By MÁRIO MAESTRI*
The China-US inter-imperialist conflict and current successes in the Ukraineânia are from it matterskey element for workers and for the struggle for socialism
The Third World War, the Cold War, which began in 1947, was won by US imperialism and its allies-subjects, in 1989-91, with capitalist restoration in the so-called states of real socialism and the explosion of the USSR. The triumphant neoliberal tide has destroyed historic achievements of the workers throughout a world strongly reorganized according to the pathological needs of imperialism. Faced with that defeat, the working classes began to disbelieve in their program, the only one capable of resolving the contradictions that threaten humanity itself. In 1989-91, midnight struck the century, opening up a counter-revolutionary era that continues and deepens to this day.
In the years following the “Fall of the Berlin Wall”, the US-led imperialist club experienced triumphal times. His victory was strongly supported by capitalist restoration in China, driven since 1979 by the dominant socio-political bloc. In Peking, in 1972, Mao had embraced Nixon as he landed in Washington. China allied itself with imperialism against the USSR, on the political level, and became the homeland of make-up industries and trinket producers, on the economic level. Big capital landed in the former Middle Kingdom, which had once again become a “China business”. [MAESTRI, 2022, p. 37 et seq.]
It was not enough that the USSR and, after 1991, Russia were territorially shattered and that Yeltsin danced under the baton of triumphant international capital, supported by avid former CPSU bureaucrats and opportunists of all kinds who cannibalized state properties and wealth built by workers since 1917. The US imperialist club wanted more, much more. In truth, he wanted everything.[SACCO, 2022, p. 105.] James W. Carden, a former consultant to the Department of State, recalls, regarding the shaping of Russian society in the years following 1991: “In a very short time […] a squadron of officials from the Department of State, the CIA, the Treasury and the [U.S.] Council for National Security embarked on a series of tours throughout the former Soviet Union.” [CARDEN, 2022, p. 144; CASELLI, 2013, p. 27-40.]
Russia Delenda is
In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution had risen like a wall against the historic program of European imperialism to conquer the deep eastern regions of Euro-Asia. Since 1991, he has resumed the project of literally colonizing the rich agricultural land and endless raw materials and labor in those regions. With the destruction of the USSR, it was necessary to continue and expand the economic, political and ideological hegemony obtained through the Yeltsin administration and complete the territorial explosion, intensifying the contradictions of the minority nationalities of the Russian Federation. A necessary operation for the relaunch of the central capitalist core in structural crisis.
Reduced to an intermediate power, Russia continued to be the second nuclear power on the planet, which prevented it from being attacked frontally, as had been done with Yugoslavia, since 1990; Iraq, in 1990 and 2003; Syria, in 2011; Libya in 2011, etc. It was necessary to weaken Russia, without direct confrontation. Despite the commitment, upon the dissolution of the USSR, not to extend NATO towards Russian borders, in 1994 the siege of the Russian Federation began.
NATO's eastward expansion was at a trot-gallop. In 1999 it incorporated the Czech Republic and Hungary; in 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia; in 2009, Albania and Croatia; in 2017, Montenegro, and, in 2020, North Macedonia. Ukraine, with almost two thousand kilometers of border with Russia, was the icing on the cake of this pluridecadal offensive. Atomic missiles and troops in NATO nations bordering Russia made it indefensible. In 1991, Atlantic Pact troops were 1.600 kilometers from Moscow. Today, there are 450. [PETRONI, 2022, p. 45.]
The paths of history are infinite, but, contrary to the so-called designs of God, they are intelligible. There were many successes in recent decades that weakened the US unipolar hegemony, among which the following stand out: industrial relocation; the pantagruelian squandering of resources in endless wars, etc. But it was above all the deep movements of reorganization of the international division of labor, cradled by the structural crisis of capitalism in its senile age, which motivated strong structural transformations in the world economy, to the detriment of the USA. [MANDEL, 1976.]
Imperialism besieged
At the turn of the millennium, the overcoming of the Yeltsin Era [1991-1999] and the advent of the Putin Era, in 2000, on the one hand, and, on the other, above all, the awakening of the Chinese Dragon as an imperialist nation, at the dawn of the new millennium, in the context of a strong shift of capital accumulation to the East, they put US imperialism in check, in industrial and technological regression, but hegemonic in the military, financial and diplomatic spheres. [MAESTRI, 2022, p. 59 et seq.]
The Putin Era was characterized by the constitution of a new dominant social bloc, around a national capitalist bourgeoisie and the control-recovery by the State of important spheres of production, with emphasis on energy – oil and gas – and the arms industry. Mutatis mutandis, an articulation not very different from that known at some times by developmentalist Brazil, especially in the Getulist Era and in the years of the military dictatorship after 1967. [CASELLI, 2013, p. 53; MAESTRI, 2019, p. 105 et seq.]
Very soon, it became clear to the new Russian political and social bloc in power that there was no room for it in the dominant capitalist core of Western Europe, as it wanted and expected. He was denied the right to sit at the European and world capitalist banquet table: he was not welcome at dinner. He was, in fact, part of the menu. This rejection profoundly determined “Russian political consciousness”. [LUKJANOV, 2022, p. 36.]
The US imperialist club saw Russia as a neo-colony, militating for a return to something similar to Yeltsin's times, as proposed. From 1999 to 2009, the Russian state put down with difficulty the separatist revolt in Chechnya. In 2008, in just a few days, Georgia quelled Georgia's aggression against South Ossetia and Abkhazia, breakaway territories with a Russian-speaking majority and a repressed population. Prompt intervention defeated aggression and, with the latent conflict, prevented Georgia from joining NATO. Russia was fighting the first outsourced battles, organized by the US imperialist bloc, in the Fourth World War, currently in the process of acceleration.
