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| Tuesday, 11 November 2003 |
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US military muscle in the service of business Asia watch by Lynn Ockersz Is Iraq shaping-up as a show-case of the concerted penetration into a Third World country of not only US military but also economic power? This way of viewing the situation in Iraq is dictated to the observer by some revealing findings of the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, a watchdog body which has been keeping the Bush administration's system of granting contracts to US firms and economic interests for post-war reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, under surveillance. Recent press reports said that the Centre probed the operations of three key US agencies in this context over the years 2002 and 2003 - the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Agency for International Development. A principal finding of the Centre was that more than 70 US companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for post-war reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two years. Equally thought-provoking was the finding that these companies contributed more money for the Presidential election campaign of George W. Bush than for any other Presidential contender over the past 12 years. There is more food for thought in the disclosure that the company Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - which US Vice President Dick Cheney formerly headed, won the lion's share of the contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan, that is more than $2.3 billion. It is as if Marx is being proved prophetic rather belatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are bearing the brunt of the earliest US-led military incursions into the Third World in the post-Cold War era. While the US is up against the problem of exacting human costs in particularly Iraq, the recent disclosures on the huge economic stake some US companies are having in the countries facing US - led military incursions, seem to be proving a prime motive for big power military and political involvement in the Third World - that is, economic gain. Besides, we seem to be having here an object lesson in the close link between political establishments and economic exploitation and penetration. If the economic gains being made in Iraq by the US firm linked to the US Vice President are anything to go by, we seem to be having here a graphic illustration of the close nexus between political and military control of Third World states by the big powers and the economic stranglehold they are seeking to exercise over these states. The point is clinched that neo-colonial political and military control goes hand-in-hand with big power economic expansion and penetration in the Third World. The increasing attacks against the US military presence in Iraq have prompted some observers to predict a Vietnam-type quagmire for the US in Iraq. While this could come to pass, the huge economic stakes for the US in Iraq could ensure for it a far more bitter and prolonged military confrontation in the conflict hit country. |
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