By VALERIO ARCARY*

The US under Trump has a new strategy to preserve its hegemony in the international system of states. It is a brutal long-term counter-offensive.

“If you want to know the villain, put a stick in his hand”
“Solve slowly, execute quickly”
(Popular Portuguese proverbs)

1.

The international phase that began in 1989/91, when the capitalist restoration in the former USSR was historically defeated, has come to an end. We are now entering a new historical period. For twenty-five years, the Triad has held undisputed supremacy, with the US leadership shared with the EU and associated with Japan, with the hegemony of a liberal project of globalization of the free circulation of capital and goods. Organizations in the UN system have been strengthened, particularly initiatives for energy transition in the face of global warming that culminated in the Treaty of Paris, and the consolidation of the WTO with the incorporation of China. No less important, democratic-liberal regimes have expanded beyond Europe and North America, especially in Latin America, for the first time in history. In the 2000s, the US experienced a mini-boom under Clinton, driven by financialization and the implementation of the Internet. In the XNUMXs, a mini-boom under Bush, despite the war strategy against Iraq and Afghanistan, with qualitative leaps in nanotechnology that transformed telematic communications. But the second decade of the XNUMXst century was qualitatively different. The capitalist economy, especially in the Triad countries, began to move sideways for the first time since the end of the Second World War. The QE (monetary easing) strategy circumvented the catastrophic threat of an international depression, but failed to prevent a long stagnation, while China continued to grow uninterruptedly. The costs of an accelerated energy transition will not be possible without broad global concertation. The orientation of Trump and his far-right allies around the world is a rupture or a turn. They are not willing to sacrifice their competitive advantages. Any power that decides to decarbonize faster than the others will put itself in a more vulnerable position, because it will have higher production costs. “Globalization” has stopped, and we are back to a situation of growing protectionism confirmed by the avalanche of tariffs on imports from the United States, which holds the largest share of the world market. The power of the strongest will exercise.

2.

The noisy episode of Trump’s abuse of power in the White House against Zelensky confirms that we are at a different stage in the world situation. Control of the Panama Canal, the acquisition of Greenland from Denmark and the incredible provocation of Canada’s annexation signaled a new strategy. A few weeks ago we had already watched in perplexity and terror the explicit defense of Palestinian ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, with support for the most fascist leaders within the government coalition headed by Netanyahu. However, these two moves by Washington do not allow us to conclude that the Atlantic Alliance between the US and Europe has expired. What is underway is a change in the political balance of forces within the Triad, and Washington is on the offensive to relocate its role in NATO by imposing new conditions. It is not true that the suspension of support for Zelensky means that Trump has abandoned Europe to its own fate. Europe accounts for more than 20% of the world’s GDP, and without the support of the EU and the UK it will not be possible to contain China. But Washington is not prepared to indefinitely support a war with no military solution, unless it involves total involvement, the outcome of which would be a gamble on Putin’s overthrow. That would be risking an atomic war, a suicidal gamble. The US will need Europe, perhaps more than ever, in the face of an alliance between Russia and China that is not temporary. But it requires a Europe aligned with a new long-term project. Trump is inspired by the Nixon/Kissinger tactic in dealing with the USSR. The rapprochement with China was key to ending the Vietnam War, and decisive in isolating the USSR. However, isolating China will not be so simple.  

3.

Trump is aware that the relative weight of the US has diminished and, although it maintains broad military superiority and financial supremacy, a unipolar power is no longer possible. Russia has consolidated itself as an imperialist state that aims to maintain regional influence, demonstrated by its control of Crimea in 2014, invasion of Georgia, deployment of troops to Kazakhstan and Belarus to defend regimes threatened by popular mobilizations and, finally, invasion of Ukraine in 2022. North Korea remains intact, on the border of Seoul, a protectorate defended by the presence of tens of thousands of Yankee soldiers. The dictatorial regime of the religious-military apparatus in Iran has remained standing, despite protests from the young female and urban population. India is no longer an Anglo-American semi-colony. Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and is an independent country. The strengthening of Mercosur under the leadership of Brazil, in partnership with Chile and Bolivia, and the presence of the Petro government in Colombia, in addition to the heroic resistance of Cuba, indicate a loss of influence in South America, which is aggravated by the election of Cláudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. As if that were not enough, the BRICS expanded their participation with new members. Trump decided to adopt a line of maximum initiative and is going on the offensive. The world has become much more dangerous than it has been in the last thirty-five years.

4.

The US under Trump is implementing a new strategy to preserve its hegemony in the international system of states. This is a brutal, long-term counteroffensive. Anyone who underestimates it will be making an irreparable mistake. It essentially involves repositioning itself in the face of the threat posed by China. It follows the calculation that it is essential to isolate the main enemy: Beijing. The hypothesis of a slow, subordinate absorption of China into the system of states was based on a project that failed. Over the past forty years, since the consolidation of the program formulated by Deng Xiaoping, the expectation prevailed in the American bourgeoisie that the restoration of capitalism in China would foster the transformation of a comprador bourgeoisie into an internal bourgeoisie that, supported by the rapid expansion of an urban middle class, would be the social subjects of a revolt against the domination of the communist party apparatus over the state, fracturing the bureaucracy and repeating, albeit in slow motion, the process in the former USSR initiated by Gorbachev. This bet did not come to fruition. Trump has a new project under construction.    

Another twist in the global situation is that the danger of authoritarian regimes is imminent and real. The subversion of liberal-democratic regimes from within their own institutions has proven to be a standard strategy of the far right. Many on the left are wondering about the reasons that explain a neo-fascist-inspired movement in the 60st century. It turns out that Nazi-fascism was a political-social movement from the XNUMXs and XNUMXs that responded to several determinations. It was a response to the danger of new October revolutions. But that was not all. The defensive dimension was to impose a historic defeat on the workers, destroy their organizations, and “spread terror.” But it was also a project of struggle for leadership in the international system of states. The destruction of the USSR followed the calculation of a unified Eurasia under the leadership of Germany, associated with Italy and Japan, which could measure forces with the United States. It failed, but the cost was more than XNUMX million lives. Over the past ten years, since Brexit, a political and electoral laboratory in the United Kingdom, a fraction of the Western ruling class has moved to the far right to impose a historic defeat on its working classes, eradicating the concessions made to the last two generations: free education and healthcare, subsidized housing finance, public transport, pay-as-you-go pensions, and XNUMX or even XNUMX-month holiday pay. But this strategy of accelerating the movement of capital accumulation and super-exploitation also follows the struggle to preserve global hegemony against China. The national imperialist fever in the United States has degenerate ideological symptoms: machismo, racism, homophobia, anti-intellectualism and messianic fanaticism. But it responds to a strategic project under construction: authoritarian regimes that strengthen internal social cohesion in order to face the threat coming from the East. The arms race has only just begun. In the face of this new period, the challenges facing the global left will be enormous. The only hope lies in the internationalism of those who live off their work, the exploited and oppressed. But time is not on our side. More than ever, we should be in a hurry.  

* Valerio Arcary is a retired professor of history at the IFSP. Author, among other books, of No one said it would be Easy (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/3OWSRAc]

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