The following is the first part of a speech on world perspectives, given on Tuesday 28 January at a meeting of the International Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Communist International.
As they say in planes, “ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened, because we have entered an area of turbulence.”
It’s only been one week since Trump entered power. It’s been a few weeks more since he was elected in November, and the whole of the world situation has been transformed.
We have seen – just from the point of view of Trump’s actions – the ceasefire in Gaza, the threat of military action against Denmark, a NATO member and an ally of the US, and Panama. We have seen the idea that Canada should become the US’ 51st state, that is, the annexation of a NATO country north of the border.
And this is just to mention a few things. What we can really see is an enormous acceleration of the pace of events in world relations, the economy and politics. And obviously, this has an impact on consciousness as well.
Of course, Trump is not the cause of all this. He is certainly a symptom of deeper processes taking place, but at the same time, he is a factor which enormously accelerates events. There’s no doubt about that.
As well as a number of events triggered by Trump’s actions, we have also seen in the last few weeks a number of other events: the collapse of the government in France, the collapse of the government in Germany, the collapse of the government in Canada. We have also seen the cancellation of the elections of Romania, which in any other circumstances would be a major event, but is now overshadowed by all of these other, more important events.
Yesterday we saw the collapse of the tech stocks in the US market. Nvidia, the tech company, lost over $600 billion from its stock market valuation. In just one day. This is the biggest one day fall of any company, in terms of the amount of money lost, at any time in history.
A lot of these things are quite astonishing in and of themselves.
We saw, for instance, a telephone call between Trump and Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, about Trump’s ambition to annex Greenland, which apparently did not go very well. According to the Financial Times, which quoted some Danish sources, Frederiksen said that they were shocked and that they now understood that this was a serious matter!
This is the question. Because of Trump’s style, you can think, he’s all talk. Or that it is just the opening salvo in negotiations. But he is not just some influencer on social media. He’s the president of the United States of America, the most important and powerful imperialist power on earth. And when he says something, he might be a little bit extravagant in the way he says it, but you need to pay attention.
A bourgeois commentator quoted in the New York Times said that “you shouldn’t take Trump literally, but you need to take him seriously.”
As if all of this was not enough, yesterday we had Trump’s clash with Colombia. It was a short-lived clash, but I think it’s very revealing. For some reason that is best known to him, at four in the morning, the Colombian President Petro, decided to post a tweet protesting about the treatment of Colombian migrants being deported by the United States. They are being badly treated. From Trump’s point of view this is a demonstrative thing. Trump is trying to show that he is deporting people, by treating them like criminals that should be deported, shackled and handcuffed.
Colombia’s president Petro protested, and declared that he would not allow two US military planes that were transporting Colombian migrants to land in the country. One of the planes was already in the air, apparently. So what happened next? Trump published a social media post saying that “the socialist president of Colombia, who’s already very unpopular amongst his own people” has decided to reject these planes, and that therefore he was going to introduce 25 percent tariffs on all Colombian goods, effective immediately.
And he added that he was withdrawing visas and entry permits to the US from President Petro, and his government, and their families. And all their supporters! That’s millions of people!
He made a number of other threats. But these were in fact not just threats. He started acting on them immediately. There were about 1500 people who had appointments for visa applications at the US embassy in Bogota the day after. They were sent messages saying the appointments were all cancelled.
Petro then replied that this was unacceptable and that Colombia was imposing reciprocal tariffs on all US imports. Furthermore, he decided to publish a very long social media post. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. He said all sorts of things. He referenced the tradition of Sacco and Vanzetti [Italian anarchists infamously executed in the US], called Trump a “white slave owner” and said he would not shake his hand.
However, by the end of the day, Petro had been forced to back down all along the line and Trump issued another social media post saying that he had taught him a lesson, and that “America is respected again”.
There is an article today in the New York Times that describes this clash. The headline is “Behind the Colombia Blowup: Mapping Trump’s Rapid-Escalation Tactics”, and the opening paragraph says:
“There were no Situation Room meetings and no quiet calls to de-escalate a dispute with an ally. Just threats, counterthreats, surrender and an indication of the president’s approach to Greenland and Panama.”
Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador, made an interesting remark about Trump. He said that he is a businessman. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care for the norms of diplomacy and international relations between countries, the formalities and protocol, all of that. And he added that he is not just any businessman. His background is in New York real estate. That is a business in which there are no ethical rules of any kind. It’s all based on bullying and backstabbing.
Definitely. That seems to be Trump’s style. And now he is the president of the United States. Of course this does have an impact. There is obviously a strong element of this in his actions which sometimes may seem unpredictable. But of course, there is a method to his madness. And this is why we need to discuss what’s behind all of this.
Trump’s war against the state apparatus
Trump feels that, when he was in the president’s office the first time, he tried to accommodate the different wings of the party, and he tried to work within the rules of the state. As a result of that, he was slowed down, he was hemmed in and he was prevented from carrying out his real agenda by what he describes as the “deep state”. There’s an element of truth in that name.
But he’s now stronger than he was the first time around. He has full control, or let’s say overwhelming control, over the Republican Party, much more than in 2016.
Certainly he has much more political power, and he’s much less prepared to make any compromises or to allow other people to dictate his policies. You just have to look at some of the other measures that he has taken in this past week.
On Wednesday, officials at the National Security Council were sent home, some on leave, some on suspension. These are people who advise the government on issues like Iran, North Korea, Ukraine, the Middle East in general, and a whole number of other things. The decision was so fast, that according to the New York Times, some of them couldn’t physically leave the building, because their passes had been deactivated even before they’d been told they were being laid off.
And then, on Monday, President Trump signed an executive order, suspending all foreign aid for 90 days, pending a full review. All foreign aid has been suspended and people who work in NGOs all around the world have been told, “do not spend one single cent from now on until further notice”. There was a big panic in Ukraine about whether this affected military aid or not. There was back and forth all week about that.
In all of these instances, Trump said that these measures were to make sure that everyone is on message with his policies. He has also suspended all DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) programs, and, not happy with that, he’s also instructed civil servants to inform on their colleagues if somehow they try to maintain policies like that, despite Trump’s orders. A confidential email address has been set up where people can report their colleagues in government.
He is at war with the establishment and what he perceives as “the deep state”. This does not necessarily mean he’s going to win on all occasions, because the capitalist state is very powerful. Regardless of the outcome, it is clear that he is at war with it and he has decided to push his agenda, whatever that may be.
We are faced with a decisive change in the world situation, one that has several important implications.
The very election of Trump, which was only two months ago, – it seems now like a long time ago! – was a major change in itself. The US ruling class and the US establishment used all the tricks in their armoury to prevent him from winning that election. Nevertheless, he won. And he won a very convincing victory.
What does that mean? We have seen the liberals, the media and the so-called left raise a hue and cry saying that this represents ‘a shift to the right’ in the United States, and that it’s part of a general shift to the right in world politics.
But this explains nothing. Because if you accept this argument, what are you saying? Was Biden left-wing? This is the implication. Let’s look at foreign policy. Trump was the ‘peace candidate’, while Biden was the warmonger candidate. That question played a role in the election result, particularly in a number of districts with a high percentage of Muslim and Arab voters.
Of course, there are reactionary elements that pushed Trump’s vote. But, in themselves, they do not explain his victory. For instance, there were a whole number of states where Trump won or increased his vote significantly which at the same time also voted for legislative initiatives to enshrine abortion rights in the states’ law. This included Florida, where the pro-abortion vote got a higher result than Harris – though they didn’t reach the required threshold.
What we have explained, and I think it is completely correct, is that the main reason for the victory of Trump, the main conclusion you ought to draw, is that he was able to capture, connect with and channel this very deep-seated and widespread anti-establishment mood that exists in the United States.
The same mood exists in many other advanced capitalist countries as well. It expresses itself in many different ways. Another indication of this, which was very striking, was the reaction to the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO by Luigi Mangione. The assassination itself was significant, but even more so was the public’s reaction to the assassination, which was one of understanding and sympathy; not for the CEO but for Mangione.
He has become a sort of folk hero. That reaction was not only among people who consider themselves left-wing, but also amongst many people who consider themselves conservatives and Republicans, including many Trump supporters. That’s the significant question.
