As Bordiga once famously noted, human affairs cannot be understood as a photograph, as something frozen in time, but have to be understood as a film, a series of almost imperceptible shifts in every frame but which add up in the end to a complete change in reality.⁽¹⁾ Recent events in the Middle East and their consequences (both intended and unintended) only underline the validity of that methodology when trying to understand the complicated “reciprocal interactions” in the current world order.

In the not-too-distant past some of the states currently winning in the struggle for a greater share of the planet and its resources have had their setbacks. Israel was forced to retire from its (US-backed) attack on Lebanon by dogged Hezbollah resistance in 2006. Then Turkey could only look on as the Egyptian Army carried out a coup against its client, Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government, in 2013.⁽²⁾ And in 2021 the USA suffered a humiliating retreat from Kabul⁽³⁾ which was the consequence of Trump’s attempt to do a deal with the Taliban eighteen months earlier (and which Biden adhered to as he too wanted US troops out of Afghanistan). A consequence of that debacle was to embolden the Putin regime in the Kremlin to gamble on an attack on Ukraine which would allow Russia to hold on to its gains in Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, then under threat from a reforming, NATO-backed, Ukrainian Army. How dramatically different the situation is today has been underlined by the recent events in Syria and which have repercussions well beyond the Middle East. Above all what they underline is that the war fronts across the world are beginning to join up.

The Fall of the House of Assad

After the Arab Spring of 2011, of which the rising in Syria was a part, Assad lost control of nearly half Syria’s recognised territory, but despite Syria suffering 14 years of Western sanctions, his brutal regime survived. For the last few years it had seemed like a “frozen conflict”. Even as late as March 2023, Jean Michel Morel could write in Le Monde Diplomatique:

President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power seems firm despite food insecurity, which affects 12 million people in Syria, and a poverty rate of over 90%. His regime’s stability is all the more striking because, out of a prewar population of 21 million, more than six million are refugees in other countries and some seven million are internally displaced. It’s the combined result of harsh repression of political adversaries, a weak and divided opposition, and the determination of Assad and his clan.⁽⁴⁾

No wonder then that December’s dramatically rapid fall of the brutal Assad regime caught even the most dedicated Middle East monitors by surprise. After all, it had faced down apparently more serious challenges in 2011 and 2015-6. In 2011 it was only saved when Iran sent Revolutionary Guards, Afghan Shia militias and eventually Hezbollah fighters to hold on to a main supply route of the “Axis of Resistance” against Israel. In 2016 brutal Russian bombings saved the day for Assad although Russia’s main aim was to retain its last strategic toeholds in the Middle East – its naval base at Tartus and airforce base at Hmeimim (Latakia).

But that raises the question of why Russia and Iran, which had such strategic interests in keeping Assad in power eight years before, did so little to save him this time. Russia did initially respond with the usual aerial attacks on the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces advancing on Aleppo but then they ceased. Apparently they could see no purpose in these attacks whilst Syrian troops (at this point paid 3 days' wages instead of a month’s salary)⁽⁵⁾ were not putting up a fight on the ground.

However, there are deeper reasons for Russia’s abandonment of Assad. The obvious one is that the war in Ukraine has stretched Russia’s military resources. But that is not all. Russia was also critical of Assad’s failure over the years to make any significant concessions to broaden the base of the regime, and thus increase its stability. Assad apparently rejected all attempts at dialogue with both internal and external opponents. In particular he ignored Russian urgings to attend meetings they had organised with the Turkish President, Erdoğan. It is also the second time since the invasion of Ukraine that Russia has abandoned a historic ally. In Armenia there is also a huge Russian military base and Armenia was part of the Russian “Collective Security Treaty Organisation” but since 2020, when the pro-European Pashinyan was elected Armenian President, Russia has not to lifted a finger to aid Armenia in either its war, or in later disputes with Azerbaijan. Instead it is now cultivating relations with Azerbaijan.⁽⁶⁾

Russian frustration was also shared by Iran, but the Tehran regime had other reasons to be disillusioned with the dictator in Damascus. Syria had been an important conduit for Iranian arms to reach Hezbollah in Lebanon via Iraq and its border crossing with Syria at Deir Ezzor. However, as Gaza was being levelled to the ground, Assad refused to participate in Hezbollah’s campaign of launching missiles at Israel in order to try to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza. His own agenda was the attempt to reintegrate Syria into the Arab League as a first step on its rehabilitation in the world imperialist order. As late as 2 December 2024 Reuters reported that the US and UAE were in talks about dropping all sanctions against Syria on condition that it broke with Iran.⁽⁷⁾ Iran had already let Assad know that it was well aware of the threat and sent a “friendly warning”. It was an important moment. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all have separate imperialist interests but the one factor that underlies their cooperation is that they are all the target of “the economic weapon” of Western imperialism – sanctions.⁽⁸⁾ Iran is estimated to have spent $30-50 billion over the years, not to mention thousands of casualties (mainly Afghan Shias it has to be said), to keep Assad in power. Now he wants to leave the club. When the HTS advance began the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei himself, decided it was time to cut Iran’s losses.⁽⁹⁾ Tens of thousands of Iranian “advisors”, consular officials and troops left Syria days before the HTS arrived in Damascus. Although more orderly than the US retreat from Kabul, it was a humiliating withdrawal, underlining the current economic and military weakness of Iran. Even Iranian commentators close to the regime did not hold back in criticising Iran’s Syria policy.⁽¹⁰⁾ However, in one final act, which may yet have significance for the coming struggle for control in Syria, they handed over control of the Deir Ezzor region, not to the Turkish backed HTS, but to the Kurdish forces of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Syria as a Turkish Satrapy?

