From Eastern Europe to the Middle East to the Pacific, sharpening imperialist competition is escalating both regional warfare and the risk of global conflict. In the latest U.S. move to contain Russia, “the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry-fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries” (New York Times, 6/14/15). Barack Obama has announced plans for more U.S. troops and bases in Iraq. Meanwhile, as CHALLENGE recently reported, the U.S. and China are vying militarily over strategic Pacific and Indian Ocean shipping routes.
These conflicts represent potential imperialist flashpoints for a massive armed confrontation — and a heavy toll on the international working class. While the capitalist bosses create these wars, workers are pitted against each other on the frontlines. Workers suffer the brunt of the racism, sexism, and nationalism that are intensified by imperialist rivalries.
The Progressive Labor Party fights to rid the world of the capitalist system that generates these wars. We fight for a communist society that will end racism, sexism, nationalism, mass unemployment and poverty. We fight to put workers in control of running society.
U.S. Challenged by ISIS, Iran
After murdering more than three million workers and children in Iraq and displacing millions more in two decades of war and sanctions, U.S. bosses and allied imperialists won only shaky control over the country’s vast oil wealth. Their weakness created a power vacuum that U.S. enemies seek to fill. Obama’s latest move was prompted by ISIS’s (an armed capitalist organization also known as the Islamic State) territorial gains in Iraq and Syria, but also by Iran’s growing influence in the region. Despite U.S. backing of government and Kurdish forces, Tehran appears to be consolidating its leadership of the anti-ISIS effort (Long War Journal, 6/1/15).
Beyond the immediate challenge to U.S. control over Iraq’s oil reserves, Obama and the finance capitalists he serves fear the threat to U.S. control over the world’s foremost oil profit center, Saudi Arabia. Nowhere else is oil — the lifeblood of the profit system — more plentiful or cheaper to pump. Since the end of World War II, U.S. have allied with the Saudi royals to run the most lucrative business deal of the modern era. Protected by the U.S. Navy, ExxonMobil (with close to half a trillion dollars in annual sales) and a handful of other major oil companies dictate the terms of crucial energy supplies throughout the world.
But Iran is challenging Saudi/Exxon supremacy on two fronts: by arming anti-Saudi Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen, and by pursuing a nuclear arms program. At the same time, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the U.S. ruling-class think tank owned by the same finance capital interests as Exxon, worries about ISIS disrupting and then invading Riyadh, the Saudi capital. ISIS’s goal is to “ignite a sectarian civil war in Saudi Arabia by targeting the Shia community and provoking them to unleash their anger against the Saudi government” (CFR website, 6/11/15). Any serious fighting within Saudi Arabia will surely draw in U.S. troops.
Bombing Russia
In Europe, Vladimir Putin’s “Greater Russia” power plays present U.S. rulers with an equally dire predicament. After the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact alliance, U.S. bosses opportunistically welcomed ten ex-Soviet countries into NATO. Now they are planning to defend these additions to their empire from Putin’s imperialist counterattack — with massive, lethal force.
As the proposal stands now, a company’s worth of equipment — enough for about 150 soldiers — would be stored in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia…about 750 soldiers — would be located in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary, they said.…The amount of equipment included in the planning is small compared with what Russia could bring to bear against the NATO nations on or near its borders, but it would serve as a credible sign of American commitment, acting as a deterrent the way that the Berlin Brigade did after the Berlin Wall crisis [Cold War-era dividing the city into pro-Soviet and pro-Western capitalist camps] in 1961 (New York Times, 6/14/15).
The reference to Berlin reflects the significance of this seemingly modest deployment. As retired Army Colonel John M. Collins noted in Military Strategy (2001):
Tiny tripwires can…serve useful purposes….Soviet armed forces could have swamped the Berlin Brigade any time the Kremlin gave a green light, but doing so would have risked a nuclear war with NATO.
For now, nuclear war is U.S. imperialism’s sole trump card. This reflects the rulers’ strategic weakness and workers’ potential strength. It dates back to the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, when mass anti-imperialist actions of the 1960s and 1970s — in which our Party played a crucial role — undermined the bosses’ genocidal campaign. Ever since, U.S. rulers have been unable to implement a draft to field the millions-strong military they need. Shrinking economic power and industrial capacity curtails the rulers’ ability to produce conventional weapons in quantities comparable to those of World War II.
(Class-blind militarism is in short supply among U.S. allies in Europe, as well. According to a June 2015 Pew Research poll, “at least half in Germany, France and Italy are unwilling to use military force to defend other NATO members against Russian aggression.”)
As a cheaper alternative to conventional warfare, U.S. imperialists have developed the ability to deliver city-obliterating nuclear weapons anywhere on earth.
Islands of War
On June 12, Australia’s Sydney Morning Post reported on the growing tensions in the South China Sea:
China has responded to an international outcry over its construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea by accelerating the building program….Australia, the United States and most recently the G7 group of rich nations have all warned China to stop its frenetic sand-dredging activities, fearing that it is creating airstrips, ports and battlements that will dramatically alter the balance of regional military power.
While China’s new outposts would pose no problem for a nuclear-armed U.S. in an all-out World War III, they could be significant in preliminary proxy battles. U.S. military strategists worry that the islands will enable China’s army to enforce its air and naval power against weak defenses of countries with competing territorial claims, like Vietnam and the Philippines (see CHALLENGE, 6/17).
The International Working Class Needs You
In their competition for financial dominance, the bosses in the U.S., Russia and China have killed millions of workers across the globe. As the capitalist gear up for the next stage of imperialist war, workers must resist these mass-murdering plans. We must reject the bosses’ nationalist, racist ideas. As U.S. capitalism tries to distract us with another round of presidential elections, we must recognize that voting will never stop inter-imperialist slaughter.
The only solution is to unite other workers in Progressive Labor Party and organize millions to thwart the bosses’ agenda for slaughter. Join us as we prepare to turn the next war for profit into a class war for communist revolution.