Well, we know where the Comintern's support of the Kuomingtang took the workers revolution, that's for sure.
Excuse me? The problem was not support for the KMT, but the failure of the CP to maintain an independent presence, including a newspaper. Even Trotsky backed the KMT, just as he would back Haile Selassie against Italy or a Brazilian bourgeois nationalist against Great Britain.
And I believe you pose a false choice, in that no "bourgeois nationalist control" of Iraqi oil, separate and apart from the domination, military or market of Western capitalism is possible. That's what the war itself has shown, as if it hasn't been shown a hundred times before; in China, India, Spain, Angola.....
There was a big difference in Argentina before and after the overthrow of Peron. Socialists take sides when a Peron or an Aristide opt for some kind of development path even if it falls short of socialism.
As for the Irish struggle, Connolly himself established exactly that sort of litmus test-- in just those terms.
Marx and Engels supported the cause of Irish independence long before Marxists like Connolly were involved. They did not extract promises from bourgeois nationalists that they would expropriate the expropriators.
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