For the moment, the big winner and key player in Syria is now Turkey. In 2016, Russia’s merciless bombing campaign gradually drove the Islamist resistance into the North West corner of the territory around Idlib, where Erdoğan’s Turkey established a “safe zone”. Indeed Turkey promised Iran and Russia that it would clamp down on the worst Islamists in their ranks.

But this never happened. Erdoğan had his own problems and his own imperialist agenda. He needed at least some of the Islamists to form a so-called Syrian National Army (SNA) to use against the Kurds of the People’s Defence Units (YPG) who were the main element in the SDF in the North East of the country. However the SDF was supported by the US as the most organised and successful combatants against the Islamic State (IS or Daesh). This support not only included US air power but sophisticated surveillance and communications systems. The US also maintains its own bases there, largely to protect the Syrian oil fields against both IS and Iran. The US once acknowledged only 900 troops in these bases but have recently admitted that they now hold 2,000 troops. However, it is not yet clear (especially with Trump re-entering the White House later this month) whether they will remain.

Under Erdoğan since 2002, Turkey has pursued an erratic imperialist policy whose only consistent aim has been interpreted as rebuilding a modern version of the Ottoman Empire.⁽¹¹⁾ Even though a member of NATO, it bought Russian air defence systems in 2017 (and thus lost the contract to obtain US F-35s) whilst constantly shifting positions as expediency demanded.⁽¹²⁾ A classic example of this was the denunciation of Chinese oppression of Uighurs in Xinjiang province in 2009 as “genocide”, a stance maintained for 10 years until Turkey’s trade with China had developed to be worth $27 billion a year. When Erdoğan sought to increase this, he suddenly discovered on a trip to Beijing that there were “others” who sought to exploit the Uighur issue to poison Turkish-Chinese relations.⁽¹³⁾ The principles of trade clearly demand the trading of principles! Although it did not stop Turkey from smuggling Uighur fighters to Northern Syria to assist Turkish military operations.

From 2004 until 2011 Turkish relations with Assad’s Syria were friendly as trade between the two states grew but when the civil war broke out in 2011 Turkey called for Assad to step down. Faced with the burden of supporting millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Erdoğan began to call for the establishment of “safe zones” in Northern Syria which he envisaged as a 20-30 mile strip all along the Turkish border. However the real aim was to create a cordon sanitaire between Turkey and the Kurdish areas now dominated by the YPG and SDF. At the same time Turkey’s border was open for any jihadist from anywhere to cross over into Syria to join IS. On both counts the US were at odds with Turkey for the reasons explained above – the SDF and YPG were far more reliable forces when it came to dealing with IS. However in 2019, the other egomaniac in this tale, Trump, decided (against CIA and Pentagon advice) to withdraw US ground forces from Northern Syria, as well as remove air cover for the zone. This allowed Turkey a free hand to invade Afrin and the other provinces along the northern Syrian border.

And here there is a cautionary tale for all those who think that Syria post-Assad will be any less bloody or less sectarian. Syria, like all post-colonial states, is a mixture of nations, tribes and religions. Northern Syria is as varied as anywhere in the country with a mixture of Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen, Circassians, Syrian Armenians and Yazidis. Many were already migrants from wars and forced displacement, both historically and recently. In Afrin the YPG, now devoid of US air cover by President Trump’s decree, could do nothing to stop the pounding of the town by Turkish F-16 bombers. They were forced to retreat leaving civilians to fend for themselves. Close to 200,000 of them (mainly Kurds) in Afrin knew what was coming and fled.⁽¹⁴⁾ Those who could not faced murder at the hands of former IS and Al-Qaeda jihadists now on the Turkish payroll as fighters in the rabble misnamed as the SNA. Everybody they caught was killed, particularly women.

