BY JACK BARNES
Below are excerpts from the article "The Opening Guns of World War III" in issue no. 7 of the Marxist magazine New International. It is copyright c 1991 by 408 Printing and Publishing Corp., and reprinted by permission.

The Bush administration presents the war against Iraq as the triumph of the "new world order." It points to the fact that Moscow not only gave public backing to the U.S. war drive, but also voted for every U.S.-initiated motion in the United Nations Security Council, right down to the April 2 resolution rubber-stamping Washington's stranglehold cease- fire conditions that in practice suspend Iraqi sovereignty. This enabled the U.S. rulers to use the UN as a fig leaf in a more brazen manner than any time since the opening of the 1950s during its war against Korea.

Washington succeeded in gaining political and diplomatic cover for each new stage of its aggression in the Gulf with the aid of all four of the Security Council's other members with veto powers: Britain, China, France, and the Soviet Union. Enlisting the collaboration of the Stalinist regimes of the Soviet and Chinese workers' states was decisive to Washington's ability to present the devastating assault on the people of Iraq as if it flowed from a mandate of an "international community."

Only the government of Cuba - currently one of ten governments serving a two-year rotating stint on the Security Council -is using its position in the UN to speak out consistently against Washington's right to intervene in the Arab-Persian Gulf, under any circumstances or with whatever rationalization..

The truth is that Washington's Gulf war and its outcome did not open up a new world order of stability and UN-overseen harmony. Instead, it was the first war since the close of World War II that grew primarily out of the intensified competition and accelerating instability of the crises-ridden old imperialist world order. It is the increasing internal strains within this declining order that drove Washington to launch its murderous military adventure. The irremediable social and political conflicts, and consequent instability, that existed before the Gulf war and that underlay it have all been exacerbated:

between imperialism and the toilers of the Middle East and elsewhere in the semicolonial world;

among the rival imperialist powers;

between the various imperialist states and the oppressed nations;

between exploiters and exploited within these oppressed countries;

between the toilers and the bourgeoisified leaderships who speak in their name and claim to represent their interests;

among the bourgeois states of the Middle East and other oppressed nations;

between Washington and the governments of the deformed and degenerated workers' states, first and foremost, the Soviet Union;

between the U.S. imperialist rulers and the two workers' states that pose the biggest problems for them, North Korea and Cuba; and

between Washington and the revolutionary government and communist leadership right on U.S. imperialism's very doorstep in the Americas - that of Cuba.

The war demonstrated once again that there is no "international community" under the aegis of world capitalism. Most importantly, it has driven home the fact that there can be a world community - if the exploited and oppressed worldwide remove the exploiters and oppressors, the war makers, from power..

Acceleration of interimperialist conflict
The assault against Iraq was the first of Washington's wars since World War II in which it sought to use its military might to deal blows, indirect but palpable, to U.S. imperialism's rivals, especially in Bonn, Tokyo, and Paris. The Gulf war exacerbated the conflicts and divisions between Washington and its imperialist competitors, as well as between these rival powers themselves. While we know these sharpening conflicts already existed (every working person has been deluged by protectionist propaganda from the U.S. government, bourgeois politicians, trade union bureaucrats, and their radical hangers-on), the war brought them to the surface with greater force and accelerated them to a degree not seen in world politics for some time.

Coming out of World War II, U.S. imperialism emerged the dominant power in the world imperialist system, both economically and militarily. For a substantial period following that war the rate of profit, and for even longer the tempo of growth of the mass of profits, was rising in all the imperialist countries. As a result, competition between the imperialist powers over markets for commodities and capital and over sources of raw materials was buffered.

Since the mid-1970s, however, the combination of the declining rate of profit, halting growth in the mass of profits, and relative slowdown in economic expansion has precipitated growing, sometimes sharp rivalry among the imperialist ruling classes. The years 1974-75 saw the first worldwide recession since 1937, as economic interdependence among the major capitalist powers grew alongside their competition and conflict.

Although the sheer size and output of the U.S. capitalist economy remains enormous, and while it remains the largest market in the world, its position as an industrial and trading power has slipped substantially in recent decades in the face of growing challenges from German, Japanese, and other rivals. U.S. strategic military power remains unchallenged, however, and is the main lever the U.S. rulers have to compensate for their relative decline.

No power other than Washington could have transported and put in place the mammoth order of battle necessary to carry a war to Iraq. While waged behind the facade of a broad "international coalition," the war was a U.S. government operation, with London's enthusiastic support and with Paris being forced to join in out of weakness. Bonn and Tokyo - still limited in their use of strategic military power abroad flowing from their defeat in World War II - took no part in the combat at all.

Through the initiation, organization, domination, and execution of this war effort, U.S. imperialism strengthened its control over Gulf oil reserves, gaining additional leverage over its rivals in Bonn, Tokyo, and Paris in the competition for world markets for commodities and capital. By throwing the biggest military forces of any other imperialist power behind Washington's war effort, the rulers in London successfully sought to guarantee themselves a privileged junior position alongside U.S. finance capital in this region, which was once largely a British protectorate but had been penetrated more and more by French trade, aid, and loans.

The commitment of combat forces abroad by the Canadian ruling class for the first time since the Korean War, and Ottawa's increasingly open and unqualified backing of Washington's foreign policy moves, indicate the pressure to grab more firmly onto the skirt of U.S. imperialism. The regime in New Zealand did the same, easing conflicts with Washington that have grown up there over port visits by U.S. ships armed with nuclear weapons. The Australian ruling class, as usual, made sure it was represented in Washington's armed entourage as well.

The relationship of forces that existed prior to the Gulf war among the capitalist powers in Europe has not been altered, but the national and state conflicts between them have been exacerbated.  
 
 
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