BY MEGAN ARNEY
Washington's latest attempt to launch a military assault on Iraq and consolidate U.S. military and economic dominance in the region has ended in defeat. Unable to put back together the coalition that carried out the U.S.-led slaughter in the 1990- 91 Gulf War, the U.S. rulers had to accept negotiations spearheaded by Paris and Moscow to resolve the crisis they had provoked. At the same time, the Clinton administration is continuing its military buildup in the Persian Gulf.

Over the weekend of November 15-16, Washington's campaign for a military air strike against Iraq, on the pretext of the alleged threat of Iraqi chemical weapons, was still in full swing. But by November 17 the U.S. rulers were forced to openly negotiate with Baghdad.

Through French and Russian diplomats, Washington and London offered to slightly ease the draconian sanctions against Iraq if U.S. officials were allowed back into that country as part of a group of United Nations "weapons inspectors." Under restrictions first imposed by the UN Security Council in 1990 at Washington's insistence, Baghdad can sell only $2 billion in oil every six months, a large portion of which must go to pay "war reparations," and the rest of which is limited to purchasing food and medical supplies. The deal would raise the allowance to $3 billion.

Iraqi representative to the United Nations Nizar Hamdoon rejected this scheme as a "nonstarter in trying to resolve the current crisis." Hamdoon reiterated the Iraqi demand to end the UN sanctions entirely.

On November 20 Iraqi officials said they had reached agreement with Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov to allow the UN inspectors back into Iraq. In the negotiations, Primakov reportedly suggested softening and possibly end the sanctions against Iraq. Less than a week before, U.S. president William Clinton had proclaimed that the sanctions "will be there till the end of time, or as long as he [Iraqi president Saddam Hussein] lasts."

At the same time Washington is forced to rely on Paris and Moscow to negotiate with Iraqi government, White House officials say they are discussing whether they will impose sanctions on the oil companies Total SA of France and Gazprom of Russia for a $2 billion investment in Iranian gas fields. French oil and gasoline companies have also been negotiating further production deals in Iraq, and Russia's Lukoil signed a production-sharing pact with Baghdad in March valued at $3.8 billion. Baghdad also owes Moscow billions of dollars incurred during its war with Iran during the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was a major arms supplier. Easing of the sanctions would advance all of these business interests.

No rebuilding Gulf War coalition
Washington's current fiasco stems from its inability to accomplish its aims in the 1990-91 Gulf War - to remove the Hussein government and install a subservient client regime in Baghdad that could better support the interests of U.S. capital in the region. Using the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as a pretext, Washington orchestrated a massive military assault involving nearly half a million U.S.-led troops. The U.S. rulers forced their allies, including those with rival interests in the region such as Paris, and most of the governments in the region, into a coalition to carry this out.

For 43 days more than 88,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the Iraqi people, crippling electricity networks and oil refineries, severing bridges, and destroying roads. This was followed by Washington's 100-hour ground invasion, in which fleeing soldiers and civilians were slaughtered. In all, an estimated 150,000 Iraqi workers and farmers were killed in this so-called war.

The U.S. government decided to halt the ground war short of going into Baghdad, leaving the Hussein regime in place. Former U.S. president George Bush explained his reasons for this decision in a recent British Broadcasting Corporation TV documentary. "The coalition would have shattered," Bush acknowledged. "I know the French would have left us in a minute, I know the Egyptians and the Turks would have been gone. Syria would have been long gone had we rolled into Baghdad."

There are still two UN-imposed "no fly" zones in Iraq, which are enforced by U.S, French, and British war planes. Since 1991, however, Washington has never been able to put together the same kind of coalition. London was the only major power to back Washington in its recent war moves.

The recent events around Iraq began when Washington attempted to tighten the embargo against Baghdad in a UN Security Council vote in October. At first the U.S. government attempted to push through a resolution banning travel by Iraqi officials. When the delegates of France and Russia refused to go along, Washington conceded to a watered-down version. Even so, five members of the Security Council - the representatives from France, Russia, China, Egypt, and Kenya - abstained.

On October 29 Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ordered U.S. members of a United Nations weapons inspection team expelled. The UN arms inspections, imposed following the war, are supposedly to certify that Baghdad does not have major weaponry or the capacity to build it. The inspectors, led by those from the United States, are a key piece in justifying the continuation of the sanctions. Washington seized on the expulsion of U.S. members of the investigating team as justification to push through another Security Council resolution November 12 imposing a travel ban on some Iraqi officials. While the resolution warns of "further measures" if necessary, it does not include an explicit threat of military force. The governments of France, Russia, China, and Egypt again refused to go along with the military threat, and Washington conceded a weaker resolution to get a unanimous vote.

Four days later, Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz told Le Figaro in Paris that the crisis could be defused if the inspection group were to include an equal number of each permanent member of the UN Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China. Washington dismissed the proposal. "He [Hussein], being a parolee, is not in a position to determine who his probation officers are," scoffed U.S. defense secretary William Cohen.

Qatar conference debacle
Over the last few weeks Washington has also proved incapable of forcing the regimes in Arab-speaking countries that had backed the Gulf War to go along with a new assault on Iraq. This was brought home at the U.S.-led Middle East and North Africa (MENA) economic conference held in Doha, Qatar, November 16. There Washington suffered an embarrassing defeat when, despite major arm-twisting, nearly every one of these governments - including those in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates - boycotted the meeting. Months earlier, Arab officials began saying their attendance was contingent on the relations easing between the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv and the Palestinians. Since then, the conflict over Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem has heated up. Several of the boycotting regimes publicly expressed that they do not support a military attack against Iraq. U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who was at the Doha conference, was forced to shuttle from Qatar to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in an unsuccessful attempt to drum up support for the impending U.S. assault.