Women are singled out by Turkish-backed groups, many of which share the same extremist ideology that ISIS and similar groups adopted. For instance, when Turkey invaded Tel Abyad in October 2019, one of the first targets were women activists, such as Hevrin Khalaf. An unarmed local politician in her twenties, she was hunted down and pulled from her vehicle, beaten and shot to death, her head and body trampled by Turkish-backed Syrian groups. Turkish media called her execution a “neutralization.”⁽¹⁵⁾

This same SNA, with Turkish Army assistance, are today carrying the fight towards the Autonomous Area of North and East Syria (AANES, or Rojava) to attack the YPG and SDF, sanctioned by the new “interim” government of the other Turkish puppet, HTS. Erdoğan has already called on the YPG to lay down their arms or they “will be buried” in Syria.⁽¹⁶⁾ Under pressure of the new offensive in the North, the SDF commander Mazloum Abdi⁽¹⁷⁾ (a close friend of Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK leader still languishing in a Turkish prison) has already conceded that the SDF does not aim for a federal state and is ready for his forces to become part of a new Syrian Army under the new government in Damascus but this was accompanied with an appeal to the US to halt the attacks of the SNA on the Kurds. For the moment the HTS leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa (formerly the “Islamist terrorist” Abu Mohammad al-Jolani or al-Golani) currently talks the good talk of inclusion for all, as he aims to re-establish a centralised Syrian state, but all non-Sunnis will be worried about the HTS track record in Idlib in 2020:

When civilians fled, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists pillaged their homes. As battles waged, they detained, tortured, and executed civilians expressing dissenting opinions, including journalists. Female media workers were doubly victimized, as the terrorist group continued to systematically discriminate against women and girls, including by denying their freedom of movement. HTS, moreover, indiscriminately shelled densely populated civilian areas, spreading terror amongst civilians living in Government-held areas.
Women, men and children that we interviewed faced the ghastly choice of being bombarded or fleeing deeper into HTS controlled areas where there are rampant abuses of human rights and extremely limited humanitarian assistance”, said Commissioner Karen Koning AbuZayd. “The acts by HTS members amount to war crimes.”⁽¹⁸⁾

Despite breaking its links with IS and al-Qaeda, HTS remains a Salafist Islamist organisation with all the intolerance of that ideology. And some of the militias allied to them are even worse. Already there are reports of Christian and Alawite demonstrations over the desecration of their religious symbols. However, the main priority for both HTS and Turkey is to re-establish a centralised Syrian state which would mean an end to the Rojava Kurdish enclave and the removal of what Erdoğan claims is a threat to the territorial integrity of Turkey. Under Biden, the US continues to support the Kurds as the SDF still guards 10,000 ex-ISIS fighters plus many more of their families in concentration camps and the US fears any weakening of the SDF or YPG will lead to their release to join a revived IS (which is already happening). The Turkish Government is trying to persuade them that they and the HTS can deal with IS (and thus the US can exit the scene) but given the track record of both this is hardly convincing – unless you are called Donald Trump…

Greater Israel?

If Erdoğan’s Turkey has been the big winner in Syria itself, Israel (and its backer, the USA) have scored a massive victory in a much wider sense. As we noted in the beginning, the various imperialist fronts are now beginning to have an impact on each other. In Syria, Israel’s devastating blows against Hezbollah in 2024 were so severe⁽¹⁹⁾ that its leaders were forced to recall troops from Aleppo. This seems to have been the shift which gave the HTS forces the chance to start their lightning advance in late November. Syria was the main conduit for Iranian arms to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and that is now very much in question. In the existential struggle between Iran and Israel (backed by the hypocritical but unwavering support of the USA) which has dominated the Middle East for half a century, this is an enormous victory for Israel and its Western supporters. It is an enormous blow for the loose alliance of the sanctioned powers of Russia, Iran and even China.

Whether the Israeli security forces knew of it or not,⁽²⁰⁾ the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 provided a great opportunity for the ultra-nationalist and racist government of Israel to alter the balance of power in the region like no other. We do not (and may never) know how much Hezbollah and Iran knew of the Hamas plan to break out from their Gaza gaol 14 months ago. We do know that the motivation came from Hamas’ own needs. It was no accident that it was code-named Al-Aqsa Flood in direct response to all the provocations of the Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the religious Right/settler movement they represented. Itamar Ben-Gvir, despite being only 1 of 6 MPs from his Kahanist (that is, the most extreme fascist wing of Zionism) party, plus having several convictions for racism against Palestinians, became Minister for National Security in Netanyahu’s right wing coalition. The job gave him control of the West Bank, as well as the prison system holding Palestinians, and as a consequence:

More Arabs were murdered in 2023 than in any previous year, according to a year-end report ... by the Abraham Initiatives, a coexistence organization that tracks crime statistics. According to the report, 244 members of the Arab community were killed in Israel in 2023, over twice as many as the previous year. The report ... roundly blamed the sharp uptick in homicides on National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose ministry is responsible for policing and who was elected on a platform of the need to improve personal security.⁽²¹⁾

In addition, in August 2023 Ben Gvir led a mob blowing a shofar⁽²²⁾ as an act of defiance into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and proclaimed it was Israel’s.⁽²³⁾ We examined Hamas’ response to these provocations a year ago⁽²⁴⁾ but they could not have come at a worse time for either Hezbollah or Iran. Neither the Lebanese nor Iranian economies were in a fit state to deal with an all-out war and both Hezbollah and the Ayatollahs were highly unpopular at home. Hezbollah not only was responsible for the massive explosion from stored chemicals which devastated Beirut in 2020⁽²⁵⁾ but was also the backer of the Bank of Lebanon director who broke the Lebanese economy. However, the final straw for their critics was their intervention in Syria to defend an Assad regime which had continually interfered in Lebanese affairs for decades. In Iran, Western economic sanctions and the incompetence and corruption of the Ayatollahs, had not only created inflation which had provoked strikes⁽²⁶⁾ but the fall out from the September 2022 death of Jina Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police “for wearing her hijab too loosely” had led to a wave of defiance of the Islamic regime. In such circumstances neither force could afford foreign adventures.

