Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.15
DEVELOPMENT OF IMPERIALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND UKRAINE
Development of the conflict in the Middle East
The process of integration of Israel with the rest of the Middle East was accelerating with the Abraham Accords (initiated by the isolationist faction of the US bourgeoisie) in the framework of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and practically from Iraq, the Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement under the auspices of China and the recognition of Israel by Saudi Arabia that was to be imminently announced. This integration counted on a series of obstacles which in turn have violently collided with each other to stop it since the umpteenth detonation of the conflict in the area on October 7th, 2023. In “The Internationalist Proletarian” n.13 (March 2024, p.32-40) we published a report on the development of this military conflict, its causes and the actions of each of those involved to which we refer the reader. Almost a year later, the process has advanced in the following terms.
To the systematic destruction in Gaza was added the systematic assassination by Israel of senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials and leaders as well as several high-ranking Iranian military officers stationed outside Iran, the organized detonation of the pagers in Lebanon (September 17th, 2024) to affect Hezbollah's information network (in a demonstration of Israel's military infiltration and intelligence capabilities) and the invasion of southern Lebanon also by Israel. And this without a serious response from Iran and without the rest of the Arab states intervening against Israel.
It is true that there have been direct attacks by Iran on Israel and vice versa (on April 13th and 19th, 2024, and October 1st and 26th) but these have been telegraphed beforehand. After Iran's first attack, the representative of the US military diplomatic expansion warned Israeli imperialism “’Let me be crystal clear, if you launch a big attack on Iran, you're on your own’, the report quoted Biden as saying, (…) ’You do this, and I'm out’.” (Haaretz, 03-07-2024). After the second, the US went so far as to leak Israel's attack plan to ensure that it did not attack critical oil or military infrastructure in Iran.
The result of the military escalation has been the organizational decapitation and substantial reduction of Hamas forces in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Overlapping with this process, the El Asad regime in Syria, which had withstood the military onslaught of various militias and armies for over a decade, supported by Russia and Iran, and which was in the process of formal rehabilitation in the Arab world, fell like a house of cards in a matter of days (see in this issue the article “Syria: collapse of a decayed regime, capitalist continuity”, p.20).
On the other hand, Israel has increased its diplomatic isolation with international arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against its president and its defense minister (dismissed a few months ago, for the second time) but its soldiers are also subject to arrest warrants in other countries, as is the case of Brazil. Incidentally, before the astonishment and internal blockade of European imperialism, the Israeli army has launched a message in its offensive against South Lebanon, also attacking without much contemplation the soldiers of the so-called United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.
This combination of material facts, added to the fact that the walled-in withdrawal current has once again taken control of the US government, has made possible a cease-fire first in Lebanon (end of November 2024) and then a cease-fire in Gaza (in January 2025). A cease-fire that has been promised for a year but was always sabotaged by one of the parties. A cease-fire imposed by the US, as corroborated by the lamentations of the pro-government Israeli media: “laments began to be heard on Channel 14 (...) ‘It's because Trump is pressing to do it! That's what's happening‘. Zimri: ‘So all his people have been lying – it's a big disappointment. ‘ Magal: ‘He talks about hell and in the meantime sends his envoy to sign a deal. (...) That's the truth’”. (Haaretz, 13-01-2025).
The ceasefire, which for the moment is maintained in Gaza, has not prevented the continuation and even the increase of Israeli military activity in the West Bank by the Israeli Army and also the clashes of the PNA against the rest of the Palestinian armed factions, with the PNA banning the broadcasting of the Qatari television propaganda media Al Jazeera.
Iran's setbacks and advances in the region
Iran has been the capitalist power that has lost the most positions (in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria) and, at the same time, the one that has suffered the most passively from these losses. The new Iranian president spoke of resurrecting the nuclear pact, and Israel eliminated the Hamas leader by assassinating him in Iran itself a month later. He also declared at the UN General Assembly in New York: “’We’re willing to put all our weapons aside so long as Israel is willing to do the same’ (…) ‘If a war erupts in the region, it would serve no one’s interest‘, he said. ‘We don’t want to fight. (…).’” (Bloomberg, 23-09-2024), and within a week Israel eliminated the apparently untouchable Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah.
The reason was to try to get out of its isolation, to avoid being dragged into a war that would give a competitive advantage to those not involved (remember the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988) and to maintain the relations with the Arab countries that it has been building up after the agreement with Saudi Arabia and its entry into the BRICS.
These relations could be seen, for example, at the funeral of Iran's president (Raisi), dead in a helicopter crash in May 2024, which was attended by foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, the emir of Qatar, the president of Tunisia, representatives of Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, as well as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Russia and China sent low-level officials. At the UN, African, Latin American and Asian countries and the UN Secretary General also expressed their condolences.
Shipment of weapons by the US
Despite the internal blockades between the different fractions of its bourgeoisie, the United States has maintained the flow of arms to Israel: “the U.S. State Department has informed Congress of its plan to send $8 billion worth of U.S.-made weapons to Israel. (...) Many of the weapons are not intended for immediate use but will instead enter a manufacturing pipeline, with delivery potentially taking years.” (Haaretz, 04-01-2025). The item that was blocked was the bombs over 900 kg and has been unblocked by the new US government: “President Donald Trump ended a Biden administration hold on supplying 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.” (Bloomberg, 26-01-2025).
