U.S. Imperialism Turns the Screws

Introduction

Donald Trump’s re-election as U.S. president has triggered a political earthquake, and his first months in office have confirmed that we are in a period of profound global shifts. Yet the rapid pace of events is matched only by the confusion gripping the left and political commentators more generally. On the one hand, some are beginning to understand what they previously couldn’t. Among liberals and socialists, it is now common to speak of the crisis and failure of liberalism. On the other hand, panic and hysteria are rife. Many have reacted to J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference by declaring that the U.S. is abandoning Europe, or that it is “the end of the West.” Some believe that Trump is capitulating to Russia and/or that he is a fascist cozying up to others of his type. Others think he is simply insane. And on the other end of the spectrum are those imagining Trump and Elon Musk as political masterminds who will purge the deep state and usher in a golden age for American capitalism.

To make sense of anything, we must put the liberal frenzy aside and look at the actual trend behind daily events. The U.S. is not about to abandon Europe, where it has huge economic interests and more than 100,000 troops. Nor is Trump capitulating to Putin. He is simply aligning U.S. policy with the reality on the battlefield in Ukraine in order to shift U.S. attentions elsewhere. And, obviously, it isn’t the end of the West. It is the liberal West that is on its deathbed.

The long-term trend defining the changes in the world is the relative decline of the U.S. For 80 years, the U.S. has been the hegemonic power of the capitalist world, and of the entire globe following the fall of the USSR. But American supremacy also contained the seeds of its own decline. Once-mighty U.S. industry was largely offshored to the Global South. The U.S. military overextended itself. And other countries have seen substantial economic growth—China in particular. Yet the U.S. remains the world’s superpower, controlling the world’s reserve currency and financial system while the American military—still the largest—remains the main guarantor of security worldwide. The growing contradiction between the U.S.’s hegemonic position and its declining economic power has now reached a breaking point. This explains the turmoil in the world’s situation.

Far from being insane, what Trump represents is a fundamental shift in the strategy of U.S. imperialism, which aims to reassert its dominance and reverse its decline, or at least slow it down. To do this, Trump is seeking to reindustrialize the U.S. for war and to further squeeze U.S. allies and neocolonies. The new administration is breaking with liberal ideals and institutions, which dominated the U.S. system for decades but have now become a hindrance to shoring up the U.S.’s position. Behind trade wars, negotiations with Russia and fiery speeches against the “enemy within” lies the need for the U.S. to cohere a bloc, firmly aligned behind U.S. trade and foreign policies, in order to confront, isolate and asphyxiate the People’s Republic of China, the U.S.’s main economic rival.

Contrary to widely held belief, particularly on the left, the source of turmoil in the world is not the rise of Chinese or Russian so-called imperialism. China has seen an economic development unprecedented in human history, yet this has unfolded within the U.S.-led world order. As the U.S. moves to isolate China, the Communist Party bureaucracy in Beijing hopes to preserve the old global system, just without U.S. dominance—a complete fantasy. As for Russia, despite its huge military, it has a tiny economy compared to the U.S. What has driven the oligarchs’ war in Ukraine has not been an expansionist Russian capitalism but a reaction to the U.S. overextending itself to the very borders of Russia.

Despite what Western media might repeat, the world remains very much an American empire. China, Russia, the BRICS+ alliance—none are vying for world domination. Nor are they building an alternative system to that of the U.S. They are simply seeking to insulate themselves from U.S. aggression. But for the world’s superpower, even such modest moves constitute a fundamental—even existential—challenge to its supremacy that must be confronted.

The reassertion of American dominance is provoking major economic and political crises. Many obstacles stand in the way of U.S. designs, and there is a difference between the aims and ambitions of the American ruling class and its capacity to carry those out. The new administration is already confronting the anger of other countries. Domestically, while no serious force currently threatens Trump, opposition will grow. And sooner or later, Trump’s brutal attacks will face working-class resistance, at home and abroad.

A lot of noise is coming from the rulers of Europe and Canada resisting U.S. demands. However, they are dependent on the U.S. and, in the short term, will have no choice but to get into line. An economic crisis combined with U.S. pressure will likely further accelerate the shift to the right and facilitate the downfall of European and Canadian liberal politicians. Indeed, the forces best placed to benefit from an economic downturn in the short term are right-wing parties, which are on the rise everywhere in the West. This faction fight within the ruling class promises to be a stormy process, as the liberals are clinging to power and using all means to keep it.

Dynamics will be different in the neocolonial world—Latin America, Asia, Africa, etc. Most of those countries are already suffocated by imperialism. The U.S.’s tightening noose will be a disaster, as there is already barely any fat to cut and hundreds of millions live in complete misery. This situation will fuel an impulse among the working class and the broader masses to combat American domination and resist the pillage of the IMF. We have already seen such revolts in recent years.

