Middle
East: Imperial Assault
And Tasks For The Left
By Ardeshir Mehrdad
& Alex Callinicos
21 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The present interview
with Alex Callinicos was performed over several weeks by email spanning
late July to mid September. The early questions took place at the start
of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The last five questions were answered
in one go in mid September. Because of the length of the interview it
was not possible to pose any further questions arising out of these
answers.
Ardeshir Mehrdad:
Can we start with the political context. In general terms, how would
you describe the current political situation in the Middle East?
Alex Callinicos: The current situation – not
only but especially in the Middle East – is defined by the imperialist
offensive mounted by the United States and its closest allies (notably
Israel and Britain) since 11 September 2001. Carried out under the slogan
of the ‘war on terrorism’ the real aim of this offensive
is to perpetuate the global domination of US capitalism (hence the title
of the neocon ‘Project for the New American Century’). The
Middle East – and more generally Western Asia (what Zbigniew Brzezinski
calls the ‘the global Balkans’) – is the privileged
site of this struggle, both because of its strategic and economic significance
and because of the setbacks that the US and its allies have suffered,
notably thanks to the effects of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 and
of Israel’s disastrous 1982 Lebanon War.
This imperialist offensive suffers three main problems. First and most
fundamental, it has evoked powerful resistance, above all in Iraq itself,
where the US seems to be bogged down in an unwinnable counter-insurgency
war. We now see Israel too beginning to face similar difficulties thanks
to Hezbollah's very effective defence against the Israel Defence Force’s
assault on Lebanon. Secondly, compared to the 1991 Gulf War, the current
‘war on terrorism’ lacks international legitimacy thanks
to the Bush administration’s unilateralism and its contempt for
human rights (Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram ...). Some commentators,
for example Giovanni Arrighi, argue that we are witnessing a broader
crisis of US hegemony. [1]
Thirdly, the ideological justification of the imperialist offensive
– what Condoleezza Rice calls ‘the birth of a New Middle
East’ with the spread of liberal democracy – is rebounding
on its authors. This is partly because when given the chance to vote
people seem to be backing radical Islamists such as Hamas and the Muslim
Brotherhood. Moreover, by giving legitimacy to democratic demands the
US threatens to undermine its closest Arab allies, for example, the
Saudi autocracy and the Mubarak dynasty in Egypt. Finally, of course,
by allowing Israel to destroy Lebanon, Washington is destroying the
one clear success for its democracy agenda in the region, the so-called
‘cedar revolution’ thanks to which the US and France forced
Syria to pull out of Lebanon.
AM: Before proceeding to the next question you might
wish to clarify and expand on the seriousness of the three main problems
that you suggest challenge the imperialist offensive. Could you, for
example consider following facts: First, the existing resistance movements
operating in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon appear to suffer
from internal weaknesses, resulting predominantly from sectarian rivalries
and factionalist tensions. Second, in recent years the Bush Administration
seems to have modified its unilateralism significantly. The US has been
seeking a broader international consensus over its pre-emptive strategy
as witnessed, at least, in the current referral to the UN Security Council
of the war on Lebanon or the Iran nuclear issue. And third, the power
of corporate media to modify and dampen down the negative impact of
the US Army’s barbaric behaviour in the region, and to conjure
up spurious ideological justifications for the continuation of its military
aggression.
AC: These are big issues. I’m afraid I disagree
with you on all three supposed ‘facts’. First of all, when
it comes to ‘sectarian rivalries and factional tensions’
it’s important to draw distinctions. What we have seen across
the whole region is a process in which the leadership of resistance
to US imperialism and Israel has passed from secular nationalists and
the left to the Islamists. This process began with the Iranian Revolution
of 1978-9 but we have seen some very important developments in the past
few months, notably with Hamas’s defeat of Fatah in the elections
to the Palestine Authority and the enormous acclaim that Hezbollah and
its leader Nasrallah have received through the region for their resistance
to the IDF. It’s misleading to describe this as ‘factionalism’.
It is a historic shift that is a consequence of the political failure
of secular nationalists and the left. We may not welcome this development
– as a revolutionary Marxist I don’t, though I am glad that
someone is seriously taking on the imperialists – but we have
to recognize it if the left is ever to re-emerge in the Middle East.
The case of Iraq has to be mentioned separately because it is so complex.
Here the resistance, which appears to be a loose collection of Iraqi
Ba’athists, nationalists, and Islamists based mainly in the Sunni
Arab areas have succeeded in mounting a counter-insurgency war that,
to repeat, the US shows no sign of winning. (It is essential to distinguish
the mainstream of this resistance from the sectarian terrorists of Al
Qaeda in Mesopotamia, formed by the late and unlamented Zarqawi.) The
US sought to isolate the resistance through a policy of divide-and-rule,
and in particular by allying itself to those political leaders of the
Shia majority who, though having very different agendas from Washington
(most obviously, often close links with Tehran), were prepared to advance
their interests through collaboration with the occupation.
This policy has now badly rebounded on the occupiers. Strategically
it has strengthened Iran, thanks to its influence on the Shia politicians
who dominate the Iraqi client regime. Politically the biggest single
bloc in the Iraqi parliament, the supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, belong
to the ruling coalition, but also oppose the occupation and have just
mounted a mass demonstration in Sadr City in solidarity with Hezbollah.
Finally, and disastrously from a human perspective, divide-and-rule,
and the government death squads that it licensed have unleashed large-scale
sectarian killings, particularly in Baghdad, that have developed a dynamic
of their own. Last week the Commander of US Central Command, General
Abizaid, acknowledged that ‘it is possible that Iraq could move
towards civil war’. [2] The disintegration of Iraq, which might
be the result of such a war, would not work to the advantage of the
US. That was why George Bush senior decided to leave Saddam Hussein
in power at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
Secondly, the administration of George Bush junior radicalized the unilateralism
that was already a visible feature of US global policy during the 1990s
under Clinton. Conquering Iraq was supposed to vindicate the Bush Doctrine
of unilateral preventive war, first unfolded at West Point on 1 June
2002. Instead, of course, the US has bogged down in Iraq, which has
gravely limited its ability to deal with other crises such as North
Korea’s nuclear programme and the challenge of Hugo Chávez
and the new left in Latin America. One wing of the American ruling class,
represented by Brzezinski and Brent Scrowcroft, Bush senior’s
National Security Adviser, say the Bush administration have behaved
like idiots in abandoning multilateralism: they need the European Union
in particular as junior partner in running the world.
