Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.

V. I. Lenin 

Economic & Philosophic Science Review 

No 1162  November 26 2002

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Southwest seminar Sat Jan 25.Rcpts

American military aggression to cover up insoluble economic crisis moves into uncharted waters in the era of total monopoly domination of the world. Past patterns of inter-imperialist world war, ending previous over-production crises, struggle for clear relevance in face of the USA's overwhelming armsrace dominance. Yet seething Third World and class-war revolt against the slump-evils of Western monopoly exploitation make warmongering distractions more vital than ever for capitalism's survival. Washington could end up facing the impossible task of fighting 40 or 50 Vietnams, Afghanistans, Somalias, Nicaraguas, and Iraqs simultaneously.

Prophesying the outcome of the US warmongers drive to blitzkrieg Iraq (specifically), and as much else on an "axis of evil" list that can be managed, is not the point of an attempted Marxist analysis of the crisis degeneration of the imperialist system.

But using the Iraq warmongering venture as a test-case of the balance of class and national forces inside a monopoly-capitalist world facing catastrophic slump, makes every sense.

Assessing the doubts and difficulties of slaughtering Iraq and beyond, from a Western imperialist viewpoint, matched against the economic-survival necessities facing the major powers in their trade-war conflict with each other and in the revolutionary unrest affecting the Third World billions as a result of the approaching slump, gives an obvious focus to the whole historic crisis facing civilisation.

What are the forces driving the imperialist system towards general warmongering aggression and hysteria yet again in history???

Establishing that there is a lot more to it than just the shock and humiliation of Sept 11 and the fear of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in the hands of "rogue states" (as real and serious issues as these are), and that insoluble economic crisis is more relevant, - does not require envisaging some demonic cabal in Washington suddenly pulling fiendish faces and saying: 'I've got it, war on the world", to make sense.

It is common ground that a supremacist warmongering arms-race and economic colonial domineering are ALWAYS on the imperialist agenda, and have never been off it.

It is also agreed that Third World revolt (including by Islamic nationalism in the Middle East and beyond) has never been absent from the equation, but that isolated police/military actions (coups, subversions, etc), - plus permanent vast amounts of buying-off bribery and corruption, - have routinely kept the capitalist system out of generalised warmongering conflagrations in the interim periods between, before, and after World Wars I & II. 

The question is: Does it help understanding, - and help the class struggle against the warmongering imperialist system, - to represent the current hysteria for militaristic aggression (in leading Western circles) as cynically deliberate moves towards World War III, being the only way for these monopoly-capitalist powers to survive, still ruling the world, on the far side of the approaching economic collapse????????????

First, what is assumed to be known by the imperialists about the disasters facing them from insoluble economic crisis???

The EPSR has routinely deduced that whatever small-print or between-the-lines admissions about the uncontrollable depth of crisis can be gained from capitalist sources themselves, the knowledge that the authorities DON'T let slip about the disasters to come is a thousand times more conscious, detailed, accurate, and devastating.

Or is it assumed that the 'free press' never has anything to hide, and always tells us everything we would be interested to know about the world???

The specific generalised deductions the EPSR makes about the coming catastrophe are not usually challenged, - only the "crisisist" political perspectives attached to them.

Does the outlook for an economic crash still hold up?

As always, judge from the latest capitalist press admissions themselves:

President Bush may have received a warm response in Waco, but he is in danger of going from hero to zero in the eyes of middle America As their pension savings vanish amid revelations of corporate corruption, workers and investors are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the economic outlook.

Their gloom is shared by Wall Street, where stock-prices have fallen by a third since the dotcom bubble burst in March 2000, and the dollar has lost some of its shine. Economists are warning that the world's largest economy is in danger of a double-dip recession.

Last month, the commerce department published revised estimates for growth that rewrote recent economic history. Not only was the 2001 recession deeper and longer than first thought, but America's much vaunted productivity miracle has largely evaporated in the revisions.

Hopes that the blistering pace of growth in the fast three months of the year were a sign the economy had shrugged off last year's downturn proved illusory. Most of the rebound was a temporary boost from the turnaround in the inventory cycle. Growth slowed dramatically in the second quarter, with output rising by just 0.3 %.

The lukewarm recovery has so far failed to create jobs, adding to fears that consumer spending may falter. Battered by falling markets and the corporate scandals, consumer confidence fell last month to its lowest point since the aftermath of last September's terrorist attacks.

Economists say the willingness of households to keep spending will be crucial to preventing the economy from sliding back into recession. With businesses still writing off billions of dollars of wasted investment during the dotcom boom, consumer spending is the only factor keeping the economy above water.

President Bush's economic team had few serious remedies to offer this week. The summit seems to have been a stunt designed by political advisers for maximum impact on prime-time television, reinforcing the perception that Bush's economic officials are a second-rate bunch without much clout in the White House. Their proposals - government-backed terrorism insurance, domestic energy exploration and abolition of the estate tax - failed to reassure a market worried about far larger issues such as re-emergence of the federal deficit and America's ballooning trade gap.

Thanks to last year's $1.3 trillion tax giveaway, most of which went to the richest 10% of the population, the White House cannot afford further fiscal easing to help kick-start growth. Meanwhile, foreign investors are pulling out of Wall Street and Main Street, putting downward pressure on the dollar.

As the hand-picked audience assembled in Waco to hear US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill explain how the president's economic agenda would help "each American own part of the American dream"; the US Federal Reserve's open markets committee was meeting. Banal slogans were not on the agenda; the Fed's top minds were considering whether the US economy is about to follow the same path as Japan.

The world's second-largest economy has been trapped in a deflationary spiral since the collapse of its property market 10 years ago. Policymakers at the Fed are worried that the dotcom implosion could cause a similar bout of deflation in the US. Falling prices might sound like a central banker's dream but in fact deflation is far more damaging and harder to control than inflation. With prices always falling, there is no incentive for consumers to go out and spend - goods will be cheaper next week. The entire economy suffers the equivalent of a bout of negative equity. Anybody with outstanding loans is in trouble, because the nominal value of their borrowing stays the same.

Prices in America are still rising but at their slowest rate in 40 years and the Fed takes the threat of deflation very seriously. A paper by senior Fed economists published last month warns that bouts of deflation can surprise forecasters.

The lesson, they conclude, is that the Japanese authorities should have acted earlier and with greater vigour to prevent prices falling in the early 90s. But so far it has failed to prompt the FOMC into action: at its meeting this week, the committee kept rates at a 40-year low for the eighth month in a row.

Two factors probably lie behind the Fed's overcautious approach. A rate cut might have alarmed already nervous markets by revealing the extent of the Fed's concerns about the outlook.

Fiscal laxity

The second is that the Republican administration's lunch into deficit has boxed in the Fed. With fiscal policy already loose, the Fed feels constrained about delivering more stimulus to the economy through lower borrowing costs.