As for China, instability will come not from it being starved of resources, at least in the short term, but from the inner contradictions in its system. The Communist Party regime is a bureaucratic caste, which is seeking to reconcile capitalism and a planned economy and whose growth model has relied on the U.S.-led globalized order. But now the U.S. is moving more aggressively to isolate and confront China. Tremendous pressure will be put on the Communist Party tops, both from capitalists, whose profits are melting, and China’s massive working class, whose living conditions are getting squeezed. The Stalinist bureaucracy will have to perform an ever more difficult balancing act to contain those contradictory forces, doing everything from subsidizing industries and indulging in left-wing phraseology to increasing repression. But this will not be enough to delay indefinitely the fundamental choice facing the People’s Republic: either capitalist restoration or working-class political revolution.

In this period of imperialist offensive, rearmament and growing crises, the question posed is: Will U.S. imperialism be defeated or will it continue to drag the world into a spiral of reaction, immiseration and wars? For communists, the task of the epoch is to forge revolutionary leaderships capable of uniting workers and the oppressed and leading the struggle against American hegemony to victory. Placing hope in the Chinese Stalinists, Russian oligarchs, nationalists or social democrats of all types will prove fatal. As they do not seek to overthrow U.S. hegemony, and given their opposition to working-class revolution, they are incapable of waging a consistent or truly progressive struggle against imperialism. The freedom of the world’s toilers from oppression and exploitation will advance and succeed only under the banner of a reforged Fourth International.

The purpose of this document is to orient revolutionaries for the period ahead. This is particularly crucial as revolutionary forces everywhere are weak, discredited and tremendously disoriented. We hope this document can contribute to resolving this state of affairs.

Part One:
Marxism vs. Gradualism

Politically, Western liberals, social democrats, trade-union bureaucrats, advocates of the BRICS+ alliance, Chinese Stalinists and many so-called revolutionaries all share something in common. That is, variations of a gradualist and pacifist conception of history and world relations that paralyzes them in the face of Trump’s renewed offensive.

For liberals, it is the notion that social progress and democracy gradually develop with the march of history. Similarly, social democrats and reformist union leaders think the development of working-class organizations gradually leads to progress, and even socialism. The advocates of BRICS+ view the incremental development of China, Russia and the Global South as an upward, linear march toward a new, fairer and “multipolar” world order. Everywhere, we see the same tendency: the great trends of history are reduced to gradual and incremental development, leading to constant, incremental progress.

Unfortunately for them, this is not how the world works. Throughout history, we see that gradual development leads to violent and sudden shocks. Capitalism gradually developed within the feudal system, and then burst out of it through revolutions and wars. Financial speculation gradually leads to economic crisis. The exploitation of workers gradually leads to a strike. The gradual accumulation of quantity turns into quality, not peacefully but through sudden shocks. And the motor force of change in societies is the class struggle between the oppressed and oppressors, which inevitably leads to violent confrontations.

The dominance of gradualist conceptions among many on the left reflects the past three decades of relative stability. The hegemony of the U.S. following the destruction of the USSR enabled globalization and the rapid expansion of world trade. Under U.S. military and economic supremacy, almost all countries fell in line and capital could freely move, while the U.S.’s imperialist wars were limited to the few countries defying its diktats. Economic growth and relative social progress gave the illusion that the world was gradually reaching new heights. This was the economic basis for liberalism, the dominant ideology of the post-Soviet period.

Billionaires from Russia bought football teams in Britain. Industrial magnates from India acquired mansions in California. The European Union was unified under the watchword of peace and liberal values. Even the Chinese Stalinists discarded Mao-style attire and donned suits and ties to disguise themselves as respectable capitalists. Economic relations appeared organic, natural and as free as the global flow of trade. Many on the left came to forget that imperialism maintains itself through force. They reduced it to a vague economic notion about the “export of capital,” and since most countries exported some capital, then imperialism is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Any country with big GDP growth, a big army and a lot of millionaires had become somewhat imperialist, on a long, sliding scale of imperialism.

However, the post-Soviet period was made possible by the supremacy of a single imperialist power: the U.S., which came to dominate the world not through a peaceful and gradual process but through World War II, the greatest carnage in human history. The U.S.’s victory enabled it to unify all the old colonial powers—Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy—in a U.S.-led alliance to confront the Soviet Union. The U.S. came to dominate the entire globe by finally destroying the Soviet Union through capitalist counterrevolution, which rolled back the gains of 1917 and shattered the social fabric of Russia and Eastern Europe.

Now, Trump is setting U.S. imperialism on a war footing. He is reversing globalization, breaking with liberal values and institutions and moving to confront China. Those who are the most shocked in the face of Trump’s offensive are those who hold onto gradualism. They cannot understand how the U.S.’s gradual economic decline would inevitably lead to a sudden and brutal turn by the American ruling class to shore up its position by any means necessary. The advantage of Marxists is precisely that we understand that empires are built through war and maintain themselves not only through economic relations but through force. We understand that the U.S. empire will not leave the scene of history gradually and peacefully but only through its forcible displacement. That is, “either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes,” to use the words of the Communist Manifesto.

However, many Marxist groups today believe that U.S. hegemony is already over! They believe that Russia and China have gradually become imperialist powers. They believe that the world has already been redivided, that the U.S. lost its hegemonic position peacefully, through gradual economic development alone and without any major fracture or war, and that the world is now divided between competing imperial blocs. They often say this while claiming to be Leninists. Yet Lenin constantly hammered on how wars were an inevitable feature of the imperialist system and the means by which great powers fight to redivide the world into spheres of influence. The left’s revisionism of Lenin reveals a gradualist conception, disappearing that the world remains an American empire whose ultimate power is based on the U.S. military and its 750 bases spread over all continents.

