After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attacked civilians with chemical weapons, Donald Trump bombed a government airbase in Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles. The U.S. imperialist rulers struck in the name of “humanitarianism,” but their real cause is something else again: a desperate push to maintain U.S. dominance over the Middle East and its vast oil reserves.
Humanitarian Imperialism
In what world does it make sense to bomb the very people you are claiming to defend? The U.S. air strike killed nine civilians, including four children, and will result only in more war, more refugees, more death. The real outrage is that the capitalist bosses have free rein to kill us, the working class, in their wars over profits and power. There are already 11 million Syrian refugees, half the country’s former population. More are created every day. The criminal Trump has the nerve to profess compassion for Syrian workers while doing all he can to ban desperate Syrian refugees from entering the U.S.
Bombing Without a Plan
If Trump didn’t bomb Syria to defend workers there, why did he do it? Why provoke Russia just as Trump and Putin seemed to be building an alliance? The answer lies in geography. Syria is important because its territory is needed for a pipeline to supply the European Union with oil and natural gas.
In 2009, Assad rejected a deal with Qatar that would have run a similar pipeline from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. Because of Qatar’s close relationship with U.S. capitalists, the pipeline would have meant billions in profits for U.S. bosses. It also would have threatened the capitalist interests of Russian bosses, the top supplier of natural gas to Europe.
After rejecting the proposal from Qatar, Assad made a $10 billion pipeline deal with Iran, a Russian ally, to supply Europe with gas. The deal was a blow to U.S. bosses, who are increasingly losing military, political, and economic control around the world to their main rivals in Russia and China. This is the real motive for U.S. involvement in Syria: a fight over imperialist spoils.
Workers in Syria have nothing to gain by the “targeted” U.S. attack on Assad’s airfield. U.S. workers must not be fooled by Trump’s fake tears and staged moral outrage over the chemical attack. In fact, Assad’s atrocity helped the U.S. bosses by giving them a pretext to clean up some of the messy infighting and political scandal impeding their ultimate goal: global war.
Syria Crisis Opportunity for U.S. Bosses
Trump’s show of force in Syria sends a message to U.S. allies and enemies alike. In recent years, allies have lost confidence in the U.S. as the world’s most powerful imperialist force. The U.S. military has been unable to win decisively since its debacle in Vietnam in the 1970s.,China’s growing economy offers more opportunities for trading partners than the weakening economy of the U.S. Russia has proven more decisive militarily, leading Turkey—a longtime strategic U.S. ally—to hedge its bets:,
This critical NATO ally [Turkey] has been allying itself with Russia, conducting joint exercises and, in a widely reported move, limiting its opposition to the Assad regime in exchange for being allowed to target Kurds inside Syria...Turkey recently threatened to forbid the United States from using its Incirlik airbase, which is the top staging ground for the war against ISIS (Foreign Affairs, 4/10).
To maintain their global profit flows, the U.S. bosses need a president who can follow orders. Trump campaigned as an independent “outsider,” but he’s now expected to be as loyal to the bosses’ agenda as Barack Obama and George W. Bush before him. The ongoing FBI investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign team is designed to pressure the new president into falling into line. So is the barrage of criticism from the capitalist media.
The attack on Assad’s airfield gave Trump an opportunity to show the U.S. ruling class that he can be their disciplined servant--to “change the perception of disarray in his administration” (New York Times, 4/7). The bosses won’t be satisfied with one limited attack on a Syrian air base. The Council on Foreign Relations, a leading main-wing capitalist think tank, criticized Trump for not going far enough—and for lacking a bigger plan for war.
Opportunities for Fightback
Although Trump appears to be responding to the bosses’ pressure, big problems remain for U.S. capitalism. As U.S. bosses get more desperate to retain control over Middle East oil and other resources, they will become even more vicious and make more mistakes. As members and friends of Progressive Labor Party, it is our job to use their weaknesses against them.
We must harness the rage we feel every time we see children terrorized in Syria, every time we see a Black or Latin worker murdered mercilessly by the police, every time we see families separated by heartless deportations. We must channel our working-class anger into organizing for a communist world. As the working class struggles through this dark night, we cannot lose confidence in our ability to win a world where drone strikes, famine, and police murder are distant memories. Progressive Labor Party fights for a communism, a system based on egalitarianism. That means destroying racism, sexism, nationalism, and the entire profit system. Communist revolution is the only way to destroy capitalism and all its horrors.
It’s clear that the capitalists have no loyalty to the working class, or even to each other as they fight over profits. All that unites them is their exploitation and oppression of the working class. The calamity in Syria is proof that they are willing to destroy anything and anyone standing in their way.
This May Day, we must unite under the red flag of the international working class. We must carry on the struggle of courageous working-class fighters to defend and liberate our class, once and for all!