The war in Ukraine has just entered its third year and everything indicates that there will hardly be a fourth, even if Zelensky cries out demanding more help from the US and the EU or Macron launches the bluster of sending troops.
On February 21, the Kyiv Government was forced to withdraw its troops from Avdiivka, in Donbas, in the face of the forceful advance of the Russian army. This setback has once again set off alarms in all Western powers, and voices in favour of an agreement that recognises Russian conquests in Ukraine are multiplying in all areas. The strange idea that economic and military support for the Ukrainian regime can continue indefinitely has been discarded.
Confirming what we pointed out in our last statement, the decisive elements of the imperialist war in Ukraine are the level of development of the productive forces and the internal cohesion of the direct contenders and their international allies.
In both areas, the superiority of the imperialist bloc made up of China, Russia and other countries has been demonstrated in facts. Of course, the US imperialism still retains economic and military power enough to keep striking, trying to stop its own decline. However, after the Great Recession of 2008 and the pandemic; after its humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, this new failure in Ukraine - and the effects of having dragged Europe into this scenario, constitutes a decisive milestone in its decline. The consequences for international relations and the domestic politics of Western countries will be far-reaching.
Genocide in Gaza
The events in Ukraine are unleashing centrifugal effects on the bloc of countries which, until a few years ago, were submissive without discussion to the will of Washington.
The rise of China and its robust productive and export muscle has made numerous countries swing towards Beijing over the last decade and a half. Saudi Arabia's approach is a good example of how an unconditional ally of the United States distances itself seeking not only commercial benefits, but also the protection for its internal security provided by the agreement promoted by Beijing with its traditional arch-enemy, Iran.
NATO countries, such as Turkey, and others with a strong US military presence, like the Philippines, put their own agenda ahead of the interests of the Yankee power.
Perhaps, the best indicator of the maze in which the United States is trapped in this new stage, is represented by its policy towards the genocide that Netanyahu's Zionist Government is committing in Gaza. Israel has depended on American military and economic aid since its founding. In the context of the Cold War with the USSR, US imperialism found in Israel an excellent ally to control the oil and gas reserves of the Middle East and to crush any attempt at revolution in the Arab world. Consequently, the United States flooded Israel with hundreds of billions of dollars to boost its economy and at the same time equip it with enormous military power, including nuclear weapons.
But that help came at a price. The United States decided the Israeli Government’s agenda when it came to carrying out its expansionist and war plans so as not to endanger the geopolitical balance of the region or the stability of its Arab allies. For example, in 1956, when Israel had to withdraw from the occupied Egyptian territories after the invasion of the Suez Canal, or in 1979, when it was forced to accept a peace agreement with Egypt, which obviously satisfactorily met the objectives of Washington's imperialist agenda.
Nowadays things are different. Considering the American defeat in Ukraine, Netanyahu knows perfectly well that he is the only solid ally that Washington has in the region, and he uses that asset thoroughly to impose his genocidal and colonialist policy without conditions or pressure. He openly mocks the hypocritical calls by the US and EU for the Gaza slaughter to be moderated, while demanding their unconditional support. He knows perfectly well that neither the ruling class of the United States nor Europe is going to put any limits on him, as the deplorable resolution of the International Court of Justice has sanctioned.
It is true that many Western governments fear that the wave of mobilizations against the Palestinian genocide that is sweeping the world, could become a factor of internal instability. Or that even Biden sees his re-election threatened by the resounding rejection of a large part of the Democratic electorate to his unconditional support for the Zionist regime. However, American diplomacy no longer has the ability to condition what its allies in Tel Aviv do. That is why Biden supports and will continue to support a supremacist and far-right Zionist government, no matter how many crocodile tears and food packages are thrown at the martyred and starving population of Gaza..
This is the role of the Democratic Party: to deploy an aggressive militarist and imperialist agenda, which strips its leader and those supposed “leftists” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders who trail behind the Democratic establishment. The same nauseating conformity that we see in Spain from the Government of Pedro Sánchez and his greatest cheerleader, Yolanda Díaz.
External failures and their reflection in internal crises
The upcoming United States presidential elections in November will offer us a good measure of the defeat in Ukraine. As we have recently explained, Trump's return points out the consequences of the external failures of US imperialism and an internal social polarisation that continues to grow.