In a certain sense, Trump has a better feel for this than the gradualists. He knows that to shore up the U.S.’s position he needs to prepare for war and choke off China. And he knows that to do this, he needs to smash the liberals and the fainthearted standing in the way. At least, Trump might have the effect of clarifying for our gradualists a thing or two about the true nature of imperialism and world relations. This is key, as those who want to fight U.S. imperialism must rid themselves of any gradualist illusions. Without doing this, it is impossible to understand the world, the direction it is going in and, crucially, what to do.

Part Two:
How the U.S. System Works

Many know that the U.S. dominates the global economy. But few actually understand how it does this. In order to make sense of what Trump is doing, it is important to take a step back and understand the mechanism used by U.S. imperialism, its inner workings and its limits.

What enabled the U.S. to come out victorious from World War II and tower over all its rivals was its industrial might, providing the U.S. with the most powerful military. It is from this position that the U.S. was able to impose the dollar as the world’s reserve currency (used for most international trade and kept in reserve by banks and governments). The dollar was tied to gold, which gave it stability. Broadly speaking, the U.S. loaned money to other capitalist countries, which in turn used it to purchase goods made in American factories. In this way, an American empire was built, and the old colonial powers were co-opted as junior partners to dominate the rest of the world and confront the USSR. For the first time, the capitalist world was unified around the power and the currency of a single hegemon.

But as the U.S. waged war against Soviet allies across the globe and Europe and Japan rebuilt their industrial base, this relationship changed. U.S.-manufactured goods became less competitive and the U.S. started to decline economically. Foreign wars were putting tremendous strain on the U.S. budget. Before long, to finance growing imports and military adventures, the U.S. was printing more money than its gold reserves could back. Traditionally, this would have meant bankruptcy. However, the U.S. was able to turn this to its advantage in a unique way.

Since the U.S. was now importing more than it exported, foreign countries accumulated a lot of dollars, assuming they were convertible into gold. But President Nixon limited convertibility and in 1971 abolished the gold standard altogether. The U.S. could now print money without limit. Furthermore, it demanded that foreign countries with dollar surpluses buy U.S. Treasuries, that is, U.S. debt (lending to the U.S. government for interest). Thus, from now on foreign countries would manufacture products for the U.S., get dollars in exchange and return those dollars through Treasuries in order to finance the growing American budget deficit. Dollars would also come back to the U.S. through investments in the stock market or the purchase of assets in the U.S. (property, etc.). In other words, foreign countries would pay for the U.S.’s wars, and since the U.S. could print an unlimited amount of dollars, it could borrow without limit.

The end of the gold standard sent shockwaves around the world and provoked economic unrest and inflation. European imperialists were angry at this unilateral move, with France lashing out at the U.S.’s “exorbitant privilege.” But in the end, Europe had no alternative. European imperialists, and also the Japanese, benefited greatly as junior partners in the U.S. empire, which secured their interests at home and abroad. Since refusing to concede would mean breaking with the U.S., they accepted taking an economic hit in order to keep their privileged position. The U.S. also struck a deal with the Saudi monarchy and other OPEC countries to sell oil only in dollars, buying U.S. Treasuries in exchange for military protection. This forced anyone who wanted to buy oil to hold large reserves of dollars.

Meanwhile, the Third World was forced into submission. To get dollars, those countries would be forced to take on loans at extortionate rates from U.S. banks. When they could not pay, the IMF would force them to implement austerity and privatizations and to open their markets to U.S. companies, choking dozens of countries into a debt crisis that continues to this day. Those who looked to the USSR as an alternative would face Washington’s might, from economic sanctions and blockades to regime change. The whole capitalist world submitted to the U.S., either forced to do so or because of their economic interests in the American empire. In both cases, this was possible because the U.S. remained the uncontested military power of the capitalist world.

Economist Michael Hudson’s book explains:

While Hudson is able to describe quite well the mechanics of exploitation of the U.S. system, he constantly presents those as mistaken political choices by rulers in Washington, who instead could have used their advantage to do good in the world. What he denies is that the creation of a unique mechanism of exploitation flowed from the very logic of capitalism in its imperialist stage, i.e., it flowed from the material interests of the American imperialist ruling class.

We see that as the economic weight of the U.S. declined and its industry became less competitive, domestic production alone was no longer sufficient to sustain the cost of its empire. Its maintenance required printing more fictitious money and extorting more value from other countries—through forced loans via U.S. Treasuries, debt repayment to U.S. banks or cheap labor for U.S. companies. The more the productive capacities of the U.S. declined, the more it needed to use parasitical means to maintain its global empire. The contradiction between the declining productive forces of the U.S. economy and the burden of empire is constantly getting stretched, with the elastic becoming thinner and thinner.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed under intense pressure from U.S. imperialism. Suddenly, the U.S. system was extended to the entire planet, bringing massive profits to the U.S. while also fueling its decline. Capital could expand everywhere and into new markets. But this process accelerated deindustrialization in the U.S. and other imperialist powers, reducing their economic weight and increasing financialization. The world economy became even more organized around a group of countries in the Global South—China in particular—whose cheap labor produced goods for the U.S./Western markets, while another group of countries was kept in utter destitution through financial strangulation.

