The Kurdistan region of Iraq enjoyed a head start over the rest of the country. Its 1991 uprising ousted Saddam’s genocidal forces which had murdered nearly 200,000 Kurds at Halabja and elsewhere. Its leaders started to build universities and lay down democratic foundations but it also endured a bloody civil war whose divisions are now healing.

Security is tight although there have ‘only’ been about 120 terrorist killings since 2003, 100 of these in early 2004, and overseas business people and diplomats rarely take special measures. Crime is very low.

There’s also been a development boom with homes and big infrastructure projects built in recent years. Workers don’t pay tax and work six hours a day. Unions are social partners and back the call for full union rights in the rest of Iraq, where they are restricted.

Iraq has the world’s third largest oil reserves but is only the 11th biggest producer. Kurdistan has plentiful supplies. Oil and gas provide virtually all Iraq’s revenues and diversification is vital. Agriculture was born in Kurdistan but liquidated by Saddam who razed thousands of villages and herded people into cities. Kurds have lost farming skills and its young people are not accustomed to rural life. Most food is imported although Kurdistan could become self-sufficient by modernising its methods through foreign investment. Tourism is another growth area.

Kurdish leaders seek UK investment and trade and are mystified that there has been no official ministerial trade mission while other European countries are making a beeline to the region. Britain is losing business opportunities. Direct flights to the UK and a wider visa scheme would boost commerce.

Kurdistan is wrongly overlooked in case UK engagement upsets Arab Iraq. This is not, however, a zero sum game. Kurdistan is open to business which is currently less feasible elsewhere. Kurdistan could become the gateway to the whole country and companies could expand as security permits.

Kurdistan’s leaders are open to international best practice. They don’t want to reinvent every wheel and have contracted British institutions to help them tackle corruption and administrative inexperience.

Secular opposition

Their Speaker asked us to outline the British political system and more than half their 111 MPs enthusiastically participated in two lively sessions. They were keen to understand our Official Opposition system. They now have one – Gorran (the Change). This breakaway from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) took 25% of the seats in last year’s elections. The split is very bitter and Gorran has yet to find its feet. The emergence of a secular opposition is an important example for the Middle East.

Iraq has become a cold house for Christians but many have fled to Kurdistan and senior Christian leaders praised the government for building churches and protecting Christian villages.

Discussion in landlocked Kurdistan always turns to the neighbours. The good news is that frosty relations with Turkey have thawed massively in the last year, partly driven by extensive trading. However, Turkey and Iran are manipulating water supplies and one leading politician told us directly that Iran is not a neighbour but controls Shia Iraq.

The bad news is that relations between Iraqi Kurds and some Arabs have worsened considerably. This dangerous gap involves cultural and ethnic differences, resentment and fear and has come close to a shooting war. The Kurds suffered genocide directed from Baghdad but now embrace a federal and democratic Iraq. An independent Kurdistan including parts of Turkey, Iran and Syria is a popular dream but would almost certainly cause conflagration and is not on the agenda.

Kurds fear that Baghdad is building a centralised rather than federal state and it constantly delays implementing agreed constitutional provisions to solve problems. These include making Kirkuk and other disputed territories part of the Region, and establishing a reliable regime for oil production and sharing revenues.

Neutral statistics should underpin political representation and planning but they are not available in Kurdistan because the last census was in 1957. The Prime Minister, a Labour supporter-in-exile, Cardiff Barham Salih, told us they need UK technical assistance.

Improving Kurdish-Arab relations depends on the Iraqi parliamentary elections in March which could bring a new Iraqi PM with Kurdish support and reshaped cross-community alliances.

Iraqi Kurdistan has come a long way quickly but governance and human rights need improving. Its leaders and people most clearly desire deeper and wider political and commercial engagement by the UK, and others. It is in everyone’s interests that Kurdistan achieves its full potential within and for Iraq. The whole country would then stand a much better chance of working for its long-suffering people.

–

Gary Kent’s sixth fact-finding visit to Iraq, his fourth to Kurdistan since 2006, was with Meg Munn MP for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan. They were guests of the Kurdistan parliament. In five days they met the President, Speaker, Prime Minister, Interior Minister, other ministers, unions, women activists, Gorran, Christian leaders, plus British and Kurdish business leaders.

Labour Friends of Iraq

In March 2003, as the war began in Iraq, I found myself sitting in the middle of a road in Cardiff alongside hundreds of anti-war protestors. I was one of what the media had dubbed ‘protest virgins’: ordinary, politically non-aligned people who had been galvanised by the impending war into joining a protest march for the first time in their lives.

Like most of the protest virgins, I didn’t stay with the Stop the War Coalition for long. The bulk of them turned up in London on 15 February, spent a jolly day marching from the Victoria Embankment to Hyde Park, watched Ms Dynamite and then went home to gossip over a latte about what a thrilling experience it had been and how they even got to carry a placard.

Personally, I stayed rather longer. I continued to join protests and help organise local STWC events until about three weeks into the war. By this time the US forces were about to take Baghdad. It was also becoming increasingly obvious to me that whatever remained of the Stop the War Coalition, post-invasion, would be ugly, ineffectual and dominated by extremism and idiocy.

Two years on, and with the benefit of hindsight, my time with the Stop the War Coalition has been a rather depressing experience. Not just because the biggest protest movement in British history failed utterly to have the slightest influence on government policy, but also because of what it illustrated about the state of the British left. At its peak, the STWC represented a broad swathe of centre-left opinion, but its direction was all-too-easily steered, not by those people who represent the best of the left, but its worst. Clapped-out Stalinists, dimwit Trotskyists, armchair Che Guevaras, clueless ultra-left hacks – these constitute the sorry shower who have become the noisiest voices on the left over Iraq.

The Socialist Workers Party are not the only ones to blame for this, but through their manoeuvring in order to dominate the STWC agenda, they have to shoulder more blame than most.

Of those protest virgins who tried to continue working with the STWC, there often seems to have been some sort of pivotal see-saw moment when the desire to register one’s protest at the war became overtaken by the sheer levels of blithering stupidity on display at STWC events. For an acquaintance of mine, that moment was when American flags began to be burned on protest marches. For me, it was the ‘Victory to the Resistance’ placards printed by the SWP a couple of weeks into the war. Declaring your opposition to an ill-conceived, potentially disastrous foreign policy adventure is one thing; being a cheerleader for Saddam’s Fedayeen thugs is quite another. It wasn’t a coincidence that around this time I stopped turning up to STWC meetings and started ‘forgetting’ to return the voicemail messages of STWC activists.

Shocking

Once the invasion was over and the occupation began, one would have expected that the priority of a decent left would have been to begin building solidarity with democratic and progressive forces in Iraq. The anti-war movement’s failure to do so is shocking. At times they’ve not only ignored Iraqi leftists and democrats, they’ve actively hindered them. The Iraqi Communist Party opposed the war, but once it was over joined the Iraqi Governing Council. To an ordinary mortal like me, getting involved with the closest approximation to a democratic forum in post-invasion Iraq seems like a sensible and obvious move in order to try to influence events. To the ideologues of the hard left, however, this was collaboration.

Recipe for disaster

When a representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions told a Labour Party conference that an immediate withdrawal of British troops could lead to civil war and the balkanisation of Iraq, it struck me as a straight- forward statement of the bleeding obvious. Whatever one may have thought about the original war, a sudden pullout of foreign troops is a self-evident recipe for disaster; a quick and easy way to massively escalate the chaos and turn Iraq into a deeply unpleasant place where anyone who is a democrat, a socialist, a communist, a liberal, a trade unionist, a feminist or a human rights campaigner is liable to wind up receiving a bullet in the back of the head.

Despite the sheer obviousness of the IFTU representative’s words, this was, once again, collaboration. This time the charge was made in an official Stop the War Coalition statement. Chillingly, the same statement also condemned the IFTU’s ‘view that genuinely independent trade unionism in Iraq can develop under a regime of military occupation’. So trade unionists aren’t even allowed to try to represent Iraqi workers? Socialist solidarity, comrade. Even more chillingly, this was followed by a call for Iraqis to resist the occupation ‘by whatever means they find necessary’. This was only a week or so after certain Iraqis found it necessary to behead Ken Bigley. A couple of weeks later, other Iraqis found it necessary to murder the humanitarian aid worker Margaret Hassan.

The words ‘by whatever means they find necessary’ were soon expunged from the statement, followed by unconvincing denials that they had ever said it in the first place. Despite the denials, it’s always been fairly obvious whose side the STWC leadership see themselves as being on. We can find the evidence in STWC vice-president Tariq Ali’s words that, ‘The immediate tasks that face an anti-imperialist movement are support for Iraqi resistance to the Anglo-American occupation’ and that the resistance is ‘the classic initial stage of guerrilla warfare against a colonial occupation’. We can find it in George Galloway’s comparison of the Iraqi insurgency to the French resistance in World War Two, and in John Rees’ comments that ‘I don’t propose to lecture the Iraqi people on the methods they use, and neither should we.’

So, to summarise, beheading terrified hostages is more forgivable than engaging with the occupation in order to try to develop a working democracy.

Those who want the occupation to be replaced by an Islamo-fascist theocracy or a return or to Ba’athist tyranny are worthy of our support. Those who want an orderly handover to a democratic state are not. All this reminds us of George Orwell’s famous comment that, ‘One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.’

