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Another point of view and analyzes of the last Iraqi crisis by George
Caffentzis
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by Midnight Notes - [e-mail]


Introduction


    Barely seven years after a major military attack that left Iraqi
industry, hospitals, water and sewage treatment plants devastated, and
caused thousands of civilian casualties as well as widespread sickness
among American soldiers, the United States government prepared to go to
war again against Iraq in February 1998. The Clinton administration's
reasonsfor initiating this war although noticeably shifting as the
weeks went by were clothed in a dramatic language.

    "...It is very important for us to make clear" said Secretary of State
Albright in a Columbus, Ohio "town hall meeting" on February 19, 1998
"that the United States and the civilized world cannot deal with
somebody who is willing to use...weapons of mass destruction on his own
people, not to speak of his neighbors." In the same meeting, Albright
reiterated, "What we are concerned about is Saddam Hussein, who has a
record of using weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors as
well as against his own people. And [he is] a brutal dictator who is
terrifying his people and threatening the region.....our policy is to
contain him; that is what we are trying to do"(NYT 2/19/98: A9).


    The key words used to justify the US policy were "weapons of
massdestruction" and "tyrannical rule."(1) The US war aims, according
to Pres.Clinton, were to undermine the Iraqi government and to
"substantially reduce or delay" its ability to develop and deliver
weapons of massdestruction (NYT 2/13/98: A1). The commander of US
forces in the Persian Gulf, General Zinni, explained that he intended
to meet these aims by destroying "the things that obviously allow
[Saddam Hussein] to stay in power, threaten his neighbors, threaten the
use of weapons of massdestruction, the things that are involved in the
control of those sorts of assets" (NYT 2/12/98: A6).

    Such justifications, however, were generally unconvincing, as the
audience in the famous Columbus town hall meeting demonstrated. Their
questions and the answers they received showed that the Clinton
Administration was far from transparent about its true war aims. As one
audience member said: "The are many countries that have these
biological and chemical weapons; six countries in the Middle East
alone. You've stated why Saddam Hussein should be singled out, but it
is puzzling to people to wonder why it's O.K. for these other countries
to have biological and chemical weapons." Another audience member asked
Secretary of Defense Cohen "if he thinks that the ultimate goal of this
particular action...should be the ultimate removal of Saddam Hussein
from Government." Cohen replied that the removal of Hussein "would
require...a rather massive force of landforces, and we don't think that
it's necessary in order to contain him. We think that we can contain
him, as we have for the past seven years, and allow the Iraqi people at
some point in time to determine for themselves whether they want
another seven years of deprivation" (NYT 2/19/98: A9). Inother words,
Secretary Cohen committed himself to the "containment" of Saddam
Hussein while General Zinni, is out to destroy his power.

    The Columbus "town hall meeting" gave voice to a pervasive sense
growing throughout the country and the world that the Clinton
Administration was hiding something. Was the movie "Wag the Dog" right?
Was the threatened war nothing but a diversion from a sordid sex
scandal, or was there an another explanation? Clinton Administration
officials stuck to their cover story through thick and thin simply
because, however shaky it may have appeared, it put the opponents to
the war on the defensive. After all, who wanted to defend secret
weapons of mass destruction or a tyrannical regime? What I offer in
this article is a different explanationas to why the US insisted on
waging war against Iraq along with some reasons why people in the US
should oppose this war.

    Alternative explanations are necessary as probes to challenge and
deflate the ever present threats of war. For even though the agreement
between Kofi Annan, the UN General Secretary, and the Iraqi government
seems to have averted the immediate threat of war, there is very good
reason to believe that the US government will be vitally interested in
the fomenting similar episodes in the future. This strategy of tension
can delay the lifting of the sanctions that restrict the sale of Iraqi
oil for years. So we should be ready with our best arguments, since
they might have to be deployed quite soon.

    Moreover, one of the main arguments of antiwar opponents a war would
cause the loss of innocent Iraqi lives is morally valid, but
politically weak. Its moral validity is obvious. As we know, the
combine deffects of the aerial bombardments and the sanctions imposed
on Iraq, that restricted the import of food and medicine, have been
responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people,
most of them children.(2) And we can easily imagine that a bombing
campaign of the sort described by General Zinni would produce a carnage
and a devastation of incommensurable proportions.

    Unfortunately, these types of considerations have never moved the US
population to seriously try to stop its government from engaging in the
use of mass bombing, except in the case of Vietnam. Moreover, once a
war is started, military decisions are not in the people's hands. But
if we cannot appeal to the hearts of the US people, then we should
speak to their selfinterest, showing how the war on Iraq is connected
to a set of larger issues that do affect the US working class and call
for our resistance to the war.