It is not imperialist, but would like to be
The Russian capitalist reorganization took place based on the old structure of the Soviet economy, which was heavily hit, the material basis of its economy. Russia opened itself up to mainly European monopoly capital – German, French, Italian, etc. – and focused its exports on primary products: gas, oil, fertilizers, grains, wood, gold, etc. The extremely high level of development of the war, aerospace and nuclear industries inherited from the USSR allowed for a cutting-edge technological export niche.
In general, in the Marxist sense of the term, Russia remained an industrialized semi-colonial state, without managing to transform itself into an imperialist nation, supported by monopoly capital-exporting conglomerates, as is the case of today's China. Russia lacks capital, so it does not export. Multinationals have settled in its territories, without it having done the same throughout the world, with the exception, in a limited way, in neighboring countries under its influence. [MASTER, counter power, 2022.]
Aware of the inevitability of a strong frontal attack – direct or indirect – by the imperialist bloc, the Russian State undertook a long period of meticulous preventive preparation. It prepared for the interruption of the internet, for the attack on the ruble, for bank marginalization, for the blocking of exports-imports, etc. Its armed forces were resized, in relation to the times of the Soviet Union, favoring the modernization of armament and the interconnectivity of troops. As in the Soviet era, great attention was paid to offensive and defensive artillery: cannons, howitzers, mortars, missiles, etc. In some sectors, it has technologically surpassed imperialism. Armament exports reduced the weight of the war effort in an economy with a GDP close to that of Brazil and a population some sixty million smaller than that of the Latin American country.
Ucrania - the icing on the cake
In 2014, Russia responded to the military coup orchestrated by imperialism in Ukraine with the recovery of the Crimean peninsula and support for the breakaway republics of Donbass, Russian-speaking regions. The unexpected reaction made it possible for the European Union, at the behest of the USA and England, to undertake an uninterrupted Russophobic campaign, with sanctions, provocations, fanciful actions, etc. – “poisoning” by Alexei Navalny; Russian “cyber attacks” against satellites, against political parties, against western industries; “intervention” in US elections; Russian diplomats disguised as spies, etc. While Putin and Russia were demonized in Europe and the world, NATO was preparing, politically and militarily, a resumption of the conflict in Donbass that would force a direct intervention by the Russian State.
Especially after the European Union turned its back on it and showed its teeth, Russia reoriented its economic, political and diplomatic ties to the East, establishing a close relationship with China, pointed out, especially since the second Obama administration (2013-2016), as the great challenge to be faced and defeated by the USA. Donald Trump had proposed rapprochement with Russia and Putin to distance them from China, a policy vetoed by the Deep State, under the threat of impeachment. The Biden administration, on the contrary, resuming the program of the democratic candidate Hilary Clinton, defeated in 2016, focused on the destruction of Russia, seen as the “soft underbelly” of the alliance between the Bear and the Dragon, with the macro-objectives indicated .
Due to the non-stop anti-Russian weaponry of Ukraine by the USA and NATO, it is proposed that the opportune moment for the Russian defensive campaign would have been in 2014, when the Maidan coup, and not in February 24, 2022. However, in 2014, perhaps Russia was not yet prepared for such an operation and, above all, at that moment, military support was required for Syria, its historical ally in the Middle East, semi-strangled, launched in September 2015. Operation carried out in association with Iran that settled a coup very hard on imperialism and on Israel.
The intervention in Ukraine was an unavoidable defensive action, in defense of the survival of the Russian state's autonomy, its integrity and its "very existence". [KORTUNOV, 2022, p. 77-83; MAESTRI, counter power, 2022.] Ukraine, succubus state of imperialism, under the guidance of NATO, was ready for a military offensive against the people's republics of Donbass, under military attack from April 2014 to February 2022, in which 13 thousand people died , forcing Russian intervention, as proposed. With its back to the wall, under the growing threat of a hostile state with vast common borders, the Russian state had to give battle on terrain carefully prepared by NATO and the US. The justification for the intervention was based on the defense of the People's Republics and the regions of Novarussia – territory of Russian language-traditions – that suffered national oppression by the Ukrainian governments since the 2014 coup.
silencing Dostoevsky
The explanations that the Russian intervention would have been driven by the desire to seize part or all of the Ukrainian territory are laughable. Rivers of ink have flowed over Putin's ambitions to refound and expand the former empire of the tsars. The material, human and diplomatic cost that such an initiative has caused and will be incurred by Russia, a country with the largest territory in the world, which has a huge subcontinent waiting for the conditions, especially material ones, to be fully appreciated, is immense. The era of territorial conquests belongs to the past – today, nations are dominated and exploited without losing their apparent political autonomy, as in the current case of Brazil. [MAESTRI, 2019, p. 331 et seq.]
With the intervention, Joe Biden's USA, Boris Johnson's England and Mateusz Morawiecki's Poland formed the front squad that dragged Europe into a hysterical, diplomatic, economic, ideological, communicational and, above all, military offensive against Russia . Newspapers, websites, radios, etc. were banned. Russians; European journalists and intellectuals who questioned the mystification of governments and the mainstream media were attacked; Russian athletes, scientists, artists were marginalized from competitions, meetings, shows, etc.. Stroganoff and Russian salad were banned from patriotic European restaurants. Even Dostoyevsky, a former political prisoner of tsarism, received a red card.
The initial imperialist rhetoric was to support the defense of a fragile European democratic state against the arrogance of the powerful imperialist Russia. Very soon, the United States and NATO assumed the real objective pursued in the conflict: leaving Russia bloodless and, if possible, destroying its current state, in favor of a government flexible to imperialism. To that end, general sanctions had to exhaust Russian resources on the economic battlefield, and their armies would be beaten to exhaustion, fighting to the last Ukrainian, even if the Russians won the war. The strategic objective is the destruction of the Russian Federation, even at the expense of a future frontal war, fought, of course, in Europe. [KARAGANOV, 2022, p. 143-148.]