Thanks to the ideological agenda of the SWP and their allies, the overriding principle guiding STWC policy has become not democracy, human rights or international law, but anti-imperialism. When anti-imperialism is taken to its idiot extreme (and it all too often is) then anyone who is an opponent of western foreign policy becomes declared an ally to be supported. The trouble is, all too often this means supporting people with little or no regard for democracy, progressivism, the Geneva Convention, or even basic human decency. The Vietcong, General Galtieri, the IRA, the Soviet Union, Hamas, the Iranian ayatollahs, and now the brutal thugs of the Iraqi insurgency: all have received declarations of support from so-called ‘progressives’ who really ought to know better.

Naturally, all of this has no impact whatsoever on actual policy. The SWP are about as influential in the corridors of power as the Flat Earth Society are in geography classrooms. But the hysterical voices of the tinpot ‘anti-imperialist’ ideologues can drown out the more reasoned voices of those who want to see a decent left founded on principles of democracy and humanitarianism. The SWP are not a threat to new Labour or the Bush agenda. They are a threat to genuine left-wing dissent.

It was this sorry state of affairs that I was contemplating when I was invited to join Labour Friends of Iraq. The key idea behind LFIQ is a straightforward one: no matter whether you supported or opposed the war, the important thing now is to get behind the democrats and left-wingers in Iraq, beginning with the Iraqi trade union movement. I was sympathetic to the idea. How many times does one have to re-run the old argument about what should have been done back in March 2003? I opposed the war, and don’t apologise for that. Even so I’d rather work with someone who supported the war but wants to ensure the best possible future for the Iraqi people, than someone who’d happily see an entire nation burn just to prove Bush and Blair wrong.

There was, however, a slight snag. When the war began I’d vowed never to vote Labour again. Now I was being asked to join the Labour Party in order to support the Iraqi trade unions. I opted to go back on my word and signed up with Labour and LFIQ. If the only decent, pro-democracy alternative to the STWC was inside Labour then that was where I would go.

Courageous

So far I haven’t had cause to regret pledging my support to LFIQ. By challenging the far left’s smears and libels against courageous Iraqi trade unionists, LFIQ and others have succeeded in forcing the SWP and co to mute their hostility to those Iraqis who have the temerity not to follow the SWP party line. (I suppose an apology from the SWP might not be possible? No? I thought not.) There is a need to support Iraqi leftists operating in difficult and dangerous conditions, and LFIQ have highlighted that need where others have ignored it or tried to hinder it. It would be the ultimate irony if, after all the cries of betrayal over new Labour, a new form of dissent based on decency and democracy were to emerge from within the ranks of Labour itself.

A new, decent left needs to emerge to challenge the totalitarian pseudo-left. The voices of this decent left can be heard not just in LFIQ. They can be heard on internet blogs such as Harry’s Place, in the thoughtful analyses of writers such as Johann Hari, and in Peter Tatchell’s bloody-minded commitment to the principle of universal human rights.

For now, Labour Friends of Iraq have generated a remarkable change in my own outlook. In March 2003 I felt ashamed to have supported Labour in the past, and proud to march with the Stop the War Coalition.

In March 2005, I feel ashamed to have supported the Stop the War Coalition, but Ican now once again feel proud to be a Labour supporter.

Reprinted with permission from the LFIQ website: www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk

I have a feeling that it must have been a disappointing week for Francis Fukuyama, whose essay ‘After Neoconservatism’ (adapted from his upcoming book America at the Crossroads) was awarded seven pages in the 19 February 2006 New York Times Magazine. The anti-Danish mayhem that had been dominating the news was surpassed by the fantastic criminality and sacrilege in Samarra, and nobody seemed to have time for the best-advertised defection from the neocon ranks. This is a pity, since the essay exhibits several points of interest.

However, it must also be said that Fukuyama himself made it hard for people to concentrate on his words. There appears to be an arsenal of clichés and stock expressions located somewhere inside his word processor, so that he has only to touch the keyboard for one of them to spring abruptly onto the page. Thus, in the first paragraph, we are told that Iraq has become ‘a magnet’ for jihadists, later that democracy-promotion has been attacked both from the left and (gasp) the right, later that neocons have issues with ‘overreaching’, and soon after that ‘it is not an accident’ that many neoconservatives started out as ‘Trotskyites’.

Unironic beauty

Not everyone will appreciate the unironic beauty of those last two formulations; they will appeal most to the few who are connoisseurs of leftist sectarianism. The opening words, ‘It is no accident, comrades’, used to be the dead giveaway of a wooden Stalinist hack (who would also make use of the deliberately diminishing term Trotskyite instead of Trotskyist). And these nuances matter, because Fukuyama now tells us that the book that made him famous, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), ‘presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism’.

Alas, the purity of his Marxism was soon to be corrupted by the likes of William Kristol and Robert Kagan, whose position was ‘by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States.’ Pause to note, then, that even the advocate of the new foreign-policy ‘realism’ feels compelled to borrow the most overused anti-Hegelian line from Karl Marx’s 18th Brumaire.

Trostkyist parody

For all this show of knowledge about the arcana of Marxism and Straussianism, Fukuyama’s actual applications of them are surprisingly thin. It is not even a parody of the Trotskyist position to say that the lesson they drew from Stalinism was ‘the danger of good intentions carried to extremes’. Nor is it even half-true to say, of those who advocated an intervention in Iraq, that they concluded ‘that the “root cause” of terrorism lay in the Middle East’s lack of democracy, that the United States had both the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq.’

The first requirement of anyone engaging in an intellectual or academic debate is that he or she be able to give a proper account of the opposing position(s), and Fukuyama simply fails this test. The term ‘root causes’ was always employed ironically (as the term ‘political correctness’ used to be) as a weapon against those whose naive opinions about the sources of discontent were summarised in that phrase. It wasn’t that the Middle East ‘lacked democracy’ so much that one of its keystone states was dominated by an unstable and destabilising dictatorship led by a psychopath. And it wasn’t any illusion about the speed and ease of a transition so much as the conviction that any change would be an improvement. The charge that used to be leveled against the neoconservatives was that they had wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein (pause for significant lowering of voice) even before September 11, 2001. And that ‘accusation’, as Fukuyama well knows, was essentially true and to their credit.

Three questions

The three questions that anyone developing second thoughts about the Iraq conflict must answer are these: Was the George H.W. Bush administration right to confirm Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait in 1991? Is it right to say that we had acquired a responsibility for Iraq, given past mistaken interventions and given the great moral question raised by the imposition of sanctions? And is it the case that another confrontation with Saddam was inevitable; those answering ‘yes’ thus being implicitly right in saying that we, not he, should choose the timing of it? Fukuyama does not even mention these considerations. Instead, by his slack use of terms like ‘magnet’, he concedes to the fanatics and beheaders the claim that they are a response to US blunders and excesses.

That’s why that week was a poor one for him to pick. Surely the huge spasm of Islamist hysteria over caricatures published in Copenhagen shows that there is no possible western insurance against doing something that will inflame jihadists? The sheer audacity and evil of destroying the shrine of the 12th imam is part of an inter-Muslim civil war that had begun long before the forces of al-Qaida decided to exploit that war and also to export it to non-Muslim soil. Yes, we did indeed underestimate the ferocity and ruthlessness of the jihadists in Iraq. Where, one might inquire, have we not underestimated those forces and their virulence? (We are currently underestimating them in Nigeria, for example, which is plainly next on the Bin Laden hit list and about which I have been boring on ever since Bin Laden was good enough to warn us in the fall of 2004.)

In the face of this global threat, and its recent and alarmingly rapid projection onto European and American soil, Fukuyama proposes beefing up ‘the State Department, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and the like’. You might expect a citation from a Pew poll at about this point, and, don’t worry, he doesn’t leave that out, either. But I have to admire that vague and lazy closing phrase ‘and the like’. Hegel meets Karen Hughes! Perhaps some genius at the CIA is even now preparing to subsidise a new version of Encounter magazine to be circulated among the intellectuals of Kashmir or Kabul or Kazakhstan? Not such a bad idea in itself, perhaps, but no substitute for having a battle-hardened army that has actually learned from fighting in the terrible conditions of rogue-state/failed-state combat. Is anyone so blind as to suppose that we shall not be needing this hard-bought experience in the future?

Policy and history

I have my own criticisms both of my one-time Trotskyist comrades and of my temporary neocon allies, but it can be said of the former that they saw Hitlerism and Stalinism coming – and also saw that the two foes would one day fuse together – and so did what they could to sound the alarm. And it can be said of the latter (which, alas, it can’t be said of the former) that they looked at Milosevic and Saddam and the Taliban and realised that they would have to be confronted sooner rather than later.

Fukuyama’s essay betrays a secret academic wish to be living in ‘normal’ times once more, times that will ‘restore the authority of foreign policy “realists” in the tradition of Henry Kissinger’. Fat chance, Francis! Kissinger is moribund, and the memory of his failed dictator’s club is too fresh to be dignified with the term ‘tradition’. If you can’t have a sense of policy, you should at least try to have a sense of history. America at the Crossroads evidently has neither.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent books are Thomas Jefferson: Author of America and Love, Poverty, and War. This article was first published on www.slate.com.

It rarely makes the news here but a million trade unionists are on the march in Iraq. A new network of non-sectarian union federations, professional associations and civil society groups has emerged in Iraq, having been brutally repressed by Saddam Hussein’s fascist-type régime for decades.

These free unions and other civil society organisations could hold the key to uniting the country in peace and prosperity.

