United States, Europe, Russia, China: the great imperialist upheaval - what kind of world are we going to have to face?

The images of Zelensky being humiliated by Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, mocked for his tie-less uniform, asked to say thank you, then ordered to shut up, have raised a wave of outrage across the world.

That relations between the different parts of the ruling class are characterised by domination, oppression and intimidation is nothing new. However, they usually keep their gangster ways behind the scenes, away from the cameras and prying ears, whereas Trump makes a spectacle of them for all to see.

But the reason for the shockwave is actually elsewhere, much deeper than the simple vulgarity displayed in broad daylight. This event has thrown in the face of the world the images of a major historical upheaval, what the media have called "the great reversal of alliances." Behind this abandonment of Ukraine by the United States lies nothing less than a break with Europe and a rapprochement with Russia. The structure of the world since 1945 is being swept away.

The reaction in Europe was immediate. From Paris to London, summits followed one another; an 800 billion euro plan to ‘rearm Europe’ was voted through; France, Germany and the United Kingdom loudly and clearly affirmed the need to develop a war economy in the face of the new Russian threat, now that American military protection seems to have lapsed.

Since then, in every country in the world, there has been a succession of speeches warning of the need to accept new sacrifices, because according to all the bourgeoisies, across all borders, we will have to arm ourselves more to protect the peace (sic!). India, for example, has just announced a major project to develop its military industry in order to face up to Chinese ambitions throughout Asia.

“Capitalism carries war within it, just as a cloud carries a storm," said Jean Jaurès from the podium one evening in July 1914, on the eve of the First World War. This same prospect of war is on everyone's mind today. For the working class, the near future is increasingly frightening. What new catastrophe is approaching? The invasion of Europe by Russia? A military confrontation between the United States and China, or between India and China, or between Israel and Iran? A Third World War?

The role of revolutionary minorities is precisely to succeed in discerning, amid the noise and fury, amid the daily lies, the incessant manipulation and propaganda, the reality of the historical development in progress. Because yes, the future promises to be most difficult for the working class! We must prepare for it. But no, it is not the Third World War that threatens, nor even the invasion of Europe. It is a barbarism that is less frontal and general, more devious and creeping, but just as dangerous and murderous.

On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, heralding the end of the USSR, which was officially recognised on 25 December 1991. To understand the current dynamic, we need to start with this historic event.

The end of the blocs, the explosion of the ‘every man for himself’ mentality, the rise of China

With the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the Western bloc lost its raison d'être, and the USA’s mortal enemy for more than fifty years, Russia, was considerably weakened. The bourgeoisie of the world's leading power immediately grasped the new historical situation that was opening up: the world divided into two imperialist blocs was over, the discipline that was necessary to maintain the cohesion of each bloc was over, the submission of America's allies to protect themselves from the appetites of the Russian ogre was over. The time had come for fragile alliances, for changing sides depending on the circumstances of each conflict, for the explosion of the ‘every man for himself’ mentality. Europe in particular, which since the end of the Second World War had been at the centre of the East-West battle, found itself freed from this stranglehold. As for the most solid and ambitious nations, the place of Russia, the number 2, the great adversary of America, was up for grabs.

The American bourgeoisie therefore reacted immediately: “We find ourselves today at an exceptional and extraordinary moment... a rare opportunity to move towards a historic period of cooperation... a new world order can emerge: a new era, less threatened by terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace.” These words of US President George H. W. Bush during his address to Congress on 11 September 1990 have remained engraved in our memories. At the same time, Tomahawks launched from American aircraft carriers and Abrams tanks were crushing Iraq in the name of a ‘new world order’, ‘cooperation’, ‘justice’ and ‘peace’.

With this first Gulf War, which caused nearly 500,000 deaths, the United States had a dual objective: to carry out a real demonstration of military force to dampen the growing imperialist ardour of all the other nations, in particular their former allies in the Western bloc, and to force them all to participate in the intervention in Iraq, to obey the US godfather.