The tax cut which the administration hailed as saviour of the economy last year now looks like a major policy error. If the recovery continues to be sluggish, the government cannot increase spending or cut taxes further to help get the economy moving without being punished by the markets for fiscal laxity.

The much-feared 'double-dip' recession in the United States and Europe would actually be one of the more benign outcomes for the world economy compared with the really scary scenario: the world's largest economies following Japan into a sustained period of stagnation, compounded by deflation - subverting the ability of monetary policy to help boost the economy.

Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC, has no illusions: 'The environment we are painting is one in which deflation provides the greatest single risk to ongoing economic stability.'

He points to warning lights that are 'flashing red', such as the persistent weakness of equities and rise in corporate bond spreads.

Money supply growth is still strong despite low price inflation. King puts this down to an increase in the demand for money to hold on to rather than to spend. A sharp decline in the 'velocity of money' - the extent to which the same notes and coins are circulated - supports this view. In deflationary times, holding on to cash is a sensible financial strategy.

Deflation is essentially the painful march down a hill after an asset price bubble. As such, it is more of a worry for the US post-dotcom economy than for the UK or Europe. Mervyn King, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, calls this 'debt deflation'. Where the burden of nominal debt grows as prices fall leaving an even bigger burden of debt, this kickstarts a cycle of lower demand and even lower prices.

Globalisation helps to explain this. Goods can be traded more readily than services, and are therefore more sensitive to international price competition. In ultra-competitive markets, companies completely lack pricing power. Only last week it was announced that already embattled mobile phone companies, weighed down with mountains of debt, were to face even more competition from 'Three', a new entrant in the UK.

But this is not the reason that Japan fell into its deflationary spiral in 1991. In the Far East the markets marked out a path of over-investment, excess capacity, and unserviceable debt to speculation and exuberant valuations in property markets that slumped. But, hey presto, the bears in the West say that the hangover from the 'infectious greed' era of the late Nineties both psychological and economic, may amount to the same thing.

'This recession is being driven by excess capacity,' said Charlie Minter, a US manager of a successful 'bear' fund. He believes there is an unalterable cycle that follows, involving devaluation, protectionism and tariffs. 'This is not going to be a good period of deflation as we unwind all the greed from the biggest financial mania of all time,' he says.

For the UK, the threat remains slightly more than conceptual. There have been no published Bank of England or Treasury studies into debt deflation.

At our very low levels of inflation, it would not take much for deflation to appear. The biggest risk is in asset prices, and Britain's own version of the dotcom bubble - the housing market.

'The biggest risk is from housing, a market where prices have been increasing by 10 times the rate of inflation. It contributes seven tenths of the rise in inflation. If that was negative rather than positive, you'd get deflation straight away,' says Danny Gabay, UK economist at JP Morgan.

So the best way to stave off Japanese style debt deflation is to stop the emergence of asset price bubbles before they get out of control. But as Governor Mieno of the Bank of Japan, once said: 'Pricking the bubble is the easy part. Controlling the fall is the problem.'

Daiei is one of the "zombie" companies, the walking dead which stalk Japan's corporate landscape 10 years after the bubble economy burst. Kept alive by the banks who fear that if they allow the firms to fail the true extent of Japan's bad loans problem will be revealed, the zombies have come to symbolise the troubles of the world's second largest economy.

Last month the government threw Daiei a financial lifeline, backing a ¥60bn (£300m) bailout package from its three main lenders with a loan from the state owned Development Bank of Japan. But by keeping the debt-burdened retailer going, the government has handed more ammunition to its critics who argue that it does  not have the stomach for the radical measures necessary to rescue the country from its decade-long slump.

The prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, came to power 20 months ago promising to shake up Japan's cosy post-war consensus with the slogan "no pain no gain". Observers are starting to wonder if Mr Koizumi, despite the Thatcherite rhetoric, is any more capable than his predecessors of tackling the interconnected problems of debt and deflation weighing down the economy.

Japan is in a strange topsy-turvy world where the normal rules of economics do network. Prices started falling three years ago and, with interest rates now at zero, the Bank of Japan cannot cut borrowing costs to cheer up consumers and companies.

Deflation is adding to the woes of the zombie companies like Daiei. The equivalent of an economy-wide dose of negative equity falling prices make it harder for firms to service their debts. Bad loans total ¥52 trillion, according to the government's latest estimate, around 10% of GDP. Many analysts believe this figure is too conservative and that the real figure could be two or three times greater.

Fifty years ago, Keynes advised countries stuck in this "liquidity trap" that when monetary policy cannot be loosened any further, it is time to use fiscal policy - the government's power to boost demand by cutting taxes or increasing its spending.

But traditional Keynesian remedies do not work in Japan either - the substantial public spending packages rolled out by Tokyo throughout the 1990s have left the country saddled with the highest debts of any major economy. Worried that the government will not be able to afford to pay for their future pensions, Japan's ageing population prefers to save rather than spend.

The central bank says it cannot do anything about falling prices unless the government cooperates by boosting fiscal policy and pressing ahead with reforms of Japan's featherbedded domestic economy. They argue they have already taken the first step by pledging to increase the money supply to boost prices.

Officials at the Bank of Japan say that they cannot go any further because they are running out of assets to buy with the money they are printing. Moreover, until the government tackles the problem of non-performing loans, the banks will simply use all the extra money to prop up zombie companies.

Part of the reason for the policy paralysis is that the Japanese public lacks any sense of an impending crisis. Looking at the number of people thronging the upmarket Ginza district and the price of the goods in the stores, the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that Japan was experiencing a phoney recession. But as Yoshimasa Hayashi, a member of Japan's upper house for the ruling Liberal Democrat party, warns, appearances are deceptive. "We are not starving to death because we are living on past wealth," he says. "But that is more dangerous because the situation is not sustainable."

The next few weeks will be a test of the goverment's resolve to tackle the situation before the country faces a full-blown financial meltdown. A plan championed by the economy minister, Heizo Takenaka, if strictly implemented, will force the banks to disclose the true extent of their dud loans which could push some of the weaker institutions to the wall.

The Takenaka plan could prompt the crisis some critics think may be necessary to jolt Japan into action. Last week, the head of the Japanese business federation, told the Guardian and other British newspapers that the government could be forced to nationalise at least one of the big four banks by the end of the year. The knock-on effect would be to pull the plug on the zombie companies.

Daiei, with its billion-yen bailout, will be safe but the other zombie companies face bankruptcy which could push hundreds of thousands more people on to Japan's rising dole queues.

The only books being talked about this year -were the ones the publishers themselves would be writing after being made redundant.

The crisis in German publishing is part of a wider crisis in the German media. The big newspapers are being hammered by the collapse of classified advertising revenue. And that is just a symptom of the malaise throughout the German economy. 
 
A sure sign that things are going wrong in Germany is when people start using the "W" word - as in "Weimar". Only last week the former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine likened Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to Heinrich Brüning, the chancellor whose economic policies in the early 1930s are often blamed by historians for wrecking the Weimar Republic.

