BY DOUG LORIMER
Why is Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition government supporting the US in its march to a war against Iraq? Since late last year, Howard has provided two main justifications.
The first is that it is in "Australia's national interest" to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In a January 30 interview on ABC radio, Howard stated: "[I]t is in Australia's national interest as part of a world community that could be vulnerable to the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, to see that rogue states that have those weapons lose them, and that by that action we make it harder for other rogue states in the future to get them."
This argument, of course, presumes that Iraq has such weapons. In his February 4 speech to the federal House of Representatives, Howard claimed that "the Australian government knows that Iraq still has chemical and biological weapons and that Iraq wants to develop nuclear weapons". However, Howard provided not a shred of evidence to back up this assertion.
Howard's second main argument is, as he summarised it in his February 4 speech: "Australia is a close ally of the United States. No nation is more important to our long-term security...
Australia's alliance with the United States has been and will remain an important element in the government's decision-making process in Iraq."
This argument has been one that has come under considerable criticism from federal ALP leader Simon Crean, who has accused Howard of heading a government that "will do whatever the United States asks of it".
In the February 4 parliamentary debate on Iraq, Crean repeatedly accused Howard of committing Australian troops to a war against Iraq "solely on the say-so of George W. Bush". But as Malcolm Farr, the Sydney Daily Telegraph's chief political reporter, correctly noted on February 5: "Labor policy doesn't reject the possibility of war with Iraq, it simply challenges the government's route to get there."
Crean argues that Australia should not commit troops to a war against Iraq unless such a war is authorised by the UN Security Council.
Of course, both the US and Australian governments would like to have the fig-leaf of UN Security Council endorsement for their war against Iraq — so as to give it international legitimacy and thus, they hope, weaken public opposition to this war. But if they can't get such endorsement, they will still go to war against Iraq.
Neither side in the debate between the Coalition and the ALP has acknowledged that the US drive to war against Iraq is really about control over the marketing of Iraq's oil production. To do so would begin to undermine the ideological framework that pro-big-business politicians from both parties conduct their debates over foreign policy within. This is the framework that there is a "national interest" shared in common by al "Australians".
This nationalist myth, that working people and the capitalist owners of the banks and corporations have a common "national interest", helps disguise the fact that politicians debate out and decide government policy within the framework of the interests of the class that rules the country.
The debate between the Coalition and the ALP over Iraq largely centres on what the Australian government's relationship should be with the US capitalist rulers.
The ALP's position was put this way by Crean in the February 4 parliamentary debate: "Labor supports the US alliance, but we want a mature one, not a toadying one... Why is the UN so important? If the US flaunts the decisions of the UN, it sends a signal to other nations not to be bound by its decisions. It is in the interests of nations the size of Australia for the rule of international law to be strong."
In other words, as a participant in the imperialist exploitation of the people and resources of the Third World, it is in the interests of Australian capitalists to maintain their alliance with the imperialist godfather in Washington.
As a small imperialist power with limited economic and military resources, however, it is in the Australian capitalists' interests to have an authoritative multinational body whose decisions are respected by every national gang of capitalist rulers.
By contrast, Howard's argument is that in a world in which US military and economic power is being increasingly globalised, the particular interests of the Australian capitalist class can best be defended if Canberra is regarded by Washington as an always dependable ally.
Howard bluntly told the federal parliament on February 4: "In an increasingly globalised and borderless [sic] world, the relationship between Australia and the United States will become more and more and not less important."
Being a vassal to a powerful sovereign may not be something that is wise to openly admit to one's subjects, but its material compensations are that you get to share in the great lord's conquests.
From Green Left Weekly, February 12, 2003.
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