Reagan's Libyan attack was not the work of a madman but a calculated part of American global strategy. OLIVER MACDONALD looks at the consequences for humanity. PRESIDENT REscANs indisputable physical triumph over the several hundred people his warplanes killed or maimed in Libra should norobscure his equally spectacular sombole achicrement zapping those Were Euro pean ombassics in Tripoli. No doube is was a slip of the trigger finger, bot a was surciv a Freudian one, rich in underlying meangs.
Autompts to explain the attack on Libya by seterence to terrorism and Washingron's dorts to combat it can't be taken seriousiv because ther suggest than the State Depart ment one of the drving forces behind the entire ani Libyan policy is run be a bunch of morons, oblivious to any of the political realities of the Middle Last. And terroris is ders important do ishington is an adeologs justiting the ase of American military power against a bood of targets. Most of thesetargers, however, have nothe whaterer to do with terrorisms detinition of the word, ther are pole! targets, hit to further Washington's political .ams.
One should not assume singie exclusive political aim behind the Reagan admanstragon's and Labyan properi. The ranous Washington bureaucces ind in terest groups would all have their own per pay offs from the programme. But let as explore what scoms to bethe contad paradox of the maid: that dor the sake ol hitting diuddarti and the Libyan-Sovict connecton. Reagan was ready to deeply embare both the moderate Arab dates like Mubarali: Egypt or the Saudis and also the riles' on Wester Curope. Does ds make donse 1s rational policy?
Conventiona assumptions about the narare of world politics and U$ foreign policy would suggest this policy indeed makes no sense. The conventional Assumprions that Gorbacher plus Ciaddait equals Ker: the moderare Arab regimes plus Wester Europe plus the USA cquals Blue. Bur whar ithe Reagan administration docs topcine on these conventional assumptions? Whati its sees America as the good guys ind everybody else as cither a problem ur menace? With these assomptions liba appears in a new light: not Ked versus Blar. but Us pomer versus threats to U$ power.
Libya then appears as a model nos revolutionary radicalism in the Arab world but of an oil stato outside US control, shielded to some degree by Soviet military power and able to sell oil as it likes to whom in likes in fact mainly to West Germany and Italy. Thus the customers are also nor dependent on US power tor thor oil supplies. On our new assumptions, that is a very unattractive model for the US. Hou for example, would they react if the present Saudi regime switched alliances, brought in the Soviet militarily and then shitted their oil
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(iR" Appeasement, Collaboration or Resistance ales and their interatonal market as it unced them, withou reterence to US pomer? course they would sell to Enrope and the cuscomers there would also be no inget dependent on U$ power tor che ecurity of their oil supplies.
litoe were the real concerns of the State Department, ihe paradox of the anti Libya programme disappears: the said was designael not only to get rid of Caddatti and the Some Libyan connection, bur also is d warang to Mubarak and ocher Arab moderates and the West Europeans not to follow the Libyan model, or else. For Washingron, triangles involving non socialist Arab states, Soviet military power and West European concerns to be conomically independent of the US are not on these days. American Strategy What Washington has been secking to do is get a firm grip on certain vital levers of control over America's allies in order to lay
MANGOLA
BL LIBYA down the rules of the game within which rivalry can proceed. These levers are, hrst overwhelming military superiority over the USSR; secondly a global military capability for action anywhere in the Third World; thirdly arrangements which preclude any possibility of an uncontrolled economic and/or political exis dereloping between Bonn and Moscow; fourthly, arrangements precluding the rise of a West Buropean super-state. And finally, the US wants to begin roll-back against regimes allied to the USSR in the Third World.
With such measures increasingly in place, Washington need not fear cither of its nightmares. The first of these is of a quasi-super-state arising in Western Europe with the capacity to create a militarily secure anti-dollar trade bloc in the Middle East and other parts of the Third World. The other is a tacit entento between certain West European states and the Soviet Union chabling the West European states to use Soviet
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military power in the Third World as a shield behind which they could maintain markets and sources of raw materials outside US control - Gaddaffi's Libya is a classic, though rare, example of such an arrangement.
Against the background of these controls, the Reagan administration hopes to achieve the reconstruction of the world economy and international division of labour in a pattern that ensures effective US hegemony over its allies-rivals into the twenty-first century. Reagan is attempting to do the job of global restructuring previously always achieved through war without actually having to engage in that Third World War. Problems of Reagan's strategy It is likely that Reagan's strategy will fail just as much as other strategies failed before. But what cannot be predicted with any certainty
We can simply underline various points of strain that could explode. The plan involves attempting to establish undisputed military hegemony in the Middle East, with Israel as junior partner, thus driving out the Soviets altogether. This involves overthowing the Assad regime in Syria and destroying its treaty link with the Soviet Union. will not be easy and efforts to achieve it, starting, for example, with an Israeli strike against missile sites, could slip out of control leading to superpower military confronta-
Tand nuclear necessary political objectives threaten Reagan (and us) with blow-out.