"It is as if Heinrich Brüning has risen again," Lafontaine said. "He caused mass unemployment with his savings measures and prepared the ground for Hitler." Lafontaine was alluding to Schröder's decision to cut spending and raise taxes at a time of rising unemployment - the same masochistic and ultimately self-destructive tactic adopted by Brüning

But the Weimar parallel is being drawn by historians, too. In the words of Amulf Baring: "Today's crisis can be compared to the end of the Weimar Republic . . . the symptoms of economic and political disaster are the same."

To the many pundits who predicted that the reunification of Germany would create a super-power at the heart of Europe this has all come as a shock. The reality seems to be that since acquiring East Germany the federal republic has become the sick man of Europe - bigger, yes, but weaker. But what is undeniable is that government policy is pro-cyclical - tightening fiscal and monetary policy when it should be relaxing it, just as Brüning's was in 1930.

So just how bad is Germany's economic crisis? According to the International Monetary Fund only two of the world's developed economies have performed worse than Germany's in the past decade: those of Japan and Switzerland.

Unemployment in Germany is 8.3% and 5.2% here. It is forecast to rise to 4.3m - one in 10 of the workforce - and will almost certainly worsen.

The German stock market is a disaster zone: the DAX has slumped by more than 50% in the past two years and the once glamorous Neue Markt, set up to trade technology stocks back in the 1990s, has vanished. German banks and insurance companies are in the doldrums. 

The newly re-elected government's response? Spending cuts and tax hikes totalling £2.3 billion. The measures, including higher state pension contributions and an increase in capital gains tax, have outraged German voters. In the eyes of German investors, Schröder and Hans Eichel, his finance minister, might as well have hoisted the Jolly Roger.

So what has gone wrong? There are two answers, only one of which German politicians dare mention.

The mentionable explanation is that Germany didn't have the 1980s in the way that Britain and America did. While Thatcher and Reagan liberalised their labour markets and hacked at their sclerotic welfare states West Germany under Helmut Kohl took the line of least political resistance.

The result is that the country has one of the most rigid and expensive labour markets in the world non-wage labour costs account for two-fifths of gross pay - and a lavish welfare system that its ageing population can no longer afford.

Reunification concealed these problems for a few euphoric years because to finance the integration of the former German Democratic Republic, West Germany went on a borrowing spree. Billions were thrown at the problem, though much of the "investment" ultimately took the form of unemployment benefit and other handouts for East Germans.

(The decision to convert the East German currency to deutschmarks on a one-to-one basis wrecked the much less productive East German manufacturing sector at a stroke.)

Thirteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the consequences of all this are most clearly legible in the German budget. More than two-fifths of government spending now goes on civil service pensions; 16% is consumed by the interest on public debt.

In 1930 Brüning made the mistake of putting international considerations ahead of domestic economic stability. His prime objective was to get rid of post-war German reparations. Today's equivalent is a blind faith in the growth and stability pact.

German politicians remain paralysed, incapable of acknowledging that, at the very least, the growth and stability pact needs to be junked, something even Romano Prodi, the president of the European commission now accepts. But if the history of the Weimar Republic has any lesson for Germany today, it is to beware the wrath of German voters when the fruits of foreign policy are stagnation and instability.

And does the commandeered brain-power of the mightiest imperialist states in world history, at the peak of the capitalist system's phenomenal expansion for 800 years of science and scholarship, not have all this information at its finger-tips, multiplied a thousandfold and in far better quality, and with far more ruthless conclusions being appraised out of survivals necessity???????

The observation that whether or not Iraq specifically is blitzkrieged next is "not necessarily the issue" need not clash with the most useful approach to this whole question of historic imperialist crisis and warmongering.

But would it not be even better to turn the problem round and say whether generalised imperialist warmongering is in the offing or not is not really the issue??  There can be no doubt about it from the performance record of all past centuries of Western capitalist monopolies' global domination, and from all the recent past behaviour from the Gulf War onwards.

Bob Woodward is not put on the 'Today' programme to say categorically about the Bush regime: "No one wants war; who could want war?" in order to enlighten the world's working masses with Marxist science.

He is a well-paid petty bourgeois professional opportunist and US nationalist, interested in bourgeois world fame and respect, and needing to maintain relations with leading American imperialist political circles for that reason, and to earn his living.

The overwhelming philosophy in this journalistic caste is episodic impressionism and subjectivism which automatically subscribes to the "good person; bad person" view of history and is derisively cynical against any Marxist perspective of mass proletarian class-war righteousness finally triumphing over bourgeois society's final total degeneracy in war, etc.

What does "no one wants war” mean in the light of the list of over 130 bullying and brutal warmongering aggressions by US imperialist in just the last 100 years (EPSR 1160)???

Woodward's subjective feelings and intentions are irrelevant. The statement objectively is the foulest lying crap imaginable to broadcast on mass radio.

Objectively, imperialism only MEANS war. It cannot possibly function any other way.

Therefore, the only materialist logic is that imperialism WANTS war, and CANNOT do anything to change the monopoly-capitalist exploitation system's intrinsically warmongering way of succeeding and dominating.

And what does Woodward's book reveal anyway??????

Here is just a bit of the description of life in the White House after two years of the Bush regime.

It sounds more like a thieves kitchen of monstrously vicious cynics than the version proferred on 'Today' of civilised humanity wrestling with the difficult problems of government:

When the group reconvened, Rumsfeld asked again: "Is this the time to attack Iraq?"

Powell objected. You're going to hear from your coalition partners, he told the president. They will go away if you hit Iraq. If you get something pinning September 11 on Iraq, great let's put it out and kick them at the right time. But let's get Afghanistan now.

Once in the Middle East, Powell found himself getting orders from the White House: go left, go right, correct your course so many degrees. Cheney and Rumsfeld sent word that he should not meet Yasser Arafat.

Powell went nuts. Nobody wanted to face realiy! They wanted to be pro-Israel and leave him holding the Palestinian bag by himself. They had sent him out on a nearly impossible mission.

"I'm holding back the f****** gates here," Armitage retorted. "They're eating cheese on you" a military expression for gnawing on someone and enjoying it.

People in the defence department and the vice-president's office were trying to do him in, Armitage added.

'That's unbelievable," Powell said. "I just heard the same thing." Reporters travelling with him told him that sources in Cheney's office were declaring he had gone too far, was off the reservation, and about to be reined in.

"People are really putting your s*** in the street," Armitage said.

Powell had still not squared his relationship with the president. When Armitage heard that Rumsfeld was having private meetings with Bush, he urged Powell to do the same. Face time was critical.

Powell recalled his time as national security adviser for President Reagan, when everyone was always trying to see the president. He didn't want to intrude. Armitage retorted that he was the "f****** secretary of state". It wouldn't be an imposition.

Powell complied. Rice arranged meetings for him with Bush about once a week and sat in on them. It seemed to help.