What has happened since Condoleezza Rice took over as Secretary of State
in January 2005 has been contradictory. On the one hand, she has tilted
towards the critics, in particular by involving the other major powers
in the negotiations over North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear
programmes. On the other hand, the administration’s rhetoric,
most notably in Bush’s Second Inaugural Address, has if anything
become harder in affirming what one might call Wilsonian imperialism
– using the power of the US to spread American-style liberal democracy
world-wide.
The present war in the Lebanon demonstrates that Rice’s more multilateralist
style is a tactical adjustment, reflecting an accommodation to the limits
of American power rather than a strategic reorientation. The Iraqi quagmire
has encouraged the administration to see the Islamic Republican regime
in Iran as the major obstacle to securing its objectives in the Middle
East. Hence the war plans revealed by Seymour Hersh back in April. It’s
clear the administration saw the Lebanon crisis as a heaven-sent opportunity
to weaken Tehran through Israel ‘degrading’ Hezbollah, a
powerful and strategically placed guerrilla movement closely allied
to Iran. The crisis has also highlighted America’s crisis of international
legitimacy since it has been almost alone, backed only by Israel itself
and by Britain, in opposing an immediate cease fire in Lebanon. The
US is negotiating with France now because it needs French troops in
Lebanon – this is a sign of weakness, not strength, on both its
part and that of Israel.
Thirdly, I don’t really see Iraq as a good example of the power
of the corporate media. In the US itself public opinion has turned against
the war much more quickly than it did in the case of Vietnam. The evident
American failure in Iraq is one of the main causes of the rapid decline
in Bush’s popularity since Hurricane Katrina a year ago. In Britain
today Tony Blair is hugely unpopular, above all because of his close
support for Bush in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Lebanon. It’s true
that it’s hard to translate this popular opposition into the removal
of the politicians responsible for these disasters, but this reflects
the nature of the political system rather than the ability of the media
to deceive people about what’s really happening.
AM: In order to clarify the substance of my previous
question and to arrive at a more accurate picture of the political conditions
pertaining in the Middle East, and also as revolutionary Marxists in
order to arrive at the means to a better prospect for the region, it
might be better to recast my previous questions in a different mould.
Let us assume that the problems facing the imperialist offensive are
those you have enumerated. We then have to answer two questions. First
– how durable and robust are these problems (as they stand today)?
What are their significances and how effective are they? Are they capable
of acting as a real barrier against the implementation of the imperialist
projects of the US and her allies or merely elements that increase the
cost of these projects? Second – can the current situation in
the Middle East be reduced to the various obstacles lying on the route
of imperialist aggression? Are there in the current political context
in the Middle East no other factors or grounds that facilitate the furtherance
of the dominating imperialist offensive?
You will appreciate that your previous explanations are not entirely
clear on this score. It is indeed correct that presently the Islamist
movements (or to put it in more general terms, religious and/or ethnic
ultra-conservative movements) play an important role in the regional
political arena. Indeed they have a greater weight than seculars and
leftists in the resistance struggles against the US imperialist assault.
It is equally true that this superiority is an expression of a “historic
shift”, the roots of which should be sought, among others, in
the political defeats of secular nationalist, socialist and communist
movements. But such a reasonable emphasis cannot excuse ignoring the
internal weaknesses of the present resistance and to leave out this
feature from our analysis of the conditions pertaining in the region.
Specifically, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the domination
of religious and ethnic sectarianism or political factionalism on large
parts of the anti-imperialist resistance has reduced its mobilising
power. It has meant that the entire popular potentials of resistance
in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan (which you chose not to
mention) cannot be mobilised, nor work in tandem. It has prevented the
Muslim, Jew, Christian (Assyrian, Armenians, Maronites), and Zoroastrian;
Shi’i, Sunni, Bahaii, and Sheikhi; the religious and agnostic;
the Kurd, Arab, Persian, Turkmen, Turk, Pashto, Bluchi, Hazareh, and
Tajik to see themselves as belonging to the same camp. A camp determined
to stand up to the new order of slavery that is in the process of being
engineered by the Pentagon and other imperialist agencies.
Moreover, the fact that the Bush administration has radicalised unilateralism
does not mean that this government has become paralysed and has lost
its ability to manoeuvre. We have witnessed that this same government,
as you rightly pointed out, has to a great extent albeit tactically,
reduced the problem of “international legitimacy” in pursuing
the “war against terrorism” through a series of retreats
from its previous unilateralist action. One can observe this in the
behaviour of the UN Security Council in confronting Israel’s barbaric
military assault on Palestine and Lebanon, or over the Iran nuclear
issue. It demonstrates that despite the crisis of hegemony, the Bush
government can still line up the “international community”
in support of its policies and conduct in the Middle East.
And finally, if it is true that today’s Iraq is not a good illustration
the power of the corporate media in shaping public opinion, Iran is.
The strong American public opinion support for a new offensive in the
Middle East and a military intervention in Iran, even while the US military
machine is still sunk in the Iraqi quagmire, cannot be explained except
through the illusion-creating power of the corporate media (see for
example: USA TODAY/CNN Gallup Poll www.usatoday.com/news/polls/2006-02-13-poll.htm
and Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Pool www.pollingreport.com/iran.htm).
AC: There’s no law that says you have to agree
with what I say, but I’m becoming worried that the interview will
become bogged down by the repetition of the same questions. Maybe going
deeper may help to short-circuit this problem. If we want to understand
what underlies the difficulties facing the US in the Middle East we
have to look at the more fundamental situation of American capitalism.
There is a basic discrepancy between its economic and military power.
