< < <
Date > > >
|
< < <
Thread > > >
on THIRD WORLD WAR/Kosovo antecedents in GULF WAR [long 1991 essay with table of contents]
- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 14:58:48 -0400 (EDT)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May 20, 1991
THIRD WORLD WAR:
A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE GULF WAR AND NEW WORLD ORDER
by
Andre Gunder Frank
University of Amsterdam
H. Bosmansstraat 57 TEL Home: 31-20-664 6607
1077 XG Amsterdam, Holland FAX Office: 31-20-620 3226
--------------------------------------------------------------
T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s
INTRODUCTION TO THIRD WORLD WAR
FALSE WESTERN PRETEXTS FOR GOING TO WAR IN THE GULF
IMMEDIATE ECONOMIC REASONS FOR GOING TO WAR
Foreign Oil
Domestic Recession
WORLD GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMIC REASONS FOR GOING TO WAR
The World Recession of the 1990s
West-West Competition
East-West, North-South
Using Military Strength to Compensate for Economic
Weakness
Political Economies of Escalation
ECONOMIC BUILDUP AND POLITICAL ESCALATION OF CRISIS AND WAR
Public Iraq-Kuwait Disputes and Secret Kuwaiti-US Agreements
Setting the American Trap for Hussein
Springing the Trap on Hussein by Foreclosing Diplomatic Outs
Planning Mr. Bush's War
FIGHTING AND LYING TO WIN THE WAR
HUMAN AND MATERIAL WAR DAMAGES AND COSTS
The Casualties of Direct Hits and "Collateral Damage"
Other Human Costs
Ecological Costs
POLITICAL COSTS OF GULF WAR: VIOLATION OF DEMOCRACY AT HOME
Setting Up and Blackmailing Congress
Free Press Censorship, Self-censorship & Orwellian New
Speak
The Violation of Participant Democracy in Civil Society
MORE POLITICAL COSTS OF GULF WAR: INTERNATIONAL
DIMENSIONS
The Peace Dividend Cancelled
Perversion of the United Nations Peace Mission for War
NATO Redirected Southward
The Middle East Convulsed
DE- AND DOWN-GRADING EUROPE, JAPAN AND THE SOVIET UNION
NORTH-SOUTH WAR TO PUT THE THIRD WORLD IN ITS PLACE
IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
THE UNITED STATES IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
INTRODUCTION TO THIRD WORLD WAR
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Gulf War may be termed THIRD WORLD WAR in two senses of
this title: First, this war aligned the rich North, the rich
oil emirates or kingdoms, and some bribed regional oligarchies
against a poor Third World country. In that sense, the Gulf
War was a THIRD WORLD WAR by the North against the South. It
was massively so perceived throughout the Third World South,
not only in Arab and Muslim countries but also elsewhere in
Asia, Africa and Latin America. Masses of people in the Third
World manifested their opposition to this war and the North,
even if it meant taking sides with the dictator Saddam
Hussein, for whom little love was lost. Indeed, the popular
expressions of racism and xenophobia in the North also were
manifestations of this same perception that this was a war
between "us" in the North and "them" in the Third World South.
The second sense of THIRD WORLD WAR is that the Gulf War may
dangerously mark the brutal beginning of a THIRD WORLD WAR,
following upon the First and Second World Wars. Not only was
the tonnage of bombs dropped on Iraq of world war proportions.
The Gulf War and the New World Order it was meant to launch
signify the renewed recourse by a world wide "coalition of
allies" to mass destruction of infrastructure and mass
annihilation of human beings. The allies led by the United
States chose to wage a major destructive, brutal and
unnecessary war and renounced dialogue and negotiation as
their preferred instrument to settle a relatively minor
international dispute. In so doing moreover, they clearly
signalled their threat to build the New World Order on
repeated recourse to this same military force and annihilation
against any other recalcitrant country or peoples -- as long
as they are poor, weak, and in the Third World South.
With the conclusion of the cold war, the Third World [Hot] War
is not to be fought between East and West, or West and West,
but between the North and the South. Since the Second World
War, West-West wars have been obviated, and the East-West cold
war has been fought out in regional hot wars in Korea,
Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua, and other parts of the Third
World. Now, West-West cold conflicts are also to be
transmuted, as in the Gulf War against Iraq, into the ever
existing North-South conflict and into Third World War at the
expense of Third World peoples on Third World soil. Of course,
the North-South gap and conflict itself is also becoming ever
acuter. The Gulf War signals that in the New World Order the
North reserves the right and threat to turn any Old World
Order North-South cold conflict into a North-South hot war at
the expense of Third World people on Southern soil at any time
of Northern choosing. Therefore, the world is threatened with
THE THIRD WORLD WAR.
This essay examines the Gulf War and the New World Order in
this global context. However, it also concentrates on the
political economic motives, actions and their consequences of
the major actors in the unfolding of this tragic drama. THE
major actor in the Gulf War for a New World Order certainly
was President George Bush. However, he has never told the
truth about his reasons, actions, or purposes in promoting and
fighting the Gulf War. Indeed, George Bush deceived the
American public and the world already earlier on. To go no
further, the dominant theme in his election campaign to the
American presidency was READ MY LIPS!. He promised the
American people and in effect the world "NO NEW TAXES" and "A
KINDER, GENTLER PRESIDENCY." Instead, what we got from
President Bush is his New World Order War in the Gulf. Poor
American people and Poor World! They did not listen when
Bush's Democratic Party rival Michael Dukakis explicitly
warned us all that George Bush was making false promises. The
Bush campaign also featured promises to be "The Education
President" at home and "To Take Care of the Environment."
Once elected, President Bush first raised new taxes, which
will have to rise further with recession and war. Then he
neglected education and the environment, which will also
suffer more for the war.
President Bush made this war, and in order to make the war he
gave us THE BIG LIE both about the war and about his NEW WORLD
ORDER. Therefore, it takes some inquiry to unravel the
immediate economic and more underlying geopolitical economic
reasons; the economic buildup, political escalation,
belligerent pursuit and the human and material damages; and
the domestic and international costs of this Gulf War for New
World Order. Finally, we may inquire into the resulting place
of the United States in this New World Order. The purpose here
is to contribute to the clarification and answer of these
important questions.
Therefore, this essay concentrates on the actions and
responsibility of the Bush Administration in the United States
in the Gulf War. This essay consolidates, amplifies, documents
and updates the author's four earlier writings and
publications on the Gulf crisis and war, which are listed
below. One of these earlier essays still included "a curse on
both your houses" in its title, because then it still seemed
important to stress and critique the responsibility of both
sides to this conflict. However, more recently it has become
both absolutely and relatively more important to analyze and
help expose the American Bush administration's much greater
[ir]responsibility in the tragic unfolding of events. In the
meantime also, much more evidence on the same has also become
publicly available. I draw on the relatively limited amount of
this evidence made available abroad, primarily through the
International Herald Tribune [IHT]. In any case, the actions
of the United States and its allies carry much more weight and
importance than those of any country or its leader in the
Third World. Therefore, the analysis below concentrates on the
world shaking actions and consequences of the major actors in
this drama and on their responsibilities in and significance
for the "new world order."
FALSE WESTERN PRETEXTS FOR GOING TO WAR IN THE GULF
The violation of international law through the invasion and
occupation of Kuwait by Iraq under the presidency of Saddam
Hussein is beyond dispute. However, the allegation that the
Gulf War was to protect the "principle" of world order,
international law and the Charter of the United Nations from
lawless might-is-right violation is a lie. Indeed, this
pretext is the height of cynicism, especially by President
Bush, but also by his Western allies and others who supported
him in the United Nations.
Many similar aggressions and violations of both the UN Charter
and UN resolutions have gone without any such response, or
often even without any notice. Indonesia invaded and ravaged
East Timor and Irian Jaya with genocide without having the
world take hardly any notice. Apartheid in South Africa, but
less so its continual aggressions against its neighboring
Front Line States in Southern Africa, led to embargoes by the
UN and its members; but no one ever suggested going to war
against South Africa. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
merited condemnation and opposition, albeit of course not by
the Security Council; but certainly no counter invasion of the
Soviet Union. The Iraqi invasion of Iran received, but did not
merit, de facto political and even military support by the
same coalition of allies, which then waged war against Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait.
Indeed, among the very same states who allied themselves in a
coalition to "liberate Kuwait" from aggression and occupation
by Iraq several engaged in similar aggression and still today
maintain their military occupation of others' territory:
Israel invaded and still occupies the Golan Heights, West
Bank, and the Gaza Strip in violation of UN Resolution 242.
Israel also invaded Lebanon and de facto still exercises
miliary control over southern Lebanon. Syria invaded and still
exercises military control over parts of northern Lebanon.
Turkey invaded Cypress in 1974 and still occupies part of it
militarily. Morocco invaded and took over the Western Sahara.
Only recently, the United States waged war on Nicaragua for a
decade through the "contras," invaded and still occupies
Grenada, and invaded and still exercises military occupation
over Panama. Thus, the coalition allies included at least a
half dozen states [not to mention France in Africa and the
South Pacific and Britain in the South Atlantic] who
themselves recently subjected other UN member states to
military invasion and still occupy them or parts of their
territory. This dirty half dozen clearly did not "defend
Kuwait" to defend the international law that they were and
still are breaking themselves. Like the other coalition
members and demonstrably the mortal enemies Syria and the
United States, they allied themselves with each other each for
their own sordid realpolitik reasons. As the foreign minister
of Australia, whose hands are not so clean either, explained,
"the world is littered with examples of acquisition by force."
Significantly however, hardly anyone except some Latin
Americans - not even President Hussein and certainly not
President Bush - has made the obvious linkage of the Iraqi
occupation of Kuwait with the American one of Panama. Only
eight months before President Hussein invaded Kuwait,
President Bush himself invaded Panama The US foreign invasion
of sovereign Panama cost 4,000 to 7,000 lives [far more than
the simultaneous domestic violence in Romania], used armed
brutalization of part of the population, caused wanton
destruction of property for which no amends have ever been
made. Moreover, Panama is still "governed" by a "president"
and two "vice-presidents" solemnly installed by the United
States on an American military base and under effective US
military occupation and rule to this day!
President Bush's "Just Cause" for his invasion of Panama with
27,000 troops to catch one drug trafficker was a cynical lie.
So much so that a year later in Panama the drug trade remains
business as usual (IHT April 20-21, 1991 ), and in the United
States President Bush's Justice Department has been unable to
unearth a single shred of documentary evidence to use in court
against General Noriega. Indeed, he may never get to court,
not the least because Noriega himself probably has evidence on
George Bush since their days of friendly collaboration no so
long ago. The real reasons for President Bush's invasion of
Panama have still not been revealed. Noriega's defense lawyer
now claims that the real issue in the US-Norigea falling out
was not reported drug dealing but Noreiga's late 1980s
refusal, despite CIA threats, to help the CIA backed contras
invade Nicaragua (IHT May 17,l991). Another reason for the
invasion may have been the need to replace the no longer
usable bogey of the Soviet evil empire with a new one in the
personalized form of a narco-terrorist in the Isthmus -- until
a better bogey became available in the Gulf. However, more
material incentives have also been suggested: In the short
run, to forestall a deal with Japan, which was a threat
because of Panama's accession to a majority on the Canal
Commission on January 1,l990. There is also increasing
evidence that a longer run reason for the U.S. invasion and
continued occupation of Panama is to maintain control over the
Canal by forestalling the execution of the Carter-Torrijos
Treaty. It stipulates the American handover of all of the
Canal and its "Zone" to Panama on January 1, 2000. What limit
then is there to cynicism when President Bush can now appeal
to God, morality, and international law to condemn President
Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, when he himself
did and still does the same in Panama?
Unfortunately, lying cynicism is not limited to Presidents
Hussein or Bush and their immediate supporters. No Security
Council resolutions were passed, or even proposed, to protect
President Bush's new world order from his own violation of the
sovereignty of Panama. On the contrary, President Bush
received only acquiescence or even outright support for his
violation of international law and human right in Panama. So
had President Reagan when he invaded and occupied sovereign
Grenada [which also is still administered by the United
States]. Indeed, the entire European Community, not to mention
the United States, also already supported Prime Minister
Thatcher when she escalated her war against Argentina and its
military junta [notwithstanding that she literally torpedoed
on the ocean all efforts in Lima to defuse the situation and
prevent war in the South Atlantic, and that she threatened to
nuke the Argentine city of Cordoba]. The Malvinas/Falkland War
was the first major war of all the West against a single Third
World country. The latter received no support of any kind from
any other country in the North, and only moral support
regardless of political ideology from its regional partners in
Latin America. Therefore, it cannot be credible that today
the same old Western NATO allies -- and now the ex Warsaw Pact
foes and new allies to boot - appeal to God and justice from
their high moral horses to condemn another violation of
international law and to band together to wage war against a
Third World country for the same. There must be other -- even
more cynical? -- reasons at work.
IMMEDIATE ECONOMIC REASONS FOR GOING TO WAR
Foreign Oil
The most obvious economic reason for the war has been oil.
The real price of oil had again declined, especially with the
renewed decline of the dollar in which oil is priced. Iraq had
some legitimate demands, both on its own behalf against Kuwait
and on behalf of other Arab states and oil producers. In
pressing these demands by resort to invasion, Saddam Hussein
threatened some other oil interests, clients of the United
States, and the success of its "divide et impera" policy.
President Hussein invaded Kuwait for political economic
reasons: to shore up his political capital at home and in the
region in the face of increased debts from the Iraq-Iran War
and declining earnings from oil revenues with which to settle
these debts.
Time (August 20) observed that "the uneven distribution of
wealth-producing resources -- the gap between haves and have-
nots -- is fuelling a regional crisis, a struggle with severe
implications for the entire world's standard of living."
The same issue of Time Magazine also quoted an advisor to
President Bush: "this has been an easy call. Even a dolt
understands the principle. We need the oil. It's nice to talk
about standing up for freedom, but Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are
not exactly democracies, and if their principal export were
oranges...we would have closed Washington down for August.
There is nothing to waver about here." Later, placards
carried in street demonstrations around the world expressed
the same still more simply NO BLOOD FOR OIL.
That world renowned moral authority, Richard Nixon, aptly
summed up both the recessionary and the oil reason, and to
boot he managed to do so under the title "Bush Has it Right:
America's Commitment in the Gulf Is Moral." Nixon wrote
When Senator Bob Dole said we were in the Gulf for oil
and Secretary of State James Baker said we were there for
jobs, they were criticized for justifying our actions on
purely selfish grounds. We should not apologize for
defending our vital economic interests. Had America not
intervened, an international outlaw would today control
more than 40 percent of the world's oil....[However] it
will not be just a war about oil. It will not be a war
about a tyrant's cruelty. It will not be a war about
democracy. It will be a war about peace....That is why
our commitment in the Gulf is a highly moral enterprise
(IHT Jan. 7, l991).
It is hardly necessary to recall that before this same Richard
Nixon resigned the US presidency to evade congressional
impeachment for fraud and deceit, he directed a war to bomb
Vietnam "back into the stone age." It was said that "we had
to destroy it to save it."
Domestic Recession
Another immediate economic reason for going to war was to
counter domestic recession or at least its political
consequences at home, as Secretary of State Baker suggested.
Indeed, both presidents Hussein and Bush started this war to
manage their own domestic political economic problems in the
face of a new world economic recession. There was also recent
precedent for the same. During the last world recession, both
General Galtieri in Argentina and Prime Minister Thatcher in
Britain started and escalated the Malvinas/Falklands War in
l982. The reasons was that they both faced political problems
at home, which were generated by the world economic recession.
Only one of them could win the war gamble and thereby assure
his/her political survival. Significantly, that war already
pitched the entire West [and its nuclear arsenal] against a
single country in the South.
Why was American reaction against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait so
strong? The United States went far beyond what most initially
considered appropriate, likely or possible, indeed beyond what
most people deemed desireable before it took place, as we will
observe below. So why this reaction here and now and not, for
instance, when Iraq attacked Iran or when Israel invaded
Lebanon, not to mention its continued occupation of Arab
territories? Part of the explanation of course lies in the
differences in American interests among their clients and
enemies.
However, the timing of this American response abroad also is
immediately related to economic needs and political conflicts
at home. President Bush's failure to deliver on his electoral
promises of a domestic renewal program were eating into his
popularity ratings, and the oncoming recession reduced them
further. The recession, the growing budget deficit and the end
of the cold war fed Congressional threats to the Bush-Cheney
Pentagon budget. President Bush reacted with much historical
precedent. We may note that the incumbent administration in
the United States, whether Republican or Democratic, had
already escalated incidents or opportunities to gear up the
war machine in response to all previous recessions since World
War II.
Truman's massive response in the Korean War in l950 followed
postwar demobilization and the first recession in l949, which
many feared might replay the depression of the 1930s. During
the l953-54 recession, the United States intervened in the
military overthrow of the constitutionally elected Arbenz
government in Guatemala. The l957-58 recession was followed
by Eisenhower's intervention in Lebanon in l958. The l967
recession was important in Germany and Japan and only
incipient in the United States; because the latter avoided it
through President Johnson's massive escalation to war in
Vietnam. Yet Vice President and Democratic candidate Johnson
had run and won his 1964 electoral campaign against the
Republican Goldwater on the promise against war in Vietnam.
