Making the world safe for capitalism

In the decade since the invasion of Iraq by the US-led 'coalition of the willing', a massive and often acrimonious debate has ensued over the issues of motives, methods and consequences. Much of it, while adding more detail to the total picture, has generated more smoke than light. The 'Weapons of Mass Deception' chronicled by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their study of The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq (2003) are upgraded and still deployed. But some broad interpretative overviews are also emerging, offering new insights and perspectives.

One such study has been published by Christopher Doran, a teacher at Indiana University who specialises in the relationship between corporations and democracy. Refreshingly, its title makes his thesis plain: Making the World Safe for Capitalism: How Iraq Threatened the US Economic Empire and had to be Destroyed (Pluto Press, London, 2012). Doran spells out his point in the Introduction, that 'the motivation for the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq in March 2003 was to eliminate the threats a post-UN sanctions Iraq posed to American economic hegemony.'

The likely lifting of UN sanctions after 13 years and the pursuit by Iraq of independent economic policies, particularly in relation to oil revenues, which challenged the fundamentals of neoliberalism, the current 'supercharged form of capitalism', generated alarm in American political and corporate circles. Under threat were US-dominated agencies controlling Third World loans and debt, US dollar financing of world oil, and global corporate market penetration and control. Facilitated by the pre-emptive strike strategies of the post-September 11 'war on terror', the military invasion of Iraq became an acceptable solution. Violence and war became more openly than ever before the tools with which to defend and extend American capitalism.

In many ways, by integrating neoliberalism, economic hegemony and regime change into an explanatory model, Doran is expanding well developed themes. In the Preface to a 1920 edition of his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism(1917), Lenin claimed to have proved that:

the war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital, etc.

In short, 'finance capital' (the merged capital of banks and monopolist associations of industrialists) was driving a new phase of imperialist aggression, using war to divide the whole world between the biggest capitalist powers.

In fact, Doran opens his book with the point that, when Woodrow Wilson told Americans they had to enter the First War 'to make the world safe for democracy', he was lying; it was to make it safe for capitalism. He might have added that the use of 'freedom' and 'democracy' as cloaks for 'capitalism' has become since then a well worn political device.

Quite apart from its vanguard role for capitalism, war itself is highly profitable for capitalists. The very experienced and much decorated US Marine Corps Major General, Smedley D. Butler, author of War is a Racket (1935), hammered the point: 'War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope.' He went on:

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.

In 1961 Eisenhower identified the key 'inside' group when he warned against the 'potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power' by the 'military-industrial complex'. Their all-pervasive influence had, he said, 'grave implications' for 'the very structure of our society'. The danger to American 'liberties' and 'democratic processes', must be guarded against in 'the councils of government'. C. Wright Mills had already identified the of The Power Elite (1956) of military, corporate and political leaders.

Since then, most of what Eisenhower feared has come to pass. In 1995 Robert Higgs expanded the concept to 'military–industrial–congressional complex', and many commentators add the media. Since 2001 the counter-terrorism industry generated by the 'war on terror' has further expanded this complex, making it the most lucrative and powerful member of the 'corporatocracy' now dominating America.

With size and wealth has come naked political power. Naomi Klein's thesis, in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), was that 'this fundamentalist form of capitalism', rather than being (as claimed) the triumph of freedom and unfettered free markets, 'has consistently been midwifed by the most brutal forms of coercion, inflicted on the collective body politic as well as on countless individual bodies.' The 'rise of corporatism' was written in shocks and crises, many of them engineered and violent.

Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs argued in The Price of Civilisation (2011), that America was caught in a 'feedback loop', in which the relationship between corporate wealth and political power was such that 'Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth.' The American 'corporatocracy' was dominated, in the view of Sachs, by four key sectors of the economy: the military-industrial complex, the Wall Street–Washington complex, the Big Oil–transport–military complex and the health care industry. Corporations now control politics, not governments. Corporatocracy had replaced democracy.

Doran weaves all these themes into a systematic and coherent presentation in support of his thesis. He argues that 'the ultimate beneficiaries of free market neoliberalism have been corporations and their shareholders', a position strengthened by their recognition as 'individuals' under the Bill of Rights, giving them unassailable power to pursue their own interests free from government control. Chomsky has labeled them a form of 'private tyranny'.

The ramifications of the potential threat to American economic hegemony from a post-sanctions Iraq are well developed in the first third of this study, as the foundation of Doran's examination of the processes which shaped the American response. While the 'push for war' chapters mostly traverse well known material, the framework within which it is presented persuasively supports his argument that 'regime change' would remove 'significant threats to US hegemony and the neoliberal agenda'.

Moreover, Doran argues, 'installing a new, pro-market, neoliberal US client state in Iraq would also provide immense opportunities.' The analysis of the occupation, the 'reconstruction and corruption' of Iraq, is sharply focused on the economic implications of Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority regime. Clearly, there was far more method and purpose to the economic than the political policies pursued. Doran wrote that the 'CPA itself resembled the executive infrastructure of a US corporation, both in structure and content.'

To a considerable extent, the neoliberal economic agenda was successfully implemented, with spectacular benefits to corporations such as Haliburton and Bechtel. This process is also very well demonstrated in a whole section devoted to a case study of the reconstruction of Iraqi agriculture, where the purpose is to 'establish a western-style agriculture based on large-scale mono-crops that can be owned and manipulated by western agricultural giants such as Monsanto and Cargill', and companies supplying fertilizer and machinery.

The attempt by George Bush to establish a US Middle East Free Trade Area is also sharply analysed by Doran, with case studies of Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt. When he spoke of 'freedom' and 'progress' and 'an expanding circle of opportunity', Bush 'certainly wasn't talking about human freedom and concern for democratic and human rights'. The utilization of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and a string of Free Trade Agreements make it plain that neoliberal economic advantage was the only serious goal.

In his Conclusion, Doran argues that 'the invasion and subsequent occupation has been a success', though not 'unqualified', and understood as being 'within the very narrow definitions of US hegemony and the expansion of neoliberalism.' Moreover, ill consequences such as the worsening humanitarian disaster in Iraq, the ongoing damage to global peace and security, and the undermining of the role of the United nations, are fully acknowledged. Nonetheless, the whole scholarly study, which is buttressed with 26 pages of references, entitles Doran to make some final general points about the 'corporate capture of the democratic state.'

In his view, the corporate dominance of the mass media, pulsing out 'the relentless corporate message that government is bad', that free markets and private enterprise can provide all social needs, including health care, education and prisons, shields 'predatory capitalism' from a rational reckoning. The true human costs of both the use of war for corporate economic purposes and the near-collapse of finance capital itself are brushed aside by shrill ideologues. Instead, it's 'business as usual'. Doran's book provides much ammunition (to use an unfortunate military turn of phrase) to those who wish to change the system.