But what of the politics of the the actual war that will take place? Saddam's strategy has been described as essentially a political defence. It is to use the Republican guards to protect Baghdad and probably Tikrit, and to continue to appeal for support against an anti-humanitarian blitzkrieg.
The hegemonistic war plans are to seize ('liberate') the sunni south - Basra is expected ot fall within 24 hours - and presumably now to negotiate with Iraqi Kurdistan rather than to occupy it. Interestingly it intends not to bomb the regular Iraqi army in its barracks, because it will want to use it for peace keeping after victory. So it is mounting psychological warfare already.
It can try a creeping escalation of an aggressive war, but with certain targets it will want the maximum effect of surprise and instill overwhelming terror of its power in the population as a whole. Hence we have to expect that if the US abandons the SC second vote war may have started by the time we get up one morning in the near future.
But analysts think there could be a standoff around Baghdad, with key installations being taken out, while the US is calculating how soon there will be a rising against Saddam and how to support it. They will try to marginalise any initiatives by Saddam to promote dialogue and get support from the anti-hegemonistic bloc in the Security Council. They will bring together some sort of oppositional forum to make declarations and appear in front of the television cameras. Whether the Kurds can introduce any genuinely democratic demands into this may be important for the peace movement to regroup. If the Iraqi army is to be used there will be other aspects of the Iraqi state which will continue. Saddam's regime cannot be undialectically totally negative and some of the political fight may be about what continues and what is overthrow. After all denazification did not go very deep after the defeat of Germany. So Saddam may play to certain demands that have a basis in reality, and which are inherently anti-imperialist. If the debate on the surface is about the terms of Saddam's exile (which Chirac supports) the struggle under the surface is to stop the violent destruction of the more democratic and progressive aspects of Iraq and prevent their conquest by the new imperialism.
Mass protests for a cease fire around Baghdad could do some good.
There will also be demands for a Middle East peace settlement, which the US in particular will brush to one side, but Blair would like to get involved in.
I thought I would check Clausewitz, because the point I want to make is about the political content of war, even during a blitzkrieg.
from what appears to be an informed website: http://www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/CWZSUMM/CWORKHOL.htm#dialectic -
One of the main sources of confusion about Clausewitz's approach lies in his dialectical method of presentation. For example, Clausewitz's famous line that "War is merely a continuation of politics," while accurate as far as it goes, was not intended as a statement of fact. It is the antithesis in a dialectical argument whose thesis is the point—made earlier in the analysis—that "war is nothing but a duel [or wrestling match, a better translation of the German Zweikampf] on a larger scale." His synthesis, which resolves the deficiencies of these two bald statements, says that war is neither "nothing but" an act of brute force nor "merely" a rational act of politics or policy. This synthesis lies in his "fascinating trinity" [wunderliche dreifaltigkeit]: a dynamic, inherently unstable interaction of the forces of violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation.
Chris Burford London