Decisively keeping Western Europc under control means securely blocking a West German-Soviet axis, which in turn means three things. First, returning Germany to an aggressive posture towards the East, giving military doctrine and offering some idea of 'liberating' Eastern Europe to the German right, as in the undermines Soviet security, destabilises the military 'balance' and threatens war in Europe, by accident or design, especially in the context of an internal upheaval in one of the countries of Eastern Europe.
Tor being able to swiftly destabilise a left reformist government that might emerge in West Germany in reaction to Reaganism. This could create dangerous political upheavals spreading more widely in Western Europe.
Third, containing the trade war pressures, particularly in the USA. A frontal assault of West German produce virulent 'Gaullist' responses, ready to throw caution to the winds and hit back with the help either of Moscow or of Paris or
The arms race in space -- Star Wars- and the absence of arms control agreements with the Soviets is likely to destabilise relations with the USSR and propel the Soviet leadership towards a more assertive use of its own power. While one aspect of Reagan's
strategy in the Third World is undoubtedly to seek to provoke the Soviets into cancelling future summits (thus obviating arms control) and even using some muscle (perhaps on Berlin) in order to turn INIERNAIIONAL No. 4, Mayilune 1986
CND stops the traffic in Oxford Street following Reagan's attack on Libya West Europcan and American public opinion decisively behind Reagan's cold war politics, these efforts could backfire into military confrontation and war.
Reagan's rollback in the Third World as well as his attempts to keep control of Third World capitalist states strangled by the imperialist banking system could backfire, Icading to cither Iranian or Vietnam types of disasters for American power. Either type of
'The US insisted on one
European collaborator —
Britain' development would produce centrifugal forces throughout the American global system, with the medium-sized West European powers taking advantage of US paralysis to stage at least partial break-outs trom the Reaganite straightjacket.
If any of these possible developments were to occur, never mind a combination of them, the effort of the US establishment to assert US super-imperialism would have collapsed, whether or not it brought the world down with it. Partial or total collapse
is at least as likely as success. In addition, there is always the danger of a massive economic crisis which will destroy the whole project. The phoney alternative In the face of the rise of this aggressive American strategy over the last few years, there has been great disquict in Western Europe. One obvious political perspective has emerged on all sides of the political spectrum: for the European capitalist states to collectively assert their interests and security requirements independent of, and partially in opposition to, Washington's policy. This idea of collective action by capitalist West Europcan states has been championed vigorously on the left as well as by some quarters on the right. But most of the discussion of this idea starts from a phoncy premise, namely that a thing called Western Europe already exists as an active unit in world politics.
In various left-wing journals there is a widespread assumption that the Common Market is a substantial force. Such ideas are false on two counts. First because international politics is about the wielding of torce military. It is not about population size, market size, standard of living or whatever. Secondly, as tar as capitalist politics is concerned, the wielders of force have to be hard entitics — great military-burcaucratictax-raising machines under unified command, not gaggles of electoral politicians struggling through the night to find a form of words that will obsure their disunity.
Thus Europe cannot mount a challenge' in international politics for the simple reason that Western Europe does not even existas a hard entity with the capacity to act as a cocreive force in world politics. Instead a collection of small, medium-sized and very small powers exist that have managed to reach very limited agreements among themselves on some cconomic matters within their region, some aspects of their economic relations with the outside world, and on some principles of domestic social order notably a joint opposition to socialist transtormation.
There is also, of course, a supra-national unity in matters that do really count in world politics, namely military power, but that unity is not West European at all: it is American-dominated NATO co-ordin.tion. The entire pattern of military forces in cach Western European country is structured by the American presence, and by American purposes.
It is, or course, perfectly true that there were various attempts to turn Western Europe into a significant political force during 1983-85. On the military and high tech side, the driving force for this was the French government. while on the aspect concerned with strengthening Western European political unity, the Italians took the lead. But this set of efforts was roundly deteated by the US and reviving it in the foresecable future will be very ditficult.
