A WORLD TO WIN    #16   (1991)
 
Cold Blooded Calculations of Soviet Imperialism

By H.S.

The launching of the air offensive and then the ground offensive by the U.S. imperialists and their coalition were both immediately preceded by a headlines-grabbing flurry of Soviet "peace initiatives". Since then the Soviet government has repeatedly lamented, "this was a war which could have been avoided", in the words of Gorbachev's personal envoy Yevgeni Primakov.(1) While no-one bears more responsibility than the U.S. imperialists for the rivers of Arab blood shed in Iraq, these crocodile tears from the Soviet social-imperialists cannot obscure their own murderous role in the war.

Like a medieval Pope giving his blessing to the Western crusaders off to their wars of conquest, 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner Gorbachev supported every major UN resolution that smoothed the path to the U.S.-led war. The Soviet rulers piously talked of the "right of small nations to self-determination" in order to justify the brutal bashing of a small nation, Iraq, by a coalition led by the West's great powers.

Though the Soviets did not send soldiers to the battle zone, their military cooperation was crucial to the war effort. The whole world knows that the Iraqi military was more dependent on Soviet arms, technicians and know-how than on that of any other power. And it is now clear that the Soviets meticulously fulfilled their promise to deprive Iraq of all of this. Without spare parts, technical advisers and overall support from the Soviets, much of the Iraqi military machine was rendered useless. It was thus the Soviets themselves who delivered the first heavy blow to Iraq's war-fighting capability.

The Soviets went further than simply gutting Iraq's high-tech equipment. Several military experts have observed that one of the best-kept secrets of the war was the extent to which Soviet intelligence actively aided the U.S.-led coalition. The ability of U.S. air power to knock out key Iraqi technical assets like air-defence radar was, implied a former Soviet military adviser to Iraq, enhanced by the Soviets' passing on details of their functioning. He added, "No one wants to speak about the fact that the Americans know very well the performance capabilities of missile launchers, and not only those made in the West".(2) BBC radio reports quoted sources saying that it was Soviet intelligence about the Soviet-built Scud missiles which enabled the Patriot missiles to intercept them. One Western military expert summed up the "coalition" success in the air war, "It would simply not have been possible without Soviet help."(3)

The RIM's Call to the People of the Middle East noted, "The war rooms in Washington, Paris, London and Moscow know everything about his (Saddam's) army up to and including his battle plans, because their military experts created it: he will fight just as they have taught him; they know what cards he holds and how he will play them." It appears that just as Saddam Hussein underestimated the bloodthirstiness of the U.S. imperialists, he also failed to assess correctly the extent to which his former Soviet patrons would not only refuse to come to his aid, but actively cooperate with Washington in the destruction of the very military machine they had played such a vital part in building. As Mao Tsetung once remarked of another imperialist underling, "It's no fun being a running dog."(4)

The extent to which Soviet support actually aided the U.S.-led war effort remains shrouded in mystery, but it should not be underestimated. The psychological impact on the Iraqi comprador regime of their former patron turning over the details of the innermost workings of their war-fighting technology undoubtedly dealt a grave blow to their willingness even to fight at all.

A telling indicator of the importance of Soviet support for the attack on Iraq is that the U.S. imperialists were so confident of their new relationship with the Soviet rulers that they left not only Western Europe but the U.S. itself far more vulnerable militarily than at any time since World War 2. Three quarters of all American fighter planes and nearly half of U.S. military manpower were deployed from Western Europe and the U.S. into the Gulf area, stripping away much more of their military defence than even during the Vietnam war. Without the "new understanding" with the USSR, it would have been impossible for the U.S. to concentrate enough firepower to decimate the Iraqi military without serious risk to itself.

Why did the Soviets turn on their own protegé? They supported the U.S.-led war for the same reason for which they have often opposed the U.S. in the past -- their own imperial interests. And now that the spoils of war are being portioned out, these imperialists are scrambling alongside the rest to tear off their own share of flesh from the Middle East. Soviet Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh proudly declared that "no single party" was responsible for forcing the Iraqis out of Kuwait; "each country that participated in the settlement of the crisis can claim part of the success" -- which, in imperialist diplomacy, means claiming part of the spoils of war.

Though all the calculations that went into the Soviet decision to support the U.S.-led war against Iraq are not yet known, a few of their basic interests are apparent.

