The Empire Strikes Iraq

April 19, 2003

Max Fraad Wolff and Richard D. Wolff

US expansion abroad proceeds from diverse impulses, desires and fears. Utopian and dystopian visions struggle to justify or condemn as controversy over it swirls. Proponents promise economic gain, political modernization, religious advances, humanitarian restructuring and other civilizing projects. Opponents find that empire’s costs outweigh its gains; their count stresses lost lives, destroyed cultures, and undermined values. Across the last century, the opponents mostly lost. Yet, they succeeded in limiting, reforming and slowing expansionist surges. Today, the Bush regime accepts no limits to a US empire. For the imperialist right-wing of the Republican Party, US military dominance plus alarm over September 11, 2001, provide the means and the opportunity to remake the world. Millions mobilize in opposition as Bush rushes to seize the moment.

For over a hundred years, theorists have explained what countless empirical analyses document: leading capitalist economies live by expansion. We understand why enterprises must ceaselessly outmaneuver competitors, innovate, expand markets and manage employee resistance. We know why firms press workers for ever-greater profits to fund these activities, high managerial salaries and stock dividends. Economics teaches that competition obliges firms to seek cheaper and more efficient labor, machinery, and raw material. New markets and new opportunities for profitable investment must be developed. Leading national enterprises overflow territorial boundaries as exports, imports, and foreign investments offer competitive success.

As transnational firms develop, they press home governments for assistance with and defense of foreign activity. Colonies, bilateral agreements, and international organization memberships (currency zones, GATT/WTO, common markets, trade zones, IMF, World Bank, BIS, OAS, ASEAN, NAFTA, FTAA, and more), are pushed to protect foreign exposures. Corporate empires take shape. Business success at home often generates imperialist policy abroad. Firms draw states into “partnerships” that design and pursue policies ending in cold or hot wars. Our imperial history comprises clashes between American foreign agendas and those of Britain, Germany, France, Japan, China, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and others. Iraq – in 1991 and now again – is a revealing example of how and why US imperialism is changing.

For free-market, private enterprise capitalism to expand, its political and cultural conditions have to be developed and adjusted to changing global circumstances. Economic and political leaders allied with various media and academic comrades, who share their ambitions, provide the state with appropriate policy paradigms. They identify obstacles to expansion and debate strategies to overcome them. Masters of consciousness strive to persuade US citizens to equate their personal well-being (economic, political, and cultural) with desired policies.

An economy of expansion shapes the goals for foreign policy. Washington presses countries, developed and developing, to establish or strengthen labor flexibility, private property rights; free inflow and outflow of capital, and the stability of currency and price levels. Foreign policy aims to secure export outlets for agricultural goods, manufactures, and service commodities. Likewise, cheap and plentiful sources of imports top policy concerns. Access to flexible, reliable and unorganized labor pools is sought and sustained, as are reduced levels of business taxation and of discrimination against US firms.

The US government deploys its economic, political (including military), and cultural resources to render the world safe and hospitable for expansion. Washington forms, enters, undermines or dissolves international political alliances in service to these goals. Since World War Two, we maintain an immense and costly military force, stationed globally. The Cold War’s end did not change that. Bush’s war on terror aggressively projects that force forward, domestically and globally. Iraq’s importance emerges within the context of an empire whose existence is grounded in expansion. In the fat years we can expand alongside allies, during the lean years the Eagle looks to scavenge.

Cultural and ideological campaigns accompany the economics and politics of empire. Positive images widely disseminated project the US as a model for global emulation. Advertising campaigns, news, music, Hollywood and television programming celebrate “all things American.” America’s enormous college and university system, in its teaching and publications, plays a key role by formally educating (Americanizing) future foreign leaders. Simultaneously, parallel campaigns use hype and hyperbole to demonize threatening regimes, “enemy” leaders, and alien ideologies.

