Tag: Iran

Ask the Editor: Oil Demand and Destruction
To the editor,

Is the energy crisis stemming from the war on Iran a simple matter of supply and demand?

Cheers,

Breezy.

[Sent from Substack]

Dear Breezy,

The world is staring at a billion barrels of oil lost due to military actions undertaken by the belligerent governments of Israel and the United States. This number will only go up with each passing day of disruption to maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf. To put that number into context, it is roughly equivalent to ten full days of total global consumption. This kind of supply squeeze will present itself unevenly; the higher cost of gas and transported goods can be either a nuisance or a calamity depending on the financial capacity of consumers.

Turning to Karl Marx the political economist, he himself did not live to see oil come into dominant use and it was coal that reigned supreme during his Victorian era. But he recognized fossil fuels as a foundational mean to the capitalist mode of production because their dense energy content allowed for the intensification of human labour and factory output.

The utilization of this new mean of production is what ultimately lead to the standardization of wage labour and industrial processes. Whereas water mills depended on the ebbs and flows of natural streams, the coal-fired steam engine could be plunked wherever potential workers were, with trains and ships doing the rest. Oil merely advanced the technological revolution that coal set into motion regarding production and circulation.

Because oil is so foundational to the capitalist mode of production, its presence in the marketplace cannot be reduced to the dollars and cents of each barrel. Countless wars have been fought, governments toppled, acres fracked, blockades raised—all to influence the direction that precious crude flows black. If the price is too high, economic activity will be suppressed. If the price is too low, Big Oil bleeds profits. It’s a fragility that puts Goldilocks to shame.

In Marxian economics, supply and demand “play a vital surface role in generating price movements for a particular commodity” without which “there could be no equilibrium price.”¹ With the economic rise of China and the Global South, oil prices routinely clocked in over $100 per barrel as new demand pressured existing supply. While oil companies blistered with cash, high prices suppressed potential consumption in virtually all other areas of the global economy. After all, only 15 countries export meaningful quantities of oil that another 160 countries must bid on.

As the process of capital accumulation in one sphere became a contradictory force suppressing accumulation in others, the economic system demanded a way to get beyond it.² Fracking technologies were unlocked by American public–private partnerships and they opened up vast supplies of oil in the United States and around the world. Fracking is what brought the supply and demand of oil back into an equilibrium that guaranteed both stable profits and continued future growth.

What the war against Iran has accomplished is to throw disequilibrium back into the oil markets, this time because of disruptions to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. As many Gulf producers go toward zero, oil operations outside the region see their profits soar. The sudden scarcity of oil and its byproducts has led to the cancellation of tens of thousands of planned flights, MRI screening is pressed by helium shortages, semiconductor manufacturing in Asia is throttled and a lack of fertilizer is scarring agriculture in Africa and South Asia.

Disruption to supply inevitably leads to destruction of demand. Free market orthodoxy dictates that price adjustments alone bring about equilibrium in commodity markets. But it will be shown that the value of oil to labour processes and capital accumulation transcends the spot price of each barrel. The oil market is an artifact of economic planning carefully designed to keep the downstream tributaries trickling outward. With those plans now buried under Middle Eastern rubble, capitalism is confronted with yet another “constantly overcome but just as constantly posited” barrier.³

In sols.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital (Verso, 2010): 166. ↩︎
2. The barriers that capital imposes on itself before leaping over them are explored by Karl Marx in his Grundrisse (Penguin, 1993): 410. ↩︎
3. Ibid. ↩︎
23 Apr 26
Ask the Editor: A Silver Lining to the Clouds
Dear editor,

Amidst the flurry of travel disruptions, high costs and global conflict, it is hard to see any positives. Is there anything to look forward to in these bleak times?

Sincerely,

Helen.

[Sent via email]

Hi Helen,

In Marx’s materialist conception of history, particular attention is paid to the “objective conditions” of individual life and social being.¹ These conditions include available technologies, resources, level of accessible material comfort and productive employment that shape our governing ideologies, happiness and culture. In the present economy we are heavily dependent on oil and gas for energy, fertilizer and plastic byproducts.

This fossil fuel dependency has transformed the resource-rich Middle East into a site of economic competition between great powers. The result is a raging boil of oil money, ethnic strife and a vast quantity of weapons propping up systems of repression, resistance and neo-colonial extraction. What is happening in Iran right now is what happens when the pot boils over, just as it has previously boiled over in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon and Syria.