For Israel, the Hamas attack has turned into a new and great opportunity “not seen for half a century” as former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett put it. Israel has been in a state of permanent war since the day it was brought into existence due to a favourable confluence of imperialist interests in 1948.⁽²⁷⁾ Since then it has fought four major wars, faced two intifadas (risings) of Palestinians to its illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and responded to every threat by doubling down on security and taking the fight to its enemies in pre-emptive campaigns of assassination and bombing raids. Those Israelis who have recognised that this is an unsustainable mode of existence have been largely silenced or marginalised.⁽²⁸⁾ The playbook of the current regime is taken straight from the Hebrew Bible and, as we noted in Revolutionary Perspectives 23, is unashamedly genocidal:

… the Zionist project has never intended to share Eretz Israel with anyone as the current war has made all too clear. The carpet bombing of Gaza with its threat of ethnic cleansing has been justified by several Israeli leaders. From the start, the ex-boss of the Israeli National Security Council has welcomed an epidemic in Gaza as an aid to victory and has argued that “creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal … Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist”. Current Israeli President Isaac Herzog justifies Israel’s collective punishment by claiming that “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved …”, whilst the odious Netanyahu has turned to scripture for an analogy in the Jewish destruction of the city of Amalek:
… attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.⁽²⁹⁾

And, as it gradually became clear to the Netanyahu Government that their opponents’ response was relatively feeble, they were not only emboldened to even greater atrocities in Gaza (cutting off food and water, disabling all health care by bombing hospitals and blocking aid, to add to the direct military assault which has forced Palestinians to move countless times simply to stay alive but even this has not saved many who have been attacked in supposed designated safe areas) but are also trying to drive Palestinians out of their villages in the West Bank. The existence of the Palestinians is an inconvenience which they hope to solve by driving them off the territory. Ironically the ultra-Right Zionists of the Netanyahu coalition government have an even worse “solution” for the Palestinian than the Russian Tsarist state had for the Jews when they embarked on the pogroms of the late nineteenth century. Then the Procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobedonstsev’s solution to the “Jewish question” was summed up as “Extermination, Emigration, and Assimilation”.⁽³⁰⁾ The settlers and religious zealots are not even allowing the last as a possibility. Israel’s war is, as in 1948, a war of conquest.

It has long been Israeli policy to take the war to all their opponents, and this is precisely what it has done over the last year, bombing targets in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. However with the fall of Assad the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has now taken advantage of the power vacuum to make 600 bombing raids on any weapons supply dumps it can locate in Syria to deny them to any future government. It has knocked out 80% of the old regime’s military capacity with special attention on Syrian air defences – thus making it an easy target for Israeli bombers whatever may happen in the future. Israel has also invaded Southern Syria from its occupied zone on the Golan Heights (which it annexed in 2019 – an annexation only recognised by the USA) moving towards Damascus and announced that they would settle 50,000 more Israelis in the occupied zone. As half of the current inhabitants are Druze but are subject to military call up in the IDF and have protested several times against Israeli discrimination over a whole series of issues⁽³¹⁾ this may yet lead to more protests especially as the Golan Druze identify with their co-religionists in Daraa province of Syria.

However, for the moment, the Netanyahu regime is cock-a-hoop. Hamas has been all but destroyed, Hezbollah is severely weakened and Iran has lost its supply route through Syria. The “Axis of Resistance” which Iran had hoped to mobilise in case of attack by Israel is, at least for now, severely weakened. This is also good news for the USA. The public show of some concern for the massacred in Gaza was mere window dressing as the US (Israel’s major arms supplier) not only continued its usual annual military funding of $3.3 billion to Israel but voted $14 billion more as emergency “military aid” within a month of the onslaught on Gaza starting.⁽³²⁾ Biden’s last act was to earmark yet another $8 billion making him “the first (US) President to have overseen a joint Israeli-US war”.⁽³³⁾ This should not come as a surprise. After the US’ debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel is their last dependable ally in the region, and is now all the more indispensable, especially in the 46 year old contest with their common enemy, the Ayatollahs’ Iran. No wonder Netanyahu could unctuously thank the US Congress for their bipartisan support for Israel in its “defence of Western civilisation”.

