MIDDLE EAST: IMPERIAL ASSAULT AND TASKS FOR THE LEFT: ARDESHIR MEHRDAD INTERVIEWING ALEX CALLINICOS
Payvand, Iran
9/19/06
The present interview with Alex Callinicos was performed over several
weeks by email spanning late July to mid September. The early questions
took place at the start of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The last
five questions were answered in one go in mid September. Because
of the lengthiness of the interview it was not possible to pose any
further questions arising out of these answers.
Ardeshir Mehrdad: Can we start with the political context. In general
terms, how would you describe the current political situation in the
Middle East?
Alex Callinicos: The current situation – not only but especially in
the Middle East – is defined by the imperialist offensive mounted by
the United States and its closest allies (notably Israel and Britain)
since 11 September 2001. Carried out under the slogan of the ‘war
on terrorism’ the real aim of this offensive is to perpetuate the
global domination of US capitalism (hence the title of the neocon
‘Project for the New American Century’). The Middle East – and
more generally Western Asia (what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls the
‘the global Balkans’) – is the privileged site of this struggle,
both because of its strategic and economic significance and because
of the setbacks that the US and its allies have suffered, notably
thanks to the effects of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 and of
Israel’s disastrous 1982 Lebanon War.
This imperialist offensive suffers three main problems. First and
most fundamental, it has evoked powerful resistance, above all in
Iraq itself, where the US seems to be bogged down in an unwinnable
counter-insurgency war. We now see Israel too beginning to face similar
difficulties thanks to Hezbollah’s very effective defence against
the Israel Defence Force’s assault on Lebanon. Secondly, compared to
the 1991 Gulf War, the current ‘war on terrorism’ lacks international
legitimacy thanks to the Bush administration’s unilateralism and its
contempt for human rights (Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram …).
Some commentators, for example Giovanni Arrighi, argue that we are
witnessing a broader crisis of US hegemony. [1][1]
Thirdly, the ideological justification of the imperialist offensive –
what Condoleezza Rice calls ‘the birth of a New Middle East’ with the
spread of liberal democracy – is rebounding on its authors. This is
partly because when given the chance to vote people seem to be backing
radical Islamists such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Moreover,
by giving legitimacy to democratic demands the US threatens to
undermine its closest Arab allies, for example, the Saudi autocracy and
the Mubarak dynasty in Egypt. Finally, of course, by allowing Israel
to destroy Lebanon, Washington is destroying the one clear success for
its democracy agenda in the region, the so-called ‘cedar revolution’
thanks to which the US and France forced Syria to pull out of Lebanon.
AM: Before proceeding to the next question you might wish to
clarify and expand on the seriousness of the three main problems
that you suggest challenge the imperialist offensive. Could you,
for example consider following facts: First, the existing resistance
movements operating in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon
appear to suffer from internal weaknesses, resulting predominantly
from sectarian rivalries and factionalist tensions. Second, in recent
years the Bush Administration seems to have modified its unilateralism
significantly. The US has been seeking a broader international
consensus over its pre-emptive strategy as witnessed, at least, in
the current referral to the UN Security Council of the war on Lebanon
or the Iran nuclear issue. And third, the power of corporate media to
modify and dampen down the negative impact of the US Army’s barbaric
behaviour in the region, and to conjure up spurious ideological
justifications for the continuation of its military aggression.
AC: These are big issues. I’m afraid I disagree with you on all three
supposed ‘facts’. First of all, when it comes to ‘sectarian rivalries
and factional tensions’ it’s important to draw distinctions. What we
have seen across the whole region is a process in which the leadership
of resistance to US imperialism and Israel has passed from secular
nationalists and the left to the Islamists. This process began with
the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 but we have seen some very important
developments in the past few months, notably with Hamas’s defeat of
Fatah in the elections to the Palestine Authority and the enormous
acclaim that Hezbollah and its leader Nasrallah have received through
the region for their resistance to the IDF.
It’s misleading to describe this as ‘factionalism’. It is a historic
shift that is a consequence of the political failure of secular
nationalists and the left. We may not welcome this development –
as a revolutionary Marxist I don’t, though I am glad that someone is
seriously taking on the imperialists – but we have to recognize it
if the left is ever to re-emerge in the Middle East.
The case of Iraq has to be mentioned separately because it is so
complex. Here the resistance, which appears to be a loose collection
of Iraqi Ba’athists, nationalists, and Islamists based mainly in the
Sunni Arab areas have succeeded in mounting a counter-insurgency war
that, to repeat, the US shows no sign of winning. (It is essential
to distinguish the mainstream of this resistance from the sectarian
terrorists of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, formed by the late and
unlamented Zarqawi.) The US sought to isolate the resistance through
a policy of divide-and-rule, and in particular by allying itself
to those political leaders of the Shia majority who, though having
very different agendas from Washington (most obviously, often close
links with Tehran), were prepared to advance their interests through
collaboration with the occupation.
This policy has now badly rebounded on the occupiers.
Strategically it has strengthened Iran, thanks to its influence on the
Shia politicians who dominate the Iraqi client regime. Politically
the biggest single bloc in the Iraqi parliament, the supporters of
Moqtada al-Sadr, belong to the ruling coalition, but also oppose the
occupation and have just mounted a mass demonstration in Sadr City
in solidarity with Hezbollah. Finally, and disastrously from a human
perspective, divide-and-rule, and the government death squads that it
licensed have unleashed large-scale sectarian killings, particularly
in Baghdad, that have developed a dynamic of their own. Last week
the Commander of US Central Command, General Abizaid, acknowledged
that ‘it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war’. [2][2]
The disintegration of Iraq, which might be the result of such a war,
would not work to the advantage of the US. That was why George Bush
senior decided to leave Saddam Hussein in power at the end of the
1991 Gulf War.
Secondly, the administration of George Bush junior radicalized
the unilateralism that was already a visible feature of US global
policy during the 1990s under Clinton. Conquering Iraq was supposed
to vindicate the Bush Doctrine of unilateral preventive war, first
unfolded at West Point on 1 June 2002.
