arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

New World Disorder - Ted Grant and Alan Woods

Overnight, the greatest superpower the world has ever seen turns out to be a colossus with feet of clay. The most powerful military state the world has ever seen has shown its powerlessness in the face of terrorism.

Before the Second World War, Trotsky predicted that America would emerge as the victor and establish world hegemony, but he added that it would have dynamite built into its foundations. These prophetic words have now turned out to be literally true.

Ten years ago, after the fall of the Soviet Union, President Bush's father promised a New World Order. Now the reality has struck home with a vengeance.

The rape of the planet by Big Business has created a world fraught with misery, war and chaos, which has now impacted on the heart of world imperialism.

This is the real cause of the present atrocity. The terrorism of world-wide hunger, disease, misery, exploitation and oppression which torments millions of men, women and children each and every day of their lives, is the root cause of the turmoil and instability which is sweeping the planet at the dawn of the 21st century.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in Palestine, where the people on the West Bank and Gaza are daily subjected to the bloody attacks of Israeli imperialism, their homes demolished, their young people shot down, their livelihoods taken away.

Is it any wonder that sections of the Palestinian youth have been driven to desperation? Is it surprising that there is a fierce hatred of US imperialism which backs Israel and remains silent about all these atrocities? Where was the condemnation of President Bush when the leader of the PFLP was recently murdered by the Israelis in a rocket attack?
Where was all the talk about an "attack on civilisation" when hundreds of Palestinian civilians were being killed and maimed by the Israeli army?

All this has had the most terrible effects on the consciousness of the Palestinian masses. Hours after yesterday's attacks there were reports of celebrations on the streets of Nablus on the West Bank. The terrible suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israeli imperialism, backed by Washington, is what provokes such a reaction. But it is profoundly misguided. Scenes of Palestinian youths on television demonstrating support for the killing of hundreds of US civilians will do tremendous harm to the Palestinian cause in the USA and internationally.

The sympathy which they had won among the workers of the USA and other countries because of their suffering at the hands of the Israeli oppressors will be forgotten in a wave of revulsion, which will be used by the US reactionaries to whip up anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab feeling.

This in turn will pave the way for new and monstrous acts of repression against the Palestinians which will be more acceptable to world public opinion, whereas previously they were condemned. The Americans will have to launch a strike against some Arab country - presumably Iraq. They will need the collaboration of Israeli intelligence to carry this out.

This will strengthen the hand of Israel, not weaken it. It will harm the cause of the Palestinians, not help it. Therein lays its reactionary character. One has to be blind not to see this.

Despite its spectacular impact, even the best-organised terrorist attacks can never succeed in destroying or even seriously weakening imperialism. George Robertson, the NATO secretary, immediately took advantage of the attack to advocate the stepping up of NATO's military power.

The consequences of the present attacks will be serious and reactionary. US imperialism will be under pressure to retaliate, and will not be fussy about which victims it chooses. Already, there have been attempts to blame Iraq for the atrocity. New bombings and devastation will be the answer, adding to the devilish spiral of killing and counter-killing.

As far as the peoples of the Middle East are concerned, the present incident will do nothing to help them in their plight. The Palestinian people will derive no benefit from this attack. The US imperialists will be driven even further into the arms of Israel. The brutality of the latter against the Palestinians will be "justified" by the alleged threat of terrorism.

After the terrorist attack in Africa, the US imperialists bombed Libya and Sudan, although neither of these countries had anything to do with it. They will now presumably return to bombing the helpless people of Iraq - as if one bloody crime justified another.

In this way, they will aggravate all the contradictions on a world scale, creating new victims and new hatreds - the fuel for new acts of terrorism. This is what they call the "defence of civilisation".

Lenin once said that capitalism is horror without end. In recent years the Americans and Europeans have been arming to the teeth, with a view to intervening against the movement of the masses in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, as in the so-called Plan Colombia.

The present atrocity will mean a further acceleration in this aggressive programme of rearmament. It bodes nothing positive for the workers and peasants of the world, but is just another manifestation of the convulsive crisis of capitalism on a world scale. In the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: "And when they have created a wilderness, they call it Peace".

London, 11th September 2001.

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