China saw an unprecedented industrial boom, exporting large quantities of manufactured goods to the U.S. and the West. It accumulated massive reserves of dollars, which it reinvested in U.S. Treasuries. By the 2000s, China was holding hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. debt, worrying some in Washington. In this way, China played and still plays a significant role in the dollar system, as we will see with the 2008 crisis. However, China’s industrial power, the sheer size of its economy and its growing trade relations started to undermine U.S. dominance. Take, for example, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s program to develop its trade by providing infrastructure projects, loans and cheap goods to the Global South. Although carried out within the U.S. system (many investments are made in U.S. dollars), the BRI was nevertheless undermining its foundations. For the U.S. rulers, China was becoming a growing threat.

The 2008 financial crisis exposed the weaknesses of the U.S. empire. However, its consequence in the short term was to strengthen the role of the dollar. To prevent a banking collapse, the U.S. brought its “exorbitant privilege” to new heights, printing huge amounts of dollars to throw into the stock market. As the U.S.’s junior partners were also about to collapse, it extended unlimited lines of credit to central banks in Europe and to other allies—the “swap lines.” These became a permanent feature as the entire financial system now required ever larger sums of fictitious money to prevent its collapse. The Global South also got loans from the IMF to prevent the collapse of their economies. All of this was paid for by massive austerity programs, including in Europe. But the U.S. also financed this by demanding that China buy huge amounts of Treasuries. Wanting stability, the CPC bureaucracy did so and actually bankrolled the dollar system throughout the crisis.

The same process happened again during the pandemic, at an even higher level. As economies stalled, the U.S. printed even more money (more than its entire spending during World War II, adjusted to today’s dollars). Its allies did the same, using the swap lines. This stretched the system to extreme limits, provoking inflation and a massive stock market bubble. The U.S. deficit also exploded, to the point where the U.S. now spends a trillion dollars a year on interest payments alone. Furthermore, after the Ukraine war began, Russia was essentially cut out of the dollar system. This was the first time since the Cold War that a significant economy had been excluded, but it did not crush Russia. In fact, Russia was able to function and even win on the battlefield. All of these factors and more have stretched the U.S. system to existential limits. A new strategy for U.S. imperialism is urgently needed, which is why Trump is tearing apart the status quo.

Part Three:
The Coming Economic Crisis

Trump’s tariffs are already wreaking havoc on the stock market. Financial instability is sure to burst the massive asset bubble, which has been building up since 2008. Our 2023 International Conference document expected it to burst sooner (see “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 68, September 2023). However, further speculation on AI and big tech kept it going a little longer. But now the AI boom is drying up and the new U.S. administration is not spending huge amounts like before. An economic crisis, or at least a major recession, is a certainty.

An economic downturn will exacerbate all current economic and political trends. We cannot know exactly how it will unfold, but two broad scenarios are possible: either the whole postwar order will shatter, ending the dominance of the dollar, or else a majority of countries will once again accept giving away a pound of flesh to save the U.S. system, which would continue on an even more oppressive basis. Our belief is that the latter option is much more likely, at least in the short term.

As seen in 2008, a financial meltdown will not push countries to opt out of the dollar. When crisis hits, dollars go back to the U.S. “safe haven,” starving everyone else of dollars. And who has their hands on the dollar tap? The U.S. rulers, of course. Now that the U.S., which remains the biggest consumer market, has imposed tariffs on everyone, it has gained more leverage. This is why on the world scene an economic crisis will not undermine Trump but will in fact strengthen his hand against everyone else.

Banks in Europe, Japan, Canada and other U.S. junior partners will need massive cash inflows to stave off collapse. They will turn to the U.S., which will demand a price in the form of austerity and concessions for American companies. Much has been said about the possibility of the U.S. imposing a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” on its allies—a plan to force them to buy new U.S. Treasuries with long-term commitment and lower interest rates, increase their defense spending (by buying U.S.-made weapons) and help devalue the dollar to boost U.S. exports. In other words, to sabotage their economies in order to shore up the U.S.’s while financing the U.S. deficit at a much cheaper rate. Confronted with a crisis, the pressure on U.S. allies will increase tenfold to accept such a deal.

In the Global South, investments and capital will be sucked out. A crisis will also burst the smaller bubbles, like the one currently driving the stock market in India. Remittance money will decrease. This is money sent from migrants working abroad (often in the West), constituting huge sources of revenue and liquidity. (For example, remittances account for 8.5 percent of GDP in the Philippines and 4.5 percent in Mexico. Many other countries face the same situation.) The lack of dollars will be acutely felt, particularly to pay the debt which, in dozens of countries, is at an all-time high. The IMF will step in with “debt-restructuring” programs, which come at the expense of government spending, state-owned assets, protectionist barriers and national revenue.

