Western imperialism more divided than ever!
The brutal confrontation that took place at the White House meeting between Trump, his vice president Vance and Ukrainian President Zelensky has become the official certification of the complete defeat of Ukraine, the US and the EU in the war waged against Russia. A row broadcast on live, in which both Trump and Vance have publicly despised Zelensky, accusing him of wanting to provoke World War III by his refusal to give in to Russia.
The Ukrainian president, who has been nothing more than a puppet of US and European imperialism for all these years, tried pathetically to defend himself, but Trump, like a bully who has the upper hand, repeatedly urged him to watch his words. He pointed out that he has no chance of achieving anything, “you have no cards,” and much less of continuing a war for which he has no manpower and which is completely dependent on US military aid.
Finally, the planned press conference, which was supposed to serve to announce the agreement by which half of Ukraine's mineral, rare earth, gas and oil resources were handed over to the US, was abruptly cancelled. Trump declared that he would only receive Zelensky again when he was "ready for peace." This is the language of the colonialist master about the obedient henchmen.
The spectacle that we have witnessed, in the midst of negotiations between the US and Russia to end the war, is unprecedented in history. There is a thing called diplomacy with a very relevant political function: lying to the masses, deceiving them with altruistic ideas and arguments to hide the most predatory ends. But now the diplomatic school is over. The far-right billionaires in power want to make it clear that only they command and, if they encounter resistance, they crush it without hesitation. A good example of the Bonapartist development of the Trumpist regime.
The shock that this meeting has caused in the circles of the European ruling class has been spectacular: it has placed the capitalist EU in the real position of irrelevance that it has in international relations. In Brussels they are understanding that the American president is not going to let them have a say in the peace negotiations, that is, in the sharing of the loot, and he regards them with all possible contempt. He has sent them a clear message: he is willing to blow up the EU to secure areas of influence in specific countries, and he is counting on his allies on the European far right to do so.
In this rotten picture, which reflects the leap that the inter-imperialist struggle has taken, weakening the unity of the Western bloc, we must frame the deplorable messages of the European leaders. Macron, Von Der Leyen and Pedro Sánchez himself have reiterated their support for Ukraine and praised Zelensky's bravery. But this does not change the balance of power: without the enormous American military support, which accounts for more than 50% of Ukrainian defence spending, in ammunition, defence systems and essential intelligence advice, Ukraine could suffer a calamitous collapse.
In any case, we must clear the stage of propaganda and raise the fundamental questions that are on the table. With what room for manoeuvre can the American negotiators go to the meetings with the representatives of Moscow? What kind of credibility will they have when they have recognised before the world that Ukraine is totally defeated? And what will be the mood in Kyiv and among the Ukrainian troops, already very morally shaken for months, to continue the war?
There will undoubtedly be sections of US imperialism tearing their hair out. In the past two weeks, Trump has accused Zelensky of being responsible for unleashing the conflict and of being a dictator who is going to “lose the country.” US representatives have voted for a resolution in the UN Security Council together with Russia and China, with the pathetic abstention of Great Britain and France, to “end the war and build a lasting peace.” And Trump intends to make Zelensky, who is nothing more than a simple puppet of US imperialism, appear to be responsible for the defeat. But this attempt to divert attention cannot hide the harsh reality: that the US is losing in Ukraine, while Russia and China have become qualitatively stronger.
Covering up Washington's decline with lies and propaganda is also the end of the Trump administration. But the noise cannot hide the serious faces of the American negotiators in Saudi Arabia, led by Secretary of State Marc Rubio, facing Russian representatives full of confidence. The MAGA strategy is off to a good start: a military, political and economic failure of much greater significance than that of Iraq or Afghanistan.
Who provoked the war in Ukraine and why?
Trump wants to rewrite history and erase the traces of this complete disaster. To begin with, it is necessary to point out the obvious: the war in Ukraine was undoubtedly provoked by American imperialism. As we have explained in our statements[1], after the fall of the USSR and the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, Washington had a very important influence on the ruling circles of Russia, those bureaucrats from the old CPSU who plundered state property by privatizing everything. Yeltsin and his henchmen led the capitalist restoration in Russia. But the American administration, taking advantage of this obvious weakness, did not stop its military provocations, aggressively expanding NATO's borders to the East, despite the promise not to do so.
