Cuba, Venezuela and the Question of Imperialist Intervention in Libya

There is a large debate within the left over the Arab Revolution and US imperialism. Sectors of the left feel that since imperialism is trying to intervene in Libya, the task is to oppose such an intervention first, and look at the developent of the revolution later. The article from International Viewpoint we published a few days earlier took a different position. Below we have an article by Fred Feldman, which is actually a part of a debate in Louis Proyect’s Marxmail. We do not agree with Feldan in everything that he says. But we believe it is necessary for our readers to look at all sides of the debate.

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Feldman’s Piece

First of all, since Louis’ grounds for unsubbing Walter (which I recognize — while disagreeing — as his property right, as it is Walter’s on the CubaMews l9st, and not a violation of any civil liberty), can be interpreted as barring anything resembling general defense of Cuban foreign policy. So I think I should get my disclaimer in fast.

By now, many comrades may assume, reasonably enough, that my campaign against imperialist intervention started when Castro’s first statement on this was made public. Of course. I do not consider agreeing with the Cuban or Venezuelan leadership as a political crime.

However, I actually started pounding away on this the day before Fidel’s first statement on the war threat. I did] after I found inbox an article from Pepe Escobar and a liberal activist I respect that pushed for the no-fly zone. Escobar has since, I am glad to say, reversed himself. No, I had not been sent or given an advance copy from the Castroist conspiracy.

As David McDonald has tried to tell you, I don’t need signals from Havana to respond to this threat. I hammer for danger. I hammer for warning. It’s basically an ingrained political instinct.

I note that the no-fly zone has been put back on the front burner by Obama and Hilary Clinton, following Gates’ effort to shoot it down. As I pointed out, Gates — a hard-boiled and ruthless imperialist– has not had decisive success in containing US imperialism’s probably uhnrealistic ambitions for domination. With the exception of Iran, where developments in the Middle East has clearly confirmed his doubts in a way that is hard to challenge for the time being. Sorry, Cavid, I am not simply dropping it, as you would prefer, what with US imperialism being so helpless, and just liking to watch and all.

One thing I have to concede strongly and firmly: There is no chance of a US military intervention if the US rulers are convinced that its only result will be to place a “people’s revolution” in power. But who on this list has the kind of information that would guarantee that? In any case, they will intervene and they do intervene only and if they think they can prevent that outcome

We have very little information about the real characteristics of the opposition as a mass movement, although I am sure there are quite a few people in the mass base who would like to see real change and are unwilling to settle for simply killing Gadhafi and setting up a new government, which will continue a variant of these policies confirmed by a bourgeois-democratic election among the frustrated office-seekers who have undoubtedly accumulated during the Gadhafi era.

But isn’t it possible that those who are calling for US air strikes and air cover — that is, for the US imperialists to break the stalemate and place the titular opposition at the head of government — are doing so out of class consciousness, not simply confused “good” (from our standpoint) intentions.

Might they not be calling for imperialism to put them in power not out of bad judgment, as all too many leftists, in my opinion (aside from the Stansfield Smiths the Putinite Global Research, and so on), they too are opposed to a real “people’s revolution” and want the imperialists to work with them to prevent it. T

Gadhafi’s reported victory in the latest round of the sea-saw battle for Zawiya indicates that a stalemate is hardening. I don’t think we should exclude the possibility that the military morale and political will of the insurgents are being undermined by leaders who tell them that the US will break the stalemate and place the leaders in power.

Of course it can be argued, and sometimes is, that the leaders are calling for US air-strikes and air cover only because Gadhafi has “forced” them to do so by refusing to step down and throwing his military power against the rebellion. This of course would deny all political responsibility of those leaders who support these calls for imperialist bombings and other muilitry action for the course they are setting.

