First published in FRFI 101, June/July 1991. Republished in The New Warlords (1994), Larkin Publications.
In the 43 years since the end of the Second World War there has been just one single year when official statistics do not record British military personnel killed on active service overseas. British forces have engaged in at least 92 separate overseas military interventions since 1945. TREVOR RAYNE reports.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s only the USA among the major capitalist nations spent more as a proportion of Gross National Product (GNP) on defence than Britain. The Ministry of Defence is British industry’s biggest customer approximately one in ten of the manufacturing workforce are employed in the weapons industry. Of the top 20 British industrial companies, 11 are involved in arms production or plies. While during the 1980s Britain became a net importer of manufactured goods, it remained a net exporter of weapons. In 1990 Britain’s biggest company, British Aerospace, made 65% of its sales abroad; over 50% these exports went to Third World countries with 41% destined for Middle East. 38 British firms are kno to have sold arms technology to Iraq.
How many of the 20 million-plus people slain in wars and ‘counter-insurgency operations’ since 1945 were killed by British troops and British-made weapons we shall never know. But we can see in the entire structure of the British economy, in the arming of murderous regimes around the globe and in near-constant war fought by British forces against oppressed peoples, that Britain is an imperialist nation dominated by monopoly capital for which the ‘maximum and universal development of militarism’ (Lenin) is its life-blood.
In the service of multinational capital
‘In 1914 I helped to make Mexico a safer place for the US oil companies. I helped to turn Haiti and Cuba into a patrimony of the National City Bank in order to make a profit. In 1900 and 1912 I helped to prepare the ground in Nicaragua the international bankers Brow Brothers. 1916 I made way in the Dominican Republic for US interests. In 1903 I did all I could to make US fruit companies at home in Honduras.’ (US General Smedley Butter, 1925).
In Capital Volume III, Marx explained how ‘other conditions being equal the rate of profit…falls and rises inversely to the price of raw materials. This shows, among other things, how important the Low price of raw materials for industrial countries . . . It follows furthermore that foreign trade influences the rate of profit, regardless of its influence on wages … ‘.
Lenin analysed the emergence of monopoly capital, especially the oil companies and arms producers, over the last quarter of the 19th century and first decades of this century. He saw how capital over-accumulated within national boundaries driving down the rate of profit: how capital combined into monopolies and extended overseas in search of labour and markets to restore profitability. In the midst of the First World War as capital clashed in rival bids to assert their global domination Lenin observed, ‘Monopolies have stimulated the seizure of the most important sources of raw materials . . . the more capitalism is developed the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world, the more desperate the struggle for the acquisition of colonies’. Thus the division and redivision of the world has been fought out between a handful of rich nations. The cost: over 100 million killed in wars this century, many times more killed by the robbery of their land and homes.
Today, transnational corporations control about half of the world’s industrial production and over half its trade. 15 transnationals control the marketing of 20 key food, fuel and raw material commodities: six account for more than half the world’s oil trade. The bowl of cereal and cup of tea, the materials in our clothing and vehicles, the fuel in their tanks and in central heating, the equipment we work with and the furnishings about us are taken from the Third World by the transnationals.
Third World nations producing raw materials receive on average 15% of the revenue raised from sales of their produce: the rest is shared out among the transnationals, their bankers, insurers, shipping agents, retailers, etc. Oil extraction casts can be less than a seventh of the retail price. When petrol prices were pushed up more than 50% last Autumn the extra profits were divided up between the transnationals and the producer countries. This is a price imperialism is prepared to pay to ensure that compliant monarchs and governments stay in their place. Should they be threatened by popular revolt, or should they rebel or ‘overstep the mark’, armed might is at hand to enforce the status quo – Britain alone has intervened militarily in the Middle East on 26 separate occasions since 1945.
