Washington Wired for War: Why Syria Could Spell World Catastrophe

Global Research

When Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip fatally shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, the assassination is seen as the event that ushered in the First World War. Within a month, the Great Powers of Europe would become embroiled in a four-year war owing to a web of alliances and treaties: Russia, France, Britain on the one hand; Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires on the other. The US would eventually enter the maelstrom in April 1917 on the side of Britain and the Entente allies against the Central Powers.

The eventual death toll was between 10 and 16 million, making it one of the biggest cataclysms in human history. The war was, of course, not the consequence of a mere single act on that fateful day in Sarajevo. It was the culmination over many years of diplomatic and political skirmishing stemming from economic rivalry between the European capitalist powers. Although some later historians dispute the role of economics as the determinant, it is hard not to conclude as many others have done that the First World War was the classic outcome of imperialist rivalry.

In particular, the then top European power Britain had long seen the rising star of Germany as its nemesis for the control of markets and resources. For its part, the newly formed German Empire arising from the unification of Prussia in 1871 felt that its economic development was being unfairly thwarted by London.

This latent conflict over resources was underscored by several concomitant trends at the turn of the 20th century: the economic decline of Britain compared with the technological powerhouse of Germany; the “scramble for African colonies”; the encroachment of German industrialists upon newly discovered Persian oil fields; and the perceived threat to the eastward trade routes with India – the jewel in the crown of Britain’s Empire.

The First World War can thus be seen as proof of the maxim conceived by military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) that “war is but the continuation of politics by other means”. The political and economic rivalry between Britain and Germany was in that way a powder keg that exploded into war upon a Serbian spark.

Turning to the present world situation and potential for conflict, it is likewise incumbent to see the bigger picture beyond immediate tensions and events. We need to see beyond the trees and branches in order to survey the entire forest; and not only the forest, but the historical road that leads up to the forest.

It is also critical for the appreciation of the scope for war in the present day to accept the premise that the capitalist economic system is at root “wired for war”. Or as Karl Marx put it: “War is inherent in capitalism”.

This premise of war as an integral part of capitalism holds because, under the iron law of the profit motive, nations will always be driven by an intense demand for natural resources and markets beyond national boundaries. As a result, nation states will always be thrown into competition for the control of resources and dominance in markets. This tendency towards conflict and eventually war may be held off for some time under conditions of quasi “peace” by international trade pacts and regulations, but eventually the do-or-die imperative of securing economic advantage will over-ride all supposedly civilised constraints.

The political and economic slide towards the headlong collision of the First World War is proof of that dynamic. By way of further proof, only 20 years after “the war to end all wars”, following even deeper economic turmoil between nations, the world was plunged into the even greater conflagration of the Second World War, which involved for the first time the deployment of nuclear weapons and a death toll exceeding 50 million.

Britain’s Riots: Thuggery, Looting, Lawlessness... By the Ruling Class

Global Research
Finian Cunningham

After a conflagration of arson attacks, riots and looting in several British cities, including the capital, London, there is a sense of order having been restored from a massive mobilisation of police forces.

There now follows the tracking down and prosecution of individuals involved in the mayhem. Conservative Prime Minister is leading “the fight back” to punish anyone who has inflicted damage and destruction to Britain’s society.

The events have visibly shocked the political establishment of all parties, police chiefs and the mainstream media. But what should be more shocking is the myopic and incredibly banal commentary that is being offered to “explain” the outburst of street disturbances and violence.

As pundits sit in comfy television studios trading inane insights about the “evils” of individual immorality, criminality, dysfunctional families, gang culture – in the background, so to speak, are the glaring signs scrolling across the screens of the cause of this societal breakdown. And yet the preponderant signs escape the mental radar of pundits and politicians alike.

The fact that the capitalist economic system is in worldwide meltdown is not even registered in the mainstream commentary. This is the system that the mainstream political parties have facilitated and fawned over, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal, and which has resulted in social devastation across Britain while the corporate and financial elite has ransacked economic resources. This system of legalised looting has been going on for decades, but certainly took on a precipitous dynamic starting with Cameron’s Conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s. Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were merely purveyors of the same dynamic.

In surveying today’s Britain, Karl Marx words are so right: “An accumulation of wealth at one pole of society indicates an accumulation of misery and overwork at the other”. That is the hallmark of capitalism in today’s Britain, the US and Europe.

All other problems are largely secondary in causation. Crime, racist policing, disorder, the lack of police budgets to restore order (so ironic), alienation and self-destruction, and so many other ills including the mobilisation of resources to fund illegal wars – most of our present day problems flow from the tap root of dysfunction that is the capitalist economy.

Speaking in the House of Commons Thursday, Prime Minister Cameron's “explanation” for the outbreak of street disturbances across England demonstrates a total ignorance and poverty of understanding on his part of the nature of the breakdown in his society. He blames it on “criminality pure and simple” and “pockets of sickness” and “lack of individual morality and responsibility”.

This view is largely echoed in the British political establishment of all parties and the media.

The looting, thievery and lawlessness that Cameron so condemns is but the reflection at the street level of British society of what is taking place on a much greater scale at the upper echelons of government and the economy.

Despite the appearance of pinstripe suits and well-groomed accents, we can, if we are honest, see decades of looting and thievery of economic and financial resources by corporate elites aided and abetted by Labour and Conservative governments. The taxpayer bailout of corrupt banks initiated by Labour PM Gordon Brown and now overseen by Cameron, paid for in large part by austerity in public spending cuts, is but the latest manifestation of official robbing of the majority to swell the already outrageous wealth of the ruling elite class.