He was over at the White House one day with time to kill before a meeting with Rice. The president spotted him and invited him into the Oval Office. They talked alone for about 30 minutes. They shot the breeze and relaxed.

"I think we're really making some headway in the relationship," Powell reported to Armitage afterwards. The chasm seemed to be closing. "I know we really connected."

In early August, Brent Scowcroft, the mild-mannered former national security adviser to President Bush's father, said on a Sunday morning talk show that an attack on Iraq could turn the Middle East into a "cauldron and thus destroy the war on terrorism".

The president had been hearing plenty from Cheney and Rumsfeld. Powell had not made clear his own analysis and conclusions to the president and realised he needed to do so. He had to come down very hard, state his convictions and conclusions so there would be no doubt as to where he stood.

He told Rice he wanted to see the president. Bush. invited them both to the White House residence. The meeting expanded into dinner and then moved to the president's office in the residence.

With his notes by his side, a double spaced outline on loose-leaf paper, Powell explained his opposition. to a unilateral attack on Iraq. He told Bush bluntly: "It's nice to say we can do it unilaterally, except you can't."

A war with Iraq could be much more complicated and bloody than the war in Afghanistan, which was Exhibit A demonstrating the necessity of a coalition.

A successful military plan would require access to bases and facilities in the region, overflight rights. They would need allies: This would not be the Gulf war, a nice two-hour trip from a fully cooperative Saudi Arabia over to Kuwait City just 40 miles away. Now the geography would be formidable. Baghdad was 200 miles across Mesopotamia.

He added that the president needed to think about the broader issues, all the consequences of war. Bush had to consider what a military operation against Iraq would do in the Arab world.

The entire region could be destabilised. Friendly regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan could be put in jeopardy or overthrown. Anger and frustration at America abounded. War could change everything in the Middle East. It would suck the oxygen out of just about everything else the United States was doing, not only in the war on terrorism but also in all other diplomatic, defence and intelligence relationships, Powell said.

The economic implications could be staggering, potentially driving the supply and price of oil in directions that were as yet unimagined. All this in a time of international economic slump. The cost of occupying Iraq after a victory would be expensive. The economic impact on the region, the world and America domestically had to be considered.

Following victory, the day-after implications were giant. What of the image of an American general running an Arab country? How long would it last?

The Middle East crisis was still ever present. That was the issue the Arab and Muslim world wanted addressed. A war on Iraq would open Israel to attack by Saddam, who had launched Scud missiles at it during the Gulf war.

Saddam was crazy, a menace, a real threat, unpredictable, but he had been largely contained and deterred since the Gulf war. A new war could unleash precisely what they wanted to prevent - Saddam on a rampage, a last desperate stand, perhaps using his weapons of mass destruction.

On the intelligence side, as the president knew, the problem was also immense, Powell said. They didn't know where Saddam was. He had all kinds of tricks and deceptions. He had an entire state at his disposal to hide in. They did not need another possibly fruitless manhunt like those for Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar.

"You can still make a pitch for a coalition or UN action to do what needs to be done," Powell said. International support had to be garnered. The UN was only one way. But some way had to be found to recruit allies.

Powell walked out feeling they had a deal. He went off for a vacation in the Hamptons - where he picked up The New York Times and was astonished by what he read. "Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack," said the headline. The vice-president had given a hardline speech, declaring that UN weapons inspections were basically futile.

To Powell, it seemed like a preemptive attack on the agreement to give the UN a chance - and contrary to Bush's repeated assertions that the next step should be to let the weapons inspectors back into Iraq.

News stories appeared saying that Powell was contradicting the vicepresident. Some editorial writers accused Powell of being disloyal. He counted seven editorials calling for his resignation or implying he should quit.

From his perspective, all hell was breaking loose.

Cheney was beyond hellbent for action against Saddam. It was as
if nothing else existed.

Powell attempted to summarise the consequences of unilateral action. He would have to close American embassies around the world if they went alone. That was not the issue, Cheney said. Saddam and the blatant threat were the issue.

Maybe it would not turn out as the vice-president thought, Powell said. War could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences. Not the issue, Cheney said.

The conversation exploded into a tough debate, dancing on the edge of civility.

And this is the greatly cleaned-up version by an undoubted American bourgeois 'liberal' who wants to remain a 'respected senior journalist’ within the American imperialist system, and who is plainly totally reliant for this 'insight’ book on General Powell, Washington's chief-of-staff during the Gulf War butchery, a key American warmonger himself, whose "no one wants war” humanity is here plainly stated as merely wanting blitzkrieg warmongering against Afghanistan and then Iraq to run consecutively rather than concurrently.

Sanctimonious anti-war fears and campaigns are obviously not the issue either. What scientific anti-imperialism needs is as accurately objective assessments as possible of all the driving forces favouring imperialist warmongering, its possible lines of development, its inherent weaknesses, and its likely range of opposition.

One huge complication which may possibly need thinking about is the implications of the apparent difficulty, real or imagined, that the imperialist world leadership is having in getting this warmongering perspective securely and 'properly’ imposed on "free world" expectations (e.g. see Woodward's splits mayhem above, and EPSR coverage of global bourgeois hesitancy to sign up for gung-ho USA aggression).

Leaving out, for the moment, the obvious cynical calculations (being made by the scores of rival national and monopoly business interests involved in imperialism) about "what is in it for us" or "would someone else's setback suit us better", etc, etc, - - some questions are raised as to whether the very evolutionary position itself of American imperialism, - now the overwhelming top dog and sole superpower, -  is not somehow contributing to the difficulty (if there is any) of getting this period of a Third World War of inter-imperialist contradictions well and truly launched.

Has the monopolisation process which has made capitalism ever mightier, but which can never be stopped and which eventually brought the "free market" bourgeois world to the horrific degeneracy of inter-imperialist world wars in the 20th century, completed such a dialectically self-destructive journey that even its ultimate "corrective" sick mechanism of world war to "cure" the recurrence yet again of "overproduction" crisis (see above bourgeois economic commentaries) is beyond its secure control???

Has monopoly power become so obscenely bloated (as seen in disgusting American cultural and lifestyle domination of the planet) that it just cannot even manage the ultimate obscenity of a new inter-imperialist war to get it out of its coming slump misery once again??? 

Has the foul and inhuman armsrace reached such a monstrous peak of vicious and barbaric destructiveness and domineering, and monopoly power and brutality in the hands of the US superstate that it constipates the routine systemic use of violence in inter-imperialist conflict as the "solution" to the overproduction crisis???

Obviously, with 10,000 guided missiles poised to descend on Iraq, and with the unknown repercussions of such a bullying outrage, it would not be wise to make a security guarantee out of such a fantastic dialectical speculation.

But there are real conundrums posed about all this.  Part of the global bourgeois constituency's scepticism about the "war-on-terrorism" fiction (to cover generalised imperialist warmongering) arises from the self-humiliation in America’s battle fleet, guided-bombing, nuclear-rocketing, helmeted, tank-armada preparations against a "terrorist" enemy which in fact inflicted its worst defeat on the USA using the on-board plastic cutlery to hi-jack aircraft on Sept 11, 2001.