This is a most peculiar phenomenon, isn’t it? Trump is riding the wave of anti-establishment mood. There is a crisis of legitimacy of all bourgeois institutions. There is an anger against big business, against politicians of all sorts, against the state and so on. But he is a billionaire himself, and everyone knows he is a billionaire. And he surrounds himself with billionaires.
This is a deeply confused reflection of that mood. But certainly it is a reflection of it. And the reason is also clear, both in the United States and in Europe we have seen the complete bankruptcy and failure of the left, which has been utterly unable to capitalise on such a mood.
We have come out of a period in which left anti-establishment figures and parties were on the rise everywhere in Europe and in America in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis and the massive anti-austerity movements around 2011. Podemos, Syriza, Melenchon, Corbyn, Sanders: all of them failed completely. The bankruptcy of their reformist ideas was shown in practice one way or another.
The most extreme example was the Syriza government in 2015, but also Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton in 2016. They capitulated and left the space wide open for people like Trump.
World relations
What is Trump going to do? I don’t even think he knows what he is going to do.
In his inauguration speech he said “we’re going to do things that people will be shocked at”. And, people are certainly shocked. At least I am shocked.
The President of the Atlantic Council, a right-wing think tank, Fred Kempe said that Trump “is both the product and the purveyor” of a new era which will be “characterized by more government intervention, less common cause, more mercantilism, less free trade, and more big-power swagger.”
In the way Trump is conducting himself there is a strong element of this big-power swagger. The big power is showing the little boys who is boss. This can be seen clearly in the way he treated Petro.
Obviously personalities play a big role in history. Historical materialism is not in contradiction with that, on the contrary.
At the same time, Trump is also the reflection, the personification of deeper trends in world relations, world politics and the crisis of capitalism that we need to explain.
We have explained these underlying trends in the last world perspectives document in 2023, in the RCI manifesto and in articles and discussions we’ve had about world perspectives and world relations. We have recognised that the world situation is dominated by:
a) the relative decline of US imperialism.
b) the rise of new, young, dynamic imperialist powers like China, which are also reaching their limits to a certain extent. Also in this category is Russia, in a different way and to a certain extent.
c) the fact that these trends allow a whole number of middle-range powers to act in a more independent way, balancing one bloc against the other, which you can see in many different instances, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India and others.
We have talked about the relative decline of U.S. imperialism and the rise of China, which challenges the former for world domination. But there is another additional trend that we have not paid as much attention to, one which now comes into the centre of the equation, which is the long-term crisis of European capitalism.
I think that this general framework allows us to explain the meaning of Trump’s foreign policy.
There are some important differences between his foreign policy and Biden’s. Biden’s foreign policy was based on the refusal to accept the limitations of US power, and as a result of this, continuing foolishly in an attempt to maintain US domination over the whole world.
That domination existed for the best part of 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it is no more.
You can see a manifestation of this in the Ukraine war. The idea was that the US was going to defeat Russia and weaken it to a point where it would never again be able to invade another country, defying the will of Washington. Biden made a famous trip to Poland at the beginning of the war when he said that the aim of the war in Ukraine was regime change in Moscow.
We have a similar position in the Middle East, where Biden effectively gave a blank check to Netanyahu with all the consequences that that entailed. Even though some of those consequences were not necessarily in the best interest of the United States in the region.
In contrast, Trump’s policy seems to be approximately that the US needs to defend its national security interests. The US has its own sphere of influence, which is mainly in its near abroad, in North America. The US should strengthen its position there, instead of spending a lot of money and men fighting wars in far off places which are of no interest to the US.
In his press conference before his inauguration, he talked about Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada and Mexico.
As part of this plan to strengthen the US and concentrate on its national security interests, he wants to put an end to the war in the Middle East and the war in the Ukraine. That could also, perhaps, bring Russia on board and separate Russia from China.
Such a policy, he thinks, would then allow the US to concentrate on the main threat to its world domination, which is China. You have to admit that from the point of view of the general interests of the US ruling class, this makes much more sense than Biden’s policy.
Some of you may listen to the Against the Stream podcast and we had an episode in which we talked a lot about a podcast that we had listened to, in which the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman, a liberal, was interviewing Dan Caldwell, an adviser to Trump’s Pentagon transition team.
