Mehdi
Kia: Perhaps we should start with 15th February. On that day 30
million people took to the streets in 600 cities from 60 countries. Such a show
of revulsion against war was unprecedented in modern times, and perhaps in the
history of the world, particularly as it took place before war had actually
begun. Do you think that, as it was said, a second superpower is beginning to
take shape in the grassroots to challenge the warmongering policies of the only
superpower.
John
Rees: Yes I read
that remark, in the Washington Post I think. I think this is a graphic and
effective way of encapsulating what has happened. Many people now feel that the
most important division in the world is the horizontal division: the division
between those people who have enormous wealth and enormous military capacity at
the top of society, and the two are linked, and the vast majority of ordinary
people, ordinary working people, who have a very different set of priorities
both economically and in terms of international relations. So I think in that
sense it as an accurate description. The remarkable development in recent years
is that latter has had an organised political expression in the last few years
the in a movement, by which I mean mostly the anti-globalisation movement and
latterly the antiwar movement in which millions feel able to participate.
MK: The antiwar movement grew very rapidly into a truly global movement. I guess one of the things that made it grow so rapidly was the fact that the anti-globalisation anti-capitalist movement preceded it and it was able to use that accumulated experience, and organizational cadres, to good effect.
JR: The scale of the antiwar movement
is really not explicable without the precursor of the anti-globalisation
movement. Although in the United States that interaction took a different
pattern after September 11 than it did, say, in Europe, ultimately those have
been mutually reinforcing strands. One of the right wing columnists, Thomas
Freedman in America, once said that you cannot have MacDonald without MacDonald
Douglas. He was pointing to the link between the military capacity of states
and the process of capitalist expansion known as globalisation. I think that
connection has been apprehended and is now part of the consciousness of
millions of people worldwide
MK: Would you agree that the antiwar movement, however, allowed the anti-globalisation movement, which had sort of been stuck in terms of being limited to venues where world meetings were taking place, into escaping and being able to draw in a much broader mass, and a whole range of people who were not necessarily participating in the anti-globalisation movement.
JR: Perhaps. It is always very
difficult to give definitive answers to questions which assume what would have
happened if certain events hadn’t taken place. I think the anti-globalisation
movement was certainly approaching a turning point after Genoa. The willingness
of the state to use force against demonstrations was already raising the
question of what the movement should do when faced with that degree of the
willingness of the state to use its power like that. But certainly, that same
question in many ways got posed on an enormously larger scale by the drive to
war after September 11. And the development of the antiwar movement did indeed
give additional breadth to the anti-globalisation movement, forced it to
confront the question of state power as well as the question of the economic
structure of the system. And then war whatever else it did, it deepened the
movement both in terms of numbers participating, but also intellectually
deepened it.
MK: Clearly we saw a whole range of people coming into this movement who were not there before. We are now going to see war against Iraq in the next few days. There is always the possibility of a rapid victory. What should the antiwar movement do to stop the momentum from devolving? From actually dissipating and disappearing?
JR: Well All of us, especially these
days, are acutely aware of the enormous human cost of the war. But if it is
possible for a moment to stand back from that barbarity and imagine what
questions will be posed, assuming that there is an American victory (and I
don’t necessarily take that for granted by any means by the way, but let us for
the sake of argument take that to be the case as one possibility) I think the
victory by force of arms is not the same as gaining a political victory. I
don’t see that there is a settlement of the Kurdish question that will come
quickly after the military victory. In fact in many ways I feel that it is
possible that the Americans will become involved in a war which eliminates the
degree of autonomy that the Kurds in Northern Iraq have enjoyed under the
sanctions regime. I think that may well destablise Turkey.
Then the
question will be whether or not a military regime which is what the Americans
have in mind (this morning Blair made a statement that here will be democracy
there in weeks, though I think that is fanciful) is set up. A reaction against
a prolonged military occupation can be at least as serious for them as the
situation is at the moment. Then you have to ask a number of questions. What
does it mean for the Americans to have weakened Iraq to the extent that Iran
becomes a regional power. We have not at all reckoned with Ariel Sharon
extending the genocidal policy against the Palestinians. The answer to your
question is that we will have a great deal, unfortunately, of arguments to make
in the course of these events.
MK: The United States, and also even Blair, have made it clear that this is not just a single war but is part of a whole series of wars. They talk about “permanent war”. The antiwar movement should perhaps focus on this concept.