Instead, of course, the US has bogged down in Iraq, which has gravely
limited its ability to deal with other crises such as North Korea’s
nuclear programme and the challenge of Hugo Chavez and the new left
in Latin America. One wing of the American ruling class, represented
by Brzezinski and Brent Scrowcroft, Bush senior’s National Security
Adviser, say the Bush administration have behaved like idiots in
abandoning multilateralism: they need the European Union in particular
as junior partner in running the world.
What has happened since Condoleezza Rice took over as Secretary
of State in January 2005 has been contradictory. On the one hand,
she has tilted towards the critics, in particular by involving the
other major powers in the negotiations over North Korea’s and Iran’s
nuclear programmes. On the other hand, the administration’s rhetoric,
most notably in Bush’s Second Inaugural Address, has if anything
become harder in affirming what one might call Wilsonian imperialism –
using the power of the US to spread American-style liberal democracy
world-wide.
The present war in the Lebanon demonstrates that Rice’s more
multilateralist style is a tactical adjustment, reflecting an
accommodation to the limits of American power rather than a strategic
reorientation. The Iraqi quagmire has encouraged the administration
to see the Islamic Republican regime in Iran as the major obstacle
to securing its objectives in the Middle East. Hence the war plans
revealed by Seymour Hersh back in April. It’s clear the administration
saw the Lebanon crisis as a heaven-sent opportunity to weaken Tehran
through Israel ‘degrading’ Hezbollah, a powerful and strategically
placed guerrilla movement closely allied to Iran. The crisis has also
highlighted America’s crisis of international legitimacy since it
has been almost alone, backed only by Israel itself and by Britain,
in opposing an immediate cease fire in Lebanon. The US is negotiating
with France now because it needs French troops in Lebanon – this is
a sign of weakness, not strength, on both its part and that of Israel.
Thirdly, I don’t really see Iraq as a good example of the power of the
corporate media. In the US itself public opinion has turned against
the war much more quickly than it did in the case of Vietnam. The
evident American failure in Iraq is one of the main causes of the
rapid decline in Bush’s popularity since Hurricane Katrina a year
ago. In Britain today Tony Blair is hugely unpopular, above all
because of his close support for Bush in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now
Lebanon. It’s true that it’s hard to translate this popular opposition
into the removal of the politicians responsible for these disasters,
but this reflects the nature of the political system rather than the
ability of the media to deceive people about what’s really happening.
AM: In order to clarify the substance of my previous question and
to arrive at a more accurate picture of the political conditions
pertaining in the Middle East, and also as revolutionary Marxists in
order to arrive at the means to a better prospect for the region,
it might be better to recast my previous questions in a different
mould. Let us assume that the problems facing the imperialist
offensive are those you have enumerated. We then have to answer two
questions. First – how durable and robust are these problems (as
they stand today)? What are their significances and how effective
are they? Are they capable of acting as a real barrier against the
implementation of the imperialist projects of the US and her allies
or merely elements that increase the cost of these projects? Second
– can the current situation in the Middle East be reduced to the
various obstacles lying on the route of imperialist aggression? Are
there in the current political context in the Middle East no other
factors or grounds that facilitate the furtherance of the dominating
imperialist offensive?
You will appreciate that your previous explanations are not entirely
clear on this score. It is indeed correct that presently the Islamist
movements (or to put it in more general terms, religious and/or ethnic
ultra-conservative movements) play an important role in the regional
political arena. Indeed they have a greater weight than seculars
and leftists in the resistance struggles against the US imperialist
assault. It is equally true that this superiority is an expression of a
"historic shift", the roots of which should be sought, among others, in
the political defeats of secular nationalist, socialist and communist
movements. But such a reasonable emphasis cannot excuse ignoring the
internal weaknesses of the present resistance and to leave out this
feature from our analysis of the conditions pertaining in the region.
Specifically, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the domination of
religious and ethnic sectarianism or political factionalism on large
parts of the anti-imperialist resistance has reduced its mobilising
power. It has meant that the entire popular potentials of resistance
in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan (which you chose not to
mention) cannot be mobilised, nor work in tandem. It has prevented
the Muslim, Jew, Christian (Assyrian, Armenians, Maronites), and
Zoroastrian; Shi’i, Sunni, Bahaii, and Sheikhi; the religious and
agnostic; the Kurd, Arab, Persian, Turkmen, Turk, Pashto, Bluchi,
Hazareh, and Tajik to see themselves as belonging to the same camp.
A camp determined to stand up to the new order of slavery that is in
the process of being engineered by the Pentagon and other imperialist
agencies.
Moreover, the fact that the Bush administration has radicalised
unilateralism does not mean that this government has become paralysed
and has lost its ability to manoeuvre. We have witnessed that this
same government, as you rightly pointed out, has to a great extent
albeit tactically, reduced the problem of "international legitimacy"
in pursuing the "war against terrorism" through a series of retreats
from its previous unilateralist action. One can observe this in
the behaviour of the UN Security Council in confronting Israel’s
barbaric military assault on Palestine and Lebanon, or over the Iran
nuclear issue.
It demonstrates that despite the crisis of hegemony, the Bush
government can still line up the "international community" in support
of its policies and conduct in the Middle East.
And finally, if it is true that today’s Iraq is not a good
illustration the power of the corporate media in shaping public
opinion, Iran is. The strong American public opinion support for
a new offensive in the Middle East and a military intervention in
Iran, even while the US military machine is still sunk in the Iraqi
quagmire, cannot be explained except through the illusion-creating
power of the corporate media (see for example: USA TODAY/CNN Gallup
Poll and Los Angeles
Times/Bloomberg Pool ).
AC: There’s no law that says you have to agree with what I say, but
I’m becoming worried that the interview will become bogged down by
the repetition of the same questions. Maybe going deeper may help to
short-circuit this problem. If we want to understand what underlies
the difficulties facing the US in the Middle East we have to look
at the more fundamental situation of American capitalism. There is
a basic discrepancy between its economic and military power.
