Third World War?

Last night on BBC's Newsnight - See: Newsnight, former Yeltsin Advisor, Alexander Nekrasov, commented that if a repetition of this week's conflict in Georgia arose in Ukraine, after Ukraine had joined NATO, then this would mean World War III.

As Nekrasov pointed out the South Ossetians are just a small population. There are about 1 million Ossetians, with two-thirds living in the more developed North with the other third living in the South. The South Ossetians rely on the North for jobs. As a result of Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, and its destruction of Ossetian towns and cities half of the South Ossetian people have been turned into refugees. By, contrast the Ukraine has a large population of more than 46 million people. But, the country is divided in two, with one half comprising ethnic Russians, and still looking towards Russia for its future. If Ukraine joins NATO, as the US is pushing for, then it is quite possible that the Russian population, and the other ethnic groups, such as the Rumanians and Belorussians, might seek to break away and demand the right of self-determination. If such demands resulted in the same kind of attacks that Georgia, this last week, unleashed on South Ossetia, Russia would be bound to respond, and the US would be bound by Article 5 of the NATO Constitution to come to the defence of its ally.

The Rose and Orange revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia had some common features. After years of Stalinist repression and economic stagnation, the economic boom that began in the late 1990's made it attractive for these states to look West. Although, its not right to place too much emphasis on it, given that incentive, its also true that the actual political developments owed a great deal to massive intervention by Western intelligence organisations that pumped billions of pounds into front organisations, nor indeed do these agencies deny they did so. Why should the US be so interested in such action?

In fact, the world has many of the hallmarks that the world had at the end of the 19th century. There is a scramble for resources, as booming economic activity has created shortages and high prices for raw materials and foodstuffs. Paul Mason, on last night's Newsnight, commented that the world, again, has been divided up into competing economic powers, in place of the division of the world into Imperialism and Stalinism of the Cold War era.

The idea that some of the Left have advocated, over recent years, that imperialism had morphed into something else, a super-imperialism, which could, out of a common world interest, manage these conflicting interests has been blown out of the water. What characterises imperialism, today, is not that it has managed to create a single world imperialism, under US hegemony, but that it has replaced an imperialism of competing national states with an imperialism of competing huge economic blocs - essentially North America, Europe, and Asia.

Within this, the US occupies the position that Britain occupied at the end of the 19th century. The position of the former world economic superpower, which was in the process of being rapidly overtaken. Then, it was Britain being overtaken by Germany which was taking away British markets in Southern Europe, and Latin America in particular. Now, it is China and other Asian countries that are taking away US markets all over the globe. But, then, Britain retained huge military power, just as the US does now. Both seek to utilise that military power to compensate for the lack of economic power and competitiveness.

British naval superiority gave rise to the era of gunboat diplomacy, just as US firepower, today, has seen it march unchallenged into Serbia, and the Balkans, into Iraq and elsewhere. Indeed, its the principal established that such large powers can act as policemen - which really means enforce their interests - around the globe, which has given Russia, now, the ability to say we have the right to do what you have been doing. That is why socialists should have been opposing with all their might these actions of imperialism. They certainly should not have been promoting the idea that the imperialist leopard had changed its spots, that it was, now, somehow progressive, promoting "democracy", or in any other way carrying out actions that could be described as "good". In fact, under cover of humanitarianism, and "promoting democracy", the US has been implementing its strategy of the "New American Century". It has built up a huge number of US bases around the globe in countries it has intervened in, and those bases have a strategic purpose, or it should be said two strategic purposes.

Firstly, the US has positioned itself to be able to secure access to the most resource rich regions of the Gulf for oil, and of Central Asia for oil, metals and other materials. Secondly, it has developed strategic positions in the Balkans, on the Baltic and through Central Asia in respect of any potential military conflict with its two main military rivals - Russia and China. In doing so, it has not at all been concerned with humanitarianism or democracy. Throughout the Stans of Central Asia, it has allied itself with all kinds of tinpot dictators, including those that deal with their opponents by boiling them in oil! In the Gulf, it allies itself with the feudalists of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and other similarly grotesque regimes. In Iraq it has put in power a government of clerical-fascists, and is now looking to replace even that with some fascistic strongman similar to Saddam Hussein, who they also previously supported.

There has been some headlines at the statement, yesterday, by a Russian general, in response to the signing of the Star Wars deal with Poland. He said that it meant that, in the event of conflict, in order to deal with this missile shield, Russia would now have to first nuke Poland. The press have simply presented the headline "We'll Nuke Poland", as though the Russians were threatening to do that simply in response to the missile shield being sited there, but what do you expect from the bourgeois press?