Soviet social-imperialist cooperation in the butchery of Iraq was part of their "new understanding" with the West, which involves scaling down military confrontation in return for economic cooperation. The way this is commonly put by Soviet spokesmen is that they no longer see the world in terms of a "zero sum game", where an advance for one superpower can only come at the expense of the other, but as a "balance of interests", where all the Great Powers "share" and "grow" together. What this really means is that in exchange for political concessions, especially in Eastern Europe, and toning down military rivalry with the West, the Soviets should be let in on the West's network of plunder of the rest of the world. This "new understanding" has already required that the Soviets sacrifice certain of their proteges in the Third World, for instance, in Nicaragua. Saddam Hussein was merely the next sacrificial offering to the West. Allowing the Yankee imperialists to carry out such unprecedented butchery on an important protegé in a region as key as the Persian Gulf was perhaps not a step the Soviets wanted to take -- but it was hard to refuse it without risking their "new understanding" altogether. Those who continue to entertain illusions that Soviet support can be used to gain independence from the West should seriously think over the cold-bloodedness with which the Soviet rulers served up Saddam Hussein.

While some U.S. spokesmen complained loudly that the last-minute Soviet peace initiative on the eve of the ground war was designed to "save Saddam", Bush calmed his "Cold Warriors" and explained that what Gorbachev was trying to save above all was his own face: the Soviet initiatives were, he said, a matter of image. They were indeed an attempt to put a good face on the fact that the Soviets were treacherously selling out a long-time ally for deutschemarks, dollars and Western acquiescence in their own bloody suppression of domestic discontent, especially in the Baltics. But the Soviet initiative was also an effort to position themselves in order to seize on any U.S. difficulties in their intervention. This "peace initiative" they worked out with Iraq appeared to comply with the U.N. resolutions; the Soviets almost certainly knew beforehand that the U.S. would reject it, but this put the U.S. in a position of having to more nakedly reveal its own imperial designs on the region.

There are also indications that the Soviets were acutely concerned with the extent of the U.S. manoeuvering in the region and that this has given rise to concern within the Soviet ruling class over how to ensure that Soviet imperialist interests are upheld in the context of the "new understanding". Gorbachev personally denounced the U.S. for "going beyond the U.N. mandate". Soviet liberal democrats declared that the resignation of Gorbachev's longtime friend and supporter Foreign Minister Shevarnadze was not voluntary, but compelled by powerful forces in the Soviet establishment, the military, KGB and Communist Party apparatus, in part because they deemed he had given away too much to the U.S. in the Gulf crisis. High military authorities repeatedly denounced the U.S.' "massacre", pointed out the danger to the USSR of having the largest concentration of firepower since World War 2 so close to the USSR's "southern flank", and argued that Bush's "New World Order" really disguises a U.S. bid for unchallenged world hegemony.

Soviet Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, Gorbachev's chief military adviser summarised the point of view of influential sections of the Soviet rulers:

"NATO remains, even though the Warsaw Pact has actually disbanded. NATO persistently rejects talks on naval cuts. Some in the West have repeatedly tried to dictate to us, even to shape our domestic policies.... [Soviet] defence spending in 1990-91 will be slashed by over 16 percent, while the U.S. is cutting its own expenditure by just four percent... we have cut half a million troops -- twelve percent -- while the Americans are only 'planning' similar reductions, and with the Gulf war have stopped even planning.... I add this question to the leaders of the CPSU and the Russian Communist Party: shall the Soviet Union continue as a single entity, or break up into dozens of Western client-states, with all the suffering and humiliation that will mean for the people? Faced with the same challenge in 1941-45, we made a fitting response. What will be your response today?"(5)

Marshal Akhromeyev is not issuing a call to arms or even to a return to pre-Gorbachev era confrontation with the West. In the same speech he supports the normalisation of relations with the U.S. and even acknowledges the need for serious cuts in defence spending in order to combat the economic crisis. But his speech does reflect deep concern among influential sections of the Soviet ruling class that they must vigorously safeguard basic Soviet interests, especially as concerns the bedrock of strength of the Soviet rulers, the military forces of the centralised, unified state. At the peak of the Gulf war, the Soviet Army united with the Communist Party to hold rallies mobilising hundreds of thousands under the signboard of supporting the Army and the unified Soviet state.

There was also struggle within the Soviet military over why the Iraqi military was so easily routed. Soviet Defence Minister Yazov took the side of those who mainly defended Soviet equipment and doctrine, saying that it's who wields it that counts. Others argued that the war shows the impotence of massed formations of tanks and armour which are at the heart of Soviet strategy. Whatever conclusions they draw, there is already agreement on one basic point: that they must pay serious attention to avoid further erosion of Soviet military strength, especially its high-tech sectors.