The 1968 Vietnamese Tet offensive and the l969-70 recession
were followed by renewed American escalation in Indochina,
including Cambodia. The l973-75 recession also resulted in
further escalation of the war in Vietnam.
The 1979 recession and Democratic President Jimmy Carter
initiated the Second Cold War. The two track decision to
install cruise missiles in Europe and to negotiate with the
Soviet Union from strength as well as the 3 percent yearly
increase in NATO budgets came before the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in December 1979. The unexpected strong American
response, which was not expected by the Soviets or perhaps
anyone else, followed not only the invasion but also the 1979
recession. The 1981-82 recession brought on Reagan's military
Keynesianism and massive arms build up, not to mention his
Nicaraguan Contras policy and perhaps his over-reaction in
Grenada. As already noted above, Margaret Thatcher also over-
reacted analogously and received a new lease on her political
life in the Falklands/Malvinas War when economic recession and
political demise threatened her government in l982.
Threats of recession and military budget cuts also prompted
President Bush already to over-react massively in Panama. Even
greater recessionary threats, decline of his popularity over
the tax/deficit issue, and military budget cuts then drove him
to over-react again even more against Iraq. Reports in the
American press suggest that the Democrats have to shelve much
of their proposed Congressional "peace dividend" cuts to the
Pentagon budget. Of course, hardware and logistics for U.S.
intervention in the Third World will receive an additional
boost.
WORLD GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMIC REASONS FOR GOING TO WAR IN THE
GULF
The World Recession of the 1990s
The discussion by the US administration and press about
whether the Gulf crisis brought on the recession or not is
totally turned around; for both the timing and the causation
were the other way around. For the recession of l989-l990-19??
began months before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and led first to
President Bush's "Just Cause" invasion of Panama and then to
the Crisis and War in the Gulf. As Richard Nixon noted, even
Secretary of State Baker let on undiplomatically that the
American stance in the Gulf was to maintain jobs at home; and
The Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers,
Michael Boskin, was quoted by the International Herald Tribune
(Jan. 3, l99l) to say that the American economy would have
been even worse off if military operations in the Gulf had
not helped stabilize it.
The recession began with the renewed cyclical decline in the
rate of profits in l989, which continued in l990. The
recession became evident in l990 -- some time before the Gulf
Crisis and War. A very small sampling of newspaper headlines
and some text [mostly from the International Herald Tribune]
from l990 sets the tone: "U.S. Profits: Sign of a Slump [for
second year in a row]," "1.3% Fall Forecast for U.S. [3.4 %
annual rate in the last quarter of 1990]," "Amid Signs of a
U.S. Recession, Bankruptcies Hit a Record," "U.S. Firms' Debt
Service Burden Grows," "U.S. [corporate and municipal] Debt
Downgrades Hit a Record in 1990," "Portfolios of U.S. Banks
are Shakiest in 15 Years," "20 Big Banks Head for Failure.
U.S. Agency Says Many Will Need Bailouts," "U.S. Deposit
Insurance [of bank accounts] is 'At a Low'," "1991 Bank
Failures Threaten U.S. Fund. Most Large Institutions Are on
Verge of Insolvency, Congress Study Says," "This Is a Rescue?
The S&L bailout is faltering - and the meter keeps running,"
"No End in Sight. Politicians Hurl blame as the U.S. savings
and loan crisis races out of control" -- but not only at the
S&Ls, and not only in the USA.
The recession is already world wide: Canada and Australia are
in severe recession. "U.K. Slump Worse Than Expected."
France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, even
Switzerland ["bank profits down"] have reduced or negative
growth rates. Africa is in depression. In Latin America, GNP
declined 0.5 per cent and per capita 2.4 per cent in l990, on
top of a 10 per cent decline in the l980s. Now it is the turn
of Eastern Europe with an over all 20 percent economic decline
in 1990, and of the Soviet Union. Also "China Sees Threats to
Growth" and so does India, whom the crisis largely bypassed in
the l980s.
Are Japan and Germany exceptions? Can and will they be the
replacement locomotives for the world economy during the early
1990s? "Without World Recovery, Bonn [Germany] Fears a
Slowdown." "Germany's East: Bleaker Yet." "Economy Feels
Strains as Price of Unity Mounts." "German Trade: No Moscow
Miracles Foreseen" to restore exports and jobs lost.
Bundesbank President Karl Otto Phl declared the economic
consequences of German unification a "catastrophe" and drove
the D-Mark down several cents the next day.
In Japan, as well as in Korea and Taiwan, growth rates have
also declined already. The Japanese speculative bubble has
burst. "Japan's Big Banks Brace for Bad Results." The stock
market declined 40 percent in l990; real estate prices
plummeted; and Japanese investors and speculators transferred
funds inward from abroad to help them cover their losses at
home. That is also why in l990, for the first time since 1986
and now that the United States needs it most, the net flow of
Japanese capital was out from the United States to Japan. The
prospects for a severe recession in Japan and the East Asian
NICs are quite real. Either way, the prospects for economic
cooperation instead of competition by Japan in the world
economy are quite dim. "G-7 Aides Disagree on Policy;" "G-7,
by Default, Gives Japan Go-Ahead on Loans to China." If Japan
primes the pump or steams up its locomotive at all, it is
likely to do so in its own region in Asia, as Germany would if
at all in Europe.
Thus, the threat that world recession in the early 1990s will
be even more severe than in the early 1980s is quite real. As
I wrote in l989 about "Blocking the Black Debt Hole in the
l990s"
The question is less one of a soft or hard landing than
whether the world economy has already bottomed out, or
whether the next recession will be still deeper once
again. This is a serious danger, because the next
recession threatens to exacerbate all these imbalances
and to accelerate their resolution by sucking the world
economy into the black hole of debt (to use the
expression of MIT economist Lester Thurow). The
accumulation of domestic and foreign debt in many parts
of the world is likely to inhibit further domestic
reflationary finance (call it Gramm-Rudman in the United
States) to combat recession just when it is most needed
in the next recession. That would be among other things
to forestall the bankruptcies of junk bond financed
corporations and banks dependent on interbank loans. Both
US and Japanese monetary policies would be damned if they
do and damned if they don't....
The continuing world economic crisis is exacerbating the
accumulated regional and sectoral imbalances especially
among the world's major trading regions of America,
Europe, Japan, and their Third World and Socialist
trading partners. They will find it ever more difficult
to manage the growing conflicts between financial debt
speculation and real economic productive investment,
through the already conflicting monetary, fiscal,
exchange rate, trade, security and other policies.
Therefore, another (again more severe?) recession
threatens also to spark another (also more acute?) crisis
within the crisis. More of the same muddling through is
likely to become impossible. Any possibility of
reimposition of the old American dominance (or an
alternative Japanese new dominance) in a multilateral
world economic and financial system or its coordinated
management by the G7, G5 or G3 is improbable in such a
recession. (A, US bomb and Japanese yen based Pacific
basin political economic consortium is possible but
rather unlikely, and one including Europe even less
likely). The most likely possible alternative resolution
will therefore be increasingly neo-mercantilist
regionalization of the world economy into American
dollar, Japanese yen and German led European ECU / D mark
zones and/or trading (and political?) blocs (Frank
1990c).
West-West Competition
Additional underlying reasons for the belligerent American
stance leading to the Gulf War was the defense of American
economic and geopolitical interests world wide. The primary
threats to these American interests are competition from Japan
and Germany, or from a Japanese led Asia and a German led
Europe -- all the more so now that the Soviet "threat" is
virtually eliminated. As we observed, the cold war is over -
and Japan and German have won! The Reaganomics of the l980s
helped eliminate the Soviet Union from the running but at the
cost of mortgaging the American economy and even its
government's budget to the Japanese and the Europeans. The
United States is now economically dependent on continued
capital inflows from its principal economic rivals, which the
Japanese already began to withdraw. In response to even deeper
recession and/or with greater deliberation, the Japanese now
threaten to pull the financial rug out from under the United
States and its dollar altogether. At the same time, trade and
other economic disputes grow ever deeper at various points
including the GATT Uruguay rounds. Japan was distinctly
uncooperative, and Europe refused to budge more than a few
percent on the issue of agricultural subsidies. The road to
"Europe 1992" was made more difficult by the 1989-90 events in
Eastern Europe and by Britain's intransigent foot dragging.
The July 1990 Houston Summit of the G [Group of] 7 industrial
countries confirmed the live-and-let-live "Sinatra doctrine":
Each one does it "my way," and the others nod approval, as
long as they have no other choice. At that Summit, Prime
Minister Kaifu of Japan announced a large scale program of
loans to China, and Chancellor Kohl of Germany a similar state
guaranteed loan of 5 billion DM to the Soviet Union. President
Bush reiterated his "Enterprise for the Americas Initiative"
for a free trade zone from Alaska to Patagonia [and $ 7
billion remission of debts out of the over $ 420 billion!],
which he had already hurried to announce a week earlier. In
each case, the other two listened, acknowledged, and did
nothing either to participate or to stop it. Thus, they
consecrated what the Soviet spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov had in
another context baptized as "the Sinatra Doctrine."
Germany's first priority was and is reunification. The
economic and social costs are enormous, and they are borne
mostly by the people and their government(s). So far private
industry in the West of Germany has been very slow to invest
in the East of Germany - and much less even in the East of
Europe. How long it will take Germany to get up the steam to
put its locomotive in motion remains to be seen -- in Central
and Eastern Europe. Little of this locomotive power is likely
to be visible in the world economy elsewhere. On the contrary,
as an economy that has been very dependent on exports to the
world market, Germany itself has already suffered from
declining export markets due to the recession elsewhere in the
world economy.
In June 1990, the former editor of the American foreign policy
establishment's Foreign Affairs, James Chace, wrote in
International Management. Europe's Business Magazine
AUF WIEDERSEHEN USA. There will be a European
challenge.... Europe has ... turned Servan-Schreiber's
thesis on its head. Today it is the United States that is
fearful of Europe's economic strength and worried about
its own relative economic decline....Approaching
1992...if there are severe economic dislocations or, let
us not forget, a global recession, there is no telling
how the new Europe will react....From this prospect
arises the even more frightening specter, to Americans at
least, of a Fortress Europe dominated by great industrial
groups that could freeze all competitors out of its
market. If this should happen, the risks to the United
States would be huge.... The likelihood that the
Europeans will eventually form a pan-European security
system of their own will further reduce U.S. power and
influence.....Washington is almost desperately eager to
remain in Europe. "The United States should remain a
European power in the broadest sense, politically,
militarily and economically," said U.S. President Bush in
a speech last month.
Two months later, Saddam Hussein offered President Bush an
opportunity to meet the European challenge.
Using Military Strength to Compensate for Economic Weakness
BRAVO FOR AMERICAN POWER celebrated the "serious" London paper
Sunday Telegraph (Jan. 20, l991) in a five column editorial:
"bliss is it in this dawn to be alive; but to be an old
reactionary is very heaven.... Who matter are not the Germans
or the Japanese or the Russians but the Americans. Happy days
are here again." The same paper added farther down the page,
"this is not going to be a multi-polar world. If there is to
be a new world order, it will be based on US military power
with Britain playing a key role. Saddam's scalp will be its
first trophy." Thus the London Telegraph also makes its own
the observation of the aptly named American National Interest:
"The fact [is] that the military power of the United States
was the only thing capable of mounting an effective riposte -
when the economic power of a Japan or a Germany was virtually
irrelevant." Since World War II, the United States has not
been able to use its military might against Japan and Germany;
and it can no longer do much for them either, now that the
Soviet military threat is waning. However, the United States
still can - indeed without Soviet encumbrance now all the
moreso - use its military might in and against countries in
the Third World. In other words, the Gulf Crisis offered
President Bush a black golden opportunity to try to redress
declining American hegemony against its principal economic
rivals in Japan and Germany by playing the only - that is
military - ace he still has up his sleeve. Of course, at the
cost of Iraq and the Third World, where this war was "played"
out. Without exception, all East-West wars since 1945 were
fought on Third World soil. Now the West-West competition is
to be fought out in the South as well.
East-West, North-South
Oft used labels aligned the old world order along East-West
and North-South axes and conflicts. In recent years, however,
the East-West ones have waned while the North-South ones have
waxed ever more. So have, albeit to a lesser degree, West-West
conflicts among North America, Western Europe, and East Asia
led by Japan. Thus, recent history was marked by "Political
Ironies in the World Economy" (Frank 1984/1987). Since l945,
world economic conditions were shaping international and
national politics and social movements. In particular, the
economic conflicts and opportunities generated by the world
economic crisis since 1967 would prove more important in
shaping international relations and domestic policy than the
ideological and political cold war between the United States
and the Soviet Union. Many East-West conflicts were a sham and
largely a cover for the always real North-South
contradictions. None of the 14 "revolutions" in the South
since 1974 was what it appeared to be or would turn out as was
hoped or feared.
These observations among others suggest the further irony
that much of the East-West conflict, especially between
Washington and Moscow, is a smoke screen cover for North-
South conflicts.... The world economic and technological
development that is now passing through a crisis of
regeneration, is perhaps, again ironically, likely
further to diminish if not eliminate the importance of
the East-West political division of the world much more
than the North-South economic division, which it is
likely to accentuate still further (Frank 1984/1987).
Under the title The European Challenge (Frank 1983/84), I also
argued that world economic conflicts made greater "Pan-
European Entente" [as per my subtitle] politically both
possible and desireable, all state policies and obstacles of
political blocs and their ideological inclinations
notwithstanding. This inefficacy of "voluntarist" state policy
and politics, especially for "national development" in a world
economy, was also the basis for the rise to greater importance
of alternative social movements in the West, South and also in
the East (Frank and Fuentes 1989,1990). In the meantime, all
of these and related analyses and forecasts, which seemed
unrealistic in the ideological climate of their time, have
become hard reality. However, these "ironical" turns and
consequences are only logical repercussions of the changing
world economic conditions. Now the cold war is over, and
Germany and Japan have won! However, the United States still
has the military power and the political ambitions to try to
defend its place in the world order -- now all the more so at
the expense of the Third World South.
Political Economies of Escalation
The escalation of the Gulf crisis was marked by three
important new departures in recent international political
economic relations:
1. The energetic American response in the Gulf was visibly
over a political economic issue. The issue is oil without any
cold war ideological overtones. The conflict about oil and the
massive American response was barely masked behind appeals to
the "defense" of small states in international "law."
2. This mobilization was entirely against (a part of) the
South without any pretense of an East-West ideological cover.
Popular reaction in the United States - and some physical
attacks and threats against innocent neighbors - was directed
against the Arab bogey. Not for nothing are the image of the
Arab and of the "terrorist" often identified in the popular
mind. The end of the cold war and of the Soviet Union and its
Warsaw Pact as a credible enemy require the legitimation of
another target. Actually, much of the ostensible East-West
conflict had always been a convenient cover for the underlying
North/West-South conflict. Now, there is little alternative
other than to bring that North-South conflict out into the
open. Private enterprise drug traffic and individual terrorism
are useful but limited alternative targets. They are better
targets if it is possible to make a state sponsorship
connection, as (wrongly) claimed about Libya. In Panama, the
ostensible "enemy" was narco-terrorism. The two were combined
and personalized by General Noriega and served as readily
available ideological replacements for the no longer operative
red menace/ Soviet bogey. Significantly of course, the target
was also (in) the Third World. It is even more useful now to
be able to mobilize for real war against a bigger Third World
state and its supposed threat.
3. The third major departure in the Gulf is the near unanimity
and alliance in the North against the South. The lineup
against Iraq from West to East, includes the United States,
Western and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China and Japan,
as well as American client states and governments whose arms
are easily twisted, as in Egypt and Pakistan. That new
alignment is a major difference, new departure, and ominous
threat for the future of "international" relations. Time
Magazine commented on "the astonishing unanimity of
purpose.... It is rare that a victim's fortunes are so
directly tied to the health of the Western economies." In
view of the same, British Prime Minister Thatcher commented "I
cannot remember a time when we had the world so strongly
together." By "world" she means the "North," which is what
counts. Yet, as Time quotes a Bush aide who watched his boss
calculate, "he knew that to be effective, the lineup against
Saddam had to be perceived as more than just the rich West
against a poor Arab." This lineup was prepared with care and
time.
ECONOMIC BUILDUP AND POLITICAL ESCALATION OF CRISIS AND WAR IN
THE GULF
Public Iraq-Kuwait Disputes and Secret Kuwaiti-US Agreements
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was not an unexpected bolt of
lightening out of the blue. Its utilization as a pretext by
the United States to launch its new world order through the
most destructive war since World War II appears increasingly
as malice aforethought.
Stealing Kuwait was not simple greed or national hatred.
Theft on a national scale [of what had been Iraqi before
the British created Kuwait] had become the only possible
access for war-devastated Iraq to ... the modern standard
of living that Western nations and small oil-producing
emirates of the Gulf enjoy today as a matter of right....
The strength of this almost suicidal drive to emerge
from poverty and backwardness ... was the motor (Jim
Hoagland, IHT March 5).
