Russia-U.S. Rivalry Sharpens War Threat, Intensifies Fascism

Russia’s onslaught into Georgia, a major strategic setback for U.S. rulers, shifts the imperialist rivalry into a new, more dangerous phase. The U.S. war machine no longer holds a monopoly on invasion and must now contend with the restored might of Moscow’s 1,200,000-strong nuclear-armed forces. For example, Pentagon planners targeting Iran will have to raise their estimates of needed troops and figure out how to get them.

Eight years ago, the top-level, Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman commission formulated far-reaching plans for maintaining U.S. global supremacy into the 21st Century, including militarization under a domestic police state. Its foreign policy chapter stated, “It is a critical national interest of the United States that no hostile… [predominant power] arise in any of the globe’s major regions, nor a hostile global peer rival or a hostile coalition comparable to a peer rival.”  On Russia, Hart-Rudman warned against political developments that Putin in fact later led, “A form of Russian national socialism [fascism — Ed.], emboldened by a revived form of pan-Slavism, could do enormous harm over all of Eurasia and beyond” [“harm” to U.S. ruling-class interests ––Ed].

PUTIN INSTITUTES WARTIME FASCISM

Former KGB agent Putin’s success in reorganizing Russia into an imperialist power contrasts sharply with Bush’s failure to carry out Hart-Rudman’s recommendations. Putin has mercilessly disciplined pro-U.S. political dissenters and businessmen. Alexander Litvinenko, a KGB turncoat who criticized the Kremlin from London, died horribly in 2006 from a Russian-sourced radioactive poison. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ex-chief of the former oil giant Yukos — which he tried to sell to Exxon Mobil — rots in a Siberian jail, his latest parole bid summarily denied. Putin ended regional elections and effectively nationalized major industry, especially energy, which Russia wields as a weapon.

The soaring price of oil, partly due to the U.S.’s Iraq fiasco — which has been far from meeting predicted oil production goals — has helped immensely to strengthen oil-exporting Russia. But mostly, Putin & Co. have stirred up a nationalist fervor for resurrecting the old Russian empire. The Russians have a big head start in moving to an imperialist wartime footing, stemming from both good and bad periods of their past.

From World War II, they retain the collective memory of the red-led mass mobilization against their Nazi enemies — the greatest single undertaking in history. In the late 1980s, the now state-capitalist Soviet rulers opted for open capitalism, crushing all workers’ past gains, and the old Soviet Union imploded. U.S. capitalism chose this as an opportunity to install a “new world order” with only one superpower — the U.S.

This worked for a while, but the U.S./NATO war against Russian ally Serbia became the turning point for Russia’s bosses. The latter needed justification to get back at the U.S. and the recent U.S./NATO-inspired independence for Kosovo — taking it away from Serbia — fit the bill. Following Georgia’s invasion of its two northern pro-Russian autonomous provinces, Moscow turned around and recognized their independence.
Russia’s bosses have used nationalistic patriotism to influence workers to accept worsening living conditions and tight government social control. Pensions are down, the former communist-led healthcare system is in shambles, wages go unpaid for months, and prostitution and Mafia-type crime are rife.
Bosses’ nationalist and profit drives, whether from Moscow or Washington, run counter to the interests of the international working class, including Russia’s workers.

U.S. BOSSES HOPE OBAMA-BIDEN CAN SPUR WAR EFFORT

U.S. rulers, on the other hand, thought they could counter Russian influence in the old Soviet bloc without committing U.S. ground troops. They banked on bribes instead, through election-fixing “revolutions” in Georgia and the Ukraine among others, financed by Rockefeller ally and billionaire George Soros, and massive arms shipments to two-bit pro-U.S. leaders like Georgia’s Saakashvili.

While the Bush gang tortures and murders “detainees” in its worldwide prison camps and terrorizes immigrants at home, it has failed to enact the society-transforming fascistic measures outlined in Hart-Rudman and other strategic proposals. These include a thorough revamping of education “in the national interest,” a top-to-bottom centralization of law enforcement agencies, and a systematic indoctrination of elected officials to support the rulers’ military priorities.

