[Marxism] Attempt to turn Libya's decision into weapon against Israeli militarism

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The use of Libya's decision to end advanced arms programs to expose
imperialist and Israeli militarism, as the following article seeks to
do, is completely legitimate.

The Libyan government has been retreating from conflict or
confrontation with the US imperialists for many years, and there is no
reason to doubt that the decision to give up attempts to create
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons is part of this.
Nonetheless, I think it would be a mistake to criticize Libya or any
other nation (among them Cuba, Venezuela,
Brazil, and South Africa) that decline to compete with the
imperialists in the field of "weapons of mass destruction" and rely on
other methods of self-defense.

While a real shift of Libya into the US camp may be possible, there is
unlikely to be any  end to  pressures and outright attacks aimed at
overturning the Libyan government short of that.  The announcement
that sanctions will continue until Washington is satisfied with
Libya's performance is a reminder of that fact.  This is a good time
to remember that "weapons of mass destruction" have been more a
pretext or a subordinate issue in Washington's conflicts with semi
colonial countries.

Furthermore the resources poured into nuclear and other "weapons of
mass destruction" have to come at the expense of economic development,
health, and education.  But the latter are key to the creation of the
kind of mass base that can resist imperialist attacks.  The key
question that countries under attack face is not whether they can
obliterate New York, but whether their armies  are capable of
resisting.

>From that standard today, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Iraq today are
a much better example than, say, the Iraq of 1990 whose leaders
boasted of their terrible weapons but caved in when the US troops
arrived, or the Iraq of 2003 whose leaders, this time without any
"WMD," proved equally incapable of putting up a real fight as the
invaders neared Baghdad.

The Iraqi people, post-occupation and without any hopes of "WMD," are
putting up a much more effective fight against imperialism today than
Saddam's regime, with or without the big bang weapons, ever did.
Fred Feldman









We can no longer turn a blind eye to the fifth largest nuclear power

Peter Preston
Monday December 22, 2003
The Guardian

There's a logic to these things. Mammary Gadfly, growing older, and
his
isolated Libya, growing poorer, were getting nothing worthwhile from
the
atomic bomb they hadn't built yet or chemicals they had scant residual
use
for. Logic - and common sense - meant changing tack. Good for logic.
But
logic doesn't stop there.
What next? If weapons of mass destruction are a menace in unstable
regions
such as the Middle East, if their availability must be reduced, then
logic
begins to move us closer to the confrontation we never seek with the
nuclear
power we - let alone Messrs Bush and Blair - seldom mention: Israel.

Nobody, including the Knesset, quite knows what happens inside the
Demon
complex, but if you put together a compote of usually reliable sources
(the
Federation of American Scientists, Jane's Intelligence Review, the
Stockholm
Institute), a tolerably clear picture emerges. Ariel Sharon probably
has
more than 200 nuclear warheads this morning - more if the 17 years
since
Mordechai Vanunu's kidnapping have been devoted to building
stockpiles.

That makes Israel the world's fifth largest nuclear power, boasting
more
bangs from Washington's bucks than Blair's Britain. And over in the
other
WMD basket, nobody much dissents when a report by the office of
technology
assessment for the US Congress concludes that Israel has "undeclared
offensive chemical warfare capabilities" and is "generally reported as
having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme". Bombs,
missiles, delivery systems, gases, germs? Tel Aviv has the lot. We
only
forget to remember because it's not a suitable subject for polite
diplomatic
conversation.

Logic, in the old days, didn't trouble too much about that. It saw a
state
of Israel surrounded by many potential foes who denied its right to
exist.
It saw such enemies initiate research of their own. It saw too many
wars,
bitterly fought. It watched the Soviet Union, with warheads to spare,
cruising continually in these troubled waters. It was prepared to turn
a
blind eye and to button its lip.

Come back today for a reality check, though. Saddam's Iraq is a
wrecked rat
trap. The weapons of mass destruction Gadafy sought are no more, no
threat.
Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt? Nothing to say, nothing to show.
You
can, if you wish, be concerned about Syria's chemical weapons
facilities -
and you can reasonably worry about a nuclear Iran, even though Tehran
took a
decisive step back towards international acceptability last week. But
Moscow
is out of the action, and the whole dynamic of Middle East danger has
changed. Logic comes knocking at Sharon's door.

He faces problems, of course: problems of intractable politics and
Palestinian suicide bombers. But he can't nuke Gaza or gas Bethlehem.
His
WMD are useless in any battle for hearts and minds - as practically
useless
as Gadafy has just deemed them to be. So why keep Dimona and the
biological
research centre at Nes Ziona out of any equation? Why pretend that
they
don't exist?

The formal logic of defence is threat, counter-threat. Sit in Tehran
and
look east - at China, India and Pakistan, with their bombs; look west,
and
there sits Israel. It is natural, in logic, that Iran consider its own
deterrent. It will require a deal of understanding engagement - and
guarantees - to close off that path. But such guarantees are possible
in the
age of the world's only superpower. There is every reason to talk
frankly
about Israel's bomb, just as the Syrians could be closely involved in
dismantling chemical stockpiles if only we could find the right
language to
start.

What, after all, is the current western fear? Of terrorism, rogue
states, of
more 9/11s. That's why Geoff Hoon's latest defence review moves out of
heavy
tanks and battleships. It adjusts to what it calls the new realities
of
flexibility and intelligence. Even Gadafy seems to have noticed. Why
not
mention them to Sharon?

An Israel bristling with nuclear hardware it cannot talk about and
chemical
horrors it could negotiate away does not make itself, or the world,
any
safer. On the contrary, it makes a hypocritical farce of too much
Washington
bargaining, buries too many initiatives deep down Hypocrisy Gulch and
gives
rogue groupings in ex-rogue states every reason to carry on
developing,
stealing or buying the devices that keep Mr Blair awake at night.

Does Tel Aviv see that connection? Does it want to bring a whole
region in
from the cold? Such things are becoming possible. But first we need
the
honesty to follow where logic leads; and begin to talk about them.

p.preston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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