The so-called Great Powers have long been exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small and weak nations. And the imperialist war is a war for the division and redivision of this kind of booty.
—Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917

The escalating crisis in Iraq signals the sharpest threat yet to U.S. control over Middle East oil — to the point where the U.S. ruling class is more openly acknowledging the prospect of the next world war.
The last two weeks have seen the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, sustain its advance toward Baghdad from northern Iraq. ISIS forces now occupy one-third of the country and are laying siege to Baquba, just 30 miles from the capital. They have obliterated the border between Iraq and Syria and overrun a crossing between Iraq and Jordan, one of the very few reliable U.S. allies in the region. The region’s national boundaries, drawn to divide the spoils between imperialist powers Britain and France after World War I, are being erased before our eyes.
“Having taken Mosul and Tikrit,” The Guardian reported, “ISIS is now near striking distance of some of Iraq’s most strategic sites. It continues to menace the Baiji oil refinery and the Haditha dam and has encircled Iraq’s largest airbase north of Taji” (6/28/14). Reuters observed that both ExxonMobil and British Petroleum “are pulling foreign staff from Iraq, fearing Sunni militants from the north could strike at major oilfields concentrated in the Shiite south despite moves by the Baghdad government to tighten security” (6/17/14).
Even more alarming to the U.S. ruling class is the growing threat to the vulnerable slave state of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and the linchpin to today’s inter-imperialist rivalries. According to Fahad Nazer, a former analyst at the Saudi embassy in Washington, ISIS “has vowed to ‘conquer’ Saudi Arabia after it has ‘vanquished’ the regimes in Damascus and Baghdad” (Al-Monitor, 6/25/14). The Saudis designated the group as a terrorist organization in March. They recently issued a statement calling for “the defeat and destruction” of ISIS and all al-Qaeda networks in Iraq. Ten days later, the ISIS offensive had “brought it within a few dozen miles of Baghdad and a couple of hours’ drive from the Saudi border” (Wall Street Journal, 6/27/14).
Motley Fool, a savvy financial services company, warned in veiled terms of an oil shock if ISIS gets its fingers on Saudi treasure: “The spread of extremist ideology and the mobilization of groups like ISIS to neighboring countries is an even bigger threat ... of supply disruptions in key OPEC-producing countries.”
Rulers Can’t Back Down
By contrast, Russian gas giant “Gazprom....is experiencing ‘no problems’ in Iraq,” boasted Moscow’s RT website (6/19/14). It’s not a coincidence that Russia is bolstering the pro-Iran administration of Iraq’s sectarian Shiite president, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. As the New York Times (6/29/14) reported:
Iraqi government officials said Sunday that Russian experts had arrived in Iraq to help the army get 12 new Russian warplanes into the fight against Sunni extremists. The move was at least an implicit rebuke to the United States, where concerns in Congress about the political viability of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government have stalled sales of advanced jet and helicopter combat planes to Iraq.
For the international working class, the stakes in this growing conflict could not be higher. In their determination to control the world’s oil production and distribution, U.S. rulers killed more than three million Iraqis in two wars and an intervening decade of child-starving sanctions. But their divide-and-conquer strategy — to fuel murderous divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims — has apparently backfired. The prospect of losing Iraq yet again, not to mention the energy reserves of Saudi Arabia, would likely prompt a third, even more lethal Gulf War.
From a global perspective, Iraq is a flashpoint for the intensifying competition among the world’s most dangerous, nuclear-armed, capitalist powers: the U.S., China, and Russia. All three are vying for oil and gas supremacy from the Persian Gulf to Crimea to the South China Sea. All three have demonstrated their willingness to slaughter countless workers in pursuit of maximum profit. None of them can afford to back down. In particular, the U.S. bosses — still on top, but in relative decline — will not passively stand by and watch their adversaries overtake them.
Forecasting WW III
Of late, U.S. ruling-class organs have begun to address the inevitable upshot of this inter-imperialist antagonism in more candid terms. In line with Lenin’s century-old analysis, they are predicting a third world war in so many words. Consider “World War Next,” an essay in Asia Times (6/27/14) written by Michael Vatikiotis, director of the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. Among the organization’s funders are George Soros and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, two leading financiers for the dominant finance capital wing of U.S. capitalism.
Vatikiotis compares ISIS and al-Qaeda to early 20th-century anarchist groups and the Serbian nationalist who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the trigger to what is now known as World War I. “[T]he Sunni insurgents of western Iraq,” he writes, “are connected to the sprawling civil war in Syria …  which in turn has allowed the Kurds to carve out with alacrity their proto-state. This risks opening a path for new age Persian adventurism, bringing the counter-threat of Israel’s use of nuclear weapons one step closer to reality.”
In Asia, Vatikiotis points to China’s “wide-reaching territorial claims in the South China Sea” and the resulting tension with Japan, which “may soon shed the constitutional constraints on its armed forces in place since the end of World War II.” (On July 1, the cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced plans to “reinterpret” the constitution to ease the use of military force.)
With the U.S. and the European Union preoccupied by the Middle East and East Asia, the writer sees “almost nothing stopping Russia’s slow annexation of East Ukraine, which will inevitably embolden Vladimir Putin to roll out his grand design for a greater Russia.” Throw in the imploding states of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and it is “no surprise … that the number of refugees globally has now exceeded 50 million people, the first time the figure has been higher than [in] the immediate aftermath of World War Two.”
Stating the obvious, Vatikiotis believes the United Nations is worthless in dealing with this latest “revival of great power rivalry and interstate conflict.” Then he goes one step further: “In this, the 100th anniversary of the start of the war to end all wars, we could be once again on a slippery slope towards what looks like old-fashioned world war.”
From War to Revolution
The working class has no control over how or when the bosses wage their next worldwide clash. We hold a different kind of power: the power to transform inter-imperialist war into the fight for communism. The two “great wars” of the 20th century gave rise to the two great communist revolutions. But this sequence of events was neither spontaneous nor inevitable. In both the Soviet Union and China, a dedicated communist party organized masses of workers for many years before hostilities broke out. Communist leadership — and patient preparation — were essential.
Today we are faced with a similar challenge. Progressive Labor Party has taken on the historical task of organizing the working class to be ready to turn the guns against the rulers. Our aim is to create a world free of racism and sexism, of exploitation and unemployment, of poverty and war. Join us!