Iraqi grievances against Kuwait were an old inheritance from
colonial times, which was newly aggravated by Kuwaiti action
and perhaps provocation. The disputed border between Iraq and
Kuwait was arbitrarily drawn through the old Mesopotamian sand
by the British before they had to abandon their colonial
empire. However, the British deliberately did so to deny
Kuwait's oil and access to the sea to the populous Iraqis and
to reserve them to a rich emirate, which would be more subject
to Western influence.
Indeed, the resulting division among Arabs in Iraq and Kuwait
was only one example of their division into six large and
populous but poor countries and six artificially created
smaller states with oil reserves ruled mostly by emirs. These
have scarcely shared their oil derived riches with their poor
Arab "brothers" and have preferred to use them to flaunt their
luxury at home and invest their surplus funds abroad in the
West.
Iraq never quite resigned itself to this colonial and neo-
colonial arrangement and its borders with Kuwait. In
particular, Iraq claimed two small off-coast islands, which
would increase its access to the sea and tanker born exports
of its own oil.
Moreover, the border between Iraq and Kuwait obliged them to
share the Rumaila oil field beneath. Iraq accused Kuwait of
surreptitiously siphoning off increasingly more than its fair
share of oil from this common field while Iraq was occupied by
its war with Iran. This war left Iraq undercapitalized and in
US $ 30 billion debt to its rich neighbors. Therefore, Iraq
asked its rich Arab neighbors, including Kuwait, to forgive
this debt and supply it with another $ 30 billion. They
tentatively offered $ 10 billion each, but then reduced their
offer to an insulting
$ 500 million instead. Moreover, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had
started to add injury to insult by increasing their own
production of oil and thereby driving down the price of oil on
which Kuwait depended to recoup its wartime losses. Long
before its recourse to the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq repeatedly
denounced and demanded relief from all these measures, which
it regarded as injurious affronts to itself. To no avail.
On the contrary, information is emerging both quite publicly
and less so that the overproduction of oil by Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia to drive the price of oil down was a deliberate attempt
to weaken Iraq. "The Kuwaiti government was acting
aggressively - it was economic warfare" according to Henry
Schuler, the Director of the energy security program at the
Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies,
which has often been linked to the CIA.
Saddam Hussein and other Iraqis repeatedly complained about
this economic warfare against them and demanded better and
fairer treatment from their Arab neighbors instead. To this
end, Hussein convoked an Arab summit in Baghdad in May 1990
and complained of "economic warfare," but to no avail. In his
Revolution Day speech on July 19, President Hussein called the
oil price policy by Kuwait and the other Emirates "a poisoned
dagger" thrust into the back of Iraq, which was left alone as
the only real defender of Arab interests.
King Hussein of Jordan was an intermediary in negotiations
between Iraq, Kuwait and other Arab states. Michael Emery,
writing in the New York Village Voice cites King Hussein as
his source to make the following statements among others:
Parties to the Arab negotiations say the Kuwaitis ... had
enthusiastically participated in a behind-the-scenes
economic campaign inspired by Western intelligence
agencies against Iraqi interests. The Kuwaities even went
so far as to dump oil for less than the agreed upon OPEC
price ... which undercut the oil revenues essential to
cash hungry Baghdad.
The evidence shows that President George Bush, British
prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak, and other Arab leaders secretly cooperated
on a number of occasions, beginning August 1988, to deny
Saddam Hussein the economic help he demanded for the
reconstruction of his nation.... However, Washington and
London encouraged the Kuwaitis in their intransigent
insistence (Village Voice March 5, 1991 reprinted in Open
Magazine Pamphlet Series No. 9 and also cited in
International Viewpoint, April 15, l991). The Iraqi foreign
ministry has distributed the translation of a supposedly top
secret report to the Kuwaiti Minister of the Interior by his
Director General of State Security. It is dated 22 November
1989, informs of a meeting with the Director of the CIA in
Washington, and reads in part:
We agreed with the American side about the importance of
exploiting the deterioration of Iraq's economic situation
in order to put pressure on the Iraqi government to
consent to the delimitation of the borders. The CIA
offered its own ideas about how these pressures might be
exercised through extensive cooperation between the CIA
and ourselves and that the coordination of these
activities be established at a high level....The American
side offers us a private telephone line to facilitate the
rapid exchange of information (cited in part by Emery
ibid.)
Emery also reports on a July 30 meeting between King Hussein
and the foreign minister of Kuwait, who is the brother of its
ruling
Emir. Emery notes that "despite Saddam's army on their border,
the Kuwaitis were in no mood to listen." Emery asks
Why were the rulers of this tiny city-state sure of
themselves? Apparently, the Kuwaities thought the knew
something the Iraqis didn't. In their July 30 meeting...
[Kuwaiti foreign minister] Sheik Sabeh shocked the
Jordanian delegation by saying: "We are not going to
respond to [Iraq].... If they don't like it, let them
occupy our territory...we are going to bring in the
Americans..."
(Emery, ibid.).
The Kuwaiti Crown Prince had told his senior military officers
that they would have to hold off any Iraqi invading force for
24 hours and the "American and foreign forces would land in
Kuwait and expel them" (Emery, ibid.).
Setting the American Trap for Hussein
"The Americans were determined to go to war from the start,"
and Saddam Hussein "walked into a trap" according to the
former French foreign minister Claude Cheysson (IHT March 11).
"State Department officials...led Saddam Hussein to think he
could get away with grabbing Kuwait....Bush and Co. gave him
no reason to think otherwise" (New York Daily News Sept. 29).
The Former White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger has
written at length about how this trap was set [but
unfortunately I have not yet had access to this
documentation]. Bits and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle trap are
also emerging elsewhere, however; and some may be summarily
put together here. The belatedly publicized July 25 interview
between President Hussain and American Ambassador April
Glaspie is literally only the tip of the largely submerged
iceberg of this trap setting story.
Evidence is emerging to suggest that the Persian Gulf war is
the result of a long process of preparation, much more so than
the Tonkin Gulf one in Vietnam. For a decade during the Iran-
Iraq war, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had enjoyed US and Western
military, political and economic support, including $ 1.5
billion of sales approved by the U.S. government. George Bush
had been a key figure in the Reagan Administration's support
for Iraq. After the conclusion of Iraq's war with Iran and the
accession of George Bush to the American presidency, US policy
towards Iraq became increasingly confusing at best and/or the
product of a downright Machiavellian strategy to deceive Iraq
and set a trap for Hussein.
In March 1990, the "U.S. Bungled Chance to Oust Hussein,
Report Says" (IHT May 4-5,l991). According to a belated U.S.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report, rebellious
Iraqi military officers had sent out feelers asking Washington
for support for a coup against Saddam Hussein. However, the
Bush adminstration rebuffed them, and they desisted.
The [forced?] resignation and the testimony to Congress of
former Undersecretary of Commerce for Export Administration
Dennis Kloske revealed that in April 1990 he recommended "at
the highest levels" the reduction of high tech sales to Iraq.
He himself sought to delay these exports by tying them up in
red tape to compensate for the lack of such action by the Bush
administration. Still during the last week of July, the Bush
administration approved the sale of 3.4 million in computers
to Iraq. The day before the invasion of Kuwait on August 1,
the US approved the sale of $ 695,000 of advanced data
transmission devices (IHT March 12). As Kloske later
testified, "The State Department adamantly opposed my
position, choosing instead to advocate the maintenance of
diplomatic relations with Iraq" (IHT, April 11).
A month later in May l990, the National Security Council [NSC]
submitted a white paper to President Bush "in which Iraq and
Saddam Hussein are described as 'the optimum contenders to
replace the Warsaw Pact' as the rationale for continuing cold
war ilitary spending and for putting an end to the 'peace
dividend'." Yet the same NSC toned down an April 30 speech by
Vice President Dan Quayle adding "emphasis on Iraq misplaced
given U.S. policy, other issues" [John Pilger, The New
Statesman Feb. 8].
At the State Department, Secretary James Baker had promoted
John Kelly to Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern
Affairs. Kelly visited Baghdad in February, "the records of
which he is desperately trying to deep-six [bury]" (William
Safire, IHT March 26,1191]. However, it has been revealed that
Kelly told President Hussein that "President Bush wants good
relations with Iraq, relations built on confidence and trust."
Moreover, Kelly then rebuked the Voice of America and
countermanded the Defense Department on statements, which he
considered too unfriendly to Iraq. On April 26, Kelly
testified to Congress that Bush administration policy towards
Iraq remained the same and praised Saddam Hussein for "talking
about a new constitution and an expansion of participatory
democracy." Still on July 31, two days before the August 2
invasion of Kuwait, Kelly again testified to a Congressional
sub-committee "we have no defense treaty with any Gulf
country."
Kelly had sent the same message to President Hussein through
the U.S. American Ambassador April Glaspie. In the July 25
interview with President Saddam Hussein, she told him that "we
have no opinion on ...conflicts like your border dispute with
Kuwait...I have direct instruction from the President...
Secretary of State James Baker has directed our official
spokesman to emphasize this
instruction." "Mr. President [Hussein], not only do I want to
tell you that President Bush wants better and closer relations
with Iraq, but also that he wants Iraq to contribute to peace
and prosperity in the Near East. President Bush is an
intelligent man. He is not going to declare economic war
against Iraq." In her testimony to Congress, which the State
Department deliberately delayed until after the end of the
war, Ambassador Glaspie was asked "did you ever tell Saddam
Hussein...if you go across that line into Kuwait, we're going
to fight?" Ambassador Glaspie replied "No, I did not."
In the meantime on July 19, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told
the press that the US was committed to defend Kuwait if
attacked. However, his own press spokesman Pete Williams
immediately repudiated Cheney's statement as spoken "with some
liberty," and the White House told the Defense Secretary that
from then on he was to leave making statements to itself and
the State Department. On July 24, Iraq moved two divisions to
the Kuwaiti border, and on July 25, the same day as the
Hussein-Glaspie interview, a Kuwaiti military attache working
in the Basra consulate informed the government of Kuwait that
Iraq would invade on August 2. Two days later the director of
the CIA warned President Bush of the likelihood of coming
invasion. On July 31, "a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst,
Pat Lang, bluntly warned in a memo that Saddam Hussein
intended to invade. Mr. Lang intended his memo as 'a
thunderclap' to top policy makers ... but it drew virtually no
reaction" (IHT May 3, l991 citing Bob Woodward). On August 1,
Secretary of State Baker told his colleague Soviet Foreign
Minister Sheverdnaze, as the latter waited till March 1991 in
turn to tell Moscow News, that the United States "has proof
that aggression is possible" by Iraq. Yet, time and again,
President Hussein was and continued to be reassured and
emboldened by the Bush administration and its Department of
State, as well as by the US Senate minority leader Bob Dole,
who also went to visit him. Little wonder, that many observers
in Washington and elsewhere concluded that the Bush
Administration [deliberately?] gave Saddam Hussein the green
light to invade Kuwait. Moreover as the Village Voice (January
22,l991) also revealed, since then US intelligence sources
also learned from their "assets" in Iraq that President
Hussein was personally informed of the American reactions,
took each to be yet another sign of Bush administration
acquiescence with his intentions, and then seemed genuinely
surprised at the very different and belligerent American
reaction to his move into Kuwait.
President Hussein also may have had additional reasons for his
move beyond the immediate ones of his oil related grievances
with Kuwait. The stalemate in his war with Iran incited him to
try for a realignment of the regional balance of power once
again. It is useful to recall that Mesopotamia [Iraq], Persia
[Iran], and Egypt always, and occasionally the Arabian
peninsula also, have disputed but never achieved hegemonial
regional overlordship for long since the Sumerian Sargon tried
around 2,500 BC!
Immanuel Wallerstein (Economic and Political Weekly, April 27,
1991) suggests four reason that may have made the time
ripe for Hussein to make another move to that effect: 1. The
world debt crisis for which seizing Kuwaiti assets offered
some relief at least to Iraq; 2. Israel's recent foreclosure
of peace talks and increased intransigence with the
Palestinians, to whom Hussein's move seemed to pose no further
loss and might enhance their bargaining power; 3. The end of
the cold war and the crisis in the Soviet Union deprived him
of their support but thereby also of American fears of the
same; and 4. the collapse of the ideology of national
development through domestic efforts suggested the need for
more drastic measures. These included seizing Kuwait first as
a bargaining chip, and when that failed, then as Iraq's 19th
province. The likelihood of much adverse response must have
seemed remote, particularly in view of the repeated green
lights by the Bush administration.
Springing the Trap on Hussein by Foreclosing any Diplomatic
Way Out
Between the Iraqi invasion on August 2, 1990 and the start of
American bombing on January 17, l991, President Hussein gave
clear indications of his willingness to negotiate an Iraqi
withdrawal on at least six separate occasions. Three times,
he unilaterally took steps, which could have led to
withdrawal. President Hussein made repeated statements
indicating that he was serious about withdrawal, which would
include Iraqi "sacrifices" for a negotiated package deal. On
more than one occasion, President Hussein and his foreign
Minister Tariq Azis also told UN Secretary General of their
desire for a negotiated solution. All these Iraqi and other
initiatives came to naught, because the American Bush
administration wanted and arranged for them to fail. We
briefly review only some of these initiatives to avoid the
Gulf War, which the Bush administration in the United States
insisted on fighting.
British Prime Minister Thatcher was in Washington in early
August and egged President Bush on to take a completely
intransigent hard stand to deny Saddam Hussein any step back
or way out. We should recall that President Hussein himself
first claimed he was only helping a rival government in
Kuwait, which had asked for his help. Only after the first
still not clear international response, did he take the next
steps to complete military occupation, then to annexation, and
finally to making Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq. In the
meantime on August 3, the day after the invasion, the
inveterate Jordanian mediator King Hussein got Saddam Hussein
to agree to attend another hastily convened Arab summit on
August 5 and then to begin to withdraw from Kuwait again on
condition that there should be no condemnation of Iraq.
Nonetheless, under pressure by Washington and London
especially on Egyptian President Mubarak who received a call
from President Bush, by the evening of August 3 a majority of
the Arab League had already issued a condemnation at the
urging of Mubarak. He immediately received the remission of
the US $ 7 billion Egypt owed the United States. It was a
deliberate and ultimately successful drive to scuttle all
attempts at a negotiated diplomatic settlement of the Iraqi
claims, which many people even in Washington considered
reasonable and negotiable.
US troops "to defend Saudi Arabia" arrived there on August 7,
after several days delay. However this delay was only
necessary to overcome the resistance thereto of the Saudi
government who felt no danger of any possible attack by Iraq.
It appears that the Pentagon then duped the Saudis with
allegations that US satellite pictures showed Iraqi troops
massing on the Saudi border ready to invade. Later Soviet
satellite pictures examined by American exports showed Iraqi
troops in Kuwait that numbered not "even 20 percent the size
the [US] administration claimed. We don't see any
congregations of tanks, or troop concentrations. The main
Kuwait air base appears deserted" (St. Petersburg Florida
Times cited in War Report No. 6/7, March 23, 1991).
However, Emery comments again
But Saddam's intentions were actually less critical at
this juncture than Western intentions. In another
conversation King Hussein had around this time, with then
prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady let it
slip that "troops were halfway to their destination
before the request came for them to come [International
Viewpoint April 15, l991,
p. 21].
Indeed, Iraq sent another proposal to negotiate, which was
received on August 9 in Washington. The next day, the NSC
recommended its rejection as "already moving against [our]
policy." Former CIA director Richard Helms tried to find
consideration for the Iraqi initiative, which a State
Department Middle East staffer called both "serious" and
"negotiable." However, it was not so considered by the Bush
administration, where Helms found no one and "nothing in this
that interested the US government." On August 12, Iraq again
proposed its own withdrawal from Kuwait linked to the
withdrawal from their occupied territories by Syria and
Israel. The US, of course, rejected all "linkage," and Iraq
then dropped this negotiating demand according to Yasser
Arafat. Two weeks later, Iraq made still another offer of
withdrawal linked to some settlement of its old demands about
the two islands, the Rumaila oil field, and oil production.
The offer reached the Bush administration on August 23 but was
rejected out of hand. Indeed, as the New York Times diplomatic
correspondent noted on August 22, any and all such Iraqi
initiatives with "a few token gains for Iraq...[like] a
Kuwaiti island or minor border adjustments" had to be blocked
lest they might "defuse the crisis."
Therefore also, Iraq's "serious prenegotiation position" was
again dismissed by the United States on January 2, l991. The
US and UK also threatened to veto the French proposal on
January 14 to avert the start of bombing after the January 15
UN deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The February 15
Iraqi offer to withdraw was again dismissed as "linked" to the
Israeli-Palestine problem. The February 20-22 Soviet
initiative to preclude the ground war was rejected, etc.
Indeed countless further Iraqi, Irani, Jordanian, Algerian,
French, Soviet, and other initiatives, including those by the
UN Secretary General, to negotiate a peaceful settlement of
the crisis had to be and were effectively blocked by the Bush
administration. It wanted and planned its NEW WORLD ORDER WAR
instead. Far from "going an extra mile for peace," President
Bush deliberately deceived one and all with his and Secretary
Baker's "negotiations" instead to camouflage his own war plan,
to be reviewed below.