With the operation, US imperialism achieved objectives that had been pursued for a long time: replacing the supply of Russian gas with US shale gas; put an end to the illusions of European political and military autonomy and the rapprochement, especially of Germany and Italy, with Russia; oblige Europe to increase military spending and, therefore, to purchase US weapons. Which imposes increasing military spending on Russia and China. For the “Ukraine operation”, it was essential to replace Angela Merkel, in Berlin, and Giuseppe Conte, in Rome, with the Americanophiles Olaf Scholz and Mario Draghi, complex political operations that long preceded the beginning of the conflict.
Blitzkrieg midiAttica
Elements are lacking for a more precise assessment of the reasons for the Russian intervention to have started with the siege of Kiev, in search of the overthrow of Volodymyr Zelensky and the enthronement of an autonomous government in relation to the USA and NATO. What would be the best solution for the populations and States of both nations. The neutrality of Ukraine and the recognition of Crimea and the republics of Donbass would allow the maintenance of the status quo, without loss of life or property. Ukraine could once again take care of its interests and its extremely complex problems. It would, however, be a huge defeat for imperialism's and NATO's plans and investments in that country.
There was an overestimation by the Russian media of the autonomy of the Ukrainian population, as a whole, in relation to imperialism and NATO, after eight years of nationalist, Russophobic, philo-fascist governments, on the one hand, and of harsh repression of the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine , with emphasis on the south and east of the country, on the other. The opposition capacity of the Ukrainian army trained and armed by NATO and the weight of fascist paramilitary troops within the framework of the civilian population were underestimated. [DOTTORI, 2022, p. 127.] The failure of the march on Kiev, with the images of immense lines of armored vehicles immobile in the vicinity of that capital, caused disrepute to the Russian armed forces, accompanied by proposals of its structural fragility. He facilitated the convincing of the Ukrainian and European population of the heroic character of the resistance and of an upcoming victory over Russia. “The first step to winning is believing you can win,” recalled Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defense. [PETRONI, 2022, p. 37.] And, it seems, with the abandonment of the siege of Kiev, at least factions of the US government began to believe in the real possibility of victory.
The initial campaign's impact was even greater with the proposal that Moscow's objective was the occupation of Kiev and the whole of Ukraine, not the overthrow of Zelensky's puppet government. Meaningless assertions, as NATO and the US soon understood. [MITCHELL, 2022, p. 64.] The occupation of Kiev would have a very high cost and few results – the Ukrainian government would be transferred close to the Polish border. The same would happen with the occupation of poor and hostile Ukrainian territories, close to Poland. The limited Russian troops involved at the beginning of the operation – around 120 soldiers – already ruled out any operation of territorial domination of Ukraine. [DOTTORI, 2022, p. 127.] As of February 2022, Ukraine has 250 troops on active duty and 250 in reserve. Meanwhile, the retreat of the Russian troops that were headquartering Kiev gave rise to a Blitzkrieg world imperialist media, with President Zelensky as its star, a skilful, histrionic communicator, obedient to the Atlantic Pact and irresponsible for the fate of his country.
Unable to obtain Ukraine's neutrality and recognition of the current status from the republics of Donbass and Crimea, Russian troops began to occupy a very large border strip with Russia; of the entire province of Lugansk and a large part of the provinces of Donetsk and Mylokaiv, of the entire coastline of the Sea of Azov and of part of the coastline of the Black Sea. The control of the current 20% of the territory of Ukraine, in expansion, will allow the protection of Russian ethno-linguistic communities and will remove the possibility of deploying strategic NATO weapons in these border regions of Russia. He will disorganize Ukraine as an imperialist ram against Russia and prevent its entry into NATO, as it is a nation in latent conflict.
the war in míday and how she é actually
The initial advance of Russian troops in southern Ukraine was slow, with the expected assault by thousands of tanks on the powerful Ukrainian defenses in Donbass – around 50 entrenched soldiers – not occurring, as during the Soviet counter-offensives in World War II. This allowed the media campaign to continue on the fragility of the Muscovite armies and the intrepidity of the Ukrainian troops, destined for the inevitable victory promised by Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and the endless parrots of imperialism.
Zelensky and NATO waged a war aiming at media victories, broadcast by the international media in a monotonous chorus. The thousands of destroyed tanks, the multitude of dead soldiers, the depletion of ammunition, the massacres of the population and the intentional bombing of civilians by the Russians were publicized. There was silence on the limited number of civilian victims, in relation to imperialist operations in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., not to mention the terrible bombings by the British and Americans in World War II, unconcerned with the civilian population, when it did not was the target of the attacks—Dresden, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. The battalions of Ukrainian neo-fascists using civilians as human shields were hailed as legendary heroes.
Concerned with mitigating the losses of troops and civilians they liberated, the vast majority of whom were Russian-speaking, inevitable in a rapid progression and hard urban combat, Russian troops advanced, preceded by intensive artillery attacks, through regions and cities whose civilian populations had been evacuated preventively. The neutralization, concomitantly with the start of operations, of railway junctions, bridges, barracks, armament depots, command centers, artillery, planes, etc. Ukrainians continued uninterruptedly, with surgical missile strikes that did not spare military centers close to the Polish border. Precision ballistic weapons are the revelation of the art of war in this conflict.
The slow but inexorable advance and the incessant hammering of the Russian artillery led to the structural exhaustion of the Ukrainian professional troops, replaced by civilians, mercenaries and adventurers unprepared for the current technological combat. Zelensky's media war prevented defeated Ukrainian troops from retreating to more easily defensible positions, allowing them to be routinely razed by Russian artillery without ever seeing the enemy's face. Demoralization is advancing in the Ukrainian ranks, with more than six thousand soldiers surrendered and imprisoned. Apparently, the Ukrainian high command would have started to disobey the president and NATO, allowing the retreat of the troops without conditions of resistance or semi-surrounded, under the pressure of desertions and denials of combat on their part.