It is important for those of us in the West to appreciate just how much of our perceived progress has relied on managing the conflicts and resources of other nations. The capitalist world order was largely cemented by accident, when Old World European technologies collided with New World resources and societies. But its persistence is consciously maintained by way of corporate exploitation of capital starved countries and military containment of economic rivals. In other words, there is an intrinsic relationship between the riches of one country and the poverty of another.

Having survived the U.S. proxy war with Iraq, Iran became one of those rivals earmarked for “containment.”² They were systematically marginalized from the global economy with sanctions and surrounded by American military bases. From the American point of view, this containment strategy was largely successful for decades and culminated with massive Iranian protests against the economic conditions of their country. The resulting crackdown only exposed the unsustainability of Iran’s trajectory.

Luckily for the IRGC, Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran allowed them to unleash the full force of their asymmetric power and they exploded out from the box that had previously contained them. Trump is now confronted with the stark reality that he won’t be able to contain them economically or militarily again. He’ll have to either destroy the country entirely or watch it become dramatically strengthened.

The bleak circumstances of war are a heavy burden to bear for this geopolitical competition over economic dominance. But if there is a silver lining to these clouds, Iran has plucked it from the sky and laid it at our feet. They have weaponized the global dependency on oil and wielded it to their great advantage; they have exacted a toll from the genocidal state of Israel; they have exposed limits to American militarism, inspiring defiance from tormented nations like Cuba.

Since the belligerent and cowardly attack on Iran, the world has turned to greener fertilizers, electric vehicles and renewable solar and wind power generation for energy needs. A helium shortage will put the brakes on a runaway tech sector and military-industrial complex. From the ashes of war, we may find the objective conditions of mankind gradually change for the better. Since a hegemonic power cannot sanction the Sun or go to war over wind, the foundation of a post-capitalist cooperative economy slowly becomes concretized.

Henri Lefebvre once said, “History puts its worst foot forward.”³ There is a duality to history, a tendency for progress to be paid up-front in coins forged by blood and fire. Iran is paying that price now in opposition to the oil-thirsty American establishment and Zionist lobby. As allies for a better world, we can always hope that Tehran is the rock where the wave of western imperialism breaks.

In sols.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom (Holt, 1969): 293. ↩︎
2. China, Russia/the former Soviet Union and Iran have all found themselves surrounded by American bases at one time or another. ↩︎
3. Henri Lefebvre cited in Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic (Verso, 2010): 287. ↩︎
26 Mar 26
Ask the Editor: Iran, and America’s Doomsday Scenario
To the editor,

What is the outcome of the U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran?

Thanks!

Kora.

[Sent via Bluesky]

Hi Kora,

By many accounts Americans and Israelis approached this military attack with different objectives. For the Americans led by Trump, the objective after the decapitation strike was the quick emergence of a compliant leader that would submit to Washington’s demands on the state. Israel no doubt knew that this outcome was unrealistic but nonetheless were elated to have American assistance with their ultimate goal, which is the total destruction of Iran as a functioning country.

Alas, nothing has rationalized Iran’s notorious slogan of “Death to America! Death to Israel!” more than this joint U.S.–Israeli attack, which has already blown up children at a school in Minab and brought calamity to the entire population of Tehran. Assassinations and aerial bombardment have led Iranians to rally around the flag and this alone has frustrated American and Israeli designs. Even further, Iran has demonstrated the ability to hold the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf states hostage, while simultaneously inflicting heavy damage to Israeli infrastructure and American bases in the region.

Iran has a strong hand to play as they try to end this war on their terms: war reparations from the U.S. and Israel, along with international security guarantees against future strikes. Ultimately, this war is one of attrition between Iranian missiles and regional interceptors. Whichever side runs out first will lose.

If the United States and Israel neutralize Iranian weapons and prevail, the global status quo will remain depressingly the same. Trump will continue to mark more and more countries for imperialist expansion and Israel will solidify itself as the undisputed Middle Eastern military power without any counterweight.

But the spectre of an Iranian victory against the West’s flagship militaries should not be taken lightly. In the Middle East, perceived strength matters more than anything else. This is how Israel and the United States have managed to expand their influence over Arab politics during the past few decades, despite those countries being massively unpopular amongst the Muslim populace.

An Iranian victory replete with reparations would shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility and demonstrate U.S. military presence to be a security liability rather than an asset. The net effect would be a much smaller military footprint for the U.S. in the region as they lose control control over the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the prestige of Iran’s theocratic government in the Islamic world would soar to new heights.