Numerous countries of the former Warsaw Pact joined NATO, and Russia was surrounded by military bases and missile systems in these bordering countries. Ukraine was a key player in this aggressive and militaristic strategy, to the point that Washington and Brussels went all out by promoting the Maidan coup in 2014, relying on supremacist Nazi elements and unleashing a civil war against the pro-Russian provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk that caused tens of thousands of victims. It was the US that very consciously pushed for war, boycotting the Minsk peace agreements, and insistently signalling that it would allow Ukraine to join NATO. A red line that Moscow had already indicated it would not allow to be crossed.
On the other hand, as we have also explained, the war in Ukraine had another decisive objective: to strike a blow in Europe, to break its relations with Russia, especially in the case of Germany, and to curb the growing economic penetration of China. The US blew up the Nord Stream, sabotaging German industry, whose competitiveness depended on cheap Russian gas and oil, and in the process hitting one of its main competitors on the world market. This is also what is now intended, humiliating not only Zelensky but also the servile European partners. To break up the EU and create a fragmented Europe where American imperialism can impose itself without question. But this step, without a doubt, will not be easy.
Let us be specific. The war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia have not prevented EU-China relations from continuing to strengthen, with imports of Chinese goods reaching record levels between 2022 and 2024, while the European trade deficit with the Asian power is set to increase[2] . In 2024, EU trade with China continued to grow to $785 billion, compared to $941 billion with the US. These figures show the practical impossibility of decoupling with China, despite the insistence of Western propagandists.
It is true that China has been Germany's largest trading partner between 2016 and 2023, losing that position in 2024 to the US. However, this dynamic, which is more a consequence of the German industrial and economic crisis than of American maneuvers, has led to an increase in the American trade deficit with Germany, which has gone from 63 to 70 billion dollars last year[3] . In other words, the US continues to face serious difficulties in Europe, and China's advance on the old continent is not being slowed down.
The US begins negotiations by accepting Putin's objectives... That is, it surrenders
US imperialism has failed in all the economic and political objectives set at the start of the war in Ukraine, also revealing the serious weaknesses of its military industry, which is unable to match the Russian military effort, despite making multi-million dollar profits. On the other hand, as a superpower, it has become a very unreliable ally.
The defeat is no surprise. It has been brewing for months, and it has forced the Trump administration and a section of the ruling class to now seek an “acceptable” agreement rather than risk a disorderly collapse as happened in Afghanistan. However you paint it, it is a catastrophe for them and a triumph for Putin and Xi Jinping.
The very start of the negotiations is an open confession of the magnitude of the disaster. The new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, stated at NATO in Brussels that it would not be realistic for Ukraine to return to the 2014 borders, nor to join NATO. Thus, Putin's government, showing that there is no hurry in these negotiations, has explained that it will not be enough to simply refuse to accept Ukraine into NATO, but that it will be necessary a complete retraction of the 2008 Bucharest commitment, which proposed the accession of both Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. Putin and the Russian capitalist oligarchy are on the way to achieving all their political, territorial and military objectives, and they want to make this clear.
The reason for this decisive turn is neither Trump's alleged madness nor a strategy to win Putin's sympathy, but the realization of military defeat despite the huge resources invested. The US has approved aid packages for Ukraine, in just 3 years, worth 175 billion dollars, to which another 130 billion dollars are added by the EU and European countries. More than 300 billion! US military aid has reached nearly 0.5% of its GDP, exceeding that deployed in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2010, with the difference that in the latter case there was an invasion and a military occupation[4]. In other words, the bet has been enormous, and the results have been minimal.
Alongside this vast military aid, the US and Europe deployed an aggressive strategy of sanctions against Russia to isolate it and sink its economy. And not only have they failed, but the Putin regime, a capitalist and imperialist regime that is not at all progressive and that is completely alien to the USSR and communism, has been strengthened. Its economy, in the midst of a war, is growing robustly, above 4% in 2024, surpassing the US and leaving far behind the EU and Germany, stagnant and in recession respectively. This growth has also boosted a powerful war industry that allows it to produce three times more artillery shells than the US and Europe combined!
