The "transatlantic" rift is one manifestation of the growing conflicts among the imperialist powers. Other such divisions are increasingly evident among the major powers within the European Union, including between Paris and London.

French prime minister Jacques Chirac and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder reiterated their position at an April 11 meeting in St. Petersburg with Russian president Vladimir Putin. "You have to respect the UN charter in all situations," said Schröder.

"We are no longer in an era where one or two countries can control the fate of another county," Chirac said before the meeting, in a dig at Washington and London. "The political, economic, humanitarian, and administrative reconstruction of Iraq is a matter for the United Nations, and for it alone."

French representatives have threatened to use their veto in the UN Security Council to maintain sanctions on Iraq, saying that such a step will stymie U.S. plans to reap the income from sales of the country’s oil, reported the April 11 Wall Street Journal. Paris will maintain such a stance "until Washington affords them a larger role," added the paper.

Whatever the immediate outcome of this dispute, Washington is sitting pretty to implement a key goal of its offensive: reimposing the dollar as the currency for all oil-related transactions in Iraq. Baghdad’s 1999 switch to the euro made it the only major oil-producing government to have broken from a 1971 OPEC agreement to conduct all trade in U.S. dollars.

At an April 8 meeting in Northern Ireland, U.S. president George Bush and British prime minister Anthony Blair made it clear that their rivals would not elbow their way into a share of the occupation’s spoils. The UN would have the "vital role" of supporting the U.S.-installed "interim authority" in Iraq, they said, that is, largely distributing some medicine, food, and water. It could also "serve as a conduit for international contributions," the Journal reported.

Backed by Berlin, Paris had previously led criticism in the Security Council to the U.S.-led drive for war. After Washington launched the air attacks and ground invasion, however, both the French and German governments did an about-face, declaring support for the brutal assault. "We hope through the defeat of the dictatorship, the Iraqi people can realize its hope of a life in peace, freedom, and self-determination," said Schröder.

Chirac remained silent for almost 24 hours after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces. He then stated that he welcomed the fall of "the dictator Saddam Hussein."

Both before and during Iraq’s occupation, Paris has fought to defend the lucrative investment and trade deals built up between French capitalists and the Saddam Hussein regime. French-based companies signed almost 800 contracts for parts and equipment for the Iraqi oil industry--second only to Moscow. The French-dominated oil company, TotalFinaElf, negotiated oil deals that would give it control over 25 percent of Iraq’s massive oil reserves.

These agreements were built on the close relations between Paris and Baghdad going back decades. But they were largely signed under the UN-imposed regime of weapons inspections and economic sanctions of the past 12 years. The sanctions were reconfigured as the "oil for food" program in the mid-1990s.

While the U.S. government has made no statement about the fate of these deals, it has cast doubt on whether the new regime should be held responsible for massive debts imposed by the capitalists and governments of France, Germany, and Russia. U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz told a Senate committee April 10 that these three governments "ought to consider whether it might not be appropriate" to forgive some or all of the debt Baghdad owes them.

Iraq is estimated to owe between $8 and $12 billion each to France and Russia, and a little more than half that amount to Germany. Its total debt is estimated at more than $100 billion. Together with war reparations imposed by Washington following the Arab-Persian Gulf War--which are included in the $40 billion Baghdad owes to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait--the country’s total indebtedness stands at around 400 percent of its gross domestic product.

The loans became a bone of contention at the April 12–13 meeting of the Group of Seven imperialist countries, also attended by Moscow. Following the meeting, the Russian finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, said, "no one has forgiven Russia’s debt, regardless of what kind of regime it was and regardless of the country’s clout." His statement contradicted an earlier comment by Putin that Wolfowitz’s proposal was "understandable and legitimate."

The president of Germany’s central bank, Ernst Welteke, also dismissed the proposal. Only "very poor countries" should have their debt canceled, he said.

Oil contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime threaten to be an even more explosive issue. Officials of Lukoil, Russia’s biggest oil company, said they would "fiercely defend" a deal with Baghdad giving them rights to Baghdad’s giant West Qurna oil field, according to the April 9 Wall Street Journal. "If a new Iraqi government tries to declare the contract invalid," continued the Journal article, Lukoil will take legal action "to impound tankers carrying Iraqi crude."