Iraqi unions told our British labour movement delegation that they need urgent assistance to boost their clout as a social partner in reconstructing Iraq. This is a huge task. Iraqis have long been isolated from modern thinking in every field of human activity. This is why Labour Friends of Iraq supports the Books to Iraq appeal.

Iraqis also face the burden of an enormous physical and psychological legacy of dictatorship, sanctions and war. Iraq was run by a megalomaniac and his astoundingly brutal family network in the Tikrit area. There was no honesty, competence or ability to speak one’s mind. Take the cabinet minister who responded to Saddam’s plea for an honest assessment and foolishly gave one: he was taken out, executed and his body was chopped to pieces before being presented to his colleagues for inspection.

That was the pattern throughout society for decades. Spies were everywhere. Repression was harsh. Sisters, wives and mothers would be raped to punish their men. Families disappeared. This legacy doesn’t disappear overnight.

We stayed in Iraqi Kurdistan which had been free of Saddam since its uprising in 1991 and its subsequent protection by the Anglo-American no-fly zone. I lost count of the number of times the British and American governments were thanked for liberating Iraq.

This part of Iraq has had longer to develop relatively decent, stable and progressive institutions and is generally secure thanks to police and armed forces that enjoy popular support. The relative peace is enforced by frequent roadblocks, armed guards at hotels, restaurants and obvious terrorist targets. I have never seen so many kalashnikovs in my life, but it works.

Chronic insecurity

But there is chronic insecurity in the rest of the country. Some 50 people a day are killed in terror attacks and counter-insurgency. Extremists have murdered over 500 teachers and lecturers who are seen by extremists as a great resource for stability and citizenship.

Iraqi Kurdish Communist leader Kamal Shaker – who was one of many Peshmerga fighters to retreat to the mountains and take up arms against Saddam – says that terrorists who target civilians are enemies of the people and that the real resistance are those who are building trade unions and reconstructing Iraq.

Their schools are overcrowded – sometimes 110 pupils in a class – and hundreds of schools are still mud buildings. Many spoke movingly of a continuing legacy of dominance and physical beatings in schools.

There is a desperate lack of decent housing. Water and electricity come and go. Petrol is often sold at the kerbside rather than in petrol stations – deeply ironic in such an oil-rich country. Roads are pot-holed and can change at a blink from tarmac to dirt tracks. Factories are idle or under-capacity.

Yet each part of Iraq has huge natural resources, including agriculture, minerals, oil and a potentially sophisticated workforce – whose second language is often English – and offers real potential for foreign investment.

Investment and jobs

It initially seemed odd that unions and others were asking us for investment but we soon understood that there are no prospects for unions without jobs and these cannot be generated internally, although there may be greater scope than some think for Keynesian job-creation schemes.

I was reminded of the old saying that there’s nothing worse than being exploited by a large multinational company, except not being exploited by a large multinational company. Iraq has a war-torn command-style economy and no indigenous capitalist class to fund such investment and technology transfers.

Another problem is that Iraq, like other oil-rich countries in the region, lacks a widespread personal and corporate tax regime. This limits the contract between state and citizen and is thought to be a necessary part of the long-term reconstruction of the nation. Foreign investment always has costs, such as a shake-out of workers, but a stronger Iraqi labour movement can protect workers by improving training and social security.

We saw the breathtaking beauty of Iraqi Kurdistan whose people endured pitiless efforts by Saddam to physically exterminate them. Nearly 200,000 people were murdered, most famously in the chemical attack on Halabja, but thousands of similar villages were bombarded by chemical weapons and razed to the ground.

We toured the Red House in Sulamani where hundreds of people were tortured, just one of many such centres throughout Iraq. Later, we had dinner with high officials who had survived the ordeal. You could see their crooked hands. They were disfigured after being suspended for hours from a ceiling hook with their hands tied behind their backs while guards pulled their bodies to dislocate their shoulders. They were shy about details because so many had been through the same process.

Chemical warfare

It’s said that the Iraqi Kurds have no friends but the mountains, from where their fighters have fought for decades. These same mountains could be a source of tourist revenue when the threat of terrorism recedes. There are similar tourism possibilities in the rest of Iraq.

Saddam’s chemical warfare has left a lingering legacy of increased cancers, leukaemia and genetic deformations but there is a lack specialist health facilities to deal with these problems in Iraqi Kurdistan, and little money to send patients abroad.

After decades of external aggression and internal repression Iraq has an above average number of orphans, widows and disabled people as well as deeply traumatised and mentally ill people. There is even an association for dwarfs in Iraqi Kurdistan – the result of chemically-induced congenital disease.

The one million strong trade union movement wants British trade unionists to help them stand on their own two feet and reconstruct Iraq. With its oil wealth, there is no reason why, over time, Iraq could not have the roads, homes, schools and jobs, like those available in many other oil-rich parts of the middle east, such as Dubai, which resembles an Arabian Los Angeles.

As labour movement representatives, we went to listen to Iraqi trade unionists who also have problems with the current Iraqi government. Iraqi trade union assets have been frozen by Decree 8750 of 8 August 2005 and by the maintenance of Saddam’s ban on public sector unions, the old law 150 passed in 1987. The private sector in Iraq is small and the ban on public sector organisation covers about 80 per cent of the workforce.

So unions cannot easily organise or recruit, produce newspapers, or carry out other activities that we take for granted. Union leaders have to use internet cafés. Iraqi ministers are seeking to dictate how the unions should organise and union leaders fear that this will ‘paralyse’ independent unions. The first target was the engineers’ union, who resisted the government rulebook, and the coming target is the lawyers’ union.

British influence

The British government should use its influence to overturn this ban and ministerial interference in unions, both of which totally contravene International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions as well as the Iraqi constitution. Democracy needs independent unions and democracy is the declared aim of the American and British governments.

The next issue is assistance. British trade unions have already done much. The Fire Brigades Union has sent fire fighting equipment and more is on its way. We also saw a UNISON sponsored ‘train the trainers’ session in Erbil which was just like any similar session in the UK apart from the language.

There are many links between our movements. During our visit, the IWF granted honorary union membership to former Derbyshire Labour MP Harry Barnes who did his national service in Iraq in the mid-50s. Barnes was strongly anti-war and has been a staunch advocate of the needs of the Iraqi labour movement.

We ended our trip by the memorial statue to the 98 Iraqi Kurdish civilians blown up by terrorists in Erbil in 2004. The inscription says ‘Freedom is not free’. Urgent material and moral assistance will do much to help the unions build freedom in a democratic and federal Iraq.

Gary Kent is director of Labour Friends of Iraq.

In Britain, our minds are often focussed on two big issues concerning Iraq. First, should we have been involved in its invasion? Secondly, should our troops now be withdrawn?

I will outline where I stand on these matters, before concentrating on a third key concern which I feel should engage the attention of the wider Labour and trade union movement. How significant are equivalent bodies to ours inside Iraq? What are they aiming for? And how worthy are they of our support?

But first let me confront those first two big issues.

I opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq in a fully fledged way and I stand by the position I adopted. I was opposed to the invasion whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We now know that he did not hold such weapons and that the argument used for the invasion was spurious. But, at the time, I argued that even if he held such weapons an invasion still wasn’t justified as it would have been a highly dangerous exercise – rather like prodding a mad dog with a stick.

I was also opposed to the invasion whether or not it was sanctioned by the United Nations. For me, if the United Nations had been persuaded to back the invasion, that decision would still have been the wrong one. With or without such backing, the likely consequences (as we have now seen) would be shocking in terms of the loss of life, the internal conflict in Iraq, and the impacts in Palestine, the rest of the middle east, and throughout the Muslim world.

While I don’t accept the estimates of post-invasion deaths that have twice been cited in the Lancet, I do recognise that the loss of life in this period has been horrendous and that something like it was predictable before the invasion.

However, those advocating an invasion did put forward a question which the rest of us needed to answer. ‘What would we do instead to tackle the manifest evils of Hussein’s regime?’ My answer was that we should have been assisting those brave people in Iraq who opposed the regime and who struggled to have it replaced by a humane alternative. The internal struggle should have been in the foreground. An article by Mary Kaldor on the Open Democracy website last year, called ‘Iraq: the wrong war’, has since spelled out that option in a section entitled ‘Was there an alternative?’

Bring them home?

Many assume that if someone opposed the invasion in such a fully fledged way, they must now be in favour of immediately withdrawing the troops. This does not follow, of course, either in terms of logic or morality, for there is a countervailing concern.

Terrorist groups and criminal gangs are murdering masses of Iraqi people who are going about their normal business and not ever giving meaningful support to ‘the occupying forces’ or to the supposed ‘puppet regime’. Iraqi troops and police need to be able to contain this hideous aggression. American and British troops play a role in helping to build up and supplement internal security.

The great problem is that American forces, in particular (but not excluding the British), have been involved in a whole series of actions involving prisoner abuse and over-the-top military action, and have failed to link with and aid Iraqis who could have helped build the alternative democratic society that Bush and Blair say they seek.

The questions that arise are: how much terrorist activity would fall away if the British and American troops left?; and would any drop in violence be sufficient to ensure relative peace?

I have always answered this quandary by arguing that the decision to withdraw should be made by the Iraqi parliament, although I recognise (and below stress) some of the shortcomings of the Iraqi parliament and their government. As a democratic socialist, I would criticise aspects of decisions made by almost every parliament in the world but that does not mean that I would wish to abolish them.

