[Marxism] The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States

[John Edmundson]

On Mon, 2007-10-01 at 12:12 -0700, Paula wrote:
> J writes (and I'm sure Nestor agrees):
> 
> > The tenor of this analysis is insidious in the extreme. It attempts to 
> > posit
> > the notion that what we are dealing with are two nations of equal power.
> 
> No, that is not the posited notion. Imperialist nations don't need to have 
> parity of power, and rarely do. Recall Trotsky's comment, posted by Carlos 
> Eduardo, concerning the rivalry between Britain and Italy. Clearly Britain 
> was the stronger of the two; but what was the true nature of this rivalry?
> 
> I grant you that the United States is far more powerful than Iran. But it is 
> also far more powerful than, say, Belgium. I seem to remember that, in the 
> recent discussion about Ireland on this list, somebody called New Zealand an 
> imperialist nation, and nobody objected. If Belgium and New Zealand are 
> imperialist, why not Iran? Or is it only the white nations that need apply 
> for the position?

I don't know a lot about Belgium or the Belgian economy but I doubt that
many in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) would doubt
that it was subject to imperialism. But on the subject of New Zealand I
can be more clear.

Firstly, in terms of its military operations, New Zealand has police in
the Solomons, troops in East Timor, and the SAS fighting in Afghanistan
along with other soldiers there on "peacekeeping" duties. The NZ Army
just issued its first Victoria Cross in years to a soldier from the SAS
for rescuing an injured 'comrade' under fire in Afghanistan. NZ had Army
Engineers in Iraq after the "end of hostilities" and now has an
estimated 500 "private security contractors" working there for the likes
of Blackwater - allegedly the highest per capita number of any country
in the world. NZ sent troops to Korea and Vietnam and for many years
after the "Malayan Emergency" maintained a significant military presence
in Malaysia. New Zealand, despite the appearances put about by the
current Labour Government, is an active participant in the "Western
alliance". Despite being a small country, New Zealand definitely behaves
in an imperialist manner in many areas of the world.

In terms of economics, NZ clearly behaves as an imperialist, despite its
small size. To clarify, for NZ, agriculture is by far the most important
industry and it is an industry. NZ farming is carried out on a massive
industrial scale - I say this because people may think in terms of
European or 3rd world peasant farming but here, I am discussing large
scale operations worth millions of dollars.  Fonterra, NZs largest dairy
company, "is one of the top six dairy companies in the world by turnover
(June 2006 Rabobank ratings), the world's leading exporter of dairy
products and responsible for more than a third of international dairy
trade" according to its website (www.fonterra.com). It is involved in 50
or 57% shareholdings in companies in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela,
Colombia, Ecuador and Chile, including manufacturing as well as
marketing operations. (Hopefully, given the countries they're in,
they'll get nationalised in the near future.) They have sales offices in
Mexico, Guatemala, the US and Canada, where a lot of their South
American production ends up being sold. They have branches in Egypt,
Algeria, South Africa and Mauritius. They are heavily represented in
Europe Asia and Australia.

Other New Zealand concerns have invested heavily in South America,
notably Chile and Brazil, particularly in wine production and forestry.

Much of New Zealand's domestically owned industrial production -
whiteware, plastics, electronics etc has been (and the remnants are
being) relocated to third world countries in Asia in classic imperialist
capital exporting style.

There are left wing groups in NZ who argue that NZ is a neocolony. Some
of them argue that we need to be organising the "workers and farmers" as
if we were living somewhere like Nicaragua. These people clearly live in
some parallel universe as yet undiscovered by the rest of us. The
reality in the dimension where we are living is that NZ is a 100%
capitalist country expanding its imperialist tentacles around the globe
in proportion to its modest size, but typically, being an imperialist
country, punching above its weight.
Cheers,
John