The White House's strategy in the Ukraine war, and its determination to safeguard its supremacy in the old continent against other imperialist actors such as China and Russia, are fuelling new contradictions and divisions in the ruling class. At the moment, financial and military aid to Ukraine is paralyzed by the opposition of the Republicans, who consider that the fundamental factor for the survival of their imperialist power is the economic battle against China and want to pass Ukraine's hot potato to their European allies.
Nevertheless, this political arrangement is also a difficult exit. The destruction carried out by the US in Europe; the fact that the German economy is a mess and the German far-right is advancing with solid steps, creates considerable difficulties for Washington in the immediate future. The nationalist demagoguery of AdF, and that of other far-right formations in Europe, involves an increasingly evident anti-American discourse. This is a good reason why a reactionary, imperialist and anti-communist like Putin, is showing his satisfaction with hardly any concealment.
But let's be specific. Biden's China policy is no different from that pursued under Trump. Furthermore, the Democratic Administration has launched new rounds of trade sanctions and has tried to boycott Chinese advances in key technological sectors. The result has been a complete fiasco. The Economist magazine, the economic bible of neoliberals, recognised in January that the pace of Chinese investment in strategic innovation (Artificial Intelligence, electric cars, renewable energies, etc.) far exceeded that of the United States.
Biden's response to this defeat has been to pass the bill for his decline onto Europe and continue waging an internal class war against the workers. Focusing on the first aspect, the Reduction Inflation Act has as its axis the attempt to attract industries based on the EU to North American territory. And it is succeeding, with Germany as the main loser.
At the end of 2023, the German economy presented a bleak balance [1]. The decline in its GDP by 0.3% or the fall in exports is not the worst data. The most serious aspect is the fall in investment, which in the key sector of the German economy, the manufacturing of machinery and capital goods, has been -3.5%.
A year ago, a survey by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed that one in ten companies in the country were thinking about moving their production to other countries, particularly the United States. This flight of investments, which has only just begun, declares important social upheavals in Germany and throughout Europe.
Join the Revolutionary Left!
The events of recent months fully confirm the perspective that we, the revolutionary communists have explained since the financial crisis of 2008. The decline of the capitalist system, expressed in the death confrontation of the two great imperialist powers of our time, announces that, if the state of things continues, barbarism will spread more rapidly.
Recently, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, declared that “the threat of war may not be imminent, but it is not impossible.” This is the perspective that the capitalists of civilised Europe use to terrorise the population, justify their billion-dollar expenditures on weapons and the militarisation of society.
Are we going to stay with arms crossed when these politicians at the service of high finance and monopolies vilely disregard the lives of millions? Of course not.
In recent years we have witnessed enormous mobilizations, strikes and social uprisings. There is enormous accumulated anger, a discontent that grows and manifests itself as soon as it finds an adequate channel: against the destruction of public education or the health system; against the cost of living, low salaries and labour exploitation; against the environmental catastrophe; the sexist violence that continues to kill and rape us and transphobia; the repression exercised by the State against those who rebel against the existing order; the inhuman and criminal treatment of our immigrant sisters and brothers... and above all with the internationalist movement which denounces the Zionist genocide in Gaza which is taking millions of people to the street all around the world.
Behind each of these reasons for resistance and struggle lies the same cause, a system in decline that can only survive by exploiting workers more and more; irreversibly destroying nature's resources for the sake of obscene profit; promoting wars; spreading social decomposition to guarantee the survival of an irrational order and strengthening the power of the State to ruthlessly crush the struggles of the oppressed.
It is time to draw conclusions from all these events. The aforementioned struggles demonstrate that it is not strength and massiveness that are lacking in the constant outbreaks of rebellion. What is necessary is to unite them to openly confront the enemy common to all of them. Fighting in isolation against each of the consequences of the capitalist crisis is no longer enough. It is necessary to unify all our forces around the only program that can offer a future to Humanity, the program of socialist revolution.
This task, building a combat communist party with a real influence on the working class and youth, cannot be postponed. That is exactly what we communists of the Revolutionary Left fight for every day on every front of the class struggle. And that is why we are calling you to join.
Now is the time. Join the Revolutionary Left!
[1]Alemania confirma una caída del PIB del 0,3% al cierre de 2023