The Jordanian King Hussein remarked "I've been convinced for a
while that there was no effort to dialogue, there was no
effort to reach for a diplomatic solution, and there was
preparation from the word go for war" (Emery, ibid.)
Planning Mr. Bush's War
According to a reconstruction of major internal
deliberations and decisions by President George Bush and
his senior advisors ... offensive military planning began
in earnest in September, and on Oct. 30, a week before
congressional elections, Mr. Bush secretly approved a
timetable for launching an air war against Iraq in mid-
January and a large-scale ground offensive late in
February that would strike deep into Iraqi territory to
encircle President Saddam Hussein's army....General
Schwarzkopf had introduced the concept of offense from
the very beginning. ... The dimension of the planned
military buildup were closely held by Mr. Bush and his
inner circle.... The plan required almost doubling the
200,000 U.S. forces in the Gulf.... That critical
decision increased U.S. troops from 230,000 to more than
500,000.... Mr. Bush showed no hesitation in making the
decision to increase troop strength, but decided to keep
it secret until Nov. 8. Why? 'Nov. 8 was a very important
date because it was after Nov. 6' a White House official
said, referring to the election. ... In the two hour
meeting [on October 30], Mr. Bush made two fundamental
decisions: first, to set in motion the machinery for a
midwinter war against the Iraqi Army and, second, to win
a UN mandate for that war. To that end, he dispatched Mr.
Baker on a round-the-world tour to round up support for a
Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force"
( Thomas Friedman and Patrick Tyler, IHT March 4, 1991).
Yet two days after this important war plan meeting, on
November 1 "Bush Denies He Prepares U.S. For a Gulf War. Says
He Wants to Refocus Attention on Hostage Plight" (IHT Nov. 2,
l990).Later President Bush would repeat again and again that
"no one wanted war less than I did." But did he ever tell the
truth?
Mr. Bush's decision to use military power was opposed by
a bewilderingly mixed bag of radical Democrats, moderate
and conservative Democrats, conservative Republicans and
Republican right-wingers. The strongest intellectual
cases against going beyond sanctions were made by
Republocrats like Zbigniew Brzeznski, James Schlesinger
and Paul Nitze. All are staunch conservatives; all are
renowned advocates of a muscular U.S. national security
policy. Then there was Edward Luttwack, the mother of all
conservative strategists ... [and] Pat Buchanon.
Eight of nine recent secretaries of defense favored
staying with sanctions. This group included none other
than [President Reagan's Secretary of Defense] Casper
Weinberger. Two recent chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Admiral William Crowe and General David Jones,
were even more reluctant to use force than Mr.
Weinberger. This unique brew of Bush critics was joined
by probably 90 percent of American and European experts
on Arab affairs" [Leslie Gelb, IHT March 11, 1991].
This is becoming one man's war. It is George Bush's War;
the only thing that matters is what he thinks. In
Washington, people who know Mr. Bush say he is a man
obsessed. There is no point in arguing with him about
this matter, but men very close to the president say
privately that anyone who tries to disagree is risking
access and position.... What does the President want?
More war, less talk. As commander-in-chief, he is
operating like a medieval king. This chief seems to be in
command alone, with technical advice from his military
leaders" [Richard Reeves IHT Feb. 26, 1991 my emphasis,
AGF].
In this context, it is even more revealing then to find from
Bob Woodward's later expose that
last fall, General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, had serious reservations about the Bush
administration's shift toward an offensive military
strategy in the Gulf and repeatedly suggested
"containment" of Iraq...short of war.... He finally
raised the issue with Mr. Bush.... Mr, Bush, according to
Mr. Woodward's account, answered "I don't think there's
time politically for that strategy." The book does not
elaborate on the president's political considerations.
After that meeting, General Powell felt he had gone as
far as he could (IHT May 3, l991) -- without, perhaps, risking
his access and position!
The ultraconservative American columnist Charles Krauthammer
notes in the IHT, March 5, 1991:
Remember how roundly, and correctly, Mr. Bush was
criticized for being unable to articulate the justness of
the cause.... So he did it, as they say in the Middle
East, by creating facts. Four times since Aug. 2 he made
unilateral decisions that were bold and generally
unpopular. Yet each action reshaped the debate.... Fact
1, Aug. 7: the initial U.S. troop deployment ... found 56
percent [of polled Americans] opposed. Announcement of
the deployment, framed as a defense of Saudi Arabia, drew
immediate, 81 percent approval....
Fact 2, Nov. 8: doubling the ground troops. That put the
United States on a war footing and created a great wave
of Democratic opposition. But there was little the
Democrats could do. Mr. Bush had used his power as
commander in chief to create a political fact.... Fact 3,
the launching of the war itself. But here, too, Mr. Bush
had constrained the debate with more facts, in this case
the already established United Nations deadline....
Having prepared the battlefield, as the military briefers
like to say, Mr. Bush won. By a hair, but he won. Then
Fact 4, the ground war.... Ten days before the ground
war, the CBS/New York Times Poll found only 11 percent of
Americans in favor of launching one. When asked again
after the ground war started, 75 percent approved.... My
point is merely to note the magnitude of his political
achievement and the most unusual way in which he
did it: not with language but with action [Charles
Krauthammer, IHT March 5, 1991].
FIGHTING AND LYING TO WIN THE WAR
Two propaganda blitzes dominated the war: one was that it was
valiantly waged against "the world's fourth largest army" with
a highly trained "elite Republican Guard." The other one was
that therefore the coalition forces had to put on history's
first high tech "Nitendo" like electronic war with "smart
bombs" - at least curtesy of US and UK military command video
taped briefings for CNN and other TV networks around the
world. Hardly anyone then noticed that these two features of
the war were mutually contradictory in principle, and
empirically false in practice.
However, former French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson
declared
I categorically reject notions about avoiding unnecessary
damage. The allied goal of annihilating Iraq's economy
was bound to involve civilian casualties.... 200,000 - a
massacre, with a terrifying impact.... Why don't you ask
why the air war lasted 40 days instead of the 15 as
planned" (IHT March 11, 1991).
Only after it was all over, did a bit of the truth emerge
about what finally the International Herald Tribune headlined
"Desert Mirages: In the War, Things Weren't Always What they
Seemed. U.S. Overestimated Size and Ability of Iraq's Armed
Forces." It did so deliberately to help justify the carpet and
terror bombing of both the military and civilian "assets" of
this Third World country with a population of only 17 million
souls. The Pentagon presented sanitized images of a new kind
of high tech war between machines, not men. We saw videos of
outgoing Patriot[ic] American missiles impacting on incoming
Iraqi Scud missiles. However, we only learned later in the war
that the Patriots only hit the Scud propulsors and did not
destroy their warheads, which still hit buildings and killed
people. We also were not shown that both missiles fell back to
the ground to cause damage. Indeed only on April 18 did the
IHT reveal that "the Patriot may have caused as much damage as
it prevented."
The military commands also released many videos of precision
guided smart bombs taking out hard targets in Iraq. However,
they neglected to show the that these bombs still were not
smart enough not to miss 10 percent of their targets. Still
less did they mention that the smart bombs accounted for only
7 per cent of the tonnage dropped. Of these, the 3 percent of
the total dropped by the new Stealth bombers accounted for 40
percent of the target hits, which included roads, bridges,
power plants, irrigation works -- indeed "the works." The New
York Times editorialized a bit late on March 25,l991 [IHT
edition]
The bulk of the damage found by the UN team was not
accidental or "collateral," but the intended consequence
of the successful air campaign to destroy Iraq's war
machine by attacking its industrial base and urban
infrastructure. The findings raise questions about how
much of that bombing was needed, or justified. That
debate will go on....
The Times and other "responsible" media, however, did precious
little to start the debate before or during that bombing, when
it should have been avoided, limited or stopped. When the
American targeters hit first the only powdered milk and infant
formula factory in the country and then a civilian air raid
bunker / shelter, the Pentagon insisted that they had
correctly hit military targets. CNN and its Peter Arnett was
hounded as a traitor to the cause for sowing doubts after
having loyally already aired hundreds of hours of war
propaganda. In the pot calling the kettle black, the US
Commanding General Schwarzkopf said "I did resent CNN aiding
and abetting an enemy who was violating the Geneva Convention"
(IHT March 28, l991).
Nonetheless it was later revealed that only 60 percent of the
laser guided bombs hit their intended targets and the other 40
percent missed (Boston Globe Jan. 29, l991). Moreover, we may
ask what happened to the 97 percent of bombs that were not
from Stealths or the 93 percent of the bombs which were not
smart enough to get on TV? Answer: 75 percent of them missed
their assigned targets and did only "collateral" damage. In
English, they carpet bombed and terrorized both the civilian
population and its conscripted sons in the Iraqi army. Indeed,
that was of course the deliberate purpose of using squadrons
of Vietnam age B52s and their notoriously inaccurate high
altitude bomb runs. Indeed, some bombs were so big that they
would not fit into the B52s and had to be carried in and
shoved out of even bigger transport planes.
The United States again used Vietnam fame napalm and cluster
"anti-personnel" [not anti- person/s?] bombs and fuel
explosion bombs. These bombs suck oxygen out of their target
area and wantonly asphyxiate their victims of mass
destruction, if they did not kill them through the concussion
waves of their explosion. The Los Angeles Times (Feb. 24,
l991) also reported on the first wartime use of more
"efficient" new anti-personnel weapons: "Improved conventional
munitions [ICM] can kill four times as many soldiers." Adam
and Bouncing Betty bombs bounce off the ground to detonate at
the more lethal groin level. The Beehive is "perhaps the
ultimate concept in improved fragmentation...[and] spins at
high velocity, spitting out 8,000 flechettes -- tiny darts
with razor edges capable of causing deep wounds." The
fragments of white phosphorous howitzer shells "can continue
to burn hours after they have penetrated a soldier's body,
creating deep lesions." According to the propaganda, the
"Hitler" Hussein had and threatened to use fuel explosive and
chemical "poor man's atom bombs." However, Iraq never used any
such weapons. The Americans did not threaten. They not only
used their tried and true old napalm and other anti-personnel
weapons. The Americans also used their first opportunity, of
course in the Third World, to try out their new weapons of
mass destruction and annihilation on their poor defenseless
Iraqi victims. The Iraqis never fought back. Except for the
Western propaganda value scud missiles, the Iraqis were never
reported to have even tried to drop a single bomb or shell on
allied troop formations.
The United States also violated United Nations International
Energy Commission regulations to which it had agreed not to
bomb nuclear facilities, because of the danger of
uncontrollable contamination. Despite this ban and danger,
American bombs were dropped on Iraqi nuclear facilities
anyway. "In one of these cases, the bombardment resulted in
what Iraq described as 'radiation contamination of the
region'.... Thousands of Iraqi weapons have been described by
Baghdad as buried beneath the contaminated debris of Iraqi
storage sites and production factories" (IHT May 2, l991).
Contrary to Allied assurances as well, bombs also damaged
ancient archeological treasures from Sumerian and Assyrian
times (IHT May 6, 1991).
HUMAN AND MATERIAL WAR DAMAGES AND COSTS
The Casualties of Direct Hits and "Collateral Damage"
No one knows, or probably ever will know, the resulting number
of Iraqi casualties in an unnecessary war that could and
should have been avoided. The world's "fourth largest army"
from a population less than 50 percent bigger than New York
City had been decimated without any means of self defense from
the air before the long heralded but only 100 hour allied long
ground offensive even started. Only after the war, several
press sources repeatedly reported American military and CIA
estimates between 100,000 and 250,000 Iraqi primarily military
dead. In his televised interview with David Frost, the
American commanding general Norman Schwarzkopf referred to
"50,000 or 100,000 0r 150,000 or whatever of them to be
killed." A Saudi military commander told CNN of 100,000 Iraqi
troops dead and 200,000 wounded. A French military
intelligence source told the Nouvelle Observateur that 200,000
were killed. The Muslim Institute referred to "up to 500,000
Iraqi civilians killed or injured by Allied bombs" in the
April 12 IHT. The eleventh hour or last minute destruction of
the two convoys, one 38 Km long with 5000 vehicles, retreating
out of Kuwait, whose grisly remains were televised around the
world, cost the totally unnecessary and unjustifiable death of
further countless thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians,
as well as of Kuwaiti hostages. Pilots later said that the
retreating Iraqis were "basically just sitting ducks" and "it
was like shooting fish in a barrel" (Washington Post Feb. 27,
l991). The British Independent (Feb. 28, l991) fond it
"sickening to witness a routed army being shot in the back."
Otherwise, hardly any protest was murmured, and even that was
rejected by on high.
At war's end in Iraq, a United Nations commission of inquiry
found a country in "near apocalyptic" conditions of
catastrophe with its economy, society and people bombed back
into the pre-industrial age. The civilian economic
infrastructure had been deliberately destroyed. There is no
more electric power to treat urban sewage, to provide drinking
water or to irrigate agricultural land. US President Bush
wants "not one dime" spent on Iraqi reconstruction and,
instead, had the Security Council adopt a cease fire
resolution to force poor Iraq to use some of its future oil
earnings to pay for the reconstruction of rich Kuwait. The
Emirate, in turn, has reserved and assigned over 70 percent of
its reconstruction contracts for American companies like the
Bethel construction company, which sacrificed itself to supply
the Secretaries of State and Defense to the previous
administration !
That is, "The New Way of War is to Bomb Now and Kill Later,"
as the April 17, l991 IHT headlines a column in the Washington
Post by the vice president of the World Resources Institute,
Jessica Mathews. As a direct result of carpet bombing Iraq's
infrastructure back into a pre-industrial age
the International Committee of the Red Cross, which
normally expresses itself in the most understated
language it can devise, warned last week of the seeds of
a "public health catastrophe of immense proportions." It
was referring not to the plight of the 1.5 million Kurds
but to that of the other 14 million Iraqis. The principal
threat is contaminated water and lack of sanitation....
Dr. Jack H. Geiger, president of Physicians for Human
Rights, who has just returned from Iraq, says he would
not be surprised if the nationwide toll may soon reach
"many tens of thousands." ... The [UN] secretary
general's mission expects "a catastrophe...at any time."
Food is scarce....The June harvest is questionable, with
no electricity to run irrigation pumps and no gasoline
for harvesting combines. Food now available cannot be
stored because of lack of refrigeration. Seeds for next
season's crop were destroyed. Famine is in imminent
prospect....
The extent of present and anticipated human suffering
demands some clear answers to these questions. With whom
were the allied at war, Saddam Hussein or all Iraqis? If
not all Iraqis, which?... How far does America's and
other coalition members' responsibility extend for
Iraqi's suffering? If Iraq cannot pay for what its people
need while also paying reparations, what should be done?
Finally, unavoidably: Was it worth it?
In answer, Gulf War US Commander in Chief General "Stormin"
Norman Schwarzkopf declared
I have a great feeling of a great victory. Anyone who
dares even imply that we did not achieve a great victory
obviously doesn't know what the hell he is talking about
[IHT April 13-14]
The same General Schwarzkopf had also declared that if there
ever were any conflict between his ethics and his duty, he
would of course chose his ethics above his duty. ln l983
already, he valiantly used 6,000 troops to conquer mighty
Grenada and its unarmed Cuban construction workers at the cost
of still untold casualties. Early on in the Gulf conflict, he
had given public assurances that anyone evacuating Kuwait
would of course be guaranteed safe passage, for otherwise it
would be unreasonable to expect them to leave. Then, he killed
every last member of the 5,000 vehicle retreating convoy. Now,
General Schwarzkopf also says "never say never" to the well
earned proposals of a nomination to the presidency of the
United States. In the meantime, Stormin Norman intends to
retire with "multimillion dollar book offers" for his memoirs
and/or a multimedia book and film deal [IHT 13-14 April]. For
the victory euphoria among some people in the United States
seems to know no bounds.
So it was certainly "worth it" for them, since President Bush
aptly noted that "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome
once and for all." Vietnam had been "bombed back into the
stone age," but the humiliated Americans were forced to
withdraw in defeat anyway. Now the "great victory" over Iraq
is the corner stone of America's "new world order."
Other Human Costs
There were already been many other important casualties even
before the first shot was fired: The millions of refugees in
the Gulf region; the millions of people who lost sources of
their livelihood from the occupation of Kuwait and the embargo
against Iraq. The many Third World countries from which the
guest workers came lost the remittances of foreign exchange
from these workers. Moreover, they now return home penniless
to augment the masses of the unemployed. The price of
petroleum temporarily skyrocketed for the old Third World
countries in the South and the new Third World countries in
Eastern Europe. Hundreds of millions of people around the
world saw their most urgent problems [like renewed famine in
Africa] even more neglected by the attention, which was
focussed on the Gulf. All of these suffer from President
Hussein's occupation of Kuwait and President Bush's escalation
of the same into a major war. Post war refugees by the
millions were also forseeable. As in all occupation and war,
the rape of women multiplied. All of these casualties were
bound to multiply again in the course of the war itself and
even after the "liberation" of Kuwait. Yet only some of these
costs and casualties merited little concern at best, and then
only when it was necessary in order to tie some regional
governments into the alliance, like Turkey and Syria, or
maintain them neutral, like Jordan and Iran. Most of these
momentous problems and their literally untold costs to
countless millions of people have received no, or virtually
no, attention from the "responsible" presidents, their allied
prime ministers, their governments, the United Nations, or the
mostly warmongering media. The direct financial costs of the
war to the coalition allies, from which the United States
seems to be making a net profit, are better considered in the
discussion below of the American New World Order.