Is Washington serious, even right wing imperialist generals and ideologues are all asking, arising out of the disparity of force of the earmarked "warring parties", including Iraq itself by an extended association of ideas, whose supposed possession of "weapons of mass destruction" requiring a good blitzkrieging convinces absolutely nobody.

Such ideological propaganda hiccups cannot choke off the US warmongering drive, but they do sow doubts inside the imperialist ranks, - within the Bush regime (as related by Woodward); in American and world public opinion; and between all the rival imperialist states, and agencies, and business interests, - as the EPSR has been recording them.

The Bush regime did blink in the end and sought the quite meaningless UN "approval" for its proposed bloodbath against the people of Iraq.

Does UN approval make this sledgehammer v. nut monstrousness even remotely less barbaric and insane??? Not at all, and yet Washington hesitated enough to seek it. Such nervousness could have many causes, but the farcicalness of superpower US imperialism beating up very clumsily on zero-power Iraq might just be a peculiar factor.

Much more realistic is the strange case of the hurt and humiliated imperialist powers who have failed to line up as warmongering protagonists (as in previous generalised war periods to 'solve' overproduction crisis, crippling the planets economy) to play the role of each other's "worst enemy" and "the cause of all our economic difficulties", etc,etc.

Germany has three times (Franco-Prussia; WWI; WWII) most believably played the role of a one-nation "axis of evil" in becoming the target for Anglo-US-French world domination to warmonger its way to a "solution" for the overproduction crisis dragging the whole global economy down. But not any more. Not yet, anyway. And Japan neither. Although still being forced to suffer more and earlier (by Anglo-US world domination) from universal economic phenomena which are not remotely Germany's or Japan's fault; the humiliating devastation, and subsequent 1945 parole supervision, imposed by the West has affected their nature as imperialist states, it might seem; to which could be added the disconcerting influence of being incredibly far behind the almost unbelievable armed power and world political and economic dominance of the USA, a degree of global imperialist control never remotely seen before in history.

The detail of the uneven (and unfair) economic imbalance may have changed from the pre-WWI and pre-WWII periods but the essential grievance hasn't changed. Japan and Germany are the most successful and innovative capitalist market competitors around, but can only take their triumph so far because of the far-flung political and military stranglehold on everyone’s behaviour (including economic trading, and IMF and World Bank decisions, etc) which the West has always maintained.

In a hundred and one subtle or unseen ways, the USA and its many global economic and military alliances have allowed German and Japanese trade and influence expansion to go so far but no further, once the signs of deflationary overproduction crisis once again began to appear.

That German or Japanese aggression against such limitations played a part in inter-imperialist war, which was crucial to unblocking previous world economic constipation due to overproduction crisis, is widely accepted.

That the West DELIBERATELY played up to this threat of aggression to suit its own warmongering interests is either forgotten or disputed sometimes.

Past EPSRs have tried to establish this deliberate warmongering beyond further doubt, and will return to it frequently. But regardless of that factor, the reality certainly is that inter-imperialist world war did play an important role in getting the global economy out of over-production crisis (via the massive destruction of 'surplus' investment and 'surplus' labour that was being blamed) in all previous great world-trade conflicts of imperialism.

The signs now are that the US imperialist leaders are looking for war opportunities again as the calamitous prospects of global slump are faced up to, arising out of over-production crisis, but that there are few realistic INTER-IMPERIALIST war opportunities around. Hence the strange search for an "axis of evil" to go to war against in the unlikeliest of places (North Korea, Sudan, Yemen, etc, etc). 

To believe that no generalised warmongering intention is involved in this American blizkrieg hysteria risks giving credibility to Washington's own excuses for this massive build-up of aggressive militarism, - namely that "rogue state" Yemeni behaviour really IS a ‘threat' to the USA's 'home security', or that 'Islamic fanaticism' is about to conquer the world, etc, etc.

This also plays right into the hands of the fake-'left' who similarly take Washington's excuses for its warmongering tyranny at face value, and even agree that "fundamentalist terrorism" really must be condemned and fought, etc.

It is certainly true that the rise of Islamic and Third World nationalism in general implies a serious-enough threat to long-term American hegemony to warrant some displays of US warmongering determination around the Middle East.

But giving American policy such a realistic, rational, and low profile "cause" still leaves huge questions unexplained.

At what stage, and why, was the existing long-standing Western policy of buying up and recruiting stooge regimes in order to split the anti-imperialist resistance around the Middle East, - and buying off other more obstreperous regimes, - abandoned in favour of the now warlike front against all who refuse to toe the Bush warmongering line. "Either you are with us or you are against us".

Once again, it attributes reason to the ludicrous insanity of Washington warmongers' pretended "response to Sept 11", to argue that the slightly barmy (if heroic) DIY terrorist stunts of the clearly fantasising (although self-sacrificingly tragic) Osama Bin Laden were cause enough for the USA to stand its whole triumphant "corrupt them" Middle East policy on its head and vow to blitzkrieg them all into line instead.

There would be nothing necessarily artificial or exceptional if the US turn to warmongering was presented as nothing more than an enforced militarisation of Middle East diplomacy as quantity turned into quality from the relentless rise of Islamic national self-assertiveness, etc, becoming a "real threat" to American domination at last.

But on the one hand, that would amount to exactly what the EPSR is attempting to argue in the first place, namely that US imperialism has consciously decided that the time has come when only a deliberate warmongering offensive will securely guarantee American interests in the Middle East (and worldwide) henceforth.

On the other hand, the attempt to limit the historical/philosophical implication of such a decision to it being "nothing more than a practical logical response to regular bourgeois interests, as routinely perceived", etc, doesn't explain why Bush's hysteria (real or phoney) about Sept 11 and Islamic nationalist revolt in general, should require Washington to warn the WHOLE WORLD that US imperialism would henceforth PRE-EMPTIVELY strike at ANY power which even ATTEMPTED to begin to rival the USA in advanced weaponry, ever again.

The conclusion to all these warmongering complications most broadly reached by the EPSR seminar tried looking at the sole US super-monopoly power as not surprisingly imperialistically isolated by ever-increasing aggressiveness/vulnerability (having the most to lose in all history), yet increasingly called upon to almost single-handedly try to keep putting down ever growing signs of Third World anti-imperialist revolt (Islamic nationalism, etc) as the global economic slump steadily begins putting more and more squeeze on living standards and ever-greater class war repression on the proletariat to prevent revolution.

As the USA toils with this impossible task, it could be envisaged that Germany and Japan, etc, might sit back relishing Washington’s discomfort and ready to leap in at America's expense with neo-colonial deals only (to try to hold back revolution) while doing nothing to help limit the USA's losses.