The Iraqi people did not support the invasion, but they should at least use their new institutions to decide just when and how the troops leave. I suggest there needs to be a timetable for withdrawal plus plans to replace the troops with forces from acceptable Arab and other nations, if needed. The Iraqi people need to know that Britain and America will be leaving.

I do not wish to draw a line under the above matters, but I do wish to turn our attention to another concern which should be given a much greater priority by the Labour movement. Furthermore, I would claim that whatever attitude we take on the first two big issues, we should be united on this one.

We should start by asking ourselves if there are forces in Iraq who are striving to advance the values which we share – namely, those of democracy, civil rights, social justice and a secular state?

In fact, there are many such forces, including those who mobilise to achieve a status for women, young people, the maimed and disabled, or to improve hospitals, schools, electricity and other services. But I will concentrate on the organisations I know best which seem to me to have massive potential – the trade unions.

Iraq’s population of 27 million is dominated by young people – only 15 million are between 14 and 65. Unemployment is normally said to be in the region of 50 per cent, but as many women in fundamentalist Muslim areas are discouraged from working outside their homes, the number of people in steady employment could be as low as five million.

Yet more than a million people are in trade unions – roughly 20 per cent of those who could be mobilised. In Britain the equivalent figure is 29.1 per cent and we have faced nothing like the traumas and controls experienced by Iraqi working people over the past 40 years.

In Saddam Hussein’s era, trade unions were banned in the public sector – which accounted for 80 per cent of the workforce – and Chemical Ali was put in charge of what was left of the trade unions. These were what are normally called yellow trade unions, working under strict and corrupt state domination.

Unions re-emerge

When Saddam Hussein banned trade unions in the public sector in 1987 he stated that workers no longer existed in Iraq and turned a body called the General Federation of Trade Unions (the GFTU, which had a fine past) into a corrupt state-controlled organisation for the private sector. It spied on its own members and its offices were used for interrogation and torture.

Yet within a few weeks of the invasion, workers who organised in the docks in Basra took successful strike action to remove an oppressive Baathist management and get a pay rise. Thirteen separate bodies with a total of 200,000 members were quickly organised and formed the units of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU).

How was this possible given the Baathist legacy? As in any revolutionary turn-around, it was a mixture of spontaneity and organisation.

Spontaneously, many workers in Iraq knew about the fine history of trade unionism in their nation and had an idea that it was needed and possible in the circumstances of uncertainty, disruption and confusion created by the invasion. Relatives and friends held onto the memory of many martyrs, and such networks are of great importance in Iraq.

As for organisation, many activists had managed to survive, after operating in a clandestine fashion throughout the Baathist days, and were in touch with comrades who had been driven into exile. Those in exile immediately returned or otherwise helped with organisational work.

Things happen quickly when spontaneity and organisation are fused.

The heritage

The pattern of trade union history in Iraq is a common one. Workers struggled for reasonable wages and conditions, opposed anti- trade union laws, and engaged in strikes, which at times had political implications. They struggled for the Labour movement to be given a central role in the nation.

Imperial interests established Iraq and it was placed under a British mandate in 1920. Britain set about exploiting its resources – railways, ports, cigarette and other factories were built, and, in 1927, oil was discovered.

A downtrodden and exploited working class emerged and did just what you would expect in such circumstances. The workers organised and industrial action took place in all the areas mentioned above. The 1920s was also a good time to learn from actions being taken by the organised working class in Britain.

Iraqi trade unions had a persistent battle with the law (and it is still happening today). In 1932 Iraq technically became an independent nation, but it was still under strong British influence. Trade unions were banned in 1936, with the inevitable reaction.

Industrial action had an even clearer political content when the Portsmouth Treaty was signed in 1948. This was an update of earlier Anglo-Iraqi Treaties that maintained British controls, meaning air bases, for example, were still British Crown Territories. I was one of many national servicemen who were sent to one of these bases.

There was widespread struggle in 1948, made possible by 16 new trade unions formed between 1944 and 1946, and the Iraqi Communist Party, which played a leading role in the conflict.

It wasn’t until the pro-British system was swept aside in 1958, in a revolution led by colonels, that Britain was finally obliged to leave its air bases. The GFTU (later to be subverted by Saddam Hussein) was established, and Communists won all ten seats on its central council in open elections.

In 1959, the trade unions then organised a May Day march in Baghdad, and half a million people joined from a population of less than seven million. The march was led by the Communist leaders wearing suits, shirts and ties. These were the nation’s leading advocates of bourgeois democracy as a means of giving the workers their place in the sun.

Murdered and reborn

From 1963, coups and counter coups took place until the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein took full power.

The way the trade union movement was forced into clandestine activity and exile, and unionists were tortured and murdered, is illustrated by the life of Hadi Saleh, a trade union leader whose story is told in a fine book produced by the TUC called Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi trade unions, by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson (the academic, not the politician).

In 1969 (a year after a Baathist coup), the 20-year-old Hadi was imprisoned for trade union and communist political activity, seriously maltreated and sentenced to death. He remained on death row until 1973 when he was released under an armistice and returned to work as a printer where he again engaged in trade union and political activity. The armistice arose because the Baath Party had signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union to obtain arms.

However, in 1977 Hadi had to flee the country. In exile, he linked secretly with clandestine elements in Iraq and, in 1980, helped to found the Workers’ Democratic Trade Union Movement. In 1984, this movement called a strike at Sulymanyah, in the Kurdish area, involving 4,000 people. The regime took harsh action and four of the activists were executed.

In 2003, Hadi returned to Iraq on the heels of the invasion. He was at the forefront in establishing the IFTU, and became their international secretary, travelling widely from his base in Baghdad to develop crucial links with the international trade union movement.

He was brutally murdered in Baghdad in 2005 by terrorists who deliberately target trade unionists. His trade union records were stolen and information was used to seek out others. Some 2,000 of his comrades have been targeted and murdered, using a variety of sources of information. Imagine our own trade union movement withstanding such an assault.

I had the privilege of chairing a meeting for Hadi in the House of Commons. He was a fine person and his murder came as a deep shock. In fact, he is the only person I have had such close contact with who was later murdered, so you can imagine my reaction. I was privileged to address his memorial service at the TUC.

Thanks to his groundwork, the Iraqi trade union movement has become a significant force, recognised by the Arab Federation of Trade Unions and working closely with bodies such as the TUC, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Labour Office.

Iraqi Kurdistan

Saddam Hussein engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Kurds in 1991. They fled to the mountains in the north, and a no-fly zone was established, creating the conditions for the Kurds to operate on a fairly autonomous basis.

Although the Kurds had a period of internal conflict after this, they are now united and Saddam Hussein’s anti-trade union legislation has bitten the dust. Trade unions now have full recognition from the Kurdish regional government and a number of ministers and officials come from their ranks.

Today the Kurdistan Workers’ Federation has 200,000 members, while the Kurdish Teachers’ Union has 100,000. There are also what are termed civic bodies catering for several tens of thousands. These are organisations that have much in common with, say, the MSF section of AMICUS.

Iraqi Kurdistan’s population is mainly Sunni Kurds, with minorities including Shia Kurds, Turcoman and Assyrians, making up between 20 and 25 per cent of Iraq’s population, depending on where we draw the boundaries (the status of Kirkuk has yet to be determined).

I visited Iraqi Kurdistan in April with Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ) and trade union officials. Outside of areas such as Mosul and Kirkuk, it is now reasonably safe to move around thanks to the Kurds’ own tight security system. This involves regular road checks (at which you can trust those questioning you not to have links with terrorists), and huge concrete blocks and guards, which protect key buildings.

The economy has characteristics of a command economy, but even the local Communist Party are aware of the need to attract inward investment. Yet in opening up the economy to the influences of capital, there is a keenness not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

A building boom is taking place covering private housing, rented flats, council housing, university students’ accommodation and public facilities. Road building, a hydro-electric project and plans for leisure facilities are to the fore. Cement factories proliferate.

But there are plenty of problems to overcome. Petrol shortages create a huge black market for petrol that’s smuggled over the borders. Hydro electric extensions are sought to overcome the regular breakdown in supplies, and there is also a great deal of hidden unemployment. We visited a cigarette factory employing 600 workers which had not produced a fag for several years, but the workers attended full-time in order to be paid.

The Kurds’ views of the invasion and the occupation tend to differ from those of Arabs elsewhere in Iraq, although a few shared the views of the minority Kurdish Communist Party, which opposed the invasion and looks for a phased withdrawal of troops. They were as opposed to the terrorists’ tactics as anyone, however. On the other hand, there is little feeling of being occupied in Iraqi Kurdistan as only 200 American troops are situated there.

Our visit was well publicised in the local media, but we were protected and closely guarded. If we had attempted the same activities in Baghdad then we would soon have been kidnapped. Our hosts from the Kurdistan Workers’ Federation looked after us well, and carefully. They even arranged for us to meet 11 trade union leaders from the rest of Iraq who flew from Baghdad to meet us in Arbil.

Arab Iraq

The IFTU forms the backbone of the newly established General Federation of Iraqi Workers. The GFITU was established to bring all recognised trade unions in non-Kurdish Iraq together to affiliate to the Arab Federation of Trade Unions, except for the large teachers’ union with which they enjoy close fraternal links. Today the GFITU has some 300,000 members, and there are 400,000 in the teachers’ union, from all education institutions.