Across the 1930’s and 1940’s the enemies were totalitarian Europe and the Japanese. Then Communists and anti-imperialist nationalists - sometimes separately but often synonymously - became enemies of freedom, democracy, and our business prowess. Godless dictators/devils obstructing superior culture, products, politics, and religion beset the decent people of the developing world, Eastern Europe, and beyond. Today we face “Islamic terrorists” driven by envy and religious fundamentalism. Whatever else they represent, anti-fascist, anti-communist, and now anti-terrorist phases of Pax Americana facilitate the Eagle’s transnational flight.

An expansionary foreign policy requires effective domestic power blocs comprised of economic and political groups dedicated to the task. They shape policy by lobbying, bribing, media blitzing and mobilizing mass campaigns for their objectives. Methods shift depending on which world regions, commodity markets, or foreign investment opportunities are targeted within an ever-changing social climate. These blocs often ally with ideologically driven groups for mutual advantage. Thus, expansionists in the US have long defined their project as a global crusade to “spread and share our democracy, economic well-being, and values”. They denounce their opponents for blocking the noble crusade. When foreign leaders resist our expansion, rhetoric intensifies and pressure builds. If needed, liberating military action follows. The resulting death and destruction become valiant sacrifices or collateral damage in the struggle of good against evil. When evils strike back (or can be plausibly so portrayed), the militarization of imperial policy is temptingly easy. Bush wins domestic support to invade Afghanistan and Iraq after the September 11, 2001, attacks. He tries to stretch that support toward future military action by designating an axis of evil. Totalitarian, repressive and corrupt rogue regimes threaten global democracy and economic progress; every country is simply with us or against us.

Washington’s ideologues update earlier imperialisms’ self-celebrations as civilizing and modernizing missions to the planet’s backwaters. The American Eagle brings the utopia of democracy– equated with private property and markets. It banishes global poverty and oppression: peacefully if possible, by force when obstructed as in Iraq. Wishful thinking and news manipulation recast aggressive war as surgical strike, minimizing loss of innocents. Sufferings are regrettable costs of progressive “regime change” forced on democracy’s reluctant guardian by indigenous failings. The Pentagon controls coverage with elaborate media pool strategies and an avalanche of sanitized images.

Nonetheless, our myriad foreign adventures provoke resistance. Millions of protestors on February 15, 2003, make this clear. Opponents sometimes coalesce into political movements able to limit or derail the adventures. The Anti-Vietnam War movement and now perhaps the growing mass opposition to Bush’s militarised foreign policy are examples. Limiting is not eliminating. If thwarted here and now, imperialist expansion resurfaces there and then. Imperialism and anti-imperialism provoke each other so long as no basic change attends their common foundation.

Iraq, Islam, and Beyond
Every adventure has multiple roots. Iraq is no exception. The world’s fossil fuel dependence adds prominence to a Middle East whose location already made it strategically important to trade and political power. As the colonies of the Ottoman and European Empires won independence, the influence and demands of petroleum companies and the US became dominant. Iraq’s modern history is a page from this book. Monarchies, strongmen and repression blossom as popular expectations about what independence would bring become frustrated. American and oil company monies blend to sustain local elites battling nationalist and socialist movements fueled by mass frustration. The resulting instabilities and conflicts seriously undermine economic, political and social development. Yet petroleum reserves and the region’s actual and potential place in world trade guarantee that civilization’s cradle cannot escape unmolested by grasping imperial hands.

In Iraq, the Middle East, and across the Islamic world, foreign competition and intrusion challenge feudal landlords, undermine self-employed producers and threaten traditional society. Social change deepens into profound uncertainty and insecurity under the impacts of hot and cold wars, socialist movements, and unstable commodity prices. Extreme inequalities of wealth, power, and education keep governments – including Iraq’s – insecure and repressive. They rely on armed force – enabled by oil revenues and the US - to contain domestic oppositions and limit hostile neighbors. Economic and social development are continuously deferred. Occasional breaks from this pattern - Nasser’s Egypt and Mossadeq’s Iran - do not survive external attacks. Enduring mass poverty, unemployment, and extremely concentrated wealth and power combine to cloud and limit prospects for American economic interests. The relative few with jobs in foreign and national capitalist enterprises find themselves exploited, alienated and insecure. Such conditions make each government’s survival - and social stability - ultimately dependent on how it controls its angry masses.