The Wider Imperialist Picture

But Iran is only the weakest of the US’ major opponents on the world stage and has survived decades of US economic warfare largely thanks to the support of Russia and, especially China. By November 2023 China was buying about a third of Iran’s daily oil output and shipping it clandestinely in old tankers to avoid US sanctions.⁽³⁴⁾ China, ever cautious, was not as committed to Syria as either Russia or Iran (but did sign a “strategic partnership” deal with Assad in September 2023). It had also voted alongside Russia every time to veto anti-Assad resolutions in the UN Security Council, and was the third biggest source of Syrian imports, but that was the extent of its commitment. In common with its general imperialist policy of stealthy advance, its only comment on the fall of Assad is that “the Syrian people” (whatever that means) will have to decide on their political future.

China’s signature success in the Middle East so far has been to get Saudi Arabia and Iran to sign an agreement re-establishing diplomatic relations in 2023.⁽³⁵⁾ This was a diplomatic blow to Washington as it not only broke Iranian isolation but demonstrated that even its main ally in the region since 1945 doubted US assurances of protection. It also was a triumph for China’s imperialist strategy. And this brings us to the wider picture.

The US has been the world’s undisputed dominant power since 1945. Its former rival in the USSR could never match it in the dollar-dominated “free world” hence was forced to hide behind non-convertible currencies in its empire. It was the same in terms of military deployment – the attempt to match the USA in that arena only led eventually to the implosion of the Soviet Union.

But hubris is the poisoned chalice of victory and the US drank too deeply from it in 1991 and thereafter. Instead of incorporating Russia into the “New World Order” (dismantling NATO might have been a smart first step given that it was formed as an anti-USSR body)⁽³⁶⁾, US imperialism continued to see it as a rival. It thus mopped up the old Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe, and drew them into its own dollar-dominated orbit as it gradually extended NATO membership across the continent. In addition the President of the USSR’s Russian remnant, Boris Yeltsin, was persuaded to subject it to the US “shock doctrine” which turned economic crisis into a national trauma. Yeltsin’s “loans for shares” scheme of 1995-6 led to rigged auctions where those with access to banks bought up the bulk of the newly issued shares of Russia’s most profitable state industries. These new oligarchs and corruption flourished but the rouble tanked. The Russian state defaulted on its debts in 1998. Yeltsin even lost a two-year war against Chechen rebels (1994-6) before resigning in 1999. His chosen successor, Putin, took over and got lucky with world oil prices, at a time when Russian wages were so low following the 1998 meltdown that profits rose dramatically, so more was invested in local industry.

Once this economic turnaround had secured his position, Putin and his “siloviki” (strongmen) first went after the oligarchs (gaoling Khordokovsky pour encourager les autres) so that they submitted to the state rather than the other way round, pounded the Chechens into submission by destroying the capital, Grozny, and then set about reversing “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century” as he called the collapse of the USSR. Russia, unlike the USSR which had emerged as a victor in 1945, is thus a revanchist power and this raises the stake in imperialist rivalry. Putin has basically stated that NATO has gone so far but there must be no further advance. Russia’s direct interventions in both Georgia and Ukraine are the result, while the war in Ukraine has become a destructive war of attrition, which has cost a million dead or wounded, in two and half years of war.

Yet, as the world divides into two camps, neither side has fought alone. The US has assembled a group of 57 states prepared to offer military and other aid to Ukraine amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars whilst countries like China, India, South Africa, Venezuela and Brazil have assisted Russia to evade sanctions.

But, as we have written many times before, the dominant imperialist rivalry is not between NATO and Russia. It is between China and the USA. Throughout the Ukraine War the US State Department has lost no opportunity to attack China and at the same time prepare the ideological ground for the coming war – “democratic values”!

Even as President Putin’s war continues, we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order – and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China. China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it. Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.⁽³⁷⁾

As he leaves office, Blinken has doubled down on where the real threat lies. In an interview with the Financial Times he smugly told them “that four Indo-Pacific countries — Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea — were invited to attend Nato summits during the Biden administration and that the transatlantic alliance now criticises China, which was previously unimaginable. He recalls how former Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida warned that “Ukraine [today] might be east Asia tomorrow”, in a veiled reference to China.⁽³⁸⁾

All this in addition to a whole slew of anti-Chinese alliances in the Pacific like AUKUS and Five Eyes intelligence cooperation with Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. The significance of the China threat is shared right across the US political spectrum, as the 20 April 2024 vote of the US House of Representatives showed. They approved a $95 billion aid package to Ukraine, Israel ... and Taiwan.

None of this surprises us. In December 2021 we linked the sabre-rattling over Ukraine and Taiwan as joint harbingers of a more generalised war to come.⁽³⁹⁾ At the time other internationalists doubted this even after Russia invaded Ukraine less than 2 months later. We were not arguing then that world war was immediately around the corner. We were well aware that this is the start of a process and, given the complexity of imperialist contradictions, it is not easy to say how long this will take to unfold. However, half a century of declining capitalist growth and increasing stagnation has created the conditions where no compromise of imperialist interests is possible any longer. As Ukraine, Gaza and Syria have all shown, only the unconditional defeat of an adversary (as at the end of the First and Second World Wars) is now on the agenda.

