The Conflict in Europe is Preparation for Imperialist War

Ceasefire Negotiations and the Prospects of Fake Bourgeois Peace

Shortly after his election as president of the United States, the Republican candidate appears to have overturned the entire architecture of foreign and domestic policy pursued by his Democratic predecessors.

The apparatus and institutions of the postwar period, created to ensure free trade and monetary stability, have been challenged and openly denounced.

In particular, “free trade,” a veritable trade dogma for the states of the democratic West, has been denounced by the new administration. This has been done with the risk of aggravating the economic crisis gripping the economies of the various European states.

Thrown (yes, thrown) into panic, the European states see this measure as a dramatic deterioration of their economies, which is precisely based on the export guaranteed by free international trade.

The rules and agreements established in the postwar GATT made the Trente Glorieuses, the famous “thirty glorious years,” possible. But now, they have been shattered by the global crisis of capitalism and the profound change in the balance of power among states.

Likewise, increased financial imbalance has been politically accompanied by the emergence of new vigorous and belligerent regional players: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Brazi, India, and especially the emergence of a new superpower, China. Meanwhile, the old imperialist states are declining.

As far as Europe is concerned, the military alliance system that ensured imperialist peace for all the decades after World War II has simultaneously broken down.

Until yesterday, European states were forced under the protective NATO umbrella. NATO is itself an expression of the powerful US imperialism, and any “defense” from any external aggressor (!) was entrusted to it. Now, the European states are groping for an alternative that can overcome the limitations of their national armies. The certainty that most of the costs of maintaining this huge supranational apparatus will have to fall on their own economies poses a very difficult problem for the band of dreary and incompetent officials governing the so-called United Europe.

These profligate figures seek miraculous recipes for finding financial resources all strictly based on increasing state debt. This is ironic given that strict debt control was an indispensable principle of the financial practices of the EU. Sometimes, this debt control meant social slaughter, which was passed off as a miracle cure for the national economies of Southern Europe.

Likewise, the European States are assiduous about setting up an infamous nuclear deterrent, which was guaranteed ad abundantiam by the US. The only European states that possess nuclear devices are France and the UK. They will never ever share their arsenals with the other states in this new “coalition of the willing,” which the shaky upcoming alliance has been called in the EU, with unintentional humor.

There will be another imperialist war as it is the only way that the US can eliminate its stratospheric debt to the rest of the world. In this impending conflict, there will be fronts on which states will have to take sides. It is on the Western Front that the derelict EU will have to align with, for better or worse.

US imperialism accounted for 40% of the world’s industrial output in 1956. Today, it has seen its relative weight on a global scale steadily decline to just 16.7% in 2018. This percentage continues to decline.

We see the same trend in Russia. Russia,  as a part of the USSR, was worth almost 13% in 1960, yet in 2018 was worth only 4%. This is the same weight as Japan, but Russia today is far behind Japan, Germany, and France in terms of technology.

All the great European powers of yesterday are now mid-sized powers and, like the United States and Russia, are on the road to decline.

In addition, the United States has also been facing major imbalances for several years, not to say decades. One such imbalance is the large budget deficit that by 2024 had exceeded $1.8 trillion, which is enough to make the European states’ $900 billion trade balance deficit look trivial.

To get an idea of the size of the trade deficit, consider that this figure exceeds all Japanese exports ($718 billion in 2023), despite Japan being the world’s fourth largest exporter.

This trade deficit is compounded by a balance of payments deficit. Hence, there arises the need to cut spending and impose customs duties on imports.

The problem is that the trade deficit is a structural fact, and that it causes the offshoring which has allowed American companies to increase their profit rate.

The current US administration is trying to bring this trade deficit under control with both threatened tariffs and incredible tax advantages for companies that set up their production in the territory of the States.

This measure, which abolishes the dogma of the free market and competition—a fiction of financial imperialism—has no chance of reversing the productive decline of the USA in the current stage of the capitalist crisis. This is also because the imposition of 25% tariffs on Mexican products or on processing companies will further destabilize American firms that relocated to low-cost countries to boost their profit rates, which are now drastically collapsing.

It is a fact that in the past twenty-five years, the economic center of gravity has shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

This is where the main economic development for capital has taken place over the past 30 years.

It is the prodigious accumulation of capital in China and Southeast Asia during this period that has allowed global capitalism to survive to the present day and enabled the United States, Japan, and Germany to reap huge excess profits and escape the collapse of the profit rate for a time.

But in this final stage of capitalism, Chinese imperialism is itself affected by the crisis of overproduction.

The result, of course, is the emergence of a fierce competitor and a new global imperialism that challenges American leadership.

And this is the new big problem facing US imperialism.

In short, the US superpower is in decline and its leadership is being challenged by China, the second superpower that will soon surpass the US.

Europe is composed of medium-sized powers that are also in relative decline.

As we have said, the geopolitical center of gravity is shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the United States intends to loosen—but never abandon—its presence in Europe.

Some data on the subject:

in the late 1980s, US forces in Europe numbered 315,000, but after the collapse of the USSR and the disarmament of Europe, the Americans drastically reduced their military presence to the point that in 2019 the US armed forces numbered just 65,000 soldiers.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they rose to 100,000 men.

This is 35,000 military personnel who have been added on a rotational basis.

To reinforce the notion of the need for European defense against alleged Russian expansionism, at a NATO meeting in Warsaw last February, the US Secretary of Defense stated that Europe cannot assume that the presence of American troops on the continent “will last forever.”

This and other claims were reported and exaggerated by the European press. For the sake of its vested interests, the European press must hammer on the need for an appropriation of 800 billion—of course all “in debt”—to be found by sacrificing all social spending.