As for strengthened political co-ordination, the Italian plan for a big step towards •7
Grosvenor Square 19 April: protest against Reagan's war moves greater political unity looked set lord still-birth at the Common Market summit in the summer of 1985, because the Ciermans were being encouraged to drop it by the British and the Americans. AI the last minute the Bonn government wobbled over to the side of the plan, to the panic and fury of Thatcher. But l ›y the autumn of last year the momentum behind the plan had dwind. led away and the summit took the guts out of
The US knew this only too well betore the attack on Libya. They knew once the deal with Bonn was finalised at the beginning of March that they could hit Libya without any threat of united European opposition. But just to make doubly sure, thev insisted on one European power - Britain being drawn directly into their aggression against Libya as a collaborator.
Behind all these reasons the West European states will not turn themselves into a coherent political force, there are the deeper structural factors. Such a super' state would have to have its own nuclear force, but it can't because the British nukes are in fact controlled by the Americans: the cconomic rivalries between capitalists in Europe are often as intense or more so than their common hostility to US capitalists, while anyway the US capitalists are massively present in Western Europe: the ideological cement of the parties of the right in Europe (except in France) would be shattered by an attempt to make the US' as much of an enemy 8 as the USSR; and the intricate institutional
and tax deals that bind the ruling social blocs in the different countries together would be shattered by efforts to create a unitorm quast-stale in Western Eurpoc. The Consequences of Nonentity: Appeasement and an internal authority crisis If then there are almost insurmountable obstacles to capitalist Western | Europc becoming a real force in world politics, the consequences need to be spelt out. These can be summed up in a single semence: the vital interests and sccurity of these capitalist states are not under their own control, while the middle classes of these states like 1o beliere that they are indeed fully sovereign and in control of their own destinies.
Lel us begin by briefly summarising the main headings of dependence. First of all there is dependence over the biggest question of all - the capacity to decide on war or peace. I used to be though that this question would be decided in Moscow and' to prevent Moscon opting for War vOu needed overwhelming military strength in NATO and thus the lack of ability to decide on war in Western Europe wouldn't matter. But now there is the realisation that this question is most likely to be decided in Washington and logical thinking has been turned upside down.
Then there is the economic security issue, which encompasses a range of problems such as secure access to strategic raw materials which at present can only be got
-arios Gara Ratio from the American powerzonc, notably sub-Saharan Africa (or, of course, the Soviet zonc). Then there is the security of capitalist export markets to pay for oil imports and to keep domestic big capital afloat: the bulk of this again involves the American power zone, notably in the Middle East and the Americas, although Comecon also has some importance especially tor sateguarding a thick margin of sales in slump conditions. Then there is the sccurity of energy resources themselves — above all oil and uranium for the nuclear industries. This also depends heavily on US power, although there are partial alternatives: Libya for oil, the USSR for gas and uranium and potentially for oil as well.
The third broad area of state sccurity concern is the internal front. The West European countries are small and medium sized capitalist states with large, relatively very well organised labour movements on the Western rim of a vast landmass dominated by post-capitalist relations of production. It is a permanent worry of the West European bourgeoisies that this geopolitical situation could end up one day with the example of the East and the domestic movements of the working class tipping capitalism into the Atlantic. It was this fear that took these states to Washington on their knees back in the late 1940s begging for a massive US rescue operation.
As a result, they find themselves with a deep US penctration of their societies both through direct military presence (there are
INHIKNALONAL No. 4. Maylune 1986
more American troops than British soldiers in Britain) through intelligence nemorks, political penctration of stato bureaucracies, CIA operations in the labour movement and so forth. Without this structure the ruling classes in a number of West European states would feel psychologically vulnerable, retat the same time in many fields of policy it makes them dependent on the US.
The absence of West European unity and these crucial dependencies on the US in the external military and economic fields and in domestic politics created only occasional crises during the long post-war boom and these came from either clashes between the European imperialist powers and the US during the struggles for independence in the Third World (Suce, for example) or sudden fears over East-West crises (the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, for example). But with the end of the boom in the 1970s and the turn in US foreign policy towards unilateralism' and 'neo-globalism', the West European states have been squirming and writhing in the face of contradictory requirements and pressures, unable to pursue any stable direction in foreign policy.
The overall effect of this has been to create a sense of unease and disquict amongst sections of the solid middle classes of Western Europe - unease about threats posed by the US, tears of war, fears of economic vulnerability and above all a feeling that their own states are far less decisive and authoritative than they ought to be in asserting their interests vis-it-vis the US. The word is not used but the fecling is widespread that in the face of US irresponsibility and worse, their own states are doing no more than trying, timorously, to appease the Reagan administration.
