Marxist critics did not need to wait for American tanks to enter Baghdad—or to witness the shameful spectacle put on by the “liberators” as they divided up the spoils of the wretched Iraqi proletariat—to place the war within its historical and materialist context.

Regardless of what the paid-off official line claims, what is at stake in Iraq is not democracy and freedom, but the very survival of the United States’ gigantic productive apparatus. Despite the unscrupulous exploitation of a spectacular—albeit mammoth and bureaucratized—war machine and of death-dealing weapons of every kind, this is, on the American side, a veritable war of defense, waged certainly not against the wretched tyranny of Saddam Hussein, but against the sister democracies of Europe, whose goods and capital are increasingly threatening American products and the greenback.

Why did the U.S. decide to go to war this time despite opposition from the United Nations and the Security Council?

Following the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Yalta agreements—which had governed the global balance of power for more than half a century—the United States rose to the rank of the world’s leading military power, with a military force slightly smaller than that of all the other armies in the world combined.

But this disproportionate military strength is no longer matched by a corresponding advantage in production. The U.S. economy has been in recession for many months, and, more importantly, the relative share of U.S. production and trade in world markets is in an inexorable historical decline, as our party’s research has amply documented.

Some less spectacular data on the economic infrastructure can be found in the newspapers these days. “During the long boom of the 1990s, the United States attracted capital from all over the world because it succeeded in instilling extraordinary confidence in the potential of its economy (...) This confidence led to ‘buying America’ at rising prices, with an increasingly strong dollar and stock valuations never before seen in history (...) With the practical implementation in Iraq of the new doctrine of preventive wars, the terms of the contract have changed (...) America now speaks to the financial markets not about the economy, but about politics—and as a military superpower, not an economic one. With this new language, on the one hand, it instills apprehension and sows uncertainty, and on the other, it demands even more money” (Il Sole 24 Ore, April 6). “The dollar has already lost about 30% against the euro from its 2000 highs, partly due to the economic slowdown in the United States,” and this has meant that “net purchases of U.S. financial instruments from abroad totaled $536.82 billion in January, a new record. But even the most optimistic Americans admit, grudgingly, that this enormous flow of money into the United States cannot continue indefinitely (...) The ongoing U.S. slowdown has prompted many investors to diversify. The Russian Central Bank has admitted to purchasing European currency in recent months, raising the share of official reserves held in euros from 10% to 20% in 2002 and that held in dollars from 90% to 75%. It is likely that other central banks have done the same. Market sources claim that the global share of foreign exchange reserves held in euros could rise to 20% by the end of 2003, up from 10% or slightly more than a year ago (...) According to press reports, some Arab countries have decided to revise their investment strategies (...) Petrodollars have thus reportedly been partially replaced by petroeuros. It is estimated that investments in the United States originating from Saudi Arabia are worth approximately $800 billion (...) For diversification purposes, international contracts denominated in euros—rather than dollars—are reportedly becoming more common, even in the oil sector.” Among other things, “Iraq itself has for some time now begun pricing its oil in euros. This is a move that must be nipped in the bud to ensure the U.S.’s imperial role” (Guerra e Pace magazine, April 2003).

It is no secret that globalization is in reality a centralization of capital in the United States. “Oil revenues are siphoned off into the global financial market via the London-Wall Street route (to give just one example: Saudi Arabia has been, along with Japan, one of the largest financiers of U.S. public debt for several decades), and are spent (primarily on arms) back in the same direction. Oil (...) is an essential part of the mechanism that makes the dollar the world’s currency and that underpins U.S. hegemony (...) The enormous U.S. trade deficit is ‘sustainable’ to the extent that the country incorporates capital from around the world into its financial system.”

Maintaining the dollar’s primacy is therefore a matter of life and death for American imperialism, even at the cost of exacerbating conflicts with Europe first and foremost, and then with all the economic regions upon which forced “dollarization” is imposed through the International Monetary Fund. The Iraq War is the U.S.’s desperate attempt to prevent the horses from bolting.