In the Middle East and indeed across the Islamic world, two social movements, each with a mass base, have threatened local governments and foreign interests during recent decades. One is the religious establishment and the other is a secular anti-imperialist alliance of nationalists and socialists. Countries differ markedly in the relative strengths and internal compositions of both movements. Each country’s government eventually allies with one and represses the other: its survival depends on how it manages this. The Shah of Iran has the dubious distinction of having managed to push these two groups together. The 1979 Revolution followed this gargantuan error.

During the Cold War some local governments tried to link their military to nationalist/socialist alliances receiving assistance from the USSR, China, and other socialist countries. This strengthened the global coalition opposed to western and especially US interests. Such governments rarely withstood the domestic and foreign pressures brought against them, particularly after 1990. To avoid or accommodate the onslaught, most Middle Eastern governments, sooner or later, cut deals with oil giants and the West. These deals were usually both causes and effects of parallel decisions to ally with portions of the Islamic establishment for domestic support. Divergent interests temporarily shelved to defeat a common enemy, would resurface later.

Across the Islamic world, an elaborate deflection campaign eventually emerges – a religious substitute for anti-imperialism – mobilizing a crusade against two chief evils. One is Israel (often equated with Jews and western influence), and the other is the atheist left (often equated with secularism, socialism, and nationalism). Alliances of local governments, oil interests, and the US embrace the clerical establishment in campaigns to destroy nationalist/socialist alliances. This strengthens fundamentalists within the establishment because of their militants’ experience and commitment to mass mobilization. In a repressive environment, Friday prayers offer a unique chance to assemble and voice disagreement. As traditional society collapses amid savage inequities, an Islamic community of fairness, equality and decency increasingly captures the imagination. The Umma could rise and empower true believers to retake control over lives and resources.

Heightened Islamic identification facilitates local governments’ actual dependence on global capitalism. Targeting the USSR, socialists, and communists as Islam’s enemies (Iran, Indonesia, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Kosovo and so on) fits nicely with American foreign policy. Rhetorical support for Palestinians and a substantial war against leftism become the centerpieces of ideological and political struggle. Local governments destroy one and deflect another potential domestic opposition. Their anti-leftist struggles, indispensably presented as Islamic crusades, win US funding and armaments crucial to internal social control. Sometimes the turn to Islamic fundamentalism proves troublesome, as in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and beyond. There, secular governments find Islamic fundamentalism blocking their efforts to modernize and industrialize along Western lines. What the US wants then contradicts the goals of the mass base it has financed.

Indeed, many other contradictions also beset the alliance of local governments, oil, Islamic fundamentalism and American interests. Israel’s survival as the lightening rod drawing Islamic militancy requires US money and political support. Enmity toward Israel thus spills over to the US. Aroused fundamentalist crusaders in Pakistan target Hindu India confronting the US with possible nuclear war between its allies. Different interpretations of Islam, different ethnicities, and different attitudes toward secularism (civic distance between state and mosque) become bloody explosions among and within Islamic countries when an encouraged fundamentalism extends beyond its patrons’ intentions. Examples include destabilizing warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Morocco, Iran, Chechnya, Pakistan, Kashmir, Turkey, Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere.

When fundamentalists criticize governing elites (for example, the House of Saud) for their irreligious lifestyles and western ties, the political insecurity of US allies worsens. Sometimes, fundamentalists triumph and take state power. They then confront Washington demanding that prior commitments be maintained. If they refuse, as in Iran, interventions - directly or by proxy - follow. The contradictions of alliance with fundamentalism come back to savage the interests they once protected. Fear of this outcome call into question old arrangements and motivate the search for a new Middle Eastern policy.