Many of these countries are already at a breaking point. In Mexico, 70 percent of the population receives financial support from the state, which often prevents starvation. A crisis will likely ax many such state-sponsored social programs. In India, only 10 percent of its 1.4 billion inhabitants have money to spend while 90 percent live from hand to mouth. A further squeeze is bound to be explosive, including by inflaming caste, religious and national divisions that are already rife. In South Africa, where unemployment already stands at 32 percent, the U.S. has made it a point to crush the country, and a crisis there is sure to further asphyxiate its economy.

These are countries in which the U.S. and the West more broadly have economic interests. They will want to bail them out, surely at an extortionate price. However, there is a layer of countries that the imperialists have no qualms about leaving in a state of utter chaos, as long as they can pillage resources and no force emerges capable of uniting everyone against their plunder. This is the case for much of East and Central Africa and certain countries of the Middle East. Already torn by famine and wars, a crisis will wipe out the meager revenues they obtain from the world market. It is expected that economic pressure there will further fuel bloody regional and ethnic wars as well as ever-larger flows of refugees.

The state of dire misery existing throughout the Global South (minus China and Russia) will provoke social explosions and put tremendous pressure on the regimes. The weak national bourgeoisies will be increasingly forced to oscillate between aligning themselves fully behind U.S. designs or leaning on the anti-imperialist sentiment of the masses. In either case, this would mean an increasing tendency toward bonapartism and even possible coups.

As for Russia, its transformation into a war economy has enabled growth despite its exclusion from the dollar system. The regime of the oligarchs is relatively solid, particularly given its imminent victory in Ukraine. But a crisis will crash the price of oil, one of Russia’s main exports, and inevitably create difficulty there too. However, Russia’s real trouble will likely start after the Ukraine war, when war production stops and tens of thousands of soldiers are demobilized.

One of the biggest questions posed by a coming crisis is what will China do? As we have seen, back in 2008 the CPC leadership effectively propped up the dollar system by purchasing massive amounts of U.S. Treasuries. As the U.S. will need to once again put the money presses to use, it is likely that they will again demand that China contribute to stabilizing the U.S.-led world economy. With the U.S. openly seeking to strangle China, this would seem unthinkable. However, the Communist Party bureaucracy is a conservative force, interested in its own stability and privileges and caught between a huge working class and U.S. imperialism. Therefore it is likely that it will want to save the dollar system in a time of crisis. We cannot know exactly how this will proceed or if the CPC will be forced into a more confrontational stance. But one should never underestimate the determination of Stalinist bureaucracies to seek accommodation with world imperialism.

These projections are based on the short-term impacts a crisis will likely have, as the U.S.’s control of the world’s reserve currency and of capital flows will serve to strengthen its hand. But this will be true only initially. The world is not the same as in 2008. The U.S.’s hand is weaker as it faces growing challenges, and the price it must demand to shore up the dollar system is higher. The extortion of the world through the dollar system depends, above all, on the willingness of the empire’s junior imperialist partners to accept their subordinate role in exchange for certain privileges; on the lack of alternatives for others; and on sheer coercion for the rest. In the medium and long term, any one of these forces could, in various ways, break from the dollar system. This would not automatically be a progressive development. It can only be progressive if it advances the struggle of the international working class against the entire imperialist system.

Part Four:
The Ukraine War

No other issue has generated as much hysteria among liberals as Trump’s approach to the Ukraine war and the shift in policy his administration is implementing. Many have screamed betrayal, arguing that Trump is capitulating to another autocrat and abandoning Europe, which now stands alone as the bearer of freedom, democracy and the values of the postwar order. Here again, to understand anything, the first step is to put aside the liberal frenzy.

Contrary to the claims of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, whose reports on the military situation are uncritically parroted by the liberal media and politicians, Ukraine is losing this war. Zelensky’s Kursk adventure has ended in a complete disaster and, throughout the front line, the army is facing shortages of men and weapons and is getting destroyed. Meanwhile, Russian forces are advancing everywhere, the size of its army is increasing and a major offensive appears in preparation. While the Ukrainian economy is in ruins, Russia’s economy has been growing despite heavy sanctions, and has been reorganized for massive military production. Furthermore, supplying Ukraine for a high-intensity industrial war has depleted Western weapons stocks at an unsustainable rate. A stark light has been shed on the West’s industrial impotence: while all of NATO can collectively produce 1.2 million artillery shells a year, Russia alone produces over three million.

From the standpoint of Washington, which has been by far the biggest donor of military aid, the policy of complete hostility to Russia and support to Ukraine until total victory has been a costly failure. The new administration is simply shifting U.S. policy in line with this reality. The U.S. has no vital interests in Ukraine. While Russia does represent a geostrategic challenge to American designs, its small economy is in no way a threat on the level of China. This is why for many in the new U.S. administration, three years of war in Europe have been a waste of resources that could have been put to better use in the Pacific. The Ukraine war has also strengthened ties between Russia and China, which is a problem for U.S. interests. For all these reasons, it makes sense for the U.S. to seek not only to bring the war to an end—even if this means making concessions to Russia—but also to achieve an economic and political rapprochement with Russia. This could potentially bring Russia closer to the Western fold and away from China, or at a minimum neutralize it as a nuisance.

