Tag: Russia

Taiwan is a Province of China
Transnistria is a de facto state with boundaries that ripple along the better part of Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine. It was founded by Soviet loyalists who feared that their Moldavian Socialist Republic would merge with Romania in the event of a breakup with the Soviet Union. Linguistic concerns over the future of the Cyrillic script and Slavic languages in the eastern region motivated a declaration of independence in 1990, with a breakaway government established in Tiraspol. As it turns out, only one of these events came to pass: Moldova did splinter off when the USSR was dissolved but it did not merge with Romania. As the newly-found country of Moldova moved to assert their sovereignty over Tiraspol, the Russian garrison intervened on behalf of the Transnistrian cause and froze the conflict in 1992. Transnistria remains an unrecognized, de facto breakaway state all these years later.

With its ambiguous boundaries and hammers and sickles and towering Lenin statues, Transnistria evokes a land of incomprehensible time and place. It could be Annexia from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, but a legal state it is not. That is because Transnistria rests wholly within Moldova’s internationally recognized borders. Moldova has every legal right to assert its sovereignty over Transnistrian territory, including by force. Blocking this option, however, is Moscow’s continued military support for the separatists, guaranteeing a civil war should Moldova attempt to reincorporate the territory. Transnistria thus persists as a de facto state without de jure legitimacy.¹

Scenes from Transnistria.

This Russian support is, of course, illegal under international law, with Article 2, Section 4 of the United Nations Charter stating: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” But we need not invoke Russia to understand that this is a “might makes right” world; the United States has proved it again and again and again.

The Island Formerly Known as Formosa

This brings up the continued existence of the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan. Taiwan rests wholly within the internationally recognized borders of the People’s Republic of China, it is a de facto state without de jure recognition and it has been propped up by the illegal intervention of an outside power for decades. Legally speaking, China is analogous to Moldova, Taiwan is Transnistria and the United States plays the role of Russia.

Taiwan was annexed by China during the Qing dynasty over 340 years ago in 1684, after decades of Han migration and brief occupations by Spanish and Dutch colonialists. The encroachment of European powers had flagged the geopolitical importance of this island, situated prominently 100 miles from China’s east coast. As is so often the case throughout history, indigenous people found themselves in the middle of a greater power game and they experienced violent battles against Europeans and Chinese alike, ultimately leading to severe cultural erosion over time.

Two centuries after Taiwan had become a part of China, a nascent Japanese Empire turned its military might on both Korea and China. Taiwan was the first Chinese territory to fall into Tokyo’s hands after Imperial Japan decisively defeated Qing forces in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895. When the Japanese were finally defeated by allied forces at the conclusion of World War II, their local authorities formally handed the island over to the Republic of China led by Chiang Kai-shek.

Taiwan was henceforth officially recognized as Chinese territory by the United States and other western nations. Although a civil war continued on China’s mainland, US President Harry Truman indicated that he would not intervene in the fight between Mao and Chiang’s armies.

Illegal Interference

Truman changed his mind shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, suddenly wary of expanding Soviet influence in the region. Truman sent the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, preventing any attempt to take the island by the newly-formed People’s Republic of China. Mao, in turn, ordered soldiers over the Korean border and pushed the American-led coalition back to the original demarcation line between the two Koreas.

The tension between the US and PRC led to a curious situation whereby Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China in Taipei became recognized as the sole representative of China by Washington and many other western governments. Taipei even represented China at the United Nations and held China’s permanent seat on the Security Council. At this time, the PRC was the de facto government of the entirety of China, minus Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Even though very little Chinese territory was under ROC control, Washington used diplomatic pressure to create competition between Beijing and Taipei for de jure international recognition. Taking Taiwan by force was not an option for the PRC, as Chiang Kai-shek’s military dictatorship was protected by American nuclear weapons deployed to the island, in addition to naval and air force installations guarding the strait.