Ecological Costs
The Ecological costs of the war have been enormous, but so has
been their western propaganda use to extend and intensify the
war. That way, the ecological costs were increased still
further.
The oil spills in the Gulf were blamed on the Iraqis by the
Pentagon. The media showed heart rendering images of oil
stricken birds. As it turned out, these pictures were taken
during earlier oil spills elsewhere. The purpose, of course,
was to whip up even more anti-Hussein sentiment to justify the
escalation of the war. After all the propaganda, the
ecological damage turned out to be less than advertised.
Wildlife conservationists now estimate that 1/2 of 1 percent
of the birds in the area were affected. The percentage of
Iraqi people killed was very much higher, but their pictures
did not go around the world. As to the oil slicks themselves,
Claude-Marie Vadrot of the Paris Journal de Dimanche (Feb. 3)
writes "none of the existing slick in the Gulf have resulted
from voluntary action or piracy, and four out of five are the
responsibility of allied forces." The first one was from the
January 19 allied bombardment of three oil tankers. The second
one from the January 20 bombing by French and British planes.
The third one can be attributed to Iraqi bombardment. The
fourth is due to allied bombardment of Al Ahmadi, and the
fifth oil spill if from the bombing of Boubyane Island by
British planes.
The 500 Kuwaiti burning oil wells were indeed set afire by the
Iraqis, who had announced from the very beginning that they
would have to use this measure. It was one of the few
available to them to defend themselves from superior force in
general and from threatened amphibious attacks across the Gulf
waters in particular. Moreover, having been incited into this
war by Kuwaiti oil competition and duplicity, Iraq now assured
itself of a long respite from this competition by setting fire
to the Iraqi oil wells. The resulting man-made environmental
damage from smoke is unprecedented, at least in its regional
impact. However, this damage also is much less than was
advertised, and it has been noted that the same oil would
eventually be burned one way or another somewhere else anyway.
Less has been said of the ravages to the desert environment by
over a million troops with their heavy equipment and its
destruction. However, the responsibility for the wanton
disregard of all this environmental threat and damage must be
shared if not carried by the coalition allies and their
American leadership, who pushed ahead with their war plans in
total disregard of this problem. So much for the promises and
commitment of President Bush and others to safeguard the
environmental future of wo/mankind.
POLITICAL COSTS OF THE GULF WAR: VIOLATION OF DEMOCRACY AT
HOME
The Gulf War fought against a ruthless dictator in the South
by the great democracies in the West violated or subverted the
most important bases and institutions of democracy. The United
States Congress, other Parliaments, and the will of the vast
majority of the people in the West were violated. Freedom of
the Press was actively censored, and the Free Press guardian
of democracy self-censured itself. As much by omission as by
commission, the media deliberately misled the public.
Participant democracy in civil society and its organization
through social movements were bypassed and neutralized or
sterilized. On the other hand, racism and chauvinism
flourished and were used to aid and abet the war effort on the
home front. The Gulf War was falsely fought in the name of
"democracy." The war witnessed one of the sorriest days for
real democracy in the West, not to mention the newly
democratic East.
Setting Up and Blackmailing Congress
Another major institutional casualties of the Gulf War were
the American Congress and other parliaments. The
constitutional mandate of Congress to keep the President in
check and balance, and especially to exercise its authority to
declare war for good cause were subverted. President Bush
skillfully manuevered Congress with deceit and blackmail
reminiscent of and functionally analogous to the Tonkin Gulf
affair. [That was when President Johnson faked a Vietnamese
attack in the Tonkin Gulf to deceive Congress into authorizing
escalation in Vietnam in l964]. All through the autumn, the
American Congress and public were against a US war in the
Gulf. However, President Bush manuevered and blackmailed
Congress to back him up to go to War in the Gulf by adept and
deceitful timing.
Congress would surely have refused to vote Mr. Bush war powers
in November or perhaps even in December. That is surely also
why President Bush did not send his war resolution to Congress
before he had crossed so many Rubicons, that Congress could
hardly deny its support to the American men and women, whom
President Bush had sent to the battle front. A crucial step by
President Bush was to double the number of troops in Saudi
Arabia by bringing in 200,000 more American NATO troops from
Germany in November. He brought them, not as initially
announced to rotate them with, but now to add them to, those
already there. Thereby also, the mission of the American
troops was changed from the supposed defense of Saudi Arabia
against a possible attack by Iraq to the "liberation" of
Kuwait through the planned American attack of Iraq itself and
to the defeat of its military forces. In view of this
commitment by President Bush, the ever astute Henry Kissinger
then observed that any withdrawal without victory now "would
lead to a collapse of American credibility, not only in the
area but in most parts of the world" (quoted in the
International Herald Tribune Jan. 17, 1991).
These far reaching decisions were made before the November 6
American congressional elections. However, they were
deliberately withheld from the public and Congress before the
elections and only implemented thereafter. The same day of
the above cited eventful meeting at the White House,
on Oct. 30, Mr. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker
briefed congressional leaders but said nothing explicit
about the president's war policy. Later that day Mr.
Bush doubled U.S. troop levels -- a decision not
disclosed to the public until the election was past (New
York Times editorial "Bush the Warrior" in IHT May
6,l991).
Neither the American public, nor the American Congress, would
have agreed to this deliberate escalation towards war by
President Bush if they had been given a choice. That is why
President Bush gave them no choice, but instead deceived them
and pursued his covert policy of faits accomplis.
Then, President Bush deliberately delayed seeking
authorization of his war plans from Congress until January,
because he knew he would be refused until he could put
together a strong enough foreign hand to finesse and blackmail
an ever patriotic domestic Congress. In the meantime, Bush and
Baker used diplomacy to build up an international coalition
for the Gulf. Especially crucial was UN Resolution 678 to set
a January 15 deadline for Iraq and for Bush to use the over
half a million armed forces he had sent to the Gulf. Some
American commentators remarked on the irony that President
Bush was able to get the authorization for going to war in the
Gulf from the United Nations, which he was unable to get from
his own American Congress. Then, of course, he used the one
in his faits accomplis policy to get the other as well.
Thus, President Bush used the powers of his office first to
overcome congressional and popular opposition, then to get
reluctant approval, and finally to achieve jingoistic
enthusiasm for his war. President Bush had already made over
400,000 American troops ready for battle in the Gulf, which in
itself exerted pressure on Congress now to accept this fait
accompli and to authorize their use. Moreover, President Bush
threatened to give the order to send them into war with or
without the approval of Congress, to whom the Constitution
reserves the right to declare war [which it never did in
Vietnam]. Even so, in its pre-deadline resolution nearly half
the Senate still dared to oppose or at least to delay the use
of these troops for war. However, President Bush's war
resolution passed, the January 15 UN deadline came and went;
and the US Commander in Chief gave the order to fire. Then, of
course, Congress - the Senate voted 98-0 - and the American
people were faced with President Bush's [so far] final fait
accompli, which now oblige them to rally around their troops,
their flag and their President.
President Bush's strategy to blackmail the American Congress
was particularly effective through its use at the eleventh
hour before going to war. Another conservative commentator
asks us to
recall the circumstances of the key congressional vote on
Jan. 12, four days before Mr. Bush launched the air
war.... Some number of legislators - quite possibly the
number that tipped the balance - made their decision not
on the basis that war had become necessary and feasible.
No,...they felt that a vote to authorize force offered
the only chance remaining to squeeze Saddam into backing
off. In short, whatever the president and his advisors
may have thought, the vote in Congress was finally
carried not by those who had determined that war was
inevitable and who were ready for it, but by those that
hoped that war was still avoidable. At that moment,
moreover, there was little awareness evident anywhere in
Congress that the United States and its allies were going
to wage the sort of fantastic high-intensity military
campaign, air and ground, that materialized" (Stephen
Rosenfeld IHT March 11, 1991).
Thus, President Bush won. The American Congress was denied its
constitutional mandate to exercise checks and balances on the
President, and especially on his ability to wage war. Through
all this deceit by President Bush, the two major institutional
safeguards against war, the United Nations and the United
States Congress, became major casualties of President Bush
and those who supported him before the first shot was even
fired in the Gulf War.
Other parliaments in the West were also bypassed and/or
bamboozled into supporting and paying for a war whose real
reason and purpose was never explained to them or their voter
constituencies. The easiest task was perhaps in Britain,
where all substantive discussion of the matter in the House of
Commons was avoided, and attention was focussed on the change
of parliamentary and government leadership. President Bush's
most enthusiastic foreign support did come from Britain, first
under the leadership of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and
then under that of her successor John Major. The London
Telegraph (January 20,1991) offers an interpretation in a
column entitled "TO THE POINT" : "Britain goes up in the
world" again thanks to its support for President Bush in the
Gulf, which "suggests that Britain, not Germany, is the more
natural leader for a Europe aspiring to greater political
unity." In support of this thesis, the same paper also cites
"so influential an American organ of opinion" as the Wall
Street Journal. Moreover, by February 14, the International
Herald Tribune would report that "Britain has a new
credibility within the EC that has been bolstered, for the
time being at least, by the Gulf crisis, officials said."
Unmentioned but perhaps not irrelevant is the consideration
that the recession ridden British economy and the London
financial "City" still need the continued financial support of
the Kuwaiti and other oil sheiks and that in this same
recession the unpopular Tory government was in dire need of a
political boost. A jingoist war in the Gulf offerred both.
In Japan, in Germany and even in France the heads of
government had more trouble bypassing their parliaments and/or
twisting their arms to exact support for Mr. Bush's war. All
in turn were subject to blackmail and arm twisting from
Washington, also ironically exercised through Secretary of
State Baker's trip around the world to pass the hat for
financial contributions to the "common cause." Considerable
powers of persuasion by the governments of the United States
and their allies were necessary and exercised, because the
people and their elected representatives in these countries
had much trouble understanding just what they were supposed to
contribute their taxes for, or why.
Free Press Censorship, Self-censorship and Orwellian New Speak
The Gulf War was accompanied and indeed prepared by the
biggest media blitz in world history. However, when war breaks
out, the first casualty is the truth -- it was said already
during the Crimean War 130 years ago. Poor Joseph Gbbels.
Hitler's minister who made the management of racist and
totalitarian war propaganda synonymous with his name, would
have had to start again in Kindergarten to learn today's high-
tech news management of Orwellian New Speak to brainwash a
global population via instant satellite TV. If democracy
relies on informed people, all semblance of democratic
procedures were thrown to the wolves. They clad themselves in
sheeps' clothing not to misinform Little Red Ridinghood but
supposedly educated responsible adult citizens and voters.
"Managing the news was seen as part of the war-winning effort"
as the TV reporter Geoff Meade observed from his posting in
Saudi Arabia. Indeed.
The Pentagon managed press [sess?] pool was the most
successful military weapon used in the war. The pool was
designed to permit a military monopoly on gathering,
assembling, and disseminating information through commission
and especially omission. Far from denying military secrets to
the military enemy in Iraq, however, the pool was intended to
and did operate to create secrets for and foreclose or
neutralize potential civilian enemies of the war on the home
front. The military command not only prescribed and
administered sanitized news drop by drop for its dissemination
by an obedient medical corps of news doctors. The Pentagon
news pool also prevented unlicensed practitioners to operate
on or near the battle field. Moreover, woe was to any
independent free-lance or indeed network newsman or woman who
dared to ask "anti-military" questions about the patient or to
see him outside of established visiting hours and places, or
to disseminate any medicine not prescribed by the Pentagon's
team of news doctors. Big Brother Pentagon immediately
blacklisted these undesirable newspeople and denied them
access to the socialized medicine of the military blood news
bank. An information pamphlet was also circulated to US troops
in Saudi Arabia urging them to avoid any mention to newspeople
and others of 19 different topics ranging from American good
relations with Israel to questionable ones with some Arabs.
Therefore, there were the severest penalties for filming,
writing, speaking, editing, publishing or otherwise
broadcasting any news or any ever so mild critique of the real
or video shooting war, which was not to the Pentagon's
complete liking. Newspeople were threatened not only with de-
accreditation, but also with deportation from Saudi Arabia and
environs. Very few took the risk or left on their own
account, as a CNN reporter apparently did rather than
forsaking her integrity.
The self-censorship by the press at home probably exceeded
even the military's blackout of battlefield news and its
analysis, which might have fed the patient at home with even a
modicum of the information he might have used to question the
aims and prosecution of this war. Fairness & Accuracy in
Reporting (FAIR) for instance summarizes "Eight (Self-
)Censored Stories National Media Ignored" in the United
States:
1. Secret U.S. arms shipments to Iraq during the Reagan
Administration; 2. The diplomatic scandal of Ambassador
Glaspie's signal that the U.S. would not oppose Iraqi
invasion; 3. The Kuwait connection of its financial clout
in the U.S. and the conflict of interest of National
Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft; 4. Racism and bigotry
in the U.S. military; 5. Slave labor in the Gulf; 6. The
true cost of the war including interest and veterans'
benefits could be more than 10 times the official
estimate; 7. The army that wasn't there poised to invade
Saudi Arabia; and 8. Bush's family ties in the Gulf
(quoted and paraphrased from Extra, May 1991, p. 16).
These and many other stories were deliberately ignored,
because their airing by the media might have sown some doubts
in the public mind about the justification of this war and
thereby reduced home front support for the same. Instead, the
news were managed to rally home front support for the war
before, during, and after its bloody prosecution in Iraq - and
to manage public perception of the political, military and
missile/bomb aims and victims of the war. They were sanitized
through newly mounted video cameras accompanied by comments in
Orwellian Military NewSpeak. It covered the whole gambit from
the poisoned alphabet soup of new acronyms for military
technology and terminology to the sanitized verbs used to
"soften up," "degrade," "suppress," "take out," "down,"
"cleanse," "neutralize" and "eliminate" mention of killing
real people by the hundreds of thousands. The famous
"collateral damage" was not limited to the "target rich
environment" of Iraq, but was worldwide -- or was all of that
damage to informed public opinion and democracy deliberate as
well? If so, the media blitz war was successful -- and not
so.
For the evidence is that on the home front itself there was
still much dissatisfaction with the press -- for failing to
contribute enough to the war effort! Once the shooting
started, barrages of letters, phone-ins, interviews, and
public opinion polls in the US and UK at least gave vent to
public demand for even more sanitized news censorship and
management of their own brainwashed opinion. 80 percent of
Americans supported the restrictions on the press and 60
percent wanted even more military control over the press and
information (IHT Feb. 1,l991). So where then was the denial of
democracy? Was it in managing public opinion less than it
wanted? Or was the abrogation of democracy to be found in the
brainwashing of people who for the whole second half of 1990
knew neither what such a war should be fought for, nor wanted
it to be fought to begin with -- that is before the missile
and video shooting started?
Little wonder that Anthony Lewis could belatedly summarize in
the New York Times under the title "Docile Media Hawked the
Official View of the War":
Most of the press was not a detached observer of the war,
much less a critical one. It was a claque applauding the
American generals and politicians in charge. In the press
I include television, its most powerful component now and
the most egregious lapdog during the war. For the most
part the networks simply transmitted official images of
neat, painless war. Or worse: put a gloss of independent
corroboration on those false images. And they were
false.... Perhaps the most dangerous shortcoming of the
press was its failure to keep asking whether the war was
necessary or wise. Once the bombing started that
fundamental political question was mostly put aside....
The May issue of Harper's Magazine ... [carried an
article] by the editor, Lewis H. Lapham and is entitled
"trained seals and sitting ducks" [which observed that]
the administration well understood ... that it could rely
on the media's complicity in almost any deception dressed
up in patriotic costume" (IHT May 7, l991).
The Violation of Participant Democracy in Civil Society
The London Sunday Telegraph (January 20, l991) offered good
advice to Western and other governments:
Not that the danger from the peace movement has wholly
passed....If things start going wrong in the Gulf, we may
need to have recourse to jingoism, if only to combat the
fire and fervour of the peace movement.... For so long as
primitive, irrational pacifism can continue to cloud the
minds of men - as it can and does as never before - so
long will it be necessary for there to be an equally
strong emotional antidote on the other side.... It would
be a foolish Western leader who threw this indispensable,
if ancient and primitive, psychological weapon [of
jingoism] onto the scrap-heap before victory was assured.
The London Telegraph must be proud to have such attentive and
obedient readers in Downing Street and the Mother of
Parliaments, in the White House and Capitol Hill, and of
course in Baghdad and all over the Arab and Islamic world too.
The decisions and faits accomplis to go to war were made at
the highest national and international levels. These
governmental leaders not only failed to consult their
populations and voters. As we noted above, President Bush
deliberately even avoided putting the issue to the people's
elected representatives in Congress until long after the
Congressional elections and his subsequent doubling of
American Gulf troops in November l990. In so doing, these
government leaders also pulled the rug out from under the
social movements in civil society both in the United Sates and
Western Europe, after these movements had already been
bypassed in Eastern Europe. The mobilization of civil society
around a myriad of local, national, and international issues
of gender relations, environmental issues, and the peace
movement itself received a brutal blow. Even the director of
that old cold war think tank, the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, observed in the International Herald
Tribune (February 11, 1991) "the current collapse of pacifist
movements in Western countries, not the least Germany, is one
of the notable features of the war."
