Consequences of Global Capital: Katrina, Iraq, and Resistance

Despite the common consensus among Iraq War opponents that the war in Iraq was fought not because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but because of oil, the rise of global capitalism and the U.S. role in this economic order was what led the U.S. to invade. In order to understand the nature of the relationship between capitalism and war, and the very nature of all modern wars, we have to start to look at the conflict in Iraq in a different context.
In an article written for the online paper, Flame, Australian Journalist Geoffrey Heard puts it this way, “The war in Iraq is actually the US and Europe going head to head on economic leadership of the world.” His support for this statement is varied, but centers around the transfer of the currency of trade of Iraq's oil from the U.S. dollar to the E.U. Euro. This move under Saddam's leadership in late 2002 effectively took the control of Iraq's oil industry away from U.S. markets, and gave control directly to the markets of the European Union.
The War in Iraq became a war to maintain the United States as the world's only superpower. As Heard puts it: “Locking the world back into dollar oil trading would consolidate America's current position and make it all but impregnable as the dominant world power -- economically and militarily.”
The efforts to restructure the oil trade were not the only threats Saddam Hussein's rule posed to U.S. hegemonic control over foreign markets. Like the rest of the “Axis of Evil”, Iraq stood alongside North Korea and Iran in its refusal to accept IMF and World Bank loans and the Structural Adjustment Policies that those loans would mean.
At the time of the invasion, according to CNN Money reporter Mark Gongloff, Iraq's debt was at least $60 billion. The IMF and World Bank had tried for years to get Saddam to accept a loan package from the monetary organizations to pay off this debt. However, such a loan package would have also included the right for the IMF and the World Bank to forcibly advise Iraq on how to restructure its economy. Traditionally, this has meant that in IMF countries like Argentina, social programs, education, and state run healthcare are the targets of massive budget cuts, whereas the military, police, prisons, and projects that can open up a country's economic market to foreign corporations (dams, roads, seizing communally owned land) become the focus of the new economy.
In a statement released by the IMF in April of 2003, it became very apparent that although Saddam had barred the entrance of the IMF and World Bank into Iraq under his rule, the current reality is far different. "The World Bank and the IMF stand ready to play their normal role in Iraq's re-development at the appropriate time," said the statement. Several months later, offices were opened for the IMF and World Bank's Structural Adjustment Policy work in Baghdad.
The reasons the United States invaded and now currently occupies Iraq speak to the very nature of all wars. Wars, simply, are fought for power and control. In a more detailed evaluation, they are fought for economic and social control over economic markets that are not yet controlled by the aggressor. These markets may be wanted for resources, labor, consumer power, or for a number of other reasons. Because of this, global capitalism and war are inseparable. One cannot exist as we know it without the other.
While the conflict in Baghdad seems a world away from the shores of the Gulf Coast, the people of Iraq are facing the same struggle as the people of New Orleans: The struggle to persevere and survive in the wake of a travesty fueled by global free market capitalism.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the face of capitalism is being unmasked for all to see. The scene has been set: the poor, mainly non-white, people of New Orleans struggling to survive, begging for food and water, while armed National Guard troops patrol neighborhoods and shoot anyone trying to get food and water from now flooded and abandoned stores. The “rule of law” and the value of property is more important than the lives of thousands of people. Instead of food, the Army has been giving nothing but live ammunition. Instead of humanitarian aid, the administration has created a virtual police state, with the National Guard even being ordered to keep the Red Cross out of the disaster zone.
And now, with firms like Haliburton and Bechtel receiving rebuilding contracts in New Orleans (the same corporations that have received contracts in “post-war” Iraq), the links between corporations and Iraq and New Orleans are even more glaringly obvious. According to CNN Money Reports, firms that are given government contracts to rebuild Katrina stand to gain as much as $5.8 billion.
One can only assume that this legacy will be sustained in the aftermath of the now developing Hurricane Rita, and the poor will bare the brunt of the devastation and major corporations will profit.
The legacy of capitalism may be of war, class division, racism, and massive exploitation, but it is also one of resistance. The people of Iraq are resisting the occupation of Iraq, through nonviolent civil disobedience and even armed struggle. The people of New Orleans have continued to organize their own health collectives, their own food distribution, and even their own self-defense against the actions of the National Guard and local police. And the people of the world, in every workplace and community, have started to self organize and take back real democracy: politically, economically, and socially.
It is now up to us, the movements for justice of the United States, to organize, challenge each other and ourselves, and start to work toward a future worth living in. Only by building concrete alternatives to capitalism and by confronting the rise of authoritarianism by any means applicable, can we hope to see that future.