World War III Nears as the US & UK Strike Yemen

houthi and tribesman rally Jan 14

21-01-2024: The Anglo-American powers are relentlessly pushing the globe towards World War III, after the governments of the US (United States of America) and the UK (United Kingdom) announced they had launched massive air strikes against the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in Yemen on January 11. The US Air Force claimed it had hit 60 targets at 16 sites in Yemen, and that it had non-operational support from the governments of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea (“South Korea”).[1] These strikes are ostensibly to “protect global shipping” from the actions of the Houthis in boarding and blockading commercial shipping traversing the Bab al-Mandeb strait into the Red Sea en route to Israel. In reality, the Houthis had only been blocking shipping bound for Israel, while allowing other ships to pass through without incident. The Houthis have taken these actions in an effort to slow down or stop the Zionist Israeli state from the genocidal bombing of Gaza in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas. The actions of the Houthis in solidarity with Palestine, putting themselves at risk to help others, can only thus be defended by working people worldwide.

Middle East and the World on the brink

The day after, the Houthis reported that the strikes had killed five of their fighters,[2] and represented a new stage of a war Yemen has been enduring for 10 years. Days later, Mohamed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the political bureau of the Ansar Allah resistance movement (Houthis) declared that US and UK forces can no longer pass through the Bab al-Mandeb strait and that the Axis of Resistance had regained control over the region.[3] If the aim of the US and UK imperialists was to deter Yemen from defying them and from defending Palestine, it has clearly failed, as potentially one million Yemenis rallied in a vast demonstration in the capital Sanaa two days after the strikes – waving the flags of Yemen, Palestine and the Lebanese Shia resistance force Hezbollah.[4] The Ansar Allah movement of Yemen, which swept to power in 2014 and then endured and survived a relentless and murderous bombing from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia backed by the US and UK governments – clearly has the overwhelming support of the majority of Yemen’s population of some 34 million.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Western attacks on Yemen, implying that they would “turn the Red Sea into a bloodbath”. The Russian Federation also denounced the attacks, while Russia and China abstained from a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution demanding that the Houthis immediately halt all attacks on international shipping.[5] Yemen’s neighbour Oman broke with other Gulf states in the region and declared a no-fly zone for all military aircraft participating in air strikes against Ansar Allah. This effectively denies the use of Omani airspace for US and UK warplanes.[6] Seemingly in support of Yemen, the Islamic Republic of Iran launched ballistic missile strikes on an ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) base in Syria and a stronghold of the Israeli spy service Mossad in Iraq on January 15. However, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) stated that these attacks were a reprisal for the January 3 terrorist attacks on the memorial meetings for General Qassem Soleimani in Kerman.[7]

It should be noted that there have been a series of strikes by US forces in Iraq and Syria throughout last year, with counter strikes by Shia resistance forces. However, the January 11 strikes were the first to have been accompanied by grand public announcements from the Western media. To some extent, they may have even been constructed as a mass media narrative. Andrew Korybko on South24 reported that the US government apparently tipped off the Houthis before the January 11 strikes, in a similar manner in which the Iranian government tipped off the US in 2020 before hitting US bases in Iraq following the Soleimani assassination.[8] While these actions can appear to look like collaboration between enemy forces, it may contain the logic of an unwritten agreement that a major scale war would not benefit both sides at a particular time, while a strike by either side allows both to not appear to be backing down from their respective positions. Regardless of this somewhat organised expediency, the Middle East remains on the brink of a devastating war which is being instigated almost entirely by the ruling classes of the US and the UK along with its Israeli Zionist state delegate.

Desperation of imperialism

It is commonplace today to observe that World War III is approaching. If anything is driving this potentially catastrophic scenario, it is the desperation of imperialism as it counts down the remaining days of its survival. What is imperialism? Russian revolutionary leader VI Lenin once described imperialism as “that stage of capitalism when the latter, after fulfilling everything in its power, begins to decline”. Co-leader of the October 1917 revolution L Trotsky later expanded on Lenin’s observation, noting that the cause of the decline of capitalism is that the productive forces are hemmed in by the framework of private property as well as the boundaries of the national state. Hence, in place of national wars come imperialist wars, which are totally reactionary in character as an expression of the impasse, stagnation and decay of monopoly capital.[9] This was the case in the time of the early 20^th century, so one can imagine the stagnation and decay of monopoly capital one hundred years later.

Today, what confronts imperialism as a mortal danger is not the Soviet Union and its “communist” allies, but the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) alliance which is clearly a non-imperialist bloc. The BRICS now contains 10 members, with the addition on January 1 of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia. By far the most powerful of the BRICS bloc is the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which remains a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state politically led by a conservative Stalinist caste. Despite this, the BRICS process is one which represents rising economic development on potential lines which are not based on the ruthless exploitation of the working class and the environment. Imperialism is well aware of this, which is one reason why it is now targeting Iran, as a brand-new BRICS member, for a dire regime change war. In reality, imperialism is well aware that it cannot win a war in the Middle East against Iran, a war against Russia via Ukraine, and a war against the PRC via Taiwan. So the aim appears to be to do as much damage to its adversaries as is possible, before it is forced to exit the stage of history while risking a civilisation obliterating third World War.