To their dismay, only the Homeland Security Department proposal has been established, and that is pretty disorganized although able to carry out terroristic anti-immigrant raids. (See page 3) In addition, instead of ruling-class-imposed discipline, economic chaos reigns domestically. Bankers, bent on doing whatever they please, got rid of their nemesis Eliot Spitzer, the rulers’ supposed Sheriff of Wall Street. Financial crises mount. U.S. rulers are counting on “Change” candidate Barack Obama to initiate the mobilization they need. Their new situation regarding Russia explains why Obama chose arch-imperialist draft supporter Joe Biden as his running mate. [See adjoining box and article on Conventions, page 2]

Russia’s newfound militarism is already damages U.S. influence far beyond Georgia, Agence France Presse reported (8/17/08). “President Hugo Chavez said…that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela.” And Russia is increasing its arms sales to U.S. foe Syria. We don’t say that World War III will start tomorrow. We do, however, recognize that chances for a global flare-up have risen qualitatively, without counting either China’s inevitably destabilizing role or Europe’s ambiguous loyalties. The rulers’ power grabs constantly increase the risk of deadlier wars.

All this U.S. capitalist economic anarchy and faltering trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come down hard on the U.S. working class while killing millions of workers abroad. Wages are down, prices and unemployment are up, racist policy brutality and Nazi-like immigration raids are intensifying. The only road to reverse such assaults — in both the U.S. and Russia, as well as worldwide — it to build a mass international Progressive Labor Party that aims to establish a profit-free communist society without exploitation, unemployment, racism, sexism and capitalist borders.

OBAMA’S VEEP PICK BIDEN HAS IMPERIALIST PEDIGREE

Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war and the fascist Patriot Act. He wants to send U.S. soldiers as “peacekeepers” to fight pro-China forces in Darfur. He now sponsors a bill that would send $15 billion in aid to Pakistan’s yet-to-be-named next dictator. Biden’s ruling-class mentor is Leslie Gelb, former NY Times editor and head of the Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations. Together they wrote a major policy paper on Iraq which proposed partitioning it into three autonomous regions, a plan that foundered on the inability to apportion its huge oil reserves.

In 2005, Biden told NBC News, “The United States will ‘have to face’ a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as rising casualties result in persistent shortfalls in US army recruitment (Agence France Presse, 6/12/05). “It’s just a reality,” Biden said.

2007: Rival Imperiaists Challenged U.S. –Workers Fought Back Worldwide

World domination by U.S. rulers is being challenged by the bosses of Russia, Iran and China. This sharpening rivalry is displayed in many ways. Pick up a mainstream U.S. newspaper any time and the message you most likely receive is that China is evil. News sources reported all year about the dangerous or poisonous products of China: from pet chow to toothpaste, from toys to sea food. The mouthpieces of the ruling class were determined to paint China as the devil, even though U.S.-owned companies produced the goods in question.

A communist analysis tells us that the bosses’ reason for this is not concern for our safety. They fear China’s growing ability to compete with the U.S. as an imperialist power, and they need to build up anti-China sentiment in workers in anticipation of future armed conflict.

The U.S. rivalry with China and other growing powers drove many of the events of the year, either directly or indirectly. The Save Darfur movement is being built among students and workers in order to oppose China’s interests in Africa. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is able to call George Bush names without much fear, partly because of his ties to imperialists in China, Russia and elsewhere. Over a million people have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan waged by U.S. bosses to prevent rivals from gaining access to Mid-East oil.

The year 2007 saw the outbreak of rebellions by Arab and Muslim youth in France and mass strikes in France, South Africa, Peru, Italy and the Dominican Republic and a general strike in Greece. Workers in the United States have fought back with strikes in war plants at Northrop-Grumman in Pascagoula, Mississippi and at Navistar. Although those workers struck for economic reasons, striking war plants shows that they did not fall for the boss’s patriotism. PLP supported these strikers and helped expose the pro-boss union hacks still holding back our class. PLP’ers have also been organizing in the military and in subcontracting plants serving the war industry.

The lead-up to the next presidential election was big news as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton jockeyed for the Democratic Party nomination, each hoping to convince workers of their anti-war stance while assuring Big Oil that they would do a better job than Bush at securing control of the Middle East. Both Obama and Clinton have openly supported pre-emptive strikes against al Qaeda in Pakistan and the Iranian rulers respectively.

In mass events, PLP’ers — through chants, speeches and sales of CHALLENGE — have consistently exposed the liberal politicians as more dangerous as they try to win worker support with their lies while deepening the wars their “conservative” counterparts started.