The Iranian conflict has already become a black hole for critical global energy supplies and western investment in the Gulf. This will weaken the ability of European capitals to aid Ukraine at a moment when Russia expects a windfall from its oil exports. If there is a U.S. defeat by Iran, don’t be surprised if Ukraine is the next western ally to settle a conflict on unfavourable terms.

The Europeans have been on the receiving end of continuous insults and threats from Trump regarding tariffs and territorial annexation. Having witnessed the limits of U.S. military capability overseas, the next crop of European leaders should pursue a new security regime for their continent that includes a durable peace and trading relationship with Russia.¹

In Asia, the story is much the same. Their energy costs and stock markets have been hit hard by Trump’s decision to illegally attack Iran. They have also been subject to Washington’s erratic tariff policy. But luckily for Asians, they share their continent with a burgeoning superpower that has routinely demonstrated stability and restraint—and has invested in all the right places. China has weathered the oil shock with relative ease, thanks to long-term planning and allocations in green energy and battery technology. For Asia, the increasingly obvious limitations of American security only underline the benefits of deepening economic relations with Beijing.

The stakes are obviously a lot higher than Trump realized when he decided to take a ride to Tehran with the genocidal prime minister of Israel. Israel, by the way, will be lucky to survive an Iran war loss over the medium term; war-addicted and Spartan countries only function so long as they win the conflicts they start. Across the world, we can expect the Middle East to lurch toward Iran, Asia to lurch toward China and Europe to lurch toward Russia. American military prestige will take a massive hit and the oil shocks this war has caused will do immense harm to Trump’s fossil fuel-driven economic agenda.

The war is not yet over. But if the zenith of American hegemony passed over the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan, it may be Iran where the nadir is found.

In sols,

Your editor.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. Polls show European views of the United States in free-fall over their treatment and future elections should reflect this mistrust. ↩︎
12 Mar 26
How Iran Can Win, According to Sun Tzu
“Under heaven thunder rolls.”

—I Ching

Donald Trump once commissioned a ghostwriter to put his name to a book called The Art of the Deal—but he’s clearly never read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Consider a staple teaching from Master Sun: “So it is said that if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperilled in every single battle.”¹ Doubtless, the Pentagon has very capable military commanders, tacticians and a massive arsenal of weapons at their disposal. In matters of war, the balance of power heavily favours America’s legions of imperial soldiers. But with Trump as their commander-in-chief, they fly blind in terms of strategy.

In his political career, Trump has branded himself as an “America First” isolationist, allergic to “forever wars” that divert resources from the homeland. He has boasted about ending eight wars, a Nobel Peace Prize-worthy effort. When he did not receive said prize, he declared himself to be untethered from thinking about peace. After Venezuela amassed a citizens militia to deter American invasion, Trump opted to kidnap the president and threatened to kill his successor unless she complied with U.S. demands. The revolution in Venezuela is now in tactical retreat but the ink is not yet dry on the results of Trump’s acts of violence. Before even knowing what he had accomplished in Venezuela, aircraft carriers were positioned in the Middle East to set about duplicating the Venezuela operation all over again. This time it was in partnership with Israel and against the much more formidable opponent of Iran.

He Who Wishes to Fight

They began with a familiar decapitation strategy, taking the more audacious step of murdering Iran’s head of state rather than merely kidnapping him. They hit 500 targets and launched cyberattacks to encourage a domestic uprising against the government in Tehran. From interviews, Trump evidently believed that the combined external and internal pressure on Iran would bring a compliant leader to the foreground—an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez. But Trump confusingly oscillates between stated objectives in Iran, his motivations for attacking the country are unclear and he has struggled to define his relationship with war in general. In short, this is a man who does not know himself. And he does not know his enemy either.

Although the Venezuela operation was a tactical success for U.S. planners, the hardcore Chavista apparatus remains in place to live another day. Assassinating the Ayatollah Khamanei, on the other hand, galvanized grief and anger across the Shia world. It was an abrasive action that could not be interpreted as a “limited strike” by Iran’s theocratic government—much to Trump’s chagrin. The Iranians responded by setting in motion a battle plan that they had transcribed for weeks beforehand: regional conflict targeting the energy infrastructure of Gulf countries and closing the Strait of Hormuz. This plan was no secret, yet Trump astonishingly went on the record stating that the Gulf escalation was the “biggest surprise” of the conflict. Which brings us to another valuable lesson from The Art of War: “If you don’t know their strategy, you should avoid battle with them.”²

Iran’s escalation was clearly not accounted for by U.S. strategic planning. Only afterward did Trump realize he’d need a mass evacuation of American citizens, a British base for operational support, Ukrainian assistance to counter Shahed drones and more arms production to prosecute the war effort. His “big wave” aerial bombardment appears to be only an ad hoc response to the failure of a domestic rebellion to materialize and Iran’s refusal to capitulate to illegal U.S. and Israeli aggression.