    To explain the US government's decision to threaten an attack on Iraq
we must go beyond the official reasons offered to justify this course
of action, and look at the short and longterm material interests the US
government has in the region, and at the role Iraq plays in the
international division of oil and gas production. If we do that, we
also see that the attack on Iraq fits with the politics of
"Globalization," as demonstrated by the position the US/UN has taken in
many other world regions and conjunctures as, for example,  the Asian
crisis.


Official Issues and the Fine Print


    At the end of the Gulf War, a series of agreements were concluded
between the Iraqi government and the United Nations. One of the most
controversial was the right of the United Nations to search for and
destroy any "weapons of mass destruction" that the Iraqi state would
produce. The"UN Special Commission" on Iraq ("UNSCOM") is the name of
the UN inspectionteam in charge of the search and destroy mission;  its
present head is Richard Butler, a former Australian ambassador to
Indonesia. Once UNSCOM completes its work, the sanctions will,
presumably, be lifted

    The Clinton Administration justified its threatened bombing of Iraq by
claiming that the Iraqi government has violated this agreement. Was
this true? Immediately before the Secretary General Kofi Annan's
arrival in Baghdad in February 21, 1998, there appeared to be two
interpretations ofwhat complying with the original agreements meant.
(A) The Iraqis agreed to give the UNSCOM inspectors access to eight
presidential sitesareas containing many buildings including residences
belonging to Saddam Husseinf or the duration of 60 days, and they have
also agreed to have the inspection team report directly to the UN
Secretary General rather than to Mr. Butler.

(B) The US asserted that the UNSCOM inspectors "must be free to do
their work without hindrance, without conditions, and without time
limits" and they must continue to report to Mr. Butler (NYT 2/17/98:
A6).

    The issue, then, as stated, was not whether the inspections should go
on, but how they should be conducted. The Iraqi authorities were
demanding that the accords be put in specific  terms (specific times
places and persons), while the US demanded a general  reading of the
accords. In other words, the confrontation seemed to be between the
position of Iraq, that accepts eight sites and sixty days, and that of
the US, that demands inspection at any placeany time.

    The Iraqi government's insistence on specific terms in the
interpretation of the accords came from its desire to maintain at least
a shred of sovereignty. It wanted the terms of the accord to be open to
negotiation at each turn in the story and the story itself to have a
temporal limit that would lead to the end of sanctions.

    The US government, on the other hand, claims the right to carry on an
absolute surveillance over the entire Iraqi territory, for an
indefinite span of time, and wants the absolute right to control and
destroy any possible means  that might lead to the development of
weapons of massdestruction and their delivery. This demand is
tantamount to requiring that the Iraqi nation become a pre-industrial
colony producing crude oil, at  best. For, as we have learned from the
ecological movement, almost any industrial development is either a
potential weapon of mass destruction, or allows for the development of
such weapons. For example, any petrochemical industry makes chemical
weapons possible; any aerospace industry makes delivery vehicles
possible; any bio-engineering or pharmaceutical industry makes
biological weapons possible. What the US is, in fact, demanding is the
elimination not only of Iraqi sovereignty but the total control over
its future industrial development, if not the total destruction of its
industrial capacity.

    The seemingly formal issue concerning the interpretation of the
accords hid a much more substantial one: whether the ruling Baathist
government will accept Iraq's return to a colonial, dependent status.
This definitely was what international jurists used to call a "casus
belli."

    The crisis was averted when Iraqi government decided to accept an
interpretation of the accords brought by Kofi Annan to Baghdad on
February 23, 1998.  This interpretation seemed to be an adequate
diplomatic "splitting of the difference" for the moment. It lifted the
sixty day limit on inspections, but kept the reference to the eight
sites. Similarly, it included a gesture to the recognition of Iraqi
sovereignty by adding a group of senior diplomats to the UNSCOM
"technical" team whose members were arrogant and disrespectful,
according to Iraqi officials that will inspect the presidential sites.
Finally, the document's references to the"legitimate concerns of Iraq
relating to national security, sovereignty and dignity" and the
"lifting of sanctions" seemed enough to assuage the Iraqi government
(NYT 2/24/98).

    But the fundamental issue between the US and the Iraqi regimes
concerning the political sovereignty and economic independence of Iraq
remains and will be the source of tension in the future.

    Some "hawks" in the US have attacked the recent agreements because,
acording to them, the Iraqi state lost its rights to national
independence when it was defeated in the Gulf War and that any
negotiations with Saddam Hussein's government are unnecessary and
illegitimate concessions to a "mass murderer" and weak willed world
opinion. The Iraqi Army's invasion of Kuwait was unjust, they claim,
and its defeat gave the victors (the US lead UN coalition) the right to
punish the guilty state at will.

