US imperialism and the war for the Middle East
Joel Geier has been a socialist activist in the US since the civil rights movement in the late 1950s. He has written extensively on US imperialism, politics and economics. He spoke to Red Flag’s Robert Narai. The interview has been edited for length.
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How would you characterise the position of US imperialism today?
The US is still the world’s dominant economic, political and military superpower. But it now faces competition from a newly emerging superpower, China, and its allies. This introduces a new, more dangerous phase of imperialism, which has its roots in preceding phases.
There have been three previous phases of imperialism over the last century or so. First was the struggle for the world market and an international economy that led to World War One, the Great Depression and World War Two, the latter of which the US emerged from on top. It was the strength of US industrial capacity that, converted to war production, produced the planes, ships, tanks, trucks, guns and ammunition that were vital to the Allied victory.
After World War Two, there was superpower competition between the victors of that war: the US and the Soviet Union. This was a political and military struggle without economic rivalry, as the Soviet Union could not compete on the world market.
The third phase begins at the end of the 1980s. After the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the world’s only superpower. It used this phase to organise its globalised order under US auspices.
During this time, the US made its greatest strategic gamble and, ultimately, mistake. To gain access to cheaper labour and greater profits, it outsourced its industrial capacity and manufacturing to China and others. The US thought it could incorporate China into the economic world that it controlled. Instead, the US has found itself in the ironic position that it is dependent upon the decisions of the Chinese Communist Party for some of its industrial goods, and even its military is dependent upon parts and supplies from China. The US currently lacks the industrial-military capacity to engage in a major conflict with China.
There is now an attempt by the US to restore its industrial-military capacity. This requires a major struggle for the world market, raw materials and the military preparations necessary for world domination. This is a new phase of imperialism that has been accelerated by three recent events.
First, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted US industrial supply chains that were dependent upon China. Manufacturing parts didn’t arrive from China and so sections of manufacturing ground to a halt. Supplies of pharmaceuticals and other medical supplies were dependent upon China. This highlighted to the US ruling class that it could not remain dependent upon China; it was necessary to restore self-reliance to ensure its continued control over the world.
Second, the Russian invasion of Ukraine convinced sections of the American ruling class that they must control Middle Eastern oil and should not pivot away from this commodity that the US’s allies and rivals depend on.
Third, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and Israel’s advance against Iran and its allies in the Middle East—all of which is dependent upon US support—have strengthened the US’s position in the region.
These events have restored or reinforced alliances and the formation of blocs and coalitions over the last few years. The US has used the war in Ukraine to restore its military dominance over NATO and Europe. In Asia, the US has created AUKUS and restored its alliances with the Philippines and cemented ties with South Korea and Japan against China. On the other side, Russia and China have formed an alliance. Both now have ties with Iran, which is supplying military goods to Russia, and North Korea is sending troops to support Russians fighting in Ukraine.
What were US imperial interests in the Middle East prior to the war in Gaza?
The US’s strategic objective for more than 80 years has been to control world oil and to use this leverage over other countries because no modern capitalist economy or military can function without oil.
During the first half of the twentieth century, the US was the leading oil producer in the world and supplied oil to the Allies that contributed to their victory in World War Two. During the war, the US made an alliance with Saudi Arabia. It created the modern Saudi state and military in order for US oil policy to be supported by Saudi Arabia. And with the decline of British and French imperialism after the war, the US came to dominate the Middle East and Middle Eastern oil.
The US fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to extend its control over Middle Eastern oil. These wars were won militarily but were a disaster from the vantage point of US imperial interests. They cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of deaths of US soldiers and many tens of thousands of injuries. These were endless wars: they could not control and maintain the occupations they were involved in. This weakened the US’s ability to confront China and so they were determined to pivot away from the Middle East, starting with Obama.
Obama was also the fracking president. He restored oil production in the US, which is now again the leading oil producer in the world. The US no longer depends on oil imports from the Middle East: it is now a net exporter of oil. Biden continued this policy by pulling the last troops out of Afghanistan and scaling down the troops in Iraq to a few thousand.
The US withdrawal from the Middle East created a vacuum that was mainly filled by Iran, which has set up allies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. This shifted the balance of forces in the Middle East and created a clash between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others against Iran. These Arab states wanted the US back in the region as protectors against Iran.
The US also changed its attitude towards the Middle East after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Germany and other EU countries were dependent upon oil and gas from Russia, which made it difficult for the US to organise Europe and NATO against Russia until that question was solved. However, the US and its Arab allies were now in a position to supply oil and natural gas to Germany and others in Europe.