The vitest oriaá in the corner
Zelensky, Biden, Johnson and NATO continued selling to the battered and crippled Ukrainian army the certainty of victory to be conquered with the arrival of heavy artillery, assault vehicles, modern anti-aircraft batteries, tactical missiles, even common ammunition that is lacking enormously. The US provides forty billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine and to strengthen NATO – double the budget of the Brazilian army in 2021. On the Donbass front, the ratio of artillery fire would be five to fifty, in favor of the Russians . This fable of victory waiting around the corner has been hammered and amplified by the western media, in a shameless process of infantilizing and fanaticizing its consuming public.
In the world of real facts, imperialism refuses to supply its most modern weaponry, certain that it will either fall into the hands or be sold to the Russians, as would have happened with the top of French self-propelled artillery, the Ceasar howitzer, 155 mm and 40 kilometers in range. Weapons delivered through Poland, often old-fashioned, must cover a thousand kilometers to reach the battle line, transported by railroads affected by the conflict, when they are not destroyed in warehouses or on the march. They are delivered in minute quantities relative to the needs of the Ukrainian army, often without training for complex use. These are media operations that do little to help the Ukrainian army. The need for an uninterrupted supply of the tons of ammunition required by artillery has been an almost insoluble problem.
What the Ukrainian army sorely lacks are properly educated career noncommissioned officers and soldiers. The formation and training of a new army would require fabulous resources and, at the very least, around a year, in terms of non-commissioned officers and operators of complex weapons. European nations, including Germany, pressured by the US, increasingly support Ukraine, especially with statements that do not find substantial correspondence in the acts, concerned about the consequences caused by the war in their economies.
In the member states of NATO, the conscience of an imminent defeat of Ukraine is consolidating. Western media are starting to move away from hyperbolic reports about Ukrainian victories and towards the slow but relentless Russian advance. There is tangential talk of the need for the concession of regions in Novarusia and the neutrality of Ukraine, at least on paper, in order to obtain peace. A complex negotiation, until now made impossible by the policy of the USA, England, Poland and NATO to continue the war, wearing Russia down to the “last Ukrainian” [KORTUNOV, 2022, p. 92.] The negotiation of an armistice or peace will hardly be done under the leadership of Zelensky, who, with the resounding failure and the very heavy consequences of his leadership for the population and for the nation, will possibly be discarded as a grandiloquent and irresponsible buffoon. Eventually, it will be kept by imperialism in a golden exile, waiting for an eventual future use.
The Fourth World War on the march
It is difficult to assess the consequences of Russia's almost inevitable victory in southern Ukraine, if unpredictable events do not intervene, with emphasis on the widening of the conflict – in Libya, Syria, etc. Some central objectives of US imperialism were achieved, as proposed: the exacerbation of the offensive against Russia; imposing the sale of its shale gas; the increase of his troops in Europe; the consolidation of its despotic command over NATO, amplified by the admissions of Finland and Sweden, etc. These two countries have more than 1.300 kilometers of borders with Russia. However, they were already unfriendly towards Moscow and do not intend to allow strategic weapons to be stationed in their territories.
With a victory for Russia, its new positioning mainly along the Azov and Black Seas poses serious military and economic questions to the United States, the European Union and NATO. The military defeat of the imperialist offensive will influence international relations, strengthening the autonomy movements in relation to the USA that, on May 14, reaffirmed, through Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, support for Ukraine until the “final victory”. Also serious is the failure of economic sanctions, which should have deeply and quickly disorganized the Russian economy and society, and strangled the financing of its armed forces.
The biggest reason for the failure of the economic blockade against Russia was the refusal of a huge part of the world to embrace it, especially the nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia. In November, Putin will attend or virtually participate in the G-20 in Indonesia. The US threatened China with the evils of hell if it supported Russia's war effort by handing over the weapons it was expected to run out of very soon. Beijing has kept a low profile about the conflict. It acknowledged Moscow's security concerns and reaffirmed its support for Ukraine's territorial integrity. Analysts of high and low rent boots pointed to Beijing's growing and inexorable distancing from Moscow. A monumental victory for the imperialist offensive!
China – associated with India – simply bought the oil and gas that Europe was refusing, neutralizing the heart of anti-Russian sanctions. And so, the surge in energy prices kept Russian income high and caused huge economic losses for the European Union. Today, Russia is faced with an excessive appreciation of the rubro, while it was expected that it would thaw like ice cream in the sun. Cutting off Russian gas altogether will throw Germany and Europe into recession, something the US doesn't worry too much about. The consequences of irresponsible economic decisions are already having an impact on European and American politics, with emphasis on the French election results, the precipitation of domestic support for Biden and, now, the resounding fall of Boris Johnson, who had predicted a future fall for Putin. . In Portugal, Spain, France, the population has already taken to the streets demanding peace and attacking NATO.
general offensive
The offensive in Ukraine was just a movement of enormous importance in the imperialist policy that intends to march on Russia to attack China, the primordial enemy. The time window for the US to overcome Chinese imperialism, which economically disputes its primacy, was short. Window that seems to have narrowed lately, accelerating the offensive against Russia. A.Wess Mitchell, former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, estimates that it takes three to four years for China to “achieve the necessary military refinement to prevail in a conflict” with the US. He makes clear the need, in this period, to exhaust Russia for an upcoming conflict with China. Realistic, he recognizes that a war on “two fronts”, against Russia and China, “would surpass the capacity of the US “armed forces”. [MITCHELL, 2022, p. 63.]