    But we must remember that defeat in an unjust war does not give the
victor such automatic rights. For example, the US military's unjust
invasion (replete with chemical weapons) of Vietnam was defeated. But
this defeat did not give the Vietnamese government even the theoretical
right to control the US's political and economic life. For the US
defeat was conditional. Similarly, the Iraqi state's defeat in the Gulf
War by the US lead UN coalition was conditional. Iraq 1991 was not
Japan 1945.  The Baath government survived the Gulf War and today is
defending the principle ofIraqi sovereignty and the right of the Iraqi
state to determine a national industrial policy. That is, the status of
Iraq is not that of a slave whose life was forfeited and must then live
under the absolute legal and moral power of a master, as occurred in
Japan after the Second World War. Iraqi society and its state demand
recognition as agents in an exchange.

    Nevertheless, the US government insists that any demand by the Iraqi
government for negotiations about the conditions of the accords and the
end of sanctions conditions involving its territory and economy are
illegitimate. The Clinton Administration is making claims fit for an
absolute master without having any right to possession, except for its
military superiority. It is by virtue of this military power that the
US government and its transnational corporate allies have in recent
times battered down all trade and political barriers wherever they
stood in the way of US national and corporate interests. The recent
showdown with Iraq was not different, even if the justifications given
appealed to the wellbeing of the people of the world and put the US in
the place of the ancient knight fighting the horrendous dragon,
ensuring in the end that justice is done.

    But is hard to cast President Clinton, the supporter of the IMF,
NAFTA, Multinational Aggreement on Investment (MAI) and all the other
corporate sponsored institutions and deals around the planet, in the
clothes of Saint George, with his spear drawn in defense of the poor
and weak. Indeed, there were and are more mundane reasons revolving
around the price and availability of crude oil that make war with Iraq
a continual temptation .


The Oil Secret

"Most likely the sanctions will be lifted, not when Iraq agrees to any
newelimination of a weapons system or a new inspection of its arms
sites, butwhen it agrees to sell the oil on the US/UN terms"(Midnight
Notes 1992: 49).

    Oil has long been recognized as a major factor in the Gulf War. This
insight was expressed most graphically in the 1990/91
anti-Gulf-War-movement's slogan "NO BLOOD FOR OIL!" What exact role oil
played then,however, was often disputed. According to some commentators
at the time, the US's interest in "cheap oil" brought about a
confrontation with Iraq. But the US government was never committed to
any particular price for crude oil. In 1974, for example, the US
government gave the go-ahead to the Saudis to hike the price of oil
dramatically while in 1986 it bombed Libya and sent cakes to Iran in
order to lower the price of oil (Midnight Notes1992: 67, 283301).

The US was responding not to the Iraqi state's demand for high oil
prices, but to its desperate attempt to bypass the US military and
economic control of Persian Gulf oil in 1990/91. In this respect little
has changed since the Gulf War.

    A key to understanding the present situation is to realize that the
Iraqi government has managed to face seven years of total military
surveillance and economic sanctions without capitulating completely to
the military subordination and economic dependence that US has demanded
of the states in the region. The Iraqi state is still insisting on some
control over the nation's resources and its independent entrance as a
seller into the global oil market. For example, the Iraqi state has
made major deals with a number of nonUS oil companies to bring them
into the joint development of oil fields in Iraq once the sanctions are
lifted. These deals involve French companies like Elf Aquitaine and
Total SA (involving fields of 12.5 billion barrels) and Russian
companies like Lukoil, Zabrubezneft and Mashinoimport (involving fields
of 7.5 billion barrels). The only companies left out of the oil
exploration bonanza when sanctionsare lifted will be US based, unless
the Saddam Hussein regime is somehow persuaded otherwise (Wall Street
Journal 2/23/98: A17).

    The economic situation now is the inverse of what it was during the
1991 Gulf War. In 1990, Iraqi authorities were the primary oil price
hawks in OPEC. They were calling for $25 per barrel and one of their
official reasons de guerre  was that Kuwait was violating its OPEC
quota and depressing the price of oil. In 1998 Iraq is objectively not
a force for higher oil prices. In fact, the full return of Iraqi oil
into the international oil market would substantially lower oil prices.
In 1994, the Clinton Administration estimated that, with the full
lifting of sanctions, a return of Iraqi oil on the world market would
depress prices by almost 50% and there is no reason to believe that
this estimate does not hold any longer today. Such a price collapse
would be especially problematic for the world petroleum corporations in
a period when they believe that there are new, profitable largescale
investments to be made in oil exploration and development (especially
in the former nonRussian Soviet republics), but at the same time they
face a decline in shortterm demand because of the"Asian Crisis" (Beck
1998). Such a price collapse would also undermine the present control
structure of OPEC (where Saudi Arabia, a US client state,is kingpin),
and would devastate the capitalists of the local "oil patch" in Texas
and Louisiana. These are no small losers in the shortrun, and they have
tremendous power with the US government.

