Approximate reading time: 10 minutes, 19 seconds
In 1916 Lenin published a book where he precisely described how Capitalism would later move into a phase that he called Imperialism.[i]. This occurred just as the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution anticipated. It is a reality today. Among the main characteristics that this new phase would adopt were: Concentration of capital in a few hands, export of capital for investment in natural resources of poor countries, division of the world into so-called spheres of influence, preponderant dominance of financial monopolies in finance. world, impoverishment of the workers of the countries that suffer this economic colonization. The final conclusion that Lenin reached was the inevitability of military conflicts between the dominant powers of the world in this struggle, as the final expression of Capitalist society. The only doubt about these conclusions is knowing today whether when the end of Capitalism occurs, this will also be the end of Humanity.
What characterizes the current era is the commercial, political and economic dispute, including the monetary one, between the US and China. Declared struggle to obtain natural resources from poor countries to ensure their own development. It is also a fight to conquer, dominate and/or maintain markets and influence in regions of the world of interest to their multinationals and investment funds.[ii]richer than many of them and much richer than entire regions of the world.
The unipolar world that we had until the end of the 20th century with the US as the world hegemonic power, mainly after the implosion of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall, has been succeeded in this century by the appearance of a new multipolar world represented by the emerging powers that have their political expression in the BRICS[iii] as an alternative to the G7[iv] western. The BRICS is working on the creation of financial and monetary structures to end the global dominance of the dollar in international transactions, a business that represents half of its annual GDP for the US. A monetary war of the greatest importance. Multipolar world for some to characterize current geopolitics. Or bipolar world, if we agree that there are only two great global powers with interests throughout the world. USA and China.
The entire world is the theater of this fight for natural resources, particularly for energy resources, since historically every world power has as its first objective to secure the energy necessary for its development and domination. The thousands of people who die because of this represent the social cost of this fight. Cost that for many multinationals, if not all, is assumed as part of the business costs. Money first. The lives of millions of people later.
The fight for hegemony and domination of these powers is global. Let’s review very briefly where this happens that confirms the Leninist hypothesis.
The European Union (EU), which until 30 or 40 years ago appeared as a middle power with its own opinion in the defense of its interests in the world, today is subjugated to US imperialism, strongly pushed by England, which ironically already It does not formally belong to this. It has been in Europe where China and particularly Russia tried to deepen economic relations by disputing the US’s trade and political relations. The great German development of recent decades is incomprehensible if it had not had cheap and abundant Russian gas and oil, a trade blown up in a terrorist attack on Russian marine gas pipelines.[v]. This rupture of all kinds between the EU and Russia represents a great triumph for the US and its multinationals obtained at the expense of Russia’s war with Ukraine. The US now has the richest region on the planet as a captive customer for its energy and sells oil and gas – much more expensive – to the whole of Europe.[vi]. Its military-industrial complex has also done another big business. Europe, with its decision to join the militaristic drift of the US and its international armed wing, NATO, has impoverished its populations. A serious mistake by the Right and Social Democracy that rule the EU that will cost them dearly. The latest example of the EU’s alignment with the interests of the US and NATO is that at the moment when European farmers occupy and block the roads of the main cities requesting economic support, the EU approves a package of 50 billion euros to Ukraine[vii]. A support that will be added to the long debt that it will have for decades in a war that, in the opinion of American and European military analysts, is already lost. To legitimize their objectives, European governments and NATO resort to crude propaganda. Today we are told that the protests of their farmers are directed from Moscow, or that if Ukraine loses this war, all of Europe is in danger of being invaded by the Russians.[viii]. Arguments that sound familiar to Chileans.
The defeat of Ukraine will be another heavy defeat for the US and an example of a major strategic error. It is now possible that the US will discreetly withdraw from that front, and leave Europe alone facing Russia.[ix]. And “paying their bills with NATO” as Trump reminds them. This is the cost that the EU will have to pay for entering a war that was not its own, developing a Russophobia among the rarely seen population and a demonization of everything Russian to the point of absurdity. Today they even intend to censor the journalist Tucker Carlson who has just interviewed Putin, preventing him from entering the EU. And in the height of delirium, a former Norwegian minister proposes Jean Stontelberg, head of NATO, for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The dozens of sanctions imposed by the US, the United Kingdom and Europe on Russia to bankrupt its economy and contribute to its defeat turned out to be a complete failure. The Russian economy has grown, now oriented towards the East and the ruble has strengthened. More importantly, the BRICS have grown stronger and many other countries now do not align with the so-called West, which is orphaned in many UN votes. Another example of a world that is no longer unipolar.
