BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Washington has emerged with a finer hair trigger to unilaterally use its massive arsenal as a result of the February 23 deal negotiated between United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan and the Iraqi government. While the agreement has averted a U.S. military strike for now, it in no way decreases the likelihood for another slaughter against the Iraqi people.

The world's dominant imperialist power has used its war preparations in the Persian Gulf to deal blows to its rivals in Europe and take further steps toward their ultimate aim of overthrowing the workers states in Europe - primarily Russia - with military force and reestablishing the system of wage slavery there. The U.S. rulers seek to unleash their enormous military might to compensate for what they can't achieve through economic weight alone.

"The United States, because of our position in the world, is called upon to bring its power to bear when it is important to do so," said President William Clinton at his February 23 news conference on the UN deal with Iraq. "Once again we have seen that diplomacy must be backed by strength and resolve."

Echoing Clinton, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright told an audience of 200 students at Tennessee State University, "We are the only superpower and, as a result of that, we have many responsibilities and privileges. We stand tall, and therefore we can see further into the future." During this meeting the secretary of state explained that the "long-term goal of American foreign policy and international policy" was to bring everybody into the group "of countries who understand the rules and ... follow them -the rules of the international system." She said Iraq "falls into the rogue state group." Washington must "try to isolate the rogues and then try to reform them so that they can be part of" a stable imperialist system.

"I feel very secure as a diplomat, because I know that I have the American military force behind me, the finest force in the world," Albright boasted. "Threat of the use of force sometimes helps diplomacy. And all those troops out there in the Gulf are sending a very strong message to Saddam that if he doesn't obey... we are coming."

Albright spoke later that day at the University of South Carolina and the day before, February 18, she had participated in a televised "international town hall meeting" on Iraq at Ohio State University where she was heckled by opponents of Washington's war moves.

The secretary of state has been touring the country to drum up support for military action against Iraq. In a TV interview hours before her talk in Tennessee, she repeated what has been the theme of the Clinton administration since the president's second inaugural: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation."

UN deal dictated by Washington
Nearly a week before he left for Baghdad, the UN secretary general met with Albright, who stipulated the "red lines" or Washington's dictates for his mission to "mount one last diplomatic effort" the New York Times reported February 25. Backed by the massive U.S. armada in the Arab-Persian Gulf, Annan wrested a written agreement from the Iraqi government that allows the UN weapons "inspectors" to have "immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access" throughout the country. Baghdad received nothing in return except acknowledgment that "lifting of sanctions is obviously of paramount importance to the people and government of Iraq."

Annan openly gave credit to Washington's war threats for bringing about the "peace" agreement. Sitting at a joint news conference with Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz in Baghdad, the UN secretary general bluntly stated, "You can do a lot with diplomacy, but of course you can do a lot more with diplomacy backed by firmness and force." Upon his return to the United Nations offices in New York, Annan praised Clinton and British prime minister Anthony Blair as "perfect UN peacekeepers" who knew that "the best way to use force is to show it in order not to use it."

But Washington remains poised to use military force. If the Iraqi government balks on the deal, the U.S. military "would have the unilateral right to respond at a time, place, and manner of our own choosing," Clinton declared February 23. White House officials have reiterated that point since.

Blair chimed in, "We are not going to get mucked about in two or three months' time."

Two days before the agreement was reached, Washington had advised all U.S. citizens to leave Iraq as soon as possible. "Due to these ongoing tensions," the State Department warned February 21, "all United States citizens are strongly urged to avoid all travel to Iraq, and those already in Iraq are advised to depart as soon as possible." A UN official announced February 25 that some 80 UN staff personnel who left Baghdad to escape an impending U.S. bombing raid would return to the country the next day.

Despite the UN accord Clinton said, "I have ordered our military to remain in the Persian Gulf. Our soldiers, our ships, [and] our planes will stay there in force until we are satisfied." He said the U.S. war machine would remain at a "high level of preparation in the Gulf."

The U.S. military force has expanded to nearly 35,000 troops, 30 warships, and 450 warplanes in the Persian Gulf region. And in fact Washington is continuing its buildup. On February 25 an additional 200 U.S. Marines arrived in Kuwait, where they will be based on land. London is keeping an aircraft carrier and other forces in the region as well.

"We have to be willing to be committed to the use of force if [the agreement] doesn't stick," stated Donald Snider, a former director of the White House National Security Council who teaches at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He urged Congress to allocate more funds to the military, adding, "This one is not over by a long shot."