At the same time, social cohesion and support for the government have strengthened, with Putin reaching an unprecedented approval rating of 87% according to the pro-Western Levada Institute. One of the reasons for this is the improvement in real wages, and therefore in the standard of living: an increase of 5.3% in 2023, and 9.2%! in the first seven months of 2024[5] .
The defeat is so obvious that Trump has had to come up with arguments to justify this surrender in order to cover it up in front of his fanatical nationalist social base. Hence his statements about how the US is going to obtain huge quantities of rare earths from Ukraine that will allow it to confront the Chinese threat. But the reality is that Ukraine does not produce rare earths at the moment, and it is not known how many it could contain. Pure propaganda, a smokescreen.
Ukraine, an American colony
Trump has laid his cards on the table, exposing the fallacies of Western propaganda. Those who claimed that we were facing a war of national liberation, for Ukraine's freedom and independence, including large sections of the reformist left and some sects that declare themselves "Marxist", have come up against the harsh reality.
The proposals put forward by Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Zelensky, suggesting that the US should get 50% of the profits from the exploitation of the country’s natural resources, take us back to the colonialist model of the 19th century. Trump has even demanded compensations of up to 500 billion dollars, almost three times Ukraine’s GDP, which would mean mortgaging the country for decades[6]. Zelensky, Washington’s broken puppet, despite his initial protests calling the initiative a national humiliation, finally went along with the agreement, although the agreement has not yet been signed due to the row in the White House.
In any case, this plan, as the Treasury Secretary pointed out in a more subtle way in the Financial Times[7] , aims to create a “joint US-Ukrainian fund” so that American imperialism can benefit not only from the exploitation of natural resources, but also from infrastructure and reconstruction itself. The agreement is so humiliating that it does not even include, as Zelensky had requested, concrete security guarantees against Russia.
It should be noted, to clarify the underlying issue that Trump has sold with great fanfare, that the supposed Ukrainian rare earths are for now a complete fiction[8], and many of the other mineral resources to be exploited are either in Russian territory, an estimated 50%[9], or, as numerous studies suggest, are not profitable in terms of initiating large investments for their exploitation.
In the case of rare earths, China's market control is also impressive: it produces two-thirds of them and has the largest known reserves in the world, and also has the capacity to refine 85% of the total. Data that makes the US plan to obtain profitability even more difficult. Even before the war, mining companies, some of them American, refused to start projects in Ukrainian subsoil because they required huge investments and years to get started, and their profitability was not guaranteed.
As for gas, Ukraine is the 39th largest producer in the world, it needs to import gas to cover its own domestic needs and 90% of its production is located in Russia. As for oil, its known production and reserves are negligible, being the 61st largest producer in the world. Ukraine's main role in these industries has been as a transit country for oil pipelines that transport Russian gas and oil to Europe.
All these exploitation plans could only be carried out after a vast reconstruction of the country, both of its electricity industry, which has been badly hit and is decisive in the mining sector, and of transport. In the current circumstances of devastation, investors will think twice[10].
That said, it is abundantly clear that this colonialism that Trump openly expresses is the one that has prevailed since the beginning of the conflict, both by the Biden Administration and by the EU governments. But the mentors of this war now find themselves with a scenario that they had arrogantly dismissed: Ukraine has lost 20% of its territory, including the rich mining and industrial regions of Donbas and virtually all of its coast. In these years of war, its economy has collapsed, depending exclusively on American and European financing for its survival.
The exhaustion of the Ukrainian population and the collapse of fighting morale are difficult to conceal by propaganda. 10 million Ukrainians have fled the country, 800,000 are in hiding to avoid drafts, and desertions in January peaked at 90,000. All this has created numerous military problems, but also enormous economic difficulties due to the shortage of manpower.
The majority of the population is now against continuing the war and is in favour of negotiations: according to polls, more than 50% in the western provinces and more than 70% in the provinces bordering the front and with a significant Russian-speaking population[11]. Under these conditions, continuing the war is impossible.
