BRITISH IMPERIALISM was run out of Basra and Iraq, and is about to be run out of Afghanistan. However, it is still organising new wars in support of French imperialism in Mali and Somalia, and in support of US imperialism in Syria.
Cameron and his military chiefs have now announced that they are ready to go to war with Argentina in defence of one of their last colonial outposts – the Malvinas Islands (Falklands).
This is despite the fact that the US, which supplied and resupplied the British forces in 1982 with the bombs and shells that won that war, may not be willing to do so this time around, leaving the UK with a navy that has no aircraft carriers and no Harrier jump jets, and an army that is to be 30% part-time.
The UK ruling class are threatening the planet with a new war, despite the fact that their financial crisis is so great that a new Malvinas War could break them absolutely, paving the way for the ending of the rule of the capitalist class in the UK.
Their economic crisis is so great that the gamblers that make up the British ruling class are being driven to take that risk.
They argue the ‘Argies’ won’t dare take the Falklands – they seem to have forgotten that they said this in 1982, only to be confounded.
Then, their fate hung in the balance until President Reagan made up his mind which side the US was going to support. However, the US under Obama is making it clear that if the UK does not quit anti-EU propaganda and cancel its armed services cuts there can be no special relationship with it.
However, it is imperialism as a whole that is bankrupt and writhing in its death agony, having lost its ability to unconditionally dominate the planet.
The US and the UK insisted on war with Iraq only to end up with a regime there that is closer to Iran. They then forced their way into Afghanistan and now cannot get out fast enough, despite the fact that their rout will leave the Taleban free to take the power.
They organised Islamists and the Gulf feudalists to overthrow and murder Colonel Gadaffi, only to see the same Islamists murder the US ambassador, and arm al-Qaeda to take control over Northern Mali. We must say that if the US ambassador had been murdered in Iran we are sure that the US would not have been so understanding in its response.
Now the UK and France are confronting the Islamists in Mali, who were their allies in Libya, and are still their allies in Syria where they are being armed and handed tens of millions of dollars to try and murder President Assad, whose regime is secular and progressive and anti-imperialist.
Only this week UK Home Secretary Hague pledged to finance and arm the Syrian pro-imperialist opposition. The Islamists consider that acting as imperialist agents is preferable to living under secular progressive Arab regimes.
The imperialists, who backed Osama bin Laden in the 1980s in Afghanistan against a pro-Russian government, support the Islamists against the anti-imperialist Arab nationalists as they have proven in the cases of Saddam Hussein, Muammar al Gadaffi and now Al Assad.
Imperialism is thrashing around blindly, driven on by its economic crisis to try to find the forces that it can use to destroy the national liberation movements.
This process has already cost the lives of millions since the war against Yugoslavia. The role of politicians like Hague has been to stand on the sidelines shedding a few crocodile tears as the drones go in to slaughter the innocent.
Meanwhile, the working class and the middle class at home are being pauperised and told that they must return to the days of the Poor Laws and Workhouses so that capitalism can be saved from its crisis.
Workers in the UK and the other Metropolitan capitalist countries are beginning to realise that their enemy is at home, and not in Syria or anywhere else. The only way out of the crisis for the working class is to join hands with the workers and poor of the world and overthrow capitalism and imperialism with socialist revolutions to bring in world socialism.