Taking advantage of embalo Ukrainian warmonger, Yankee imperialism disciplines its allies-succubi and prepares a campaign that points to a future partial confrontation with Russia, in Europe, followed by identical actions in relation to China, in the Indo-Pacific. He intends to reconquer militarily, even over a world in ashes, his hegemony, which is receding economically. It wants to impose its heel on the world, throughout the 21st century, with increasingly open dictatorial forms of domination still difficult to define.
The US strike plan envisions short-range, economic initiatives and vast military offensives. From Sunday to Tuesday, June 26th to 28th of this year, in Elmau, in the south of Germany, the members tops of the US imperialist club – Germany, France, England, Japan, Italy, Canada. The big decision announced was a global investment plan, proposed by Biden, of six hundred billion dollars, destined for countries with backward capitalist economies – “Collaboration for Global Infrastructure and Investment”. A timely counterpoint to the already consolidated initiative of investments in the Amazon of the Chinese “New Silk Road”.
The USA promises 200 billion dollars of public and private resources to be applied in five years. Great emphasis will be given to the fight against the Chinese empire in terms of G5 and G6a telephony. The monstrous countercyclical US spending during the Covid-19 epidemic, war investments in Ukraine and Europe, the country's normal deficits have already led to a violent devaluation of the dollar. The latter strikes American workers and… millionaire Chinese investments in US public debt securities. Russia has long since ditched these bonds in favor of huge gold reserves. The dollar and euro liquidity tsunami will spread inflation worldwide. For the experienced former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, the United States should fear the demoralization of the dollar as a refugee currency more than war. (MAHBUBANI, 2021)
China is vicina
At the meeting in Germany, the members of the G7 renewed allusions to the lack of transparency in trade, the theft of technology, forced labor, the enslavement of nations with unpayable loans, the mistreatment of ethnic minorities by the Chinese. On the flip side, the G7 embraced the US's anti-Chinese economic policy, which is none of their business and will contribute to the depression of their economy. The NATO meeting held on June 29 and 30 was more direct, aggressive and innovative. In Madrid, the Atlantic Pact took a huge step towards its internationalization, following the anti-Chinese bias.
The meeting was called to define the new political-military “strategic concept” of NATO and its future 32 members for the next decade. The previous general orientation, approved in Lisbon, in 2010, did not even refer to China and hypocritically embraced Russia, defined as a partner nation, invited to participate in the aggression against Afghanistan. In the same year, Yeltsin was ousted and Putin took over, who would dream for a few years of incorporating Russia into NATO and the European Union.
At that time, twenty years after the dissolution of the USSR, NATO was already breaking its promise to stay away from Russia's borders, as proposed. And in 1999 it massacred Serbia and its people – 78 days of bombing – and in 1990 and 2003 it attacked Iraq. Also in 2003, it intervened in Afghanistan, for the first time outside Europe, the statutory zone of its action. Later, he would do the same in Libya, devastated as an autonomous nation and society. The massacre of civilians in these operations will possibly never be counted.
In Madrid, the expected general abomination of Russia took place, defined as the “most direct and important threat to security, peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area”, which intends to “guarantee its spheres of influence and direct control” “through the coercion, subversion, aggression and annexation” of other states. The definition of the nation to be slaughtered allowed the consolidation and expansion of the already enormous US control over NATO. The European army, without the United States, France's eternal proposal, was sent to Cochinchina.
NATO of the five oceans
It was unanimously decided to expand US military land, sea and air forces in Europe, with an increase of the current one hundred thousand Yankee soldiers stationed in the Old Continent. It was agreed to increase NATO's rapid intervention forces, in 2023, from forty to three hundred thousand soldiers. And establish an American Headquarters in Poland. Initiatives that point to a new partial confrontation with Russia, always in Europe, the American dream.
What was really new was the constitution of NATO, in fact, even if not by statute, as the spearhead of US imperialism against China. Without ever being cited as an enemy nation, it was defined as a strategic opponent of the “interests, security and values” of the United States and allies. Radical modification of the guidelines of nations such as Germany and Italy, which often maintained close economic relations with a nation undergoing strong economic expansion. And thousands of miles from the Old World.
The concluding document takes up ipsis literis American rhetoric. China is accused of employing “political, economic and military instruments to enhance its global position and project its power”, while remaining “opaque about its strategy, intentions and military build-up”. All to obtain or “control key technological and industrial sectors”. Like Russia, it would maintain “hybrid and cyber operations” and “disinformation”, to gain “control of key technological and industrial sectors”. A nation that organizes itself to “undermine” and “undermine the international order”.
The definition of China as a strategic enemy was not rhetorical. The meeting was attended by Austria, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand – and, in spirit, Taiwan. All of them nations outside the NATO military pact and prominent members of the US Indo-Pacific alliance against Beijing. And, in a general formulation of the ongoing reunification of the two military complexes, it was defined that the successes of the Indo-Pacific “could directly affect Euro-Atlantic security”.
the main enemy
Therefore, every conflict in the Indo-Pacific with China will concern NATO, even if it does not force it into direct intervention. Collective naval military maneuvers will be organized in those seas, visited even more frequently by warships from England, France, etc. All under the justification of defending the right of international navigation, in waters claimed by China. It is therefore clear the success of the USA in the effort to unify NATO and its military articulations in those regions against China.
Under the imperial command of the USA, NATO transforms itself from a former spearhead of the unsuccessful war, in 1989-91, against the USSR and the countries of “real socialism”, into a ram against China, its strategic enemy. Military provocations, eventually having the island of Formosa and its independence as an excuse, especially in the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea, will eventually repeat the Ukrainian operation, to also bleed China, always far from US territory.
