NTERNATIONAL I IEWPOINT V News and analysis from the Fourth International IV380 - July/August 2006 War in the Middle East: Holding a whole population hostage International Viewpoint - IV380 - July/August 2006 IV380 - July/August 2006 War in the Middle East - Milosevic - Scotland War in the Middle East The sinking ship of US imperial ambitions - Gilbert Achcar 3 Israel's Dual Onslaught On Lebanon And Palestine - Gilbert Achcar 6 "Israel is holding a whole population hostage" - Gilbert Achcar 7 Changing the Rules of the Game? Let it Be! - RCG - Lebanon 10 Israel's new Lebanon war - Piers Mostyn 11 The future of Israel is at stake - Michel Warschawski 14 Twin Battles - Gilbert Achcar 15 The 33-Day War and UNSC Resolution 1701 - Gilbert Achcar 17 Hezbollah's Victory (2000) - Gilbert Achcar 21 Italy Chomsky, Tariq Ali criticise Rifondazione on Afghanistan, back antiwar MPs 23 Withdraw Italian troops from Afghanistan! - Sinistra Critica (Critical Left) 24 Against the Italian intervention in Afghanistan - Franco Turigliatto 25 Yugoslavia Dossier - On Slobodan Milosevic - Catherine Samary 26 Slobodan Milosevic: Architect of Yugoslav break-up - Alan Thornett 40 Venezuela The revolution seen from the left: Chavismo's original sin - Roland Denis 43 South Africa Resistance to neoliberalism - Josep María Antentas 46 Repression and electoral fraud Showdown in Mexico - Phil Hearse 49 Workers movement The European trade union movement today - a rapid overview - Thadeus Pato 52 Scotland Statement on the crisis in the SSP - International Socialist Group 57 SSP is split by Sheridan - Socialist Resistance statement 58 Fighting "Jurassic Park" capitalism Russian Social Forum Success - Aleksander Buzgalin 62 Brazil Socialists of the World Support Heloisa Helena - Support on-line petition! 64 Pakistan Gorja - a great victory for textile workers - Farooq Tariq 66 Theory Marx, Weber and the Critique of Capitalism - Michael Löwy 67 INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT is a review of news and analysis published under the auspices of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International. IV appears online at www.internationalviewpoint.org and in a monthly pdf version. Editorial office: PO Box 112, Manchester M12 5DW UK ISSN 1294-2925 2 International Viewpoint - IV380 - July/August 2006 Armed Globalisation The sinking ship of US imperial ambitions Gilbert Achcar "The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower. The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership.... His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well." Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, August 4, 2006 "But the administration now has to admit The lead-article in a recent issue of Time neocons of the Bush administration have what anyone - including myself - who magazine, published before the start of been pushed aside nurtured the hope that a believed in the importance of getting Iraq Israel's new Lebanon war, heralded "the end new salutary course of the administration's right has to admit: Whether for Bush reasons of cowboy diplomacy" - it took note of the foreign policy was in gestation. The reshuffle or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we obvious fact that "the Bush Doctrine that went along with George W. Bush's can't throw more good lives after good foundered in the principal place the U.S. tried second term, despite the exit of realist-in- lives.... But second best is leaving Iraq. to apply it": chief Colin Powell who, anyway, had quite Because the worst option - the one Iran loves limited influence on the administration, "Though no one in the White House openly - is for us to stay in Iraq, bleeding, and in easy seemed indeed to confirm the "twilight of the questions Bush's decision to go to war in range to be hit by Iran if we strike its nukes.... neocons" that some Clintonites had Iraq, some aides now acknowledge that it has announced two years ago. [2] We need to deal with Iran and Syria, but from come at a steep cost in military resources, a position of strength - and that requires a public support and credibility abroad. The However, what the Time authors announced broad coalition. The longer we maintain a Administration is paying the bill every day as as marking the end of "cowboy diplomacy" - unilateral failing strategy in Iraq, the harder it it tries to cope with other crises. Pursuing the "a strategic makeover is evident in the will be to build such a coalition, and the forward-leaning foreign policy envisioned in ascendancy of Secretary of State stronger the enemies of freedom will the Bush Doctrine is nearly impossible at a Condoleezza Rice" - proved to be no more become." Thomas Friedman, New York time when the U.S. is trying to