JR: Absolutely. The Stop the War
Coalition was of course itself opposed to the Afghan war and marched against
it. Raised the question of Palestine and ran with that issue as well. There was
a truly chilling moment a couple of months ago in the Commons when a back bench
MP asked Tony Blair what next after Iraq and was met with the answer: “I’ll
tell you what next – North Korea”. That is really a chilling prospect. We have
always made it clear in the Stop the War Coalition right from the beginning
that our opposition was to George Bush’s so-called war against terrorism that
in our minds would involve a sequence of wars against a variety of different
states. That is an understanding that we have established.
MK: What is your analysis of the reasons for this drive for unending war, for “permanent war”, this war without end?
JR: Apart from certain obvious
material questions at stake for the United States, particularly around oil,
which I don’t want to underplay because I think they are very important
motivations for the USA, I think that since 1989 the whole of what Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearle call the Eurasian landmass has opened up
before them as an area of the globe that was previously for an entire
generation excluded from the operation of western multinationals and western
military strategists. That area is now an enormously important one in
contention between the major powers. This the area which, not by accident, the
Balkan war was fought at the western extent, the Afghan war was fought at the
eastern extent and the Middle East oil reserves lie in the middle of. This
makes it an extremely important area. I am not saying the Unites States does
not have interests in other parts – Latin America and so on, but this
re-colonisation in a certain sense, its dominance by military bases, its being
opened to oil companies and other corporations is an important policy goal for
the United States,
MK: Some
people would argue that the doctrine of permanent war is in fact an answer to a
structural crisis that is fundamental to modern capitalism as it has developed
and globalised over the last decades and in that sense is inherent in modern
capitalism. It is in that way that one can see the deeper links between the
antiwar movement and the anti-capitalist movement.
JR: I think that is true. I think there is an
interaction here between global expansion and military expansion which is not
particularly new. If you look right to the very earliest days of capitalist
expansion you see the coincidence of state power and economic expansion, the Dutch
and British East India Companies. This is a very old story which takes a
particularly modern form, and it is incumbent on us to analyse precisely the
differences as well as the similarities which represent imperialist expansion.
It is essentially the reworking of the imperial reordering of the globe in the
wake of the cold war. There was a particular imperial division of the globe
which went with that period which has collapsed. No stable order has replaced
it yet. And what we are seeing is the wars of Soviet Succession.
MK: If the
roots of permanent war are fundamental, then perhaps the antiwar and
anti-capitalist movement ought to have the strategic aim of addressing these
root causes.
JR: It is very difficult for both movements
as such to develop that kind of programmatic clarity. That is more something we
associate with political parties and organizations. But I certainly think that
the movement as a whole has gone through a profound process of evolution where
it has clarified its views on the relationship between imperial power and
economic power. There are now many hundreds of thousands of activists, to put
it at its least, who share this kind of perspective or related series of ideas.
MK: Do you
see any prospects for it to develop along those lines?
JR: I think it is. If you look at the
European Social Forum in Florence late last year, there was a million-strong
demonstration which took place on its final day and had as its slogan “against
a Europe, a capital of war”. During the many discussions attended by thousands
of activists during the preceding few days this Forum developed a great deal of
clarity on these fundamental issues.
MK: One of
the other weaknesses that some have pointed out in the antiwar movement was the
reliance on the UN, by at least some sections. The thinking that if you go
through the UN route, you can legitimize this slaughter.
JR: Well that obviously is an issue, and it
is an issue among millions of people. I think however, the course of events
have shown that this is a very difficult argument to sustain now. Many
activists have begun to absorb the alternative view that the UN is really a
creature of major powers and not their master. In this sense events have been a
great teacher. Many of us have been critics of the UN from the left for years.
But we could never have diminished its authority with the speed and
effectiveness that George Bush has accomplished.
MK: Let look
another aspect of the issue. Many people who consider themselves on the left in
Kurdistan, Iraq or even Iran, as well as a section of the left over here
actually welcome the war, with degrees of shamefacedness. They argue that
anything that comes after is better than Saddam Hossein, or the Taliban. That
it cannot get any worse?
JR: I think it is always a mistake to accept
the alternatives offered to you by governing elite because they want to portray
it as it as a choice between Saddam or the Americans. And for many of the
people living under those regimes it is pretty unpleasant choice to have to
make. But in fact the alternatives are not exhausted by these two options.