From the Kremlin’s standpoint, Ukraine—a border country that has historically been in Russia’s sphere of influence—is of vital interest. The hue and cry over Russian expansionism masks the reality that for the last three decades it has been NATO and the EU that have expanded all the way to Russia’s borders, despite its constant objections. What Putin wants, and what he has long sought, is an agreement with the West to secure its western border, end NATO’s expansionism and assure Russia’s sway over Ukraine. This is why he has carefully welcomed Trump’s overture. That said, the Russian ruling class has no interest in embracing the West and cutting its ties with China. On the contrary, from their standpoint an agreement with the U.S. would be beneficial not only for ending NATO’s expansion but also for enabling them to play China against the U.S. and vice versa, reaping benefits from both sides to develop its economy.

Recent developments have shown how those on the left who sided with either Ukraine or Russia have been totally wrong. The main argument of those socialists who supported Russia has been that its victory would be a blow to the U.S., and therefore a progressive development. The coming Russian victory clearly shows the bankruptcy of such a position. While the U.S. is indeed losing the war, it is not fighting directly but through a proxy. This key feature has been dismissed as irrelevant by pro-Russian “socialists.” Yet this is what enables the U.S. to now simply shift its stance, throw its proxy under the bus and seek a deal with Russia to jointly plunder Ukraine. As a result, whatever the content of a future U.S.-Russia deal (if there is one), Russia’s war will not have advanced the struggle against imperialism in Eastern Europe, nor will it have weakened the U.S. in a fundamental way. Rather, the result will be the oppression of Ukraine by Russia, the rearmament of Europe and a shift in the U.S. focus toward confronting China—all reactionary and predictable developments.

Equally bankrupt have been those socialists who supported Ukraine. Their main argument has been the need to defend the sovereignty of a small nation against foreign aggression. But Ukraine’s sovereignty could only be defended against its government. For years, the regime in Kyiv has pursued a policy of oppressing the Russian-speaking minority—roughly 20 percent of the population—while waging war to retain Crimea and the eastern regions that clearly sought secession. At the same time, it has aligned itself with NATO, the EU and the U.S., ceding its military and economic sovereignty to those imperialists. The result was to transform Ukraine into a Western colony while guaranteeing total hostility from Russia, providing it with the perfect war claims. Zelensky’s disastrous strategy of tying Ukraine’s fate to the U.S.—best shown in his humiliation in the Oval Office—has tragically confirmed Henry Kissinger’s words: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” Those socialists who defended the Ukrainian government, critically or not, ended up as useful idiots in the imperialists’ games.

The only socialist policy in such a reactionary war was and still is to fight for the fraternization of Ukrainians and Russians, based on unconditional opposition to Western imperialism and its Ukrainian puppets and opposition to Great Russian chauvinism, coupled with defense of the rights of Russian minorities. This is the only course that can unite the working class of the entire region. This is how Russia’s encirclement by the imperialists can be broken in a progressive manner, how Ukraine’s freedom can be secured and how all of Eastern Europe can be freed from national oppression. This perspective was always going to face significant obstacles, yet it remains the only progressive path. The failure of the workers movement to adopt an independent policy—with its leaders falling behind either the imperialists and their puppets or the Russian oligarchs—has now made certain that the war’s outcome will be a disaster for workers in Ukraine, Russia and all of Europe.

Negotiations between Russia and the U.S. are still at an early stage and could last for months. While the U.S. wishes to conclude the war as soon as possible, Russia is in no rush. It is winning on the battlefield, preparing new offensives and seeing little need to make concessions. This will prove problematic for the U.S., which will want to limit the damage. Furthermore, the U.S. must manage its Ukrainian proxy, which it has bolstered for over a decade by fueling Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who are not known for their conciliatory stance toward Russia. So far, the Ukrainians have done everything to derail negotiations. Thus, the question is not if Zelensky will be overthrown but when, how and by whom. The U.S. must also manage the hostility of most of the European establishment as well as a part of the American political class.

Given the inertia in the West, it might be that Russia will need to make further gains through a major breakthrough on the front line, including tanks reaching Kyiv, a prospect that is no longer far-fetched. Then the path would be cleared for a U.S.-Russia deal on Russia’s terms. This would include securing Russian control of the four eastern regions of Ukraine, the removal of the Zelensky regime, the end of NATO’s eastward expansion and of its support to what is left of Ukraine. Some sanctions may be lifted, although it remains to be seen if trade relations with Europe will get back to pre-2014 levels. In exchange, the U.S. would likely lean on Russia to help it elsewhere, for example, pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

However, there is a more fundamental consequence of a potential U.S.-Russia security agreement: to squash Europe into a reactionary arrangement. Neither the U.S., the master of Europe, nor Russia has an interest in European instability. That has always been a bad omen for Russia, and the U.S. needs a stable Europe in order to focus its attention elsewhere. Russia, with its military might, abundant natural resources and reservoir of religious conservatism could very well find common cause with American finance capital and its newly dominant right-wing Christian establishment in squeezing liberal Europe. A rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia would serve as a conservative and reactionary stabilizing factor in Europe.

This was Russia’s role in European politics throughout the 19th century: a bastion of reaction which Britain, the great power of the time, could lean on to stabilize Europe. While the situation today is obviously different, an American-Russian agreement defining European politics would be in the interests of both Russia and U.S. imperialism, particularly as the latter is pushing a fundamental political realignment on the continent.

