The Iraq War and America's Economic Imperialism
By Manning Marable
ZNet - Foreign Policy -- January 13, 2007
www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=11844§ionID=11
Several weeks ago, with much media fanfare, the James
Baker-Lee Hamilton Committee submitted to President
George W. Bush its long-awaited, bipartisan report on
the U.S. war in Iraq. On balance, the report provided
Bush with a face-saving strategy for pulling out all
U.S. combat forces by the beginning of 2008. The
Baker-Hamilton report favors an increase of U.S.
advisers being embedded inside Iraqi troops and direct
negotiations with regional powers Iran and Syria.
Bush, however, almost immediately distanced himself
from key proposals in the Baker-Hamilton report. He
now seems prepared to flagrantly flaunt his contempt
for the majority of American voters, who purged both
the Senate and House of their Republican majorities
last November. Why does Bush defy public opinion by
pursuing this unpopular war?
The answer lies not in America's need to "combat
Islamic terrorism" but in the economic necessity for
the United States to control international markets and
valuable natural resources, such as petroleum. Bush's
economic strategy is that of "neoliberalism" -- which
advocates the dismantling of the welfare state, the
abolition of redistributive social programs for the
poor, and the elimination of governmental regulations
on corporations.
In a recent issue of the New York Times (December 5,
2006), Professor Thomas B. Edsall of Columbia
University's Graduate School of Journalism astutely
characterized this reactionary process of neoliberal
politics within the United States in these terms: "For
a quarter-century, the Republican temper -- its
reckless drive to jettison the social safety net; its
support of violence in law enforcement and national
defense; its advocacy of regressive taxation,
environmental hazard and probusiness deregulation; its
'remoralizing' of the pursuit of wealth -- has been
judged by many voters as essential to America's
position in the world, producing more benefit than
cost."
One of the consequences of this reactionary political
and economic agenda, according to Edsall, was "the
Reagan administration's arms race" during the 1980s,
which "arguably drove the Soviet Union into
bankruptcy." A second consequence, Edsall argues, was
America's disastrous military invasion of Iraq. "While
inflicting destruction on the Iraqis," Edsall observes,
"Bush multiplied America's enemies and endangered this
nation's military, economic health and international
stature. Courting risk without managing it, Bush
repeatedly and remorselessly failed to accurately
evaluate the consequences of his actions."
What is significant about Edsall's analysis is that he
does not explain away the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq
and current military occupation as a political
"mistake" or an "error of judgment." Rather, he
locates the rationale for the so-called "war on
terrorism" within the context of U.S. domestic,
neoliberal politics. "The embroilment in Iraq is not
an aberration," Edsall observed. "It stems from core
[Republican] party principles, equally evident on the
domestic front."
The larger question of political economy, left
unexplored by Edsall and most analysts, is the
connection between American militarism abroad,
neoliberalism, and trends in the global economy. As
economists Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, and others noted
decades ago, the general economic tendency of mature
capitalism is toward stagnation. For decades in the
United States and Western Europe, there has been a
steady decline in investment in the productive economy,
leading to a decline in industrial capacity and lower
future growth.
Since the 1970s, U.S. corporations and financial
institutions have relied primarily on debt to expand
domestic economic growth. By 1985, total U.S. debt --
which is comprised of the debt owed by all households,
governments (federal, state, and local), and all
financial and non-financial businesses -- reached twice
the size of the annual U.S. gross domestic product. By
2005, the total U.S. debt amounted to nearly "three and
a half times the nation's GDP, and not far from the $44
trillion GDP for the entire world," according to Fred
Magdoff.
As a result, mature U.S. corporations have been forced
to export products and investment abroad, to take
advantage of lower wages, weak or nonexistent
environmental and safety standards, and so forth, to
obtain higher profit margins. Today about 18 percent
of total U.S. corporate profits come from direct
overseas investment. Partially to protect these
growing investments, the United States has pursued an
aggressive, interventionist foreign policy across the
globe. As of 2006, the U.S. maintained military bases
in fifty-nine nations. The potential for deploying
military forces in any part of the world is essential
for both political and economic hegemony.
Thus the current Iraq War is not essentially a military
blunder caused by a search for "weapons of mass
destruction," but an imperialist effort to secure
control of the world's second largest proven oil
reserves; Bush also invaded Iraq because it was the
first military step of the Bush administration's
neoconservatives (such as Paul Wolfwitz, now head of
the World Bank) to "remake the Middle East" by
destroying the governments of Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
===
[Manning Marable is Professor Public Affairs, History,
and African-American Studies at Columbia University,
New York City. His column "Along the Color Line"
appears in over 400 publications internationally and is
available at www.manningmarable.net. This article was
published in the Jackson Progressive, and was
republished by ZMag with the kind permission of the
author, who retains all rights.]
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