Meanwhile, the current government used the “war on terror” to excuse increasingly fascist tactics in oppressing the workers. We saw a rise in the use of video cameras everywhere, from schools to buses. Police murdered black and Latin young people in every major city like Kiel Coppin in NYC, Francisco Mondragon in LA and Aaron Harrison in Chicago. Brutal crackdowns on immigrants, like the raid at a plant in New Bedford, Mass., separated families through deportation at the same time that immigration “reforms” like the DREAM Act promise citizenship to those who would join the military to fight in the Middle East. The bosses have worked hard this year to build fear and passivity in the workers, but they face a major contradiction: they are attacking the same people they need to be patriotic and fight their imperialist wars.

PL was there to lead militant, multi-racial protests against gutter racists like the Minutemen. We stood up against racist right-wingers like David Horowitz with his Islamo-Fascism week and against military and CIA recruiters on our campuses.

The local courts in Jena, LA, viciously punished young black students who fought back against racists who hung nooses at their school. Since then the media has reported that racist attacks are on the rise. As the NY Times reported (11/25), “…this country has seen a rash of as many as 50 to 60 noose incidents. The level of hate crimes in the U.S. is astoundingly high — more than 190,000 incidents per year.” Masses of black workers and students converged on Jena, LA, to protest the racist events there. PL members brought communist politics to these anti-racist events.

The rulers left workers to suffer in many ways while they struggled to keep control over their imperialist interests. The sub-prime mortgage crisis meant many workers, disproportionately black and Latino ones, lost homes and financial security. Bridges collapsed, miners died in cave-ins, homes and lives were lost to fires and floods, earthquakes from San Diego to Tabasco, Mexico, to Peru, the Caribbean and Bangladesh. The wreckage left in the wake of hurricane Katrina is in even worse shape after two years of the bosses’ “recovery effort.” The bosses have decided to demolish the public housing which were totally livable.

No matter how much the bosses abandon all responsibility for our safety, workers take care of each other. Students, teachers and workers are still traveling to the New Orleans area to lend support to their class brothers and sisters there. PLP contingents made the trip several times during the year, organizing our friends to help in schools, churches, community groups and workplaces.

High school students spoke to the Delegate Assembly of the New York teachers’ union for the first time, demanding that their voices be heard against imperialist war. On the West Coast, high school and college students spent their summer building unity with industrial workers.

Even as the bosses try to beat us down and win us to their nationalist ideas, the workers’ anger is still there. It’s the job of communists to give this anger at the system a revolutionary direction. We don’t want to rebel fruitlessly, but to build a movement that will be able to challenge and destroy capitalism. Then workers will be able to run the world according to our class interests. PLP is leading the way towards that communist future.

AIDS Day Hears Revolutionary Message on Epidemic

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 1 – Several PLPers joined over 200 activists who rallied at the White House on Friday, November 30th for World AIDS Day, an annual rally to demand aggressive action against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Our message to demonstrators — it will take revolution to defeat the racist neglect of AIDS! At the rally, we distributed Challenges and flyers that urged our friends to join a PLP study-action group. Four of them attended the first meeting two weeks later. Activists need to stop trying to elect politicians or just promoting new HIV testing and educational programs. We need to figure out how to unite black, white, and immigrant workers for communism and the PLP so the working class can take power and reorganize society to meet the needs of our class.

The World AIDS rally demanded that the D.C. Board of Education approve comprehensive sex education for all students including safe sex, abstinence, and respect for gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. Since the rally, the Board has agreed in principle to require this. Demonstrators also demanded that the U.S. government end ridiculous restrictions on the $15 billion it provides to countries struggling with HIV that force them to use 1/3 of the prevention funds for abstinence-only programs and to limit outreach to women forced into prostitution.

Forty people carried out civil disobedience around these demands, refusing to move from the White House sidewalk. Others maintained a steady stream of chants.

More activists are taking to the streets in D.C. to improve the health of all residents. Students from George Washington University continue to fight for drug treatment on demand and are helping the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association organize a spring conference on substance use, HIV, and mental health. Another student group militantly picketed a CVS drug store in a black neighborhood demanding it unlock its condoms, chanting, “1 in 20 with HIV — CVS, Set the Condoms FREE!”, and distributed free condoms to scores of people who stopped to talk to us.

