France To Play In U.S. Bathtub?

Bleary-eyed, I see this morning's business news is dominated by a sharp drop in East Asian stock indexes and an even steepeer one in India. The US markets, which are experiencing an ugly new year already, are closed today for the MLK holiday, so tomorrow could be real interesting.

I want to pull the coattails of FotM readers to another recent development which could be of greater importance in the long term, one that the stock market stuff is likely to drive out of the news entirely. This is the just-announced agreement between France and the United Arab Emirates to establish a French naval base in Abu Dhabi, with 500 personnel stationed there. In what has been pretty much exclusive American turf as far as imperialist military presence goes, this is a big deal.

Commentators have pointed to a variety of short-term factors in the move--new French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy buddying up to Bush and the US, the Gulf States' nervousness about both Iran and US war talk against Iran, firming up French nuclear and arms sales in the region, and more.

But the big picture tells a different story. Bush will be gone soon, Sarkozy eventually, while French capital will now have a military toehold in the heart of the Middle East. Given that the invasion of Iraq was a US bid to keep a hegemonic hand on the region's oil, given that one major nightmare for the US ruling class is that oil-producing states will dump the sinking dollar in favor of the euro for petroleum sales, given that the Bush administration has created a world historic defeat for the US in Iraq, this would seem to be an objective intensification of the contention between US and European bourgeoisies for world domination, as well as an example of rulers in the Gulf States seeking to play on the contradictions between imperialist blocs.

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A Brzezinski Gem For Your Study Group

Here's a goodie for your next study group on imperialism:

"To put it in a terminology that harkens back to a more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."

That's Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State and general US foreign policy bigshot for the last four decades. He first said it in his 2004 Global Chessboard, but he's so fond of it that he quotes himself with evident delight in his brand new Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower.

He does so, incidentally, to rip Bush 43 for having made a complete goatfuck out of US foreign policy. The book itself is a critique of W and Clinton and Bush 41 (all three of whom Zbig is much smarter than, as he takes pains to let us know). More importantly it is intended as a salvo in a debate about what global strategy the US imperialists should adopt to replace W's hopelessly fantasist and completely failed National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

Please kick in any observations you might have on this developing debate in the ruling class in the comments section below.

h/t Rust

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