Until the Libyan crisis, this malaise within the dominant social blocs in Western Europe over foreign policy did not govern domestic politics. Even at the height of the strength of the peace movement, in 1983, the German middle classes voted solidly against the SPD and the pattern was, of course, even stronger in the British clections that vear. The fact was that the domestic class struggle was in full swing and the fight to push back the labour movement had primacy over all other issucs. The shock of the Libyan crisis will, no doubt, also pass, but the question is will the malaise deepen? Possible future developments The long-standing and fundamental global conflict between the Soviet Union and its allied post-capitalist states and the imperialist powers has become overlaid with intense conflicts and tensions inside the imperialist camp. Attempts to overcome these conflicts under Ford and Carter failed. From 1979 the US embarked upon a high risk (tor every body) strategy of 'neo-globalism', secking to hem in the Soviet Union, score victories and achieve some roll-back' in the Third World and assert its control over the external policies of the other main capitalist states.
In the carly 1980s, in response to this emerging strategy, some coalitions within and between West European states sought to form the embryonic beginnings of an INTERNATONAI No t Maydone 1986,
imperialist third force. These offorts were failures and tor the foresccable future ther could only seriously rovive if an all-out economie war on West European capitalist
was launched be the Us, thus generating a violent political response from bourgeois circles in Western Europe.
The Reagan administration is secking 1o avert that possibility, but remains unable to both govern the behaviour of the West European states and simultancously avoid undermining the legitimacy of the leaderships within their own constituencies.
What then are the alternatives for solving this problem of controlling Western Europe's external activitics without a devastating internal political backlash in one, two or many West European countries? Two alternatives are being openly canvassed in Washington and a third can casily be envisaged. The first is to revive European imperialist blood lust by drawing the main Gaddaffi West European states into military adventures with the US in the Third World. This could becalled the French option' or indeed the Falklands option'. We have seen how a strategic majority of the British population thrills to their own troops killing Third World peoples, providing of course they can get away with it successfully.
In Britain in the wake of the Libvan affair we can be sure that this option is being strongly canvassed inside the Ministry of Defence by clements in the Navy. The Times already floated the idea back in 1982 after the Falklands of pulling the British troops out of West Germany (so much for the 'Sovice threat) and projecting military power outside the NATO) arca. It's excellent domestic politics and it fits perfectly with US strategy: if only those Fls has been
The second alternative option is to move in exactly the opposite direction, tying the
European military capability exclusively to the European theatre, torcing an increased West European effort in central Europe by withdrawing large numbers of US troops, saving US resources for application outside the NATO area while ensuring
ultimate militars control in Western Europe through Star Wars, the US curo-missiles and so on. But the dangers with this option are also great: the danger of greater West European military-political integration, the danger of West European unilateralism in its relations with Moscow and the danger that if the US got bogged down somewhere in the Third World it would be stuck there alone.
The third and final option is for the US to direct its efforts not to changing Western Europe's basic orientation to the outside world but to changing the region's internal politics. To a degree this option has already been in operation in Washington's drive against the traditional social democratic institutions of north western Furope over the last five vears, an operation in which the Rraganites could count on an alliance with theright in the countries concerned, notably in Britan and West Germany. But more would be needed for Washington to feel really sccure. It would be a matter of moving down a continuum of direct intervention that begins with penctration at an Italian level, moves on through Cireck levels to Turkish levels and then on to various grades •1 Latin American levels. Outlines of a Left Alternative The basic obstacles to unitying Western Europe are not 'national antagonisms' but capitalist antagonisms. The basic task of the western left in the face of the increasingly barbaric and potentially catastrophic crisis of the imperialist sostem is to raise the banner of a united socialist curope. Such a task means first of all the double process of removing American power and local capitalist power from Western Europe through socialist transformations. It involves struggle against militarism which is also a struggle to socialise and rebuild the economic life of Western Europe.
In the struggle to carry through this transformation, the left cannot expect any active support from the Soviet leadership in the tace of the American and West European counter-revolution.
But it can expect support from very wide sections of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR if the left here rcally appeals to them on a principled socialist basis championing socialist democracy.
The transtormation of Western Europe is a gigantic task, made possible only by the scale of the threat to humanity posed by the militarist paroxysm of imperialism of which the Libyan raid was simply a tiny symptom. In this historic struggle the left must link up with all those forces opposing nuclear weapons and the American bases, it must seck links also in the unions and all the struggles against attachs on working people's living standards, it must make links in the Third World and seck principled anti-militarist joint action with the Soviet leadership on issues such as Star Wars, chemical weapons and so forth. It must also seck links with the American left in an overall internationalist struggle to take the world through and bevond the hysterical violence with which impenalism in crisis secks to terrorise us.
have a right to be in the party'