U.S. troops patrol the business district in Sar Hawza, Afghanistan.At West Point on December 1, Obama announced a major “jobs program.” He’s sending 30,000 more troops (and as many mercenaries) to “work” in Afghanistan. His coming force of over 200,000 (including “battlefield contractors”) must perform several critical tasks for U.S. imperialism. One is securing the ground for a gas pipeline planned to bypass both Iran and Russia (see below). Another involves spreading combat operations into neighboring Pakistan.
But Obama’s ultimate goal is making Afghanistan a strategic beachhead against the rising strength of U.S. rivals, Iran, China and Russia. Afghanistan borders Iran to the west and China to the east. To the north lie Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, former Soviet states that Putin is determined to reunite in a new Russian Empire.
At Stake for U.S. Rulers: Afghan Pipeline to Spoil Iranian, Russian Gas Dominance
According to the NY Times (12/2/09), “The bulk of new combat forces approved by President Obama would be sent to southern Afghanistan, an area including Helmand and Kandahar Provinces.” It just so happens that the proposed U.S.-funded Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline route runs right through Helmand and Kandahar.
Raja Karthikeya, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank which aided Obama’s lengthy Afghan deliberations, wrote, “Tapping into the energy resources of Central Asia (for example, through the trans-Afghanistan or TAPI pipeline) would help cater to [India’s and Pakistan’s] energy demand and also reduce their disproportionate dependence on the Middle East” [that is, Iran]. India and Pakistan already get the bulk of their gas imports from Iran. And a proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas line, competing head to head with TAPI, is much closer to completion.
Obama also wants TAPI, and the armed force to guarantee it, to thwart Russia’s efforts to control Turkmen gas exports.
Obama couldn’t mention U.S. rulers’ blatant pipeline profit motive. But he had plenty to say about preventing Islamic militants from taking over nuclear-armed Pakistan. And two days later the Times (12/3/09) reported, “The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal area.”
Obama’s West Point speech referred obliquely but unmistakably to his readiness to wage war on Islamists for that grand prize of energy resources, Saudi Arabia. “We will have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power. Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold — whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere — they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships.” Recent pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia starkly dramatize the strategic position of Somalia in commanding shipping lanes for Saudi crude. And Yemen sits on the Arabian Peninsula itself, just miles from the vast Saudi oil fields.
Another topic Obama omitted was Afghanistan’s geo-strategic importance. The Pentagon hopes to make its Bagram base and 30 others in Afghanistan — like Ramstein in Germany, Okinawa in Japan, Bondsteel in Kosovo and its string of bases in Iraq — a vast outpost of U.S. military might aimed directly at potential foes in a Third World War. The rulers of Iran, China and Russia are all targeting Afghanistan’s vast mineral riches and its geo-strategic position.
Obama Lies, Workers Die
Balancing this lie by omission in his West Point manifesto, Obama openly fabricated history on behalf of U.S. imperialism. He said, “Unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation’s resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours.”
But the unvarnished truth is the U.S. Constitution was founded on oppression, enslaving millions of Africans and on genocidal wars against Native Americans. Through its War of Independence it shifted slave-trading and slave-holding profits from Britain to Boston, New York and Virginia.
Today the U.S. war machine has a half million troops in 737 overseas bases in 130 countries and a 300-plus-ship navy to help Exxon Mobil and JP Morgan dominate captive foreign “customers.” U.S. troops not only effectively occupy Iraq and Afghanistan but maintain 50,000 troops and six bases in South Korea, six military bases in Japan-Okinawa and 50,000 troops on 16 military bases in Germany.
President Jimmy Carter made seizing other nations’
vital resources — especially oil — an official U.S. doctrine, as U.S.-led invasions of Kuwait and Iraq (twice) prove. And U.S. imperialists have long used racism to target “others,” from nuclear genocide at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to further anti-Asian racist atrocities in Korea and Vietnam to the anti-Islamic indoctrination of today’s GIs.
Obama Invokes World War II ‘Sacrifice’ that Led to U.S. Rulers’
Global Supremacy — but
Can’t Yet Enforce It
Obama said, “Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs.” But since Kennedy’s assassination, deep partisan differences have made it very hard for presidents to coerce the entire U.S. capitalist class to act in the interests of its imperialist wing. It has been more than four decades since Kennedy, seeking capital for his Vietnam War, forcibly reversed U.S. Steel’s price-hikes.
For now the Obama administration allows obscene bonuses for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan bankers. Although U.S. imperialism’s wars require tapping into their trillions, these bankers don’t seem to want to “sacrifice” for the long-term class interests of U.S. capitalism.
As for winning the working class to sacrifice for this same U.S. imperialism, insufficient communist leadership in the working-class movement eases Obama’s assault on jobs and wages, the harshest since the Great Depression.
Furthermore, Obama finds it difficult to restore the draft. Ultra-liberal and ultra-imperialist (they go together) NY Times columnist Frank Rich, lamented this problem (12/6/09): “We’d need a minimal force of 568,000...to fight a proper counterinsurgency in Afghanistan” but “the president conspicuously left unmentioned...the draft.” Imperialist U.S. rulers must find a way to restore it despite widespread anti-draft sentiment persisting since the Vietnam War era.
Danger and Opportunity
The full-scale military mobilization Obama and his masters are aiming for holds both danger and opportunity for the working class. Pay cuts, police-state racist terror, and forced, deadly overseas deployments await us. So do openings for us to organize militant anti-imperialist, anti-racist, pro-worker actions against these attacks.
We can expose the war-makers’ profit motive and help build a new international communist movement. Mass-murdering U.S. imperialists will likely launch global war someday. This would create the conditions for a working-class revolution, but that’s not automatic. It depends on PLP doing our job of winning masses of workers, soldiers and students to communism. Everything we do today comprises the necessary building blocks towards that future.