Militarily the US enjoys massive conventional and nuclear superiority
over any combination of other states. Economically, however, it faces
deep-seated problems of competitiveness reflecting the challenge from
other centres of capital accumulation – Germany, Japan, China,
etc. – that are expressed in the so-called global imbalances,
notably the US balance of payments deficit, which has to be financed
by a massive inflow of capital, mainly from East Asia. As both David
Harvey and I have argued, the neocon adventure in Iraq was intended
as the beginning of a ‘flight forward’ – the use of
American military superiority to reinforce Washington’s domination
of the Middle East and thereby to begin to freeze a global balance of
forces that entrenched the hegemony of US capitalism. [3]
The significance of this context of the resistance in Iraq is that it
has helped to precipitate a ‘crisis of overstretch’ for
American imperialism – in other words, a crisis that highlights
the limits of US power. These limits are partly military – notoriously
the relatively small hi-tech force that Rumsfeld insisted the Pentagon
used, rejecting his generals’ demands for far more troops, was
strong enough to seize Iraq but not enough to control the country. [4]
They are also political – Washington’s inability to find
a popular base in Iraq (or indeed elsewhere in the Middle East) for
the kind of political project it is pursuing: hence the increasingly
problematic alliance it has had to forge with the Shia parties in Iraq.
As I have already noted, being tied down in Iraq has limited Washington’s
ability to take initiatives elsewhere. You see the resulting retreats
as successful manoeuvres that have allowed the administration to contain
the crisis of international legitimacy, but it is hardly a convincing
demonstration of US supremacy to be forced to renounce, for the present
at least, serious moves against Kim Jong-il or Chávez: before
the outbreak of the Lebanon war, many neocons were complaining about
Bush’s ‘appeasement’ of North Korea and Iran. As to
Lebanon itself, if you really believe that this is going well for the
US and Israel, you are alone in the world. I prefer the judgement of
my friend and comrade Gilbert Achcar, who has written: ‘Whatever
the final outcome of the ongoing war in Lebanon, one thing is already
clear: instead of helping in raising the sinking ship of the US Empire,
the Israeli rescue boat has actually aggravated the shipwreck, and is
currently being dragged down with it.’ [5]
This crisis of overstretch doesn’t reflect an absolute scarcity
of the material resources available to American imperialism. By the
standards of the Cold War, let alone the Second World War, US defence
spending constitutes a relatively small percentage of national income.
In principle, then, the Pentagon could greatly increase its military
capabilities. But this would require much higher levels of taxation
than the American rich would find comfortable. It’s also quite
possible that the East Asian and European ruling classes would balk
at lending the US the money it would need to pursue a much more aggressive
military project given that America has already overwhelming superiority
over the rest of the world. The economic and geopolitical situation
is very different from the late 1940s and the early 1950s, when Washington
was able to brigade together the advanced capitalist world under its
leadership and pay for the entire enterprise itself.
This brings me to the question that you repeat about factionalism. How
serious a problem the divisions you itemize are depends on the criterion
by which you judge the resistance. If you are simply considering the
resistance in terms of its capacity to disrupt and impede the US project,
then these divisions aren’t decisive. Iraq clearly shows this.
So does Afghanistan, which for some reason you imagine I am trying to
avoid discussing.
What’s been happening there very clearly illustrates the general
crisis of overstretch. The US has been trying to cut down its commitments
in Afghanistan by getting Canada and the European Union to take over
much of the country under the aegis of NATO. Meanwhile, the farcical
Karzai regime clearly has very limited control outside Kabul. The absence
of any worthwhile government in the south has created a space in which
the ‘Taliban’ (in fact we know very little about who is
fighting the US and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan) can resume
activity and rebuild support. The NATO troops now participating in the
US-led offensive in the south have run slap bang into much stronger
resistance than they anticipated. It’s true that all this further
reinforces the fragmentation of Afghanistan, a process that has been
going on, through the interaction of outside powers and domestic political
forces, for more than a quarter century. [6] But this fragmentation
is a problem for the US in attempting to construct a viable client regime
capable of ruling Afghanistan as a whole.
If we are assessing the resistance forces in terms of their ability
to develop what Gramsci would call a hegemonic project – that
is, by their capacity to present a programme that offers a way forward
for society at large, then the picture is different. The sectarian Sunni
jihadis of Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly incapable of such a project.
But I don’t think this is true of all of political Islam. In this
context, I find your formulation of ‘religious and/or ethnic ultra-conservative
movements’ unhelpful analytically and politically, since it reduces
all forms of Islamism to reactionary identity politics. One dimension
of Islam’s ideological power has always been that the concept
of the umma is a universalist and therefore potentially an inclusive
notion.
One very interesting development that is currently taking place is the
drawing together of Shia Islamist radicalism – the Iranian regime,
Hezbollah, the Sadrists in Iraq – with the mother ship of Sunni
Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and its close ally Hamas.
Is this just a temporary tactical convergence reflecting the fact that
these forces have common enemies or will it prove to be a more long-term
political and ideological realignment? This is an important question
for the left if it is to begin to develop its own hegemonic project.
In this context it’s worth pointing out that I didn’t just
refer to ‘the political defeats of secular nationalist, socialist
and communist movements’, but to their failure – in other
words, to their proven inability to develop successful hegemonic projects
in societies such as Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, which created the
political space the Islamists have now filled. This is a question that
requires considerable analysis and discussion.
Finally back again to the question of ‘the illusion-creating power
of the corporate media’. The problem with using this factor to
explain American public opinion’s support for an attack on Iran
is that it can’t account for the fact that this same public opinion
has turned against the war in Iraq. We need to have a much more differentiated
analysis of how the corporate media exert an influence as part of quite
a complex constellation of forces that varies over time and according
to the issue. My guess is that the decisive factor weighing with the
American public over Iran is the memory of the humiliations the US suffered
during and after the 1978-9 revolution (the Embassy crisis etc), reinforced
by the more general Islamophobia that is a major constituent of contemporary
racism, and renewed by Ahmadinejad’s campaign against Israel.
This campaign seems to have been very effective in winning support for
Tehran in the Arab and Muslim world but it has had the opposite effect
in countries where there is a strong Israel lobby.
