a wedge between the populist unity of Sunni and Shia was in Tel Afr, which had become a major smuggling nodal point for the resistance. The U.S demanded that all resistance groups be disarmed the Sunnis side of the council sided with the Americans coalition, while the Shia sided with the resistance.

after a heavy bombing campaign 250,000 to 350,000 people were driven from their homes.  instead of dividing the ethnic minorities into sectarian riviaries it actually bound these sectarian tensions together as one unity resistance force. this is in stark contradiction of the US reliance on top down structure of the councils to impose its authority onto its respective communities yet although this worrying development was beginning to reverberate across key policy advisers, as we can see from quote of Michael Schwartz bellow it gave embattled U.S. coalition the confidence to move onto its next object:

While it is clear that many Shia Turkmen support the guerrillas, the US army insists, and some independent observers agree, that many if not all the insurgents are Sunni Arabs. If this is true, it would constitute an unprecedented alliance between ethnicities within Iraq, one that presages a more resourceful and unified 

However, the US spurred on by this success it then moved decisively to quell the resistance by a full assault on Fallujah. The U.S attacked the city with 15,000 troops yet as a back drop to this thousands of fighters took to the streets across Iraq driving out police and the National Guard. The US was in a circular war when one city was recaptured another would be retaken. However the all out city wide insurrections, were beginning to inflict huge losses on the resistance. They began to change tactics favour guerrilla like raids, as opposed to mass insurrection as it would be punitively assaulted by air strikes. This laid down another strategy of the U.S backed coalition called aid and recognition or resistance and destruction. The Fallujah assault  borrowed tactics form Israeli in relation to its occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. City wide buildings were bulldozed tuning thousands of people to refugee camps.

However, even though the victory of the assault had some successes at driving out the resistance the policy advices from the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies was damning in its appraisal of US military strategy. In a document entitled ‘Playing the Course’ the think-tank declared:

The bad news is that the US military victory in Fallujah probably only affected 10 to 20 percent of the full time Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and many seem to have escaped. Other Sunni insurgents attacked throughout Iraq during the fighting, and had considerable success in starting an uprising in Mosul. The decision to attack Fallujah was opposed by Iraq’s Sunni president, its leading group of Sunni clerics, and a number of other Iraqi politicians. Sunni Arab media coverage was almost universally hostile both inside and outside Iraq, and these negative images were compounded by TV coverage that appeared to show a US Marine killing a defenceless, wounded prisoner and then a devastated and deserted city.80

However, the limitations of the resistance movement meant that although there was partial unity in sectarian camps the elections brought these partial glimpses of unity to and end. This meant that a bloody civil war was enacted through out Iraq, which brought Shia and Sunnis into conflict with one another. Although the serge in 2007 claimed victory and end to resistance movement the aims of the U.S objectives in Iraq where utterly disfigured. The relationship between   Ali al-Sistani,  Muqtada al- Sadr’s had the capacity to undermine Mehdi army yet by consistently appealing to ali Al-Sistani it forged closed links with Iran.

This is completely contrary to the U.S objectives before the war, yet more importantly the ties between the China and Iran meant that when the Iraqi oil law was passed. The Shia lead government favoured China and  Russia over the U.S and Europe. More importantly the disfigured footnotes of the project for a new American century were completely in ruin. As I have stated earlier the further entrenchment of the US in the Iraq and Afghanistan meant the Chavez could rise in Venezuela, China had more of an influence in Asia and Africa and Iran had more strength in the Middle East, as a regional power.

In the document the rise of new American century,  which is now credited ,as the main theoretical apparatus of the neo cone doctrine china, Iran, Iraq  and North Korea were heavily prioritised as main geo strategic threats to the U.S. in the document it opens with 

Conversely, East Asia appears to be entering a period with increased potential for instability and competition.  In the Gulf, American power and presence has achieved relative external security for U.S. allies, but the longer-term prospects are murkier. Generally, American strategy for the coming decades should seek to consolidate the great victories won in the 20^th century

It followes:

The fourth element in American force posture – and certainly the one which holds the key to any longer-term hopes to extend the current Pax Americana – is the mission to transform U.S. military forces to meet new geopolitical and technological challenges. 