The latest report from the D.C. Department of Health confirmed that 1 in 20 D.C. residents lives with HIV and 80 percent of people newly diagnosed are African American. HIV remains the leading cause of death for young black women and men nationwide. We urge other CHALLENGE readers to join the fight against HIV/AIDS and the capitalist system with its poverty, racism, homophobia and imperialist war that has made this disease into a global epidemic.

DC Red

LIBERAL RULERS ON IRAN WAR: LATER

The recent revelation that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program for the last four years marks a step towards, not away from, wider war in the Middle East. Policy-makers representing the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. rulers dropped the Iran bombshell in order to hamstring the remaining neocons in the lame-duck Bush administration. The liberals want to prevent Cheney & Co., whom they view as inept war makers, from launching an undermanned, unilateral military strike on Iran in their administration’s last year.

With the U.S. war machine bogged down in Iraq, the liberal rulers are buying time. They hope a Democratic president can mobilize the vast forces — both U.S. troops and allies — needed for inevitable clashes not just with Iran but with rivals China and Russia. Toning down the U.S.’s image as a racist torturer (while in no way eliminating actual torture) is crucial to this process. That’s why a “new and improved” liberal-led CIA revealed that the corrupt, incompetent old neocon CIA had, back in 2005, destroyed videotapes of torture at Guantanamo.

LIBERALS TRY TO REMAKE DISCREDITED CIA FOR WAR EFFORT

The “December Surprise” on Iran comes not from the White House but from a spy apparatus, once discredited for its Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco but newly rehabilitated by imperialist liberals. Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Rockefeller-led imperialists’ Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), boasted, “The intelligence community surprised everyone, including the Bush administration” (CFR website, 12/04/07). The liberal NY Times joined the chorus of praise: “The new national intelligence directorate is analyzing information more rigorously” (12/09/07).

Key to this pro-imperialist transformation has been Gen. Michael Hayden, CIA chief since 2006. Hayden serves the liberal wing. Bill Clinton chose him to direct the National Security Agency in 1999. His mentor in the Air Force was Gen. Charles Boyd, formerly executive director of the Hart-Rudman commission, which outlined U.S. capitalism’s plans for world domination for the next 25 years.

Boyd penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, “A Symphony for Hayden” at the time of his protégé’s CIA appointment last year. It was Hayden who blabbed about the Guantanamo torture tapes to pin the blame on Bush die-hards and cast his own crew as “reforming” white knights. Liberal Sen. Jay Rockefeller, while condoning torture, backs Hayden’s whistle-blowing because waterboarding “however well-intentioned, plays into the hands of our enemies” (NYT, 12/08/07). However, the Democrats were briefed about waterboarding back in 2002 and said nothing.

LIBERALS WANT TO BUY TIME FOR IRAN WAR…

Mobilizing the U.S. militarily and building popular support for its wars are the chief tasks the liberal rulers lay upon the next President. CFR chairman Richard Haass told National Public Radio (12/08/07), “The new president will inherit a tremendously complex world and a U.S. less well-positioned to deal with it because our military is stretched and worn down and because of anti-Americanism.”

The liberals understand that Iran won’t be a quick “hit-and-run” job. Robert Blackwill, counselor at the CFR writes, “If diplomacy fails and the U.S. attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, the result would likely be a long war, as Tehran isn’t likely to surrender. Such use of force would also further destabilize the Middle East, inflame the Islamic world, strengthen terrorist forces everywhere and would probably produce attacks on the American homeland” (Wall Street Journal 12/6/07). So, to give the rulers time to militarize the U.S., the new intelligence estimate sets the timetable for action beyond the Bush gang’s term, declaring, “Iran will achieve nuclear weapons capabilities somewhere between 2009 and 2015.”

…BUT MAY STRIKE SOON

Robert Gates, the liberals’ replacement for Rumsfeld (Gates has worked for the Baker-Hamilton commission and the CFR), said there was no telling when the pretext for a U.S. invasion would arise. “Iran could restart those efforts at any time.” At a recent conference in Bahrain, Gates urged U.S. Mid-East allies to “develop regional air and missile defense systems” and maritime security to prepare for war against Iran. He promised that the U.S. was hell-bent on expanding its war for control of the region’s oil. “The United States remains committed to defending its vital interests and those of its allies in Iraq and in the wider Middle East” (NY Times, 12/09/07). “Vital interests” has been code for Mid-East oil ever since Jimmy Carter used the term in his Carter Doctrine and began the military build-up to secure it after the 1979 Iranian ayatollahs’ ouster of the Shah, a U.S. puppet.

