SINCE MID-2015, Caribbean viewers have been gripped by images of the steady flow of migrants, including old women and very young children, largely from Syria, Iraq and Libya, struggling their way through less wealthy European countries like Greece, Croatia and Hungary, en route to the supposed “promised lands” of Austria and Germany.
This flow of human beings from the deliberately destroyed, but previously well functioning, middle-income states of the Middle East and North Africa into Europe has presented one of the most important challenges to mature capitalist states today. It has also exposed one of the most important contradictions of mature capitalism.
The ongoing “migrant crisis” in Europe can only be described as a self-inflicted wound. In their quest to control the immense oil resources of the Gulf and North African states, and by opportunistically using the genuine democratic demands by the youth movements in these states, Europe might have brought the migrant problem upon itself. Before the deliberate destruction of the settled states of Iraq, Libya and Syria, there was no migrant crisis in Europe.
Whilst the internal democratic practices of these countries did not conform to Western liberal democratic measurements, they had always used their significant oil deposits to undertake tremendous strides in human social development to the benefit of their citizens. More significantly for the Caribbean is the fact that some of these Middle Eastern countries, particularly Libya, were playing very important roles in South-South cooperation, were actively supporting the African Union and African development, and were assisting consciously in advancing the economic and social development of the formerly colonised world.
Therefore, in their single-minded pursuit of overthrowing the stable leaderships of Iraq, Libya and Syria in the hope of installing pro-Western, and generally weaker regimes with no commitment to Third World solidarity, and to gain unimpeded access to their oil wealth, little thought was paid to possibility that the human and social crises unleashed by the destruction of these states would eventually become Europe’s problem.
Ironically, whilst Europe had generally been an enthusiastic junior partner supporting the United States in overthrowing stable Middle Eastern and North African states, the migrant problem is Europe’s alone. There is no stream of Syrian refugees into the US.
Be that as it may, the march of thousands of migrants into Europe in defiance of the so-called legitimate sovereign right of the state to determine who enters exacerbates one of the deep contradictions of the modern capitalist state. Whilst free-market ideologues celebrate the mobility of capital, they continue to apply racist and other restrictions to the mobility of labour. The continued stream of the victims of global capital into the leading capitalist countries is a clear case of the chickens coming home to roost.
The continued destruction of Syria shows that the lesson has not been learned. Europe, meanwhile, pays the price.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email tjoe2008@live.com.