Syrian defense minister Mustafa Tlass told al-Hayat, a London-based newspaper, "All Arab countries are in solidarity with Iraq." Kuwaiti foreign minister Sabah al-Ahmed al Sabah said, "We do not support any military action against Iraq."

The Arab League voted in mid-November to express its "total rejection of any military action to be taken against Iraq." And according to the New York Times, the Clinton administration still does not have the backing of the Saudi government, where more than 100 U.S. planes are based. The force could support long-range B-52 bombers, and having Saudi support would be essential for a prolonged U.S. intervention.

Secretary of State Albright and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador, held a joint press conference during the economic meeting. When asked if the Saudi government were willing to let Washington fly over their territory to attack Iraq, Bandar replied, "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." In September 1996 during another military assault against Iraq, the Saudi regime refused to allow U.S. warplanes operating from an air base in Dhahran to launch air strikes. The government of Turkey would not permit the U.S. military to launch attacks from its bases and the regime in Jordan refused to give U.S. fighter jets permission to enter its airspace.

Military buildup continues
Meanwhile, the aircraft carrier USS Washington arrived in the Persian Gulf, joining the USS Nimitz. This doubles the number of fighters and bombers off the Iraqi coast that could attack without crossing any other country's airspace. Each of the warships has about 50 offensive aircraft. The U.S. military also has more than a dozen ships capable of firing cruise missiles deep into Iraq. The armada includes cruisers and destroyers that can launch a total of about 500 cruise missiles, frigates, mine sweepers, support ships, and a submarine. There are some U.S. 20,000 soldiers stationed in the area. U.S. military officers say they could conduct round-the- clock bombing operations.

Clinton ordered additional aircraft to the Persian Gulf region November 18 for a total of about 300. Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon said that six F-117 stealth fighters were being dispatched to the Kuwait city airport. He added that six B-52s, capable of launching cruise missiles, are on their way to Diego Garcia, a British colony in the Indian Ocean.

A few days earlier, British foreign secretary Robin Cook announced that London had ordered an aircraft carrier, the Invincible, to the Mediterranean from the Caribbean and put a squadron of Harrier jets on heightened alert.

As they prepared for a possible assault on Iraq, Pentagon officials threatened to bomb bridges, military airfields, antiaircraft radar sites, gun emplacements, and other facilities. In 1993, Washington bombed Iraq more than a dozen times. Last year Clinton ordered three rounds of attacks, firing scores of missiles into southern Iraq.

Another destabilizing factor in the region is the growing crisis in the Israeli regime. Tensions threaten to tear apart the ruling Likud party. At the Likud convention the right wing of the party was furious at supporters of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who maneuvered to strengthen their grip on the party structure. At the center of this conflict are disputes over how far to push the expansion of Zionist settlements into the occupied Palestinian territories and how to respond to Tel Aviv's inability to crush the Palestinian struggle.

The MENA economic conference in Doha ended with a call on Israel to exchange land for peace and "the immediate removal of all restrictions," on the movement of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. Delegates demanded Netanyahu abide by agreements signed with the Palestinians. U.S. secretary of state Albright was among the signers on this statement. The interests of Washington and Tel Aviv have continued to diverge since the Gulf War, as the U.S. rulers have sought closer ties with Arab regimes in the region. Albright had earlier called for a "time out" on building or expanding of Zionist settlements on occupied Arab territory, but this has been regularly defied by Tel Aviv.

Adding to the tensions in the region is the $2 billion investment by French and Russian oil companies in Iran. The move violates the U.S. government's Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which call on Washington to impose sanctions on any country doing business that exceeds $20 million with energy industries in either of the two countries. Gazprom and Total SA have defied Washington's threats, saying that the profit to be made outweighs "those incurred by sanctions against us."

Meanwhile, the Chinese government recently signed two deals to buy state-owned oil companies in the oil-rich country of Kazakhstan, and an agreement to build a 1,860- mile pipeline across the land-locked state. The Caspian Sea, Caucasus, and Central Asia are some of the world's richest regions in energy resources - containing up to 200 billion barrels of oil, worth as much as $4 trillion, plus comparable reserves of natural gas. In recent months U.S. officials have made clear their desire to establish unquestionable U.S. domination over the region.

Ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan greeted the Clinton administration's defeat in Iraq with a November 19 column in the New York Post titled, "Exit globalism; enter American nationalism." He pointed to Washington's fiasco as one of three factors that mark a blow for "globalism" and a strengthening of his "America First" camp.

"One was the astonishing defeat of President Clinton on his highest priority, `fast track,' " he wrote. "Defeat of fast track is the first triumph of a blazing new nationalism. And when the coming tsunami of Asian exports hits America's shores, flooding our manufacturing base, and drowning industries and factories, the day of the economic nationalism will be at hand."

Buchanan said the second marked event was the collapse of the stock markets and currency values in Asia, which will fuel resentment against what he called the "corporate and banking elites."

"The third event was the UN Security Council's craven response to Saddam's ouster of U.S. members of the UN team searching for his hidden terror-weapons," Buchanan continued. "France, China and Russia all oppose U.S. military action, and our Arab allies have defected. With the exception of the British, America stands alone in the Gulf.

"What does this portend? The mighty coalition George Bush assembled to win the Gulf War is history. And his dream of a New World Order - where the U.S. (aided by allies and sanctioned by the UN) would police the planet, arresting outlaws and renegades - is dead... The New World Order evanesces as the old world of nation-states reappears," the rightist politician gloated.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home