There is historically a third alternative which is for the ordinary people to
take their fate in their own hands, to deal with their own dictators, form
their own organizations, form their own insurrectionary movements. This may
often be a slower and more difficult road, but is ultimately the only effective
path to democratic fundamental change.
I tell meeting
after meeting in this country that I was for a long time involved in the anti-apartheid
movement in the UK. I thought the apartheid regime in South Africa was a
vicious fascist dictatorship. Yet I never considered the option that regime
change could be engineered through bombing Pretoria or Johanesburg from London
or Washington. I always thought the solution lay in the hands of the ordinary
working people of South Africa, and as it proved, that was an effective method
of removing the Apartheid regime. It didn’t end up with a puppet regime of
America. Whatever its weaknesses, it ended up with a regime that was in some
way the legitimate expression of opinion in South Africa.
MK: Do you
actually think the Americans have a vision of a democratic Iraq?
JR: I don’t. I think their immediate plan,
announced some weeks ago, was for an 18 month period of military rule. We know
that the corporations, such as Halliburton, with close ties to vice president
Dick Cheney is currently bidding for contracts. We know they have plans to
privatize the oil company of Iraq. It is inconceivable that any popularly
elected government in Iraq would go along with such an economic prospect. So
no, I don’t think the Americans have much interest in that. They may have an
interest in a puppet government. We know that there are people in Knightsbridge
and Mayfair who are preparing themselves for power in Iraq though I don’t think
that would be a government that would enjoy much popular support in Iraq
itself.
MK: We have
already eluded to the fact that from the point of view of the people of say
Iraq, or Iran, the very fact that their governments are apparently anti-west,
and makes “anti-imperialist” postures, places the people in a very difficult
position. Any opposition to the imperialist assault may have the consequence of
prolonging the life of the hated regime at home. They are between the devil and
a hard place. Actually finding a route to the third way is not that easy. It
seems that the only way to maintain independence of the two evils is to combine
the anti-war movement with a movement for real democratisation. Do you think
that is feasible in the Middle East?
JR: I think it is more difficult in the
Middle East for a variety of reasons. If you were to put it into the broadest
possible terms you could say that the anti-colonial movements which kicked out
the western powers in the sense that they no longer have direct colonial rule
over those countries was a revolution of one type. It seems to me that there is
now placed in front of the people of the Middle East, in most but not in all
countries, the prospects of achieving a more fundamental social change which
raises both the question of democratic government and the question of a
challenge to the oligarchy of economic power. This is an old discussion in the
socialist movement in particular, but one which it seems to me to be
unavoidable.
Take Egypt as an
example. When I was there before Christmas the demonstrators in the streets of
Cairo did not face the British anymore, they faced the Egyptian army, the
Egyptian government, and the question of remaking these societies will
inevitably be raised – not just the democratic questions but the questions of
social and economic power as well. Therefore in a very real sense revolutionary
change is the question that is now posed in the Middle East. We can discuss
what kind of revolution that might be, but it is clearly something that needs
to be addressed.
MK: The Cairo
meeting which you were at did to some extent address this issue did it not? Can
you tell us a little bit more about the meeting in Cairo and perhaps the
meeting held in Haydrabad, India.
JR: The Cairo conference was very important
in the sense that it picked up themes of the anti-globalisation movement and
antiwar movement and gave an authentic Arab voice to those sentiments. That is
important in the West because we are constantly told that the only voice in the
Middle East is the Islamic, or the Islamic fundamentalist voice, and we all
know that there is a very long secular, socialist, radical tradition which is
simply extinguished by that kind of characterisation. It was also important
because there was the intension on the part of the participants not simply to
pass resolutions or declarations but to try and build some kind of movement.
They bravely pursue that course. Some of them have been arrested and tortured
by the regime. For those reasons it was a beginning, but an important beginning.
MK: Who
participated in that conference?
JR: A wide variety. There were people in the
international peace movement with representatives from Britain, Germany, New
Zealand, the US, Canada. There were also people from the Lebanon and other
countries of the Middle East. The majority were from Egypt itself including
representatives from the Nasserite tradition , some from Islamic background,
some secular radicals also.
MK: It has
got to be very difficult in the Middle East to create something like that. But
a social forum that links in democracy with the anti-war movement and
anti-capitalist movement needs to be developed there. And perhaps that was an
interesting beginning. We saw something happening in Haydrabad too.
