Red Money for the Global South by Max Trecker

Author:Max Trecker [Trecker, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, World, Europe, Eastern, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Africa, General
ISBN: 9781000037425
Google: I73RDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-02-20T03:41:38+00:00

Relations with Iraq

One country that took center stage in particular during the first half of the 1970s in the CMEA negotiations was Iraq. The relationship between the Soviet Union and Iraq had started in 1958 after a successful Ba’athist coup. The Iraqi Ba’athist Party was on the surface similar to its Syrian counterpart, but was often at odds with its sibling in Damascus. The Iraqi Ba’athists were further away from “scientific socialism” than their Syrian counterparts rejecting class struggle and calling for national unity. Nevertheless, the party’s program from 1968 called for friendship between the Eastern Bloc and Iraq based on anti-Western sentiments and “anti-Imperialism.”11 In 1972, the Iraqi government signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union which gave the Iraqi side the necessary backing to nationalize the oil industry. This didn’t coincide with a closer ideological alignment, as the new Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussein, didn’t sympathize with the Soviet version of communism. Nevertheless, the CP of Iraq was legalized again in 1973 and a national front was formed, measures which had merely symbolical value.12

Relations cooled down again in the mid-1970s when the sprawling oil trade enabled the Iraqi leadership to diversify its economic and political partners and drew it closer to the West again. The Ba’ath regime had reached a final settlement with the former private oil companies in 1973 which allowed the Iraqi side to market its own oil.13 The nationalization of the oil industry came at the right time to profit from the price increases of the 1970s. The Iraqi leadership could afford to import Western as well as Eastern civil and military goods on an unprecedented scale. In 1978, Saddam Hussein, fearing a Communist plot under Soviet guidance, ordered Iraqi Communists tracked down once more.14 Mutual relations recovered again but this shows that the relations between the Eastern Bloc and Iraq constituted no patron‒client relationship, as the Iraqi side could exercise a considerable amount of leverage.

It is interesting to follow the ascendance in importance of Iraq for the CMEA member countries. While the prospects of Iraq were judged as being rather doubtful during the 1960s, this changed rapidly after the nationalization of the oil industry and the sharp increases in commodity prices following the first oil shock. Iraq increasingly became an issue for discussion inside the CMEA and the PCTA in the late 1960s. The CMEA member states were approving the fact that their share in Iraq’s foreign trade had increased from 12.9 % in 1964 to 22.9 % in 1968. They furthermore approved of the foreign policy actions of the Iraqi government which stated its opposition towards the West and employed a positive attitude towards the East.15

However, trade in the late 1960s, although increasing, remained rather marginal. Hungary, to make a case in point, rarely imported goods worth more than 0.2 million US dollars during the 1960s from Iraq, while its exports equaled four million US dollars.16 The import numbers for the Polish economy were similar, while exports were slightly higher.17 In the case of East Germany trade with Iraq remained marginal during the entire decade.

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