Uneven economic development, shifting political alignments, and global cultural movements continually introduce still more contradictions. The demise of Eastern European socialism after 1989 deprived nationalist/socialist alliances across the Islamic world of many supports (economic, political, and ideological). Weakened nationalist/socialist alliances removed and thus undermined one basis of the local governments’ alliances with fundamentalism. Supporting it becomes less urgent. After Abdullah’s Soviet-supported Afghan regime falls, reduced support and financing leaves fundamentalist fighters feeling betrayed and abandoned especially by the US. They resist pressures to resume a socially passive religiosity. Defunded mercenaries seek out the next jihad. Insufficiently Islamic governments and their American benefactors emerge as targets. With intense moral outrage and accelerating violence, they attack the hands that no longer feed them. The 1993 and 2001 World Trade center bombers had extensive former ties to the US. Saudis, Kuwaitis and Pakistanis - recent allies in other foreign adventures – figure prominently among those targeting US facilities, personnel and interests. Alarmed reactions in the US transform formerly “heroic freedom fighters” into “religious fanatics” or “anti-American and anti-Christian murderers.”

Amid rising mutual recrimination between Islamic fundamentalism and the US, aggravated by global economic decline since early 2000, local governments across the Islamic world confront masses increasingly inflamed over their poverty, political repression, and Israel’s war on the Palestinians. The fundamentalism that denounces these conditions becomes oppositional and wins wider audience. Secular governments and their allies face especially dangerous situations. Lack of mass support threatens to undermine decreasingly friendly local governments and the structure of Pax Americana in the Islamic world. Doubts within and among allied governments, oil companies and Washington grow into publicized mutual suspicion punctuated by “incidents.” September 11, 2001, reveals structural rot. Bush’s people want direct, long-term US military interventions starting with Iraq to remake the Middle East into a safe and hospitable region for their special imperial interests. The costs in money and blood and the possibility of catastrophic failure arouse opponents across the world. Global tensions keep rising at every stage: from diplomatic failures at the UN and beyond before the war, through the “coalition’s” massive bombing of Iraq broadcast globally, and now in the angry reactions to the politics and economics of post-war occupation. Reacting to Bush’s revival of an aggressive, militarized imperialism, the rest of the world worries, resists, and adjusts its strategies and alliances accordingly.

After September 11, 2001
The destroyed World Trade Center and damaged Pentagon reveal more than
failures by the CIA, FBI, military, and police to anticipate, prevent, or intercept the attacks. A new vulnerability alarms the public. Troubled by the failures of its stock market, exposures of corporate corruption, rising unemployment, and a disturbingly contested presidential election, Americans strongly to the deadly terror attacks. The Bush administration grasps an historic chance. A campaign of mass distraction – an open-ended “war against terrorism” – can do three things at once: (1) deflect attention from the failures to protect against September 11, 2001, (2) deflect or render unpatriotic the opposition to Bush’s unpopular domestic programs favoring the rich, and (3) revitalize an aggressive imperialist program. Now, the long frustrated right wing of the Republican Party can finally act on its insistence that past challenges “to America” from China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam would have been defeated had American power been correctly applied. Having captured power – the White House, Congress, The Supreme Court and mainstream media – the hard right sees a war on terrorism as the perfect context to secure their political base as well as a growing empire. Now it can roll back past “liberal” victories on civil liberties, progressive taxation, social programs, reproductive rights, affirmative action, and governmental transparency. Now it can make questioning the domestic agenda, like the international agenda, unpatriotic, unacceptable and punishable.

Demonizations of enemies follow September 11 quickly, as Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein share center stage. To prepare the public for the planned future, Bush adds regimes in North Korea and Iran to an “axis of evil” marked for elimination. Officials and compliant media stoke public fear with images of anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-democratic, and anti-Semitic suicide missions of biological, chemical, and atomic destruction. Homeland security alerts, the war mobilization and ominous assaults on civil liberties (exemplified by the Patriot Act) terrorize, at home and abroad.

