Abbas In Beijing

Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas is in Beijing, on a state visit, as China proposes to broker peace talks between Israel and Palestine, fresh from its success in bringing together Iran and Saudi Arabia, and proposed rapprochement between Iran and the Gulf Co-operation Council. It is the fifth official visit of Abbas to Beijing, and is significant given current global tensions including the war in Ukraine. The relations between Palestine and China, as against those between the US and Israel, create a new dynamic, but also pose questions for the opportunist Left, in the West, and their support for bourgeois-nationalism, as manifest in relation to Ukraine.

Why was China able to bring about a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia? Its possible to look for an explanation in superficial factors such as the fact that the US criticised Saudi Arabia over its barbaric murder of the journalist Khashoggi, and of human rights abuses in general, or the US's attempt to brow beat Saudi Arabia into increasing oil supplies, to reduce the price of oil, in order to damage the Russian economy, as part of US imperialism's war against Russia in Ukraine. But, that would be to miss the bigger picture.

In part, the bigger picture is reflected in the fact that US imperialism is a waning force, though still incredibly powerful, militarily, whereas China is a rising power. Its symbolised in the US's defeat, and withdrawal from Afghanistan, after a 20 year occupation of the country, and the almost immediate entry into the country, by invitation, of China, offering large amounts of capital investment in infrastructure, mineral extraction, and industrial production. The US's defeat and withdrawal, leaving nothing positive behind it, is just the latest in a long line of such adventures, including in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Latin America, and before that Vietnam.

The US, which began the second half of the 20th century as the champion of imperialism, and enemy of colonialism, as it sought to smash the old monopolies and protected markets, so that multinational industrial capital could roam the world, free to invest and exploit labour-power, turned increasingly into a caricature of the old colonialists itself, as it became more concerned with its own long-term, geo-strategic interests against, first, the USSR, and, then, against its new capitalist competitors both in Europe and in Asia. Ironically, China, as the rising imperialist power of the 21st century, has taken on the role that the US occupied, in that respect, in the 20th, of rapidly expanding its economic activities, and investment across the globe, and allowing that to be the means by which it gained influence and allies, and, thereby, geo-strategic advantage.

The current global economic war waged by US imperialism against China-Russia, is a reflection of that, harking back to all of those old favourites of colonialism, of protectionist trade restraints, defence of monopolies and patents, protected markets, and so on. All of the huge advantages of globalisation, and a new global division of labour that arose, particularly from the 1980's onwards, have been iced, if not reversed, because that development increasingly favoured the new rising economies, in particular China, at the expense of US imperialism. In place of that globalisation, driven by the inexorable logic of imperialism towards a single global market, and state, once again, it is thwarted by that very same imperialism, as it remains fettered within its capitalist integument, still contained within the shackles of the nation state, and the consequent competition between states. In the 21st century, it takes the form of the division into competing politico-economic blocs.

But, the fundamental laws apply to these blocs, as much as they did to the old nation states of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Trade necessarily develops most between those economies closest together. Its that which brought together the old principalities into the nation states, in the 19th century, and which brought together nation states into the EEC/EU, and so on, in the 20th century. Those same laws apply, today, and whilst that means that the US, with its Pacific Coast economy, trades extensively with economies in Asia, it is separated from them by several thousand miles of Pacific Ocean. China, by contrast, is connected to many of them by land, and given the huge size of its own land mass, is directly connected to many of them, a connection that is being increased by the day, as a result of its Belt and Road strategy of investing huge amounts in infrastructure developments to facilitate transport and communications.

As the world divides into these competing imperialist blocs, the obvious global division is that of the US with Canada, and Central and South America, the EU, Eurasia, and Africa. But, of course, the division is not that simple or clear cut. On the one hand, NAFTA already exists, and the US, which has always seen Central and South America, as its preserve going back to the Monroe Doctrine, has economic and trade ties to those economies too. But, the further away from the US those economies are, the less is the economic gravitational pull of the giant US economy. Hence, South American economies have developed closer economies ties with each other via Mercosur, for example, and, in turn, South America, has developed ties across the Atlantic to South Africa, and across the Pacific to China. China's insatiable appetite for primary products, as it became the workshop of the world, and its vast population also saw its living standards rise, created an inevitable dynamic of primary products flowing one way, and direct industrial and financial investment flowing the other, much as Britain had done in the 19th century.

I will be writing a more specific post on this in future, but, for now, the main point can be seen that what lies behind China's ability to influence events in the Middle East, is the fact that it is drawn into the economic sphere of China (Eurasia), and away from the US, and Europe. Indeed, it restores those ancient trade ties that existed in the form of The Silk Road. These different politico-economic blocs, are reversing the advances made by globalisation, and one form of that is in the area of technology, and standards. As China has pumped trillions of Dollars into foreign infrastructure investment in Eurasia, as well as into Africa, and South America, and also in the EU, it has done so on the basis of Chinese technologies and standards. Think Betamax v VHS but on a much wider scale. Its that which is behind the US action to restrict Chinese technology developments, and attempts to impose trade restrictions and direct bans on the use of Chinese technology formats.

However, if you are in one of those areas where that huge Chinese investment, and infrastructure development has already taken place, you are unlikely to want to scrap it all, to conform with different US specifications. That further hardens these blocs into separate, and increasingly competing units. Hence, China's rising influence in many of these areas, and the declining influence of the US, and its subordinates in the EU. Its on that basis that economies in the Gulf, including Iran, are also then pulled together, with China facilitating that process, and greasing the wheels, as well as the palms of governments.