The balance of power has currently tipped towards “Western civilisation” in the Middle East but imperialist conflicts are spreading. Other twists in the kaleidoscope of imperialist competition are already occurring. If Russia loses its naval base in Tartus in Syria (which is not yet certain) it is already cooperating with Haftar (the ex-Gaddafi general) and the Libyan National Army in Eastern Libya, and negotiating with them to open another base in Tobruk. With France and the US losing bases in West Africa and the Sahel, Russia’s Afrika Korps (the former Wagner group) are making gains, and are already involved in the humanitarian disaster that is the civil war in Sudan. The result is even more murder, rape and other atrocities against non-combatants than in Gaza. And it is not just Sudan, as the Wall Street Journal has highlighted,

This corridor of conflict stretches across approximately 4,000 miles and encompasses about 10% of the total land mass of sub-Saharan Africa, an area that has doubled in just three years and today is about 10 times the size of the U.K., according to an analysis by political risk consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft. In its wake lies incalculable human suffering—mass displacement, atrocities against civilians⁽⁴⁰⁾ and extreme hunger—on a continent that is already by far the poorest on the planet.⁽⁴¹⁾

Nothing we have seen leads us to modify our 2021 judgement that capitalism is on the way to a Third World War. On the contrary, we have seen more and more reason to double down on it. Indeed, defenders of the capitalist system are themselves sounding the alarm. In October 2024, Jamie Dimon, the boss of top speculating institution JPMorgan, even went so far as to argue that “World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries.”⁽⁴²⁾

And Mr Dimon is quite clear what the outcome will be (although it won’t be America’s fault):

We’ve never had a situation where a man [Putin] is threatening nuclear blackmail. That: ‘If your military starts to win, we’re rolling out the nuclear weapons’ type of thing,” said Dimon. “If that doesn’t scare you, it should.”

Whilst Dimon’s points to the fact that all the wars seem to be joining up, a more forensic analysis comes from the distinguished Italian physicist, Carlo Rovelli. He too ends by invoking fears of a coming “nuclear winter” but starts by highlighting the fact that the current trade wars, and burgeoning arms race (which, he notes, contains its own trade war as China and the US scramble for the materials to build the new sophisticated weaponry of modern war) are not the fault of any single state. He paraphrases the April 2023 report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The actual report begins:

Total global military expenditure increased by 3.7 per cent in real terms in 2022, to reach a new high of $2240 billion. Military expenditure in Europe saw its steepest year-on-year increase in at least 30 years. The three largest spenders in 2022—the United States, China and Russia—accounted for 56 per cent of the world total, according to new data on global military spending.⁽⁴³⁾

This means that

we are plunging again into a frantic race to build weapons and restrict international trade. Proxy wars fire up. Opposite sides demonise each other as horrific, rapacious, uncivilised – just as France and Germany were doing to each other in the run-up to the first world war. Narrowly avoided during the cold war, a global conflict is looming, with nuclear risks. Support for this drive towards developing more armaments and decoupling is almost unanimous in our media and politics.⁽⁴⁴⁾

He might have added that the same thing happened before the Second World War as well, but he goes on:

My worries are not based on a naive or idealist pacifism. On the contrary, they stem from an effort to be cynically rational. With cynic’s eyes, I see the framing of China as a “threat” for instance, for what it is: a garbled reaction to the fact that an economic power is freeing itself from Washington’s dominion. Similarly, it is not the high moral ground of wanting to restore an international legal order (which our “side” has repeatedly violated) that motivates the west’s approach to Ukraine, where a bloody and devastating war continues, or to the current tragic events in the Middle East: rather it is, I believe, a geopolitical power struggle. Militaristic choices, cloaked under hypocritical rhetoric, are forestalling a more sober discussion.

The description is sound but the Professor assumes that it is only a question of ill-will that is driving us to war. He refers to the cooperation he has with Iranian and Chinese colleagues, as if to say that if “men and women of reason” got together then all would be well. It is a nice idea which resonates well amongst scientists who often collaborate internationally.⁽⁴⁵⁾

However, this is indeed “idealism” since it avoids a materialist understanding of the kind of world we live in and what is behind the current drive to global war. We live under capitalism, a system dedicated to making profits for a few from the labour of the many. But its central contradiction is that it has a tendency to drive down the cost of labour by either raising its productivity or expelling it from the workforce. Every so often, at a certain point, this becomes self-defeating as the fall in the rate of profit makes new investment pointless and at this point there ensues a crisis which destroys firms and with it their capital values. Those that survive can then resume production but from a new, higher base of concentration and a new period of boom can open. This was what went on throughout the nineteenth century and the crises occurred roughly every ten years. This was the capitalism Marx analysed. However in the final years of the century the concentration of capital became so intense that it required the intervention of the nation state both to control national capitalism at home and defend it abroad – capital had entered the era of imperialism. Now it was insufficient for a few firms to go bust to start a new cycle of profitable capital accumulation – it required the destruction of value on a much wider scale. The struggle for profit was now international in a world economy. And with more and more wealth in fewer hands the capitalists were able to control the state and its priorities. Number one of these was defending the interests of the propertied capitalist class at home and abroad. This not only changed the character of capitalism but also brought about a change in the character of its wars. These were no longer confined to the military but now were fought between whole national economies. Tariffs, sanctions and other “economic weapons” were deployed before, during and after military confrontation. All imperialist war is thus genocidal, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. This is precisely where we are now for the third time in a little over a century.

