------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 7, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
U.S. moves to 'share' casualties
WHY JAPAN IS SENDING TROOPS TO IRAQ
By Leslie Feinberg
A divided Japanese parliament voted 126-102 on July 25 to deploy 1,000 armed troops to beef up the Pentagon-dominated military occupation of Iraq. This vote, tallied after a brawl on the floor of parliament, ushered in a new era of Japanese militarism. Not a single Japanese soldier has fired a weapon in combat since 1945.
Tokyo is not the only imperial power considering such a move. Rival imperialist vultures, circling Iraq's plundered wealth, are anxious to swoop down for a share of the loot now monopolized by U.S. finance capital. And the Bush administration, worried about ongoing guerrilla warfare, is cautiously willing to offer a chunk to those who share the casualties by dispatching troops there.
France and Germany--NATO allies that opposed the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and British "Coalition of Two"--don't want to be cut out of their portion of the spoils of war.
However, while both France and Germany are reluctant to send troops to Iraq, one senior German official quoted in the July 29 New York Times stressed, "We do not want the American occupation to fail." Despite their internecine competition with the U.S., the citadel of capital, a victory of Iraqi political resistance against re-colonization would be a defeat for all the imperialist powers.
India's government announced on July 14 that it was rebuffing the Bush administration appeal to send troops to occupied Iraq. Polls in India report that some 87 percent of the population rejects the idea of dispatching forces.
The Japanese government was the first major imperialist power to offer troops. And Washington quickly hailed the decision.
The payoff for Japanese capital began immediately. On July 28, the ink dried on an agreement by Mitsubishi to buy Iraqi crude oil. Financial Times called it "a sign that Japanese companies may reap commercial rewards for their country's backing of the war." (FT.com, July 28)
Mitsubishi cut a deal to import 40,000 barrels a day of Basrah Light crude. Delivery could start as soon as August, and is planned to end in December. But Mitsubishi management admitted that the guerrilla war in Iraq--politely referred to by company spokespeople as "unstable security"--could push the start date back.
This deal may seem like small potatoes. But it opens the door for the export of Japanese capital--at least that's what its ruling class hopes. "Industry analysts said the deal's significance for Mitsubishi and other Japanese companies outweighed the size of the contract," Financial Times noted. "The deal could open the way for more Japan-Iraq contracts and help Japan in its pursuit of alternative sources of oil, for which it relies heavily on Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates."
Hajime Furuya, trading companies analyst at USB investment bank, concurred. "This transaction by itself has a small impact in business terms but it may have a far greater impact politically and strategically. It may be the signal for Mitsubishi to enter into other businesses in Iraq, such as pipeline or gas-plant construction. It could also open the way for other Japanese companies to go into Iraq."
Japanese companies had feared being iced out of capital investment in Iraq by U.S. and British big business.
Before the 1990 Gulf War, trading houses Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Marubeni had significant dealings with Iraq in infrastructure, construction machinery, energy and pipelines. After more than a decade of U.S.-led sanctions aimed at economically strangling Iraq, the July 28 Mitsubishi agreement is Japan's first commercial oil deal there in 13 years.
Now Mitsubishi and other trading houses and energy-related companies are analyzing "commercial possibilities" in Iraq, on the brink of entering negotiations once Japan reinstates long-term export credit insurance to protect its investments. (FT.com)
But although a deal like the one sealed by Mitsubishi is reported as a putative agreement with "Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization," it's really a transaction with Washington and London.
Iraq's oil and its profits could not start flowing into the world's imperial-controlled pipelines until the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on May 22 that gave the U.S., and to a lesser extent its British junior partner, legal cover as literally "the Authority" in Iraq, the occupying power in control of the country's lucrative oil and banking industries.
CAPITALIST LAWS: MADE TO BE BROKEN
Japanese rulers had to bend the iron bar of their Constitution in order to dispatch armed troops to Iraq. Under Article IX, Japan is bound to reject warfare and the threat or use of force. The country's post-WW II army was named the Self Defense Forces.
The U.S. as victor in that bloody inter-imperialist aggression imposed the pacifist constitution. But the national charter was buoyed up by powerful popular support from the Japanese population, devastated by war wounds.
As a result, Tokyo has never before shipped its troops overseas without the cover of a United Nations mandate. Japan has only been able to deploy small numbers in UN "peacekeeping operations" (PKO) in Mozambique, Cambodia, Zaire, the Golan Heights and East Timor.