The war in Ukraine convinced the US that if they are moving towards a conflict with Russia and China, they have to control Middle Eastern oil. They therefore came up with various plans to reorganise the Middle East, the most important of which was an alliance of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and so on with Israel against Iran and their allies, under US military auspices. This is what was being proposed prior to the war in Gaza. One of the reasons Hamas gave for taking on Israel militarily on 7 October was they wanted to prevent this alliance from taking place.
How have Israel’s wars against Gaza and Lebanon, as well as their repeated confrontations with Iran, changed the US plans for the Middle East?
The war in Gaza has altered US plans for the Middle East. Although its Arab allies are for an Israeli victory, they cannot openly ally with Israel while the genocide of the Palestinians is taking place, out of fear of how unpopular it would be with their own populations. These plans are either postponed or have to be readjusted when the war ends.
Israel is a close ally of the US: the Israeli military, intelligence services, technology etc. are heavily intertwined with their American equivalents. This has been true for decades. Israel does the dirty work for American imperialism in one country after another throughout the world. When the US do not want to get their hands dirty, they often have the Israelis do it for them.
Israel’s current war could not exist without US-supplied arms, intelligence, technology and so on. The US want an Israeli victory but not a generalised regional war.
The ongoing support by the US for Israel in this war is not because Netanyahu is smarter than them, or that Biden is a lifelong Zionist, or any of the other reasons the liberal press give that cover up the real nature of US imperialism, which many of them support. They do not want to present the truth: the US is also genocidal, not just Israel. Israel has killed 43,000 people in Gaza. In Vietnam, the US killed between 2 and 3 million civilians. In Iraq, the US killed half a million people, of whom over 200,000 were civilians. It is the US that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the US that firebombed Tokyo, Hamburg and Dresden during World War Two. This is what it takes to become the global superpower.
At the same time, the US does not want the fallout from a genocide against the Palestinians. Politically, it has been a disaster for Israel and the US in parts of the world. And so the US issues press releases to quiet liberal opinion about how terrible it is, that Israel should be giving more humanitarian aid, protecting civilians and so on. At the same time, the US provides Israel with all the support needed to carry out these atrocities.
Meanwhile, the US has supported Israel’s expansion of the war into Lebanon against Hezbollah and confrontations with Iran.
The US enables Israel—but just as important, Israel is enabling a victory for the US. Unless there is dramatic change in the war, this is becoming the biggest Israeli victory in the Middle East since the 1967 war against the Arab states. It is the biggest US military victory in decades.
Israel enables the US to change the balance of power in the Middle East to the detriment of Iran, which has been rising in importance in the Middle East for the better part of a decade now. This is an enormous shift. It is one that is vital to the US if it is to restore its control over Middle Eastern oil in preparation for bigger conflicts with China and Russia. If the US can control the Middle East, it can control the oil supply from the Middle East to China (even though Russia can provide a large amount of oil for China). This is the long-term goal of US imperialism.
Israel, with the full support and backing of the US, has inflicted a huge blow against Iran’s allies in Hamas and Hezbollah. It is probably the US that took out the air defences in Syria and Iraq that allowed Israel to get to Iran. Israel has used air power to take out the Iranian air defences. There is total cooperation between the US and Israeli intelligence and military services in carrying out these attacks.
The US has totally decided what Israel could do in terms of Iran. It has protected Israel by providing them with the THAAD defences against Iranian missiles. The US bombed Yemen to send a signal to Iran that the US will take part if they continue to fire missiles at Israel.
The US has told Israel that it would not go to war against Iran and has refused to allow Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. The US refused to provide Israel with the necessary equipment: bunker buster bombs necessary to take out their nuclear facilities or the B-52 bombers that deliver them. It has not allowed Israel to target Iran’s oil infrastructure. Iran said if Israel takes out Iranian oil, Iran will take out oil in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The US also leaked the Israeli war plans to Iran. This is something that is not usually done among allies. The US have also been negotiating with the Iranians publicly and behind closed doors. If the US was for Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and oil infrastructure, it would have happened.
At this point, the US attitude has been, We will protect and support our ally Israel, but we will not allow this to become a war against Iran.
The US demanded and got compliance from Israel that US national interests were to be decisive—not Israeli war ones—in the confrontation with Iran.
Israel might do some things that make it difficult for the US to carry out their political objectives for the region. But this is a fight among friends. Despite whatever headaches the Israelis might give them, this is providing the US with the biggest military victory that it has had in decades after winning militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan but losing the occupation.
This has been a cheap war for the US so far. The US spent US$2-4 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and from the strategic vantage point of US imperialism, they were a disaster. The US has spent US$20 billion on Israel in the past year and achieved its biggest military victory in the region in decades by pushing back Iran and its allies.
There were several thousand American soldiers killed in those wars and many tens of thousands injured. This victory is taking place without one American soldier being killed or injured and no political blow-back at home for these causalities. It is a very cheap victory for the US.