That, of course, is one front in which the media played out
their assigned roles. A few thousand Western hostages in
luxury hotels merited banner headlines and major TV coverage,
while several hundreds of thousands of destitute Third World
refugees from Kuwait and Iraq went virtually unmentioned.
Saddam Hussein's retention of Westerners as his "guests"
unfortunately facilitated the further popular image equation
with the hostage syndrome. In the United States early on
already, popular reaction - and some physical attacks and
threats against innocent neighbors - was directed against the
Arab bogey. Not for nothing were the image of the Arab and of
the "terrorist" often identified in the popular mind. When
Hussein launched his Scud missiles against Israel, he helped
rally widespread sympathy and media support around the world
for Jews and the war in defense of Israel. For that reason,
many Jews themselves already supported the war against Iraq
since [before] the beginning. Hussein intended his attack on
Israel to mobilize support for him among Arabs and other
Muslims; but its effect was to was rally much more support for
the war against him elsewhere. The same Saddam Hussein who had
received scant media and popular attention when he gassed his
Kurdish citizens was then vilified as a new "Hitler," who had
to be fought like the old one. Critique of this false
comparison and the western war aims was then unjustly branded
and dismissed as "Anti Semitism."
In Europe, the media confronted people with a choice between
the Iraqi Saddam Hussein and the American George Bush. With
that choice, the man in the street and in front of his TV set
chose the white American. More women, fortunately or wisely,
refused that false Hobson's choice and opted for peace
instead. Nonetheless, European civil society rapidly became
shot through with rabid racism and chauvinism directed against
any and all Arabs and Turks -- in total disregard of the fact
that many governments of Arabian countries and Turkey [which
also has its eye on some Iraqi petroleum producing territory]
were loyal and active members of the allied coalition of the
Americans and Europeans. Thereby, these West Europeans may
also have demonstrated a preference for replacing cheap non-
European labor from the South by the newly available source of
European cheap labor from the East. Perhaps it was not
altogether accidental that half a dozen countries in Western
Europe chose that time to lift visa requirements for entry by
Poles, who came by the train and busloads to look for work.
Nonetheless and very significantly so, western people in
Europe, and of course in the United States as well,
demonstrated that they were not entirely duped by the myths
that their leaders and the beholden media propagated about
this war and the supposed "principles" for which it was
fought. Instead, these people in the North demonstrate through
their own belligerent action against colored immigrants or
workers from the South on the streets at home that they feel
and understand the War in the Gulf was between their North and
the South. In the ex-East, especially in Central and Eastern
Europe, people as well as their governments sought advantage
by siding with the Western powers in the Gulf War. They vented
their spirits against Third World workers and students brought
into and still residing in their societies and neighborhoods
by the previous regimes.
At the same time, the people in the South felt and understood
the same thing about this war. That is why all around the
equator not only Arabs and not only Muslims, but all kinds of
other people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America demonstrated
against the United States and its war against the Third World.
They also demonstrated in support of Saddam Hussein who,
however cynically, has been cast in the role of defender of
the South. The cruel fact is that in popular perception and
feeling in the North as well as in the South, this was a WAR
BETWEEN "US" AND "THEM"! Alarmingly, this terrible war was
also fought out in the streets, schools, and institutions of
civil society around the world. What's more it continues to be
fought there long after the allied bombing stopped in Iraq.
Thus, another one of the major political, social, and cultural
costs and damages of this war has been to feed aggression and
pitch neighbor against neighbor in civil society neighborhoods
West, East, and South. Many people experienced and some
testified to heightened tension and agressiveness on Western
city streets during the war. Soon after the war, serious
racial disturbances broke out in the American capital,
Washington, and in the European "capital" Brussells. Moreover,
the war and its macho imagery on TV meant another big step to
the [re] masculinization of society everywhere. The war and
the world appeared [probably accurately] run by men. Women
were portayed in their roles to keep the home fires burning on
or near military bases in the United States while waiting for
their men to return from heroic duty in the war. Western TV
prominently featured only two women in male settings, the
American soldier made prisoner by the Iraqis and the BBC
reporter Kate Adie. Thus, the war and its TV rendition also
set back women's position in society and their demands and
struggle for more equal rights.
Thus deliberately or not, the Gulf War bypassed, undermined,
violated, subverted, and otherwise seriously damaged the most
precious democratic institutions and processes in the very
democracies who supposedly went to war to defend democracy
against tyranny. This violation and sacrifice of democracy, in
addition to the negation of peace and threat of future wars,
are a terrible price to pay for the new world order.
MORE POLITICAL COSTS OF THE GULF WAR:THE INTERNATIONAL
DIMENSIONS
The Peace Dividend Cancelled
The most important and most obvious international political
cost of the war is to peace. This sacrifice of peace, however,
has several dimensions, not all of which have received the
attention they merit. Perhaps the most significant one is the
[deliberate?] cancellation of the "peace dividend" in its
broadest sense, which was perhaps naively expected from the
end of the cold war. The hoped for peace dividend was not
limited to the conversion of military production to civilian
use or the diversion of military budgets to social needs.
More importantly, the peace dividend promised a transition
from cold war and its associated hot wars in the Third World
to a new era of peace, such as that which broke out in several
Third World countries in 1988-89. Then, the United Nations
successfully intervened to that effect in Afghanistan, Angola,
Cambodia, Iran-Iraq, Namibia, if not Nicaragua; and its blue
helmets were awarded the Noble Prize for Peace. The end of the
cold war and its associated stalemate between the superpowers
in the Security Council held out [vain?] hopes that the UN
could finally begin to meet its chartered responsibilities to
keep the peace. Most important perhaps however, the peace
dividend was to be the de facto renunciation of war as an
instrument of foreign policy in the settlement of
international disputes, as enshrined 45 years ago in the
United Nations Charter.
The Gulf war has dashed all of these peace dividend hopes.
Most important and most dangerous as a post cold war precedent
for the "new" world "order" is the renewed resort to war, this
time by a coalition of allied Western powers with some
southern and eastern support. They waged war without any
clearly defined cause against a solitary small Third World
country. This war clearly announces that military might is
right in all senses of the word. Ominously, this war also
threatens the repeated resort to similar wars in the future.
The linkage of this war to a supposed "new world order" is
serious, because it demonstrates for all to see that this
"new" "order" is being initiated and constructed, and then is
to be maintained, through the wanton destruction of the weak
by the military force of the powerful. To do so moreover,
the Western allies pervert, divert, and subvert the world's
and their own most precious institutions. The world's United
Nations institution is perverted. The Western allies own
"defensive" military NATO institution is diverted or
converted into an offensive instrument against the Third World
South. Western parliamentary institutions are subverted to
lend anti-democratic after the fact blessings to the war.
Civil society is bypassed west, east and south, except to use
the emergence of inflamed racism and virulent chauvinism to
support the war. In the recently "liberated" East, the first
international policy decisions by the newly "democratizing"
governments are to support a war against the South in hopes of
thereby meriting a few crumbs from the Western table. Several
Third World and Arab governments are literally bought and paid
for to lend their support and coverup of this charade against
one of their own. The media around the world are coopted,
censored, and self-censored to present the whole package as
the beginnings of a just peaceful new world order! We may
proceed to examine some of this new world order blueprint and
construction a bit more carefully.
Perversion of the United Nations Peace Mission for War
The first and most major institutional sacrifice and cost to
peace was the perversion of the United Nations. Secretary
General of the United Nations Javier Perez de Cuellar has
declared outright that "this is a US war, not a UN war" and
"the Security Council is controlled by the United States,
Britain and France."
The conservative American columnist William Safire wrote under
the title "Consider These White Lies And the Truths they
Veil":
This is not a UN enforcement action; that part of the UN
Charter has never been invoked. Instead this is a
collective defense authorized by the Security Council,
similar to the Korean defense, which means that the
resolutions ... cannot be revoked without American
concurrence.... America shows obeisance to the UN, but
obedience is a white lie: The fighting coalition
determines ... (William Safire IHT Feb. 26).
President Bush and his Secretary of State Baker put together a
coalition in the Security Council first to condemn Iraq, then
to impose an embargo, then to authorize military teeth to
enforce it, and finally to legitimize recourse to war. In all,
they got twelve UN resolutions in their pocket, as President
Bush and Mr. Baker never tired to point out. However, they do
not say how much their diplomacy paid, bribed, blackmailed or
strongarmed some member governments to do their bidding. Most
significantly, President Bush maneuvered the United Nations
into legitimizing his actions, without revealing that each
step of the way would be irreversible nor how it would lead on
to the next step to war. Yet the Washington Post
(International Herald Tribune Jan. 17,l991) quotes a senior
official and long time aide to President Bush to the effect
that he has been prepared for war since August. The London
Sunday Telegraph (Jan. 20,l91) agrees: "President Bush and Mrs
Thatcher took the decision to go to war long before there was
any hope of getting UN sanction, and they did so with a
justifiable clear conscience." President Bush "always knew
what he was going to do and has now done it in his own good
time in the most favorable diplomatic and military
circumstances."
The United Nations surely did not know, and certainly was not
told by President Bush. The UN is not likely to have given him
its support for the purpose President Bush had known and
prepared for "in good conscience" since August. The UN is not
likely to have voted the same way after the shooting started,
if it had the choice. But it did not. Indeed, the Security
Council was never again convened on the Iraq war until it
ended. Only then was the Security Council again convened by
the United States to legitimize its demands for unconditional
Iraqi surrender -- and by implication the entire war and
devastation, to which the United States and its coalition
allies had subjected the people of Iraq.
The Security Council violated the United Nations Charter on
several counts in particular and shirked its general
responsibility to the world to keep the peace. Instead, the
Security Council and the United Nations institution and
prestige was perverted to "legitimate" war.
Under the UN Charter, the Security Council mandate is to
preserve the peace, not to authorize or legitimize war.
Moreover, the Charter enjoins or bars the resort to war under
Article 42 until the Security Council [not the President of
the United States] determines under Article 41 that all
peaceful means to resolve a dispute have been exhausted.
Clearly, this was not done before this war. Then again, the
Security Council, and not President Bush, is supposed to
decide what to do next with the means at its disposal, not
those of the United States and its coalition allies. Moreover,
under Article 42 the forces to be used are those of the United
Nations, which can "include" those of member states. The
armed forces used in the Gulf war, however, were not the UN
blue helmets, and the coalition allies did not even, as in
Korea, fight under the UN flag. Resolution 678 stipulated that
"all necessary means" could be used to evict the Iraqis from
Kuwait if they did not leave on their own by January 15. Of
course under the Charter again, what "all necessary means" may
be is to be determined by the Security Council and not by the
United States. Finally, of course, all the political and
military decisions were made by the American President and
military commander. For their own reasons and purposes and
with out any advice or consent from the United Nations, the
American led coalition clearly used far more deadly means than
necessary.
As observed above, the United Nations Security Council was
never again convened or consulted during the course of the
war. Its pursuit therefore was condemned only in their own
names by the Secretariat staff of the United Nations!
In fact however, even the procedural legality of the Security
Council resolutions is in doubt on several counts under the UN
Charter. One of these is that under the Charter's Article 27,
Clause 3, all five permanent members of the Security Council
must cast an affirmative vote for a decision to be valid.
However, China did not vote affirmatively, but abstained on
the crucial Resolution 678 to use "all necessary means" after
the January 15 deadline for Iraq to get out of Kuwait. Only
by convention, but not by the Charter, is an abstention not
counted as a veto. [The United States used the same sort of
convention to marshall UN support for its war in Korea, while
the Soviet Union was temporarily boycotting the UN and China
was denied its seat]. Thus by all counts, this war was not a
United Nations war. However, the war was falsely presented as
being sanctioned by the United Nations and the 12 resolutions,
which the United States exacted from the Security Council to
use in flouting and deceiving public opinion in the world. In
so doing and in the service of its own questionable motives to
say the least, the United States deliberately subverted the
institution and prestige of the United Nations.
The imposition of the January 15 deadline and the commitment
of military forces to the Gulf war by other countries were
other ineluctable steps on the road to war. These steps were
(deliberately) made necessary by the foregoing ones to begin
with. That is, both presidents Hussein and Bush built up
military forces and political positions, which made further
escalation necessary. The American military forces and perhaps
the coalition alliance could not be maintained in the Gulf
without further escalation. In particular, it was realized
that the military forces could not continue to sit on their
hands indefinitely and especially not after the onset of the
sandstorms in the Spring. Then and during the Islamic holy
month of Ramadan, these forces also could no longer go on the
offensive. Therefore, it became necessary to get an earlier
deadline for them to be put into action. Better sooner than
later, and the Security Council obliged with a January 15
deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.
Of course, the United States had the enthusiastic
collaboration of the United Kingdom, the reluctant cooperation
of France, the silent acquiescence of the Soviet Union, and
the abstention of China among the permanent members with veto
powers on the Security Council. They and some other members
of the Security Council lent their votes and/or their silence
to this perversion of the Charter and this hijacking of the
name and prestige of the United Nations for this sordid war.
Instead of preserving the peace, the United Nations was used
to further an illegitimate and unnecessary war. The cost of
this precedent to the people and peace of the world could not
be higher. It will have to continue to be paid for years to
come. American begnine neglect and payments arrears in the UN
were less damaging than US [mis]use of the UN to further its
own imperial ambitions. The United Nations itself became the
first major casualty of the Gulf War.
Indeed, "the diplomatic activity of the UN was impeded from
the very beginning" and "The US and the United Kingdom,
mainly, was opposed to the Secretary General's involvement"
according to the Yemeni Ambassador to the UN and its
representative on the Security Council, Abdallah al-Ashtal
(MERIP, March-April 1991, p. 9). UN Secretary General Javier
Perez de Cuellar himself said that his hands were tied and he
was powerless. Why did he, like Soviet Foreign Minister
Sheverdnaze or French Defense Minister Chevennement, not
resign? At least that way he could have helped to dramatize
and expose or perhaps even stop the charade of using a United
Nations cover for a United States war!
NATO Redirected Southward
The diversion and redirection of the NATO alliance and
institution by President Bush from East-West conflicts to
North-South ones portends a most serious precedent for the
world as a whole. Indeed de facto, President Bush already set
a very serious precedent in November, when he sent to the
Gulf the American NATO troop contingents, which had been
stationed under American NATO command in Germany. De facto
also, President Bush used NATO facilities and American
supplied military hardware - and no doubt software also - for
deployment to the Gulf and asked his NATO allies in Europe to
step into their place with their own. This quiet diplomacy and
de facto policy of faits accompli by President Bush to
transform the function and direction of NATO threatens to
become one of the most dangerous legacies of the Gulf War for
the rest of the world. Thus, the integrity of NATO and the
peace dividend from the end of the cold war were another major
casualty of President Bush's Gulf War policy even before the
first shot was fired.
NATO was also used to blackmail a reluctant Germany into
active miliary support for the Gulf War. Germany is
preoccupied with its own unification and is scarcely
interested in direct support for President Bush's war policies
in the Gulf. So President Bush found a round about way to
involve Germany too. Fellow NATO country Turkey shares a
border with Iraq. Its government has been an American client
all through the cold war, and still is. Thus, it was not too
difficult for President Bush and Mr. Baker to bring Turkey
first into the embargo and then into the alliance against
Iraq. That exposed Turkey to a potential threat from Iraq.
Therefore, why not have Turkey call on its NATO allies for
protection against this real or imagined threat by Iraq. Still
better, Turkey could make a direct appeal to fellow NATO
member Germany. It did, and Germany was obliged by NATO rules
to send at least a squadron of military aircraft to Turkey.
Germany, like Japan, is prohibited by its American imposed
constitution from sending its military forces abroad, except
in its own defense. However, it is permitted to so dispatch
its military within the framework of NATO.
Thus, President Bush managed to divert both Germany and NATO
from their regional concerns and potentially to engage them in
his war against a Third World country in the Gulf. Turkey
agreed to permit the use of its soil for American military
aircraft to attack Iraq. [First the announcement was withheld;
then the American flights were called "training missions;"
finally it turned out they had been flying bombing missions
every six hours for three days before the announcement]. That
is another one of President Bush's faits accomplis. It opened
a second front against Iraq in the north and exposed Turkey to
retaliation by Iraq. The latter, however, was constrained by
what would have been an attack by a country that is not a
member against one that is a member of NATO - and therefore on
NATO itself. This NATO alliance includes Germany as its most
reluctant member country, which would thereby have been
dragged into Mr. Bush's war as well.
To short cut or indeed altogether to eliminate such problems
the next time around, the Dutch now propose to restructure
their NATO contingent armed forces for rapid intervention more
in North-South than East-West conflicts. NATO itself is now
more seriously discussing already previously tabled proposals
to redirect its political attention and military organization
to intervene in North-South conflicts. "NATO Military
Commanders Agree To Work for a Rapid Reaction Corps," which
would number 70,000 to 100,000 troops from various European
countries with US air support for "maximum flexibility" (IHT
April 13-14, l991). For his part, the European Commission
President Jacques Delors has proposed that the European
Community also needs a transnational rapid intervention force
to forge a military capacity and establish political authority
to participate in the next conflict in its area of interest in
the South or East. Again, the Gulf War's legacy of future
danger to the Third World South [soon to include parts of
formerly Eastern Europe} could not be greater as the West now
redirects its political and military institutions better and
more forcefully to intervene there.