General Schwarzkopf has served US corporate interests in a career of postings throughout the Middle East, South East Asia and Grenada. British forces are currently stationed in over 30 countries. In the past year they have added Colombia, Peru and the Philippines to their postings. They remain in the Gulf. The Middle East and the Gulf contain 66.3% of known oil reserves.
Guns for oil
‘Whoever controls oil will control the world, for he will role the seas with heavy oil, the air with refined oil, and the land with petrol and light oil. In addition, he will economically control his fellow-men because of the fantastic wealth he can win from oil.’ Henry Berenger, merchant to the French government circa 1916.
Oil and guns have interlocked for a hundred years. In 1873 the Russian Tsar allowed foreign interests to prospect for oil in the Caucasus. Two sons of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, were given concessions and joined by Rothschilds. Marcus Samuel, from London’s East End, traded Russian oil and in 1897 formed Shell Trading and Transport Company. To compete in the Far East with US Standard Oil, Shell merged with Royal Dutch. In 1906 Shell lobbied the Royal Navy to switch from coal power to oil. Winston Churchill, appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, distrusted Shell and its Dutch, hence possibly German, affiliation. With the Royal Navy’s conversion to oil the British government bought a 51% stake in the Anglo-Persian Company (later BP) three months before the out-break of World War I. At its end Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon boasted: ‘The allies floated to victory on a wave of oil’.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France carved out chunks of the Middle East for themselves. After much wrangling between Britain, France and the USA, Britain got control of all of Iraq in 1923 – at the expense of the Kurdish demand for statehood. Central to the disputes was Mosul in the Kurdish territory where oil reserves were suspected. A concession was granted to the Iraq Petroleum Company, controlled by BP. Kurdish people rebelled and Churchill, now Secretary of State for Oil and War, initiated a strategy of ‘air control’ in the Middle East, replacing ground troops with bomber aircraft which delivered ‘collective punishments’ including gas, on Kurdish villages.
During the 1929s and 1930s the RAF grew, at first in response to French air-craft development and then to combat German militarisation. In 1940 Britain was the largest aircraft producer in the world. The navy, air force and increasingly the army, with the growing role of tanks, depended on oil-based fuels. Control of oil reserves dictated much of the strategy through which inter-imperialist rivalry was conducted before and during World War 2 (the North Africa campaign, Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. the Far East war). The Vice Chairman of the US War Production Board claimed that ‘the responsibility which rests upon the petroleum industry…is nothing less than the responsibility for victory’.
The transnationals and the weapons producers collaborate with military high command to direct imperialism’s geo-political strategy. To produce today’s jet engines, submarines, aero-space technology etc, large quantities of fuel and raw materials are needed. Over half of all direct US investment in developing countries in the past 20 years has been in oil extraction, mining and material processing, In the 1970s the US Lockheed Corporation, producers of Polaris and Trident missiles, joined Shell and Standard Oil of Indiana in developing equipment to extract strategic raw materials from the ocean bed. The arms and oil companies are interwoven in the heart of finance capital: Shell is bound through interlocking share ownership, directorships and banks with Lockheed, Rolls Royce and Hawker-Siddeley.
In the recent period BP’s directors include a former Commander-in-Chief of UK Land Forces, the chairman of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, a trustee of the Police Foundation, directors of Rolls Royce, Hawker-Siddeley, ICL, PowerGen, National Westminster Bank, Standard Chartered, P&O etc. They are part of the military-industrial complex in Britain. Together BP and Shell operate some 2,250 subsidiaries in over 70 countries.
The Saudi deal and the arms bonanza
In 1965 Britain was facing a balance of payments crisis and with the steady withdrawal of British forces from East of Suez. the sale of arms to ‘reliable’ local regimes was considered a lucrative means of controlling Middle Eastern oil. Increased world oil consumption was filling Arab coffers.
