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Is US-led Globalization Leading to Clash of Civilizations?

Before 'Islamic terrorism' spread like a wildfire in the international press, Arab and Muslim states particularly in the Middle East were already troubled by a modern-day crusader - the strong American presence in the region. Since the 1950s as soon as it became deeply involved in Mideast conflicts in the name of oil and security interests, the United States discovered that while it has won a strong ally - Israel - it has also began to earn more and more enemies. It is by grappling with these realities, the author of this two-part series says, that the world can understand why the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States happened.

BY ROLAND G. SIMBULAN
Bulatlat.com

Part I | Part II

(Lecture on "The Geo-Politics of US Policies in the Middle East," before the Symposium of Sociology Majors and Faculty of the University of the Philippines Sociology Department, Claro M. Recto Conference Hall, Faculty Center, U.P. Diliman, Quezon City, Sept. 27, 2001)

First of Two Parts
Roots of Arab Hostility to US Hegemony in the Middle East

A major question that has been largely ignored by the mainstream media both in the United States and the Philippines in the aftermath of the New York and Washington DC attacks is why there is today a widespread hatred against the United States especially in the Middle East. What drives religious mullahs as well as educated Arabs from North Africa, the Palestinian refugee camps of West Bank and Gaza, to Saudi Arabia to offer themselves as human suicide bombs or human missiles against US military forces in various parts of the world?

In 1983, an Arab jihad muj ctu ahadeen of the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement drove a truck miatersa day bomb past barricades and sandbags through a four-storey US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon killing 241 American Marines. Three kilometers away, in coordinated precision, another truck bomb driven by a suicide bomber did the same thing to a French military contingent, killing 57 French paratroopers who had recently been sent to Beirut to reinforce the Israeli occupation force.

Last year, a small boat loaded with explosives rammed the US battleship USS Cole that was docked in the port city of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 US naval personnel and almost sinking the USS Cole.

Similar "human missiles" are being sent against Israeli forces in the Middle East.

But no less than American psychologists who have studied the psychological profile of Arab "terrorists" have dismissed the idea that such acts are the handiwork of madmen or crazy fanatics, but instead reveal that those suspected to be involved are a dedicated and highly-motivated, rational people.

Roots of conflicts

It is imperative that we identify the roots of the United States' conflicts in the Middle East so that these can be addressed as part of the solution. Besides, the United States will have to be part of the solution because it is also regarded as the problem behind the upheavals and turmoils in that region.

Since World War II, US priorities in the Middle East have focused on assuring the access of US and Western oil companies to oil in the Middle East, a policy that was made official with the Eisenhower Doctrine in 1958 which had allowed US military intervention in the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. After 1958, the US Mideast policy was expanded to the defense of Israel where the US now was to bear the brunt of defending Zionism as the British influence began to wane in the region.

With the collapse of its rival superpower the Soviet Union, at the end of the 1980s, the US emerged as the unchallenged superpower in the region. Since then, Washington has aggressively pushed for a stable, growing market economy in the Middle East open to US and western investments.

The downfall of the repressive pro-US Shah of Iran in the late 70s forced US strategy to revolve around the defense of Israel, a state created by Zionist military forces which were backed by British and US armaments and diplomacy. The Palestinians lost their entire homeland in this process, and so did parts of surrounding Arab countries, who were almost overnight, dispossessed of their own lands.

Today, Israel depends on continuing US military and economic aid and unswerving political support. In turn, the US counts on Israel to act as a reliable collaborator in strategic political and economic goals both within and beyond the Middle East. The two countries also cooperate on military research and development and share certain high technology advances including the 200 plus nuclear bombs at Israel's Dimona plant, which obviously, neither Israel nor the US has acknowledged.

Middle East oil imports, especially from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, though only 10 percent of US needs, remain crucial for the United States. Given its role as guarantor of Middle East oil for Japan and Europe, the US maintains its dominant world position.

Oil and military

The US, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf Kingdoms have negotiated an agreement that links oil supplies with strategic military protection. Since the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979, US strategy to protect oil sources and Israel has relied on dual containment - preventing both Iran and Iraq from emerging as independent regional power centers.

The US unleashed the 1990-1991 Gulf War in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, both to show that it would not tolerate challenges to its power in the region and to reaffirm the sanctity of Western-controlled oil supplies. Despite the existence of the United Nations military coalition against the Iraq, the US unilaterally bombed the population centers of Baghdad in Iraq killing at least 200,000 civilians, according to former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who visited that country after the war.

Likewise, no less than US fact-finding NGO groups and the International Red Cross revealed that the United States armed forces used depleted-uranium missiles against Iraqi tanks and bomb shelters leaving 900 tons of radioactive waste in Iraq, according to Clark. Since that war, US-led moves to punish Iraq through economic sanctions have left Iraq devastated, with half a million people mostly children, dying. Given that the threat to strong American presence in the region has been removed and despite the advice of many of its allies, the US opposes lifting the military and economic embargoes against Iraq.

Meantime, the US continues to extend military support to the oil-rich Gulf monarchies that repress growing domestic opposition to government corruption, Islamic rejection of rapproachment with Israel, and serious human rights violations by these pro-US regimes. The US also provides military and economic support both to pro-Western governments facing similar challenges in Jordan and Egypt, as well as to several Arab states of North Africa.

But US economic aid in the Middle East region --- a key instrument of US influence - goes primarily to Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Jordan. The first three also account for most US military assistance, while Israel and Egypt received 43 percent of the total 1999 US foreign aid budget.

Arms sales

With massive arms sales going to Washington's closest allies, the Middle East region receives the largest proportion of all US arms sales in the world. Throughout the 1980s, Washington sold arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. From 1992-1999, the Middle East accounted for 64 percent of total US arms sales worldwide.

The US also maintains six military bases in the region with more than 37,000 US troops stationed there. In 1999, at least 33 US warships were patrolling the Persian Gulf at any given day. Many Arab Muslims consider the US as having desecrated the birthplace of Mohammed in Saudi Arabia because of its large US military presence in the capital of Islam.

All these events have made the Middle East a very hostile place for US economic and military interests even before the New York and Washington DC attacks, as internal tensions in the already over-armed region heats up. The unacknowledged 200 plus nuclear bombs in Israel's Dimona plant constitute a grave threat to regional instability. The Israeli nuclear arsenal which the US technically, militarily and politically supported, has provided Arab governments with the justification for their massive diversion of revenues to fund conventional arms build-ups. The United States' willingness to ignore the Israeli threat in the

Middle East strengthens the prevalent Arab view that the US practices a dangerous double standard. Bulatlat.com

Part I | Part II

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