All the Democratic candidates seek to meet their capitalist masters’ needs in ways that will shed even more workers’ blood. Supporting any of them would be a grave error. The course for our class must be to join and build the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, which has the long-term outlook of destroying the profit system and its ever-deadlier wars.

Profit System Drowns Workers . . . . Again

VILLAHERMOSA, TABASCO, MEXICO, Nov. 12 — A half million are homeless and there are uncounted deaths from the torrential rains that hit the state of Tabasco for several days — all because of capitalism’s utter disregard for Mexico’s workers. Eighty percent of Tabasco, a state larger than Massachusetts, was under water. Many spent days on the roofs of their houses. Roads, bridges and more than 100,000 homes have been destroyed. Potable water, food, medicine and clothes are in very short supply for tens of thousands of workers and their families who have still not found refuge.

Even worse than the horrific effects of Katrina in New Orleans, such natural phenomena are turned into racist, anti-working class tragedies by the profit system. Most of Tabasco’s victims were extremely poverty-stricken workers and indigenous people — in a country where 40% are jobless and half the population tries to survive on less than $2 a day.

Tabasco’s local bosses and Mexico’s federal rulers are responsible for these deaths, injuries and destruction. “The tragedy of Tabasco could have been avoided with relatively simple and inexpensive measures,” said Salvador Briceño, director of the UN’s International Strategy for the Reduction of Disasters (El Universal, 11/3).

Opposition mis-leader López Obrador, who ran against the current president, Felipe Calderon, cynically used the disaster to build his own base of support. He accused the Federal Commission of Electricity of being responsible for the dams overflowing. Normally the dams should be kept 40% to 50% full so there is enough room for more water in case of serious storms (La Jornada, 11/7). But because the state-owned electric company buys 31% of its electricity from private utilities it doesn’t need the water power of the main dam. Out of disregard for the lives and safety of the working class, it allows it to be underutilized and therefore remain filled to 94% of capacity. Obrador spreads the lie that nationalist state capitalism, unlike private enterprise, is committed to serving the people.

Although Obrador mobilized millions for his election campaigns, neither he nor the union leaders have organized solidarity among the same masses to demand aid for Tabasco’s victims. Nor did they expose the real cause of the tragedy, capitalism. While planning for racist exploitation and wars for profits, and aided by its politician and union leader lackeys, the capitalists are incapable of central planning for — nor do they care about — the needs of the working class.

In 1999, floods in Tabasco were an omen of more extreme disasters like the current one. But government officials, bosses and their capitalist politicians ignored these warnings. Negligence, corruption, militarization and bosses’ obscene profits have been their guiding principles, not workers’ needs. Mexican capitalist Carlos Slim, the world’s second richest man, increased his vast stolen wealth from $5 billion to $49 billion in just a few years.

President Calderon has made deals for billions of U.S. blood money. Calderon sent more than 8,000 soldiers to Tabasco, not to help the workers and their families, but to “prevent looting” of his buddies’ businesses. Calderon wants to protect the state-owned oil company, PEMEX to bring it more under U.S. control. Laura Gurza, coordinator of Civil Protection, rushed to reassure the bosses that, “National security and governability were not at risk due to the catastrophe.” Concern for protecting the bosses’ property came first, workers’ well-being last.

On the other hand, thousands of impoverished Mexican workers responded immediately, bringing food, water and clothing to the victims. International solidarity saw U.S. workers and many countries bring goods to collection centers. We should organize help for our sisters and brothers in Tabasco, in our shops and unions, our churches and community organizations, our schools and on our campuses.

However, unfortunately all this aid cannot solve the problem, which continues to be capitalism and its drive for maximum profits. Other tragedies will occur because of deforestation, the construction of dams and the poverty forcing workers into neighborhoods endangered by dikes, channels or useless walls.

The best help for victimized workers in Tabasco, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, New Orleans and worldwide is to build the fight to destroy the real root of these disasters, the system of capitalism and imperialism, a system which sacrifices workers’ lives for profits. We should dedicate our lives to building a communist world where the life and security of workers is primary, the central goal of society. That means spreading CHALLENGE and PLP’s ideas which will make bosses, profits and corrupt politicians a sad chapter in humanity’s history.

