Behind the Headlines the New Imperialism

A man called Lenin once defined imperialism as the highest or last stage of capitalism and also wrote that imperialism is the highest rung of capitalism between which and socialism there is no other rung Golda Meir, in a recent television program, “Face The Nation,” said in the course of a dialogue with her questioners, that Soviet interest in the Middle East was to get American imperialism out of the area.

That was not her definition of the American presence but presumably the Soviet’s. South America has long since had a slogan against the existence of Yanqui imperialism on its continent. What is imperialism? A dictionary defines it as “the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nations over foreign countries or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.”

It is also by historical precedent the act of a stronger government to extract the natural resources of a weaker one and then creating products with those natural resources for sale elsewhere, including the same weaker country, at a high price and profit. In recent times, however, we have seen “mother” countries release their relationships with colonies and dependencies and having those, developing countries enter the United Nations and become a majority.

We have also observed how in the same course of time, the weaker countries have slowly begun to re-assume ownership and control of their natural resources. Perhaps under the classical Adam Smith contract of laissez-faire, or world-wide free competition, this might be a salutary condition although in the past, wars were fought over such trivial matters. These acts of international mishigass were usually over the question of who could push what other advanced nation out of control of natural resources and/or markets. It did not matter to the world at large, whose people did not know, except that human beings were killed in the process. But these losses were always cloaked in patriotic fervor and helped lessen the grief.

Today, however, there is a new situation. Not only is a natural resource in question but it is one on which whole economies depend for their existence. It is not gold which merely greases the economies, but oil which fuels them and without which gold would really be that “base metal.” And who is involved here? Everybody – and every country in the world – in varying degrees.

ROLE OF OPEC. COMMUNIST NATIONS

First, there is the OPEC or Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, thirteen of them and all, with the exception of Venezuela, in either the Middle East (Arab) or Africa. On the other side are the consumer countries, which is everybody else in Europe and including Japan. The Communist countries seem to have enough of the stuff to manage but they are led by the Soviet Union and stand to a side watching the big show. The OPEC has raised the price of oil enormously since the Yom Kippur War and after a meeting in Vienna, just ended, have decided to maintain a price level, already raised 400 percent in the past year, for another nine months.

But there is a method to their non-madness. This is a condition which people, particularly the Americans, can live with since they might not die from it. It will cost more to heat homes and to run cars and generally inflate the economy. But it is also causing unemployment and this, since 1929, Americans do not like and in fact fear.

There has been talk of gunboat diplomacy, of having the larger and stronger countries, using military force to replace the people in OPEC countries now in control with others more congenial and amenable. But astride that thought is the Soviet Union, anti-imperialist champion committed to support the underdog (reactionary feudal Arab countries, Libya, Saudi Arabia) and that if we or one of our trading partners (allies) moves in, we will have war with the Soviets.

WHAT THE ARABS WANT

Even the Arabs don’t quite want that. What do they want? They want us to meet with them, us, should be unified including maverick France, and sit down to talk while they ease out the companies of the four major countries (England, U.S., Holland and France which heretofore owned or controlled the oil of the OPEC). Then the Arabs want to consider recycling the money ($65 billion in unspent cash this year) by which this money is lent to other countries at an interest which the Arabs, whose religion forbids it, call commission. So the Arabs are buying into land and businesses in the capitalist’ world. They cannot buy into the Communist countries.

But on top of this they want guarantees that their invested monies will not be affected by the inflation their very policies are causing. Since they have the oil and are organized, enter a new phenomenon in the picture: something ugly called cartels. Cartels is another form of imperialism, or here the new imperialism.

What else? The Shah invites American professionals to build his economy so he can buy into German auto works and maybe Lockheed here. To offset that. American universities are now seeking Arab petro-dollars–and American banks are literally “swarming” into the Middle East, according to the New York Times.

Another distractive set of facts that the oil companies are making huge profits, or that consuming countries are trading off their deficits by selling producing countries arms, thus exacerbating the Middle East tensions, or even that only ten percent of the U.S. oil needs are supplied by the OPEC, will only take our eye off the ball. Which is where is Israel in all this, as people are led to believe?

It is a convenient ploy by which the Arabs guess they can ease Israel out. What is Israel’s capital? What raw materials and resources does it possess? It has people; it has reclaimed land. At the moment it is in control of an area (Sinai) which produces 65 percent of its own domestic oil needs. But if Israel were lifted bodily out of the Middle East and placed in the middle of the Atlantic, the same oil problem would continue. The OPEC countries would still want to ease out the foreign companies or use them as managers. They would still want to increase the price of oil. They would still want their investments guaranteed against inflation.

A DOUBLE IRONY

The double irony is that along comes Arafat, a self-styled revolutionary. Revolutionaries traditionally are committed to overturn their own imperialist or capitalist countries. At the UN, Arafat talked of overturning Israel. Did he once mention pointing that gun at the reactionary and profit-minded Arab countries? And then distribute the proceeds among the dispossessed? His failure to do so signifies his real intent, or con-

All this is not to say that Israel is a hundred percent right in its acts, or wrong, or that the United States, as Tom Wicker recently pointed out in the Times. Is completely guilty of the very thing Ambassador Scali levelled at the new (imperialist) majority in the UN. Two, or even three wrongs do not make a right. The point of this is simply to say that Israel has nothing to do with the oil problem, outside of the fact it happens to reside in the area. And if somebody is not careful, something will happen between the old and new imperialisms, and it might be that socialism will happen, even in the Soviet Union.