JR: I was not present at that. I understand
that 8-10 thousand activists gathered there which is an impressive gathering
and returns us to the point I made earlier. It is now increasingly obvious that
the activists internationally see a horizontal division in the world. This is
not quite the division we faced in the late 60’s and early 70’s when people
perhaps saw a division between the first and the third world as important.
Perhaps one of the characteristics of a post-colonial world is that they see
how much the indigenous ruling classes of the less developed industrial
countries are integrated into the world economic system and the degrees with
which they are the willing partners of the ruling class in the advanced
counties. And therefore, by extension, how much they have in common with people
in western countries who are also opposed to the western powers both
economically and in terms of their military program. That is a very hopeful
sign of the degree of internationalism which has developed in the movement, an
internationalism which springs beyond the advanced countries themselves.
MK: In the
Middle East there are large numbers of groups, NGO’s, people dealing with
single issues, with multiple issue locally. What in the end is missing is
something that can link them together. Perhaps the antiwar movement and the
anti-capitalist movement is the model that can lead the way to forge these
links.
JR: I think that is an established fact in
many ways. If you look there has been successive conferences in Porto Alegre,
there will be another European Social Forum towards the end of the year, the
demonstrations that are about to take place this weekend are he second in a
series of internationally coordinated demonstrations. We hosted a meeting in
London a few weeks ago were representatives from the anti-war meetings from 26
different countries were present. That is the remarkable thing about the
movement.
MK: But it
needs to get into the Middle East, after all that is where the first battles
for the new world order are being fought.
JR: We all know the difficulties there. These
are countries where there is no freedom of expression, where people have to
work in more difficult conditions. People are trying to work through these
difficulties. There is obviously a great deal to be done, great deal of the
road we haven’t passed yet. As we move forward those parts of the world where
it was more difficult to start, more difficult to build, will nevertheless draw
inspiration and work toward this.
MK: Let us
return to the concept of a second global superpower. What do you think it takes
to evolve into one that can confront the other superpower?
JR: I think the element in the movement which
needs most strongly to be developed now, the single biggest force that can give
it more effectiveness than it already has is the question of the organised
working class. In Italy, which in many ways is the most advanced country in
this respect, the fact that the Italian movement in the course of development
of the anti-globalisation and antiwar movement has been marked by a series of
general strikes. This has given it an effectiveness which we in the UK are
still working towards. The fact that 5 million Spanish workers struck last
Friday as part of the antiwar protest obviously gives the movement an
additional force which it would not have without that kind of action. We here
hope that the day the war breaks out there will be some significant unofficial
strike action here. I think the working class movement as a whole, particularly
in advanced capitalist countries and even more particularly in Britain itself,
went through a long period of retreat in the 1980’s. We are emerging from that
now and the role the trade unions have played in the antiwar movement is a sign
that that kind of force can be brought to bear in the future. Once we see that
we will really have an extraordinarily powerful international movement.
MK: To
paraphrase it slightly differently the issue is the increasing global poverty
and destitution of the working people of the world The movement needs to
address what it is that drives this relentless spread of poverty and misery.
JR: Yes. And obviously when the specific
weight of the organised workers is thrown into the balance, when the uniquely
powerful ability to organise at the point of production for ones political and
economic ends is thrown into this scale, that is the decisive step that the
movement can actually take to strengthen itself now. And I believe that process
is already in train. It can take a long time, but is underway now and that is
what makes the situation much more hopeful now, even with the horrors of war
about to descend on us, than it has been at any point in the last generation.
MK: One must
not ignore a crucial group of workers, those working in the oil industries,
sitting on one of the most crucial commodities for the global capitalist
economy. The idea of their organisation and linking across national boundaries
in the Middle East, has unfortunately not been on the agenda. Let us not forget
that oil workers in the Gulf and Caspian basin have an almost century long
tradition of self-organisation.
JR: Yes. I agree. But it has to do with the
fact that internationalist beliefs, particularly in this country, is only at
the beginning. It is only when people begin to see domestically that their own
working class is central that they begin to think internationally that others
workers can be so as well. And so I think there a logic I am unfolding here,
which in many ways, despite how impressive the movement is, we are probably
only at the early stages of.
MK: Thank you
very much John
March 18 2003