The isolationist current has begun to make its budget-cutting tests: “Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered a pause Friday on ‘all new obligations of funding, pending a review, for (US) foreign assistance programs funded by or through the Department and USAID‘ (…) US foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt is exempt (…).” (CBS, 25-01-2025). In relation to Ukraine: “USAID has been ordered to suspend projects in Ukraine (...) Volodymyr Zelenskiy: ‘I’m focused on the military aid. It hasn’t been suspended, thank God,’ he added. (...) Since the start of the war in early 2022, USAID has provided $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance, and more than $30 billion in direct budget support, according to its website.” (Bloomberg, 26-01-2025).
Development of the conflict in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine was prepared by the USA with the intention of breaking the connections between the EU and Russia, with the aim of isolating and wearing down Russian imperialism at the same time as European imperialism, and to impose itself a posteriori on the exhausted contenders (as it did in the two world wars). It was initiated by Russia with the intention of recovering its area of influence incited by the process of withdrawal of the USA at world level. European imperialism tries to contain with it the thrust of Chinese and Russian imperialism. The Ukrainian and Russian proletariat is sacrificed at the front and subjected to redoubled exploitation in the rear, fighting and working for a cause which is that of their exploiters.
Despite the damage inflicted on Russian imperialism by the internal military and social attrition, the desired isolation has not happened (as shown by the thirty or so states that came to Moscow for the BRICS summit) and the conflict is essentially at a standstill. Now that the current of the US bourgeoisie in favor of walled-in withdrawal has again taken the steering wheel (which lacks both the steering box and the coupling rods to ensure the correct response of the wheels), it has promised to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
Although months have passed since the electoral victory and the investiture has already taken place, for the moment there has still been no formal meeting between the Russian and US imperialisms, in spite of the manifest predisposition of the former: “President Vladimir Putin would agree to discuss with Trump some guarantees for the territory of Ukraine that does not remain occupied, but only if this country is disarmed and if the agreements contemplate ‘the Eurasian context’. In return, Lavrov does not see with bad eyes that Greenland or Panama, which he compared with Crimea, decide to be part of the US.” (El País, 15-01-2025). Greenland for the US and Crimea for Russia and problem solved... As we explained in “The Internationalist Proletarian” n.10, (September 2022, p.31): “(…) the sector of the bourgeoisie in favor of ceding ground at the international level and shutting itself up at home (boarding up doors and windows to keep everyone else out) was also in favor of an agreement with Russia. They dream of a return to the division of the world and of Europe as they did at Yalta and Potsdam, without realizing that this division was based on US hegemony in military and economic power which it no longer has. This return to the past is a wish and nothing more, but it sublimates the lack of perspectives in which this whole sector and, in fact, the whole of US capitalism finds itself.”
Wars are inevitable under capitalism
The accumulation of intertwined imperialist interests that collide and explode in the form of armed conflicts, takes place within the framework of the processes that determine the present period, once the cycle of anti-colonial bourgeois revolutions in Asia and Africa has come to an end and the extension of capitalism on a world scale has culminated: the displacement of the center of gravity of capitalism to Asia, the rupture of the division of the world and the crisis of overproduction.
National union is the grave of the working class: nationalism consigns us bound hand and foot to capitalist exploitation in times of commercial war and to the slaughterhouse as cannon fodder in times of military war. Any defense of one's own "fatherland" is a betrayal of the cause of the revolution: "The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got" (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
The role reserved for the proletariat in the bourgeois script is that of CANNON FODDER in the exploitation field and on the war front. This situation, in addition to the dead in combat, generates a permanent damage: “Thousands of Israeli soldiers have stopped serving in combat roles due to mental distress (…)” (Haaretz, 02-01-2025), “this type of disorder already affects 20% of Russian veterans returning from the Ukrainian front.” (El País, 29-09-2024) and “in Ukraine (...) 30% of the citizens – mainly soldiers – suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.” (El País, 08-10-2024).
Despite the lack of organization, a part of those condemned to cannon fodder try to escape this fate: “45,543 soldiers deserted from the Ukrainian army between January and August 2024” (El País, 14-10-2024); and even put up collective resistance: “in the 116th TRO Brigade there was a block rebellion in Kurakhove, they refused to follow orders and were transferred to Sumi (...) The case of the abandonment of their positions by 100 soldiers of the 123rd TRO Brigade in Vugledar was also well known" (El País, 21-10-2024).
But the only alternative to this situation is for the proletariat to rise up against the exploiters as a class for itself and not for capital, to resume the class struggle and to constitute itself as International Communist Party. The only way to oppose the wars that capitalism produces is the resumption of the class struggle against the own bourgeoisie, the rupture of the interclassist national front (in the belligerent countries and in the rest).
For this we need to fight against the organizational and ideological influence exerted by the bourgeoisie through state-integrated unionism and through parliamentarism, developing an extensive network of solidarity and struggle on the labor union level, outside the tentacles of the State, in which the International Communist Party has gained a decisive influence.
The slogan of revolutionaries worldwide must be uncompromisingly and without exception:
- Rejection of all nationalism: “the working class has no country.”
- Rejection of solidarity with the corporate economy and with the "national" economy.
- Revolutionary defeatism against the bourgeoisie itself in times of commercial or military war.
- Joint and international organization of the proletarians of all languages in the International Communist Party for the COMMUNIST REVOLUTION ON A WORLD SCALE.