Carefully charting an indefinitely long and globally interventionist “war against terrorism,” Washington restyles the classic imperialist “civilizing mission.” Now it becomes global self-defense where self extends to globalized corporate interests. Sermons about good and evil, us against them, aim to build domestic support while pressuring international organizations – the UN, NATO, EU, OAS, and others - to join the good or suffer irrelevance. The insecurity agitating US allies in the Islamic world proliferates globally. Former allies are told to heel or be brought to their knees.

The first act - dictated by domestic politics as well as foreign strategy - targets Al Qaeda and the Taliban. A poor, politically isolated, militarily weak, religiously and culturally barbaric semi-state is defeated rapidly. The awkward fact that the US had funded, armed, and celebrated the Taliban a very few years earlier evaporates in Bush’s public relations blizzard. A shocked world largely nods its assent. Following a superficial and unstable act one victory, Afghanistan vanishes from public view. Act two, Saddam Hussein, plays much less well. This war costs well over 100 billion, perhaps much more. Mobilizing an alliance for the war encounters massive resistance at home and abroad. The resulting over-reactions in Washington seriously strain alliances with Europe, Japan, South Korea, Russia and beyond. Smaller overt and covert fronts – North Korea, Columbia, the Philippines, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and several others – worry more governments and nations: who will follow Iraq as act three?

The Iraq crisis also highlights internal contradictions. The economy’s uncontrollable instability yet again generates grave economic problems. Irrational over-investment produces wealth-destroying financial meltdown and output exceeding what can profitably be sold. The resulting downturn worsens because of historically unprecedented business and personal debt. As always, businesses seek solutions abroad in greater exports, cheaper imports, foreign borrowing, and foreign investments. Bush offers an aggressive militarized foreign policy to achieve those goals while he “stimulates” the domestic economy by tax cuts with their resulting deficits and rising national debt. Skeptics reply that war expenditures will not counter a lasting US economic downturn that threatens more than terrorists can. Opponents blame Bush’s warmongering for provoking new alliances opposed to American interests – in Europe (including Russia), Asia (including China), and Latin America (including Brazil) – and for sharpening costly anti-US hostilities across the Islamic world and beyond. Bush’s aggressiveness, the opponents insist, will hurt chances of solving domestic economic problems in the US by foreign expansion.

US imperialism faces dangers from some of its most important trading and investing partners to the extent that they become contending imperialisms. The European Union, Japan, Russia, and China are developing economic, political and possibly military capabilities to pursue their own expansions. New alliances among them threaten to limit or thwart our expansion. World trade in the past has degenerated into inter-imperialist rivalries undermining global growth and provoking world wars. The same possibility now looms again. The serious public disagreements about war with Iraq follow disputes over trade and tariff agreements, market sharing, oil pipeline concessions, global environmental protection, and other issues. Unhinged media campaigns add France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and others to an enemies list that grows weekly.

The contradictions of the present foreign policy trajectory provoke debate. Those who prefer economic, diplomatic, and cultural mechanisms for expansion struggle against those who prefer to use military pre-eminence. The Bush-Rumsfeld hawks vilify the doves’ hesitancy to wield big sticks. Mass anti-imperialist movements, arising quickly around the Iraq crisis, worry hawks and doves. The unforeseeable risks and costs of war and their highly unequal distribution among citizens on both sides can unite divergent constituencies into powerful coalitions. The debate and its outcome also depend on the current global economic decline, now entering its fourth year, as people, enterprises, and governments coping with its effects weigh policies accordingly. Nationalist/socialist alliances skeptical or hostile to Pax Americana are resurgent.

In these dangerous times, one issue retains a central importance. Will Americans distressed by Bush’s militarized imperial strategy (with its “patriotic” constriction of domestic dissent and civil liberties) limit themselves to rejecting hawkish in favor of dovish policies? Or might millions this time question and debate these policies’ common commitment to a US empire and to an economic system that keeps empire always on its agenda?

Max Fraad Wolff is a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His latest book is CLASS THEORY AND HISTORY: CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM IN THE USSR (New York and London, Routledge, 2002).