LAST week saw fresh sabre-rattling by the White House as President Carter tried to line up the world's capitalist powers in a common front against the Iranian revolution.
As well as sending ships to the Indian Ocean, guns to Zia, and declaring the entire Persian Gulf to be under American control, Carter threatened armed action against the Khomeini regime if the imperialist powers don't agree to an economic boycott of Iran.
The choice of Iran as the target for this 'get tough' stand, even though the Soviet army is still in Afghanistan, strikes some imperialist ideologues — the Economist for one — as misguided.
But the explanation is not hard to find. It is election year in America, and while the 'red star over Afghanistan' has stirred up a good deal of reactionary American patriotism, American hostages has had even more effect on the electorate. Vietnam and detente have taken some of the cocksuredness out of American politics. The attempt, for example, to get American athletes to rally-round-the-flag over Afghanistan was an abysmal failure, and the US Olympic boycott was imposed only by the use of that older and more deep-rooted principle, rally-round-the-dollar. Even an old red-baiter like Ronald Reagan sees that there are more votes in hostages and petrol-pumps than the independence of Aignanistan. Oil Carter's international allies are much like his voters. Apart from the Japanese, who depend heavily on Iran for oil, most imperialist countries would prefer to confront an isolated, underdeveloped country like Iran than to take on the Soviet Union.
By victimizing Iran, Carter hopes both to get back into the White House and repair the 'Western alliance'.
But the problems of Iran and Afghanistan can be separated only with difficulty. American policy-makers are presently in the middle of a difficult operation: to adjust the imperialist system, economically, politically and militarily, to a situation in which the United States no longer occupies the world position it once did, but without giving way on US claims to world "leadership'.
Thus, for example, they want the European countries to assume more of the costs of NATO's European forces and Japan to finance the defence of imperialist interests in Asia. The dollar is to be eased out of its position as the main means of international exchange in favour of the IMF's 'Special Drawing Right' which all the leading imperialist countries will underwrite. But in everything the White House will still call the shots.
But to imperialist powers like France, Germany and Japan, who are far more powerful in comparison with the United States than they were when the 'Western alliance' was constructed in the '40s and '50s, these arrangements offer little. So Carter must convince them that the United States is as indispensable for the defence of their interests as it was twenty years ago. There is only one thing to do; resurrect the bogey of the Soviet Union.
The sort of world order that thẹ US wants requires at least a partial return to the days of the Cold War, and we must expect US policy to become increasingly aggressive in the years ahead. Scapegoat Margaret Thatcher understood this even before she arrived at Number Ten. Reluctant to see all British ruling class eggs in the basket of the EEC, the Tories have done much to pave the way for Carter's 'new direction', hoping that Britain will benefit once again from a 'special relationship' with the United States.
It would be wrong to see recent events as a piece of great power rivalry of no concern to the international labour movement. Apart from strengthening domestic reactionary forces, cold war revivalism will not seek its first target in the Kremlin but in the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist movements breaking out around the world.
Today the scapegoat is Iran, Southern Africa, Pakistan, or even one of those sunny Mediterranean lands where British tourists crowd the beaches. The real meaning of cold war revivalism is global counter-revolution.
The British left has responded in various ways to events in Afghanistan and is still, quite rightly, debating their significance. But imperialists care nothing for nuance. They will oppose anything that smacks of revolution.
We must be equally blunt. Whatever we think of the specifics of the Afghanistan must insist determination includes the right to make a revolution and the right to seek international aid to carry it through.
Only defence of that principle can immunize the labour movement against the reactionary offensive.
Socialist Challenge 24 April 1980 Page 8 Iran's seizure of