The result? In 1991, war broke out in Yugoslavia, with France, Great Britain and Russia supporting Serbia, the United States choosing Bosnia and Germany Slovenia and Croatia. Germany, which was seeking to find a direct route to the Mediterranean, was already displaying its new ambitions. In 1994, the war in Rwanda broke out, with France on the side of the Hutus and their genocide, and the United States on the side of the Tutsis and their recapture of power.

These five years, 1990-1994, alone summarise the whole imperialist dynamic that was to follow and that we have been experiencing for more than three decades now. The ‘Anti-terrorist’ operation in Afghanistan, second Gulf War, interventions in Libya, Yemen, Syria... the result is always the same:

- first, a demonstration of American force, whose military power is unrivalled;

- then, endless chaos, an inability to regulate and stabilise the defeated region;

- finally, an exacerbation of imperialist tensions at the global level, with each nation increasingly challenging the hegemony that the United States wants to continue to impose.

The United States, the world's leading power, has also become the leading generator of the ‘new world disorder’.

As for the objective of preventing another great power from emerging and challenging them, the United States has been successful up to a point:

- Against Russia, by establishing more and more military forces on the lands of former Russian satellites;

- Against Japan, by waging a veritable targeted trade war against it and reducing it to economic stagnation for more than thirty-five years. In 1989, Lawrence Summers, then US Secretary of the Treasury, declared: “Japan represents a greater threat to the United States than the USSR”;

- Against Germany, which was allowed to develop its economy but had to restrict its military ambitions.

However, a new power has managed to rise despite everything: China. The ‘factory of the world’, a true global economic powerhouse, which the United States also needs, China's imperialist appetites are becoming increasingly sharp, to the point of claiming to be capable of one day taking the place of the world's leading power.

That is why, as early as 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the adoption by the United States of the “strategic pivot to Asia”, a vision placing “Asia at the heart of American policy”, taking the form of a military, economic and diplomatic commitment by the United States with the aim of increasing its presence and influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The following year, Barack Obama confirmed this reorientation of American forces towards Asia under the name of “rebalancing the world”.

The Chinese response was not long in coming. In 2013, it officially displayed its new global imperialist ambitions. In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced the “project of the century”: the construction of a “New Silk Road”, a series of maritime and rail links between China, Europe and Africa, passing through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Djibouti and Somaliland. This project encompasses more than 68 countries representing 4.4 billion inhabitants and 40% of the world's GDP!

The war in Ukraine: weaken Russia, target China, coerce Europe

By attempting to invade Ukraine on 22 February 2022, Russia fell into a trap. The United States deliberately pushed Russia into this war by planning to expand the presence of NATO forces on Ukrainian territory, on the Russian border, which they knew would be completely intolerable for the Kremlin. The objective? To drag Russia into a quagmire, a dead end. No war of occupation since 1945 has been successful, regardless of the invader. The United States knows something about this from the war in Vietnam.

This was a long-planned scheme. One after the other, all the presidents since 1990, Bush senior, Clinton, Bush Junior, Obama, Trump, Biden, have pursued the same goal of establishing NATO in the countries of Eastern Europe.

From 2022 until Trump's return, the United States sufficiently informed and armed Ukraine to ensure that the war would last, that the Russians would be neither vanquished nor victorious, that they would remain there, trapped, sacrificing the ‘life forces of the nation’ at the front and wearing out the entire economic fabric at the rear.

The United States has pulled off a three-pronged masterstroke here. Because it was basically China that was targeted by the manoeuvre, Russia being its main military ally. This war has also meant a halt to the progress of the ‘New Silk Road’. And the United States took the opportunity to weaken Europe, first and foremost Germany, which is heavily dependent on markets to the East and on Russian gas.

At the end of 2024, the American imperialist reorientation towards Asia as a new ‘pivot point’, initiated in 2011, thus began to have a serious impact on the world's equilibrium:

- According to the experts, China was to become the world's leading power in 2020, then 2030, then 2040, now 2050... when they don't simply go back on the advent of this prognosis. All the signals are indeed turning red for China: slowing economic growth, a property crisis, paralysis of the Silk Road construction sites... even the goal of catching up militarily with the United States is only moving further away with a ‘defence’ budget three times lower than its competitor, and this every year!