If it was not for the Russian military, there would be no Transnistria. Likewise, if it was not for the American military, there would be no Republic of China. Taiwan would have been brought under Beijing’s de facto administration long ago. This is important to keep in mind considering that the People’s Republic gained unambiguous global de jure legitimacy in the 1970s after Nixon’s visit to China.

This legitimacy was demonstrated by the expulsion of the ROC from the United Nations and the accession of Beijing to the seat representing mainland China plus Taiwan. UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 recognized “that the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations and that the People’s Republic of China is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.”

While a dozen tiny states recognize the ROC—like Tuvalu, Saint Lucia and Eswatini—the PRC’s “One China” principle is supported by 142 countries and is expressly acknowledged by 182 in total. The UN seat representing Taiwan passed from Taipei to Beijing many decades ago. If the issue appears unsettled, it is because Washington continues to incorporate the Chinese territory of Taiwan into its regional security architecture designed to contain China. The US sells arms to Taiwan and offers them military protection in flagrant violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

Taiwan is the central node of the American “first island chain” of forward-deployed military bases in Asia prepared to attack China’s eastern coast at a moment’s notice. Without this strategic partnership with Taiwan’s de facto autonomous government, the first island chain is broken and blue water access to Chinese ships can no longer be denied.

Double Standards

If Taiwan was to gain legal statehood, the path does not run through Washington or any other third party. It runs through Beijing and a formal diplomatic settlement. Ireland gained its independence after fighting a war that forced an agreement from London. The same thing happened when South Sudan negotiated a secession procedure with Khartoum. Kosovo gained independence after experiencing a genocide of its population, and representatives from both Serbia and Kosovo agreed to take the question of Kosovar autonomy to the International Court of Justice.

The common thread here is mutual agreement between the concerned parties—something that has never been attempted by Taipei. Enabled by American protection, the ROC has simply never felt compelled to negotiate. Without a formal settlement, Beijing retains the legal right to assert its sovereignty over the island—just as Washington asserted itself over the Confederate States and Madrid asserted itself over Catalonia.

The Lowy Institute is a centre-right think tank from Australia that weighed in on this issue in 2021:

Other countries cannot have cake and eat it too: deny Taiwan is a state, but defend it as if it were. In a world with a plurality of different political systems, states are not permitted to use force simply to protect democracy or “freedom” abroad. The US backed Taiwan even when it was a military dictatorship until the 1990s; its defence has never really been about freedom.

Further, every state has a sovereign right to maintain authority over its own territory and people, including by forcibly suppressing separatism. If Taiwan is Chinese territory, China has a right to take it back and restore Chinese sovereignty—just as the US did in its own civil war. Western interference in China’s internal affairs to assist Taiwan would be an illegal use of force against China and criminal aggression. Current US arms sales to Taiwan would also be illegal force and prohibited intervention against China—just like Russia funnelling weapons to separatists in Ukraine.²

For the American foreign policy establishment, the clear preference is to maintain the illegal status quo that facilitates US dominance over Asia. Peaceful reunification has even been described as a “worst case scenario” for American hegemony—a punishing war is preferable because it would at least diminish Beijing in the process. After Gaza, nobody should be surprised by the appalling disregard for human life demonstrated by the western ruling class.

Building an actual rules-based order will not be accomplished by fighting Moscow whenever it behaves like Washington. That sort of cynical one-sidedness is what perpetuates the cycle of lawlessness. Recognizing Taiwan as a province of China is not about the PRC; it is about the rules-based order that the West already claims to uphold.

Thanks for reading!
1. It should be noted that de jure recognition can be gained through mutually-agreed upon secession procedures between the concerned parties; civil wars resulting in a peace agreement; appeals to the International Court of Justice in order to validate the existing autonomy of the aspiring secessionist party. ↩︎
2. Ben Saul, “Would a war over Taiwan be legal?” Lowy Institute, October 14, 2021. ↩︎
15 Oct 26
In Brief: The West Can’t Stop Its Collapse
Last year, Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan published an article in Al-Jazeera chalking American belligerence toward China up to two factors: an increase in Chinese wages eroding the profitability of foreign investment and the rise of native Chinese industry threatening western monopolies over advanced digital technology, energy generation, automobile manufacturing, biotechnology and robotics. Since western-dominated global capitalism has shown an uncanny ability to offshore capital and relocate investment in low-wage countries, it is undoubtedly China’s threat to monopoly capitalism that has western governments especially concerned.