It is difficult to foresee the next movements of this true Fourth World War in precipitation, which will involve the world as a whole, directly or indirectly. What is certain is that US imperialism accelerates the use of its resources to suffocate, in the military field, the challenge to its autonomy proposed secondarily by Russia and strategically by China, above all in the economic field. The strategic project of the US imperialist club is to disorganize the Russian and Chinese economies, societies and states and subjugate them as globalized neocolonial nations, as proposed.
The Left and World War Four
The historic victory of the liberal tide, in 1989-91, led to the dissolution and weakening of organizations, parties, unions, rights in the world of work. The most serious sequel to that historic defeat was the workers' disbelief in their program for overcoming the capitalist order and rationally reorganizing the world.
The fall of the USSR and the consequent crisis of Stalinism determined the consolidation and advancement of the world counterrevolution and not the expected and fanciful apotheosis of revolutionary Marxism. In the new context, collaborationist communist and social-democratic parties embraced social-liberalism or simply disappeared, as in the exemplary cases of the Brazilian Workers' Party and the Italian Communist Party.
The revolutionary left is experiencing an organic, political and ideological crisis never known in the history of the labor movement. Its defeat preceded and was exacerbated by the triumph of the counterrevolutionary tide and the objective and subjective disorganization of the workers. Marxist and Marxist-revolutionary (Trotskyist) organizations disbanded, assumed petty-bourgeois programs, broke their fragile ideological and organic ties with the workers.
Down hill
The lilliputization and political degeneration of revolutionary Marxism has been radicalized in recent decades. In Brazil, electoral cretinism, dependence on state funding, the hegemony of identity policies coming from the US reproduced like mushrooms in hot weather and humid terrain. Maintaining party apparatuses and, through them, personal projects disconnected from the social movement and the world of work became a strategic objective.
Crises in the country follow one another, increasingly serious, faced by organizations that claim to be of the revolutionary left with rhetorical and declamatory statements about socialism and the revolution, in a version that is, at best, petty-bourgeois. For them, the fundamental thing is to contest the elections, to elect deputies and councilors who are heavily paid by the State, which also finances the institutionalized parties of the so-called radical left with generous sums of money.
The China-US inter-imperialist conflict and the current successes in Ukraine are of central importance to workers and the struggle for socialism. Apart from exceptions to the rule, they are tackled, in a scholastic way, supported by decontextualized textual readings, especially Lenin and Trotsky. All under the devastating pressure of the middle classes influenced by the tax media of big capital and the middle segments, especially young people, that populate these organizations.
Tres great positiontiones
In Brazil, broadly speaking, on the left, there are three major positions on the conflict involving Russia, China, NATO and the US, and the war in Ukraine. Factions of the collaborationist left commonly propose Russia and China as anti-imperialist bulwarks and guarantees of a healthy and lasting multipolarity. For not a few, China would be a socialist nation of the new type or, in the worst case, it would not be imperialist. It would propose and maintain new collaborative economic ties between nations. These positions are common among long-suffering ex-Stalinists; neo-Stalinists defending the long capitalist road to a socialism beyond the horizon; segments of the collaborationist left in tune with the interests of Chinese capital in Brazil. This is the case of large portions of the PT, the PCdoB and the PCB. [MAESTRI, 2021, p. 97 et seq.]
In turn, the left that defines itself as revolutionary and even Marxist-revolutionary is divided into two major positions, which often intertwine on specific issues. For the first, China and Russia are bourgeois and imperialist states and the struggle with the USA is a mere traditional inter-imperialist conflict. Something like the clash between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance in World War I. A confrontation that does not interest the workers, who only lose with the war. The policy to be followed is independence from the two “imperialist blocs” and revolutionary defeatism, proposed by Lenin in the Great War. We must fight to transform this confrontation into an armed struggle of the workers for power.
The issue is simpler for many groups and organizations that claim to be Marxist and Marxist-revolutionary. The intervention of the Russian Federation in Ukraine is a criminal operation, with an expansionist objective, by an imperialist nation. It attacks Ukrainian national autonomy, which must be defended without restrictions, demanding a greater supply of weapons, a “no-fly zone” by NATO, etc. Russia must be utterly defeated. To the maximum, and in a muted manner, it is recognized that NATO support is not entirely innocent. Some groups that support this policy light a candle in defense of the right of autonomy of the republics of Donbass and the populations of Crimea.
selective blindness
Let us try to outline telegraphically the main inconsistencies of these positions. The capitalist character of Russia and China needs no further demonstration. Only those blinded by ideology do not see it. The same can be said about the status China's current imperialist, powerful capitalist nation with strong public and private capital exporting monopolists. Its multinationals spread across the world, advancing more and more voraciously in Brazil. The same cannot be said of Russia, as proposed, currently a semi-colonial industrialized nation without significant international capital exports. There are practically no Russian multinationals spread across the world.
Russian and Chinese capitalists harshly exploit workers, in their countries or abroad. Certainly its victories in the confrontation with the US imperialist bloc will not bring the independence and emancipation of its workers. Which does not mean that they do not have interests of their own in the outcome of the conflict. Is very. The military confrontation of 1914-1918 was mainly between the six great imperialist nations vying for a shared hegemony of the world. It took place in a context where the material productive forces of capitalism were still developing, while being questioned by the revolutionary proletariat.
The proposal of “revolutionary defeatism” presupposed the existence in Tsarist Russia of revolutionary parties with tens of thousands of members and sympathizers. Germany's victory would be, as it were, the antechamber of the assault on power by the workers and peasants. In the current conflict, the US imperialist bloc strategically seeks to destroy the independence and national autonomy of the Russian and Chinese nations, in search of predatory international domination, brought about by the organic exhaustion of capitalist development.