Militarily the US enjoys massive conventional and nuclear superiority
over any combination of other states. Economically, however, it faces
deep-seated problems of competitiveness reflecting the challenge from
other centres of capital accumulation – Germany, Japan, China, etc. –
that are expressed in the so-called global imbalances, notably the
US balance of payments deficit, which has to be financed by a massive
inflow of capital, mainly from East Asia. As both David Harvey and I
have argued, the neocon adventure in Iraq was intended as the beginning
of a ‘flight forward’ – the use of American military superiority to
reinforce Washington’s domination of the Middle East and thereby
to begin to freeze a global balance of forces that entrenched the
hegemony of US capitalism. [3][3]
The significance of this context of the resistance in Iraq is that
it has helped to precipitate a ‘crisis of overstretch’ for American
imperialism – in other words, a crisis that highlights the limits
of US power. These limits are partly military – notoriously the
relatively small hi-tech force that Rumsfeld insisted the Pentagon
used, rejecting his generals’ demands for far more troops, was strong
enough to seize Iraq but not enough to control the country.
[4][4] They are also political – Washington’s inability to find a
popular base in Iraq (or indeed elsewhere in the Middle East) for
the kind of political project it is pursuing: hence the increasingly
problematic alliance it has had to forge with the Shia parties in Iraq.
As I have already noted, being tied down in Iraq has limited
Washington’s ability to take initiatives elsewhere. You see the
resulting retreats as successful manoeuvres that have allowed the
administration to contain the crisis of international legitimacy,
but it is hardly a convincing demonstration of US supremacy to be
forced to renounce, for the present at least, serious moves against
Kim Jong-il or Chavez: before the outbreak of the Lebanon war, many
neocons were complaining about Bush’s ‘appeasement’ of North Korea and
Iran. As to Lebanon itself, if you really believe that this is going
well for the US and Israel, you are alone in the world. I prefer the
judgement of my friend and comrade Gilbert Achcar, who has written:
‘Whatever the final outcome of the ongoing war in Lebanon, one thing
is already clear: instead of helping in raising the sinking ship of
the US Empire, the Israeli rescue boat has actually aggravated the
shipwreck, and is currently being dragged down with it.’ [5][5]
This crisis of overstretch doesn’t reflect an absolute scarcity
of the material resources available to American imperialism. By
the standards of the Cold War, let alone the Second World War, US
defence spending constitutes a relatively small percentage of national
income. In principle, then, the Pentagon could greatly increase its
military capabilities. But this would require much higher levels of
taxation than the American rich would find comfortable. It’s also
quite possible that the East Asian and European ruling classes would
balk at lending the US the money it would need to pursue a much more
aggressive military project given that America has already overwhelming
superiority over the rest of the world. The economic and geopolitical
situation is very different from the late 1940s and the early 1950s,
when Washington was able to brigade together the advanced capitalist
world under its leadership and pay for the entire enterprise itself.
This brings me to the question that you repeat about factionalism. How
serious a problem the divisions you itemize are depends on the
criterion by which you judge the resistance. If you are simply
considering the resistance in terms of its capacity to disrupt and
impede the US project, then these divisions aren’t decisive. Iraq
clearly shows this. So does Afghanistan, which for some reason you
imagine I am trying to avoid discussing.
What’s been happening there very clearly illustrates the general crisis
of overstretch. The US has been trying to cut down its commitments
in Afghanistan by getting Canada and the European Union to take over
much of the country under the aegis of NATO.
Meanwhile, the farcical Karzai regime clearly has very limited
control outside Kabul. The absence of any worthwhile government in
the south has created a space in which the ‘Taliban’ (in fact we know
very little about who is fighting the US and NATO forces in southern
Afghanistan) can resume activity and rebuild support. The NATO troops
now participating in the US-led offensive in the south have run slap
bang into much stronger resistance than they anticipated. It’s true
that all this further reinforces the fragmentation of Afghanistan,
a process that has been going on, through the interaction of outside
powers and domestic political forces, for more than a quarter
century. [6][6] But this fragmentation is a problem for the US in
attempting to construct a viable client regime capable of ruling
Afghanistan as a whole.
If we are assessing the resistance forces in terms of their ability to
develop what Gramsci would call a hegemonic project – that is, by their
capacity to present a programme that offers a way forward for society
at large, then the picture is different. The sectarian Sunni jihadis
of Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly incapable of such a project. But
I don’t think this is true of all of political Islam. In this context,
I find your formulation of ‘religious and/or ethnic ultra-conservative
movements’ unhelpful analytically and politically, since it reduces
all forms of Islamism to reactionary identity politics.
One dimension of Islam’s ideological power has always been that the
concept of the umma is a universalist and therefore potentially an
inclusive notion.
One very interesting development that is currently taking place
is the drawing together of Shia Islamist radicalism – the Iranian
regime, Hezbollah, the Sadrists in Iraq – with the mother ship of
Sunni Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and its close ally
Hamas. Is this just a temporary tactical convergence reflecting the
fact that these forces have common enemies or will it prove to be
a more long-term political and ideological realignment? This is an
important question for the left if it is to begin to develop its own
hegemonic project. In this context it’s worth pointing out that I
didn’t just refer to ‘the political defeats of secular nationalist,
socialist and communist movements’, but to their failure – in other
words, to their proven inability to develop successful hegemonic
projects in societies such as Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, which
created the political space the Islamists have now filled.
This is a question that requires considerable analysis and discussion.
Finally back again to the question of ‘the illusion-creating power of
the corporate media’. The problem with using this factor to explain
American public opinion’s support for an attack on Iran is that it
can’t account for the fact that this same public opinion has turned
against the war in Iraq. We need to have a much more differentiated
analysis of how the corporate media exert an influence as part
of quite a complex constellation of forces that varies over time
and according to the issue. My guess is that the decisive factor
weighing with the American public over Iran is the memory of the
humiliations the US suffered during and after the 1978-9 revolution
(the Embassy crisis etc), reinforced by the more general Islamophobia
that is a major constituent of contemporary racism, and renewed by
Ahmadinejad’s campaign against Israel. This campaign seems to have
been very effective in winning support for Tehran in the Arab and
Muslim world but it has had the opposite effect in countries where
there is a strong Israel lobby.
It is interesting that in the US and Germany more people see Iran as
a great threat to world peace than the number of those who believe the
American presence in Iraq is a major threat, but the opposite is true
in Britain, France, and Spain. [7][7] This contrast suggests that we
are not just the prisoners of structural forces such as the corporate
media: for example, the kind of determined but broadly based anti-war
movement that we have in Britain can have help bring about a dramatic
change in popular attitudes,
AM: I understand your concerns and share in them. In the rest of
our dialogue I will try to avoid repetition of questions and for
the interview entering a close circuit, even where I feel that my
questions may remain unanswered.