- Despite this underwhelming performance, China has nonetheless grown in power while Europe, a crucial ally of the United States against the USSR for more than fifty years, has lost some of its geostrategic importance, becoming above all a fierce economic competitor and a supporter of dissenting, even enemy, countries during armed conflicts. The speech given by the French minister De Villepin at the UN on 14 February 2003, in which he refused to be involved in the military intervention in Iraq, remains symbolic of those European countries that are increasingly standing up to the United States: “In this temple of the United Nations, we are the guardians of an ideal, we are the guardians of conscience. The heavy responsibility and immense honour that are ours must lead us to prioritise peaceful disarmament. And it is an old country, France, an old continent like mine, Europe, that is telling you this today”. The latest events at the beginning of 2025 definitively sealed the break, a break that will greatly accelerate global chaos.

The Trump acceleration

“Look, let's be honest, the European Union was designed to piss off the United States”: here, twenty-two years later, in the words of Donald Trump, is the response of the American bourgeoisie to De Villepin and the French bourgeoisie.

The American president is a megalomaniac fool. The propaganda machine is taking advantage of this state of affairs, visible to all, to blame him for all the rot, barbarism and irrationality that are developing today. However, it is no coincidence that a megalomaniac fool has become the head of the world's leading power. Trump is the product of the madness and irrationality that are increasingly infecting the entire global capitalist system. In this respect, his presidency does not break with the policies pursued before him, it prolongs them, accelerates them, takes them to their peak. Trump's policy is just an unmasked caricature of the policy of the entire bourgeoisie to which he belongs.

Has Europe lost its geostrategic importance? Then Trump takes the consequences to the extreme. In his eyes, the old continent is nothing more than an economic competitor, so it's time to throw agreements and alliances in the bin, time to throw the nuclear shield in the bin, and long live customs barriers with extravagant tax increases. One of the aims of the end of American military protection is to force all the countries of Europe to waste part of their economic strength on developing their military strength.

Is China the main enemy to be defeated? So let's make Clinton and Obama's ‘pivot point’ work to the end: Russia must be wrenched away from China, even if it means sacrificing Ukraine; the Panama Canal must be controlled since China intends to use it for its ‘New Silk Road’; Greenland must be pre-empted since China has its eye on the Arctic. The North Pole is currently one of the planet's hot spots: Russia, China, Canada and the United States all aspire to dominate this area. China has also declared its intention to open a “new polar silk road”!

Thus, behind Trump's wildest statements lies the pursuit of the central objectives of the entire American bourgeoisie: to weaken China, to definitively prevent it from ever being able to claim the place of the world's leading power.

Trump's approach is simply much more aggressive, chaotic and irrational than that of his predecessors; he is the epitome of the aggressiveness, chaos and irrationality of the current historical period! This can sometimes lead to some success. On 7 February 2025, at the end of his meeting with the American Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Panamanian President José Raul Mulino announced that he would not extend the cooperation with China. Beijing immediately declared that it “deeply regretted” this step. “China strongly opposes the use of pressure and coercion by the United States to undermine and undermine cooperation,” said Lin Jian, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

But, exceptions aside, Trump's way of doing things, a product of the world's chaos, is in turn becoming an active factor and accelerator of that same chaos.

Trump and his clique direct the economic and imperialist policy of the world's leading power in the same way they manage their business: they look for ‘great deals’ with no long-term plan – they have to pay off, ‘now and immediately’. The consequences are obviously catastrophic.

By abandoning Ukraine, Trump has told the world: the word of the American state is worthless, you cannot trust us. Moreover, Trump and his clique are not seeking to establish international alliances, but one-off bilateral agreements, valid ‘right now’. India, South Korea and Australia are now particularly worried and suspicious of their ‘American friend’. Canada is moving closer to Europe, whose commitments seem more reliable.