Aside from terrorist attacks, these trade unions face another serious problem that does not affect those in Iraqi Kurdistan – the law is against them. In particular, Saddam Hussein’s measure banning trade unions in the public sector has not been repealed, so employers can resort to the courts and officials to act against trade unions. The practicalities on the ground do differ from Saddam Hussein’s time, however, and shop floor pressure can persuade employers in specific circumstances not to make full use of these legal powers.

However, another crippling government measure hit the trade unions on 8 August 2005. Under Decree 8750 trade union funds can be taken over by the state while it decides how the unions will be allowed to function, organise and operate. These powers to sequest funds, the threat of future bans and prescriptions, and the existing ban on activity in the main sector of the economy, place a crippling burden on the GFITU, its affiliates and the teachers’ union.

Considerable effort is being made by the international trade union movement, especially the TUC, to get these restraints removed.

Iraqi trade unions concern themselves with numerous issues beyond their own organisational viability and the wages and conditions of their members. Economic development is a key concern and they insist the oil industry should be publicly owned and under democratic control.

The status of women in society is another huge issue. Along with women’s organisations and non-governmental bodies, trade unions were at the centre of action leading to the repeal of Saddam Hussein’s Law 137, which made women subject to male domination in families and marriages. There are conflicting interpretations of the new Iraqi constitution, its free status for women clashing with Islamic commitments that some would use to justify Sharia law.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, I talked to women trade unionists at factories, on a trade union training course, and in civic society meetings, and Hasimia Muhsin Hussein, president of the Basra Electricity and Energy Union, was one of the trade unionists who met us in Arbil. I have also met female GFITU activists at the TUC and in the Commons. So far, Hasimia Muhsin Hussein is the only major office holder in a GFITU affiliate who is a women, yet all these bodies are committed to equal rights for women and struggle for it, especially within industry.

Solidarity

Understanding something about the commitment, scope and potential of the Iraqi trade union movement is a prelude to working with and for them. The British trade union movement is providing its brothers and sisters in Iraq with assistance, and there are ways in which we, as individuals, can also help.

For example, UNISON funds trade union training courses in Iraq. We visited one of these in Arbil and later came across shop stewards from the courses in their factories. We also met the person co-ordinating the national scheme. As a former tutor on trade union courses myself, I was impressed by what I heard and saw.

As a consequence of our visit, UNISON representatives also made a commitment to find resources to fund a workers’ radio station in Iraq.

In 2004 the Fire Brigades Union collected and delivered 600 kits of boots, leggings, tunics and helmets to fire fighters in Basra when they discovered that the Iraqi firefighters operated without essential equipment. Recently, they delivered two fire engines to Iraq and had to pay bribes to Turkish border guards to get them in.

The RMT, PCS and GMB are some of the other unions that have provided practical help in their areas. Many unions have facilitated visits to and from Iraq, and Iraqi trade unionists attend trade union education courses in this country.

As well as making regular representations to our government, and to the government in Iraq, the TUC runs an Aid Iraq Appeal. This sponsors a major project run by the International Federation of Journalists to help Iraqi journalists establish a free trade union. The National Union of Journalists is active in the TUC’s important Iraq Solidarity Committee, recognising that workers’ rights to free expression is crucial.

How can we help?

First, by learning about the issues involved and spreading the word. The key source for information is the TUC’s book on Hadi Saleh (details below). The book provides essential details on who to contact and profits go to the TUC’s Aid to Iraq Appeal.

As part of the appeal, the TUC also collects old mobile phones with their chargers to convert for use in Iraq. These are important because travel is so dangerous and landlines are unreliable. Unlike cash, mobiles are unlikely to be sequested by the state.

Also, raise questions within your own trade union or Labour movement organisation to see if adequate support is being given to bodies such as the TUC’s Iraq Solidarity Committee and Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ). The latter will provide speakers for meetings.

Links to LFIQ’s website will reveal other groups who support these ideals, such as a group called Books to Iraq which collects funds to buy and export text books to the Iraqi school of pharmacy.

I started by commenting on the two big issues which often dominate our thoughts on Iraq: where did we stand on the invasion?; and where do we now stand on the question of ‘troops out’?

I believe that whatever divided us over these matters, activists in the wider Labour movement could and should unite now over a third big issue: namely, support for the Iraqi trade union movement that pursues workers’ rights, democracy, civil rights and a secular state. This movement is one of the best hopes for a decent future for Iraq.

In fact, merely to concentrate on the invasion and the current position of the armed forces is a rather western-centred approach. Of course, these matters are also of key importance to the Iraqi people. But we need to go beyond our own two big issues if we are to link with their needs. After all, whose side will we be on when the troops leave? If it’s the trade unions, then shouldn’t we be active at their side already?

Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi trade unions, by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson, is £10 from the TUC, www.tuc.org.uk. This article was first published on Harry Barnes’ blog http://threescoreyearsandten.blogspot.com

The United States is not a uniform entity. Anyone who says, “America thinks this, that or the other” is just plain wrong. There is possibly more diversity of opinion in America than in Europe.

Bush made major electoral gains in the 2002 mid-term elections by putting his neck on the line with voters and because of the shambolic campaign run by the Democrats. But domestic support for his war on terrorism, though broad, is shallow and there is considerable unease bubbling beneath the surface. These are the central lessons I took from a three-week study tour on US foreign policy, organised under the aegis of the US State Department.

The tour took 14 European journalists from Washington to the (genetically modified and sprawling) cornfields of Iowa in the mid-west, on to the Pacific (Seattle or San Diego), back to the NATO Atlantic Command centre in Norfolk, Virginia, and finally to New York during election week. It was a whirlwind trip of background briefings from senior figures in various government, non-governmental and academic organisations.

Our first meeting lifted any fears that the tour would ram the party line down our throats. Dr Deibel, Professor of National Strategy at the National War College, said many feel that the real axis of evil is Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield and Paul Wolfowitz, President Bush’s key advisers. It’s often said that Bush’s genius is in his selection of advisers but the evil triumvirate is not now in the ascendancy, thanks to Secretary of State Colin Powell and, as is very widely acknowledged in official circles, Tony Blair.

Americans come in four types: Davos Man, the corporate executive who might attend the annual Davos World Economic Summit; Berkeley Man, the liberal and cosmopolitan intellectual elite; McDonalds Man (Homer Simpson); and Oklahoma Man, from the bible belt. Davos and Berkeley men are more predisposed to meeting inquisitive foreigners than the other two. Liberals in our group consequently became desperate to meet anyone who would defend and promote the Bush line.

I went to the Republican victory party at the Hilton in New York to find them. The first person I randomly selected told me that America was dominated by corporations – “for the money, by the money, with the money”. The second also slammed “Dubya” while Bush supporters gave inconsistent reasons for backing Bush on the war.

There was certainly much confusion about Bush. A former pilot who knew Bush from the days when he evaded Vietnam service for a safe role in the National Guard mentioned his months of hard drinking with the future President and opined that Bush was smuggling a highly conservative republican agenda past the American people. A Reaganite told me that Reagan had said the “darndest things” but was moderate in practice, while figures like Cheney are moderate in tone yet believe the craziest things.

Bush is genuinely more fundamentalist than people realise. We were told of a spirited debate between Bush and his mother over Dubya’s assertion that all non-Christians are destined to go to hell, not in this lifetime but the next one. The dispute was only “resolved” by him summoning his own personal minister, Billy Graham, who confirmed this particular Bush doctrine.

Plain-speaking man

However, the image of a Texan hick in hock to big oil doesn’t quite accord with reality. He is seen as a plain-speaking man who is a cunning “pol” (politician), one able to sense the American mood. Bush has, after all, pulled off an historic feat in securing dominance over the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House.

He trounced the Democrats in what an academic described as a triumph of tactics over vision. This is too kind to the anaemic campaign run by the Democrats, who face a savage debate about their future. They are understandably bitter about being robbed of victory in 2000 but were stymied by the khaki background to the election campaign. The Democrats often disagreed with the unilateralist and aggressive tone, if not always the content, of Bush’s policies.

Their biggest nightmare was that the hard-liners would prove to be correct on the threat to America, and they would hence pay an enormous price for being soft on Saddam and terrorism. One of their candidates, a Vietnam veteran who had lost three limbs in the war, was accused of lack of patriotism by a “whippersnapper chickenhawk”, who won the race.

We were reminded that the ethos of the Harvard MBA programme, which Bush attended, is “hyper-aggression”. If this theory is correct, then maybe Bush has secured a massive victory in cajoling the UN Security Council, even including Syria, into a tough resolution on disarming Iraq.

The President’s landmark National Security Strategy was regularly analysed. This is the theoretical basis for a policy of pre-emption, a sharp departure from the Cold War strategy of containment and deterrence. People often contrasted Papa Bush with his son. Bush 41 responded to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait by seeking a UN mandate before securing one from Congress. Bush 43 did it the other way round.

Europeans often think Dubya is seeking revenge for his father, who was nearly assassinated by Saddam and who decided not to finish off Saddam after the first Gulf War. But there is a fundamental philosophical divide between the two Bush presidencies. Papa Bush comes from the tradition of “Eisenhower Republicans” who fashioned the post-war multilateral world order, having defeated Republicans allied to Senator Taft, who opposed institutions such as Nato in favour of unilateral action.

However, we were also told that pre-emption and regime change were always in the American arsenal, the National Security Strategy merely codified them, and that it was wiser to look at what Bush did rather than what he said. After all, who could have predicted that Bush would have spent two months negotiating a UN Security Council resolution?

