The current struggle in Syria is between a U.S. empire in decline and rapidly rising Russia and China. Inter-imperialist rivalry is being played out as the hypocritical Obama and his Arab League lackeys condemn the “butcher” Al-Assad regime for cracking down on his protestors. The rulers’ press shows how the U.S. empire and allies want to use the Libyan blueprint of a no–fly zone enforced by massive bombing raids to foment regime change in Syria. But what is missing is exactly why the U.S. is desperate to place their own puppet on the Syrian throne.
Syria and Libya have parallels in the U.S. desperation to invade and control. In Libya, though, the U.S. mainly is concerned with the threat of Chinese and Russian economic investment in Libyan oil. In Syria the U.S. wants to try to solidify its military and economic control over the entire Middle East by weakening Russia, Iran and China who use the Al-Assad fascists as their proxy. Russia has a fundamental strategic interest to preserve its military base in Syria and is in the process of sending warships to Syria as part of a drive to revive itself as an imperialist empire.
Iran Emerges Winner of Iraq War
Iran was a real winner of the U.S. war in Iraq. It still maintains its ability to arm and fund its proxy forces like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, and has now developed the ability to influence Iraq’s government to a great extent. It is Iran, to the U.S.’s chagrin, that has facilitated Iraq making an agreement with pseudo-state “Kurdistan” (see CHALLENGE 11/30/11) that challenged Exxon/Mobil’s outright conquest of an Iraqi oil field. Iran supports Syria against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) — the Sunni-based puppet force of Syrian Army deserters that is seeking protection from Turkey and Saudi Arabia in order to topple the Assad’s primarily Alawite, Christian, and Druze regime.
Sellout remnants of the old communist movement in the Middle East try to play up Assad’s Nasserite roots of a pseudo-socialistic outright fascist state as standing up to imperialism. To them, allying with “lesser-evil” bosses includes getting into bed with dictators who espouse and arm religious fundamentalists to carry out sexist and racist massacres against working class-women, men, and children.
All Bosses Are Workers’ Enemies
PLP in the Middle East consistently struggles with our friends to understand that while the U.S. continually brutalizes and murders the working class in order to advance U.S. Imperialism (all the while condemning Syria), Russian Imperialism and Iranian hegemony are not alternatives that can serve our needs.
Neither Syria, Russia, China, Hezbollah, Iran, nor the myth of a “Welfare State” is the answer the working class needs in the Middle East. Only a communist revolution to smash Israeli apartheid, Iranian fundamentalism, Syrian dictatorship, as well as Russian, Chinese and U.S. imperialism will end the brutalization of the protestors and the working class as a whole.
Russia will block NATO’s attempt at a no-fly zone because it is in its strategic interest to do so, and China will continue to fund and arm Iranian proxies in order to challenge the U.S.’s favorite thug, Israel, but it will continue to be the children of the working class who are sacrificed to allow the imperialists to pursue their power struggle.