You will doubtless be aware that many of the revolutionary left’s
past and present mistakes are rooted in optimistic or pessimistic,
and indeed reductionist and one-sided, analyses of processes and
phenomena. It may be no exaggeration to say that one of the main
reasons that the socialist and Marxist left was marginalised in the
political arena of the last few decades in many countries (including
Iran), and the failure of its efforts to build a better and more humane
society, is rooted in these kinds of formulations in its analyses and
assessments. My emphases in previous questions were merely attempts
to arrive with your help, to the extent possible in an interview, at
an accurate and multidimensional understanding of the political arena
of the Middle East – an area whose developments will undoubtedly have
profound effects on the future of our planet. In my view your replies,
particularly where it describes the existing structural and political
obstacles to the imperialist assault on the region were illuminating. I
certainly learnt much from it.
In continuation, and in a closer look, I would like to ask you opinion
on the other actors in the political scenes of the Middle East. We know
that alongside imperialism and the governments of the region (one or
perhaps two exceptions apart, dictatorial and corrupt to the marrow)
it is difficult to deny the effects of collective political actions
in shaping to the developments of the region. Clearly these actions
cannot be limited to the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist resistance
(of which we have spoken above) and extent to other issues. Among
these issues one can identify: ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, and
national inequalities and oppression, class inequalities and poverty,
and political despotism (religious or secular).
The Middle East today is witness to the growth and spread of numerous
socio-political movements among which three groups stand out. First,
the nationalist movements of the oppressed nations and ethnic groups.
(for instance Arabs, Baluchi, and Azari in Iran, Turkmen in Iraq
and Iran, and Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran). Second the
secular anti-dictatorial and democratic movements for freedom
and legal equality (with growing roots among women, students,
intellectuals, religious minorities – especially in Iran, Afghanistan
and Iraq). Third, anti-capitalist movements fighting particularly
against neo-liberal policies (with an expanding social base among
urban and rural working people and the most deprived in most of the
countries of the region). Where do you see the place and role these
movements in the current political developments of the region?
Before concluding the question, I would like your indulgence to make
two points in relation to my previous question. First, I too do not
believe that Israel’s attack on Lebanon, with all its potential
contradictory results, has had any positive result for Israel or
America. Moreover, I do not think that in essence my comments
on Lebanon in the previous question could have permitted such
a conclusion. Yet however we interpret the results of the Israeli
attack on Lebanon, it is undeniably true that the US was able to
line up the "international community" behind it in addressing this
assault and was able to create conditions where for nearly a month
the UN Security Council watched the slaughter of Lebanese women and
children without batting an eyelid!
Second, I agree with you that there are real differences between the
Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and
the Islamic regime in Iran. It is vital for the left to pay attention
to these differences in formulating policy.
Yet, in my view, it is equally important to pay attention to the
existing parallels between them. If we assume that political ideology
and social and economic platforms are key factors in these parallels,
then I do not believe "ultra-conservative" as a concept, provides
us with a less useful analytical tool than the "radicalism" used by
you. What are your views on these points?
AC: Look, I’m not an expert on contemporary Middle Eastern political
movements, and therefore I can’t answer your main question in any
detail. Let me make three points. First of all, I certainly agree
that multi-dimensional analysis is required. But I don’t accept
that the main problem with the left in the region is theoretical
reductionism. What for many decades crippled the left in the Middle
East was the formative influence of Stalinist ideology in one form
or other and in particular of the idea that the main political task
was to construct broad class alliances, including in particular
the ‘progressive’, ‘national’ section of the bourgeoisie, against
imperialism and its local allies and clients.
This led the left to a schizophrenic attitude towards the non-socialist
forces confronting imperialism – in the past, the secular nationalists
(Nasser, Qasim, the different sections of Ba’athism, Fatah, etc),
more recently the Islamists. I think in many cases one can document an
oscillation between political subordination to whoever was identified
as representing the interests of the national bourgeoisie and
denouncing these forces as completely reactionary, fascist, etc. This
certainly implied a one-sided analysis since it failed to grasp the
contradictory character of bourgeois nationalism (and here I intend
this expression to cover some of the Islamists as well as Nasserites,
Ba’athists and the like), which can, in concrete circumstances, lead
real struggles against imperialism but will nevertheless subordinate
these struggles to its class aspiration to build its own capitalist
state, and therefore, ultimately, come to terms with the dominant
powers. I stress all this because these political problems haven’t
gone away: I’ll return to this below
Secondly, if we look as the different political movements in the Middle
East, it seems to me that one can identify there main trends. The
first consists in the remnants of secular nationalism and Communism.
These survive to varying degrees but are enormously weakened and
greatly disoriented. Witness, for example, what has happened to the
Iraqi Communist Party, once the most important CP in the Middle East,
now shamed by the collaboration of one section in the US occupation
of Iraq. And I understand some Communist fragments elsewhere in
the region expressed sympathy with the invasion of Iraq as a way
of getting rid of Saddam. This is a kind of reductio ad absurdum of
Popular Front politics – to imagine American imperialism as an ally
in the democratic struggle! Of course, there are still many excellent
revolutionaries who haven’t capitulated (there are, for example,
fine Iraqi Communists involved in the British anti-war movement),
but the left is deeply marked by defeat and failure.
The second trend is much more interesting, because it represents a new
secular force. I am thinking of a very influential tendency in the
democracy movements in countries like Egypt and Iran. The dominant
discourse is very familiar from the example of non-governmental
organizations elsewhere in the world, as well as that of the movement
for another globalization – that of ‘civil society’ as a distinct
sphere separate from the state asserting human rights against the
existing regime. It is essential to respond positively to this trend
as it has given expression to the entry of a new generation into
political activity against reactionary regimes.