It is interesting that in the US and Germany more people see Iran as
a great threat to world peace than the number of those who believe the
American presence in Iraq is a major threat, but the opposite is true
in Britain, France, and Spain. [7] This contrast suggests that we are
not just the prisoners of structural forces such as the corporate media:
for example, the kind of determined but broadly based anti-war movement
that we have in Britain can have help bring about a dramatic change
in popular attitudes,
AM: I understand your concerns and share in them. In
the rest of our dialogue I will try to avoid repetition of questions
and for the interview entering a close circuit, even where I feel that
my questions may remain unanswered.
You will doubtless be aware that many of the revolutionary left’s
past and present mistakes are rooted in optimistic or pessimistic, and
indeed reductionist and one-sided, analyses of processes and phenomena.
It may be no exaggeration to say that one of the main reasons that the
socialist and Marxist left was marginalised in the political arena of
the last few decades in many countries (including Iran), and the failure
of its efforts to build a better and more humane society, is rooted
in these kinds of formulations in its analyses and assessments. My emphases
in previous questions were merely attempts to arrive with your help,
to the extent possible in an interview, at an accurate and multidimensional
understanding of the political arena of the Middle East – an area
whose developments will undoubtedly have profound effects on the future
of our planet. In my view your replies, particularly where it describes
the existing structural and political obstacles to the imperialist assault
on the region were illuminating. I certainly learnt much from it.
In continuation, and in a closer look, I would like to ask you opinion
on the other actors in the political scenes of the Middle East. We know
that alongside imperialism and the governments of the region (one or
perhaps two exceptions apart, dictatorial and corrupt to the marrow)
it is difficult to deny the effects of collective political actions
in shaping to the developments of the region. Clearly these actions
cannot be limited to the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist resistance
(of which we have spoken above) and extent to other issues. Among these
issues one can identify: ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, and national
inequalities and oppression, class inequalities and poverty, and political
despotism (religious or secular).
The Middle East today is witness to the growth and spread of numerous
socio-political movements among which three groups stand out. First,
the nationalist movements of the oppressed nations and ethnic groups.
(for instance Arabs, Baluchi, and Azari in Iran, Turkmen in Iraq and
Iran, and Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran). Second the secular
anti-dictatorial and democratic movements for freedom and legal equality
(with growing roots among women, students, intellectuals, religious
minorities – especially in Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq). Third,
anti-capitalist movements fighting particularly against neo-liberal
policies (with an expanding social base among urban and rural working
people and the most deprived in most of the countries of the region).
Where do you see the place and role these movements in the current political
developments of the region?
Before concluding the question, I would like your indulgence to make
two points in relation to my previous question. First, I too do not
believe that Israel’s attack on Lebanon, with all its potential
contradictory results, has had any positive result for Israel or America.
Moreover, I do not think that in essence my comments on Lebanon in the
previous question could have permitted such a conclusion. Yet however
we interpret the results of the Israeli attack on Lebanon, it is undeniably
true that the US was able to line up the “international community”
behind it in addressing this assault and was able to create conditions
where for nearly a month the UN Security Council watched the slaughter
of Lebanese women and children without batting an eyelid!
Second, I agree with you that there are real differences between the
Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and
the Islamic regime in Iran. It is vital for the left to pay attention
to these differences in formulating policy. Yet, in my view, it is equally
important to pay attention to the existing parallels between them. If
we assume that political ideology and social and economic platforms
are key factors in these parallels, then I do not believe “ultra-conservative”
as a concept, provides us with a less useful analytical tool than the
“radicalism” used by you. What are your views on these points?
AC: Look, I’m not an expert on contemporary Middle
Eastern political movements, and therefore I can’t answer your
main question in any detail. Let me make three points. First of all,
I certainly agree that multi-dimensional analysis is required. But I
don’t accept that the main problem with the left in the region
is theoretical reductionism. What for many decades crippled the left
in the Middle East was the formative influence of Stalinist ideology
in one form or other and in particular of the idea that the main political
task was to construct broad class alliances, including in particular
the ‘progressive’, ‘national’ section of the
bourgeoisie, against imperialism and its local allies and clients.
This led the left to a schizophrenic attitude towards the non-socialist
forces confronting imperialism – in the past, the secular nationalists
(Nasser, Qasim, the different sections of Ba’athism, Fatah, etc),
more recently the Islamists. I think in many cases one can document
an oscillation between political subordination to whoever was identified
as representing the interests of the national bourgeoisie and denouncing
these forces as completely reactionary, fascist, etc. This certainly
implied a one-sided analysis since it failed to grasp the contradictory
character of bourgeois nationalism (and here I intend this expression
to cover some of the Islamists as well as Nasserites, Ba’athists
and the like), which can, in concrete circumstances, lead real struggles
against imperialism but will nevertheless subordinate these struggles
to its class aspiration to build its own capitalist state, and therefore,
ultimately, come to terms with the dominant powers. I stress all this
because these political problems haven’t gone away: I’ll
return to this below
Secondly, if we look as the different political movements in the Middle
East, it seems to me that one can identify there main trends. The first
consists in the remnants of secular nationalism and Communism. These
survive to varying degrees but are enormously weakened and greatly disoriented.
Witness, for example, what has happened to the Iraqi Communist Party,
once the most important CP in the Middle East, now shamed by the collaboration
of one section in the US occupation of Iraq. And I understand some Communist
fragments elsewhere in the region expressed sympathy with the invasion
of Iraq as a way of getting rid of Saddam. This is a kind of reductio
ad absurdum of Popular Front politics – to imagine American imperialism
as an ally in the democratic struggle! Of course, there are still many
excellent revolutionaries who haven’t capitulated (there are,
for example, fine Iraqi Communists involved in the British anti-war
movement), but the left is deeply marked by defeat and failure.
The second trend is much more interesting, because it represents a new
secular force. I am thinking of a very influential tendency in the democracy
movements in countries like Egypt and Iran. The dominant discourse is
very familiar from the example of non-governmental organizations elsewhere
in the world, as well as that of the movement for another globalization
– that of ‘civil society’ as a distinct sphere separate
from the state asserting human rights against the existing regime. It
is essential to respond positively to this trend as it has given expression
to the entry of a new generation into political activity against reactionary
regimes.