The argument is also put forward that the US is only being requested and seems only to be considering a takeover of the air space and a selective bombing campaign against Gadhafi strategic targets. I wonder if there is a tendency to bend a bit to the claim from some opposition leaders that these actions would not be “military intervention” in the full sense of the word. In fact, though we are all opposed to them as we oppose all US aggression, the idea seems to be that these could, despite the undoubted bad intentions of the imperialists, not only save lives and possibly have other positive consequences unintended by imperialism that might conceivably put the “people’s revolution” in a stronger position.

All such guesses leave out completely the possibility that the layer of leaders that is demanding that the US finish off Gadhafi for them, while willing to use the upheaval as a stepping stone to political power, may strongly desire to prevent a people’s revolution in Libya and may be working with Washington to prevent this after Gadhafi has fallen.

Yes, the US seems to have no plans so far to place US boots on the ground in Libya. But that does not exclude further military intervention. If my surmise is right, the first move of this section of the leadership, once in office, would be to call for a UN peacekeeping mission to prevent “chaos” and help overcome the ruin the civil war and the former regime had left behind. And I believe that once the Gadhafi government is out of the picture, Russia and Chinese representatives in the UN would probably go along.

Haiti today and the Congo back in the early 60s show what a powerful force for reaction such a “mission” can be.

All speculation, some will say. But I believe such speculations have a firm basis in the social composition of those being presented as leaders, and also in the very fact that they are calling on the US, not the masses, to deal the coup de grace to the Gadhafi regime — supposedly out of selfless humanitarian considerations. And to exclude such considerations from our strategic thinking leads to hollow triumphalism about the Libyan situation.

In this situation, I think Chavez’s initiative to offer to participate in mediating the conflict between the two camps is wholly positive, and, yes, courageous — in the world media, on the whole, it will only earn him more abuse. The tendency on the section of the left that doesn’t practice mechanical anti-imperialism (and I wonder, has it dawned on anybody on this list yet that I am not and never have been in that camp), the dominant tendency is to make excuses for the official or proclaimed leadership of the movement. Gadhafi has gone too far for any peaceful settlement to be possible, and, anyway, they are entitled to reject Chavez because he has often expressed admiration and support for Gadhafi.

This leaves out a living possibility. That is, that Chavez’s offer is being rejected so firmly because the section of the titular leadership that decides such questions today is relying on Washington offers them a surer, and, from their class standpoint, safer road to power (for them, not the people in revolt, or the rest of the masses, either) than one that does not rely on imperialist power.

On the Marxism List and elsewhere, there has been a wave of denunciations of Cuba, Venezuela, and the Alba countries as a group for their stand — real and alleged — on Libya. This is motivated by “mechanical” anti-imperialism, realpolitik, cynicism, campism, and bankruptcy. The characterizations on the part of some are almost joyously unrestrained, and never give any consideration to “non-criminal. (Admittedly, the International Viewpoint article is the main one here, a typical Late Trotskyist response, in my view, which — whatever else may be said about it — is not based on inexperience.)

Let me raise another possibility that none of the critics have not even dimly condifrtrf. That Latin America’s deep experience with US intervention, military and otherwise. This is somewhere between 100 and 200 years old. (It precedes imperialism.) Fidel Castro was permeated with this consciousness from an early age, and just about every nationally-conscious Latin American, and certainly every GENUINELY class-conscious Latin American is permeated with it.

Do I have to list all the forms, overt and covert, military and non-military that this devastating intervention has taken? It includes not only the obvious cases (the Cuban national struggle in the 1890s, the Guatemalan, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the October 1962 crisi). How many potential “people’s revolutions” have been bought off — from Venezuela in 1958 and the end of the military dictatorships in Argentina, which remained entirely the opposite of having anything to do with any social progress, until the rise of mixed nationalist figures like the Kirshners and Lula, who were pretty much militantly (as they quite sincerely demonized) on a part of the left that prided themselves on not being “mechanically” anti-imperialist.

And often by the same people who are now making excuses for the actions taken by leaders of the Libyan revolution who seem to me to be no less bourgeois than Lula or the Kirchners, but are calling for the imperialists to place them in power through air strikes on their own country, something that the Kirchners and Lula seen not to have gotten around to.