Since Trump does not know his enemy, he may not be aware that Iran is fighting from “deadly ground”—a place where death is assured unless it can be fought out from. By constantly reneging on diplomatic agreements, assassinating leaders at will, surrounding their country with military bases and demanding the forfeiture of missiles, the United States has given Iran no choice but to fight in order to achieve deterrence against their enemy: “When you cannot press forward, cannot retreat backward and cannot run to the sides, you have no choice but to fight right away.”³ And so they have.

Iran is surrounded by American bases.

Opportunity in Chaos

Iran has adopted the sort of high-risk strategy to be expected from an army on deadly ground. But it is logical according to The Art of War: when outnumbered by a massive opponent “first deprive him of what he likes” and focus strikes on “what is weak.”⁴ The disabling of the Gulf state infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz satisfy both criteria, as Iran is able to strangle the oil and gas supply from small countries that form the weak underbelly of the Persian Gulf. These countries are within range of Iran’s abundant store of short range range missiles, creating outsized pain for a fossil fuel-addicted world.

Iran’s strategy going forward will be to “find out where [the enemy is] sufficient and where they are lacking.”⁵ They will accomplish this by testing Israeli and American defences with low intensity but consistent missile and drone barrages in order to deplete interceptor inventories and conceal Iranian launch sites as much as possible. Expect Iran to refrain from ineffectual large attacks unless U.S.–Israeli defensive gaps appear. Only if missile defences are diminished will they be able to strike for a maximum psychological impact—like the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War.

Karl Marx observed that “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”⁶ Iran is at an extreme disadvantage with their heavily sanctioned economy now pitted against the military might of much wealthier opponents. The only reason they are in this fight is because of the deficiencies of current U.S. leadership. Of the eight types of decadence that compromise commanders according to The Art of War, Trump suffers from no less than five of them: insatiable greed, jealousy of the wise and able, making friends with the treacherous, a liar with a cowardly heart and talking wildly without courtesy.⁷

Iran’s path to victory is narrow but existent. It relies on their ability to absorb cruel and punishing aerial bombardment with clever military decoys and camouflage; to achieve critical depletion of the enemy’s missile interceptors; to inflict unsustainable economic pain on the West. All three criteria will have to be met before a strategic victory and future deterrence becomes a possibility. Failing to meet these goals will either result in the destruction of Iran’s 2,600 year old civilization by civil war or the bare survival of a weakened Islamic Republic that is sure to be in conflict again soon against bloodthirsty enemies. Regardless of the outcome in Iran, The Art of War has this to say about the fate of the United States: “Even if a country is large, if it is militaristic it will eventually perish.”⁸

Thanks for reading!

Footnotes:
1. Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Shambhala, 2003): 85. ↩︎
2. Ibid, 121. ↩︎
3. Ibid, 158-9. ↩︎
4. Ibid, 451. ↩︎
5. Ibid, 116. ↩︎
6. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. ↩︎
7. Tzu, Art of War, 224. ↩︎
8. Ibid, 254. ↩︎
05 Mar 26
Ask the Editor: Does Gunboat Diplomacy Work?
To the editor,

Why does Trump like gunboat diplomacy and does it work?

Thank you,

Tyler.

[Sent via Bluesky]

Hi Tyler,

The shrewd imperialist planner, Henry Kissinger, once said that “an aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy.” Gunboat diplomacy is to international relations what “the stickup” is to people on the street: a violent robbery at gunpoint. No sane person would hand over their wallet just to anyone who asked for it, but a gun in the face will change that equation. Since the 1800s, imperial powers had similarly learned that other countries were a lot more agreeable to lopsided treaties when a naval armada was docked along their coastline and ready to open fire.