The ability to export capital and extract profits from the cheap labour and resources in the Global South has been an extremely lucrative racket for the advanced imperial core countries. $152 trillion was transferred from the developing world to advanced capitalist countries between 1960 and 2021.

This racket has worked for centuries, ever since Columbus landed on Caribbean shores. It has evolved from outright theft of land and gold, into more sophisticated neocolonial arrangements which harness sweatshop labour and mine resources for sophisticated products stamped with western corporate logos and sold the world over.

The result has been a river of profits pouring into Europe and the United States, soaking elephantine financial industries and buoying astronomical stock market valuations. But that river only flows so long as the aggregate of advanced technology, patents, licences, designs and money-capital remains steadfast with western corporate headquarters.

China’s entry onto the stage of high value production does not simply add a new player to the game—it threatens to flip over the board. America is staring down hundreds of billions of dollars worth of potentially stranded assets invested in the AI sector alone.

China’s Marxian approach to economics has led them to force-feed their supply chain with an abundance of rare earths and critical minerals, renewable energy, steel, electric vehicles and batteries, artificial intelligence platforms, drones, pharmaceutical products and high speed trains. In a bid to transform quantity into quality, China is converting the lucrative monopoly industries of the past into at-cost utilities for the present. And they are squeezing western corporations out of the global market in the process.

This context is the key to understanding the posture of NATO countries as they pursue rearmament in unison: Trump is demanding a 50% hike to an already-bloated trillion dollar military budget, Canada has signed $100 billion contract for submarines, the UK will dispense an extra £63 billion, Germany has approved a 33% rise in weapons spending, France has committed $500 billion more to its military by 2030—it goes on and on like this. With Russia pinned down by the quagmire of Ukraine, it beggars belief that these trillions of additional dollars are being earmarked to counter threats from Moscow. Western leaders hold their citizenry in contempt when making this claim.

If human society was governed by anything but the ruling class interests that Karl Marx described, the dawning reality of a new global economy would have spurred a movement toward cooperation, integration with the Belt and Road Initiative and major political and economic reforms adjusting to the new landscape. After all, the people of the West could benefit from low-cost advanced technology, public banks, renewable energy and rational economic planning at the highest levels. But the momentum behind centuries of imperial accumulation does not dissipate like the heat of lightning when the clouds break.

So long as warfare and financial speculation lines the pockets of the powers-that-be, ungodly sums will continue to be extracted from the working class and put into the service of a western oligarchy determined to break China’s back. Only then can swarms of cheap labour return to East Asia and US corporate monopolies be assured.

The problems with all of this are legion. What worked yesterday is not always destined to work tomorrow and we are fast approaching a night when tomorrow does not come. Western morality was buried under rubble alongside the bodies of Gaza’s children and the illusion of military supremacy was sunk to bottom of the Persian Gulf. If Iran is the canary in the coal mine, it is clear that all of these billions dumped into offensive weaponry will not yield the surplus required for imperial capitalism to maintain itself.¹ In a dialectical reversal for the ages, the quest for self-preservation puts western capitalism on the express path to terminal crisis.