Could a worldwide colonial repression attempt by US imperialism against socialist and nationalist revolutions breaking out everywhere (as the global slump-catastrophe really begins to bite) itself amount to imperialism's last (failed) attempt to get to destructive Armageddon as a "solution" to its latest and greatest-ever crisis of overproduction??

In even better speculative fantasy, this same failed Armageddon attempt could even be seen as putting the American working class on the revolutionary civil-war trail if double repression and doubly humiliated disillusionment resulted from the effects of world economic collapse on US living standards, added to by the burdens of the USA fighting an Armageddon global colonial-repression war which would prove fearfully costly and which would be humiliatingly lost anyway, - all of this replacing the inter-imperialist warmongering failure regularly looked-to for providing the future imperialist-crisis circumstances for the US socialist revolution itself.

Something is certainly going badly wrong with routine American imperialist domination of the world; and believing the US bourgeoisie's own propaganda of it being a question of "just zapping al-Qaeda” (hardly a success anyway) or "just zapping Iraq" (untold trouble ahead) gets nowhere near the scale of the problems facing the US 'New World Order' nor the dramatic philosophical issues involved. 

Some might think that there is a slow start to any revolutionary response to the world's worst ever economic crisis (not the EPSR's view), but the major historical problem still remains unresolved, and unstated really. Namely, after more than 80 years of unrelenting anti-communist brainwashing, how does Western domination now tell the world that it is the capitalist "free market" which is actually totally buggered, not anything else.

How is that calmly announced without the hysterical cover-up of "never mind the economy, mobilise quickly to prevent those axis of evil powers from getting weapons of mass destruction and slaughtering us all in our beds"????

Yet what is this demented Bush barroom thug doing, proverbially riding off in all directions simultaneously to shoot himself in the foot at every turn instead of corralling all these "rogue states" successfully, - while meanwhile real fires of revolt are breaking out in hundreds of new places all over the world simultaneously.

There is still a chance that Washington’s warmongering crusade might not even get to Iraq next but will have to be diverted to Colombia, or Venezuela, or Ecuador, first, or more likely Argentina if this latest capitalist press admission of the intolerable misery there from the "free world" economic collapse is to be believed:

Children are dying daily of malnutrition in Argentina as a result of the catastrophic economic crisis in the world's fourth biggest exporter of food.

In the past week, images of stunted, emaciated children have scandalised Argentina, long known as the grainstore of the world.

Some 450,000 jobs have been lost in Argentina since October last year, leaving one in every five people unemployed, one in two living in poverty, and one in four destitute. Salaries have lost 70% of their value and the economy is shrinking at a rate of 14°/a, while inflation is running at 40%.

Dr Oscar Hillal, the deputy director of the children's hospital in Tucuman, said: "This is not Africa, this is Argentina, where there are 50 million cattle and 39 million people but where we have a government which is totally out of touch with the people's needs."

In an astonishing admission, the production, minister, Anibal Fernandez, last week attributed the child deaths to "a sick society and a ruling class that are sons of bitches, all of them, myself included.

"If not, this would not be happening," he said.

"It is a chronic and cumulative problem. It has been going on for many years and everyone has been turning a blind eye."

The government has defaulted on an $805m (£500m) debt with the World Bank, which will cut it off from $1.8bn in extra, aid earmarked for poverty relief and social programmes.

It seems certain that any new deal with the IMF on debt repayments will be conditional on severe belt-tightening by the provinces - meaning no new social spending.

Some of the children pictured in northeastern Tucuman province had the bloated stomachs, blotchy skin and dry hair associated  with severe protein deficiency.

The national charity Red Solidaria said that 60 children a month were being taken to hospital with severe malnutrition, and 400 were being treated as outpatients.

The Centre for Child Nutrition Studies, which advises the World Health Organisation, has said 20% of children in Argentina are suffering from malnutrition.

Five non-governmental organisations from Tucuman province last week filed a lawsuit against Tucuman's governor Julio Miranda for "wilful neglect" of the children who have died of malnutrition in his province, where 64% of people live in extreme poverty.

They accused him of diverting national funding for social programmes into "clientelism and corruption".

The organisations were supported by the archbishop of Tucuman, Hector Villalba, who warned in a public address more than four months ago: "Many children are dying in the face of the inaction.”

Before such nightmare scenarios hit too many other countries and the USA itself, what better propaganda preparation than preemptive strikes in as many directions as possible so that "war difficulties" can be used as an excuse for economic disaster, avoiding having to admit that it is the "free market" that is the real cause of all human misery.

It does not remotely imply that US leaders must have Marxist understanding to see a scale of crisis coming that will need a warmongering cover for imperialism to get out of it alive.

Critical-realist bourgeois historians throughout history have commented on the useful demagogic relationship between facing insoluble problems at home and covering them up with nationalist-militarist adventures on foreign soil.

And the myth that imperialist warmongering is only consciously deliberate in the hands of some barmpot like Hitler "who actually believed all that xenophobic master-race nonsense" proves the exact opposite when viewed in longer-term objective perspective.

What Hitler really believed, if anything, is neither here nor there.

It was the world of warmongering imperialist aggression which made Hitler, not Hitler who made the world of warmongering imperialist aggression.

The remilitarisation of Germany under Hitler (or some. other such) was a conscious decision by international monopoly capitalism, despite all the dangers, in order to prevent socialist revolution in Germany, and to build up for a war to the death against the Soviet Union.

It is partly not having the need or realistic opportunity to get Germany or Japan to play a similar warmongering role in the new imperialist crisis that the "peace and democracy" USA finds itself so exposed now, with only the mad-dog Zionists to use as warmongering stooges in chief. Is that not deliberate, and egregiously conscious warmongering as permanent and escalating policy???

The German-led EU and Japan could yet theoretically show enough economic muscle to seriously challenge the American 'New World Order', but would that not in any case still lead to deliberate conscious imperialist warmongering in the end?

In practice, however, the post-1945 humiliating horrors imposed on Germany and Japan will never cease making any return to imperialist military aggression to 'solve' economic problems totally fraught with TERMINAL class rule disaster for the bourgeoisie should inter-imperialist skirmishing lead to another serious defeat.

It is also interesting to note that imperialism's reliable warmongering stooges, the disgraceful genocidal Zionist colonisation of Palestine, are being put on the defensive themselves by slump and national liberation revolt (covering it up with the usual blitzkrieg aggression), and thus leaving all the international warmongering need pressure still firmly on US imperialist shoulders alone.

The Americans are becoming their own Nazis. This emerges in the sub-Goebbels farce of declaring a "war on terrorism"(??) and "Osama dead or alive', and then leaving Afghanistan in a total mess with nothing achieved, and announcing a blitzkrieg on Iraq (which has no demonstrated connections at all with al-Quaeda) as being the same thing.