Some speakers thought that the Bush administration was making things up as they went along, having been forced into international engagement by 9/11. Bush had, after all, spent the first eight months of his presidency gratuitously offending his allies by tearing up agreements such as the Anti-Missile and Kyoto treaties, and refusing to endorse the international criminal court.

Many Americans have a deeply ingrained fear of “foreign entanglements”. The image of body-bags from Vietnam hangs over all debates. People are accustomed to the idea of taking on opponents who can be compared to Hitler, defeating them within days with few casualties, and then leaving the Europeans to pick up the pieces. This was regularly described as America doing the cooking and Europe doing the dishes. But American policy-makers resent European countries for their lower defence capabilities, making them “free-riders” in US eyes.

The US military and the intelligence community are unhappy with the simplistic scenarios presented about Saddam. A former Reagan aide told us that “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics”. The intelligence people realise that America needs allies in the pursuit of Al Qaeda. German-American security cooperation has suffered because of the spat between Chancellor Schroeder and President Bush. The Europeans have nabbed more terrorist suspects than America, although we heard that those held in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were providing serious information.

Support for military action against Saddam evaporates when people imagine America doing it alone, in the face of opposition from European and Arab allies. It’s also expected that the US could take 1,000 casualties although there are widely varying views on how long the US would have to stay. One source from the administration argued that once US blood and treasure had been expended, the US would stay as long as it took, but many Americans don’t appreciate just how long this could be, or how much it could cost. We were told by a senior Republican that “nation-building is a four-letter word” in the US.

On the other hand, people recognise that quick-fix military action does not tackle political and economic grievances. What’s more, the war could allow Iraq’s vast oil reserves to be developed and trading to start with USA.

Growing rift

Many discussions focused on the growing rift between USA and Europe. We differ in our models of social welfare and attitudes to the death penalty, as well as in environmental policies. Most Europeans do not see Saddam as a clear and present danger while, officially, America does.

In Washington DC and New York, the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre are constant reminders of America’s vulnerability. But Washington is often described as “a city surrounded on all sides by reality” and beyond the Beltway war is something far away. We were told that 99.5 per cent of the American people don’t see Saddam as a threat, even if most have a deep respect for the institution of the presidency and often give it the benefit of the doubt.

Yet USA is on a war footing. For the first time, it has its own military command and is building an internal intelligence agency – the Department of Homeland Security. The threat of terrorism hangs over every airport. The days when it used to be free and easy to travel around the US are gone. As foreigners using one-way tickets we always had extra checks. The sign at Norfolk airport was clear: “no mace, no guns, no jokes”.

The US is spending a vast fortune on such checks. The Department of Homeland Security will have a $40 billion budget and one private think-tank, Anser, warns that the biggest problem is uncontrolled expenditure. Nevertheless, Al Qaeda has probably worked out that buying a return ticket would bypass much security.

Despite hearing so many different viewpoints, one thing seems certain – when Bush comes to shove, Saddam will not be leading Iraq by the time of the next US presidential elections in 2004. Whether that weakens or boosts terrorism, and whether it deepens or strengthens the transatlantic relationship, are open questions.

Every great international conflict in the modern world – from the Napoleonic wars through the first and second world wars – has been followed by a recasting of the international order. Yet, although George Bush senior proclaimed a new world order on the eve of the previous war against Iraq, it is only after the latest conflict that we are seeing, clearly, the contours of the international order bequeathed by the end of the Cold War.

At the centre of this new world sits the United States of America as the sole superpower. So what are we to make of US power and purposes in the world today?

The first thing is not, in fact, very new. That is, that the two-fold objectives which have guided US policy towards the rest of the world for most of the past 100 years, remain. These are, first, to secure the interests of the liberal capitalist world against challenges to it; and, secondly, to maintain the US’s leadership position within the capitalist world.

For much of the post-second world war era, these two dimensions of US policy were bent to one over-riding aim: containing and eventually defeating communism. Indeed, the confrontation with communism goes back even further than this, to the Bolshevik revolution itself. Then, western involvement in the post-revolutionary civil war, and US plans for post-World War One reconstruction in Europe (based on the creation of new, independent capitalist democracies in Europe within the framework of the League of Nations), were explicitly directed at containing the new communist state.

What turned into a global confrontation with communism lent an overarching shape to US policy towards all areas of the world. Strong, unique alliances, were built with the capitalist states of Europe, and with the reconstructed capitalism of post-war Germany and Japan, all in the shadow of America’s nuclear umbrella. Communist-influenced insurgencies in many parts of the rest of the world were confronted, often in a most violent way. And liberal democratic norms were set on one side as the US supported some of the most brutal anti-communist dictatorships in the newly independent states of the developing world.

With the collapse of communism, however, this apparent uniformity of policy has begun to be replaced by rather different approaches to different parts of the world, even while the over-riding twin objectives, identified above, remain. In an interesting piece of analysis, my colleague, Simon Bromley, has argued both that the nature of American influence and power has changed since the end of the Cold War, and that the policies it pursues towards different regions of the world is now more variable.

Uniquely dominant

The post-Cold War period provides a radically changed context for US power. On the military front, the US is in a uniquely dominant position, now unchecked by the power of the Soviet Union and its socialist allies in Europe and the developing world. However, on the economic front, the relative dominance that the United States enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of the second world war has been vastly diminished, not least because of the success of its own policies which were aimed at revitalising capitalist economies in Europe and Japan.

Bromley claims that this situation – of military unipolarity and economic multi-polarity – combines with a series of regional strategic challenges to configure a varying set of policies that the US is pursuing towards different groups of states in the world.

The first is the ongoing relationship among the liberal capitalist powers. Here, the institutionalised co-operation established in the aftermath of the second world war, and during the Cold War, is set to remain. In the economic field, the US has no option but to continue with co-operative relations with the other leading capitalist states. This has been based on achieving freer movement of trade and capital between these countries and has produced massive mutual gains for the states concerned. In particular, the capitalist states gain from the increased level of accumulation on an international scale, but the alliance they have forged under American leadership helps to strengthen the liberal states domestically. In the military field, paradoxically, the imbalance in military capabilities between Europe and America means that any radical overhaul of NATO is unlikely, whatever the French may say they want.

The spats over policy towards Iraq, in the absence of a more fundamental shift in power among the states of this liberal capitalist core, are unlikely to rupture the economic and military pillars of the liberal capitalist order.

However, outside this core, things are less stable. The second group of relationships Bromley identifies are with the non-liberal emerging powers, particularly Russia and China. Both of these countries have economic reasons for developing further the avenues of co-operation which each is establishing. Russia needs the ongoing support of the west, and further integration into the international economy to bolster its crisis-ridden transition to capitalism. China’s vibrant capitalist growth also means it pursues greater international openness, as witnessed by its accession to the World Trade Organisation. However, each has its own military and security ambitions, particularly in Asia, and each has reasons to fear the power of the other, as well as the US.

Thus, US policy is likely to focus on building, where possible, greater economic co-operation. In particular, this is likely to lead to efforts to further expand the membership of the liberal regulatory order, in particular the WTO. However, militarily, the US may continue to act as an external force maintaining the military balance among the powerful states of Asia (Japan comes into the picture here, too). This is a more precarious set of relationships as both of these states are big enough to cause problems for the US, at least within the Asian region, and neither is really liberal, so clashes may occur over the terms of their integration into the wider international system. Other states, such as India, Pakistan and, in Latin America, Brazil, may pose their own challenges in the future.

Finally, the US is confronted with the challenges of combating threats to the liberal capitalist world from without. As we all know, this is focused on the sometimes linked threats of rogue states and terrorism, both sometimes coupled to the possession of weapons of mass destruction. Here the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated that the US is prepared to become involved in state-building in an effort to undercut sources of potential threat, whether they take the form of bases for terrorist groups, as in Afghanistan, or states which are avowedly aggressive towards US interests, as in Iraq. In addition, the war in Iraq has also shown that the US adheres to a doctrine of pre-emption (that is, attacking a potential future threat before it has had a chance to attack the US).

While this latter challenge holds out the prospect of some great strategic gains for the US (a stable, friendly, and politically not distasteful state in the Middle East, which shares some common interests), it is also the most immediately problematic, as none of the western states have so far shown that they are up to the job of creating new, stable, much less democratic or liberal, states where non existed before.

What some are now referring to as the US ‘empire’ is thus a complex and dynamic creation. The core of this world remains an historically unique international order based on the joint interests of liberal capitalist states. But the relationships between this liberal core and the rest of the world are likely to be the source of many, potentially very dangerous conflicts in the future.

William Brown is a lecturer at the Open University.

• Simon Bromley’s analysis comes from his chapter ‘American Power and the future of international order’, in Ordering the International, a new textbook produced by the Open University (edited by Simon Bromley and William Brown), and published in association with Pluto Press early next year. A longer version of Simon’s chapter will also appear in the journal Historical Materialism in the near future.

As Gary Kent’s article makes clear, support for Iraq’s trade unions has been a contentious issue on the British left. Indeed, it has grabbed media attention and exposed some woeful political judgements by the Stop the War Coalition (StWC). Part of the reason for this attention was the attendance at Labour Party conference of Abdullah Muhsin, the British representative of the Iraqi Federation  of Trade Unions (IFTU) and the fact that conference voted against calling for the early withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

The Stop the War Coalition argued that Muhsin and the IFTU had been used by the Labour leadership to build opposition to the conference resolution calling for an ‘early date’ for withdrawal of British troops. It was also claimed in letters to the Guardian that Muhsin’s union credentials had provided political cover for union delegates who backed the Labour leadership line.