Finally, I want to cite an excellent quotation from Trotsky that Louis sent to the Pen-L list. Louis didn’t make any comments about this, as I recall, but I will have some. Here is the quote:

“In ninety cases out of a hundred the workers actually place a minus sign where the bourgeoisie places a plus sign. In ten cases however they are forced to fix the same sign as the bourgeoisie but with their own seal, in which is expressed their mistrust of the bourgeoisie. The policy of the proletariat is not at all automatically derived from the policy of the bourgeoisie, bearing only the opposite sign – this would make every sectarian a master strategist; no, the revolutionary party must each time orient itself independently in the internal as well as the external situation, arriving at those decisions which correspond best to the interests of the proletariat. This rule applies just as much to the war period as to the period of peace.

“Let us imagine that in the next European war the Belgian proletariat conquers power sooner than the proletariat of France. Undoubtedly Hitler will try to crush proletarian Belgium. In order to cover up its own flank, the French bourgeois government might find itself compelled to help the Belgian workers’ government with arms. The Belgian Soviets of course reach for these arms with both hands. But actuated by the principle of defeatism, perhaps the French workers ought to block their bourgeoisie from shipping arms to proletarian Belgium? Only direct traitors or out-and-out idiots can reason thus.

“The French bourgeoisie could send arms to proletarian Belgium only out of fear of the greatest military danger and only in expectation of later crushing the proletarian revolution with their own weapons. To the French workers, on the contrary, proletarian Belgium is the greatest support in the struggle against their own bourgeoisie. The outcome of the struggle would be decided, in the final analysis, by the relationship of forces, into which correct policies enter as a very important factor. The revolutionary party’s first task is to utilize the contradiction between two imperialist countries, France and Germany, in order to save proletarian Belgium.

“Ultra-left scholastics think not in concrete terms but in empty abstractions. They have transformed the idea of defeatism into such a vacuum. They can see vividly neither the process of war nor the process of revolution. They seek a hermetically sealed formula which excludes fresh air. But a formula of this kind can offer no orientation for the proletarian vanguard.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/05/think.htm

This is a wonderful statement, and I am in agreement with every word of it. But I am not sure what Louis thinks it supports in this case.

Trotsky posits the concept of a ‘proletarian Belgium,” under a workers’ government, He posits that imperialist France, threatened by Germany under Hitler, finds it necessary to send the workers’ government arms. He asks, should we oppose this? In my opinion ss in his, of course not.

But this says nothing about leadership demands for air strikes, and air cover across Libya. I see no reason to believe that Trotsky would have advocated air strikes by France in “proletarian Belgium” or occupation by allied troops (the predecessor of the United Nations. I know comrades will claim that I am only speculating. After all, a UN Security Council occupation might not follow a US bombing campaign (only against Gadhafi, we are required to assume by the givens I accept as given,) and seizure of Libyan air apace.

I want to cite the example of Cuba. Fidel Castro campaigned for an arms embargo against the Batista regime. He sought arms where he could get them, and, at least this is my recollection, and the people who ran guns to him from the United States included some — let’s just say — exotic characters, as I remember, as well as dedicated Cuban patriots. As far as I know he received no arms directly or indirectly from the CIA or other governments. But he never called for US air strikes against Batista’s forces. Whether this was a matter of principle with him, I have no idea. He may never have had the opportunity to decide whether this was a matter of principle or not.

But I remember that in the last months of the war, the US barred arms shipments to the Batista regime. I saw nothing wrong with that then, and I see nothing wrong with that then and I do not now. And no one will find in my writings on Libya in the recent period any condemnation of the arms embargo against the Gadhafi regime.

Nor will you find any criticism of the leadership of the fight until some of them began to call for the US air force (and other imperialist similars) to settle the differences among Libyans.

I have spoken and saved my soul. Fred Feldman