So, what then about Palestine and Israel, where this does not seem so obviously to be the case. In large part, the Israeli economy would not function without the US, and the billions of Dollars it pumps into it each year, not to mention the billions more of military aid it provides. And, a crucial factor for Israel is its relations with the Palestinians, in particular, and with the surrounding Arab states, in general. Its overriding concern is to be able to continue its course of denying the Palestinians a state, and, thereby, to be able to, day after day, settle additional Palestinian lands, until such time that a separate Palestinian state becomes physically impossible, if such a condition has not, in fact, already been achieved.

As an outpost of US imperialism, and kept afloat by it, Israel not only appears able to defy economic gravity, which would naturally pull it into some kind of Middle-Eastern Economic bloc, but to have every reason to do so, for its own politico-strategic reasons. Yet, Israel too cannot escape those economic laws and realities, and were the US to cut off, or even reduce significantly, its financial bank-rolling of the country, whose economy is already shaky, those realities would quickly become manifest. It must look on at the US's past behaviour in abandoning former allies and dupes, such as in South Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, for example, and wonder if its next, which is one reason why, no doubt, the political bedfellows Netanyahu and Putin are drawn to each other, with Xi standing close behind the latter.

But, Israel has another factor to consider, as it watches on, whilst China brings together its old enemy Iran with Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Co-operation Council, and, now, in a period of obviously heightening global tension, fetes Abbas, and offers to negotiate a peace deal between Israel and Palestine. When the US/NATO launched its war against Serbia, and carved Kosovo out of it, it created a precedent that was inevitably going to be used by Russia and others, as justification for their own activities. And, so it was, as Russia responded to Georgian atrocities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and used the same line that the US/NATO had used in Kosovo, to rip those territories, with their majority ethnic Russian populations, out to become independent states. It did the same thing with Crimea, and, now, with the breakaway Republics in Ukraine.

Now, NATO is backing Ukraine in trying to seize back those Republics, and using the Russian occupation of those lands, as its justification. A pro-NATO, social imperialist Left has also collapsed into support for Ukraine/NATO's war, on the spurious grounds of “national self-determination”, and argues that the Ukrainian capitalist state is justified in seeking military support and weapons from wherever it can get them. But, just as the earlier opportunism, that justified US imperialism/NATO's war against Serbia, opened the door to Russia's war against Georgia, and then Ukraine, “to defend the lives of ethnic Russians”, so the same kind of opportunism, now, opens the door for China-Russia to provide large amounts of advanced weapons to Palestinians.

After all, there has been half a century of UN Resolutions decrying the illegal actions of Israel in occupying Palestinian lands, (as well as the Golan Heights in Syria) but without any kind of sanctions applied to it, due to continual vetoes by the US. And, every day, on even western media, the war crimes and genocidal attacks of the Israeli state on Palestinian men, women and children are broadcast and clear for all to see. If its right to oppose Russian occupation of Ukrainian land, and for Ukraine to seek weapons and support from wherever it can get them, then that same opportunist Left, with its bourgeois-nationalist obsession with national self-determination, cannot avoid the conclusion that the Palestinians have that same right too, to wage war against Israel and its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and its war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

Oddly, the loud demands for Palestinians to rush into the arms of China and Russia in search of such weapons, so as to wage a war of national independence against the illegal occupation by the Zionist colonial oppressor are missing from the liberal media, as well as from that of the opportunist Left. But, it may not have escaped the attention either of Israelis or the Chinese, as China now offers to broker a deal. After all, if you are Israel, and you are presented with a choice of replacing potentially uncertain US funding with Chinese largesse, as part of an overall package of infrastructure and other investment in the Middle East and North Africa, on condition of coming to some arrangement with bourgeois Palestinian politicians, or else, of not doing so, and seeing not only that investment go only into Palestinian and Arab territories, but also alongside the provision of large amounts of modern weaponry, capable of taking down Israeli aircraft, taking out Israeli armour and so on, what would you choose?

The opportunist Left, if it were consistent, which it definitely isn't, would have to support Palestinians obtaining such weapons, in order to fight a war of national independence against the Zionist occupiers, but what would a Marxist say about that? We would obviously, be opposed to it. The creation of the racist, colonial, Zionist state in Israel, over the bones of Palestinians, was, obviously, a deeply reactionary event. But, undertaking an identical, reactionary act against that state, now it exists, would not result in one reactionary act cancelling the other. It would simply compound it. It would act to further divide Jewish and Arab workers, making their class unity against their real and common enemy, the bourgeoisie, that much harder to achieve. As Marxists, like Lenin and Trotsky, we are in favour not of national self-determination, but of workers' self-determination, and the greatest possible class unity of workers of all nations.

We are in favour of revolutionary workers being able to obtain weapons from wherever they can obtain them, so as to defend themselves, not bourgeois states and classes, who will use those weapons against the workers as readily, or more so, than they would against some other bourgeois state. But, rarely, if ever, will revolutionary workers be supplied with adequate weapons to defend themselves, by other bourgeois states, precisely for that reason. Only the revolutionary workers of other states are ever going to provide their comrades, in other countries, with such weapons, and to do that requires that we again create a revolutionary workers international. For workers self-determination, not national self-determination, workers of the world unite, the workers have no nation, The Main Enemy Is At Home.