170 Shares 154



16

0







Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a bloody, ruthless imperialist war in Yemen since the Spring of 2015. This war has been labeled a humanitarian crisis by the United Nations, not least because the Saudi Kingdom has enforced a brutal blockade on the impoverished nation. The Saudi Kingdom has laid waste to Yemen’s infrastructure and people with the help of billions in US military aid. Yet even after years of starvation sanctions and endless military operations, Saudi Arabia and its main ally in Washington are no closer to achieving their objectives in Yemen or the region at large. Another Holiday season has passed with the crisis-ridden imperialist system dictating policy in Riyadh and Washington showing once more that it has no other gift to impart to the planet but endless war

Several developments point to a coming stalemate in Yemen. First, the entire basis of the Saudi invasion has been steadily losing legitimacy. Earlier in December, the Trump Administration urged Saudi Arabia to end the blockade against Yemen. This was no act of peace. The Trump Administration was merely reacting to a set of irreconcilable conditions. On the one hand, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen have already perished at the hands of Saudi Arabia’s brutal invasion. On the other, the UN announced that the blockade would place millions in danger of premature death by way of starvation, malnutrition, and preventable illness. And it would be the US, Saudi Arabia’s closest ally, that would have to explain its complicity in the war on Yemen to a world where China and Russia hold more political weight.

US imperialism must also contend with the unrelenting resistance of the Yemeni people. The US-backed Saudi invasion of Yemen came in response to the successful overthrow of the puppet government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi during the height of the so-called “Arab Spring.” A coalition led by the majority Shia, rural regions of Yemen fought its way to the Presidential Palace, forcing Hadi’s resignation. Such resistance, led by the Houthi movement, is what prompted Saudi Arabia’s violent intervention. The Houthi movement has been painted as everything from a terrorist group to an Iranian proxy force by the corporate media to justify the continued assault on the Yemeni people.

Even still, nothing indicates that Saudi Arabia and its command center, US imperialism, have inched any closer to victory in Yemen. Yemen must continue to be framed in the context of a mythical sectarian war occurring broadly in the region. Sectarianism has always justified imperialist war dating back to the colonial period. US imperialism has for years been dropping drone strikes in Yemen to supposedly curb terrorism in the war-torn region. Under Obama, these strikes resulted in the death of US citizens. Now US imperialism is facing a potentially destabilizing quagmire in Yemen that it helped set into motion with 36 billion worth in arms sales to the Saudi Kingdom since 2014 alone.

A loss in Yemen would cut off Saudi Arabia from key oil resources and hasten the demise of its oppressive, monarchical state. Furthermore, the loss of Yemen would mean another setback for an already ailing imperialist world order led by the US. Iraq and Syria have announced the defeat of ISIS in their respective countries, giving the US little reason to remain in these strategic nations. The rightwing opposition in Latin America is also ailing. Venezuela’s socialist government has taken back over ninety percent of the nation’s municipal governments. Honduras is on the brink of a massive uprising after the US-backed coup government rigged the Presidential elections. This is not to mention how each of these developments give China and Russia a more favorable global terrain from which to gain political and economic strength.

In other words, the lords of war are losing ground despite the wreckage wrought by imperialist policy. US imperialism is the master of sewing discord and chaos around the globe in service of the military contractors, oil monopolies, and Wall Street firms that reap the benefits of a bi-partisan 700-billion-dollar military budget. However, chaos has its limits. The fall of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc precipitated the rabid unleashing of US imperialism’s productive and military forces across the planet. Masses of people worldwide have suffered mightily as sovereign states fell one by one into imperialism’s orbit. Unfettered US influence in the African continent has come at the expense of six million Congolese alone since 1996. Millions have been murdered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the region at large by US military forces since 2003 alone. However, the people across Asia, Latin America, and Africa never stopped fighting for genuine independence and Yemen is a prime example of that.

If endless war is US imperialism’s holiday gift to humanity, then Santa must be slayed. The people of Yemen will continue to suffer regardless of which US President occupies the oval office. Investigations of Trump’s political ties to Russia are mere smokescreens for US imperialism’s objective interests. These interests are rooted in the essence of the system. The formula is simple, but the methods are complex. Imperialism requires endless military expansion to secure the profitability necessary for Wall Street banks and parasitic monopolies. Some of these monopolies, such as Raytheon, sell products designed to destroy entire nations.

Saudi Arabia receives billions worth in technology from Raytheon and other military contractors to wage war on the people of Yemen. The same goes for the reactionary government of Rwanda, the rightwing dictatorship in Honduras, and the settler state of Israel. These states are dependent on US military aid and the US ruling class is dependent on these states to secure the political and economic terrain necessary for corporate exploitation. Global instability is a product of the sharpening contradictions playing out between the US sphere of influence and the resistance of the people. This resistance is significant because it lays bare the potential allies that struggling people in the mainland of imperialism could rely on to achieve common ends.

There are many points of unity that oppressed people in the US mainland share with the people of the world. The first is the fact that the Trump Administration’s tax plan is not the only policy geared toward the distribution of even more wealth to the planet’s richest capitalists. US military spending is funded by US tax dollars garnished from the wages of working people. The US military is advertised as a heroic, armed body that defends the citizenry from threats to its existence. However, existence in the US has become more precarious for most workers, especially for Black America. This makes the enormous sum spent on war nothing but a boot on the neck of the workers and oppressed in the US mainland.

Black American wealth is approaching zero. Healthcare, housing, and education are privileges only the wealthy can afford while the poor struggle to decide whether to pay rent or their doctors bill. Student debt and medical debt remain a trillion-dollar bubble that sends millions of people into default and bankruptcy. Unemployment and low-wage work dominate the economic landscape in this era of high-tech, dead-end capitalism so keen on replacing labor for the purposes of speeding up exploitation for profit. Imprisonment and police terror have been the only rewards reaped by undocumented people, Black, and Native American populations under this arrangement.

Any social democratic mass movement that arises in this period will have to confront US imperialism’s project of endless war abroad, and not only for the fact that it is expensive. A dialectical relationship exists between oppressed nations abroad and the oppressed living within imperialist nations. The common link is the state apparatus. The state apparatus is nothing but the organization of violence against the oppressed classes, coordinated by the hirelings of the ruling class. This apparatus terrorizes Palestinians, Syrians, and Libyans with the same intent and material force that leaves Black Americans in perpetual danger of premature death at the hands of the police.

There is thus only one gift truly worth giving this holiday season and beyond: unity. Unity cannot be purchased, but rather built through the development of revolutionary consciousness that acknowledges the endless war being waged on the world. The ruling system must be put on trial, not just its symptoms. The birthdays of the Haitian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution are on the horizon, marking the beginning of a new year. Our gift to humanity, and the most important resolution for the coming year, is to build a revolution of our own with the intent of moving the course of history in the direction of a world free from exploitation.

*(Art work credit: Igor Dobrowolski/ Instagram)