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NOT ALL OF WASHINGTON’S ENEMIES ARE OUR FRIENDS

                
                                                                        John Clark

                                                                      May, 11, 2018

A short while ago, a Facebook friend of mine put up a tongue in cheek comment on the mass firing of nurses in Zimbabwe who had gone on strike. (1) He wondered when he would hear from overly zealous anti-imperialists who would express support for the Government and declare the nurses to be the useful idiots of the West.

This struck me as one side of the coin when it comes to getting things wrong around struggles within oppressed countries or rival powers that US led Western Imperialism targets and threatens. The polar opposite to uncritical support for regimes Washington dislikes is the even more terrible position of supporting Western aggression and intervention. The ‘Democracy Now!’ news program in the US has been castigated in this regard. (2)

Too Hot, Too Cold

Writing primarily for readers in Canada, which is a part of the Western alliance, I want to stress that opposing imperialism doesn’t mean that you have to form a cheering section for despots and oppressors or demand of workers in oppressed countries that they put the class struggle on indefinite hold. Too hot or too cold, the anti-imperialist porridge is no good to anyone.

Presenting Western aggression in a positive light and lining up with your ‘own’ ruling class has a long history and dogmatic thinking on the left is hardly a new development. However, the recent period has produced a bumper crop of those who have lost their way. For some, Assad, the incomparable monster, justifies Western airstrikes on Syria while others call for unconditional support for Assad the democrat and liberator. You have calls for the West to double down on sanctions on Iran and to close Iranian embassies, while those at the opposite end argue that strikes and protests in that Country are simply and automatically playing into the hands of the State Department.

This a time when navigating a way through this confusion is of considerable importance. US led endless war is a work in progress. North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela are all in the crosshairs. The war on terror has proven to be but a warm up exercise, with the shift to ‘big power rivalry’ taking things to a new level. (3) In this context, any support for ‘humanitarian war’ is an act of betrayal. The West ‘protects innocent civilians’ in Syria with its bombs, as it ignores the slaughter in Yemen by Saudi forces it has armed to the teeth. The goal is domination and exploitation to a degree that surpasses 19th Century colonialism.

At the same time, however, oppressed countries remain class divided societies and the divisions and competing interests between oppressor and oppressed produce conflicts that can’t and shouldn’t be placed in suspended animation. Aside from those that have been destabilized into ‘failed states,’ we can divide the countries that live under Western threat and domination into three camps. There are compliant client states that, with some tensions, serve the West in

return for a share of the take for their ruling classes and elites. Such regimes were created by direct military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan or by way of a Western backed coup in Honduras. At the other extreme there are countries where the governments represent popular movements with major support in the working class population. Often, however, the governing powers in oppressed countries offer a more complicated picture, with corrupt and repressive governing elites that oppress the mass of the population but, nonetheless, are seen as insufficiently compliant and are, therefore, candidates for regime change by Washington and its allies. It is in this last category that things get messy and those who want to shy away from complexity and contradiction come to grief.

Nicaragua and Iran

As I write this, two countries in particular pose these issues very sharply. In Nicaragua, a Government that traces its roots back to the Sandinista overthrow of the vicious Somoza dictatorship holds power. Washington would like to replace it with something much more docile and there is nothing fanciful about the threat of regime change. Yet, Daniel Ortega, in 2018, is a very different political figure from his early days and his Government, closely linked to business groups, asserts its authoritarian rule over a country marked by growing social and economic inequality. As Orgtega has moved to reduce the adequacy of the pension system, a protest movement has sprung up. Working class people are challenging an austerity measure, as they certainly should. (4)

In Iran, the shadow of imperialism looms even more menacingly. Trump and his war cabinet have revoked the nuclear deal and set their sights on regime change (5). Still, sometimes smouldering and sometimes flaring up, resistance to exploitation and repression is a constant feature if Iranian society. Without doubt, when workers go on strike or protests fill the streets, the US State Department is delighted and even looks for ways to exploit such developments. Despite this, can anyone seriously suggest that Iranian workers should not resist in the face of extreme exploitation and the suppression of their basic rights by the governing authorities?

The argument that workers in oppressed countries need to put their struggles on hold, in the interests of a greater a greater anti-imperialist good has to be challenged. Firstly, it just won’t happen. Nurses in Zimbabwe will demand their rights as workers. Nicaraguan pensioners and students will fight back. Having no way to get their money from the White House, Iranian workers will take action against employers who steal their wages and the state power that defends such acts of theft. To the extent that such struggles are part of a global working class movement and enjoy international solidarity and support, the power of Washington and its reactionary local agents to subvert the fight back will be that much less.

The worst Eurocentric distortions have often been based on a Western led view of the international class struggle. A brand of ‘anti-imperialism’ that demands of workers in oppressed countries that, if their own ruling classes are at odds with the dominant world powers, they can’t rock the boat feeds into this dubious notion of Western led social transformation. Perhaps, however, it will be a revolutionary movement of workers in Iran that that will set in motion an international upsurge. Perhaps, indeed, Iranian workers may be a more reliable anti-imperialist force than those presently in charge.

Basic Principles

For those of us who are based in the USA or any of its major Western allies, there are some simple basic points to keep in mind. Firstly, our own ruling classes are the main enemy, for us and for the rest of the world. There is more barbarism to be found in Washington than in even the most brutal torture state the US props up. The Russian oligarchs may be terrible people but Western imperialism is the more powerful source of exploitation and violence by far. Support for Western aggression, however it is rationalized, is a fundamental act of betrayal.
Secondly, working class resistance and popular struggles can’t be ordered to suit anyone’s convenience. Even in oppressed countries under imperialist threat, working class grievances and the struggles they give rise to can’t be treated as unfortunate developments. The principles of international solidarity must prevail.

Thirdly, the most important expression of that solidarity is our struggles against the main enemy, in the USA and at home. Let Trump’s plans for endless war be disrupted by a working class upsurge that includes a movement on the streets against militarism. Let the Trudeau Government’s designs for military expansion meet the same kind of challenge.

Global capitalism is a complicated business as well as a dirty one. Anti-imperialism must be applied in that context of complexity. Not all of Washington’s enemies are our friends


 Endnotes

1. https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/zimbabwean-government-fires-striking-nurses-14503412

2. https://www.mintpressnews.com/democracy-nows-alt-media-platform-for-humanitarian-imperialism/240800/

3. https://redflag.org.au/node/6189

4. https://socialistproject.ca/2018/05/family-party-state-nexus-in-nicaragua/

5. https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/8/17332494/read-trump-iran-nuclear-deal-speech-full-text-announcement-transcript
 

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