The Chinese military, in particular, seeks to exploit the revolution in military affairs to offset American advantages in naval and air power, for example.  If the United States is to retain the technological and tactical advantages it now enjoys in large-scale conventional conflicts, the effort at transformation must be considered as pressing a mission as preparing for today’s potential theater wars or constabulary missions – indeed, it must receive a significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades

The prospect is that East Asia will become an increasingly important region, marked by the rise of Chinese power, while U.S. forces may decline in number. Conventional wisdom has it that the 37,000-man U.S. garrison in South Korea is merely there to protect against the possibility of an invasion from the North.  This remains the garrison’s central mission, but these are now the only U.S. forces based permanently on the Asian continent.  They will still have a vital role to play in U.S. security strategy in the event of Korean unification and with the rise of Chinese military power

the best way to secure peace and stability in Asia was to deter potential Chinese adventurism through a strong American military presence and system of alliances.

Professor of European affair Alex calinecos writes: This is not where the Bush administration’s strategists had planned to be ten years after 9/11. Seizing Iraq was intended to tighten the grip of the US on the Middle East and thereby discipline its rivals, all heavily dependent on the region’s energy reserves.

Although originally a 65 page document I have tried to highlight the apparent threat to that America faces in relation to China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Pakistani. However, what makes this document so important are the extremely influential people associated with the project. These include Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama and Fred Kagan. In fact every one who was involved in this project either held major position in élite colleges or where apart of highly influential administrative institutions, all of which could impose particular strategic polices onto the U.S government.

  

Yet although these signatories had their influence from the head of the World Bank to west point it would be ridicules to base the entirety of American foreign policy on this one single document. However, in the above article I show conclusively that pressures being exerted on American capitalism both from China and Russia  to a lesser extent India and brazil are repapering  in geostrategic rivalries, as a Marxist I see a totality of contradiction that emerge from class antagonism that eventually bust into geo strategic wars. This can be clarified by China owing 1.6 trillion dollars of American debt and also holding large section of European debt.

In a recent interview on al-jazeera Jin Liqun:  the treasury of sovereign wealth fund for china claims that key to understanding the European crisis is outdated labour laws and a worn out welfare state. This was days before Christine Lagard head of the IMF went to see China to ask for capital injection into Europe. The reason why this is of particular importance is that china’s influence both in economic terms and geo strategic power has grown since the Iraq war. To such an extent that American  companies were largely dismissed in the hole sale of Iraqi oil. The further the U.S relied on the more passive elements of the Shia population during the Iraq war the greater the influence of Iran was in Iraq’s affairs. This is the main reason for the oil contracts going to china, as apposed to the U.S.

However the Iraq oil law did provide at least theoretically an important footnote of American intervention particularly reinforcing neo liberalism enterprise in Iraq. This essentially uses the monopolistic state infrastructure and coverts it into private appropriation of capitalist accumulation. Saddam was able to maintain his power base because he distributed the wealth from oil industry into social programmes: Housing, Education and Health, which made it one of the most progressive social models in the Middle East this reconfiguration of the Iraq state to appropriate the state institutions, like oil and gas into hands of private investors.

The intention of the U.S was to reconfigure the Baathest regime for the appropriation of neo liberal reconstruction using all the states apparatus to turn it into a Mecca of capitalist production. Although this might have been the intention, China’s rise, as a global power both influencing large sections of Africa, Asia and south America shows how catastrophic this blatant adventurism was by bush under the guise of the neo conservative doctrine. The continual engagement in this multifaceted theatre of war under the leadership of Obama highlights a continuation of the previous governments polices, which can only serve to undermine the base of the US strategic interests, as it gives opportunities for expansionism to other rival power blocks to compete with the US globally.   

However, to take your last point I agree war came well before capitalism, yet imperialism under capitalism is completely different under Rome and their appropriation of slave’s society. The whole point, as I have outlines on numinous occasions is to look at the world today capitalism and war goes hand in hand because of the internal contradictions within capitalism. These reappears into inter-state rivalries we can see this in relation to china and Taiwan and to a less extent Russia and Georgia.  

Yet what’s most stark is that China is beginning to influence other developing states using Keynesianism, as apposed to the austerity Neo liberal regime. This means its directly confronting the Neo liberalism assumptions on crisis. A number of years as ago this would not have been possible so the point that you raised at the end of your comment is partially correct yet as I try to uncover in the for mentioned article that capital accumulation creates interstate rivalries, which manifests them self’s in war like Iraq and Afghanistan.