But it is important also to stress that this ideology is an ambiguous
one, reflecting the fact ‘civil society’ itself is a vague
concept that isn’t clearly differentiated from the market economy.
Those influenced by it can move in a radical, anti-capitalist direction
if they recognize the power of the transnational corporations, which
greatly limits the extent of capitalist democracy, but it is necessary,
especially in the Middle Eastern context, to go further and identify
the interrelations between economics and geopolitics and therefore the
close connections binding the main Arab regimes to US imperialism. If
the ideology of civil society is not deepened and radicalized, then
the danger is that it can be used by those in the region who see their
interests as being advanced by the Bush administration’s ‘new
Middle East’ policy and by the implementation of neo-liberal economic
policies. Ayman Nour and his followers in Egypt are a good example of
this option, as was the ‘cedar revolution’ last year in
Lebanon.
Finally, there are of course the Islamists. This brings me to my third
general point. I accept that ‘radicalism’ isn’t a
very precise term, but it is still a lot better than ‘ultra-conservatism’.
Anyone who at present denounces Nasrallah, for example, as an ultra-conservative
will simply make a fool of themselves. Here again we need a careful
and differentiated analysis, not simply of the concrete varieties of
Islamism but also of what American political scientists would call different
issue-areas. Depending on the issue, different forces may seem more
or less radical.
Thus if one were to identify the main ideological element at work in
popular mentalities in the Middle East it would be anti-imperialist
nationalism. The reasons for this are obvious – reactivated memories
of the colonial past, the scale and visibility of the Western domination
of the region, the constantly renewed wound of Israel, and the pathetic
subordination of most Arab regimes to Washington. What the historic
shift I referred to earlier represents is the Islamists taking over
the mantle of leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle from the secular
nationalists and the left. To the extent to which they translate words
into action, as Hezbollah have against Israel, then, on this central
issue they cannot be described as ‘ultra-conservative’.
Of course, when it comes to social and economic issues the picture is
different – the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, supports privatization
in Egypt. But even here one has to be careful. Both the Brotherhood
and Hezbollah have cultivated a popular base among the urban poor through
their welfare programmes, something that one can’t imagine American
Republicans or British Tories doing.
In any case one has to analyse the ideologies of different Islamist
political forces as totalities. Anti-imperialist nationalism isn’t,
as Ernest Laclau has argued for many years, a neutral ‘element’
that can be combined with others to make an indefinitely broad variety
of different political ideologies: it has a definite class content.
[8] Anti-imperialist nationalism is the ideology of an actual or aspirant
capitalist class that seeks the way to its own independent state blocked
by imperialism and therefore must mobilize the masses to help break
down this obstacle.
As I have already indicated, the logic of such movements is to subordinate
the interests of workers and other exploited classes to those of the
bourgeois leadership. This is what explains the many defeats the left
has suffered in the region. It is important to point out at this particular
juncture, in the face of the euphoria created by Hezbollah’s successful
resistance to the IDF, that though its leaders dress differently and
use a different ideological language from those, say, of Fatah, they
can repeat the same mistakes by, for example, tying their movement to
presently supportive states such as the Islamic Republican regime in
Iran and the Assad regime in Syria that may well be prepared to use
it as a bargaining chip in their pursuit of their own geopolitical interests.
AM: I think discussing political Islam requires a separate
interview. I will therefore limit myself to posing only two further
questions regarding the application of “anti-imperialism nationalism”
to characterize the political ideology of Islamism.
First: There is no doubt that in their conflict with imperialism, Islamist
movements usually rely on nationalist rhetoric, as well as, on the nationalist
sentiments of the people as their main instrument to gain mass support.
However, considering the fact that concepts such as “umaat”
are opposed to nation, the fact that Islamist movements distinguish
between “mo’men” (believer) as opposed to “kaafar”
(non-believer) and consider such distinctions central to their political
ideology, how useful would it be to apply nationalism in trying to identify
these movements? Furthermore, historically speaking how can we, for
instance, bridge the huge distance between the pan-Islamism of Khomeini
or Kashani (the spiritual leader of Fada’ian-e Islam who supported
the 1953 CIA coup) and the nationalism of Mossadegh or Fatemi, one giving
priority to the national interests of Iran and the other to the interests
of political Islam and Islamic world revolutionary movement in absolutely
opposite directions to each other? In fact the ultra-nationalist tendencies
of Khomeinism have determined even the definition of the main organs
of the Islamic political system in Iran. Constitutionally, the leadership
of Islamic Republic (vali-e faghih) is defined as the head of the Islamic
revolution (Enghelaab-e Mahdi), and the Revolutionary Guards are described
as the army of this revolution, both non-territorial and non-national
in terms of their role and their political geography.
Second: as you suggest, Islamist forces are currently the most powerful
agents in the struggle against imperialism and Zionism in the region.
However, we know that both the Taliban and Al- Qaidah developed under
the supervision of Berzhinsky, or that Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood
owe their initial successes to the support of Israel. The positions
of the main Shia organizations in Iraq (Hezb-al-Daveh and Majles-e-Ala)
or the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) in Turkey do not need any elaboration.
In addition, the Iran-Contra affair or the Iranian collaboration with
imperialist aggression on Afghanistan and Iraq should suffice to demonstrate
the contradictory nature of the anti western and anti-imperialist positions
of the Islamic regime in Iran. Considering these facts, do you think
one can apply the term anti-Imperialist as an epithet to all political
Islamist movements worldwide (regardless of the stage of development
or the political circumstances in which they are acting). Could this
provide us with a useful analytical tool?
I do not need to remind you that the declared aim of these movements
is the seizure of state power and aimed reconstruction of social and
political structures of countries with majority Muslim populations according
to their interpretation of Sharia’.