figure out how than wishful thinking almost as soon as it was Times, August 4, 2006 to extricate itself from Iraq. Around the printed, in light of the events that unfolded world, both the U.S.'s friends and its subsequently as Israel launched its most Everyday that passes shows more of those adversaries are taking note - and in many brutal aggression. Cowboy diplomacy, it who enthusiastically supported the Bush cases, taking advantage - of the strains on the turned out, had just been replaced with administration's imperial drive in the Middle superpower. If the toppling of Saddam cowgirl diplomacy - essentially the same. East leaving its sinking ship. There can be no Hussein marked the high-water mark of U.S. doubt any longer that what many had forecast hegemony, the past three years have True, Condoleezza Rice did her best to put long ago is proving absolutely true: the Bush witnessed a steady erosion in Washington's some make-up on the face of the Bush administration will definitely go down in ability to bend the world to its will." [1] administration's foreign policy, but there was history as the clumsiest crew that ever stood no significant shift in substance. A pillar of at the helm of the American Empire. The authors' most serious grievance was this administration since its inception, she stated as follows: shares the same delusions of grandeur and Bush and his cronies have already secured folly of overreaching designs that their position in the collective memory as the "As it turns out, Iraq may prove to be not only characterize the rest of the team. Put in grave-diggers of U.S. post-Cold War imperial the first but also the last laboratory for charge of the State department for Bush's ambitions: they have accomplished the preventive war. Instead of deterring the rulers second term, Rice's mission consisted incomparable feat of squandering the in Tehran and Pyongyang, the travails of the primarily in sealing off the many leaks in the U.S. occupation may have emboldened those exceptionally favorable conditions that U.S. administration's foreign policy ship: it was regimes in their quest to obtain nuclear indeed a mission impossible. The ship is imperialism faced since the other world weapons while constraining the U.S. sinking inexorably in the dark waters of the colossus started crumbling from 1989 on. military's ability to deter them." Iraqi oil slick. They have wasted the unique window of opportunity that the same Krauthammer This very bitter assessment was accompanied The U.S. "hyperpower" that is able to knock quoted above had called in 1990 the in the Time article by the same hope that was down any other regular army on earth - the "unipolar moment." But they have wasted it shared by the large chorus of U.S. allies, hyperpower whose military expenditure because they were inspired by precisely the protégés and clients: for all of them, with the exceeds that of the 200+ states that constitute same imperial hubris that has distinguished outstanding exception of the Israeli the rest of the world, and whose military the likes of Krauthammer and Friedman. government, the fact that the most prominent budget alone exceeds the GDP of all other 3 International Viewpoint - IV380 - July/August 2006 countries but for 14 of them - proved one of the two as the U.S. tentatively practiced in Palestinian branch), the Egyptian section, more time in contemporary history that it is Vietnam, but could not carry to conclusion came out openly in support of Iranian unable to control rebellious populations. For because the American population wouldn't President Ahmadinejad's provocative anti- that, all the sophisticated killing gadgetry that have tolerated it. Israel statements. Hamas's accession to the Pentagon possesses is of very limited power through the January 2006 Palestinian help. Controlling populations involves In Iraq, Washington was faced, on the other election dealt a further blow to Washington's troops: it is a kind of industry where labor- hand, by a much graver problem, one that regional strategy. Tehran jubilated, force can hardly be replaced with hardware. became clear by the beginning of 2004: the outbidding again all its Arab rivals in That is why, incidentally, dictatorships are Bush administration had been induced - by its supporting the new Palestinian government. relatively more at ease in this business, as own foolishness and the sales patter of some It is at this point that Israel stepped in, seen they can mobilize at will from their of the Pentagon's Iraqi friends or the stupid from Washington as the likely savior of what populations and don't fear paying a high price delusions of others - into believing that it otherwise is looking more and more like an in soldiers' lives.