The Middle East Convulsed
Far from settling any of the longstanding political problems
in the Middle East, the Gulf war first exacerbated them, and
then made them even more difficult to address and solve. The
strengthened recalcitrance in and by Israel through its "non"
participation in the Gulf War and the political weakening of
the PLO leadership, as well as of the Jordanian King Hussein,
are only the most visible and interrelated iceberg tips. So
are the postwar Shiite and Kurdish rebellions in Iraq. Even
the mildest success of the Iranian supported Shiites is not at
all in the interests of America and its European or Arab
allies, for whom the mullahs in Iran are more than enough.
Therefore, the Iraqi Shiite opposition has received neither
western or other allied support nor publicity. However, Iraqi
Kurdish demands for autonomy also threaten Turkey and Iran.
Therefore, their demands for autonomy, or God forbid
independence, cannot be tolerated either, and they are at best
publicized and manipulated only as long as they can be used
for ulterior allied motives in northern Iraq. "For Exiles, the
Bitter Truth is that No One Wanted them to Win" (IHT April 12,
1991). That includes the democratic opposition forces in and
exiles from Iraq. Who in the world except them and their
people would want a democratic Iraq? No one, of course,
especially if a democratic example in Iraq were to become
contagious among its neighbors. Better to leave Iraq with
weakened but still adequate military forces to continue the
Baathist military regime, without Saddam Hussein if possible
but with him if necessary, to maintain the integrity and
control of the Iraqi state. For Iraq is still needed as a
linchpin to maintain stability in the region, which in the
aftermath of the Gulf War is now threatened ever more than
before.
For many Arab governments are threatened to become further
casualties of the Gulf War. Some were at risk already before
the fighting started. Now the autocratic Arab governments that
sided with and/or were bought off by President Bush have
thereby sacrificed what little popular support and legitimacy
they still had. They have further cemented their dependence on
the United States, and the United States is now obliged to
prop them up politically and subsidize them economically
[which it can ill afford] even more than before. Popular
uprisings, if not military coups or splits, are now likely in
one country in the Middle East after another. That is why the
Israeli ex-minister Isaac Rabin recommends that the wealthy
Gulf countries contribute their oil riches especially to Egypt
and Syria "to stabilize the moderate regimes in the
international coalition so that they can maintain themselves
in the face of the zero sympathy of their citizens" (interview
in El Pais, February 10, l991).
In these circumstances, it was another sham for President Bush
to have promised to bring the American troops back home just
as soon as possible after completing their job in Iraq. For
President Bush knowingly committed American troops to
"stabilize" the Middle East for a long time to come. Now the
U.S. Weighs Command Post in Bahrain and Keeping Troops
With Saudis... [which] has been a goal sought by the
Pentagon for years, but was resisted by leaders of Gulf
nations.... General Powell says 'We have always been
anxious too have a forward headquarters in the region,
and I think we may be able to get one this time'" (IHT
March 26, l991).
DE- AND DOWN-GRADING EUROPE, JAPAN AND THE SOVIET UNION
With the help of their "special relationship" with Britain and
her sycophant governments and press, the United States already
achieved major political coups in Western Europe beyond
getting its support for the war itself. President Bush
successfully bluffed or finessed all of the West Europeans to
line up behind him -- and to fall out among each other. Mrs.
Thatcher lost the battle and her job, but she won her war both
in Iraq and in Europe! The Gulf crisis and war would
exacerbate the political and economic conflicts of policy
within Europe, on which she made her stand against a more
united Western Europe.
In the Gulf crisis, the West Europeans gave up all pretense at
a unified and independent European foreign policy. In
particular, the relatively more constructive and progressive
European policy towards, and good will in, the Middle East was
sacrificed. European intervention in favor of a more
reasonable settlement of the Palestine-Israeli issue receded
beyond the visible horizon. Israel's all purpose ex-minister,
Isaac Rabin, recently declared that Israel has no use for
Europe or the United Nations. For the time being, the
American-Israeli line is unchallenged, except by the for now
weakened Arabs themselves.
Another coup is the already observed transformation and
diversion of NATO. Far from constructing a stronger post cold
war [West] European pillar in NATO, let alone an alternative
European security system, the West Europeans have now acceded
to an already earlier American pressure, which they previously
resisted: To turn the NATO thrust southeastward to intervene
in the Middle East in particular, and in North-South conflicts
in general. American troops, bases, material, and logistics,
but also those of several European countries' NATO contingents
were diverted from the defense of Western Europe against the
Soviet Union to the attack against Iraq in the Middle East!
They even took their central European AirLand battle plans
with them to the Arabian desert.
Moreover, the Europeans not only paid their own but also many
of the American costs of this diversion. Europeans even paid
for the fuel that American B 52 bombers used when they took
off from and were refueled at bases in Europe. The "Socialist"
government of Felipe Gonzalez in Spain even tried to keep this
take off secret, if only because it had won an earlier
referendum to keep Spain in NATO with the quid-pro-que offer
to voters to maintain Spain free from the NATO military
command structure and related military commitments. Since he
now activated secret commitments to the United States to use
Spanish air bases in case of "need," he also kept the whole
sordid business secret, until the American press inadvertently
let the cat out of the bag!
Thus, West Europeans supported President Bush's war
politically, militarily, and financially, even with
significant financial contributions from Germany. Beyond that,
the European Economic Community finally also caved in on the
issue of agricultural price supports, its biggest
protectionist measure, which had scuttled the last meeting of
GATT. Symbolically, the last deadline for GATT
reconsideration was the same January 15, 1991 set by the
United Nations for Iraq to get out of Kuwait -- and for the
United States to go to war!
For their part, the East Europeans did all they could to
scramble onto the Western victory train, and Czechoslovakia
even sent troops to Saudi Arabia. However it is doubtful that
the rewards of any amount of kowtowing to the West in the Gulf
War can compensate Central and East Europe for the major
political and economic losses, which this war represents for
them. Indirectly, the Gulf War certainly diverted western
political and economic attention and funds at the worst
possible moment from reconstruction in Europe to destruction
in the Middle East. More directly, the temporary rise in the
price of oil cost East Europeans dearly during the autumn and
winter cold precisely when they had to start paying hard cash
instead of [non]convertible rubles to pay for Soviet oil.
Additionally, they had to import more oil from other areas. At
the same time moreover, they lost the previously agreed
repayment of Iraq's debt to them through Iraqi oil exports to
Eastern Europe. They were supposed to be stepped up to repay
these debts, but instead they were cancelled by the embargo
against Iraq. Thus, the Gulf War came at bad time for and
gave a bad time to Central and Eastern Europe.
The Gulf War participation in and consequences for the Soviet
Union are less clear, but for that perhaps even more
dangerous.
No less but more significantly than in Central and Eastern
Europe, Gorbachev's government in the Soviet Union sought to
be on its best behavior and caved in and/or sold out to the
United States and its Western allies. This concession, of
course, was essential to construct the charade of the United
Nations cover for the American war plan. Even an opportune
Soviet abstention, not to mention a veto, at the Security
Council would itself have tipped the balance and would
probably have changed the votes of China and France as well.
However, President Gorbachev went along with President Bush,
except for his and his envoy Primakov's vain effort to shore
up the waning Soviet role in the area. As it turned out, its
role in the Gulf War sacrificed Soviet influence over its Arab
friends; the war further increased sympathy among its own
Muslim population with their Islamic brethren abroad; and
Soviet military leaders had to witness the miserable defeat of
the Soviet weapons systems and their military strategy of its
client army in Iraq. Of course, the Soviet Union also faces
more serious domestic problems.
If and when these Soviet problems result in a replacement of
the regime or even of the government however, Gorbachev's
concessions and Soviet losses in the Middle East through the
Gulf War may contribute to strengthening the hand of military
and other conservative forces who demand some return to the
past and/or Soviet or even Russian play with their only
remaining strong, that is the military, card. After all, the
intended Gulf War lesson that the threat and use of military
power gets results must be making school in the Soviet Union
as well. At the same time, the military-industrial complex may
also play its strengthened hand in the United States, which
itself also has none other left to play in the world at large.
Secretary of Defense Cheney already declared on TV that if US-
Soviet tensions do not continue to decline he would have to
tell President Bush "I am sorry, but we cannot carry arms
reductions as far and fast as we had originally thought" (El
Dia Latinoamericano, April 29, 1991, p. 17). In that case, the
beginning of a Third Cold War cannot be excluded; and the Gulf
War would have done its bit to promote that additional
disaster for the world and its "new order" as well.
NORTH-SOUTH WAR TO PUT THE THIRD WORLD IN ITS PLACE
IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
The same already quoted editorial of the London Telegraph
(January 20,l991) also clarifies why President Bush chose to
flaunt American power against Iraq in the Gulf War:
[It] does sound cynical. But it also goes to the heart of
the matter. For there is a clash of interest between the
First World and the Third World, and no international
order satisfactory to the former should rely on the say-
so of an institution [like the United Nations] dominated
numerically by the latter.... Sooner or later the Third
World will throw up other challenges. But if the Gulf
war ends as it has begun, there can be no doubt who are
the masters now - at any rate for another generation....
Not only will our arms have prevailed in a most
spectacular fashion. So also will our ideals" (Emphasis
in the original, Amen).
Here we have the real significance of the Gulf War, which was
promoted and led by the "ideals" of President George Bush, the
Commander in Chief of the world's greatest military power, who
wants to use this war to initiate his NEW WORLD ORDER.
Beyond being a war between the North and the South, perhaps
the clearest gulf in this War is between the rich on one side
and the poor on the other. Obviously, the Western powers in
this war represent above all the interests of the rich in the
world. Perhaps the Texans, President Bush and Secretary of
State Baker, also represent the rich Texas oil interests more
than they would like to admit. However, the Saudi Arabs [the
original dispatch of troops was for their protection!], the
Emirates and the Kuwaitis are also among the oil rich, who are
reputed to have placed some US $ 670 billion worth of
investments abroad (Peter Custers in Economic and Political
Weekly, Jan. 5-12, 1991). Sukumar Muralidharan suggests that
the need to safeguard oil sources is only the stated
agenda behind the assault on Iraq. The far more
fundamental concern is the need to protect the West's
pre-emptive claim on the financial surpluses of the Arab
world. These are vital for underwriting the political
stability of the US and the UK, which are today in
irretrievable industrial decline, and desperately need
the rentier incomes arising from the recycling of these
surpluses.... The pathological character of the hate
campaign launched against President Saddam Hussein ...
speaks of a desperate vendetta against a man who has
dared to challenge the financial hegemony of the west
(Economic and Political Weekly, March 30, l991, p. 838).
The Kuwaitis and its ruling Al Sabah family alone have some US
$ 200 billion of investments overseas, many of them in
commercial and political joint ventures in the United States
and Britain. Of course, these investments and relations also
afford the Kuwaitis continued income and political influence
in there even without drawing up another drop of oil at home.
Suffice it to ask whether the rich West would have sent over
half a million troops to defend any poor country or people
elsewhere in Africa or anywhere else. The other Arabs in the
coalition are the American client governments also
representing the rich in their respective countries. The poor
populations of these same Arab countries were massively on the
other side of this conflict in support of Iraq, whose
President Hussein opportunistically declared himself their and
the poor Palestinians' and other Muslims' spokesman. As we
observed above, throughout the Third World South masses of the
people understood that this Gulf War was designed and executed
to put them in their place in Mr. Bush's "new" world order.
The deadly threat of mass destruction of anyone who might wish
to take exception to or even rebel against this world "order"
was pressed home demonstrably by the bombs launched against
the innocent people of Iraq and their ideological cover up at
the "United" Nations, the "coalition" of the Western allies,
their controlling interest in the "free" press media, etc.
It is no joke that the April first cover of Time Magazine
depicts the US "GLOBO COP. COMING SOON TO YOUR COUNTRY?" Time
took the trouble to send its reporters around the Third World
and elsewhere to ask how people view the "New World Order."
The introductory summary of Time's findings in cover story on
the "Global Beat" is that
Critics protest that Bush's proclaimed new world order
conjures up misty and dangerous visions of a militaristic
American Globo-cop on the march...
[A huge placard depicting a dozen skulls surrounding the
words "THE NEW WORLD ORDER" is subtitled] AN INTENSELY
SKEPTICAL WORLD. Despite Bush's view of America as "the
last, best hope of mankind, " people around the globe -
along with New York City protesters - fear that the U.S.
plans to exercise naked power to secure dominance. Even
sympathizers with Bush's ideal wonder whether it can
remedy the causes of war.
Said the President: "the victory over Iraq was not waged
as 'a war to end all wars.' Even the new world order
cannot guarantee an era of perpetual peace." Far from it:
the new order, such as it is, cannot even guarantee that
national interests will ever again converge as they did
in the gulf war.
By itself, Bush's successful "first test" of the new
world order carried the seeds of future disaster....
What Bush's vision has also failed to take into account
is a sense in many developing countries that the old
world order was preferable. For all its nuclear terrors
and proxy conflicts, the cold war balance-of-power
architecture was a place that came to feel like home.
As if to rub in the point, in early April the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, declared in
Honduras
we hope that in this New World Order conflicts will be
solved through negotiations and not through acts of war,
so that there need be no repetition of what happened in
the Gulf. But if it is necessary to defend freedom, it
can be done (El Dia Latinoamericano, May 13, l991,
retranslated from Spanish by AGF).
In the meantime, the annual American military exercises with
nuclear weapons in Korea began a month earlier and ended a
month later than usual, and North Korea denounced them to the
United Nations as a trial invasion of that country. Assistant
Secretary of State Richard Solomon in turn denounced North
Korea, and spokesmen in the American press have already called
North Korea "a potential Iraq" (El Dia Latinoamericano, May
13, l991). Many more people of course, now fear renewed
American threats against Cuba.
Nonetheless, President Bush finds ever newer words to describe
his new world order, which
really describes a responsibility imposed by our success.
It refers to new ways of working with other nations to
deter aggression and to achieve stability, to achieve
prosperity, and above all, to achieve peace. It springs
from hopes based on a shared commitment ...[for] peaceful
settlement of disputes, solidarity against aggression,
reduced and controlled arsenals, and just treatment of
all peoples. [That is] the quest for a new world order
(IHT April 15, l991).
The translation into plain english or "into Christian" as
Spanish speaking people say is to be found in a myriad of
publications and statements from South Asia to South America.
All testify to learning the first lesson in Mr. Bush's war
school for the Third World in his new world order: Dare once
again to lift your head against the "national interest" of the
United States, whatever that may be, and you expose your
country to being returned to the stone age and your population
to annihilation from on high. North-South political and
economic polarization is to continue apace, and no Southern
political economic challenges thereto will be tolerated.
That is the THIRD WORLD WAR against the South! Is it also to
be waged by another Third Reich ?
However, there is also a message for America's economic
competitors and political allies in the West [and perhaps for
any rivals in what remains of the East]: Military power can be
used and of use as an alternative to economic strength,
especially when the latter is lacking. For military power is
the only thing the United States has left, and it is the only
thing it is capable of still flaunting to maintain any
political power in the face of the "virtually irrelevant"
growing economic power of Japan and Germany, "no matter" the
Russians.
Fortunately, there are some reasons to doubt the American
capacity, albeit not its intentions, for the United States to
rely only on its military power to carry out this role of
global cop in the Third World and powerful bully on the block
among its allies in the West. Time refers to the "pre-
eminent apostle of realpolitik" Henry Kissinger who observed
that the alliance and war against Iraq was "an almost
accidental combination of circumstances unlikely to be
repeated in the future." Indeed, the original deployment of
American and other troops and equipment was "to defend Saudi
Arabia" from possible, albeit never threatened, attack by
Iraq. However, there was at least one other reason for the
choice of Saudi Arabia as the site for the massive buildup:
During more than a decade after the debacle with Iran, the
United States had built up Saudi Arabia as its client regional
military power in the Middle East, next to Israel. The United
States sold Saudi Arabia US $ 50 billions of arms [in support
of its own industry and balance of payments] and built up a
whole network of naval and air bases, which Saudi Arabia
pledged to make available to the United States for use in case
of an emergency in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's invasion
of Kuwait provided that emergency. Then, the United States
shipped half a million troops and their supporting naval and
air forces to Saudi Arabia, which is the only place that has
the necessary ground facilities ready to receive them!
Even so, the allies had over 5 months time to put their
offensive capacities in place there. Therefore, the deputy
commander of the U.S. Military Transportation command observed
that "we ought to keep in perspective that we've had the
luxury of time -- 161 days to land all that stuff without
anybody firing a shot." Moreover, "47 percent of it came from
foreign ships, which might not be available in the next
emergency." These facts, argues the Washington Post, "make
Operation Desert Storm an inadequate test of the U.S.
military's usefulness in forging what President Bush called 'a
new world order,' according to military analysts"
(International Herald Tribune February 11, 1991).