AC: To be frank, I think the question of political
Islam dominates the concluding questions of this interview. That is
as it should be, since it is a very important reality that any revolutionary
socialist strategy in the Middle East has to confront. I think we should
treat Islamism, not as something unique or diabolical, but as a socio-political
phenomenon that must be understood using the normal Marxist tools of
historical interpretation. That means we should learn how to read different
Islamist ideologies and organizations in order to locate them precisely
within the political field and within the larger constellation of social
forces nationally, regionally, and globally. [9]
Consequently, of course I don’t think ‘one can apply the
term “anti-imperialist” as an epithet to all political Islamist
movements word-wide’. On the contrary, I said that the classical
Marxist analysis of bourgeois anti-imperialist nationalism applied to
‘some of the Islamists’. One has to be very concrete: the
Saudi monarchy, one of the closest allies of American imperialism in
the Middle East, is legitimized by the same version of Sunni Wahhabi
Islam as is invoked by bin Laden and al Qaeda in waging a global war
against the US.
As to your specific points, I myself noted that the Islamic concept
of the umma is a transnational one. Al Qaeda draws on this ideological
resource in order to project itself globally. But it would be a mistake
to conclude from this that Islamism is inherently incompatible with
nationalism. Gramsci stressed long ago that ideologies are concrete
combinations of specific elements sometimes deriving from different
historical periods and articulating the interests of different classes
(though in each case one class interest tends to predominate). In both
Stalinism and social democracy, socialism, an inherently internationalist
ideology, coexisted with and was dominated by a form of nationalism.
If we want to understand the political success of Islamist movements,
and in particular their role in anti-imperialist struggles in the Middle
East today, one has to see how this has involved appropriating themes
from the broader nationalist mentalities prevailing in the popular masses
and combining them with interpretations of Islam.
Secondly, of course you are right that different Islamist tendencies
and regimes that may now present themselves as anti-imperialist have
a history of collaborating with imperialism but I’m not sure what
this proves. Yes, al Qaeda emerged from the war against the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan, in which the CIA, the British SIS and the Pakistani
ISI were instrumental in orchestrating the armed struggle of the mujahedin.
But it’s no secret that bin Laden’s relationship to the
US has changed a little since then. Yes, the ISI (not Brzezinski, who
was long before out of office in Washington) were very actively involved
in the foundation of the Taliban, but this doesn’t alter the fact
that today in Afghanistan the Taliban (maybe still with the support
of elements of the ISI) is fighting and killing American, British, and
Canadian soldiers.
And yes, to take the example that probably interests you most, it’s
true that the Reagan administration supplied arms to Iran in the mid-1980s,
both to fund the Contra attacks on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and
to keep Iran and Iraq preoccupied with the war between them. But when
the policy was exposed it proved very controversial in the American
ruling class, fundamentally because since the fall of the Shah the Islamic
Republican regime has been regarded by the US as a strategic enemy and
therefore such manoeuvres were seen as undermining the long-term interests
of American imperialism. Hence, in 1986-88, in the wake of the scandal
and in response to the prospect of an Iranian victory over Iraq, American
naval and air power was deployed to ensure that Saddam won. Of course,
that policy shift in turn rebounded against the US when Saddam grabbed
Kuwait in August 1990, but the result was not reconciliation with Tehran
but the policy of ‘dual containment’ aimed at both Iran
and Iraq and pursued by Bush Senior and by Clinton after the 1991 Gulf
War.
It’s important to stress this history because it would be a huge
mistake to conclude from the fact that Tehran and Washington collaborated
in the mid-1980s that Bush Junior isn’t serious in his threats
of war against Iran. As I have already noted, his administration’s
attempt to break out of the straitjacket of dual containment by overthrowing
Saddam has strengthened Iran. The Lebanon war was an attempt to isolate
Iran by removing one of its main allies, Hezbollah. Israel’s defeat
may, if anything, make Washington more determined on a direct attack
on Iran in order to shift the regional balance of forces back in its
favour.
The fact that the Islamic Republican regime was prepared, despite its
anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist declarations, to collaborate with
the US and Israel in the mid-1980s (and indeed on other occasions as
well, for example the early stages of the ‘war on terrorism’)
shows it is not a consistent opponent of imperialism. But this is precisely
what I was arguing earlier. It is of the essence of bourgeois nationalists
that, when imperialism prevents them for building their own independent
capitalist state, they may lead struggles against it, but they are striving
to carve out a place for themselves within the existing system, not
to overthrow it. This means that, sooner or later, they will come to
terms with imperialism, just as Nehru and Nasser, Mandela and Gerry
Adams all did.
I think some of what you say tends to idealize secular nationalism.
For example, you talk about Mossadegh ‘giving priority to the
national interests of Iran’: what are these ‘national interests’?
Do they transcend class antagonisms? Did Mossadegh represent the harmonious
unity of workers, peasants, and capitalists in Iran? I don’t think
so. That is why the development of independent socialist politics and
organization is so important in order to articulate the distinct class
project of the working class.
AM: In the campaigns that have taken shape for creating
“another world”, where and do you consign the importance
and place of any efforts to create a “new Middle East”?
What developments are necessary to bring us nearer to building a better
Middle East? From your perspective what are the obligation of the left
and progressive forces in Europe and America in this regard?
AC: First of all I wouldn’t talk about a ‘new
Middle East’ because this is the slogan of the Bush administration’s
policy of ‘democratic’ imperialism. Given the strategic
importance of the Middle East and the suffering of its peoples at the
hands of their ‘own’ regimes, Israel, and the Western powers,
the development of a real left in the region is very urgent. That left
can begin to emerge through the coming together of three agendas –
democratic (dismantling of the dictatorships, winning of real citizenship
rights for the entire population, equality for women and for other oppressed
groups, etc.) , social (against the exploitation of workers and peasants,
poverty and economic inequality, neo-liberal ‘reforms’,
for redistribution of land and other forms of wealth etc.), and anti-imperialist
(against the occupations in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, against
the Western military presence and alliances, against any new wars).
As the example of the democracy movements cited above illustrates, any
left that fails to address all three agendas doesn’t deserve the
name. The duty of the left in the imperialist countries is to help nurture
and support any signs of such a left emerging in the Middle East. This
means, above all, solidarity which needs to be directed particularly
in two areas – (1) campaigning against the Western and Israeli
occupations and in support of those resisting them, (2) against repression,
especially though of course not exclusively when it is practised by
regimes closely allied to the US and Britain.