Even more seriously, by abandoning Europe, Trump has definitively severed the ties that remained after 1990. The consequences for Europe are not yet foreseeable, but whatever path is taken, it will prove harmful for the United States: either a strengthening of the cohesion of the main European powers against the United States, with increased trade war and a development of the European armed force, or an even more exacerbated rise of the ‘every man for himself’ within Europe, with a European Union that partially disintegrates, powers that strengthen their national war economy to be able to play their own cards wherever the opportunity arises. The most likely scenario is that the two dynamics will coexist, depending on the conflicts and corners of the globe at stake. But, in all these cases, the United States will face an imperialist world that will be even more hostile and less stable and less controllable.

And all for what? Trump and his clique are not even certain of winning Russia over. In fact, it is impossible. Trump has driven a wedge between China and Russia, who have already been distrusting each other for a long time. China occupies Russian land rich in minerals against the Kremlin's will. Russia went to war in Ukraine without Beijing's blessing. This has been the case with all imperialist ‘alliances of convenience’ since 1990: they are fragile and changeable. But Trump will never succeed in making Russia his ally. Putin will try to take everything he can from Trump's ‘great deal’, but nothing stable will come out of this ‘shaking up of alliances’.

Fundamentally, after the successive and constant failures of the American bourgeoisie to impose its order and limit the dynamic of every man for himself, Trump has acknowledged the impossibility of halting this reality by openly declaring the ‘war of each against all’ as the true ‘strategy’ of the new American administration.

After Trump... there is no going back

By abandoning Ukraine and Europe and turning towards Russia, Trump has destroyed the meagre foundations of the international order that had survived the fall of the USSR in 1990. And there will be no going back.

Obviously, given the level of amateurism and incompetence of the Trump clique, the current and future failures, the chaos that will develop at the global level, the foreseeable economic and imperialist setbacks for the United States, the American bourgeoisie will try to react and prepare for the post-Trump era. It is in the best interests of the American bourgeoisie to succeed in erasing the escapades and exaggerations of the Trump clique, to reconnect with the highly effective ‘soft power’, and to try to restore credibility to its word and its commitments. But in reality, there will be no going back. Because behind this acceleration of events lies the confirmation and manifestation of the historical impasse that the survival of capitalism represents for society: the next administration may change the form of its policy, not the substance; confidence in the solidity of the American word will not return; the destroyed alliances with Europe will not be re-established, the chaos in Ukraine will not stop, the relationship with Russia will not be pacified[1].

On the contrary, the future is ultimately one of war spreading to the Middle East, probably to Iran, Russia eyeing its neighbouring countries, Moldova for example, and rising tensions in Asia, around Taiwan, between China and India... The future is a global capitalism that is rotting on its feet, wallowing in barbarism, the law of the jungle, the proliferation of warlike conflicts... The future is a war economy that is developing in every country and demands that the working class work harder, work faster, earn less, get less education, receive less healthcare...

Yes, that is the future that capitalism holds in store! The only answer can only be class struggle. The threat of the spread of military barbarism can frighten, paralyse and make people want to be ‘protected’ by ‘their’ state. But that same state will mercilessly attack ‘its own’ workers to increase the pace and develop its war economy. This is the path that the class struggle will take in the years to come: the refusal to tighten their belts even further will lead to massive workers’ struggles, and the development of solidarity, awareness and self-organisation.

Since the “summer of anger” that erupted in the UK in 2022, this series of strikes that lasted several months in all sectors, the working class worldwide has regained the will to fight, to take to the streets, to come together, to discuss, to struggle together. Only this dynamic can offer humanity another future, one in which capitalism is overthrown, its wars, borders and exploitation brought to an end by the proletarian revolution for communism.

And it is up to the revolutionary minorities, to all those searching for real political clarity, to all those who aspire to a different perspective to this decadent and barbaric system, to come together, to discuss, to make the link between the war, the economic crisis and the attacks on the working class, to point out the need to fight as one, as a class.

Gracchus (24/03/2025)

[1] Russia is also fully aware that the American bourgeoisie is already preparing for the post-Trump era, and there is a strong likelihood that the next clique in power will be a product of the United States' historic anti-Russian tradition, making the current pseudo-agreements even more fragile. Russia remains wary of the US.