The dollar is under serious threat from the euro, while foreign debt is growing at an abnormal rate. The party’s economic analysis has confirmed that, even excluding the possibility of a recession in the West, the United States—now second only to Europe in terms of the volume of goods produced—will be surpassed in this sector within a few decades by the colossal and far more dynamic capitalist China.

In this situation, U.S. capital—entrenched particularly in the military-industrial complex—has decided to strike early and use its military might to try to compensate for the economy’s weaknesses and conquer certain strategic areas. By doing so, it aims to slow its industrial, commercial, and banking decline—or, rather, to hold back or influence the growth of rival capitalist systems, state-run militaries and rearmament programs, and financial centers.

Faced with this danger, France, Germany, Russia, and China had no choice but to condemn—at least on a diplomatic level—the Anglo-Saxon powers’ unilateral war against Iraq. Meanwhile, calls among political leaders and military commanders for the establishment of a common European army capable of countering U.S. hegemony are growing ever more urgent.

The Iraqi regime, already an ally of Washington against Shiite Iran—as everyone now admits—was lured into a trap. The United States wanted to expand its military presence in the Middle East, and the satrap of Baghdad was used to create the casus belli necessary to justify American military intervention.

The Ba’athist regime was led to believe that it could secure the incorporation of Kuwait as a just reward for having kept at bay—through a long and extremely bloody war—the threat posed by the emerging Shiite Iranian power in the area and the turbulent Kurdish problem in the north, not hesitating to use the infamous “weapons of mass destruction,” the asphyxiating gases supplied by the United States itself (following the example of Great Britain, which in 1920 used “mustard gas” against the Kurds in that very same region).

The United States thus gave the green light to the invasion, only to later take credit for and boast about the liberation of the Emirate. Even in that war, the regime demonstrated its inherent weakness. Tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, having thrown their rifles into the sand, fled toward home along the highway leading to Baghdad. U.S. troops set out in pursuit of the fugitives, who were mercilessly massacred by the U.S. Air Force, but they halted on the outskirts of Baghdad when news reached them that the population of Basra—partly due to previous incitement from Washington—had rebelled against Saddam’s regime.

In an article published at the time in this newspaper, with the telling title “Truce Between Bourgeois Armies Against the Rebelling Proletariat,” we wrote: “In Iraq, reduced to rubble by the most sophisticated technologies of destruction in the service of capitalist barbarism, the specter of the social question rears its head: the proletariat, the impoverished peasants, and the exploited masses are rising up against those who have led them into war and starvation; the bourgeoisies—until yesterday divided by the war—have immediately united against them; the allied armies are allowing the armored divisions of the Republican Guard to move freely throughout the country to rush to recapture the centers that have fallen into the hands of the rebels (...) Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that this postwar uprising will spread and gain momentum; the lack of a clear class-based leadership dooms it to failure, and even if such leadership were to emerge, the country’s particular strategic situation—occupied by hundreds of thousands of soldiers from Western nations—is a guarantee for the Iraqi bourgeoisie that if its own National Guard does not crush the uprising in a bloodbath, the liberators of Kuwait, the defenders of international law, will see to it.”

The “liberators” could not intervene directly to suppress the uprising, and it was necessary to resort once again to the “Butcher of Baghdad”. This is why Saddam was left in power.

A booklet published by the Polytechnic University of Milan presents some economic calculations regarding the 1991 war against Iraq.

The cost of the war was $40 billion, 25% of which was covered by the U.S. and 75% by Arab countries, particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The money came from the rise in the price of crude oil, which had been $15 per barrel before the war and soared to $42, generating an estimated $60 billion in extra revenue. This revenue was distributed, according to the fifty-fifty rule in effect in Arab countries, with 50% going to the Arab countries and 50% to the multinational corporations that controlled the oil fields; thus 30 billion to the Arab countries and 30 billion to the oil companies, which in the Middle East are entirely controlled by the “Seven Sisters” (Shell, Tamoil, Esso, etc.)—all American, five of which are owned by the U.S. government. The companies’ 30 billion dollars were divided as follows: 21 billion to the U.S. government and 9 billion to private American entities.