AM: Part of the left in Europe and America, when deciding
on the stance they need to take in response to imperialist intervention
confine themselves to a mirror image of the imperialist position and
in the first instance the US government. Wherever imperialism places
a negative mark, they automatically replace it by a positive, and vice
versa. For example tension or conflict between Washington and the regime
of any country is enough for that regime to be labelled “progressive”
and the revolutionary or socialist duty becomes not only to oppose the
interventionist imperialist policies and actions or defend the right
of self determination (or sovereignty) of the people of that country,
but to go further and to directly support the regime. It does not matter
if Castro or Chavez is ruling there or Saddam and Milosovitch, or Robert
Mugabe and Ayatollah Khameni’i. Also the real content of the conflict
between that regime and Washington appears to matter little, nor what
are the relationship of that regime with its people (even ignoring specifically
how it deals with its workers, peasants and working people). Some go
so far as to consider any form of criticism to the policies of such
regimes as aiding and abetting imperialism and condemn it with the justification
that such criticisms provide the ideological excuse for imperialist
intervention and aggression. In the face of such behaviour what do you
consider is a principled stance. Particularly where the footprints of
corrupt, repressive and anti-people regimes are visible, which position
do you support?
AC: I find your description very general and lacking
in concrete examples. I can best respond by stating my own view. At
the heart of Marxism is the idea of socialism as the self-emancipation
of the working class. Therefore what counts is the self-activity of
the masses. Existing regimes and states, all of which part of the capitalist
world system, have to be judged in the light of this overall conception
of socialism. But a key feature of global capitalism is that the world
is organized into a system of states in which a few – the imperialist
powers – dominate the rest economically, politically, and militarily.
This poses the question of what stance Marxists should take when states
fight each other.
Now it is possible to argue that since the conflicting parties are all
capitalist states the left should, as a matter of principle, take no
interest in who wins. This is the line anarchists generally take, but
it is one that the great Marxists, from the revolutions of 1848 onwards,
have always rejected. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky all judged the
wars of their day from the standpoint of what would advance the interests
of the international working class. We should do the same now. So, when
the US fights some corrupt and repressive Third World state we should
ask: whose side’s victory will be less harmful to the interests
of the world working class? Given the role of the US as the main imperialist
power maintaining the global relations of capitalist exploitation and
domination, the question answers itself: the defeat of the US is in
these cases the better outcome.
Does this mean that we should remain silent about the character of the
regime (or movement) fighting the US, concealing its class character
and denying its crimes? Absolutely not. I look forward to the moment
when the Iranian working class resumes the work it left unfinished in
1978-9 and sweeps aside the Islamic Republican regime and indeed the
capitalist class itself. But, all the same, if the US were to attack
Iran tomorrow, under the present regime, the better outcome would be
if the US lost – even if, as it probably would, this temporarily
strengthened the regime. The global weakening of the relations of domination,
the greater space for mass struggle and initiative that would result
from a US defeat make this outcome the lesser evil.
This problem isn’t a new one. In 1937 Japan invaded China. The
ruling Kuomintang regime had drenched the Communist movement in blood
when it crushed the revolutionary wave of 1925-7. Nevertheless, Trotsky
argued that Chinese revolutionary Marxists should work for the defeat
of Japan, an imperialist power seeking to colonize China. He defined
the appropriate stance as one of political opposition but military support
for the Kuomintang. In other words, if revolutionaries could facilitate
the victory of the Kuomintang against Japan, they should do so, but
they should maintain their political independence and promote the self-activity
of the workers and peasants in order to prepare for the regime’s
overthrow. [10] Of course, there are tensions in this formula, but they
reflect one of the things that I have been stressing all along –
the contradictory nature of anti-imperialist nationalism itself.
AM: Here I ask your indulgence to give a brief introduction
before I pose a question on Iran. The heightening crisis in the relations
between the Bush administration and the regime in Iran in the last few
years has coincided with the appearance and spread of a new wave of
protests and struggles by workers, students, women and the oppressed
nations, ethnic groups and religious minorities in Iran. The protests
and struggles have had in the main a progressive, democratic, freedom-
and equality-seeking content and are in direct confrontation to the
policies and actions of the ruling regime in Iran. The unilateral attention
of left groups in Europe and America on the aggressive policies of imperialism
in the region (which is understandable in present tense atmosphere)
and the tendency in many of these groups unconditionally support the
Iranian regime in its confrontation with imperialism has meant that
the social and mass struggles of the Iranian people remain hidden from
the view of European and American socialists. This inattentiveness has
handed over the discourse over human rights, democracy and freedom entirely
to the neo-conservatives and liberal imperialists. The Voice of America
is the loudest voice heard supporting the protests of the people of
Iran.
The Tehran Bus Drivers have struggled to create an independent trade
union, and for improvement in their living and working conditions (a
struggle that began over a year ago and continues to this day), and
more than 1,200 were arrested without the slightest echo in the left
and revolutionary press of Europe and America. In a peaceful gathering
in Tehran in defence of social and legal rights and for protest against
the policies of sexual apartheid tens of people were beaten up, arrested
and sent to prison without the European and American left raising a
finger in protest. Over the last year we have been witness to widespread
mass protests in a number of cities with Kurd, Arab, Azeri, and Baluch
population to which the regime responded by bloody and savage repression.
Yet the European and American left saw itself without any duties in
relation to the oppressed nations of the country and kept silent in
the face of the repression and killings. At this moment about 10 Iranian
Arab youths are awaiting a death sentence accused of acts that could
be completely without foundation. Yet while everyday thousands of pages
are written to prove the confluence of Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro’s
paths and surface in the publication and web-sites belonging to the
left, yet one can search in vain for one word in support of these victims.
In your view how defensible are these policies on the part of the left
(socialist and communist)? What ideological and morel consequences do
you think these forms of political behaviour will have for the international
left? Should one not consider these behaviours of the same ilk as the
mistakes that, as you pointed out, resulted in the paralysis and weakening
of the left in Iran and the Middle East?