Gunboat diplomacy was used by the British against China during the Opium Wars, against Haiti when the U.S. stole their national gold reserves, against Japan and Korea for purposes of U.S. trade, by France against Thailand for the relinquishing of modern-day Laos to French Indochina and the U.S. against Colombia for the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone—to name just a few examples in a very long list.¹

The topic has gained new relevance in the age of Trump’s bulldozer approach to international relations. He has used a mix of tariffs and annexation threats against stalwart U.S. trading partners in order to browbeat them into accepting humiliating trade agreements. Meanwhile, explicit gunboat diplomacy has become Trump’s preferred tactic against countries under sanction and immune to tariffs. The first two months of 2026 have witnessed the U.S. navy kill and kidnap Venezuelans, impose a cruel blockade on Cuba and surround Iran with devastating weapons of war.

A robber committed to the threat of violent harm does not have to exchange anything of material value in order to receive a ransom. The asymmetry of this transaction is what incentivizes his crime. Trump engages in gunboat diplomacy for the same reason he applies tariffs with zeal—he believes that asymmetrical coercion is the backstop to favourable terms. Under the narrow horizon of short-term self-interest, this approach can appear to work. But robbers do catch blowback. And with history as our guide, we see that this strategy of imperialist aggression often does as well.

Japan acquiesced to American demands in the 1800s—but this sent it down a road of aggressive industrial expansion, fascist government, the colonization of Korea and the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The British did impose harsh treaties on China—but these fomented the Boxer Rebellion that laid the foundation for Mao’s decisive civil war victory and modern China’s Marxist outlook. The French did expand their colonial holdings in Southeast Asia—but this, too, boomeranged in the form of subsequent communist revolutions.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Capitalist powers have had the tendency to underestimate the agency of those that they dominate. Every war, tariff and threat introduces a new conflict, a new dialectical friction, into the tapestry of global relations. The United States has embarked on a strategy to leverage its economic and military supremacy in order to vassalize the world and extract surplus value without trading for it. On the surface, this may seem to work. But as global trade increasingly re-routes around the U.S., expect opposition to American hegemony to stiffen until it eventually comes undone.

In sols,

Your editor.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. See Karl Marx, “The Anglo-Chinese Treaty” in Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx (Penguin, 2007): 31-36 for details of the opium trade imposed on China and unequal treaties pursuant to it. ↩︎
26 Feb 26
Ask the Editor: ‘The Rupture’
To the editor,

Canada has been targeted with threats from Trump since Prime Minister Carney’s Davos speech. Can you tell me why it was so provocative?

Thank you,

Kay.

[Sent via WordPress]

Hi Kay,

Mark Carney’s diagnosis of “a rupture” in the world order has been hailed for its clarion call to middle powers to band together and form a counterweight to American global hegemony. Under threat of U.S. economic reprisals, Carney explained, a variety of demands are now being made on the allies that have benefitted from Pax Americana. As if trying to prove Carney’s point, Trump replied the next day: “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.” By acknowledging Trump’s coercive demands, Carney invited another one—stop complaining or Canada might not live.

Since 2016, Trump has promised to shake down the world on behalf of America and Carney only affirmed that fact in Davos. It is unclear if Trump really understood the content of the message or if he was merely offended that headlines were grabbed by another world leader. The psychological pathologies of the current U.S. leader are difficult to overstate. Unintentionally, Trump’s threatening response to Carney’s speech elevated its importance and imparted a lot more aura to its content than it would have otherwise had.

Carney only described a rupture in the appearance of the world order. Not its substance. Speaking as an elite financier, Carney cited a controversial former president of Czechoslovakia and said it was only a sign in the window that made people believe in the working class power of former socialist states. As an analogy for the present, Carney implied that the concept of a liberal “rules-based international order” was only ever a guise for operational U.S. global hegemony. Strategic allies such as Germany, Saudi Arabia and South Korea enjoyed market access in exchange for adherence to “American interests”—but this was the extent of the norm.

The U.S.-led global order has always been transactional and never about hifalutin “democratic values” or rational global governance. The trail of human rights violations, democratic overthrows, targeted assassinations and full-scale invasions is too long to claim otherwise. The revival of state-sanctioned piracy and gunboat diplomacy targeting Venezuela, Cuba and Iran only adds to a long-established pattern of lawless American aggression abroad.