    It is important to review oil price politics since the Gulf War to
understand this issue. That war itself was a $4 war because one of the
crucial issues at stake was the price of oil in the 1990s. A desperate
Iraqi government, trying to rebuild after the Iraq-Iran war and full of
political debts to its populace, was demanding a $25 per barrel
pricetarget at the last OPEC meeting before the war, while the Saudi
Arabian regime, with US support, was demanding $21; a $4 difference.
The Baathregime in 1990 was desperate because it was caught in a
pincer. On the oneside, the Iraqi proletariat, after nearly a decade of
war with Iran, was demanding a "pay off" in the form of higher living
standards,  on the otherside, the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
the US, and the UN were demanding the privatization of state industries
and an end to subsidies,i.e., the imposition of a policy of austerity
and structural adjustment. The invasion of Kuwait was a calculated risk
meant to gain some breathingspace from both the Iraqi working class and
the IMF/US/UN (by gaining concessions from the Kuwaitis and other
elements of Middle Eastern capitalin exchange for a pull back). The
invasion was also premised on the US not having an viable political
alternative to the Baath party. In a way, the invasion did save the
Baath regime and did impose austerity on the Iraqipeople.

    The Saudi Arabians won the oil price debate with Iraq both at the last
OPEC meeting before the Gulf War and in reality. The price of oil on
the international market between 1992 and early 1997 averaged in the
region of $19/$20 (with the low at $14 in late 1993 and a high of $25
in early1997). Indeed, in 1996 the price was rising rapidly, to the
point where many were wondering whether the preGulf War oil experts'
predictions of $40 oil at the beginning of the next century might still
be fulfilled.

    But then came, after many twists of fate, the "oil for food" agreement
between the Iraqi government and the UN Security Council (Resolution
986) and with it the very regulated and restricted return of Iraqi oil
onto the world market in January 7, 1997 which lead to a dramatic
collapse of the price of oil. In two months (January March) it fell
from$24 to $18 and a year later it is in the $15/$16 range (it was
$16.18 on Feb. 20, 1998, for example).

    The US fought against the "oilfor food" deal diplomatically and
militarily. Indeed, the last US attack on Iraq the launching of 27
cruisemissals on September 9, 1996 delayed the implementation of the
Resolution for almost four months. Though it could not stop the "oil
for food" deal completely,  US diplomats have crafted the resolution in
a very restrictive way, making it vulnerable to a thousand and one
possible interruptions and challenges.  First, it only allowed for the
sale of about 700,000 barrels per day or only 20% of the 3,500,000
barrels per day the Iraqi state was exporting before the Gulf War.
Second, an essential part of the agreement is the placing of 151
monitors from the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (UNDHA)
throughout Iraq who observe whether the food bought from the oil
revenues is properly distributed through an agreed upon ration
cardsystem at more than 60,000 retailers throughout the country. Third,
along with food, essential technology to repair water and sewerage
systems as well as equipment for the oil industry may be purchased with
the oil money.These imports will to be checked by a monitoring team as
well. Consequently, the Iraqi economy is not only watched by satellite,
spy planeover flights, and the UNSCOM inspectors; hundreds of
accountants and marketinspectors are also auditing it daily.
These monitoring teams are clearly more important for the fate of the
Iraqi people and state than the UNSCOM inspection teams, but they are
not often talked about in Clinton administration press conferences. If
they are removed from Iraq or cannot do their work there, the "oil for
food"deal will become nullandvoid and the Iraqi right to sell oil
openly will be rescinded.(3)

    In effect, any time the US bangs the "drums of war," Iraqi oil is
driven out of the market. This is certainly one of the secret
motivations for US war threats, since they permit control over Iraqi
oilsales in the shortrun. For example, the UN Security Council
increased Iraq's quota for exporting oil from $2 billion to $5.2
billion on February 20, 1998 as an inducement to Saddam Hussein's
government to sign the new interpretation of the accords in Baghdad.
This increase permitted the Iraqi national oil company to sell up to
about 50% of its preGulf War exports.But this limit is purely
theoretical, because (a) the UNDHA inspectionteams must be operating on
the ground in Iraq and (b) parts must beimported in order to repair oil
extraction and pipeline equipment in order for the Iraqi National Oil
Company to be able to increase production to meet this limit. If the US
threatens war again or objects that some imported piece of equipment
can be used to construct a weapon of massdestruction, the Iraqi's will
find themselves either thrown out of the market or unable to enter into
it.


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