Conference uproar

‘The illegal occupation is killing hundreds of Iraqis and the lives of British soldiers are being needlessly placed at risk,’ claimed Lindsey German, StWC convenor. Jon Rogers, a Unison branch secretary in London, and hard left contender in the forthcoming Unison general secretary election, wrote that: ‘Many trade unionists regret the way in which the IFTU was used against the anti-war movement in Brighton’ while going on to argue for support for Iraq’s trade unions.

The truth was somewhat more complex. Tony Woodley, general secretary of TGWU, wrote in the Morning Star on 26 October that: ‘There was a choice between a blatantly pro-government resolution, a statement from the Party executive outlining a rather vague and conditional timetable for troop withdrawal, and a constituency resolution asking for an early date to be set for troop withdrawal. In the event most unions helped secure the withdrawal of the first, unacceptable, resolution, voted for the executive statement and against the last resolution.’ Woodley justified the T&G position by citing the views of the IFTU.

However, it was the level and extent of the criticism of the IFTU which then ensued that caused most uproar. In the wake of Labour Party conference, the Guardian reported that the Stop the War Coalition’s criticism of IFTU had led to serious splits with several key trade union backers. Mick Rix, former head of ASLEF and no soft lefty, resigned from the steering committee of the Coalition, claiming statements against the IFTU were ‘not issued in my name’. Rix was particularly angered when the Coalition attacked Muhsin as a collaborator, a sentiment echoed later when George Galloway labelled him a ‘quisling’. As Gary Kent makes clear, in Iraq such attacks can literally be a death sentence.

Stop the War’s statement reaffirming ‘its call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country and … the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends’ was rightly seen by many unions as justifying suicide bombings and beheadings, and incurred the wrath of Unison. The phrase ‘any means necessary’ was hurriedly withdrawn but the damage had been done as far as Rix was concerned. Reflecting growing frustration with the Coalition at the TUC, T&G and GMB, Unison’s deputy general secretary Keith Sonnet claimed: ‘It’s not for us to tell unions in other countries how to operate. We have to listen to what they want.’

Continued attacks

The attacks on the IFTU continued at the European Social Forum in London in October when the general secretary of IFTU, Sobhi Al-Mashhadani, was prevented from taking part in a debate on Iraq by a small group of vociferous ultra-left protesters. Interviewed later in the Guardian, Mr Mashhadani claimed the experience reminded him of being ‘silenced like we were silenced by Saddam’. Going on to defend IFTU, Mashhadani claimed, ‘We are not a puppet union of any government … after the collapse of Saddam, [Paul] Bremer and his army attacked us… But this did not deter us to build the trade union movement that is transparent, democratic and independent from the state and political parties.’

For his part, in a subsequent Guardian article, Abdullah Muhsin defended his attendance at Labour Party conference: ‘I called for the removal of foreign troops and a genuine transfer of power to the Iraqi people. I explained the IFTU’s policy of support for UN resolution 1546. I did not offer voting advice to trade unions on Labour’s Iraq motions and confined my remarks to urging solidarity with Iraqi workers.’

He went on: ‘The emerging signs of vibrant civil society, such as organisations of women, trade unionists and students, present a real political opportunity to end the occupation and isolate the forces promoting sectarian, communal and religious violence… These forces offer only hell to Iraqis and harbour some of the world’s most dangerous ideas… Widespread, popular sentiment against the foreign occupation of our country does not translate into legitimation of these forces.’

One of the more eloquent attacks on the StWC came from Nick Cohen, writing in the New Statesman. Denouncing the support for terrorists in Iraq, Cohen claimed: ‘The left, or at least that section of it which always manages to get the whip hand, has swerved to the right – to the far right, in fact – and is actively supporting theocrats and fascists: the oppressors of racial minorities, secularists, women, gays and trade unionists.’ He concluded that: ‘No one who considers himself a democrat, liberal or socialist can continue to associate with the Stop the War Coalition.’

Read the reports referred to here at www.guardian.co.uk and www.newstatesman.com. These and other reports are also on the Labour Friends of Iraq website: www.labour friendsofiraq.org.uk.

Writing in the left-wing American magazine, Dissent, Michael Walzer has issued a stark indictment of the left’s response to the events of September 11th and the war in Afghanistan. While directed at the American left in particular, much of what Walzer argues should give also give those of us outside the US pause for serious thought.

Walzer claims that the war exposed the left’s reliance on knee-jerk anti-Americanism in its reactions to US foreign policy and its incapacity to produce credible, critical judgements and political interventions.

A good deal of his argument concerns the question of whether there can be what he calls a ‘decent left’ in the US – whether living in a superpower precludes the possibility of developing a left politics which is capable of anything other than simply taking the side of whoever seems to be opposing the imperial power.

Here, Walzer puts forward four arguments. First, he claims that the lingering effects of what he terms “the Marxist theory of imperialism” (itself a rather problematic notion) make the left incapable of understanding the forces, particularly religiously-motivated forces, ranged against western powers. Secondly, he argues that political powerlessness at home leads to simple oppositionalism. As Walzer puts it, “…that’s why [the left’s] participation in the policy debate is so odd: their proposals… seem to have been developed with no concern for effectiveness and no sense of urgency… That was someone else’s business; the business of the left was… what? To oppose the authorities, whatever they did.”

Thirdly, in what Bill Warren once called “the modern masochistic version of the white man’s burden”, he claims that the left blames the home, imperial state (USA) first, in order to deliver a kind of moral purism to the left: “Whatever America is doing in the world isn’t our doing.” Finally, he argues that the corollary of this is an unwillingness to criticise anyone else who is poorer and weaker than “we” are, whatever the real nature of the regimes and movements in question.

The upshot of these motivations is a left which responds instinctively to international events such as September 11th, betraying an inability to comprehend the horror of the World Trade Centre attack and showing something close to glee that the imperial state had got a bloody nose. Programmatically, all the left comes up with is the (re)statement of pre-formed positions:

“‘Stop the bombing’ wasn’t a slogan that summarised a coherent view of the bombing – or of the alternatives to it. The truth is that most leftists were not committed to having a coherent view about things like that; they were committed to opposing the war, and they were prepared to oppose it without regard to its causes or character, and without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks.”

While this pre-occupation with the left in the US betrays some of the very American parochialism that so annoys people in other parts of the world, it is this question – of the left’s orientation towards political movements ranged against western powers, and of its (lack of) understanding of the nature of western interventions and use of force abroad – which makes Walzer’s commentary so pertinent to left politics outside, as well as inside, America.

Cheap melodrama

There are a number of points which Walzer touches on which bear further consideration.

Perhaps most broadly, Walzer draws our attention to the seeming inability of much of the left to comprehend the nature of intervention by liberal capitalist states in other parts of the world. In this left view actions by liberal capitalist states are inherently malign and characterised by a purely zero-sum interaction in which the selfish interests of western states must be at the expense of others. As Walzer puts it, the international is presented as a “cheap melodrama” in which there is a clear and obvious villain, one whose ability to get what it wants is routinely exaggerated.

Underlying this view is indeed the legacy of “the lingering effects of the Marxist theory of imperialism and of the third worldist doctrines of the 1960s and 1970s” which regard the past 500-plus years of international history as a process of oppression and exploitation of one part of the world by another. For the most part such assumptions are so ingrained and pervasive among those who consider themselves radical in international affairs that they go unnoticed. And yet these are shibboleths which the left can and must abandon.

It is not that they don’t address very real and important issues in international relations: relations of relative global inequality are a massively important fulcrum around which much international politics operates; understanding US power is clearly vital to many current international issues; and the historical antecedents of the contemporary world order inform many of today’s political contests. It’s just that things aren’t that simple or straightforward.

Relative international inequalities are the subject of a huge and complex academic and political debate, and the issue is far from straightforward. That said, capitalism has delivered massively increased per capita incomes for many countries and many sections of the population. Rather than causing economic stagnation in other parts of the world the capitalism of the core states historically has expanded ever-outwards, dynamically, if brutally, transforming other societies. Western states may be pursuing their own interests when they intervene overseas, but we have to question whether this may in fact have some progressive content – if what western states want is liberal capitalist states across the world, this may well be an advance on what currently exists.

While the US is clearly the most powerful state on the planet, it is not omnipotent and is curtailed above all by its historic defeat in Vietnam which places immense limitations on its ability to use military force. (In a recent episode of the West Wing, fictional President Bartlett, exasperated at the inability of the US to rescue hostages from Colombia, commented that “there’s just no point in being a superpower anymore”.) What’s more, the attack on terrorists, while serving “western interests” in one sense, may also be in the interests of many others, both inside and outside Afghanistan.

One result of the left’s oversimplified approach to international politics is a failure to distinguish between different interventions and uses of force by western powers at different times against different enemies: Kosovo is not Vietnam, Afghanistan is not Nicaragua. Perhaps the most crucial difference, which is often ignored, is that US actions in the post-cold war era are not driven by the same motivations and priorities as in the cold war. Then, preventing the spread of communism and soviet influence in the third world often over-rode any commitment to liberalism or democracy. Now it is not so clear (although the commitment to these values certainly waxes and wanes in the face of other contingent and strategic concerns).