And why else is Dubyaism needed (or is this the working of 'pure democracy'?). He can play the role of mindless warmongering thug effortlessly. Build Leninism. EPSR supporters.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

I want to see every British soldier out of this country by five o’clock this evening. But I am realistic enough to know this is unlikely, for today anyway. But it will happen. G Adams

This is a very unique gathering. No other political party could meet like this because no other political party is an all Ireland party.

Nowhere was this more in evidence than the sight of republicans, from all over Ireland, working together to achieve the incredible electoral victories in the recent Westminster and local government elections in the north, and the Leinster House elections in the South.

We have never been better placed to make the case for independence, social justice and equality for all.

Our goal must be to exercise the political will and resolve to ensure that the voices of the neglected and deprived in our society are given their rightful place in decision making in the future.

This is the New Ireland we are struggling for. An Ireland of equals.

This party is on the rise. Irish republicanism is growing and increasingly popular as a political philosophy.

And that my friends, all other things to one side, is what has brought us to this crisis in the Peace Process.

The British and the Irish establishments' version of the Peace Process had a different script from the one that has been written in recent years.

The rise of Sinn Féin was not part of that script.

In their script, the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party were to coalesce to form the so-called centre ground. In essence, British policy is about modernising the Union so that a section of Protestants and Catholics in the North, and these are British government words not mine, could be persuaded to support the Union if it protects their interests.

Sinn Féin was to be perhaps a significant but nonetheless small, incohesive element in an anaemic political system in the North.

But it hasn't turned out like that. The Good Friday Agreement has been correctly seen as an instrument of change, real change in real ways in people's lives.

For that reason nationalists and republicans support it.

For that reason rejectionist unionists oppose it.

For that reason the British Government have minimised or diluted or delayed many of the changes it involves.

The Good Friday Agreement, despite their protestations to the contrary, has been so tar, too big a challenge for the British Government or perhaps more accurately it is a bridge too far for its agencies.

It was never going to be swallowed by rejectionist unionists, by Ian Paisley and others, and apart from the latent sectarianism of their position their opposition has a political basis.

They understand that the Good Friday Agreement is essentially and in part about establishing a level playing field.

They fear the achievement of equality of treatment and the emergence of a new inclusive society in Ireland will also erode the very reason for the existence of the Union and the British jurisdiction in Ireland.

That is why elements of the British system seek to undermine the Agreement.

The British Government is a pro-Union government and its strategy, or to be more accurate its tactical day to day management of the process, has exacerbated the crisis within unionism  - and encouraged the rejectionists.

Allied to all of this, Sinn Féin is now the largest nationalist party in the North.

Sinn Féin was seen by an increasing section of the electorate to be a party that was the engine of the Peace Process. And the Peace Process has become a cherished and important process for most sensible people.

Ten years ago this party was a demonised organisation in transition sowing the seeds of our peace strategy to a censored and sceptical media, pioneering delicate and difficult talks in a society which was polarised by the relentless cycle of ongoing violence.

Ten years ago we were told that peace was impossible in Ireland and that Irish unity was a pipe dream.

Peace is possible - real and lasting and permanent - and a united, independent Ireland is ours if we want it badly enough,  if we win support for that objective and if we are prepared to work hard to achieve it. .

Depending on your viewpoint, the crisis has been caused by unionism, or by Irish republicans or by the British Government or by the Irish Government or by the accumulation of factors involving or allegedly involving all of these elements.

I am not going to engage in the blame game.

I do want to acknowledge in a very clear way that the difficulties within unionism have been severely exasperated by the ongoing focus on alleged IRA activities.

Whatever we think about the unionist willingness to embrace the process of change - the unrelenting concentration on activities which it is claimed involve Irish republicans are grist to the mill of those within political unionism or indeed within the British system in Ireland, who are opposed to change.

Whatever we, or for that matter the IRA, say about these allegations, wall to wall daily coverage in the media fed by stories planted from within the British system - ensures that the denials are dismissed or doubted by even the more progressive elements. 

And of course, on the republican and nationalist side there is equal frustration and annoyance because there is little focus on the ongoing killing campaign by unionist paramilitaries or the actions of the British forces.

All of this is compounded by the recent decision by the British Government to suspend once again the political institutions set up under the Good Friday Agreement.

A lengthy suspension - a vacuum - will encourage those who want to violently tear down this process.

The main thing at the moment is to get the process back on track as quickly as possible. That involves reinstating the political institutions.

It means the British Government revoking the suspension legislation. It is no part of the Agreement.

It says a lot about the state we live in that the institutions were fully functioning for only about 20 months out of a possible 54 months or so. And the all-Ireland Civic Forum has never been put in place. And the Inter-Parliamentary Forum has never met.

The decision to suspend the institutions makes no strategic sense. Its tactical merits are also very limited.

Does anyone believe for one second that if the Sinn Féin leadership had threatened to withdraw our Ministers from the Executive that the British government would have moved to suspend the institutions?

Privately,  by what successive British Secretary of States have said, and publicly, by what they have done, the British government has made it clear that the survival of David Trimble and the ascendancy of the UUP and unionism are priority objectives.

DUBLIN'S ROLE

And where stands the Irish Government in all of this? The Good Friday Agreement is an international Treaty between the Irish and British Governments. They have a joint and co-equal responsibility for its implementation. The British Government has no right to act unilaterally on these matters and it needs to be told this again and again.

In particular Irish citizens, victimised and targeted by sectarian violence, have a right to expect effective political protection from our government in Dublin.

BLAIR'S SPEECH

Mr Blair's speech last week, understandably, was portrayed in the media as no more than a call for the IRA to disband. He is bound to understand why that has angered republicans. But it was a serious and detailed speech and I said at the time that it deserved a considered response. And having looked at it carefully I do see some positive elements.

Mr Blair recognised that Catholics had been treated in the north as second class citizens. I agree.

He said that the overwhelming majority of people want the institutions to remain in place. I agree.

He said that the time for transition had come to an end. There was a need for acts of completion. I agree.

He said that the British government thought the Good Friday Agreement should be implemented in one fell swoop, instead of a concession to one side here and a concession to the other there. I agree.

Sinn Féin has long called for the Agreement to be implemented in full. It is high time the British Government implemented the Agreement in all its aspects.

In reality this means acts of completion on;

• The Political institutions

• Justice

• Human Rights

• Equality

• Demilitarisation

• Victims

• Policing

• OTRs (People still 'on the run')

Above all else, it means dealing with these matters as political issues, instead of security problems. It means embarking on a process of irreversible change.

(something missing?)

the killing of Pat Finucane. Instead, a stalling exercise was put forward and last week, with the cancellation once again of the Steven's Inquiry report, we had another instalment in that effort to dodge the truth of the RUC Special Branch and M15's involvement in the killings of citizens on behalf of the British state.

Special Branch and MI5 remain at the heart of the new policing service. They are the epicentre of the political police we agreed to remove.

