Posted by John, February 6th, 2011 - under Revolution, United States, US imperialism.

Tags: Dictatorship, Egypt

The main American export to the rest of the world since the end of the second world war, when the US became the dominant country of Western imperialism, has been dictatorship.

Whether it be in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe or Asia, the United States supports, helps or installs a large number of tyrannies for one reason – they are pro-US and can seemingly repress the democratic and often economic aspirations of their people, aspirations which threaten the rule of US capital globally.

This network of dictatorships from the end of the second world war till the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe provided not just a bulwark against Russian imperialism but also made the ‘free market’ world safe for US capital.

Now the role is to contain China and keep the world safe for US capitalism. Indeed, the situation might be even more complex – to both contain China dn prevent it joining up with mid-level powers like Russia, India and Brazil. The BRIC countries could develop a loose alliance to challenge US global supremacy that is more effective than each of them on their own.

Part of the network of control is military power. As Thomas Friedman, a journalist with close connections to the US warmongers, succinctly put it some years ago:

The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without [giant arms company] McDonnell Douglas. The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the US army, air force, navy and Marine Corps.

To that list we can add the myriad of dictators and would be despots the US ruling elite support, or supported, including Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot. Today, apart from the likes of the recently deposed Ben Ali and the soon to depart Hosni Mubarak, it includes the Saudi Arabian dictatorship, and lovely figures like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Obiang Nguema in Equatorial Guinea.

In Haiti the US has rigged the elections to ensure a pro-US candidate wins, while the former President Aristide (once deposed in a US coup) and his party, the overwhelmingly popular choice, cannot stand. Aristide cannot even enter the country, unlike the former dictator Duvalier.

The network of control goes further than just friendly dictatorships. It involves sometimes sending troops into a country to suppress nationalist and other movements which threaten US hegemony and is part of the strategy of encirclement and containment of the imperialist competitor – at first the USSR and now China.

The nationalist defeat of the Americans in Vietnam in 1975 set this project back almost a decade. Ronald Reagan began to take the first steps toward its rehabilitation with his invasion of Grenada in 1983.

For 8 years the world was spared the invasions and deaths that flow from them that are an integral part of imperialism. That is why socialists support the struggles of those against imperialism, such as the Palestinians, the demand for troops out of Afghanistan and the peoples of Latin America in their nationalist campaigns to be free of US interference.

Today however the beast rampages across the globe, with bases in 134 countries, a stalemated war in Afghanistan and a lost one in Iraq, all coupled with friendly dictators from Saudi Arabia to Chad and onto Uzbekistan and Cameroon.

Then there are the military alliances such as North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, ANZUS and a more general economic alliance ASEAN which tie many bourgeois democratic and not so democratic countries firmly to the mast of US imperialism and to counter any counter-hegemonic force like China today.

These countries operate and expand their influence under the protection of US power and so, in cases like Australia, send young men and women to die in wars for the continuation of that patronage.

On top of all this too is the economic dictatorship the US has imposed on the world through the ideology of neoliberalism, the Washington consensus and the use of institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

This picture is summed up well, I think, by Alex Callinicos. Imperialism is, he says ‘the intersection of economic and geopolitical competition’.

He argues that ‘modern imperialism is what happens where two previously distinct forms of competition merged, as they did in the late 19th century: (1) economic competition between capitals; (2) geopolitical competition between states.’

It is this ‘contradictory fusion’ which continues to define imperialism today.

All of this has taken a toll. The global economy is more unequal than it has been for decades. After the global financial crisis the grand dreams of reducing global poverty lie in tatters.

Malnutrition and starvation have actually increased sharply as the beloved market prices many staples out of the reach of the poor, despite the fact there is more than enough produced to feed everyone on the planet adequately.

In many developing countries the architects of modernity have created mass education systems but no jobs for their graduates.

The aim was economic development to buy off political discontent. The result in many cases is poverty and unemployment and a yearning for democracy.

Egypt is but one example. All across the Arab world the American model – repression and neoliberalism – is dying on the streets.

The Middle East is the key strategic region for the US. Its control of that region has meant it could control the flow of the most vital commodity of all – oil – to any possible imperialist competitors like Europe and more recently China.

Israel is a key partner in this control mechanism. It is the watchdog of US interests in the region, the destabiliser, the aircraft carrier of the US.

The alternative would be to have hundreds of thousands of US troops in the region quelling uprising after uprising. Israel is a cheap defence investment for the American ruling class.

Any democratic or even populist regime in the regime would challenge not only the current puppets’ neoliberlaism but their overt or covert support for what much of the Arab street call the Zionist enemy.

It is this confluence of events – poverty, unemployment, a yearning for freedom – that has produced the magnificent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the demonstrations in Jordan, Libya, Syria, Algeria. This are struggles for freedom and food, justice and jobs.

Because democracy is incompatible with imperialisms interests in the region, the US cannot support real freedom. Orderly transition in Egypt means the dictatorship without the dictator. It means replacing Mubarak with his loyal ally and murderer and torturer, Omar Suleiman, the man who tortured Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib.

Or if the pressure form the protesters becomes too great, it may mean switching to a respectable opposition figure or a moderate Islamist.

Suleiman is an American favourite because he successfully oversaw the rendition program under which the US transferred suspected terrorists to Egypt to be tortured.

The possible loss of the Middle East to democracy will hasten the decline of the US Empire.

While the US share of global GDP has remained relatively stable over the decades, and that of Europe has declined, Asia’s, in particular China’s, has increased rapidly. China recently became the second biggest economy in the world.

Growing Chinese economic strength challenges US hegemony and ultimately US profits. In my view, for that reason it will do all in its power to retain control in the Middle East.

The mood of the masses at the moment means this cannot be done though direct US military intervention or indirectly through Israel.

The US manoeuvring that is going on at the moment in Egypt is an attempt to retain control. It wants Mubarakism without Mubarak. Those on the streets are not easily fooled. The tear gas canisters are labeled made in the USA for a reason. For 30 years the US has chosen the tyrant against the people because Mubarak serves American interests.

A new Mubarak won’t change that and the Arab street knows it.

What then for the future? The various classes that make up the revolution are united in their demand for Mubarak to leave. That demand appears to be widening to one that wants to dismantle his whole regime although appear willing to negotiate with the torturer Suleiman.

Once Mubarak goes it is possible the class nature of the revolution will come to the fore. Some elements of the bourgeoisie and middle classes will be happy with that. But for workers the fundamental questions and problems will remain.

Egyptian and international capitalism cannot meet the demands for food and jobs, for health care and unemployment benefits, for education and a living wage.

Only a radical reconstitution of society democratically to organise production to satisfy human need and not to make a profit can do that.

One thing is clear. The underlying issues of food and jobs are not going to be solved by Suleiman or Elbaradei or the Muslim Brotherhood. The next stage of the Egyptian revolution, and with it the revolution across the Middle East, awaits.