Since the 1991 U.S.-led assault on Iraq, trade disputes have proliferated among the major trading powers of North America and Western Europe, as well as Japan.

Such disputes are now sharpening. The United States and a number of European Union governments had laid some 50 legal complaints of unfair trading practices during the 35 years between 1960 and 1995. More recently, the pace has quickened. In the six years between 1995 and 2001, officials of the World Trade Organization have been confronted with 32 such complaints.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is likely to exacerbate such conflicts, said the Financial Times. Frederick Bergsten, the director of the Institute for International Economics, told the paper that the G-7 representatives "will try to keep the security dispute from poisoning the economic area, but it could spill over and make it worse."  
 
Interimperialist conflicts in Europe
Conflicts among the imperialist powers in Europe have also deepened during the war in the Mideast. In particular, the governments of France and the United Kingdom have increasingly been at loggerheads.

By throwing their weight behind Washington’s course toward war, the British rulers dealt a blow to Paris’s pretensions to speak for a "united Europe." London became the most vocal proponent of "unity" between imperialist Europe and the United States--a calculated rebuff to Paris and Berlin.

The European Union was shown to be anything but unified, as a number of governments--from Spain to Portugal and Italy (Europe’s fourth largest power) as well as the Netherlands--identified their own interests with those of the U.S. and British rulers drive to war. Of these imperialist powers, however, only the Dutch rulers sent troops to join the U.S.-British assault.

"The center of gravity [in NATO] is shifting to the east," crowed U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld in response to these developments. He referred to Paris, Berlin, and Brussels contemptuously as representing "old Europe," in contrast to the London-led "new Europe."

After dire predictions in the big-business media of his possible downfall, Blair lined up a huge majority of the British parliament behind his call to arms during a March 18 vote. His policy has been consistent with the increasingly heavy reliance by the British rulers on their "special relationship" with Washington to maintain their place as a junior imperialist power.

That relationship dates back to the period shortly following World War II, and President Harry Truman’s 1947 initiation of the Cold War--a systematic and decades-long effort to exert economic and military pressure on the workers states of the Soviet Union, Eastern and Central Europe, and China, in preparation for their military overthrow.

In the leadup to the Cold War, British prime minister Winston Churchill called for a "special relationship" between London and Washington that would form the core of an imperialist military alliance in Europe to contain any extension of the revolutionary overturn of capitalist property relations. The British prime minister also called for Washington and London to maintain a monopoly on atomic weapons.

In 1944 Churchill told Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the bourgeois opposition to the Nazi occupation of France, "If I have to choose between Europe and the open sea, between you and Roosevelt, I will always choose America."  
 
Seesawing debates over Europe
The latest reinforcement of this relationship follows decades of seesawing debates among British capitalist politicians over how to relate to the formation of a German- and French-dominated European Union.

When the governments of France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands established the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, London stayed aloof. It finally joined in 1973, over de Gaulle’s objections, after failing to construct a competing body.

Having joined the European Union, the British rulers have refused to dissolve their currency, the British pound, into the euro, which is built around the combined power of the former French franc and German mark. In doing so, London has refused to relinquish the advantages of wielding its own currency to defend its distinct imperialist interests, rather than playing second or third fiddle behind Berlin and/or Paris.

Within the EU, the French and British governments have often been at loggerheads over many issues--from "illegal" immigration to agricultural policy. Following an EU meeting in Brussels last October, Blair let it be known that he was "livid" that Chirac and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder had "pre-cooked" a deal that would maintain substantial farm subsidies, which London wants to sharply reduce. Agricultural production in Britain is quite low compared to that of both France and Germany, with London relying much more heavily on food imports. Chirac responded by postponing a year-end meeting with Blair.

London was conspicuously absent from the short list of countries proposed by the Belgian government to form the core of an EU military force. European Commission president Romano Prodi endorsed the proposal March 26.

"The deep division caused by the Iraqi crisis has provoked... debate in EU capitals about how the union will function," if nine new prospective members from Eastern Europe and Malta are accepted as full members, said The Financial Times. The London daily noted that Paris "in particular has been alarmed by the pro-U.S. stance of many of the 10 candidate countries."
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. forces consolidate occupation of Iraq
Washington targets Syria with chemical arms charge
Imperialist troops out of Mideast!  
 
 
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