At Weston Park the British, again in their take it of leave it mode, promised amendments to policing legislation to make it more fully reflect Patten. Remember, before Weston Park we were being told that Patten was being fully implemented. Here then was an admission that this was not the case but instead of a commitment to implement Patten fully through amendments we had an assertion that amendments would change legislation to 'more fully reflect Patten'.

The SDLP acquiesced to that position. That is far less than Patten and the Good Friday Agreement commitments on policing.

The broad nationalist consensus had already been broken on this issue by the Irish government's position. But unlike the SDLP, the Irish Government does not have to defend its position to citizens most affected by the absence of the type of policing that is required.

I think that those who acquiesced to the British position made a mistake.

I understand why they did so and why the SUP in particular defends its position so ferociously.

It is now attempting to claim the Weston Park proposals as a result of its good negotiation even though these amendments fall short of what is required. And in fact, SDLP sensitivity, on this issue has been quoted to me by officials from both governments as the reason why movement cannot go as far as is required under the Good Friday Agreement.

We are arguing for the Good Friday Agreement vision of policing to become a reality. And that means the British government moving beyond its Weston Park position.

It also means that the Irish government and the SDLP need to assert this as a matter of the unfinished work of the Good Friday Agreement.

An acceptable policing service is crucial for all sections of our people in the north and is in better interests of all of the people of this island. If power can be transferred on a range of key issues, there is no reason why policing and justice cannot be devolved on the same basis.

So, consequently I can conceive of a world in which it would be appropriate for Sinn Féin to join the Policing Board and participate fully in the policing arrangements on a democratic basis. That has to be when there is a proper beginning to policing, as agreed in the Good Friday Agreement and as recommended by Patten.

UNIONIST BLOCKING TACTICS

Nationalists and republicans also need to be convinced, as in my view do a lot of unionists, that the toleration by British agencies of unionist paramilitaries has ended.

I note in particular that the British Prime Minister says he will take steps to stop the unionists wrecking the Executive and north south institutions again in future. How will the British Government do that? How can we be sure that the unionists will not wreck the institutions again on the basis of some transitional demand? After all, it wasn’t the unionists who suspended the institutions!

Mr Blair's speech explicitly acknowledged that the Good Friday Agreement has not been implemented. Let us be clear about that.

Have the two governments got a plan to implement the outstanding aspects?

I certainly have had no sight of it.

But we are patient. We are also very conscious that this is a process.

Mr Blair says that at the core of the Agreement was this deal: in return for equality and justice in politics, policing, in acceptance of nationalist identity - all parties were to commit exclusively to peace.

He then goes on to say that republicans then made the continued existence of the IRA a leverage in negotiations. He says that this is at the heart of the present crisis.

All the while he says we were coming to a crunch point. Would republicanism really take the final step of committing exclusively, Sinn Féin and the IRA, to the peaceful path?

I can understand the sense of Mr Blair’s perception about all of this but I'm sure, if he paused to reconsider, he will see the flaw in this version of events.

IRA IS SERIOUS ABOUT PEACE

As one of the republicans involved in all of the negotiations with the British Government I can state categorically that we never made the IRA an issue. In fact, the Agreement came some years after the IRA cessations and I believe that the maintenance of those cessations and various initiatives by the IRA demonstrates that organisation as commitment to this process.

It also, and let us not undervalue this, created the space for all of the opportunities that have been developed since.

Our view is and was that the IRA cessations effectively moved the Army out of the picture and allowed the rest of us to begin an entirely new process.

Our strategy, and Mr Blair knows this, is about bring an end to physical force republicanism, by seating an alternative way to achieve democratic and republican objectives.

Far from using the IRA as leverage during negotiations we sought to have the Good Friday Agreement implemented, not only because that is our obligation, not only because that is the right thing, but also because that fitted into a strategy of creating an alternative to war and a means of sustaining and anchoring the Peace Process.

It wasn't we who promoted the issue of arms decommissioning as a precondition on an Agreement but it was us and others who moved so that the IRA came to do the unthinkable. To not only work with the IICD but also to put arms beyond use under its auspices at a time when unionist paramilitaries were on a killing spree, when Orange marches were being forced into Catholic neighbourhoods and when the British Army was re-militarising.

It wasn't we who came up with another demand once progress on the arms issue was being made.

I do not pretend to speak for the Army on these matters but I do believe that they are serious about their support for a genuine Peace Process.

They have said so. I believe them.

I speak for this party and we are completely committed to peaceful and democratic means.

As an Irish republican, as a citizen of Ireland, I want to see an end to British rule in this country yesterday.

I want to see every British soldier out of this country by five o'clock this evening. But I am realistic enough to know that this is unlikely, for today anyway. But it will happen. And I and this party will continue to work towards these objectives until they are a reality.

I know it will be achieved through a process - not by way of ultimatums from me or any other Irish person.

Similarly, the IRA is never going to disband in response to ultimatums from the British Government, or David Trimble.

A FUTURE WITHOUT THE IRA?

But I do believe the logic of the Peace Process,  puts all of us in a different place.

I want to see an end to all of the armed groups on this island. That has to be the aim of every thinking republican.

So if you ask me do I envisage a future without the IRA? The answer is obvious.

The answer is Yes.

And who can influence the IRA most?

The British Government, the unionists - the Irish Government and us as well of course.

All of us have to make politics work.

While I believe that the majority of unionists want to embrace change it is clear that their political leaders do not want the Agreement to be implemented.

It appears that the demands of unionism are insatiable, They are also not deliverable.

But part of the problem for those of us who have to manage this, process is that Irish republicanism is seen by the British establishment and its system, quite correctly, as being against its long term interests. This is because it interprets these interests in a very narrow and short sighted way.

It sees unionism as an ally, even with all its imperfections.

THE CHALLENGE FOR BLAIR

So the challenge for Mr Blair in all of this is quite profound. He has made a singular and exceptional contribution to this process.

He understands as well as I do that it is a process and that all of us need to apply ourselves and see beyond the difficulties of the moment.

Mr Blair should see Britain's strategic interest being best served by the democratic resolution of the longstanding quarrel between the people of these two islands.

His task in the short term has to be to continue the process of peacemaking.

The Good Friday Agreement remains the only show in town.

This is not a perfect process. By its very nature it has involved compromise. It needs collectivity.

Many may argue that it is indeed an imperfect peace. But let's be realistic about this, it is a lot better than what is happening in other parts of the world at this time and it's a lot better than what was happening in this country over a long time.

The challenge for Mr Blair is to shape his own system, his own agencies, to make this process work, and in so doing to accept that the leaderships of political unionism will not journey along the Good Friday Agreement process if they can avoid that.

But like people everywhere they will respond to the conditions in which they live and I retain a confidence that if unionism is liberated, like the rest of us, from the conditions of the past, they will rise to the challenge.

There can be no escape from the reality that the conditions in which we will all have to live are those contained in the Good Friday Agreement.

Until the unionists know that for a certainty they will resist that Agreement.

This is a hugely traumatic process for unionism. In their hearts they know that the game is up. It isn't over. But it is up.