But it is important also to stress that this ideology is an ambiguous
one, reflecting the fact ‘civil society’ itself is a vague concept
that isn’t clearly differentiated from the market economy. Those
influenced by it can move in a radical, anti-capitalist direction
if they recognize the power of the transnational corporations, which
greatly limits the extent of capitalist democracy, but it is necessary,
especially in the Middle Eastern context, to go further and identify
the interrelations between economics and geopolitics and therefore the
close connections binding the main Arab regimes to US imperialism. If
the ideology of civil society is not deepened and radicalized, then
the danger is that it can be used by those in the region who see
their interests as being advanced by the Bush administration’s ‘new
Middle East’ policy and by the implementation of neo-liberal economic
policies. Ayman Nour and his followers in Egypt are a good example
of this option, as was the ‘cedar revolution’ last year in Lebanon.
Finally, there are of course the Islamists. This brings me to my third
general point. I accept that ‘radicalism’ isn’t a very precise term,
but it is still a lot better than ‘ultra-conservatism’. Anyone who at
present denounces Nasrallah, for example, as an ultra-conservative
will simply make a fool of themselves. Here again we need a careful
and differentiated analysis, not simply of the concrete varieties of
Islamism but also of what American political scientists would call
different issue-areas.
Depending on the issue, different forces may seem more or less radical.
Thus if one were to identify the main ideological element at work in
popular mentalities in the Middle East it would be anti-imperialist
nationalism. The reasons for this are obvious – reactivated memories of
the colonial past, the scale and visibility of the Western domination
of the region, the constantly renewed wound of Israel, and the pathetic
subordination of most Arab regimes to Washington. What the historic
shift I referred to earlier represents is the Islamists taking over the
mantle of leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle from the secular
nationalists and the left. To the extent to which they translate words
into action, as Hezbollah have against Israel, then, on this central
issue they cannot be described as ‘ultra-conservative’. Of course,
when it comes to social and economic issues the picture is different
– the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, supports privatization in
Egypt. But even here one has to be careful. Both the Brotherhood and
Hezbollah have cultivated a popular base among the urban poor through
their welfare programmes, something that one can’t imagine American
Republicans or British Tories doing.
In any case one has to analyse the ideologies of different Islamist
political forces as totalities.
Anti-imperialist nationalism isn’t, as Ernest Laclau has argued for
many years, a neutral ‘element’ that can be combined with others to
make an indefinitely broad variety of different political ideologies:
it has a definite class content. [8][8] Anti-imperialist nationalism is
the ideology of an actual or aspirant capitalist class that seeks the
way to its own independent state blocked by imperialism and therefore
must mobilize the masses to help break down this obstacle.
As I have already indicated, the logic of such movements is to
subordinate the interests of workers and other exploited classes to
those of the bourgeois leadership. This is what explains the many
defeats the left has suffered in the region. It is important to point
out at this particular juncture, in the face of the euphoria created
by Hezbollah’s successful resistance to the IDF, that though its
leaders dress differently and use a different ideological language
from those, say, of Fatah, they can repeat the same mistakes by,
for example, tying their movement to presently supportive states
such as the Islamic Republican regime in Iran and the Assad regime
in Syria that may well be prepared to use it as a bargaining chip in
their pursuit of their own geopolitical interests.
AM: I think discussing political Islam requires a separate interview. I
will therefore limit myself to posing only two further questions
regarding the application of "anti-imperialism nationalism" to
characterize the political ideology of Islamism.
First: There is no doubt that in their conflict with imperialism,
Islamist movements usually rely on nationalist rhetoric, as well as,
on the nationalist sentiments of the people as their main instrument
to gain mass support. However, considering the fact that concepts such
as "umaat" are opposed to nation, the fact that Islamist movements
distinguish between "mo’men" (believer) as opposed to "kaafar"
(non-believer) and consider such distinctions central to their
political ideology, how useful would it be to apply nationalism
in trying to identify these movements? Furthermore, historically
speaking how can we, for instance, bridge the huge distance between
the pan-Islamism of Khomeini or Kashani (the spiritual leader of
Fada’ian-e Islam who supported the 1953 CIA coup) and the nationalism
of Mossadegh or Fatemi, one giving priority to the national interests
of Iran and the other to the interests of political Islam and Islamic
world revolutionary movement in absolutely opposite directions to
each other? In fact the ultra-nationalist tendencies of Khomeinism
have determined even the definition of the main organs of the Islamic
political system in Iran.
Constitutionally, the leadership of Islamic Republic (vali-e faghih) is
defined as the head of the Islamic revolution (Enghelaab-e Mahdi), and
the Revolutionary Guards are described as the army of this revolution,
both non-territorial and non-national in terms of their role and
their political geography.
Second: as you suggest, Islamist forces are currently the most
powerful agents in the struggle against imperialism and Zionism in
the region. However, we know that both the Taliban and Al- Qaidah
developed under the supervision of Berzhinsky, or that Hamas and
the Muslim Brotherhood owe their initial successes to the support
of Israel. The positions of the main Shia organizations in Iraq
(Hezb-al-Daveh and Majles-e-Ala) or the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi)
in Turkey do not need any elaboration. In addition, the Iran-Contra
affair or the Iranian collaboration with imperialist aggression on
Afghanistan and Iraq should suffice to demonstrate the contradictory
nature of the anti western and anti-imperialist positions of the
Islamic regime in Iran. Considering these facts, do you think one
can apply the term anti-Imperialist as an epithet to all political
Islamist movements worldwide (regardless of the stage of development
or the political circumstances in which they are acting).
Could this provide us with a useful analytical tool?
I do not need to remind you that the declared aim of these movements
is the seizure of state power and aimed reconstruction of social and
political structures of countries with majority Muslim populations
according to their interpretation of Sharia’.
AC: To be frank, I think the question of political Islam dominates
the concluding questions of this interview. That is as it should
be, since it is a very important reality that any revolutionary
socialist strategy in the Middle East has to confront. I think we
should treat Islamism, not as something unique or diabolical, but as
a socio-political phenomenon that must be understood using the normal
Marxist tools of historical interpretation. That means we should
learn how to read different Islamist ideologies and organizations in
order to locate them precisely within the political field and within
the larger constellation of social forces nationally, regionally,
and globally. [9][9]
Consequently, of course I don’t think ‘one can apply the term
"anti-imperialist" as an epithet to all political Islamist movements
word-wide’. On the contrary, I said that the classical Marxist
analysis of bourgeois anti-imperialist nationalism applied to ‘some
of the Islamists’. One has to be very concrete: the Saudi monarchy,
one of the closest allies of American imperialism in the Middle East,
is legitimized by the same version of Sunni Wahhabi Islam as is invoked
by bin Laden and al Qaeda in waging a global war against the US.