The shockwave of U.S. military rampage felt for decades in the Global South harkens Karl Marx: “The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked.”¹ Trump is not a rupture to the American hegemonic order. He is the ruling class without clothes. He offends the elitist sensibility of a Davos crowd not accustomed to being slapped about the head by the swinging dick of America’s president. But let’s exit the world of posh Swiss resorts in the Alps. How about those crowds of Baghdad, Caracas, Mogadishu, Havana, Jakarta, Ramallah or Tehran? Threats of annexation and tariffs against middle powers must appear positively trifling next to the suffocating economic embargoes, CIA-managed torture chambers, genocidal carpet bombings and rock-ribbed support for right wing dictatorships that have visited the Global South.

As a central banker, Carney is well aware of the vital function that international debt bondage and structural adjustment programs play in securing cheap labour and resources to middle powers. If he seemed to gesture toward the brutal and ongoing excesses of American control without denouncing any examples—this is why. The middle powers lack the scale of the hegemon but they lean on a system of dramatic capitalist exploitation all the same. Carney may be able to capture the zeitgeist of the World Economic Forum but a man with his pedigree will never apprehend the economic basis that is needed to construct a true new world order.

In sols,

Your editor.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. Karl Marx, “The Future Results of British Rule in India,” in Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx (Penguin, 2007): 124. ↩︎
29 Jan 26
Ask the Editor: The Demonic Nature of Global Rearmament
To the editor,

There are huge increases to military budgets around the world and a lot of talk about a wider war with Russia, conflict with China over Taiwan and the “Donroe Doctrine” in the Western Hemisphere. Are countries preparing for World War III?

Thank you,

Kyle.

[Sent by email]

Hi Kyle,

The situations in Ukraine, Venezuela and Iran demonstrate an aggressive push for hegemonic consolidation: the U.S. is determined to put all of Latin America into a stranglehold and knockout Israel’s last major stronghold of resistance in the Middle East, while Europe is now tasked with keeping Russia out of their sphere. Throw in the rise of China, and these developments have the world starting to resemble the European balance of power that collapsed into World War I.

In a world balancing on the weight of military strength, countries are compelled to invest in armaments or be tossed from the scale. Japan has rubber stamped a record-setting military budget and Taiwan has done the same. Canada wants to triple its military spending; Australia is under pressure to raise theirs by 75%. India, Germany and France all have proposals to double their military spending, with Emmanuel Macron adding: “To be free in this world we must be feared. To be feared we must be powerful.” Without parsing what that means to the freedom of those cowering in fear, Trump seems to agree with Macron by proposing a 50% increase to America’s already-whopping $1 trillion military budget. His proposed $1.5 trillion military spend doesn’t sound like a peacetime budget—that’s a budget for war.

In this political context, worrying about World War III is not unreasonable. Against a similar arms race backdrop in 19th century Europe, Friedrich Engels predicted World War I:

I imagine that the plan is not to push things to extremities, to more than a sham war. But once the first shot is fired, control ceases, the horse can take the bit between its teeth…Eight to ten million soldiers will massacre one another and in doing so devour the whole of Europe until they have stripped it barer than any swarm of locusts has ever done.¹

Bombing countries like Iran or kidnapping the presidents of countries like Venezuela might not get us there. But desensitization to this uptick of radical interventionism makes a miscalculation more likely, as happened between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia once upon a time.

The timing of this global rearmament could not be worse, given the present state of the environment and the residue of an inflationary crisis already aggravated by global conflict. Marx held complex views about the role of the military within the broader capitalist economy, but in the Grundrisse he noted: “The impact of war is self-evident, since economically it is exactly the same as if the nation were to drop part of its capital into the ocean.”² Warfare vanquishes the resources that could be used to build an economy of human flourishing into plumes of blood and fire. In a competitive world of amplified scarcity such as it is, the proliferation of advanced weaponry and nuclear bombs adhere to a quest for economic dominance—consequences to human survival be damned.

The ominous parallels between the first world war and a possible third recall Freud’s compulsion to repeat: we live in a neurotic civilization containing “a demonic character” whereby repressed traumas override the pleasure principle and are revisited again and again and again in order to “re-encounter our identity.”³ Given the violent and domineering history of capitalism, revisiting past demons in a nuclear-armed multipolar world would be nothing short of biblical.

In sols,

Your editor.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. There was an estimated 8.8 million military deaths during World War I, making Engels’ prediction exceptionally accurate. A further 6–13 million civilian casualties are estimated, resembling that “swarm of locusts” stripping Europe bare. ↩︎
2. Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Penguin, 2005): 129. ↩︎
3. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Broadview Press, 2011): 74-75. ↩︎
14 Jan 26