NATO’s war against Russia could be a prelude to NATO’s war with China later. This, remembering that China has been considered the main enemy by US intelligence for quite some time. Only if, as it seems, the war in Ukraine ends in failure, Russia will emerge stronger and then the US will have to find another way to attack China. Will they think about Taiwan?
Africa is the theater of pillage and political and military intervention by Western powers since white colonization until today. Portuguese, Spanish, Belgian, Dutch, English, French, Italian and later Russian and American were there in the past and are today to varying degrees. All behind the enormous African wealth of all kinds and the control of political power and influences in those countries. Direct interventions such as in Libya, Mali, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast and others; colonization for decades such as in Egypt, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Morocco, Algeria, South Africa and others. Organization of coups d’état, promotion and support of different “friendly” guerrillas, inter-tribal wars. Support for South African apartheid. There is no African country that has not suffered foreign intervention. The result of this and other factors is that many towns live in misery – despite being rich in natural resources – whose inhabitants flee and arrive in large waves on the European coasts like a true plague that Europeans have no way to stop.
Latin America shows a similar picture of poverty and migration to the North, today an insoluble problem for the United States and the source of a serious internal political crisis pitting state governments against the federal government of Texas. Despite still being in the sphere of influence of the United States, whose history of political and military interventions is known, the formidable displacement of Chinese capital in the region in this century leaves us today as a disputed area. China invests in Latin America like any great capitalist power, pursuing access to natural resources mainly from mining, agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors; communications and energy among others in addition to the financial and credit sector. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and Chile mainly account for the presence of Chinese multinationals[x]. The Asian giant is today Chile’s main trading partner. Fifty years ago this would have been unthinkable.
Another area of dispute is the Middle East, where despite historically being the field of English and French European capitalism, the US has established its influence from the Second World War until today. Its traditional allies in the area are Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan. Turkey has also been one for decades, despite not being part of the Middle East but of Western Asia. Prevalence more markedly since the invasion of Afghanistan first and then Iraq including Syria in the last 20 years. We see it today as their marine fleets race to the Red Sea to defend international maritime trade from successful attacks by the Yemeni Houthis. These only with drones, the fashionable military weapon, with which they fight against the powerful US naval fleet; a kind of democratization in the possession of weapons of war within the reach of everyone and whose projection into being able to transport small atomic bombs tomorrow can send many of the current weapons to military museums.
In the case of Palestine, today the theater of the Israeli genocide on the population of Gaza in particular, the background is the enormous amount of natural gas in the sea in front of Gaza precisely, reserves that Israel apparently intends to take over.[xi]. For that, it is necessary to first annex Gaza. Hence, the Netanyahu government refuses again and again to the idea of the existence of a Palestinian State and to stop the invasion. They intend to expel them all. Something that is on its way to becoming a reality today with the Israeli order to its army to expel more than 1.2 million Palestinians from Rafah, the last neighboring corner of Egypt where they were cornered after the expulsions from the north and center of Gaza.
To this day, the US is, after more than 28,000 Palestinian deaths, the main supporter of the genocide practiced by Israel. This is causing traditional allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq until the 2003 war, among others, to endanger their relations, indicating the volatility of the political alliances of the regional governments. For example, Saudi Arabia, which has said that it will not renew relations with Israel until the existence of a Palestinian State, has entered the BRICS as have Turkey and Iran. A hard blow for the US. Only today does Biden begin to signal that this slaughter must end, perhaps finally understanding how much they have to lose in the region. A glimmer of a solution, too little, too late.
To support Israel by preventing the entry of weapons to Hamas and the Lebanese militias, the United States, supported as always by England and its Israeli ally, are today fighting the militias of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon simultaneously due to their attacks against the numerous military bases. of the US in the region. Several of these militias are pro-Iranian and some have grouped together particularly since the Israeli invasion of Gaza such as the so-called Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The irony is that today the US, in its inability to stop the Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea, has asked China for support so that it can intercede with Iran requesting that it help control the militia attacks. With their attacks, these have achieved a 50% reduction in container ships crossing the Red Sea.