As to your specific points, I myself noted that the Islamic concept of
the umma is a transnational one. Al Qaeda draws on this ideological
resource in order to project itself globally. But it would be a
mistake to conclude from this that Islamism is inherently incompatible
with nationalism. Gramsci stressed long ago that ideologies are
concrete combinations of specific elements sometimes deriving from
different historical periods and articulating the interests of
different classes (though in each case one class interest tends to
predominate). In both Stalinism and social democracy, socialism,
an inherently internationalist ideology, coexisted with and was
dominated by a form of nationalism. If we want to understand the
political success of Islamist movements, and in particular their role
in anti-imperialist struggles in the Middle East today, one has to see
how this has involved appropriating themes from the broader nationalist
mentalities prevailing in the popular masses and combining them with
interpretations of Islam.
Secondly, of course you are right that different Islamist tendencies
and regimes that may now present themselves as anti-imperialist have
a history of collaborating with imperialism but I’m not sure what
this proves. Yes, al Qaeda emerged from the war against the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan, in which the CIA, the British SIS and the
Pakistani ISI were instrumental in orchestrating the armed struggle
of the mujahedin. But it’s no secret that bin Laden’s relationship to
the US has changed a little since then. Yes, the ISI (not Brzezinski,
who was long before out of office in Washington) were very actively
involved in the foundation of the Taliban, but this doesn’t alter
the fact that today in Afghanistan the Taliban (maybe still with the
support of elements of the ISI) is fighting and killing American,
British, and Canadian soldiers.
And yes, to take the example that probably interests you most,
it’s true that the Reagan administration supplied arms to Iran in
the mid-1980s, both to fund the Contra attacks on the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua and to keep Iran and Iraq preoccupied with the war between
them. But when the policy was exposed it proved very controversial
in the American ruling class, fundamentally because since the fall
of the Shah the Islamic Republican regime has been regarded by the
US as a strategic enemy and therefore such manoeuvres were seen as
undermining the long-term interests of American imperialism. Hence,
in 1986-88, in the wake of the scandal and in response to the prospect
of an Iranian victory over Iraq, American naval and air power was
deployed to ensure that Saddam won. Of course, that policy shift in
turn rebounded against the US when Saddam grabbed Kuwait in August
1990, but the result was not reconciliation with Tehran but the policy
of ‘dual containment’ aimed at both Iran and Iraq and pursued by Bush
Senior and by Clinton after the 1991 Gulf War.
It’s important to stress this history because it would be a huge
mistake to conclude from the fact that Tehran and Washington
collaborated in the mid-1980s that Bush Junior isn’t serious in
his threats of war against Iran. As I have already noted, his
administration’s attempt to break out of the straitjacket of dual
containment by overthrowing Saddam has strengthened Iran. The Lebanon
war was an attempt to isolate Iran by removing one of its main allies,
Hezbollah. Israel’s defeat may, if anything, make Washington more
determined on a direct attack on Iran in order to shift the regional
balance of forces back in its favour.
The fact that the Islamic Republican regime was prepared, despite its
anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist declarations, to collaborate with
the US and Israel in the mid-1980s (and indeed on other occasions
as well, for example the early stages of the ‘war on terrorism’)
shows it is not a consistent opponent of imperialism. But this is
precisely what I was arguing earlier. It is of the essence of bourgeois
nationalists that, when imperialism prevents them for building their
own independent capitalist state, they may lead struggles against it,
but they are striving to carve out a place for themselves within the
existing system, not to overthrow it. This means that, sooner or later,
they will come to terms with imperialism, just as Nehru and Nasser,
Mandela and Gerry Adams all did.
I think some of what you say tends to idealize secular nationalism. For
example, you talk about Mossadegh ‘giving priority to the national
interests of Iran’: what are these ‘national interests’? Do they
transcend class antagonisms? Did Mossadegh represent the harmonious
unity of workers, peasants, and capitalists in Iran? I don’t think
so. That is why the development of independent socialist politics
and organization is so important in order to articulate the distinct
class project of the working class.
AM: In the campaigns that have taken shape for creating "another
world", where and do you consign the importance and place of
any efforts to create a "new Middle East"? What developments are
necessary to bring us nearer to building a better Middle East? From
your perspective what are the obligation of the left and progressive
forces in Europe and America in this regard?
AC: First of all I wouldn’t talk about a ‘new Middle East’ because
this is the slogan of the Bush administration’s policy of ‘democratic’
imperialism.
Given the strategic importance of the Middle East and the suffering
of its peoples at the hands of their ‘own’ regimes, Israel, and the
Western powers, the development of a real left in the region is very
urgent. That left can begin to emerge through the coming together of
three agendas – democratic (dismantling of the dictatorships, winning
of real citizenship rights for the entire population, equality for
women and for other oppressed groups, etc.) , social (against the
exploitation of workers and peasants, poverty and economic inequality,
neo-liberal ‘reforms’, for redistribution of land and other forms
of wealth etc.), and anti-imperialist (against the occupations
in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, against the Western military
presence and alliances, against any new wars).
As the example of the democracy movements cited above illustrates,
any left that fails to address all three agendas doesn’t deserve the
name. The duty of the left in the imperialist countries is to help
nurture and support any signs of such a left emerging in the Middle
East. This means, above all, solidarity which needs to be directed
particularly in two areas – (1) campaigning against the Western
and Israeli occupations and in support of those resisting them, (2)
against repression, especially though of course not exclusively when
it is practised by regimes closely allied to the US and Britain.