Rule over the XNUMXst century
The imperialist bloc attacks China, which economically questions US hegemony, and Russia, which fights only for its autonomy and survival. There would be no military conflict if there were no US aggression against Russian and Chinese autonomy. It is a project, as proposed, of imposing a new globalized neocolonial order, which will spread throughout the world, certainly in a fascist bias. Traditional bourgeois forms of domination are exhausted with the structural exhaustion of the capitalist dynamism that originated them.
This new order will deepen the exploitation of Russian and Chinese workers to levels that are difficult to predict, as occurred in Russia after 1991; in China, especially in the early years of capitalist restoration; in Ukraine in the decades following its independence. In the current period of reflux and disorganization of the workers and the absence of a revolutionary party, the proposal of “revolutionary defeatism”, to prepare the uprising of the Russian, Ukrainian and Polish workers, is unspeakable rhetorical nonsense. “Revolutionary defeatism” under current conditions is mere aestheticist rhetoric, supporting, in fact, the aggressor imperialist bloc.
In a way, this watchword, in the current situation, repeats the views of Amadeo Bordiga [1889-1970], who denied another level or space of social struggle beyond the direct confrontation of the working class with the bosses. [MAESTRI, 2020, p. 87 and not.] Also against him Lenin wrote Leftism: doçthe child of communism. According to such a view, the national question and its right to independence, which so interested and worried revolutionary Marxism before and immediately after 1917, would interest workers only when nationalities were about to be overcome by world revolution.
EmbraceI'm going to counterrevolutiono
In a few cases, ignorance of the conflict in Ukraine as an operation meticulously prepared by US imperialism to drain Russia of blood, towards an attack on China, can be explained as a product of obtuse analysts who are unconcerned with the study of reality. In February 2022, at the beginning of the conflict, the aforementioned A. Wess Mitchell, a former senior US official, proposed, without pretense: “Ukraine is a strategic opportunity for the West […].” “The US must use [Ukraine] to shred, dry and impoverish Russia […].” “We must undertake a long-term arming program of the Ukrainians, as we did in the eighties with the Ukrainians. mujahideen against the USSR.” [MITCHELL, 2022, p. 63.]
It is not the case of organizations, not a few Marxist-Revolutionaries, that defend conditional support to the Zelensky government; NATO's millionaire war effort in that country; the defeat of Russia and the disorganization of its government and state. In this case, it is not about analytical obtuseness, but about deeply rooted policies. In fact, this reading is not new. It is embraced by political groups, self-styled revolutionaries, which were constituted by subjectively and objectively supporting the imperialist bloc in its victorious counterrevolutionary campaign, since before the destruction of the USSR.
These organizations saluted and applauded the mujahideen against the Revolution in Afghanistan, in the late 1970s. They supported the counterrevolution in Poland, proposing Solidarity and Walesca as agents of the political revolution, since the early 1980s. They celebrated, for decades, the destruction of the USSR and the States with a nationalized economy and planned, like the march of the anti-Stalinist revolution. They embraced imperialist attacks and operations against Yugoslavia, Serbia, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and so on.
They rode for decades alongside imperialism, swearing not to know it. They showed support for the counterrevolution against the independence and national autonomy of nations that were somehow opposed to imperialism as a struggle against their terrible dictators – Milosevich, Fidel Castro, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Khomeini, Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Chaves, Maduro . All of them would be questioned by popular insurrections, workers revolts, imaginary democratic movements. On October 14, 2013, during the aggression against Syria, the leadership of the LIT publicly supported the US and its allies, defending the demand of imperialism for heavy weapons from the Syrian revolutionaries – “To demand or not to demand weapons from imperialism?” [LIT-CI, 2013]
Riding with imperialism
This support for the counterrevolution, disguised as hypocritical petty-bourgeois democratism, has been maintained, without deviation, in some cases, for more than half a century. It is definitely not a question of errors or slippages of political interpretation, considering the successive disasters in which imperialist aggression resulted for the workers, peoples and nations attacked. It constitutes a consolidated abandonment and attack on the interests of the revolution, in favor of the counterrevolution, by self-proclaimed revolutionary groups.
A more precise analysis of the class roots, apparatus interests, financial support that sustain these counterrevolutionary practices is required. Certainly these organizations do not deduct allowances from the CIA window. The easiest way has been to send delegates to frequent meetings, congresses, international support meetings for “democratic residencies” driven by imperialism, in the fight against the governments, peoples and states of Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Libya, Russia, etc.
And, in these meetings, which were and are being held in Brazil, Turkey, a little while ago, in Poland, etc., revolutionary delegates come into contact with unsuspecting international institutes that finance the anti-authoritarian struggle in the world. The Ford Foundation is just the best known. Imperialism, which financed the “new French philosophers”, takes greater pleasure in financing the embattled “Marxists” of imperialism. And they, with a clear conscience and full pockets, set out to advance their revolutionary practice, trotting alongside imperialism. After all, didn't the Bolsheviks borrow to seize power? These financing bodies of the counterrevolutionary traveling companions began to be studied in detailed academic works, such as that of Wanderson Chaves, A questãthe black: a FoundationFord and the Cold War (1950 - 1970).
It should be noted that, with regard to Brazil in general, these organizations, as was the case with the PSTU and other similar organizations, denied and even supported, albeit passively, the 2016 coup, due to the indisputable social-liberal character of the PT government. [PSTU, 2016.] They forgot a small detail. The coup was against the workers and the nation, not against the PT, which would very soon accommodate itself to it. [MASTER, counter power, 2022.] In 1964, they would have remained neutral, as the overthrown government was openly capitalist and the president of Brazil, João Goulart, a strong, bourgeoisie and poltroon landowner. [MAESTRI, 2019, p. 179 et seq.]
a polítip for workers
The defense of the independence of a nation attacked by imperialism does not depend on the character of its State and its government. Communists of the Third International fought and died alongside the troops of Haile Selassie and Ethiopia, a feudal sovereign and state. [SCIORTINO, 2012.] In 1938, when Getúlio was flirting with Nazi-fascism, Trotsky proposed: “There is currently a semi-fascist regime in Brazil that any revolutionary can only face with hatred. Let us suppose, however, that, tomorrow, England enters into a military conflict with Brazil. I ask you which [side] of the conflict will the working class be on? I would answer: in that case I would be on the side of 'fascist' Brazil against 'democratic' England.” [TROTSKY, 1938.]