We need note only in passing how these analysts and publicists
also take it for granted that "The New World Order" is to be
"forged" by U.S. military intervention in one "emergency"
after another. But at what political and economic cost, and
can the United States afford them? In the case of the Gulf War
against Iraq, the answer is yes, but perhaps also under
"circumstances unlikely to be repeated in the future." For the
direct out-of- pocket [and off-budget!] expenses of the war
for United States have been variously estimated from US$ 30 to
57 billion. Yet, the United States already received pledges,
and in many cases payments, of direct foreign financial
contributions totalling over $54 billion: Saudi Arabia $ 17
billion, Kuwait $ 16 billion, The United Arab Emirates $ 4
billion, Germany over $ 6 billion, Japan almost $ 11 billion,
and even South Korea $ 385 million. Unnamed other countries
pledged additional $ 15 billion. By early May 1990 all but $
18 billion had already been paid out (IHT May 11-12, 1991).
This war, therefore, was profitable business for the Wild West
style gun for hire American mercenary forces, whose motto in
the new world order could be "have [only] gun, will travel."
Over and above these direct payments, of course, predominantly
American construction and other firms, private and public
including the US Army Corps of Engineers, are running away
with the lion's share of Kuwaiti and other contracts to
reconstruct the destruction caused by this war, at least where
there is money to pay for this reconstruction.
Finally, the Pentagon and its associated military-industrial
complex has already announced a major campaign of tens of
billions of new arms sales for the wholesale replenishment and
extension of military arsenals in the Middle East. First the
Americans and their European allies armed the Shah of Iran to
the teeth. Then they sold their arms to President Hussein to
cut Iran's successor regime down to size. Then the same allies
bombed Hussein's war machine to smithereens. Now they propose
to provide more arms to their next client in the region. It is
living dangerously indeed to be an American client state in
the Middle East [or for that matter in Panama and Central
America], but to build them up and then abandon them is also
profitable for the United States, indeed.
The old world order make work schemes in the Great Depression
of paying workers to dig holes and fill them up again, or
paying farmers to grow and then bury crops, were small
potatoes compared to the destruction/reconstruction nice
cop/bad cop schemes of the new world order. Some progress!
THE UNITED STATES IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has made
his balance sheet of the "principal benefits and debits of the
U.S.- led triumph":
The benefits are undeniably impressive. First, a blatant
act of aggression was rebuffed and punished. An important
political and even legal point, central to international
decency, was reaffirmed.... Second, U.S. military power
is henceforth likely to be taken more seriously...[and]
is bound to have a chilling effect even as far away as
North Korea.... Third, the Middle East and the Gulf
region are now clearly an American sphere of
preponderance. Pro-American Arab regimes feel more
secure; so does Israel. U.S. access to oil is now not in
jeopardy. Fourth, the Soviet Union ...
has been reduced largely to the status of a spectator
(IHT April 22, l991).
However, Brzezinski also finds some negative consequences on
the scales: Iraq's defeat benefits Iran in the region; its
ethnic, religious and tribal animosities are intensified and
threaten 'Lebanonization;' Arabs may conclude from their
bombardment that Americans view them as worthless; "and that
raises the moral question of the proportionality of the
response ... especially given the idea of the 'just war'
(ibid.).
Nevertheless though Brzezenski does not explicitly say so,
little doubt can remain then that the main purpose and result
of President Bush's American led the Gulf War was another last
ditch attempt to make former President Reagan's promise come
true to "make America Number One Again." As we observed,
President Reagan tried and failed to do so through the
economic means of military Keynesianism and spent the United
States into economic and social bankruptcy. President Bush is
trying to change the global rules of the game from economic
competition, in which America is losing, to military
competition in which it still has a near monopoly of power.
The Gulf War was designed and used by President Bush to flaunt
this power both against the Third World in the South [and
East] and against his own economically more powerful allies in
the West. Thus this Gulf War by a pack of wolves in the West
against poor sacrificial lambs in the South was used to try to
turn the political economic tables among the hungry wolves
themselves. The conservative American columnist Charles
Krauthammer observes that
if we Americans want relative stability in the world we
are going to have to work for it. It will come neither of
itself or as a gift from the Security Council. It will
only come from a U.S. foreign policy of "robust and
difficult interventionism."...We have entered a period of
Pax Americana. Why deny it. Every other nations would
like to be in America's position. Why be embarrassed by
it? (IHT March 23-24, l991).
Lest there be any disbelief, we may appeal to the authority of
President Bush and the American people themselves. President
Bush:
We saved Europe, cured polio, went to the moon and lit
the world with our culture. Now we are on the verge of a
new
century, and what country's name will it bear? I say it
will be another American century.
The same August 1 issue of Time observes that
Some of Washington's closest European allies wonder
whether the scheme is not just an exercise in nostalgia -
a wishful excursion back into the 1950s, when America has
both the will and the wallet to dictate to the rest of
the planet.
However, that is precisely what both President Bush and the
American people are doing. For the two most important reasons
and explanations for the American flag waving and yellow
ribbon chauvinistic popular enthusiasm for the war [once it
started] and the victory were precisely: 1. The Gulf War
offered Americans the opportunity to "lick the Vietnam
syndrome" of defeat by a poor Third World country. 2. A Gulf
War victory could assuage their deep down feelings of shame
for being economically bested by the Japanese and other Asians
- abroad and at home! By "taking [it] out" on and
"neutralizing" or "eliminating" a half million poor Iraqis,
these proud Americans could also eliminate their self doubts
and again be "proud to be an American" in "God's Country"!
The opposite side of the same coin is displayed by John Lewis
Gaddis in Foreign Affairs, published by the American
establishment's Council of Foreign Affairs:
A kind of division of labor has developed within the
international community, in which the United States
contributes the troops and weapons needed to sustain the
balance of power while its allies finance the budgetary,
energy and trade deficits American incur through their
unwillingness to make even minimal sacrifices ... of
life-style and pocketbook" (quoted by Jim Hoagland, IHT
April 23, l991).
In plain English, of course, this "balance" is to keep the
otherwise rambunctious Third World peoples in their place in
the South, which is assigned to them in both the Old and New
World Order.
However, over the short run even the Europeans and Japanese
also sat up and took notice of America's military business
success in the Gulf War. In world markets, foreign interest in
America revived to share its victory bonanza. Stock markets
and the dollar shot up. Political and economic negotiators
began to knuckle under the Americans, for instance regarding
the above mentioned European and Japanese agricultural price
supports and other obstacles to the American way in the GATT
Uruguay round negotiations. Also, there is "For U.S., New
Clout in OPEC." "I think we are going to see a closer
relationship between the Gulf oil producers and ourselves. We
had been laying the foundations for some time, and the house
was built very quickly when the war came" observes the US
Assistant Secretary of Energy (IHT March 6,l991). Moreover,
"Gulf states are much more open to military cooperation with
the United States now than before the Gulf War" (IHT May 11-
12, l991). American control of the Middle Eastern oil on which
Europe and Japan are dependent could come in useful as a
bargaining chip to extract future political economic
concessions from them on a myriad of other potential conflicts
of interest.
So how long will or can this second Western honeymoon and this
new Middle Eastern house, both made in heaven over Iraq, last?
Only time will tell. Or is even that honeymoon an illusion?
The Chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee writes under
the title "Trade Wars: Time for an America That Can Say No":
Last year we won the Cold War. This year we won the Gulf
war. Now it is time to win the war that really matters
for America's future: the trade war -- the no-holds-
barred struggle among nations for market share and
standard of living in a largely zero-sum world market
place (IHT March 27, l991).
The perhaps ironic question remains whether in the long run
this North-South War in the Gulf will recoup American hegemony
or help destroy it. President Bush is well aware of this major
question. He devoted much of his January l991 State of the
Union Message to the Gulf War and gave his answer directly to
this question and perhaps indirectly to why he went to war
against Iraq in the first place: America's responsibility to
"defend freedom" is greater than ever and therein its golden
age lies not behind, but before it. The 21st century too will
be an American century, he said. President Bush may not be
deliberately bluffing when he says so; but does he have the
political economic cards in his hand to make his prediction
come true? Or may the ultimate economic irony be that this
gamble at prolonging the American century through yet another
war will cost the United States so much as to become its last
Indian summer Swan song?
The longer term question remains whether the BRAVO FOR BRAVADO
of President Bush's NEW WORLD ORDER will really save the
United States or even himself. Or will President Bush's
adventurism bankrupt and sink the United States even further
than his mentor Ronald Reagan, who promised to make "America
Number One Again" and nearly bankrupted the United States
instead? It well may, especially in face of the new world
economic recession and the "virtually irrelevant economic
power of Japan and Germany" to whom President Bush had to send
Secretary of State Baker hat in hand to help finance his war
in the Gulf.
This recession/war is not likely to turn out like previous
ones. World War II pulled the United States out of the
Depression and made it hegemonic. The Korean War pulled the
United States out of the recession of l949 and launched the
military Keynesianism, which helped ward off the feared
economic stagnation. The Vietnam War was enough for the United
States to avoid the recession, which hit Germany and Japan in
l967. It was not enough to prevent the recession of l970, and
certainly not to ward off the first severe post war recession
of l973-75. On the contrary, The Vietnam War already weakened
the United States relative to its Japanese and German rivals.
The costs of that war obliged the United States to abandon the
fixed exchange rates and the institutional mechanisms
established at Bretton Woods, and then to devalue the dollar.
For American economic power, it has been downhill ever since.
President Reagan's recklessness and "Reaganomics" [which in
good time George Bush himself baptized as "Voodoo Economics"]
put the American economy at the mercy of Japanese bankers and
German industrialists. It is even more at their mercy for
financial and political support during the new recession,
which began in l989-90 before the crisis in the Gulf, and then
during the war in the Gulf itself. Any severe and prolonged
recession would still sink the American economy and President
Bush. Unfortunately, the President would take many innocent
people - and a few of his not so innocent sycophants - down
with him.
At home in the United States, the Gulf War distracted
attention from the deepening recession. That may have been
another one of its purposes, particularly in distracting
public opinion from increasing bankruptcies and unemployment.
However on the policy making level, this diversion of needed
attention from the recession may have been a short sighted or
even ostrich policy. It can become can become costly in the
middle run, if it lets the recession get all the moreso out of
hand. Moreso, because even without the distraction of the war,
the U.S. government and Federal Reserve have scarce anti-
cyclical economic policy instruments left to combat recession.
Most measures to stem the recessionary tide at home, like
lowering the rate of interest as the Fed did in early l991,
only open the floodgates even more to a lower dollar and
reduce or reverse the capital flows from abroad, which the
American economy also needs to remain afloat. The debates
about how war and victory affect domestic consumer confidence
or spending and therefore the outlook for recession or
recovery are largely beside the point. They are largely
attempts to blame the recession on the war, while if there is
any such causation, it is the other way around from the
recession to the war. The main recessionary forces were both
prior to and independent of the war; and, as observed above,
they may have given President Bush an additional impulse to go
to war.
Probably more important than the wartime or postwar confidence
of consumers at home in the United States, is the confidence
of international capital and of allied governments elsewhere
in the West. The more important effects of the recession and
war will play themselves out via the reactions of private
capital and the decisions by governments and central banks in
Europe and Japan. Still during the war, the German [Central]
Bundesbank, and following it per force the Dutch and some
others, already followed the US interest rate decline by
raising their own rates of interest, to the dismay of the more
recession ridden United States, Britain and France. The fixed
exchange rates within the European Monetary System were
brought under pressure, the dollar immediately plunged, and
capital was attracted to Germany. As usual, the intervention
of the central banks to shore up the dollar was to no avail.
The Bundesbank president defended his decision by saying that
he was contributing to "stability" in fighting against
inflation in Germany, which is Europe's most important -- but
also still most healthy - economy. Let the Devil take the
hindmost! True, the dollar rose again against the mark after
the American victory in the war and the revelation of the
costs of German unification. And then the dollar began to
decline again. Its and American fortunes remain unstable at
best.
So, how long will the Japanese and the Europeans, other than
the British with their "special relationship" but most
depressed economy, continue to lend a helping hand of private
and public funds to support the American War in the Gulf and
the American economy at home? That is the question. For
without foreign active political and material economic
support, the United States no longer has the domestic economic
base even to finance this war, let alone to build a "New World
Order" of its own design.
"A Victor in War, U.S. Is Pinned Down on Economic Front" is
the front page headline, whose story quotes a British diplomat
There's no question after, the Gulf war, that the U.S. is
the only superpower in the world. It is also clear,
however, that there are limits to that power,
particularly in the economic arena (IHT, April 22, l991).
After another week of American-German disputes about interest
rates and other economic policies
a final lesson of the week's events is the vivid contrast
between the leverage America still has in high politics
of war and peace, compared to its deepening impotence to
dictate economic policy. In the Gulf conflict, the United
States was able not only to win broad support from its
allies ... but when Washington needed allied support for
its economic strategy, it was politely but firmly
rebuffed (Robert Kuttner, IHT May 3, l991).
Walter Russell Mead correctly observed in the International
Herald Tribune (Feb 7,l991):
At a time of diminishing national resources and power,
the United States has not lowered its foreign policy
horizons, it has universalized them. The mirage of
universal alliance against instability, led but not paid
for by America is potentially the most dangerous idea in
U.S. foreign policy in the last generation. It raises
expectations that cannot be met....It tempts American to
take on responsibilities beyond their resources. While
they want the post- Cold War
order to evolve in [New World Order] ways that defend
American primacy, America's associates want it to
diminish.
There is the rub! The Soviet Union never had the economic
clout to support its claim to being a super power. Now it is
being downgraded into the position of an over-armed Third
world/rate power. The United States was long obsessed with its
political and ideological security in [successfully] defeating
the Soviet Union in the cold war. In so doing, the United
States neglected to maintain its real economic base in
competition with its real competitors in Japan and Europe. So
now the United States no longer has sufficient economic clout
to be a super power either.
Yet with President Bush waiving the American flag, the United
States rushed in where angels fear to tread. It rushed into
War in the Gulf in a probably vain attempt to shore up its
declining power on the world stage one last time by the only
means it has left and knows how to use - its military power.
However, without an adequate economic base, military power is
insufficient to keep a great super power afloat. On the
contrary, the foolish use of its military power may instead
sink that power. It is not for nothing that Paul Kennedy
became a best seller [apparently not in the Bush White House
or the Pentagon] when he wrote that foolish military
overextension beyond the economy's means to support it is the
basis of The Rise and FALL of the Great Powers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Beyond the people directly cited in the text, for this
consolidation and extension of my four earlier essays on the
Gulf War cited below, I benefited by reading Praful Bidwai,
Noam Chomsky, Craig Hulet, Holly Sklar, and Joe Stork. I
gleaned general information and some data from them, which is
not exclusive to them or did not seem specific enough to cite
or ascribe to them directly. Marta Fuentes and Barry Gills
helped me by critiquing an earlier draft.
REFERENCES CITED
A.G. Frank earlier writings on the Gulf crisis and war
used to prepare the present essay. The previous essays were
published in several languages; but where English was among
them, only that version is mentioned here.
1. POLITICAL ECONOMY OF NORTH-SOUTH CONFLICT IN THE GULF
Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay, September 15,l990
2. HOLIER THAN THOU IN THE GULF: A CURSE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES
(January)
Jornal fr Entwicklungspolitik, Wien,No.1, March 1991
(in english)
3. POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE GULF WAR [also]
THE GULF WAR; ECONOMIC AND GEOPOLITICAL PARADOXES
February 13, l991
Das Argument, Berlin, March l991 (german)
La Breche, Lausanne, Vol. 21, No. 467, Mars 8, 1991
(french)
El Dia Latinoamericano,Ao 1,No.45,April 1,l991,
[spanish]
4. APPENDIX DOCUMENTATION CONFIRMING ARGUMENTS IN THE ABOVE
(unpublished)
Other A. G. Frank publications cited
l983 & 4. The European Challenge. Nottingham: England,
Spokesman Press and Westbury Conn.,USA: Lawrence Hill
Publishers
1984/87 "Political Ironies in the World Economy"
Studies in Political Economy, Ottawa, Canada, No. 15,
Fall 1984, pp. 119-149. Reprinted in
America's Changing Role in the World-System
Terry Boswell and Albert Bergesen, Eds.
New York, Praeger Publishers l987 (pp.25-55).
1990a. "Revolution in Eastern Europe: Lessons for Democratic
Socialist Movements (and Socialists)" in The Future of
Socialism: Perspectives from the Left. William K. Tabb,
Ed. New York: Monthly Review Press 1990, pp. 87-105. Also
in
Third World Quarterly (London) XII, 2, April l990,pp.36-
52.
1990c. "Blocking the Black Debt Hole in the l990s"
Futures Research Quarterly Special Issue, Vol. 6, No. 1,
Spring l990, pp. 42-45.
Frank, A.G. and Fuentes, M. 1990. "Social Movements in World
History" in S.Amin, G. Arrighi, A.G. Frank & I.
Wallerstein
Transforming the Revolution. Social Movements and the
World-System. New York: Monthly Review Press.
< < <
Date > > >
|
< < <
Thread > > >
|
Home