However, the left’s oversimplification (or plain wrong analysis) also leads to a failure to engage with, and most importantly to criticise, the nature of those states and movements opposed to western states. As Walzer argues, “ideologically primed leftists were likely to think that they already understood whatever needed to be understood. Any group that attacks the imperial power must be a representative of the oppressed, and its agenda must be the agenda of the left.”

Atrocious commentary

This was exemplified in the UK by Paul Foot’s atrocious commentary on the World Trade Centre attacks in The Guardian (18/9/01). Foot, while criticising the tactic of “individual terrorism” (because, as one letter writer pointed out, al-Qaeda obviously hadn’t read enough Trotsky on the subject), implicitly accepted that the motivations were the justified motivations of “the oppressed”. This is far from the case with Islamic fundamentalism which, as Fred Halliday has noted, is “the anti-imperialism of racists and murderers”. Foot even had the front to criticise the media’s inability to distinguish between the “violence of the conquerors, exploiters and oppressors on the one hand and the violence of the conquered, exploited and oppressed on the other”, while he himself is clearly incapable of distinguishing between a progressive opposition politics and reactionary clericism. As Walzer put it, “a holy war against the infidels is not, even unintentionally, unconsciously or ‘objectively’, a left politics.”

Indeed, commenting on the tactics of opposition forces, Walzer is surely right to argue that, “Even the oppressed have obligations, and surely the first of these is not to murder innocent people, not to make terrorism their politics. Leftists who cannot insist on this point, even to people poorer and weaker than themselves, have abandoned both politics and morality for something else.” It is a failure which characterises the Palestinian suicide bombers and their apologists, and it is a signal of the bankruptcy of the Palestinian’s “politics of the oppressed”, regardless of whether or not they have been driven to it by Israeli terror.

These “obligations” of the oppressed were recognised by the most remarkable elements of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa in the 1980s, where much effort was devoted to thinking about, and striving to realise, a certain way of behaviour in the struggle itself. Some on the left, following Gramsci, and including the ILP, have also recognised the need for opposition movements to prefigure the societies which they seek to create. It is hard to see how murderous campaigns by reactionary clerics will produce anything other than more murder and reactionary clericism.

Finally, Walzer’s broadside raises the question of what the left should base its politics and political interventions on. Here the left’s knee-jerk response to international issues becomes almost perverse. At the very time the left is loudly criticising new anti-terrorism legislation on liberal civil rights grounds (liberal civil rights grounds, mind you!), it rejects the very idea that “western” (and by implication, therefore “bad”) liberalism should be the basis of either policy or protest when directed at the rest of the world. Seemingly, the left would rather give tacit or open support to opponents of the west overseas, however reactionary their politics might be, and even if they are explicitly and openly organised around the destruction of the very liberal values which the left supports at home.

For socialists, some rethinking of international issues is clearly necessary to get out of this mess, for the issues go much deeper than the specific question of the war on terrorism. For too long the left has operated as if it is obvious what its position should be when it comes to international politics. This has left us with simplistic sloganising, backed by poorly-grasped theories of international political economy. Such nostrums belonged to a different era – an era of anti-colonialism and cold war (and were not always a sure guide even then). In the post cold war world, the “tick-boxes” which indicate what counts as left-wing when it comes to international affairs need to be re-thought.

For a start, the left should re-examine the relationship between socialism and liberalism. Rather than assume that anything which presents itself as anti-western is progressive, we should develop our ability to make balanced, reasoned judgements about the forces and organisations at large in the world, and the conflicts which pervade international politics. And while, as socialists, we will argue that the core liberal principles of liberty and equality, democracy and rights, cannot be realised under capitalism, we are not against those principles themselves. Al Qaeda is.

Socialism is, at root, a critique of liberalism, but one based on liberalism: it is about the realisation of liberal universalist values, not their negation; it is the transcendence of liberal capitalism, not a reaction, backwards, against it. This means that socialists, at times, support the extension of liberalism, even within capitalism, as a host of campaigns which the left has been engaged in over the last century testify. And it means that sometimes we might give critical support to what our, and other capitalist states, do in the  international arena.

In international relations, claimed Fred Halliday in a recent book on September 11th, “it often seems, any fantasy or conspiracy theory goes. Freud once argued that the aim of psychoanalysis was to reduce extreme hysteria to everyday common misery. The function of reasoned argument and engaged scepticism in international affairs is to do just that.” Walzer’s commentary provides the left with a thought-provoking start to a long-overdue and necessary process of re-examination.

Michael Walzer ‘Can there be a decent left?’ Dissent magazine, Spring 2002 (www.dissentmagazine.org).
Fred Halliday Two Hours That Shook the World London: Saqui Books 2002.
Paul Foot ‘Sampson the Terrorist’ The Guardian, 18 September 2001.

Debate on the US left is bitter after 9/11. On the one hand, there are traditional anti-imperialists and pacifists, who cannot accept that America can ever be progressive. Michael Harrington, the deceased doyen of American socialism once warned: “If the left wants to change this country because it hates it, then the people will never listen to the left and the people will be right.”

On the other hand, there are those, sneeringly described as “State Department Socialists”, who recognise that US power can be harnessed for good. Bogdan Denitch, the organiser for 20 years of the Socialist Scholars’ Conference (which this year attracted 2,000 people) distinguishes two left-wing roles: “the morally pure witness”; and the “organiser”, involving compromise on means, while keeping ends in mind.

This argument erupted at Denitch’s recent annual convention of the US left in Manhattan, near Wall Street, with a debate on ‘just war’ between Tariq Ali, whose book, Clash of Fundamentalisms, focuses his dizzying polemical powers on American hegemony; and Michael Walzer, another veteran of the anti-Vietnam war movement and a leading light from Dissent, the house magazine of the Democratic Socialists of America’s.

Ali argued that the US has historically unprecedented power as the sole remaining superpower, that Al-Qaeda was a “nuisance” which should have been tackled by policing rather than military means, and that militant fundamentalism should “only” be undermined politically.

Ali often had the best lines but the inferior analysis. Ludicrously, he said that no one suggested carpet bombing Dublin after the IRA’s Grand Hotel bomb. However, Ireland was happily pursuing the Provos, unlike the Taliban, which bolstered Bin Laden. Long term, militant Islam must be defeated politically by moderate Islam. But that leaves a huge “in the meantime” in which military action remains an effective means of self-defence.

Ali argued that the dominant power would always define a just war. Walzer retorted that public opinion succeeded in the 1960s in forcing America to see that the Vietnam war was unjust. Speakers also distinguished between just wars and unjust conduct – the second world war was just, but Dresden and Hiroshima weren’t. Interventions should be considered on their merits. Two hundred thousand lives might have been saved if the west had intervened in the Balkans earlier and millions might have survived if Rwanda hadn’t been left to its own murderous devices.

Rag tag Marxism

In Dissent, Walzer criticises the “rag-tag Marxism” which turns “world politics into a cheap melodrama, with all the villains dressed to look the part and one villain larger than life”. He wonders if “the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent (intelligent, responsible, morally nuanced) politics.” He says that this left had a “barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved” and lacked “any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks”.

Most fundamentally, such leftists cannot recognise the power of religion in the modern world, preferring to see theology as “just the temporary, colloquial idiom in which the legitimate rage of oppressed men and women is expressed”. He raised the question, if the root causes of conflict are in poverty and oppression, why hasn’t there been a terrorist response from sub-Saharan Africa or South East Asia?

America is one of the few powers than can project force around the world. But voices on the right are also critical. At a private gathering, a prominent neo-conservative argued that America had “government by Gallop” polling, which drove the tendency of American administrations to believe that wars could be won in 100 hours against enemies that could be demonised as Hitlers and then to left as quickly as possible, whatever the long-term consequences.

During the Cold War, America backed the Mujahaden against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but, after the Soviet defeat, it had no appetite for helping to rebuild the country. The new government was left to swing in the wind and was then ousted by the Taliban. Napoleon once remarked that you can do anything with a bayonet, except sit on it. Peacekeeping and nation-building should also be part of the American armoury. Parts of the hard-right and the soft-left coincide against their critics on this issue.

But Americans fear GIs returning in body bags and the military fears being sucked into quagmires across the world. However, if one follows Tariq Ali’s overblown analysis, American power should be able to cope.

We have a highly fluid and dangerous international climate, and don’t know where the next threat may emerge. US power is overstretched, with just 10 (committed) fighting divisions. The Al-Qaeda threat has also forced America to post military police to internal installations and this increases the overstretch.

I also met a dedicated Reaganite who was completely scornful of George W Bush. On Dubya’s trip to the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea, he failed to consult the South, which is engaged in a sensitive “Sunshine” strategy, to reassure the North’s paranoid leaders. Yet Bush blundered in with comments that superficially echoed Reagan’s appeal at the Berlin Wall for it to go. Bush had all the form but none of the content of Reagan’s remarks, which followed years of patient diplomacy to isolate the USSR. My source agreed that Bush’s behaviour was “second time as farce”, if not “first time as tragedy”.

The next big test will be Iraq. War was apparently planned for April until the military realised that it had run out of smart bombs. Action may come in October, during the mid-term congressional elections.

The journalist Jim Chapin says America can be divided into four essential groups: corporate “Davos man”, mainstream “Hollywood man”, liberal, intellectual “Berkeley man”, and religious “Salt Lake City man”. President Bush currently commands vast support for his military posture from most of these groups. Left-wing support or opposition may only become relevant if the right’s fears of military overstretch and political naiveté ring true in reality.