What Caldwell was saying, I thought, was very interesting. The first thing he said is that he was an army veteran, who had participated in the war in Iraq. There are a lot of these types, right? A lot of army veterans who have been politicised by their experience in the imperialist military adventures of the United States. There are a lot of them amongst Trump supporters and advisors.
Dan Caldwell explains, the US killed “up to a million Arabs, Iraqis and Syrians” and “over 4,000 Americans killed who were in uniform. Several thousand more who were contractors were killed.” In addition “the monetary costs were significant. Over $2 trillion and counting because the Iraq War is still going on”. And he draws the conclusion that this is “a foreign policy that I don’t think anybody can say with a straight face has made the United States safer and arguably hasn’t made the world safer or more stable.”
And so he argues that the US should not pursue that policy anymore. The US should concentrate on its natural national security interests. Gideon Rachman, who is a liberal, in a panic, asks him, “but what about Ukraine?”
Trump has said that the Ukraine war should have never started. He has also said that Zelensky should have never gone to war as the Russians have many more tanks than Ukraine. You can glean Trump’s thinking: “you don’t pick a fight with a much bigger enemy.” His approach is that of recognising the relative strengths of each power.
Back to Dan Caldwell. When asked about Ukraine, he said, “to answer your question, not to dodge it, the war is a tragedy. But for the United States, whether or not Russia controls Donbas or Crimea is not a vital interest to us.”
Trump has also made statements along similar lines: that the war in Ukraine should have never started, that it is the result of NATO provocations against Russia, and that he can understand that Russia has national security interests in Ukraine.
Dan Caldwell puts it in terms of the need for the US to recognise that there are things it can do, and things it cannot do.
“I think the United States should strive to remain the most powerful country in the world. But in my mind, that is different from trying to achieve primacy. In my view, attempting to be the dominant power is different from trying to be the most powerful country… I’m not advocating, embracing or accepting American decline. I’m advocating the opposite, we need to do things to reverse American decline. And I think our pursuit of primacy has ultimately made us weaker as a country.”
That is quite an interesting point of view and gives us an idea of Trump’s approach to foreign policy. This has certain implications. It is a recognition that the US has its own national security interests and spheres of influence. But from that it follows that other powers also have theirs and some sort of negotiation and agreement needs to be reached among them.
This is expressed in Trump’s dictum of “peace through strength”. That would bring the whole of the world situation closer to that which existed prior to World War 1, with different powers fighting to carve up the world. That has very important implications, not only for Ukraine, where Trump wants out, but also, I would say, for the position of Taiwan.
The obvious question that arises is, is it in the US national interest to defend Taiwan from China? Already in July last year Trump said that “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China …and it’s costing us a lot of money” from which the US doesn’t get anything in exchange.
In the podcast I mentioned, Dan Caldwell said that he would not make any security commitments to Taiwan and that rather than supply them with prestige weapons, the US should provide them with cheaper drones and aerial defences so that they may deter China from taking it over.
From Trump’s point of view, yes, China is the main rival of the US in the world. There’s no doubt about that. But that does not mean that the US should commit to going to war with China over Taiwan.
What is the conclusion that Xi Jinping is going to draw from the defeat of NATO in the Ukraine war? He is going to draw the obvious conclusion that there are definite limits to US power.
There are of course different opinions, even within the Trump camp, about China. Some see it mainly as an economic rival, others consider it has already become a military adversary.
These are some of the outlines which determine Trump’s foreign policy, as well as the fact that he is first and foremost a businessman and so he is much more keen on using economic means rather than military means. This is what we saw in the clash with Colombia. He did not threaten to send the Marines, or organise a military coup, but rather, threatened economic pain through tariffs. He used the US’ economic might vis-a-vis Colombia in order to achieve his aims.
It was a similar case with Denmark over Greenland. Yes, he said, he was not ruling out military action, but the whole question was posed in terms of a purchase of Greenland and he threatened Denmark with retaliatory tariffs.
Trump is at the head of the world’s strongest imperialist power and his policy is still imperialist, but it is one that, unlike Biden’s, is based on a certain degree of recognition that the US is not the only world power and that its might has certain limits.