Part Five:
Europe and America

Trump’s negotiations with Russia, his humiliation of Zelensky in the Oval Office, the imposition of tariffs and J.D. Vance’s speech denouncing the European liberal establishment as the “enemy within” have sent shockwaves throughout Europe. In the space of a few weeks, the European order based on globalization, free trade, liberal values and hostility to Russia—a system built for years under U.S. leadership and guaranteed by its military might—came under constant attacks from the White House. Panic is gripping the European elites. For years, liberal politicians who had become increasingly hated by their own population could at least take comfort in the fact that they remained in the good graces of the world’s superpower. No more. Trump’s new administration has marked the death of liberalism throughout the U.S. empire, making liberal, “freeloading” Europe a prime target for political realignment.

The Trump administration needs to extract more from Europe in order to shore up the U.S. position, particularly in regard to defense spending and trade conditions. Far from abandoning Europe, the U.S. needs it to consolidate a more aggressive anti-China bloc that can better contribute to U.S. security. The issue, however, is that for this to happen Europe needs a massive realignment. European institutions and governing structures were built to serve the past U.S. liberal order. The European Union—a huge bureaucratic apparatus tied to countless liberal institutions—has entrenched economic interests in the status quo. And Europe is still led by politicians like Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, Ursula von der Leyen, Keir Starmer and Pedro Sánchez. These leaders, whose careers were built in the old liberal order and who are clinging to it, in many ways represent the huge political gap between the old, post-Soviet Europe and the new, right-wing U.S. administration.

After Trump humiliated Zelensky, Kaja Kallas, EU head of foreign policy and über anti-Russia warmonger, declared that “the free world needs a new leader” and “it’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.” Countless liberal commentators and politicians have similarly called for Europe to finally chart its own path, independent of the U.S., to uphold liberal values, confront Russia and prop up Ukraine longer. This only underlines how Europe’s political leadership lives in a parallel world. In reality, all major European economies are in a miserable state of stagnation. With the partial exception of Germany, they have lost almost all their industry, relying largely on finance, services and tourism. Throughout the continent, infrastructure is crumbling and the population is aging. On the military level, Europe is currently unable to sustain any sort of conventional war. Its small and outdated armies are dependent on American air power, logistics, intelligence, supplies and command systems for any serious operations.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk might repeat that Europe taken as a whole is stronger than Russia, but this does not make it true. Europe is balkanized into various countries with contending interests. What liberals always forget is that it was U.S. economic and military domination over Europe since 1945 that made European unity possible and prevented the continent from tearing itself apart. The ambitions of European leaders to take over leadership of the “free world,” to build a “coalition of the willing” or to achieve “strategic autonomy” are nothing but fantasies. Europe is completely dependent on the U.S., both militarily and economically. In the short term, and probably even in the medium term, Europe, or any single European power, will not and cannot play any role independent of the U.S.

What lies behind the bravado, fierce declarations and denial of reality in European ruling circles is an anomaly that has been reinforced over time. There is a growing contradiction between Europe’s political superstructure—its institutions, ideology, bureaucracy, politicians, etc.—and its actual economic base, i.e., its state of utter weakness and dependence on the U.S. Sooner or later, this contradiction must be resolved, and Europe will have no choice but to discard its dated liberalism and fall in line behind the U.S. The rise of right-wing populist parties represents this growing trend (e.g., the AfD in Germany, the RN in France, Reform UK in Britain, the FPÖ in Austria, Meloni in Italy—who is already in power). The U.S. administration favors those, not so much out of agreement on policies but because they are the one force that can break through the liberal status quo in a manner best serving U.S. interests.

So far, the political center in Europe is holding. The fact that many politicians feel strong enough to (partially) resist U.S. demands and (halfheartedly) defend the liberal status quo reflects entrenched economic interests. These are, first and foremost, the European capitalists who have greatly benefited from the arrangement of the last three decades, are resistant to change and may not fully trust the emerging right-wing parties yet. Secondly, there is the inertia of European institutions and bureaucracy. Thirdly, in the advanced European countries there is still a sizable middle class. Often tied to European institutions and enjoying a relatively high standard of living, this layer serves as the main base of support for centrist parties. This applies to Britain, too. Formalists on the left might robotically repeat that the Labour Party is a bourgeois workers party. While this retains a grain of truth, the reality is that currently Labour’s base of support is the urban middle class, not workers.

The trend described above was seen in the February German elections. While support for the right-wing AfD increased substantially (particularly among workers), the traditional parties retained a vast majority of the electorate, showing that German liberalism is not completely dead yet. The surge in support for the Left Party, celebrated by most of the far left internationally, came in fact mostly from ex-Green petty-bourgeois voters and must be interpreted as a defense of the liberal status quo. In Germany as elsewhere, popular support to right-wing, anti-establishment parties has come mainly from the working class, particularly its lower strata but also in layers of the labor aristocracy.