To summarize: For the Arab countries, war expenses totaled $30 billion, oil revenues totaled $30 billion, and thus the balance was even. For the U.S., war expenses totaled 10 billion, while revenue from the rise in oil prices amounted to 21 billion, resulting in a net gain of 11 billion. American private citizens had zero war expenses and received 9 billion in revenue from the price hike, yielding a net profit of 9 billion—without lifting a finger. Consequently, the U.S. as a whole realized a net gain of 20 billion.

But then, who ultimately paid for the costs of the war? All consumers of oil, in one way or another. However, the $40 billion in war expenditures were almost entirely pocketed by the military-industrial complex—which is predominantly U.S.-based—generating a direct profit of 11 billion, plus 49 billion from related industries.

The 1991 war against Iraq, therefore, in addition to undoubtedly representing a first step toward shifting the balance of power in the region and globally, turned out to be an excellent deal for the United States—though somewhat less so for its allies, especially the Europeans.

The enormous costs of this 2003 war were advanced by Washington, which hopes, however, to recoup its losses quickly. The Iraqi regime, though “ruthless,” inexplicably did not blow up a bridge, set an oil well on fire, or blow up a dam; the infrastructure necessary for oil production is all intact, and production will soon be able to resume. With just one difference: the owner. The claw of the plucked American eagle now grips the oil tap, and certainly anyone wishing to partake in the Iraqi feast will have to reward it handsomely.

France, Germany, and Russia—on edge over the fate of the billion-dollar contracts once drawn up with the “perfidious” Saddam—are seeking a common strategy to get back in the game, but the Pentagon is wasting no time and is already ordering Syria and Iran to abandon their programs to manufacture “weapons of mass destruction” if they do not want to suffer the same fate as Iraq.

The regime of Capital, driven by the most severe economic crisis since the end of World War II, is marching with great strides toward a third world slaughter.

As stated in one of our “old” texts from over 50 years ago (Korea Is the World), “imperialism is the spectacular and violent manifestation of the permanent crisis of a society in decay: its terribleness, the colossal ruthlessness of its advance do not conceal (...) behind the smokescreens of the press or the cannons, the reality that imperialism, just as it brings the manifestations of violence, arrogance, and oppression of the bourgeois mode of production to their utmost exacerbation and tension, so too does it bring—and will increasingly bring—its internal contradictions, the objective reasons for its disintegration, to a head.”

If the war finds its starting point in the defeat of the Western proletariat in the 1920s, it is nevertheless up to the latter today—almost a century later—to shoulder the tremendous historical and subjective responsibility of enduring the greatest sacrifices and deprivations in order to transform itself from the predestined victim of the third slaughter, alongside its class brothers and sisters in all countries, into the gravedigger of the present hateful system of life.

The anonymous power of Communism inexorably swells the belly of the capitalist economy. In this social war, the conflicts among the imperialist brigands—between the victims and the aggressors—represent only one aspect. And this anti-capitalist war cannot but emerge victorious.

Regarding the attitude toward the current war, the position expressed by Ingrao in il manifesto—but shared by many who are nostalgic for the “left” and “far left,” from democrats to Stalinists—is striking: the hope that the U.S. would face fierce resistance from both regular Iraqi forces and Arab volunteers, which would, if not defeat them, at least teach them a lesson. This is not what communists hope for.

The war against Iraq, despite the disparity in forces, cannot be considered a colonial war but is, to all intents and purposes, an imperialist war on both sides, even if it is being waged against a smaller and less developed state—one that is nonetheless bourgeois and an expression of a capitalist society.

If we communists had been able to, we would have urged Iraqi soldiers to desert, to turn their weapons against their own officers rather than to join the resistance. The same should be done, on the other side, with regard to American mercenaries.