The Clinton administration has come under fire from some Republicans for not pressing hard enough to overthrowing the Iraqi government. Senate majority leader Trent Lott, who has called for setting up a puppet regime in Iraq, opposes the UN deal. "The secretary general is calling the shots," he declared February 25. "The United States is not."

A February 25 article in the Wall Street Journal headlined "It's not too late to topple Saddam," demanded Washington establish an opposition that would "over time" set up a "provisional government inside Iraq." The article suggested providing direct military assistance including "close-air support to ensure the opposition of local military superiority." The next day the New York Times reported that "the Central Intelligence Agency has drafted plans for a major program of sabotage and subversion" against the Iraqi government.

Republican Senator Arlen Specter insisted that "one way or another we're going to have to topple Saddam Hussein." He said the CIA plan could help "bring Saddam Hussein to his knees."

Ultrarightist Patrick Buchanan repeated his nationalist demagogy in a column published February 25 under the headline, "Next Time, Send in the French."

"Saddam is a UN problem now, not ours," Buchanan said, referring to the Iraqi president. "Every nation involved in the Gulf crisis, except our own, looked out for its own interests first."

War moves aimed at Russia
The U.S. rulers have used their military deployment in the Arab-Persian Gulf as part of preparing the regimes in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic - prospective new NATO member states - for future military confrontations with Russia and other workers states of the Soviet Union. Founded in 1949, the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was designed to exert maximum economic and military pressure on the Soviet Union, codify Washington's dominance in Europe, and push back the struggles of workers farmers around the world.

The proposed NATO expansion would put U.S. troops right on Poland's border with the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus, as well as the Russian enclave next to the Baltic port of Kaliningrad.

"Gulf crisis may help NATO candidates" headlined an article in the February 24 Wall Street Journal. The article asserts that Clinton's war move "has handed Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic an opportunity to display their allegiances just weeks before the U.S. Senate votes on admitting them to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

Poland's deputy foreign minister Radek Sikorski had announced his government was ready to send 216 soldiers to Persian Gulf. "We certainly want to be an exporter of stability," he declared.

Yeltsin commented approvingly on the agreement signed in Baghdad February 23, stating that if Washington launched an attack in the Persian Gulf, it "would not end with Iraq [but] involve a much greater territory and significantly more countries."

The Russian president and other Moscow officials made several statements along these lines during the previous weeks. At a joint news conference with William Cohen, the U.S. war secretary, Russian defense minister Gen. Igor Sergeyev had pointedly asked, "Does the uncompromising and tough stand of the United States on the issue of Iraq help to strengthen stability and security in the world?"

Other prominent political figures in Russia, including Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov and ultrarightist politician Alekandr Zirhinovsky have adopted a more strident opposition to U.S. war moves against Iraq.

Washington has also begun establishing a military presence in the Central Asian workers states, which contain huge oil deposits. The three Caspian republics -Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, and Turkmenistan - possess more than 100 billion barrels of oil, the world's third-largest reserves after the Persian Gulf and Siberia. Last September 500 GIs from the 82nd Airborne Division participated in a week-long joint exercise in Kazakstan with soldiers from Russia, Turkey, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, and the Kyrgyz Republic.

U.S. deals blow to imperialist rivals
Washington has dealt a blow to its imperialist rivals in Europe through this process, primarily Paris, which had opposed intervention against Iraq. "We've made clear, and the French and Russians accept, that they won't be able to hold back military action," said a Clinton administration official right after the agreement was signed.

At a NATO meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels in December, Albright declared that a war against Iraq and destroying weapons of "rogue states" should become the new "unifying threat" that joins imperialists in Europe and United States in the so-called post-Cold War era. She asserted that the NATO war machine must extend its geographic reach beyond Europe and become "a force for peace from the Middle East to Central Africa."

Washington military preparations has fueled tensions among its competitors. "European allies balk at expanded role for NATO" was the headline of a February 22 article in the Washington Post reporting that officials in Paris and other "European allies" said the imperialist military alliance would become "little more than a multinational military machine to assert global U.S. interests" if it launches assaults beyond the European continent.

A group of U.S. senators traveled to Munich, Germany, for a defense seminar in early February to press support for Washington's onslaught against Iraq. Senator John Warner warned, "Make no mistake: There is a direct relationship between decisions taken on Iraq in the next weeks and the future of U.S. support for NATO."

Expressing outraged at this "blackmail," one European ambassador asserted, "Whatever happens in Iraq, blind support for every policy dictated by Washington cannot be the basis of this alliance."  
 
 
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