However, the PKO law mandates that Japan's soldiers can only be dispatched under UN cover to post-war countries and if the host country "requests" international troops. The Pentagon has dismantled Iraq's government. So Tokyo had to partially rely on the May 22 colonial mandate, rubber stamped by the United Nations, which gave Washington the right to "invite" other imperialist armed forces into Iraq.
But the Peace Constitution remained a domestic obstacle.
During the spring, fierce opposition from Japan's working class met attempts to excise the pledge of pacifism from the constitution. Polls convey that more than half the Japanese population opposes deployment of its country's troops to Iraq.
Yet legislation authorizing the dispatch of 1,000 armed troops passed the full upper house of Parliament after midnight on July 25.
The bill, backed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's three-party coalition, passed despite a melee in an earlier upper-house committee, when angry opposition legislators traded blows with ruling-party lawmakers after the latter had cut debate short.
The new law also permits the government to deploy forces around the world on missions without UN support.
Koizumi maintains that the soldiers will only be engaged in non-combat activities in "safe areas." But the growing Iraqi resistance to colonial occupation is making it clear that there is no safe area for armies of conquest. And U.S. officials "have also made it clear that they want their allies to carry arms and ammunition." (The Guardian, July 26)
Koizumi claimed this legislative victory would distance his administration from "checkbook diplomacy."
During its decades of economic boom, Japan, the second-richest country on the planet, had exported capital as "foreign aid" that returned domestically as profit.
During the 1991 Pentagon-directed Persian Gulf War, Washington took Tokyo to task for "checkbook diplomacy" when the Asian power would only ante up $13 billion to back the military onslaught.
But then Japan's capitalist bubble burst. And now U.S. markets have been shrinking.
This spring, Tokyo's political support for the full-scale war unleashed by the U.S. and Britain alienated it from Middle Eastern countries on which it depends for 90 percent of its crude oil imports--the lifeline of Japan's economy. Reportedly in response, in late April Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi shifted the destination of her diplomatic trip from France and South East Asia to the Middle East. (Mainichi, April 24)
Japan's diplomatic declaration of support for the U.S. position at the UN Security Council on Feb. 18 had ignited a firestorm of domestic anti- war outrage.
Yet at a May summit, Tokyo publicly assured Washington that it would play a vital part in "rebuilding" Iraq.
The pressure wasn't just internal.
It's no secret that Japan's rulers aspire to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Last September, according to Japan's leading English- language newspaper, "Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage turned up the heat under Japan's rulers prior to the Iraq invasion."
He referred to Japan as an economic superpower with an eye on a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, and said it should give the United States active support when it strikes Iraq. (Mainichi Shimbun, Sept. 8, 2002)
At that time, NATO allies like Germany and France were balking at military action. Japan had provided logistical backing for the Pentagon war against Afghanistan, but was cautious about being dragged into a U.S.-led strike on Iraq.
NATO FOR ASIA?
After World War II, the U.S. built up Japan as a capitalist economic rampart, but not a military bastion, during the Cold War as part of Washington's Asia strategy. The Pentagon held military hegemony, stationing its troops in bases across Japan--especially on colonized Okinawa.
Today, more than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War warriors in the Bush administration are trying to cobble together an Asian alliance as part of their military pressure against both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China.
Japanese imperialism and the Indian ruling class are vital to this strategy.
More than three years ago, a private report co-authored by Richard Armitage "called on Japan to revise its Constitution to be able to field an army, and to accept a larger share of the alliance's defense burden." (New York Times, May 9, 2001)
But sometimes Japanese politicians give voice to elements in their ruling class that don't appreciate always playing second fiddle to Wall Street and the Penta gon. In 1999, then-Justice Minister Shoza buro Nakamura attacked Wash ing ton's policy of using military threats to protect U.S.-based economic interests. Nakamura was one of the politicians arguing at that time for rewriting the pacifist Japanese Constitution to permit military intervention abroad.
So like NATO, the idea of an alliance is built on a rocky foundation of cutthroat inter-imperialist competition in a period of deepening domestic economic crisis in the foremost hubs of imperialism.
And anti-war sentiment, which flooded into the streets of cities and towns across the world last spring when the full-scale military aggression began, will inevitably reassert itself as the foot soldiers in the army of conquest--whatever country they come from--return home in pine coffins and body bags as the Iraqi population continues to resist occupation and colonization. n
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