Thus, Europe continues to be dominated by “transition” politicians—Macron, Starmer, Merz & Co.—who have one foot in defense of the liberal European order and the other in right-wing reaction, as they try to cover their right flank. This has the usual result of dissatisfying everyone. These governments, which have come to power in order to block the “far right,” are utterly discredited with the population and living on borrowed time. But their downfall and replacement by the right, which is almost inevitable at this point, will not be a peaceful and linear process but the result of acute political and economic crises. On paper, elections in Britain and Germany are years away. Macron still has two years before the next presidential elections, and the French establishment has just banned Marine Le Pen from running. The liberals will use every trick to stay in power. But given U.S. demands for a political realignment, as well as the gap between Europe’s economic base and the ideas and ambitions of its political class, this situation cannot last.

The coming economic crisis will lay bare the completely rotting character of European economies. It is expected that an economic shock, combined with major austerity measures, will hit the middle and working class quite hard. The need for rearmament also comes at the expense of the welfare system, which remains sizable in some countries. Massive discontent, which already exists, will grow. This will generate significant political crises that will make impossible the continued rule of halfway house politicians, who will have to cede their place to more decisive rulers.

Of course, in European countries oppressed by imperialism, political dynamics are different. Serbia and Greece have been rocked by mass popular movements against their governments that were fueled by anger at imperialist pillage. Greece in particular already went through a massive crisis in the 2010s that devastated large sectors of the population. In these countries, the petty bourgeoisie is much more impoverished, as is the working class. An economic crisis and austerity will have a much more explosive character, making the threat of bonapartist rule more potent. On the other hand, we can look at Hungary to get an idea of where Europe is heading politically. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a reactionary Christian close to Russia and the U.S., has long been the bête noire of the EU for his opposition to liberalism. Today, however, he is ahead of the times.

Given the current position of the working class, an economic downturn will most likely dampen rather than encourage militancy, at least in its initial stage. A rise in unemployment and the devastation of living standards in the working and middle classes does not provide a good context for working-class struggles. Furthermore, an economic crisis will accelerate current political dynamics, which favor right-wing, anti-establishment parties. This is because for the last decade, the left has miserably failed to impose itself as a force because of its support to the liberal status quo, pushing growing numbers of workers to the right. Many workers have seen their living standards devastated and, given the left’s embrace of liberalism, have found an outlet for their anger in anti-immigrant poison.

There were also significant trade-union struggles in 2022-23, like the pension movement in France and the strike wave in Britain. These were important opportunities to tilt the balance of forces in favor of the working class and position the workers movement as a force against the status quo. But all these movements were led to defeat by their own leaders, who refused to organize a real confrontation with the ruling class. More often than not, those traitors were supported by the far left. In Greece recently, we have witnessed another missed opportunity with the Tempe movement, in which the leaders of the workers movement proved to be utterly impotent. These betrayals greatly undermined the position of the working class and further fueled the right-wing shift.

What will also fuel right-wing parties is that the left in Europe continues to cling to liberalism, the EU, the “Green” agenda or arms for Ukraine (many of them now openly support rearmament)—all things that workers hate. And the left continues to join the “popular fronts” of the ruling class to block the right, whose only effect is to strengthen the right’s appeal among workers and further discredit the left. The one left-wing force from the 2010s upsurge that has not yet completely melted is Mélenchon and La France Insoumise. Yet they also cling to the dead weight of the Parti Socialiste and embrace the anti-RN front républicain, things that only help the RN win working-class votes.

In this difficult context, the task of communists is to struggle to put the working class in a better defensive position. This is not the time for reckless offensives. Massive attacks are on the horizon and the workers movement in Europe is weak and divided. Its organizations, a shadow of what they used to be, are hollowed out. Trade unions are often stratified in tiers and craft divisions and limited to sections of the labor aristocracy. Communists must be at the vanguard of the struggle to break down these divisions, strengthen workers’ organizations and lead defensive actions. At every step, this must be done in complete opposition to the trade-union bureaucracy. Communists must forge caucuses fighting for a communist strategy to lead the unions, one that is able to connect workers’ immediate demands with the need for working-class power, all the while exposing the treachery of union bureaucrats. This is how communists can regain authority in the working class and undermine the appeal of the right wing.

There might be feeble remnants of liberal movements against the right stirring for a little while. These will be the last gasps of a dying breed. As the liberal bourgeoisie gets squeezed by the U.S. and the petty bourgeoisie is increasingly ground down, there will no longer be the basis for mass liberal movements for democracy, immigrant rights, etc. An ever-smaller layer of leftists will try to keep these alive, further discrediting the left in the working class (as we are seeing now in the U.S.). We must intervene in those milieus, urging those leftists to wake up, ditch liberalism and turn to the working class. We must fight to rebuild movements in defense of immigrants and Muslims and against the right, but on a different basis—away from the dead end of liberalism and onto a working-class and anti-imperialist basis, including against the EU.

Those tasks also apply to oppressed countries (the Balkans, Eastern Europe, etc.). There the task is to tie the struggle against immiseration with the fight to free the country from imperialist oppression. This also requires continually exposing the misleadership of the masses, be they nationalists, Stalinists or union bureaucrats, for their conciliation of the U.S. and the EU or for their refusal to connect the struggle of the masses to the foreign oppression of the country. That is the only way to unite all the oppressed and national minorities and win workers and youth to a class-struggle strategy for national and social emancipation.