AC: This information is very interesting and important.
It should undoubtedly be more widely publicized in the West, although
I must emphasize that, for example, Action Iran here in Britain has
combined campaigning against a US attack on Iran with stressing the
importance of the social, democratic and national movements with Iran.
I’m maybe less offended that you by the comparison between Castro
and Ahmadinejad because I see them both as bourgeois nationalists (though
of very different kinds). Certainly it is wrong to subordinate the independent
interests of the working class to those of particular nationalist regimes
and movements. But it would be also wrong to imagine for a moment that
American imperialism could free the peoples of Iran from the oppression
you describe.
Of course you don’t imagine this, but then you have to face the
question I have already posed. If Bush attacks Iran tomorrow, which
side are you on? I would be on Iran’s but – as Lenin put
it – I would refuse to paint Ahmadinejad in communist colours;
in other words, I would be for an Iranian victory despite his anti-Semitic
rantings, despite the regime’s capitalist class base, despite
the repression it perpetrates. This is the politics of permanent revolution,
which seeks the overthrow of imperialism and of the local bourgeois
regimes, with the complex relations of collaboration and conflict that
they have with the main capitalist powers.
One final note of warning: the national minorities in Iran were oppressed
under the Shah, and continue to be oppressed under the Islamic Republican
regime (incidentally, this shows how Islamism can co-exist with, in
this case, Farsi nationalism). Revolutionary socialists should support
their right of national self-determination. But, at the same time, we
should remember what has happened with the Kurds of northern Iraq, whose
corrupt and clientilistic leaders have sold themselves lock, stock,
and barrel to US imperialism, providing Washington (and Israel) with
a secure base in Iraq. There have been reports of agents of the US,
Britain, and Pakistan being active among Iran’s national minorities
as part of Bush’s strategy of ‘regime change’. It
is important that the left point to the example of Iraqi Kurdistan as
a warning against the temptation that some in these minorities may have
of improving their position by allying themselves to American imperialism.
AM: How do you see the anti war movement? By its powerful
appearance in the prelude to the Iraq war it raised hopes in a huge
way. You reflected those hopes in your excellent book The New Mandarins
and American Power, which came out that same year. Yet a few years later,
not only did this movement not grow and spread, but we have indeed witnessed
its downturn. Why? In your view can we be optimistic for a resurgence
of this movement? How and in what direction?
AC: It is a common error to use the gigantic protests
of early 2003 to proclaim the death of the anti-war movement. One of
our greatest achievements is used to hang us! The 2003 protests were
on such a scale that they could only go forward by bringing down governments
– which did in fact happen in Spain in March 2004, albeit in an
indirect and complex way. The failure to achieve such an outcome on
a broader scale – and therefore prevent or end the Iraq war –
did lead to a certain ebbing of the anti-war movement relative to the
high point of 15 February 2003, but the extent varied enormously depending
on national conditions. Thus in the US the mainstream of the anti-war
movement (including figures as principled as Chomsky) made the fatal
error of putting their efforts in defeating Bush in 2004 by backing
the pro-war Democrats under John Kerry, a mistake from which they are
only beginning to recover.
By contrast, I think it is completely wrong to describe the condition
of the anti-war movement in Britain as one of ‘downturn’.
The Stop the War Coalition has been able to sustain an astonishingly
high level of mass mobilization for the past five years – a succession
of big demonstrations, usually twice a year, all very big by historic
standards, if not on the scale of 15 February 2003 – and to gain
very deep roots in British society. This is reflected in its ability
to mount two large marches against the Lebanon War at very short notice
and at the height of the summer holidays. More generally, his central
role in engineering the Iraq War fatally damaged Tony Blair’s
government and his complicity in the destruction of Lebanon is helping
to end his premiership.
This contrast suggests that the fate of the anti-war movement has varied
according to the state of the left in different countries. In the US
the left has been crippled by its dependence on the Democrats. The British
anti-war movement has been led by forces of the radical left that have
been able to sustain it in a way that has combined consistent opposition
to imperialism with an emphasis on building on a broad and inclusive
basis. Elsewhere the pattern is confirmed by, for example, the decline
of the Italian anti-war movement, which in 2001-4 mobilized on even
a bigger scale than in Britain, but which has been very negatively affected
by the entry of Rifondazione Comunista into a centre-left coalition
government that is sending troops to Afghanistan and Lebanon.
The international anti-war movement in any case faces a very big challenge.
The Lebanon War confirms that the Bush administration is telling the
truth when it says that it is waging a global war. Iraq, Afghanistan,
Lebanon are all fronts in this war. Iran may be the next one. The involvement
of European troops in both Afghanistan and Lebanon requires a response
for the left throughout the EU. Let us hope that this very threatening
situation will produce an upsurge of anti-war activity, not just in
Europe but globally.
AM: Finally can I ask you to turn to the global anti-capitalist
movement. Where, in your view, does this movement stand today? What
are the real potentials of this movement and what prospects can we expect
for it? As someone who has had an important role in the formation and
persistence of the regional and world social forums, what role do you
think these forums have had in the global anti-capitalist movement and
what role do you see them having in the future?
AC: This introduces some very big questions that extend
well beyond the subject matter of the rest of our discussion. I hope
your readers will forgive me if I refer them to writings where I have
discussed these matters in depth, particularly An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto
(Cambridge, 2003) and my contribution to H. Dee, ed., Anti-Capitalism:
Where Next? (London, 2004). I would be happy to provide this latter
text for translation.
AM: Many thanks for giving your time. I wish you every
success in your struggles.
August/September 2006
Alex Callinicos is a member of the Central Committee
of Socialist Workers Party and Professor of European Studies at Kings
College London. His publications include Trotskyism (1990), The Revolutionary
Ideas of Karl Marx (1999), New Mandarins and American Power (2001),
Anti-capitalist manifesto (2003).
Ardeshir Mehrdad is co-editor of iran-bulletin-Middle
East Forum.
Email: [email protected]