US imperialism, is driving towards war with Iran. It is just the latest theatre of war for US imperialism already engaged in Ukraine, and a phoney war in the South China Sea, as it seeks to maintain its global hegemony, at the same time that its economic and strategic power is in relative decline. Following defeats in Vietnam in the 1970's, and loss of client dictators such as The Shah of Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, assorted Central American dictators, followed by further defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US now faces the defeat of its proxy war in Ukraine, despite the huge amounts of money and weapons poured into the corrupt Bonapartist regime of Zelensky. At least the brutal Bonapartist regime of Zionism, in Israel, seems to hold out hope for US imperialism, and the potential to distract from its other failures, and continued decline.
There are inevitable divisions within the ranks of US imperialism, however. Immediately after Hamas attack on October 7th, Netanyahu, and others within the Zionist state, immediately came out to claim that the hand of Iran was behind it. The Zionists are continually looking for a justification for war with Iran, because they see in it, a regional, sub-imperialist power, backed by Russia and China, which could potentially challenge its dominant military position in the region, and so act as a pole around which others might be attracted.
In fact, the CIA looked for evidence that Iran was involved in planning and facilitating the October 7th attacks, and could find none. Were US imperialism entirely unified in pushing for an imminent war with Iran, they would have found such “evidence”, much as they did when it came to the charade of the presentation of evidence to the UN, by Colin Powell, of Iraqi WMD, in 2003. But, its clear that a sizeable section of US imperialism is driving towards war with Iran. At the weekend, the US Navy, in The Red Sea, became directly involved in the war, by shooting down a missile headed towards Israel from Yemen. The US was quick to link the Houthis in Yemen, with Iran. An indication of the position of US imperialism is given by the NATO propagandist and war-monger, Paul Mason, in his latest missive – Gaza: Time For Restraint.
The article itself is, typically, superficial and full of holes, let alone hypocritical hyperbole, but Mason acts as a front runner of imperialism, though, his position is now so ludicrously pro-imperialist that he has no standing in the labour movement to be of use to the imperialists, as a conduit for their propaganda. As an indication of the superficiality, he presents the ending of US hegemony, and division of the globe into multiple competing poles, as if it is the product, of some kind of plot or conscious strategy of the enemies of US imperialism, rather than being the inevitable consequence of imperialism itself, and of the unfolding of its economic and social laws. He says,
“If you listen to the advocates of multipolarity, they describe it as a project of “nonalignment and peace” - a long, orderly process whereby geopolitics falls into line with the economic reality of rising Chinese power. Multilateralism and the rules-based order are replaced with formalised spheres of influence, in which all universal concepts - human rights, international law, the rule of law - are reduced to localised, culturally relative norms set by authoritarian elites. The West remains free to be universalist and follow the rules, but nobody else bothers. The only trouble that might arise is where America resists the inevitable.”
See what I mean about hypocritical hyperbole. I doubt the Palestinians have seen the supposed commitment to “human rights, international law, and rule of law”, he professes, let alone the prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and so on! But, this, now seems to be the way western imperialism proceeds on the basis of such obvious lies, and the media facilitates them.
Its not clear that, even in the link provided to such “advocates” that they are “advocates” at all, in the sense that Mason describes, as against simply describing the world as it is, a world in which US economic, military and strategic hegemony has broken down, and is being challenged by China, and others, including the EU, South America, and others in a flux of shifting alliances, much as happened before WWI and II. Describing what is, and what the dynamics are that creates those conditions, is not to be an “advocate” of them. No Marxist, for example, would claim that the break-down of one global hegemony results in “a long, orderly process whereby geopolitics falls into line with the economic reality”. When British hegemony broke down, and was challenged by the rising power of Germany, for example, it resulted in WWI, and its continuation in WWII, with the ultimate winner being neither, but US imperialism. There is nothing orderly about war, but it is the way that imperialism contradictorily proceeds towards its ultimate objective of creating ever larger single markets, and states, on its way to the creation of a global single market and world state.
Mason continues,
“Instead, we can be certain now that multipolarity equals chaos.”
Why would that be news to any Marxist, because, of course, competition, whether it is unrestricted economic competition, or military strategic competition, leads to chaos, until such time that the most powerful win out in that competition, and assert some kind of order that ensures their continued dominance and advantage. Mason takes a point in time prior to this break down of US hegemony, and sees in it a “rules based system”, as though these rules were somehow, neutral, objectively rational rules, rather than what they actually are, the rules designed by US imperialism, for the benefit of US imperialism, just as the laws of any capitalist state are the rules designed by its ruling-class for the benefit of its ruling class.
As with his previous analyses of the Capitol Hill riot, and so on, and his subjectivist analysis of fascism, in general, he gives far too much importance to forces that, actually, on their own, can go nowhere.
“From Niger to Capitol Hill to Hamas, it is not that the Kremlin orders its proxies to disrupt the rules-based system: it is simply that the proxies understand the realm of the possible has expanded. That not only gives them agency, it gives them permission to dream of radically evil outcomes.”
Of course, you can understand why Hamas, and if not Hamas, some other similar Palestinian resistance force, would seek to disrupt those existing rules that enable the Zionist state, daily, to seize Palestinian land and property, for armed Zionist settlers with the backing of the Bonapartist, Zionist state to “use opportunism, symbolic violence, disinformation, terror, rape as a weapon of war and the legitimisation of genocide.” Though, not surprisingly, Mason has nothing to say about those radically evil outcomes being sought by that Zionist state, and backed to the hilt by US imperialism, and its “rules”.