In fact, my first response to the signing of the deal was precisely, "Do the Poles realise what they have done? They have made themselves the first line of US defence, and the first place to get taken out."  Back in the 1980's, when the US was siting cruise missiles in Britain, we used to say that Britain was just a huge US aircraft carrier. Now the US has made the whole of Europe, up to the Russian border, an even bigger aircraft carrier! In 1962, the world was nearly destroyed, because the US threatened to go to war over a few Russian missiles located on tiny Cuba. They can hardly be surprised at the Russian response to their actions, now.

The deals done with Poland, and other countries, over the missile shield, amount to this. Whether the technology of the shield works or not does not matter. It probably won't. Certainly it won't work for Poland and other such countries, and even if it did the fallout they would suffer from the destruction of the missiles heading their way would make it irrelevant. It is not the technology that constitutes the missile shield, it is the countries themselves. Because the idea is that interceptor missiles in these countries will take out Russian missiles - the US claim the idea is to stop nukes from rogue states, but that's nonsense, because none of them are anywhere near having the capability to launch intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles - the Russians, as the previously mentioned general, correctly, stated, would first have to concentrate their missiles on Poland etc., in order to overwhelm those defences, before it could consider launching an attack on the US. That would give the US time - they hope - to launch an overwhelming attack on Russian nuclear sites before they could launch any sizeable attack on the US. In other words, Poland has made itself the bullet proof vest of the US.

Yet, the US has made clear it will not resort to military force against the Russians, in Georgia. Why? Because, at the moment, it has no need. In the late 19th century, the main scramble was for sources of raw materials, for colonies to get them from on the cheap. Only when the boom came to an end was it, then, necessary, also, to try to gain protected markets for the sale of products in order to realise profits. At the moment, we are at the same phase of the long wave, a boom that should last for another 12-15 years. That boom means that markets are plentiful, profits can easily be realised, and are growing rapidly. Resources can be bought rather than fought over. At the moment.

As Trotsky pointed out, imperialists do not go to war over principles such as freedom or democracy, they go to war over markets and profits. When the boom ends, when profits can no longer be made so easily, when the lack of profits means that resources cannot so easily be bought, when markets are less plentiful and have to be secured, by hook or by crook, then the drive to war will come, just as it did in 1914. The last time that drive came, in the mid 1970's, it was muted by the existence of the USSR, by the common cause of the imperialists against "Communism". That factor no longer exists. Indeed the former "Communists" are now the main economic players depriving the US hegemon of its unrestricted dominion over the world economy.

The idea that the US, or Europe, can restrain Russia by threats of removing it from the G8, by denying it access to the WTO etc., are ludicrous. The bankrupt US economy relies on the benevolence of strangers. Russia has billions of dollars invested in US bonds and other debt. If Europe tries to boycott Russian oil and gas, it will cripple itself, whilst Russia will sell its oil, gas and other primary products to more than enough other countries desperate for them.

The Russian Stalinists have been drawing closer to the Chinese Stalinists, over recent years. The current US response must give China more cause to draw closer still to Russia for a defensive alliance, because China holds no illusions in the US's real intentions towards it. China, the new workshop of the world, is desperate for the kind of raw materials that Russia can supply, just as Russia is a large market for Chinese consumer goods. As the Chinese working class and middle class grow rapidly, the Chinese market itself will provide an alternative to the need for Western markets. Moreover, if Russia holds a huge amount of US debt and equity, China owns a vast amount more. Long before any shooting war, they could threaten the US economy, and destroy it overnight should they choose to do so.

Only the working class can provide a solution to this problem. There is a choice of seeing the world as divided into two camps of a democratic imperialism, and a camp of fascism/Bonapartism in which the former is the lesser evil, and to which socialists advise workers giving their support. All the evidence of history shows that this will lead to disaster, as the workers are duped, and find that the democratic imperialists are no different than the fascistic imperialists. Or else the working class can declare a plague on both their houses.

Instead of viewing the world through the lens of "democracy" v "fascism/bonapartism", which amounts to nothing more than a good cop/bad cop routine by the capitalists, socialists should teach the workers to see the world, instead, as divided into the camp of the workers and the camp of the bosses, the camp of the oppressors, and the camp of the oppressed. Socialists stand on the side of the camp of the oppressed even if that camp has the mask of "fascism", as in the case of oppressed countries, and against the camp of the oppressors even when that camp has the mask of democracy. Only on that consistent basis can socialists win the majority of the workers and oppressed to its banner, only on that basis does it deserve to do so.