The world revolutionary left correctly supported and defended, arms in hand, the Spanish bourgeois Republic, against the coup sustained by Nazi-fascism. A position that Leon Trotsky supported, proposing that, in order to sustain the Republic, it was necessary to carry out a revolution, while the Stalinists proposed an alliance with the bourgeoisie and democratic agrarians, leaving the revolution for after the victory of the Republic. What crucified that revolution, the Republic, and enthroned Francoism for many decades.
The unconditional defense of the Russian and Chinese States in the face of the aggression of the Yankee imperialist club must never be extended to the defense of their national leaderships, in their relationship with the working classes, which must equally continue in their struggle for social emancipation, even if interested in the national independence of their countries. And, above all, it must not give rise to false illusions. The defeat of US imperialism in Russia and China will possibly prevent the imposition of a semi-fascist order on the workers of those countries and on the world for a few decades. Which is not little. But the tendency is for China to follow its path, now evicted, to transform itself into hegemonic imperialism, replacing the US, in a time frame that is difficult to establish.
Therefore, in the context of that total or partial solution, the contradictions between the world of work and that of capital will continue to dominate history and influence all spheres of social and political life, waiting for a necessarily international solution to the contradictions by the proletarian classes, if it occurs. It imposes, therefore, with terrible urgency, accurate monitoring and interpretation of the development of the current offensive of the imperialist club, as well as of the difficult period that we live and that opens before us. We need such a concrete analysis of the concrete situation, which we always talk about and rarely carry out.[1]
* Mario Maestri is a historian. Author, among other books, of Awakening the Dragon: Birth and Consolidation of Chinese Imperialism (1949-2021).
Reference
CARDEN, James W. Bush priest aveva ragione: giù le mani dall´Ucraina. LIMES. Italian Magazine of Geopolitica. Rome, no. 4, Apr. 2020.
CHAVES, Wanderson. A Questãthe Black: the Ford Foundation and the Cold War (1950-1970). Curitiba: Editora Appris, 2019. 295p.
CASELLI, GP La Russia Nuova. Economy and story from Gorbacëv to Putin. Milano: Mimesis, 2013.
KARAGANOV, Sergej. “If lost, Russia rischierebbe di spaccarsi”. LIMES. Italian magazine of Geopolitica. Rome, no. 4, mag. 2020.
KORTUNOV, Andrej. “In Ukraine, diplomacy has failed”. LIMES. Italian magazine of Geopolitica. Rome, no. 4, Apr. 2020.
KORTUNOV, Andrej. Nato, il nemico utile. LIMES. Italian magazine of Geopolitica. Rome, no. 5, mag. 2020.
LIT-CI. To demand weapons from imperialism or not? October 14, 2013. Available at:https://litci.org/es/exigir-ou-nao-armas-do-imperialismo/>
LUKJAVOV, Fyodor. Un ´vecchio pensieri´ per il mostro passe e per tutto il mondo. LIMES. Italian Magazine of Geopolitica. Rome, no. 4, Apr. 2020.
MAESTRI, Mario. Black Identitarianism Is Eating the Left by a Leg. counter power. 31 Oct. 2020. Available at:
MAESTRI, Mario. Abdias do Nascimento: quilombola or captain of the bush. Marxist interpretation essays on racialist policy for Brazil. Porto Alegre: FCM Editora, 2018.
MAESTRI, Mario. revolutiontion and Counter-Revolution in Brazil: 1530-2019. 2nd ed. enlarged. Porto Alegre: FCM Editora, 2019. Available at:
MAESTRI, Mario. Antonio Gramsci: the life and work of a leftist communist. With a chapter by Luigi Candreva. 3rd ed. Porto Alegre: FCM Editora, 2020.
MAESTRI, Mario. The Dragon's Awakeningo: birth and consolidation of Chinese imperialism. (1949-2021). The US-China Conflict in the World and in Brazil. Porto Alegre: FCM Editora, 2021. 142 p.
MAESTRI, Mario. The right to defence. Counterpower. 19 Apr. 2022.
MAHBUBANI, Did China win? The Chinese Challenge to American Supremacy Rio de Janeiro: Intrinsic, 2021.
MANDEL, Ernest. Le troisième âge du capitalisme. France: UGE, 1976. 3 vol. PETRONI, Federico. Sconfiggere la Russia sì, ma fin dove? LIMES. Italian Magazine of Geopolitica. Rome, no. 5, mag. 2020.
PSTU. Opinion. The meaning of Dilma's impeachment. 31 Aug. 2016.
SACCO, Giuseppe. Perché Putin non crede pia nell'Occidente. LIMES. Italian Magazine of Geopolitica. Rome, no. 4, Apr. 2020.
SCIORTINO, Gaspare. Comunisti ei guerriglieri del Negus. An episode of anti-fascist resistance in Ethiopia, 1938-39. Apr. 2012. Available at:https://www.resistenze.org/sito/te/cu/st/custce15-011045.htm>
TROTSKY, Leon. Mateo Fossa. Interview: 23 sep. 1938. Available at:https://www.marxists.org/portugues/trotsky/1938/09/23.htm>
Note
[1] Thanks to the reading of the linguist Florence Carboni.