Mason vastly overstated the importance and capacity of the Capitol Hill rioters, many of whom have been locked up for life, their organisations shredded, and not to mention all of those high profile Trump supporters, gaoled, or facing gaol, and not to mention Trump himself. Mason continually operates on the level of appearances and superficiality, and so gets lost, because none of his analysis is located in the reality of class relations and class interest. Its a superficial journalist's description of the world, heavily coloured by his own agenda. So, for example, eighteen months ago, he was telling us that Ukraine was about to defeat Russia, and Russia was going to be sent scurrying not just from Ukraine, but weakened on the global stage itself.
Today, we see that Ukraine is losing badly. It is suffering heavy casualties of its soldiers, despite all of the masses of latest weapons from NATO, because, so long as Russia sticks with its objective of simply securing Eastern Ukraine, Ukraine can make no significant headway. Its soldiers are being ripped apart by shrapnel, because it can't get close enough to Russian troops to exchange rifle fire. It can't get past the first line of Russian defences of mines, and stuck in those positions is shredded by Russian artillery, fired from a distance. As Autumn proceeds, even that progress will be reversed, and Russia will harden its defensive positions further. Zelensky's own position looks tenuous, as a result of that failure.
Indeed, its that failure of Zelensky, and so of US imperialism/NATO, in Ukraine, that gives added urgency for it to seek to distract attention, by a wider war in the Middle-East. Its possible that the intensification of Netanyahu's fascist coup, the increased drive to have settlers seize Palestinian land at a faster pace, to have the overt attacks on the Al Aqsa Mosque and so on, were simply, in Mason's words, a result of the fact that “the proxies understand the realm of the possible has expanded. That not only gives them agency, it gives them permission to dream of radically evil outcomes.” But, Biden could have stopped that. Without the billions of Dollars that the US gives to the Zionist state each year, without the US acting to veto any attempt even to have previous UN resolutions against Zionist occupations and so on, implemented, Netanyahu's government would not have lasted a week.
But, the US did not do that, and the subordinates of the US, despite the so called “rules based order”, did not do that either. The Zionist state was given the green light to ignore even those rules that were drawn up by, and in the interests of its masters. Far from discouraging the Zionist state and its rush to fascism, and intensification of its drive towards “radically evil outcomes”, the US rushed to encourage the Zionist state to enter into deals with other US client states, such as the Saudis, whose rulers, ignored the rules also, and literally butchered the US citizen Jamal Kashoggi, completely ignoring the Palestinians, for whom the US rules based order, cannot even provide them with the promised Two State Solution.
Although, the CIA found no evidence of Iran organising or facilitating the October 7th attacks, Mason is in no doubt, on the matter.
“In the case of Hamas and Iran, we should be in no doubt of what the desired outcome of the aggressor is. Mohammed Deif, the Hamas commander in Gaza, spelled it out on 7 October: the destruction of Israel by a region-wide war.”
The Liberal-Democrats say they would like to form the next government in Britain, but that doesn't mean they have any chance of achieving it. Hamas are a tiny, more or less powerless organisation, when it comes to Israel, let alone the rest of the region. Their power, in Gaza, is mostly down to the role of the Zionist state, in the way it oppresses the Palestinians as a whole, and Gaza, in particular. They have no more ability to destroy Israel than the men in funny costumes that stormed Capitol Hill on January 6th had of carrying through a successful coup against the US state.
What is more, Iran has no desire for a war with Israel either, because it knows that any such war, would certainly give US imperialism the excuse to intervene directly against it. The experience of such US intervention has not been a happy one either, as with its intervention in Iraq, but for the US, even just the creation of chaos in Iran, as it achieved in Libya, would be a step forward, whilst the reimposition of the brutal dictatorship of the Pahlavi's would be even better for the US. Mason of course, has little to say about the fascists in these cases, or the “radically evil outcomes” required for the reimposition of “order”. He simply notes,
“the defence of Israel against Hezbollah would be a war of necessity for those determined to uphold the rules-based order”
His only concern is that Biden and the rest of western social-democracy could not sell this idea to a western working-class already suffering from the effects of years of excess liquidity that inflated asset prices, and that has now inflated commodity prices, whilst workers are told they cannot have pay rises to match, and who are suffering from the effects on energy prices and economies from the effects of western boycotts and sanctions on Russian energy and food exports.
Mason is just the front runner of US imperialism. So, it was not surprising that, on the same day that his missive was published, his fellow neo-cons from the US were in Israel, purveying an identical message. Right-wing Republican war-monger Lindsay Graham, echoing Mason's insistence that Hamas would not have acted without Iranian approval and backing, noted that any response by Hezbollah to the repeated shelling and air strikes on Lebanon, or Israel's bombing of airports in Syria, would also be taken as provocation by Iran, unleashing a joint US-Zionist response.
As I wrote on day one, the Zionist state would look to declare war not just on the Palestinians, but on other Arab states. It has got away with its “radically evil outcomes” committing genocide in Gaza, as it drives towards a final solution to its Palestinian problem, and so has also intensified its attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. From the start, it launched attacks across the Lebanese border, and engaged in the bombing of the airports in Damascus and Aleppo, in Syria. Now, it has also bombed the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt, and has also shelled an Egyptian position, clearly as a warning to Egypt, which held an international conference on Gaza, at the weekend.
The Zionists need to divert attention from the holocaust in Gaza, and its exposure of the nature of Zionism, both in Israel, and in western democracies, as seen, for example, in its role in opposing the Left in the Labour Party, and in the US Democrats, equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. A wider regional war in the Middle-East meets their requirement to divert attention, and, as US imperialism's proxy in Ukraine, fails, opening a new front against Russia-China, via a war against Iran, meets the needs of US imperialism too.
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