The added problem of the current situation is that the post war boom after 1945 ended 50 years ago and there has been no moment of “creative destruction” (as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter euphemistically dubbed the crises Marx identified as central to the system long ago) to allow for a new boom in capitalist accumulation. Instead there has been one state-driven expedient after another to artificially kick start the growth of previous years. When the crisis first started in the West one of the first expedients to deal with workers resistance was simply to write off capital and shut down factories. This not only had the effect of breaking up resistance but also led to the transfer of investment to low wage economies like China. China’s dramatic growth was the “unintended consequence” of the crushing of working class resistance in the West. It was not expected that China would not just “match western economic and cultural weight” as Professor Rovelli notes but also become a challenger (at least economically) to the dominance of the US. The US today may have a very divided ruling class but the one thing that they all agree on is that China has to be stopped whilst the US still has the strength to do it, and if per capita spending on the military has to be 15 times higher than China’s, then it has to be done.

The one glimmer of hope is that wars cannot be engaged in without some support from the population. In the past the working class, the class who produce the world’s wealth through their labour, have eventually resisted war and brought it to an end, as happened at the end of the First World War with the Russian Revolution or in the Vietnam War where US working class conscripts increasingly refused to fight. However they took place in the days when the working class was still organised in large production units. It is no bad thing that the old Labour movement has largely gone in the West with the old smoke stack industries given that its main achievement was to integrate the working class into the post-war welfare capitalism. However, the restructuring of capital has also meant the fragmentation of the class into smaller production units in the West or subject to all kinds of individual contracts (zero hours, precarious jobs, etc.). This is ideal for capitalists – reducing the worker to an atomised individual means that collective resistance becomes harder.

This has also had ideological consequences. Class fragmentation means there are not so many votes in class politics so the various electoral forces of the Left (of capitalism) have adopted “identity politics” where your race, gender or sexual orientation are more important than your common class position as the exploited wealth creators of the world. This is being exploited by the capitalist Right who, whilst making jibes at the more ridiculous aspects of identity politicking have the great opportunity to push their own identity politics – nationalism. Across the world the rise of the narrow nationalism of the “radical Right” is everywhere, from Brexit and Trump to the German AfD and India’s Narendra Modi. In a cruel irony, its stock in trade is to play on fear and hatred of the migrants fleeing the very wars many of these states sponsor. In a world of capitalist crisis where resources are diminishing alongside workers’ share of the world’s wealth, the fight for a few available crumbs keeps those who have next to nothing at each other’s throats. And for the “native” it gives them a sense of national identity when they are called up to fight in another rich man or woman’s war.

For the moment workers in countries not yet visited by the fighting are largely unaware of what is in preparation (in contrast to the rich who are putting in record orders for nuclear bunkers).⁽⁴⁶⁾ In Ukraine and Gaza there are some signs that, despite the ruling class domination of the media, not everyone is fooled. Hundreds of thousands of men on both sides have fled ‘their’ countries rather than fight in the horrific war in Ukraine whilst tens of thousands have either deserted or refused to return to their units. Similarly, in Gaza the crimes that some soldiers of the IDF are being asked to commit against the civilian population are leading to some not returning to their units.⁽⁴⁷⁾

These are individual responses and not yet class responses. Those who escaped did so on their own (some recorded as dying trying to swim the River Dniester). Given the mechanical brutality of the fighting, many of the desertions are due to what we now call PTSD but the First World War came to know as “shell shock” (not before some of the sufferers were executed as deserters) but in Ukraine and Russia they are significant enough to cause both high commands some pause for thought. In Gaza we know more about the atrocities committed by the IDF from soldiers’ selfies than any other source (given that journalists are either banned or killed in Gaza).⁽⁴⁸⁾ And, of course, once a war starts it is much harder to organise resistance to it unless the resulting privations are so horrendous as to actually bring the population out on the streets (as in February 1917 in Petrograd). All the more reason why internationalists, in the here and now, recognise first of all that all states and wannabe states today are in various ways imperialist, whether as patron or client. We must cooperate and communicate to ensure that there is a modicum of organisation before any conflict breaks out where any of us are. Another world is possible but only if we struggle together for it. Our starting point is still that of the Communist Manifesto: “Workers have no country, You cannot take from them what they do not have”. And to its final call for “Workers of all lands to unite” we add “The only war worth fighting is the class war” because only by ending this infernal system of capitalist exploitation can we rid the world of imperialist war for good.