“Anti-War” movement must be transformed

The onus on reigning in, and indeed overthrowing imperialism so that it can no longer wage wars which threaten civilisation, falls largely on the working classes of the West. For this task, consistently anti-imperialist leadership is at the very least a necessity. Unfortunately, the leadership of the “Stand with Palestine” movement which has mobilised in the collective West has been hamstrung from the beginning by politics which remains subordinate to imperialism, rather than offer a challenge to it. Examples of this misleadership emanate from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) in the US,[10] the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the UK,[11] and Socialist Alternative (SA) in Australia.[12] These parties, along with much of the ostensible left, did not change their politics on October 7. Prior to this, they joined with the capitalist states they swore they oppose on the fraudulent “Covid pandemic”, which in reality was fascistic repression aimed at working people. Then they gave mealy mouthed backing to NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) Nazified proxy war on Russia via Ukraine, even as they claimed to be opponents of NATO. On October 7, they leapt into action to lead a “anti-war” movement which in practice was only partially anti-war.

It is true that millions of workers in the West have mobilised in defence of Palestine since October 7. These movements have, however, been weighed down by the question of terrorism and Hamas – despite elementary justice being on the side of Palestine. The opportunist left leaderships have either apologised for, or even justified and defended, the blatant terrorism carried out by Hamas and other “resistance” factions. This drags the name of socialism in the mud, and in Palestine it breaks any chance of joint struggle between Arab and Israeli workers, which is a vital step towards ending both the conflict and the vastly unequal Zionist state. Secondly, these so-called left parties view Palestine in a vacuum, seemingly unconnected to the Middle East or the global conflicts of which it is an inevitable part. They scarcely recognise the major support the Palestinian authorities receive from the governments of Iran and Syria, let alone the diplomatic support of the major non-imperialist powers such as Russia and China. They don’t even call for the withdrawal of US troops from Syria and Iraq, despite the fact that Shia resistance militia have been in constant conflict with this illegal occupation.

These faux left parties also tail after the Democrats in the US, the Labour Party in the UK, and the Labor Party in Australia. This often happens via plaintive appeals to trade Union officials, who often only offer a few words in support, if that. This misleadership also fails to link these major imperialist wars to the war at home – the skyrocketing cost of living, the loss of elementary rights such as free speech, the climate crisis and much else. Without the linking of the anti-war movement to the erosion of basic living standards for working people, the “anti-war” movement will ultimately remain a lobbying exercise, which is predominantly appealing to the politicians of the elite to “change their spots”.

This “anti-war” movement must be transformed. It must totally reject indiscriminate terrorism. It must offer military support to those forces actually fighting imperialism (Iran, Syria, Iraq, Hezbollah, Yemen) while strategically aligning itself with the non-imperialist BRICS bloc which is offering an economic and political alternative future to a floundering imperialism in its death throes. It must link the wars abroad to the wars at home, and it must break entirely with “liberal” capitalism. A real and genuine Marxist leadership can guide working people towards the establishment of their own states as a final end to imperialist wars.

Workers League

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@protonmail.com

[1] apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-biden-retaliation-attacks-0804b93372cd5e874a0dd03513fe36a2 (16-01-2024)

[2] www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/biden-warns-more-strikes-yemens-houthis-if-red-sea-attacks-persist-2024-01-13/ (16-01-2024)

[3] www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/01/16/718317/US-UK-forces-can-no-longer-pass-Bab-el-Mandeb-Strait-Yemen (16-01-2024)

[4] www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-houthi-strikes-protest-livefeed-b2477628.html (16-01-2024)

[5] www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/turkey-russia-condemn-strikes-yemen-west-eager-turn-red-sea-bloodbath (16-01-2024)

[6] www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/oman-declares-no-fly-zone-refuses-airspace-for-us-poxy-war-in-yemen/ar-AA1mUHko (16-01-2024)

[7] www.rt.com/news/590702-iran-missiles-terrorists-spies/ (16-01-2024)

[8] www.south24.net/news/newse.php?nid=3756 (16-01-2024)

[9] www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/02/lenin.htm (17-01-2024)

[10] www.liberationnews.org/national-march-for-gaza-brings-enormous-crowd-to-dc-to-reject-u-s-israeli-genocide/ (17-01-2024)

[11] www.socialistworker.co.uk/comment/hamas-call-for-arms-and-the-politics-of-resistance/ (17-01-2024)