China disputes in the Middle East with its rival over energy sources (where Russia is also located). It has had great commercial activity there in recent decades. Your own growth demands it. For example, it only buys almost half of its daily production from Iraq and has cooperation agreements in several areas, in exchange for oil, which Iraq today proposes to pay in rubles and not dollars, in addition to requesting the departure of US bases from his territory. Another tough defeat for the US. China also buys oil from Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. its partners in the BRICS. In exchange for oil, it is carrying out important infrastructure development projects throughout the region: roads, railways, ports and energy transportation. A very important step in their political relations is their recent alliance with Iran. It would be said that China expands and strengthens its political relations and influence in the world initially through trade. This serves as a spearhead as an entry and consolidation in your areas of interest. And all this without military bases like its rival. It is defeating the USA in what they were champions. World trade.
Iran, located in Western Asia and a member of the BRICS, is an enemy of the US, as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia.[xii]. The American right demands that Iran be attacked now. A regional medium power whose nuclear capabilities and the support it could have from China and/or Russia are not known with certainty if it is attacked by the US.[xiii]. It is evident that the intensification of military activity in this region could result not only in a war with Iran but in a much broader conflict that would mean the union of many countries as majority Islamist in a joint crusade against the West. Coordination that occurs today clearly at the level of the militias.
Thus, the United States is fighting hard against China to avoid losing its global hegemony on several different fronts. Of course there is the war in Ukraine, where the US has managed to cut off the great trade that existed between Russia and the EU and continues to threaten to bring NATO to the very doors of Moscow. Added to this is his political and military support for Israel in its invasion of Gaza. Then its air strikes in Iraq and Syria, given the increasing attacks against the US and British forces stationed there. Added to their threats to continue tempting Iran to enter the conflict. Military conflict in which China and Russia have no major interest other than the maintenance of their commercial relations.
The US also has a direct front open with China in Taiwan in the South China Sea. Constant military maneuvers and diplomatic provocations such as the permanent presence of a significant part of its fleet and air maneuvers in that area, as well as the periodic sending of prominent American parliamentarians to the island. China has its well-known “one China” policy towards Taiwan, a policy formally accepted by the UN and the US itself. A permanent zone of friction between these powers.
Will the American empire be able to maintain four simultaneous conflict fronts in its frenetic fight not to lose world hegemony? How much of this is the effect of domestic politics in the US in an election year? Whatever the case, irrationality and non-recognition of new geopolitical realities characterize the actions of the decadent American empire in recent times. If the war in Ukraine seems a serious threat to global security, the threat that the Middle East will erupt into a generalized struggle against “the West” is no less so. As is encouraging the independence of Taiwan from China, a red line of great danger. None of which seems to matter much to the US. And much less to the big capitalists of the world who operate from investment funds, companies without an apparent flag or the obstacles of diplomatic relations.[xiv].
The immediate future thus seems quite volatile and at great risk to world peace. The fight between the two great powers where the increasingly poorest people in the world are only spectators and where the urgent defense of the Environment completely takes a backseat. A power struggle that kills us.
By Patricio Serendero
[i] V. Lenin, “Imperialism, the highest phase of Capitalism”, in free pdf format on various sites on the Web.
[ii] The largest investment fund in the world is BlackRock, a fund based in New York, with US$9.42 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, 2023. Let’s say in passing that this fund owns a good part of the agricultural land in Ukraine .
[iii] BRICS; Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, the first members of said group. In addition to Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
[iv] Group of the 7 most developed countries of the so-called West: Germany, Canada, USA, France, Japan and the United Kingdom.
[v] US or NATO operatives in addition to the now deposed Ukrainian Military Chief Zaluzhni are among the suspects.
[vi] Among the oil tankers attacked by the Houthis are some loaded with Russian oil destined for Israel.
[vii] Ukraine has 40 million agricultural hectares. If it joins the EU, European farmers will lose 20% support per hectare. That is the background of the fight of European farmers for the subsidies they receive from the EU.
[viii] As stated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal on a recent visit to kyiv.
[ix] At the end of the year, the North American Senate voted to definitively cut off funds to Ukraine.
[x] China has shown its attitude towards those who reject them, just as the US does with Cuba or Venezuela. After Milei’s diatribes against the “Chinese communists” saying that he would not do business with them, he today suffers the cut of important economic aid that China had agreed to provide to Argentina during the Fernández government. In money and in joint development projects.
[xi] Likewise, Israel revives an old project for a second Suez canal that would reach Gaza to free itself from current Egyptian tutelage.
[xii] Iran has established diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in 2023.
[xiii] Russia cooperates with Iran on a military level and also in the development of its nuclear energy.
[xiv] The largest fund in the world BlackRock now lands in Argentina, to buy the public companies that Milei will privatize.