To those political forces who welcome all this as a sign that the Soviets might "stand up" to the U.S. and so prevent aggression in the future: instead of nostalgia for the mummified bureaucrat bourgeoisie of the Brezhnev style, who "liberated" nations the same way the U.S. does, as in Afghanistan, with napalm, cluster bombs and the rest of their typically imperialist arsenal, why not fight all imperialism and rely not on compradors but on the masses of people?

While it is true that Soviet collaboration with the U.S.-led war reflected a certain amount of weakness, the Soviet social-imperialists are not impotent. They are still head of the only force on earth that can really challenge the U.S. -- spearheaded by their thousands of nuclear weapons. Their stand did not reflect a surrender of any pretensions to Great Power influence in the Middle East. On the contrary, as noted above, Bessmertnykh immediately claimed their rightful share of plunder. Theirs was not helpless capitulation but a cold-blooded calculation of how to advance their own interests in the given conditions. The Saddam Hussein regime was not really a Soviet puppet -- as in Afghanistan -- and had substantial aid and influence from the Western powers too. Moreover, the Soviets seem to expect that the problems for the U.S. from the Gulf War have really just begun -- and they may be right. There is much precedent in the Middle East for a military victory to give way to the conquering power being besieged and eventually retreating ignominiously, as Israel had to from the greater part of Lebanon it occupied in 1982. Furthermore, while the U.S.' demonstration of military might enables them to assert their world superiority, stepping up the role of military force in world affairs does not threaten the Soviets in the same way it does the Japanese or Germans: they are, after all, the only other power capable of annihilating the planet.

In the Middle East itself, the image of their protege Saddam Hussein delivered up for a beating by the other superpower is certainly not a good advert to sign up new compradors. But that is not really at the heart of the Soviet's plans in the Third World right now. They are concentrating instead on extending their influence into areas of traditional Western hegemony, and not without success: the USSR has established consular relations with Israel for the first time since 1967; it has finally established diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia; relations with Egypt have dramatically improved; even Kuwait has put several billion dollars into the Soviet banking system.

Events with Syria illustrate how Soviet "new thinking" safeguards its own interests with one of their most favoured compradors. At the fall U.S.-Soviet summit meeting, Bush promised Gorbachev that in return for Soviet collaboration against Iraq, the Soviets would participate in the future regional security structure to be set up after the war. Syria's Assad has long been in the Soviet camp, but the West likes him too because he oversees the bloody suppression of Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon. Assad sent nearly 30,000 troops and several hundred Soviet T-62 tanks and APCs to fight alongside the U.S. In return, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates have granted Syria $3bn; Syrian and Israeli troops have begun to cooperate in southern Lebanon to smash the PLO guerrilla forces who trouble them both; and now, as Bush promised, Soviet-backed Syrian troops are, together with the Egyptians, the spearhead of the new Arab peace-keeping troops designed to enforce imperialist order in the Gulf region. So the so-called anti-imperialist Assad helped slaughter Arabs on behalf of the U.S. in exchange for his own infusions of capital and a free hand in suppressing threats to his own rule, all under the signboard of Gorbachev's "new thinking". It is an illustration in blood that it is once again the masses of people who will pay for the Soviet rulers' "peaceful cooperation" with the West.

Finally, there is the question of how the Soviets assessed the U.S. war aim of achieving tighter control of the oil lifelines of the world's industrial economies. The U.S. was after this in order to give it greater leverage and competitiveness, especially against Japan and Germany, an especially important objective given the threat of increasing Soviet-German cooperation. While this worries the Soviets, it is not clear how practical it is for the U.S. to rely on actually using this leverage. The Soviet media made a point during the Gulf War of featuring articles highlighting the fact that the USSR has 60% of the world's known oil deposits.(6) The problem, they repeat, is that they don't have the capital and infrastructure to exploit these reserves properly. But someone else might -- say, Germany. The magnetic attraction between the two poles of the German economic locomotive and the Soviet military superpower is obviously of serious concern especially to the U.S. and British imperialists, but whether the Gulf war and tighter U.S. control over oil will serve to anchor Germany more firmly to the U.S. or whether it might push Germany to look to Siberia and increased cooperation with the USSR remains to be seen.

1. Time, 4 March 1991

2. International Herald Tribune, 13 February 1991

3. The Independent (London), February 1991

4. Mao Tsetung Unrehearsed, "Remarks at the Spring Festival", p. 198.

5. Sovetskaya Rossia, 7 February 1991.

6. Soviet Weekly, 14 February 1991.