AM: Part of the left in Europe and America, when deciding on the
stance they need to take in response to imperialist intervention
confine themselves to a mirror image of the imperialist position and
in the first instance the US government. Wherever imperialism places
a negative mark, they automatically replace it by a positive, and
vice versa. For example tension or conflict between Washington and
the regime of any country is enough for that regime to be labelled
"progressive" and the revolutionary or socialist duty becomes not
only to oppose the interventionist imperialist policies and actions
or defend the right of self determination (or sovereignty) of the
people of that country, but to go further and to directly support
the regime. It does not matter if Castro or Chavez is ruling there or
Saddam and Milosovitch, or Robert Mugabe and Ayatollah Khameni’i. Also
the real content of the conflict between that regime and Washington
appears to matter little, nor what are the relationship of that regime
with its people (even ignoring specifically how it deals with its
workers, peasants and working people). Some go so far as to consider
any form of criticism to the policies of such regimes as aiding and
abetting imperialism and condemn it with the justification that such
criticisms provide the ideological excuse for imperialist intervention
and aggression. In the face of such behaviour what do you consider is
a principled stance. Particularly where the footprints of corrupt,
repressive and anti-people regimes are visible, which position do
you support?
AC: I find your description very general and lacking in concrete
examples. I can best respond by stating my own view. At the heart
of Marxism is the idea of socialism as the self-emancipation of
the working class. Therefore what counts is the self-activity of
the masses. Existing regimes and states, all of which part of the
capitalist world system, have to be judged in the light of this
overall conception of socialism.
But a key feature of global capitalism is that the world is organized
into a system of states in which a few – the imperialist powers –
dominate the rest economically, politically, and militarily. This
poses the question of what stance Marxists should take when states
fight each other.
Now it is possible to argue that since the conflicting parties are
all capitalist states the left should, as a matter of principle,
take no interest in who wins.
This is the line anarchists generally take, but it is one that the
great Marxists, from the revolutions of 1848 onwards, have always
rejected. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky all judged the wars of
their day from the standpoint of what would advance the interests of
the international working class. We should do the same now. So, when
the US fights some corrupt and repressive Third World state we should
ask: whose side’s victory will be less harmful to the interests of the
world working class? Given the role of the US as the main imperialist
power maintaining the global relations of capitalist exploitation and
domination, the question answers itself: the defeat of the US is in
these cases the better outcome.
Does this mean that we should remain silent about the character of the
regime (or movement) fighting the US, concealing its class character
and denying its crimes?
Absolutely not. I look forward to the moment when the Iranian working
class resumes the work it left unfinished in 1978-9 and sweeps
aside the Islamic Republican regime and indeed the capitalist class
itself. But, all the same, if the US were to attack Iran tomorrow,
under the present regime, the better outcome would be if the US
lost – even if, as it probably would, this temporarily strengthened
the regime. The global weakening of the relations of domination,
the greater space for mass struggle and initiative that would result
from a US defeat make this outcome the lesser evil.
This problem isn’t a new one. In 1937 Japan invaded China. The ruling
Kuomintang regime had drenched the Communist movement in blood when
it crushed the revolutionary wave of 1925-7. Nevertheless, Trotsky
argued that Chinese revolutionary Marxists should work for the defeat
of Japan, an imperialist power seeking to colonize China. He defined
the appropriate stance as one of political opposition but military
support for the Kuomintang. In other words, if revolutionaries could
facilitate the victory of the Kuomintang against Japan, they should do
so, but they should maintain their political independence and promote
the self-activity of the workers and peasants in order to prepare
for the regime’s overthrow. [10][10] Of course, there are tensions
in this formula, but they reflect one of the things that I have been
stressing all along – the contradictory nature of anti-imperialist
nationalism itself.
AM: Here I ask your indulgence to give a brief introduction before
I pose a question on Iran. The heightening crisis in the relations
between the Bush administration and the regime in Iran in the last few
years has coincided with the appearance and spread of a new wave of
protests and struggles by workers, students, women and the oppressed
nations, ethnic groups and religious minorities in Iran. The protests
and struggles have had in the main a progressive, democratic, freedom-
and equality-seeking content and are in direct confrontation to the
policies and actions of the ruling regime in Iran. The unilateral
attention of left groups in Europe and America on the aggressive
policies of imperialism in the region (which is understandable in
present tense atmosphere) and the tendency in many of these groups
unconditionally support the Iranian regime in its confrontation
with imperialism has meant that the social and mass struggles of the
Iranian people remain hidden from the view of European and American
socialists. This inattentiveness has handed over the discourse over
human rights, democracy and freedom entirely to the neo-conservatives
and liberal imperialists. The Voice of America is the loudest voice
heard supporting the protests of the people of Iran.
The Tehran Bus Drivers have struggled to create an independent trade
union, and for improvement in their living and working conditions
(a struggle that began over a year ago and continues to this day),
and more than 1,200 were arrested without the slightest echo in the
left and revolutionary press of Europe and America. In a peaceful
gathering in Tehran in defence of social and legal rights and for
protest against the policies of sexual apartheid tens of people
were beaten up, arrested and sent to prison without the European and
American left raising a finger in protest. Over the last year we have
been witness to widespread mass protests in a number of cities with
Kurd, Arab, Azeri, and Baluch population to which the regime responded
by bloody and savage repression. Yet the European and American left
saw itself without any duties in relation to the oppressed nations
of the country and kept silent in the face of the repression and
killings. At this moment about 10 Iranian Arab youths are awaiting
a death sentence accused of acts that could be completely without
foundation. Yet while everyday thousands of pages are written to
prove the confluence of Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro’s paths and
surface in the publication and web-sites belonging to the left,
yet one can search in vain for one word in support of these victims.
In your view how defensible are these policies on the part of the left
(socialist and communist)? What ideological and morel consequences
do you think these forms of political behaviour will have for the
international left? Should one not consider these behaviours of the
same ilk as the mistakes that, as you pointed out, resulted in the
paralysis and weakening of the left in Iran and the Middle East?
AC: This information is very interesting and important. It should
undoubtedly be more widely publicized in the West, although I must
emphasize that, for example, Action Iran here in Britain has combined
campaigning against a US attack on Iran with stressing the importance
of the social, democratic and national movements with Iran. I’m
maybe less offended that you by the comparison between Castro and
Ahmadinejad because I see them both as bourgeois nationalists (though
of very different kinds).
Certainly it is wrong to subordinate the independent interests of
the working class to those of particular nationalist regimes and
movements. But it would be also wrong to imagine for a moment that
American imperialism could free the peoples of Iran from the oppression
you describe.
Of course you don’t imagine this, but then you have to face the
question I have already posed. If Bush attacks Iran tomorrow, which
side are you on? I would be on Iran’s but – as Lenin put it – I would
refuse to paint Ahmadinejad in communist colours; in other words,
I would be for an Iranian victory despite his anti-Semitic rantings,
despite the regime’s capitalist class base, despite the repression
it perpetrates.