As this war has shifted from Gaza to include Lebanon and Iran, the left is finally starting to wake up to the idea that the US may be doing more than just enabling Israel. Israel is enabling a victory for the US to restore its power in the Middle East. This victory also pushes back China and Russia, which are allied with Iran.
What implications does the election of Donald Trump have?
The new Trump presidency will not be a repeat of his first administration. The new phase of imperialism we have entered will accelerate even more with Trump in power. We are in a very different world because of the war in Ukraine and the Middle East, supply chains that must be uncoupled, of the new alliances and bloc formations taking shape.
The foreign policy of the US will not be the ruling-class foreign-policy establishment political strategy pursued by Biden, of managing the status quo of a US-dominated world order. Trump and Republican imperialist foreign policy is to change the world order. It is divided about how to pursue that.
The Trump administration includes both wings of the Republican Party. The traditional Republican hawks generally supported Biden’s foreign policy of restoring American alliances, but criticised him for not being aggressive enough: the US provided weapons to Ukraine but didn’t deliver the weapons that it needed and did not allow Ukraine to use them against Russia. These Republican hawks also criticise the US for holding back Israel against Iran.
But the greater section of the China hawks—Trump and his associates who now dominate the Republican Party—argue that the US does not have the resources to effectively intervene everywhere in the world: they have to concentrate on China. Despite what Trump and the liberal media say, they are not going to dissolve NATO. Europe is militarily dependent on the US, and NATO is a key pillar of US domination over Europe. Instead, Trump argues that the Europeans have to deal with Russia and make it their responsibility. And he wants to end the Ukraine war and its costs to US imperialism. Trump doesn’t step back in terms of the Middle East because Israel is restoring US power in the Middle East against Iran.
Trump’s strategy is “make America great again”, to rebuild American economic industrial and military power so that it is capable of preparing for competition and war with China.
Trump has presented this mainly in terms of a trade war against China and if necessary whole sections of the world in order to restore US competitiveness and industry. This is part of what the stock rally was about when he got elected. The capitalist class expects there to be an enormous boom under Trump, who will do away with as many regulations as possible.
The other aspect of Trump’s policy is to quickly raise the war budget from 3 percent of GDP to 5 percent to US$1-1.5 trillion annually.
Deregulation and lower corporate taxes will be used to try to unleash a new trickle-down scheme that aims to convince US corporations to rebuild the military-industrial complex.
Biden made a small gesture in that regard with infrastructure and the subsidies for electric vehicles. Trump will make more moves to re-shore production to the US mainland.
Trump’s strategy has been primarily that of a trade war than can threaten the entire world economy through economic nationalism and economic warfare.
We are in a world in which imperialism threatens not just war but total economic instability. We are entering a whole new period that can produce crises. Both of wars like Gaza and Ukraine. There can be even bigger ones coming. And alongside it there is the threat of economic instability as the US and China attempt to separate and become self-reliant. As these great powers attempt to uncouple from each other, we are back in a world that existed before World War Two.
What are the tasks for socialists in this new era of imperialism?
Revolutionary socialists, like everyone else, have to face reality, draw conclusions and act on them. We have to understand that the decades of globalisation and one superpower, however bad that was, are now over, and that we are in transition to a more unstable, volatile, dangerous world. A world that threatens economic warfare that impacts on people’s daily living standards, as well as more wars that could culminate in a struggle between the superpowers for world domination.
Imperialism and war radicalised generations throughout the twentieth century. They created an international movement and led to revolutions—from Russia in 1905 to Portugal in 1975. This new phase of imperialism has the potential to do that again. During previous decades, consciousness of imperialism, war and revolution practically disappeared, even in most sections of the left. We are starting again almost from scratch. In the twentieth century, imperialism and war also created vicious, right-wing and fascist movements. A more aggressive far-right, nationalist movement is under way internationally.
In the last year, the war in Gaza has produced a new international movement in support of Palestine. It is centred on a new generation of young people opposed to war and its horrors who, like all newly radicalised people, do not have consciousness of imperialism or revolution, but who are suspicious, if not outright hostile, to their rulers, who have excused and supported genocide. Like all new generations, it will take time and experience of struggle for this consciousness to reach radical and revolutionary conclusions. But it is the key question: how to raise the consciousness of people who have been moved by war in the last year to the road of the socialist struggle against imperialism; how to raise their consciousness through struggles, battles, including ideological ones, to win them to the conclusions of the socialist struggle against imperialism and war. We have to win them to internationalism, to support all the struggles of workers, students and the oppressed against all the ruling classes in the world, that the struggle against imperialism and war have to be connected to the struggles against exploitation and oppression. It is a long struggle in front of us. But it is essential we build a much larger and stronger revolutionary organisation committed to this goal.
