In serving the U.S. ruling class, two factors guide Barack Obama’s policies in the greater Middle East: controlling oil profits, and preparing for a future inter-imperialist war. This explains what Obama did in Libya — and what he hasn’t done in Egypt.
Unlike Libya, Egypt doesn’t have much oil. But it does have the Suez Canal, a vital waterway for the world’s main cheap oil reserves. The bulk of Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi and other Europe- and North America-bound oil exports travel through the canal. Most of it goes under the U.S. and allied British brands of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell. In addition, U.S. Navy warships depend mightily on the canal. The Pentagon’s World War III planning counts on it. If the canal were to be shut by anti-Western insurgents, oil exports would need to detour thousands of miles around the southern Horn of Africa to reach their destinations.
And it’s pertinent to note that Egypt’s armed forces keep the Suez Canal open.
U.S. Rulers See No Evil in Egypt
When Obama ordered the 2011 NATO invasion of Libya, he hid behind a “responsibility to protect” Libyans from dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Left unmentioned were Libya’s considerable oil reserves, which are coveted by Big Oil. But since the July 3 coup in Cairo, the U.S. president and his capitalist bosses have looked the other way as Egypt’s military murders hundreds of unarmed protesters in the streets. In fact, the U.S. continues to provide the same bloodstained junta with its annual $1.5 billion supply of military hardware, made by profiteering U.S. arms-makers.
Why the inconsistency? Because workers’ lives have no value for capitalist rulers. The bosses are steered by profit alone. Obama’s raid two years ago was spurred not by Libya’s 5.7 million suffering inhabitants, but rather its 1.6 million daily barrels of oil. Then as now, the needs and limits of U.S. imperialism — not any concern for our class — dictate the bosses’ deadly Middle East gambits.
Besides trusting Egypt’s military tyrants to safeguard the Suez Canal, the U.S. rulers have assigned them two other important jobs. The generals are charged with preventing Arab states’ attacks on U.S. ally Israel, and also with curbing the spread of anti-U.S. al Qaeda-led Islamic forces inside oil-rich monarchies in the Exxon-Chevron-BP-Shell sphere. Ousted president Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, wasn’t up to these tasks. No sooner did Morsi get the boot than the petroleum-soaked princes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates pledged $12 billion to prop up Egypt’s military brass.
Bosses’ Plan B: Let Syrian Workers Die
Meanwhile, as strife in Syria has killed over 100,000 and left millions homeless, no vow to rescue the afflicted can be heard from the White House. Another country with limited oil but vast geopolitical significance, Syria hosts a Russian naval base and has strong alliances with U.S. foes China and Iran. U.S. rulers would love to be rid of Bashar Assad’s pro-Moscow/Beijing/Teheran regime. But at the same time, they fear strengthening the militant Islamists who hold the upper hand among the Syrian rebels. As a result, Obama has abandoned his phony “responsibility to protect” and chosen to let the bloodshed continue.
Plan A for the U.S. in Syria was to use defecting officers and Islamist fighters to bring down Assad and then install a pro-Western government. But given the unexpected strength of the Syrian army and the unreliability of the opposition, Obama & Co. have apparently turned to Plan B: Let the war drag on in the hope that the two sides will weaken or even destroy each other.
Anthony Cordesman, based at the U.S. ruling class’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, confirms this cynical approach. He proposes that the U.S. can protect its huge geostrategic stakes in the Middle East by limiting military aid to Syria to small arms, at least for now, he states (Washington Post July 22):
If Assad succeeds in crushing the opposition or otherwise maintains control over most of Syria, Iran will have a massive new degree of influence over Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in a polarized Middle East divided between Sunni and Shiite. Minorities [millions of refugees] will be steadily driven into exile. This would present serious risks for Israel, weaken Jordan and Turkey and, most important, give Iran far more influence in the Persian Gulf, an area home to 48 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. If Washington arms the rebels and they still lose, the United States will at least have shown its willingness to make decisions and honor its commitments. It will have shown it will make good on its words and support its allies.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, the ultimate insider, concurs. As he told the U.S. Senate on July 18, “I am in favor of building a moderate opposition.” Dempsey cites U.S. budget constraints on broader U.S. action in Syria, which would require “thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces…needed to assault and secure critical sites.” These costs, Dempsey later wrote to the Senate, could average “well over $1 billion per month” (which he thinks is excessive).
Main Capitalists Prep for Broader War
Dempsey’s reluctance to over-spend isn’t just aimed to appease the anti-tax, anti-deficit Republicans. It follows the lead of the dominant liberal wing of U.S. bosses — the ultra-imperialist finance capitalists like JPMorgan Chase and Exxon Mobil — who have far bigger fish to fry than Syria. Their top spokesman, Richard Haass, president of their supremely influential Council on Foreign Relations think tank, called for “refraining from direct armed intervention in Syria’s current civil war” (New York Times, 6/22/13). Haass said U.S. rulers should capitalize on their current military lull (after the Iraq and Afghan drawdowns) to make long-term preparations for potential world war with their imperialist rivals. “Most important, we should step up efforts to maintain stability in Asia and the Pacific Ocean, where this century’s great powers could easily collide,” Haass declared.
All of these ruling-class servants dismiss the impact of their imperialist policies on the international working class. None of them are concerned how their wars in the Middle East and South Asia destroy workers’ homes, bomb workers’ schools and hospitals, maim workers’ children, and kill millions in the process.
The capitalists’ profit-driven system breeds mass unemployment and poverty, burns workers alive in garment factories, wrecks the minds of soldiers forced into war, and uses racism and sexism to divide the working class and weaken its ability to challenge any of these horrors. At the same time, workers are forced to pay for the wars that slaughter them. They bear the brunt of capitalism’s world economic crisis through cuts in wages, social services, and healthcare, and through long-term unemployment. The bosses’ never-ending drive for maximum profits falls on workers’ heads from Greece and Spain to Pakistan and Bangladesh to Turkey and Brazil and Mexico. U.S. workers are far from immune. Most vulnerable of all are immigrant workers who move from one capitalist country to another, searching for the promised “better life” but falling under the heel of exploiters with every border they cross.
Communist Revolution, the Only Solution
The rulers do worry, however, about the revolutionary potential of the working class. That’s why they are intensifying their fascist attacks in every corner of the globe. Hitler’s Third Reich was a tea party compared to what the world’s capitalists have in store for us.
But the international working class is not taking this offensive lying down. Workers have taken to the streets throughout the world — striking, fighting the bankers’ austerity attacks, rebelling against a siege of racist murders of youth like Trayvon Martin.
The rulers try to divert workers by offering electoral choices of various ruling-class stooges, from Obama to South Africa’s Jacob Zuma to Haiti’s Michel Martelly. They use these sellout reformers to try to divert our class from the one real solution to the hell of capitalism: communist revolution. Only communist revolution can create a society run by and for the working class. And it can only be achieved by building a mass communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, to lead it.
It is imperative for all PL’ers and friends, wherever PLP groups are organizing, to spread our communist politics among workers and youth in every mass organization we’ve joined. By starting with tens and hundreds, we’ll eventually reach thousands and millions. What everyone does counts.
Only communism can rid the world of bosses, profits and wars. Only communism can end racism, sexism and mass slaughters. Capitalism is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Communist revolution will bury it forever.