Arab’s Regime Arab’s Enemy
Adel Samara
Occupied Palestine
Note: Following the developments of the US/Zionist Entity’s war against Iran and the uncover of the weakness of the Gulf Entities on the one hand and the failure of US protection to them on the other, I think it is beneficial to publish the following few pages from my aforementioned book.
Are The Gulf Entities Imperialist?
It is an adventure to ask such a question at least according to Lenin’s five characteristics of imperialism which were discussed at the beginning of this chapter. But we must consider changes in the world in the century that followed Lenin’s work.
Lenin defined imperialism as a relationship of economic exploitation leading to unequal distribution of wealth and power on a global scale. This enlarges his definition of imperialism as controlling substantial amounts of capital and capital export.
The case in hand, i.e., the rental Gulf entities control enormous capital and export capital as well. We cannot ignore this similarity, but at the same time, we cannot emphasize that they are imperialists depending on those similarities alone.
Lenin also argues that imperialism is characterized by “high monopoly profits” or “super profits” through the plunder of the entire world. Here the Gulf entities fail to be called imperialists because of four shortages:
· Their wealth never stems from a developed productive process in historical and current times, the source of their wealth stems from oil rent which is discovered, extracted, and even refined by imperialism.[1]
· Their wealth was originally never acquired from external plunder. And,
· It is not so obvious until today if their colonializing of land in poor countries in Africa will breed many surplus or super profits.
· Most of the areas of the Gulf regimes’ export of capital are not productive, and it is not oriented to be productive, but their exported capital is devoted to terror to serve imperialism’s division of labor, i.e., it is burning capital in support of terror devoted to burning human beings.
On another level, it is also interesting to note that, for Lenin, imperialism as a “world-historical phenomenon” has to be based on the exploitation of the majority of the world population by a “handful of exceptionally rich and powerful states.”
This never applied to the Gulf regimes in terms of exploitation, the Gulf regimes did not control their own capital rent, and they lack an independent national political decision. The Gulf regimes are not strong countries in terms of social and even demographic structures. For example, in some regimes, Arabs are less than 10 percent of the population, moreover, they are dependent and vulnerable, lacking Internal/social demographic cohesion. The only similarity with Lenin’s point is the Gulf’s tiny population, but it is very tiny.
What one extracts from the case of Gulf regimes is that it is very deformed in form of social structure, they are dependent on the one hand and aggressive and colonizers on the other. They are rich but not productive.
Many Arab Marxist and nationalist militants were worried about the future of the Gulf countries because the majority of their populations were not Arabs and mistreated in addition to the fact that the regime’s policies are against any form of Arab unity. The Arab Spring/Fall uncover the particularly important and dangerous role of those regimes. I will not return to their clientele role for imperialism, but I will deal only here with their situation and role in the light of a theorization of Marx in terms of militarism.
Marx’s perspective on military spending as “non-productive waste of part of the social product” in tandem with its growing imperialist status.
While Marx’s point here is highly applicable to Arab clientele states in the Gulf with some differences in the case of the social product. Because those regimes’ money liquidity is originally rental, and the money spent burnt on the military is for import and aggression but not invested in producing weapons. The Gulf military spending is in fact against the Arab nation itself which is a unique form of self-suicide. It is an active absorption for the imperialist weapons industry which serves imperialist two important goals:
· Large accumulation, and
· International domination.
Marx’s point is applicable in the theoretical/human short run more than in the practical and long run. This form of spending first of all is a class one; it is by and for the corporatist owners. It is burning the Gulf wealth on the one hand and launching massacres against other parts of the Arab nation, but it is profitable for the owners, the producers of weapons. In fact, even in the long run, imperialist investment in weapons is profitable. It is the tool of colonial wars that subsidizes the capitalists’ losses in wars through plundering, working-class exploitation, and unequal exchange, war is the most profitable field for capitalism.
Military spending led to war expansion which means an opening of new markets and more profit. It is an expansion of employment of the local and other workers who are employed in this sector. It is a tool to subjugate and gain allies in many countries that open their markets for imperialist military and civil exports.
To take the imperialist military spending/donations to the ZAE for example which are strategic investments, it is not profitable in the short run or direct glance, but considering the role of the ZAE in blocking Arab development and maintaining Arab dependency it is super profitable.
As noted above, Marx is right from a humanitarian point of view and the protection of nature, an argument that imperialism never listens to.
To elaborate, Gulf military spending in the form of capital burning/waste, and aggression against other Arab countries in a form of semi imperialism is going hand in hand with Zionist aggression and blocking the development of Arab countries and finally, both Gulf and Zionist regimes are agents for imperialism, albeit in different forms.
The normalization between many Arab regimes, especially the Gulf regimes with the ZAE and their joint aggression against Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and for sure Palestine as part of imperialism’s plan against the Arab nation led us to open the discussion towards other lumpen or semi Middle East imperialisms especially their aggression against the Arab nation.
The Arab Homeland is under vital threat from three countries, two of them from the so-called Middle East, Turkey, and the ZAE in addition to Ethiopia.[2] Mayada Azzoqi argues that both Turkey and Ethiopia are launching water wars against the Arab nation serving the ZAE.[3]
· Turkey’s aggression in terms of renewing its colonialism even in a settler form in addition to its’ water war against Syria and Iraq
· Ethiopia’s water war against Egypt and Sudan, and
· For sure the ZAE in all possible aspects.
All of those problems strengthen and justify our argument that dealing with imperialism in the Arab Homeland separately is more accurate than dealing with all MENA countries as one group. Iran is a case in between, it is pro-Arab in Lebanon, but in Iraq, it is the second plunder of Iraqi wealth after the US.
The book is available at:
NOTES
[1] In the imperialist British academia there is a saying stated: “How come our oil existed in their land”!
[2] Iran is an old country neighboring Arab state, it is not currently at war against the Arab nation, and it supports Arab resistance, but at the same time supports the Iraqi regime which was appointed by the occupier USA!
[3] See M.Azzoqi: www.observerme.net
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The opinions and views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Kana’an’s Editorial Board.