Between 1951 and 1971 40 aerospace projects were cancelled in Britain, including Blue Streak missiles and the TSR2 supersonic bomber. British aerospace exports fell by 50% over 1958-64 while imports from the USA soared. The Plowden Report 1965 foresaw a world market for aircraft and missiles worth £05 billion over the next decade. Labour Defence Secretary Denis lieges.’ established the Defence Sales Organisation to promote arms sales. Healey explained: ‘While the government attaches the highest importance to making progress in the field of arms control and disarmament. we must also take what practical steps we can to ensure that this country does not fail to secure its rightful share of this valuable commercial market’.
Britain and Saudi Arabia had collaborated since 1962 in suppressing a Nasserite revolt against monarchism in North Yemen. In 1965 the British Labour government in the form of John Stonehouse MP, Parliamentary Secretary to Ministry of Aviation Roy Jenkins, announced the biggest export deal Britain had ever achieved – morn worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Victory over bids from Lockheed, Northrop and the French Dassault company had been achieved with bribes – standard practice in the arms business. The deal was tied to the proposed British purchase of $725m worth of F-11s from the USA – the $120m was intended to offset this enormous cost. Despite professed Labour Party policy of not selling arms that could be used in Vietnam, the Saudi deal also included equipment sales to the USA. Between 1964 and 1967, British exports of bombs, grenades, mines. guided weapons etc to the USA increased six-fold. Also in 1965, when US engagement in Vietnam was accelerating, Healey sent the SAS into Indonesia to assist in the mass murder of the largest communist movement in Asia outside of China and the Soviet Union. At least 700,000 people were killed and 200,000 imprisoned. Indonesia is a major Far East ail producer.
Arms purchases by Middle East governments exploded after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, An October 1973 Arab Conference condemned the USA for giving Israel means ‘to challenge the legitimate right of others’ – ie weapons. Arab oil producers cut back supplies and oil prices rose ten-fold; their in-come rose from $7.2 billion in 1972 to $57 billion in 1977. By 1980 OPEC funds had reached $350 billion. In that same year the Third World countries spent $60 billion on arms and defence. about half of the weapons being bought by Middle Eastern countries_ Between 1973 and 1987, of the major Third World arms purchasers six of them were in the Middle East. Britain spends approximately 5% of its GNP an Rs military each year, the USA TS ma din Soviet Union over 8%. UN firms for 1986 show Israel spending 192% 1195 GNP on the armed forces. Iraq 32%. ler-dan 13.8%, Iran 20%, Syria 14.7%. Oman 27.6%, Saudi Arabia 22.7%.
In 1984 Iraq spent $33.3 billion on arms imports. Estimates put Iraqi arms purchases between 1980 and 1990 at $80-100 billion. That compares with Britain’s arms expenditure of $69.5 billion over the same period with a GNP eight times that of Iraq. In the 1970s the Shah of Iran had been the big arms buyer. In some years [ran consumed close to half of all US arms exports. Iran’s total defence expenditure for 1975-76 was $10.4 billion or nearly a third of its GNP. This was a sum greater than Britain’s military expenditure for the year, which had more than five times Iran’s GNP, Over 1973-83 US arms sales to Saudi Arabia were worth $35 billion, to Iran $14 billion and to Israel $11 billion – the latter receiving many of the supplies gratis.
Over the coming year the US intends to export $33 billion worth of weapons. two thirds going to the Middle East. Asia and the Pacific Rim are targeted as promising new future markets. Indonesia is already one of Britain’s biggest arms buyers outside of the Middle East.
This macabre game results in death for hundreds of thousands of poor people. Arms provided to Israel bring orders from Iran; Iran’s armoury war-rants sales to Iraq; Iraq’s military strength requires Saudi counter-strength and so on and on. The blend of weapons is adjusted as rival suppliers claim assorted victories and each new generation of weapons calls forth further rounds of orders and counter-orders. Thus the trade in death and destruction is by far the most valuable trade in the world, and its proprietors, the Grand Masters of War, unconstrained by any shred of morality or conscience, seated behind desks in New York, Washing-ton, London, Paris and Bonn, serve only the Golden Calf of Profit. ■