U.S. Bosses’ ‘Solution’ for Economic Woes: Police State, Wider War

“We are at a moment of economic crisis, stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices,” said Senator Charles Schumer. (New York Times, 11/10/07). He could have added plunging stocks, dwindling sales domestically and being bogged down in the quagmire of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to his list of U.S. rulers’ woes. Hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil, GM’s $39-billion third-quarter loss, the growing subprime foreclosure epidemic and a rapidly-devaluing dollar all cut sharply into the bosses’ profits. The dominant liberal wing of U.S. capitalists is responding by concentrating control over their own class, increasing racist attacks on workers at home and expanding their murderous overseas oil wars.

TOP IMPERIALIST PLANNER TAKES OVER BIGGEST U.S. BANK

Robert Rubin, a leading ruling-class strategist, took over as chairman of the giant Citigroup after it reported an $11-billion subprime-related loss. Rubin is co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Rockefeller-funded think-tank that seeks to steer foreign policy in the interests of the biggest U.S. capitalists. Rubin’s CFR drafted plans, that Bush ignored, envisioning a massive occupation of Iraq accompanied by a six-million-barrel-a-day oil bonanza for Exxon Mobil and its allies. As Clinton’s treasury secretary, Rubin helped dismantle Welfare in order to pay for the bombing of Serbia and missile strikes to soften up Iraq. With Rubin at its helm, look for Citi to prove more responsive to the needs of U.S. imperialism.

The current profit slump has bosses squeezing more and more out of workers. Recent auto-industry contracts slash workers’ pay and benefits by more than 50%, with black workers hit the hardest (see article page 5). This increased racism is making it more difficult to recruit black and Latino youth into the military. Minimum-wage workers today receive 40% less in purchasing power than in 1968. Stepped-up deportations, concentration camp detentions and workplace terror raids force many immigrants to toil for even less than the minimum. Liberals want to increase the pressure. Earlier this month House Democrats introduced a bill that would “strengthen workplace enforcement of immigration laws.” Lower wages for black workers and immigrants depress pay rates for the entire working class. In the U.S., 38 million people now live in poverty.

BOSSES FACING LOSSES USE COP, MIGRA TERROR AGAINST WORKERS

A burgeoning racist police state helps enforce the rulers’ profit-driven attacks on workers. The 100,000 additional cops Bill Clinton put on the streets have been working overtime terrorizing, jailing and often killing workers. The cops’ victims are disproportionately black and Latino and increasingly women (see box). Community policing, which uses churches and schools to turn neighborhoods into networks of undercover agents and civilian stoolpigeons, has taken hold in cities nation-wide.

Along with cracking down domestically, U.S. rulers are counting on their (for now) unmatched military to launch a wider war for control of Mid-East oil and export routes to solve their many-sided economic problems. The euro may shame the dollar, but France has no aircraft carrier groups regularly plying the Persian Gulf or South China Sea. Germany has no troops stationed in Japan or South Korea. So now, among presidential hopefuls of both parties, permanent U.S. presence in oil-rich Iraq is a done deal, and debate has shifted to how best to confront oil- and gas-rich Iran.

Hillary Clinton, supporting the U.S. Iraq occupation has said that Iraq lies “right in the heart of the oil region” and so “it is directly in opposition to our interests” for it to become a failed state or a pawn of Iran. Michael Klare, a professor at Hampshire College, wrote in The Nation (11/12/07):

“Senior figures in both parties are calling for a reinvigorated U.S. military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries….Perhaps the most explicit expression of this elite consensus is an independent task force report, “National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency”…released by the Council on Foreign Relations in October 2006. The report warns of mounting perils to the safe flow of foreign oil…It argues the need for a strong US military presence in key producing areas and in the sea lanes that carry foreign oil to American shores.”

U.S. rulers intend to muddle through their economic troubles by exploiting and killing millions of workers. They are getting away with murder, for the time being, without a serious military rival or a mass communist movement to challenge them. But both situations can change.

The U.S. empire is on a long-term collision course with China’s bosses, whose interests lie in allying with Europe or Russia or both. Such a coalition holds the potential for World War III. Building a base for communism among workers, soldiers and students, we can turn the cauldron of global conflict among the imperialists and their lackeys into a revolutionary storm to smash all war-makers.