This is the politics of permanent revolution, which seeks the overthrow
of imperialism and of the local bourgeois regimes, with the complex
relations of collaboration and conflict that they have with the main
capitalist powers.
One final note of warning: the national minorities in Iran
were oppressed under the Shah, and continue to be oppressed
under the Islamic Republican regime (incidentally, this
shows how Islamism can co-exist with, in this case, Farsi
nationalism). Revolutionary socialists should support their right
of national self-determination. But, at the same time, we should
remember what has happened with the Kurds of northern Iraq, whose
corrupt and clientilistic leaders have sold themselves lock, stock,
and barrel to US imperialism, providing Washington (and Israel) with
a secure base in Iraq. There have been reports of agents of the US,
Britain, and Pakistan being active among Iran’s national minorities
as part of Bush’s strategy of ‘regime change’. It is important that
the left point to the example of Iraqi Kurdistan as a warning against
the temptation that some in these minorities may have of improving
their position by allying themselves to American imperialism.
AM: How do you see the anti war movement? By its powerful appearance
in the prelude to the Iraq war it raised hopes in a huge way. You
reflected those hopes in your excellent book The New Mandarins and
American Power, which came out that same year. Yet a few years later,
not only did this movement not grow and spread, but we have indeed
witnessed its downturn. Why? In your view can we be optimistic for
a resurgence of this movement? How and in what direction?
AC: It is a common error to use the gigantic protests of early 2003
to proclaim the death of the anti-war movement. One of our greatest
achievements is used to hang us! The 2003 protests were on such a
scale that they could only go forward by bringing down governments –
which did in fact happen in Spain in March 2004, albeit in an indirect
and complex way. The failure to achieve such an outcome on a broader
scale – and therefore prevent or end the Iraq war – did lead to a
certain ebbing of the anti-war movement relative to the high point
of 15 February 2003, but the extent varied enormously depending on
national conditions.
Thus in the US the mainstream of the anti-war movement (including
figures as principled as Chomsky) made the fatal error of putting
their efforts in defeating Bush in 2004 by backing the pro-war
Democrats under John Kerry, a mistake from which they are only
beginning to recover.
By contrast, I think it is completely wrong to describe the condition
of the anti-war movement in Britain as one of ‘downturn’. The Stop
the War Coalition has been able to sustain an astonishingly high
level of mass mobilization for the past five years – a succession of
big demonstrations, usually twice a year, all very big by historic
standards, if not on the scale of 15 February 2003 – and to gain
very deep roots in British society. This is reflected in its ability
to mount two large marches against the Lebanon War at very short
notice and at the height of the summer holidays. More generally,
his central role in engineering the Iraq War fatally damaged Tony
Blair’s government and his complicity in the destruction of Lebanon
is helping to end his premiership.
This contrast suggests that the fate of the anti-war movement
has varied according to the state of the left in different
countries. In the US the left has been crippled by its dependence on
the Democrats. The British anti-war movement has been led by forces
of the radical left that have been able to sustain it in a way that
has combined consistent opposition to imperialism with an emphasis
on building on a broad and inclusive basis. Elsewhere the pattern
is confirmed by, for example, the decline of the Italian anti-war
movement, which in 2001-4 mobilized on even a bigger scale than in
Britain, but which has been very negatively affected by the entry of
Rifondazione Comunista into a centre-left coalition government that
is sending troops to Afghanistan and Lebanon.
The international anti-war movement in any case faces a very big
challenge. The Lebanon War confirms that the Bush administration is
telling the truth when it says that it is waging a global war. Iraq,
Afghanistan, Lebanon are all fronts in this war. Iran may be the
next one. The involvement of European troops in both Afghanistan and
Lebanon requires a response for the left throughout the EU. Let us
hope that this very threatening situation will produce an upsurge of
anti-war activity, not just in Europe but globally.
AM: Finally can I ask you to turn to the global anti-capitalist
movement. Where, in your view, does this movement stand today? What are
the real potentials of this movement and what prospects can we expect
for it? As someone who has had an important role in the formation and
persistence of the regional and world social forums, what role do you
think these forums have had in the global anti-capitalist movement
and what role do you see them having in the future?
AC: This introduces some very big questions that extend well beyond
the subject matter of the rest of our discussion. I hope your readers
will forgive me if I refer them to writings where I have discussed
these matters in depth, particularly An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto
(Cambridge, 2003) and my contribution to H.
Dee, ed., Anti-Capitalism: Where Next? (London, 2004).
I would be happy to provide this latter text for translation.
AM: Many thanks for giving your time. I wish you every success in
your struggles.
August/September 2006
Alex Callinicos is a member of the Central Committee of Socialist
Workers Party and Professor of European Studies at Kings College
London. His publications include Trotskyism (1990), The Revolutionary
Ideas of Karl Marx (1999), New Mandarins and American Power (2001),
Anti-capitalist manifesto (2003).
Ardeshir Mehrdad is co-editor of iran-bulletin-Middle East Forum.
Email: [email protected]
————————- ————————————————– —–
[1][1] G. Arrighi, ‘Hegemony Unravelling’, New Left Review, II/32
and 33 (2005).
[2][2] New York Times, 4 August 2006.
[3][3] A. Callinicos, The New Mandarins of American Power (Cambridge,
2003) and D. Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford, 2003).
[4][4] M. Gordon and B. Trainor, Cobra II (London, 2006).
[5][5] G. Achcar, ‘The Sinking Ship of US Imperial Designs’, 7 August
2006,
[6][6] B. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (New Haven, 2002).
[7][7] Pew Global Attitudes Project, ‘America’s Image Slips, But Allies
Shares US Concerns over Iran, Hamas’, 13 June 2006,
[8][8] See, most recently, E. Laclau, Of Populist Reason (London,
2005).
[9][9] See, for an exemplary attempt to do so, C.
Harman, ‘The Prophet and the Proletariat’, International Socialism,
2.64 (1994), available at
[10][10] For example, L.D. Trotsky, ‘On the Sino-Japanese War’,
in Leon Trotsky on China (New York, 1976).