Jock
Communist Workers’ Organisation
14 January 2025

Notes:

Image: Annette Dubois (CC BY-NC 2.0), flickr.com

(1) “The Marxist critique sees human society in its movement, in its development in time; it utilises a fundamentally historical and dialectical criterion, that is to say, it studies the connection of events in their reciprocal interaction. Instead of taking a snapshot of society at a given moment (like the old metaphysical method) and then studying it in order to distinguish the different categories into which the individuals composing it must be classified, the dialectical method sees history as a film unrolling its successive scenes; the class must be looked for and distinguished in the striking features of this movement.” leftcom.org

(2) leftcom.org

(3) leftcom.org

(4) See mondediplo.com

(5) theguardian.com

(6) As has Iran since Azerbaijan is a direct conduit between them. Aliyev the current dictator (and like Assad the second generation of a dynasty which seized power 31 years ago) has long been backed by the British oil company BP (with a bit of assistance from the British state from Tharcher onwards – the current Foreign Secretary Lammy described Nagorno-Karabakh as “liberated” after the war against Armenia). However now “the West has embraced Armenia, Aliyev has grown closer to Putin. For the first time in three decades, there is a rift between the UK’s and BP’s interests in Azerbaijan”. Peter Geoghegan in the London Review of Books see lrb.co.uk. The twists in the imperialist kaleidoscope are never ending.

(7) reuters.com

(8) For more on how US sanctions helped forge the Russia-Iran-China cooperation see leftcom.org

(9) carnegieendowment.org

(10) theguardian.com

(11) “In August 2020, Erdoğan gave a speech saying that “in our civilization, conquest is not occupation or looting. It is establishing the dominance of the justice that Allah commanded in the region. First of all, our nation removed the oppression from the areas that it conquered. It established justice. This is why our civilization is one of conquest. Turkey will take what is its right in the Mediterranean Sea, in the Aegean Sea, and in the Black Sea.” See worldisraelnews.com

(12) There is also a significant movement amongst the Turkish Armed forces in support of a “Blue Homeland” (Mavi vatan) strategy. These officers not only assert Turkish claims to large swathes of the Mediterranean (with the gas deposits off Cyprus in view) but have “a shared disdain for the United States and what they often term the “Atlantic framework.” They see the West as imperialist in relation to Turkey and claim that it aims to “prevent Turkey’s ascension as a global power”. See warontherocks.com With this perspective it is little wonder that relations with NATO members are strained.

(13) edition.cnn.com

(14) reuters.com

(15) jpost.com jpost.com

(16) aljazeera.com

(17) kurdistan24.net

(18) ohchr.org

(19) leftcom.org and leftcom.org

(20) leftcom.org

(21) timesofisrael.com Note that being the Times of Israel they will never refer to Palestinians as anything other than “Arabs” in case they admit that they have been dispossessed by the Israeli takeover of the land.

(22) It was an act of Judaist fundamentalism as this ancient musical instrument made from a ram’s horn is blown on specific religious and other occasions as a symbol that the Jewish God is King.

(23) This act is specifically cited as a reason for the timing of the Hamas assault by its military leader, Muhammad Deif, in his call to arms. See oasiscenter.eu

(24) leftcom.org

(25) leftcom.org

(26) leftcom.org

(27) See leftcom.org

(28) Since the assault on Gaza almost 83,000 have left with only 32,000 new migrants arriving (a drop of 33% on the previous year). See i24news.tv. How this has shifted the political balance in Israel we can only guess, but it would be surprising in the current climate if it did not further increase support for the rabid racist nationalism of the Right.

(29) leftcom.org

(30) Pobedonostsev actually said “One third will die out, one third will move out and one third will disappear without a trace into the surrounding population”.

(31) theguardian.com and middleeasteye.net

(32) James Butler “Up in Arms” London Review of Books, 16 November 2023 p.16

(33) Gilbert Achar, “Netanyahu’s Bloody Onward March” in Le Monde Diplomatique (November 2024)

(34) reuters.com

(35) aljazeera.com

(36) As the veteran George Kennan famously stated in the New York Times. See nytimes.com

(37) Blinken speech at George Washington University May 2022 state.gov

(38) ft.com

(39) leftcom.org

(40) archive.vn

(41) archive.vn

(42) finance.yahoo.com. We could have cited many others especially from military sources like the UK’s Sir Roly Walker (see msn.com) but these military men. Like arms dealers have a vested interest in talking up war to claim yet more for “defence” spending – their comments though provide “unwitting testimony” that an arms race is already well under way.

(43) sipri.org

(44) theguardian.com

(45) It should not be forgotten that the pathogen of the Covid 19 virus was discovered very quickly in 2020 due to ongoing cooperation between Chinese and Australian scientists, and this paved the way for the rapid development of vaccines.

(46) apnews.com

(47) bbc.com and democracynow.org

(48) witnessing-the-gaza-war.com