Imperialist war and socialist revolution
The war in Ukraine, like the brutal Zionist genocide in Gaza, has once again shown how far the organic crisis of the capitalist system has gone. The battle for hegemony between the imperialist powers, between China and the USA, as it happened at the beginning of the 20th century, brings us closer day by day to a scenario of absolute barbarism. All those who preach about the need for a world with rules and respect for so-called international law, where diplomacy and good manners prevail, especially the reformist organisations of the left, are completely overwhelmed by a reality that hits them in the face.
Under capitalism, not now, but always, the struggle for world hegemony is waged through coercion, force, exploitation and lies, as Lenin explained. But in periods like the present, all the legalistic and humanitarian propaganda that tries to cover up this mode of operation collapses. The war in Ukraine is an atrocious imperialist war, for which Ukrainian and Russian workers and oppressed people are paying with their lives, and its aim is to divide the world among the capitalists.
Even though the US and Europe played a central role in provoking this war, and both have an unparalleled record of brutal imperialist interventions, support for dictatorships and military coups, and crimes against humanity over the past hundred years, the latter being outright support for the savage Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, it would be a mistake not to understand the imperialist role of Russia and China.
Both are powers that have experienced a notable rise in the last decade, under a regime of state capitalism. In the case of Putin, we are talking about a furious anti-communist, who at the beginning of the war, in a public speech to the nation, denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks for their defense of Ukraine's right to self-determination, and who fights the militant and communist left, feminism or the LGTBI movement, aligning himself with the Trumpist and European far right in his defense of the family and traditional values. A great Russian chauvinist, of those that Lenin fought to the death, and who defends a capitalist class that made its fortunes by looting the nationalized resources and industries of the former USSR.
The behaviour of Russia and China regarding the genocide in Gaza is another good reflection of their imperialist character, refusing, beyond their rhetoric, to take serious and effective measures to stop the holocaust against the Palestinian people. To this day, both powers continue to maintain all their economic, military and diplomatic relations with Israel, of which China is its second largest trading partner.
From the Revolutionary Left we defend that the only way to end the imperialist war, and all kinds of national oppression, is to turn our weapons against our own exploiters, denounce our own capitalist governments, and promote mass movements raising the flag of the international socialist revolution that unites all the oppressed against the imperialist bandits.
The war in Ukraine is just another chapter of the barbarity we face every day. And after this war, it is inevitable that others will come. The division of the world will continue, and we must say loud and clear that the oppressed, the workers and the youth of the world have no choice if they subordinate themselves to any of the imperialist sides in conflict.
We must defend an internationalist and class-independent policy. We must return with force to the programme of Marx and Lenin, to build class unity beyond national borders against the common enemy. And we must be clear that the message of Karl Liebknecht, the German revolutionary communist murdered by the social democrats and the Freikorps, is more relevant than ever: The main enemy is at home!
Down with imperialist war!
For proletarian internationalism! Workers of the world, unite!
For the socialist revolution!
Notes:
[1]Alto a la guerra imperialista en Ucrania
[2]Trade balance of the European Union with China from 2013 to 2023 China-EU cooperation vital for inclusive global growth
[3]US wins out over China as Germany's biggest single trading partner last year
[4]https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine Foreign support to Ukraine: Evidence from a database of military, financial, and humanitarian aid
[5] Russia's Real Wages Surpass Expectations With July's 8.1% Increase Russia's Soaring Wartime Salaries Are Bolstering Working-Class Support for Putin
[6] Revealed: Trump’s confidential plan to put Ukraine in a stranglehold
[7] Economic partnership will protect the Ukrainian people and the US taxpayer
[8] The Ukrainian government has claimed to have 5% of the world's reserves, but this is a complete falsification, as there are no studies or surveys in this regard. The Ukrainian government itself inflates its data regarding rare earths and other minerals in order to try to gain advantages in its aid negotiations.
[9] Ukraine’s resources mostly hard to access or needed at home
[10] Las claves tras el pacto de los minerales: Ucrania tiene metales críticos, pero no tantas tierras raras como cree Trump