At this historical stage, it seems clear that for the United States, the goal is to drastically reduce its presence from a theater of operations that has become secondary in order to strengthen its presence in Asia.

American imperialism obviously cannot reduce its military presence in the China Sea, or even afford not to actively support Taiwan, which occupies a strategic position.

If the United States abandoned Taiwan, it would lose all credibility with South Korea and Japan, and with all Asian states in general.

Worse, they would leave the field militarily, politically, and economically open to China, which, today, is America’s main adversary.  Thus, abandoning Taiwan or reducing presence in the China Sea are manifestly impossible events.

That being said, to say that Europe, with all the NATO bases scattered throughout the states and extra-territorial US bases, may be abandoned by the United States, is a stretch.

Previous Democratic administrations have worked vigorously to increase military pressure on Russia. For its part, Russia, after the collapse that culminated in the Yeltsin era, is a “lower-ranking” imperialist power—though one equipped with a formidable nuclear and missile arsenal. However, given the current economic, financial, and productive conditions, the current US administration needs to reestablish relations with Russia both to resolve the conflict in Ukraine—which has been dragging on for three years and has no reasonable way out—and to address other global crises, primarily in the Middle East.

Also, as already mentioned, to stem Chinese expansionism. The crises are multiplying and deepening.

The choice made by a section of the American bourgeoisie, which has prevailed at this moment, was to therefore change its perspective of its massive presence in Europe.

The prospect that America intends to “wrest” Russia from China’s costly embrace, put forward by certain sections of the press, is even more remote and unlikely. China, meanwhile, has made no secret of its desire for Siberia’s riches.

At present, China and Russia’s fates appear to be inextricably linked, although it is not immediately clear how this current “partnership” will evolve into an alliance in the future.

But the “historical vector” that indicates the direction of the two imperialisms, one in decline and one on the rise, would seem to be indisputable.

Our materialist doctrine indicates that the present historical phase is developing in the direction of a general crisis of the capitalist mode of production.

This is a general observation, but in the Russian Federation, this trend, albeit limited in scope, is reinforced by a three-year war.

Catastrophic reports have been circulating for some time about its economy, its finances, and its productive potential.

It is not certain how much of this is the result of Western propaganda predicting Russia’s imminent collapse.

However, public data show a state of general difficulty and a very difficult financial situation.

The rising inflation rate and low interest rates to finance the war effort, alongside the depreciation of the ruble against other currencies—such as the dollar and the Chinese yuan, which currently belongs to one of Russia’s essential partners—are undeniable facts.

Even on a strictly military level, the recent successful counter offensives are losing momentum.

The losses are significant and have forced much more limited advances.

At this stage of the war, the main effort has been focused on the very small area of the Kursk Oblast that was previously invaded. Kursk has today been reduced to a minimal front after the Russian military strategy decided to liquidate it, thereby easing pressure on other areas considered critical. To name just one, operations in the highly critical area of Pokrovsk—a true strategic hub for holding an extensive section of the front line by the exhausted Ukrainian army and a heavily fortified bastion—are almost suspended.

Yet the collapse of that stronghold would truly undermine the entire defensive apparatus of the Donetsk Oblast, and would be an almost fatal blow to Ukraine.

How long Russia’s efforts to maintain the war could last is unknown, even if the current American president has boasted about a “secret report” from the CIA that sets the limit at 2026.

But here we are in the realm of the most vulgar propaganda.

However, the need to put a stop to this is clear, and the extremely difficult talks for a ceasefire are continuing, though with difficulty.

When and how they will end is another question.

The unfortunate Ukrainian state, squeezed between many neighboring wolves ready to take advantage of its dismemberment, seems to have a fate that is already sealed.

The powerless EU, a political and military dwarf, is pushing for rearmament—its not-so-hidden goal being to revive its depleted productive capacity, naturally financed entirely through debt. This follows the blueprint of the United States in the period immediately preceding World War II, which allowed them to unleash their immense power.

But today’s weak and divided Europe is not the powerful America of that time, which was emerging from the general capitalist crisis.

The UK and other European countries have imagined a “coalition of the willing,” which Canada and Turkey could also join. But this fanciful alliance will never achieve military unity, as that presupposes a unified state.

The fantasized “United States of Europe” is a dream—or a nightmare, depending on your point of view—that is totally unachievable, outside of history, impossible to realize by bourgeoisies that have completely exhausted their progressive cycle for centuries and are incapable of going beyond convenient military or economic alliances.

Each is ready to denounce these alliances if better opportunities arise, each is reluctant to submit to anyone but a powerful master who has the strength to keep them in line.

Let’s set aside the hysteria of the Baltic states, three nobodies the confused and wavering situation of the EU has brought to ridiculous visibility. Germany, the UK, and France are heading down the path of rearmament in disarray, without even a shred of a common policy beyond the endlessly reheated line: “we must help Ukraine resist the invader.”

This is very little for those who delude themselves into thinking they represent an alternative to US imperialism, against the Russian Federation and China.

While the bourgeois states prepare for a future of further wars and mourning, the proletarians of Russia and Ukraine are slaughtering each other in a bloody war that is supposedly in the name of the “fatherland.” In reality it is only for the interests of the national bourgeoisie.

The proletarians of Europe are equally oppressed by their bourgeoisies, and will be even more so until the eve of war.

The task of communists is as clear and unambiguous as it was on the eve of 1918: “to transform the war between states into a war between classes.”

The Party does not express any particular inclination towards any of the warring sides, but brands them all as products of the capitalist world, which pits class brothers against each other, brothers beyond national divisions and “homelands.”

That is why we hate with the same hatred all states that fight the “holy war” without distinction. The flag of the communists is not that of any state, but that of proletarian internationalism.