China has been described as the factory of the world and it would be prudent to now call it the world’s laboratory and power plant as well. Never mind that going to war with such a formidable power would obviously be unwinnable and catastrophic—it well could happen given the incredibly low calibre of people running the Occidental show. When it comes to protecting their property, history demonstrates that the oligarchy is always willing to fight to the last working class man. As David Harvey pointed out in The Limits of Capital:

Capitalism is stabilized through the defence budget, albeit in ways that rob society of more humane and socially worthwhile programmes. But the present theory suggests a rather more sinister and terrifying interpretation of military expenditures: not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use.²

The collapse of the western economy necessarily entails an enormous loss of property on the most rarefied rungs of capital ownership—and this is the good news. If we’re lucky it will happen before an apocalyptic war can commence. Marx wrote that “the violent destruction of capital as a condition of its self-preservation is the most striking form in which advice is given it to be gone and to give room to a higher state of social production.”³ The collapse will not be where the fight for our future ends. It will be where it begins.

Thanks for reading!
1. In Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2014): 40, David Harvey recounts other modes of production that have disappeared by failure to generate surplus. ↩︎
2. David Harvey, The Limits of Capital (Verso, 2018): 445. ↩︎
3. Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Penguin, 1993): 749-50. ↩︎
21 Jul 26
Ask the Editor: Who Will Win the Russia–Ukraine War?
To the editor,

Who will win the war between Ukraine and Russia?

Thanks,

Lindsay.

[Sent via Bluesky]

Hi Lindsay,

The war between Ukraine and Russia is another item of a catalogue that demonstrates the futility of warfare in this 21st century of cheap drone weaponry. Russia began the war by opening a broad front along the north, east and southern borders of Ukraine. Their subsequent drive on Kyiv and Kharkiv suggests that Russian leadership had banked on a swift military victory and regime change. Obviously that did not happen. Over four years later, Russia has been largely expelled from northern Ukraine, military lines have consolidated in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine and fortified defensive zones have engulfed the field of battle. Although Russia has fought through fierce counteroffensives to capture about 20% of Ukrainian territory, their pace of advance has been achingly slow.

Deep rumination on the causes of this war is beyond the scope of your question but it suffices to say that there are ethnic dimensions to the conflict that trace back centuries. From a materialist point of view, both Ukraine and Russia can be characterized as run-of-the-mill corrupt capitalist kleptocracies: the imperialist NATO alliance backs Ukrainian oligarchs aligned with western capital, while Moscow has sought to shore up its own capital interests in eastern Europe. Working people sent to their doom by capital wrapped in a nationalist disguise is an old and horrible story. Noble causes do not abound here.

There are concrete geopolitical implications worth flagging. Just as the US-Israeli war on Iran has been a cocktail shaker for the regional politics of the Middle East, so too has the Russia-Ukraine war had a similar effect on Europe. The European Union has largely severed key Russian inputs from their economies, creating stagnant economic conditions. At the same time, European countries have committed to a large-scale military buildup in order to counter the “Russian threat” that has failed to topple Ukraine. And this is on top of a whopping $400 billion in aid spent by NATO countries to prop up the Ukrainian war effort against Russia. As for the Russian side, the math gets worse: over $1 trillion dollars lost to sanctions and frozen assets plus hundreds of billions more in direct military expenditures.

Karl Marx wrote in the Grundrisse that the economic effect of war “is exactly the same as if the nation were to drop part of its capital into the ocean.”¹ By that standard, none of the principal actors in this war can possibly emerge a “winner.” Any victory declared by the principal belligerents could only be considered Pyrrhic at best. As with the Iran war, the primary political benefits have accrued to the one major power smart enough to remain neutral: China.

China has managed to retain a robust trading relationship with the United States, European Union, Ukraine and Russia throughout the war. With Russia politically and economically ostracized from Europe, China has deepened ties with their large northern neighbour and destroyed America’s containment strategy in the process. Ukraine has set fire to western resources across the board and kneecapped any faint hope of Europe achieving economic sovereignty independent of the United States—itself a sinking ship. The relative strength of China increases each day the conflict drags on.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said that it takes “the acme of skill” to win wars without fighting. China clearly possesses this skill. The imperial world must crumble before it can do the same.

In sols.
1. Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Penguin, 2005): 129. ↩︎
09 Jul 26
In Brief: Revolution is Inevitable
In Capitalism and the Death Drive, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that “revolution is impossible today” because any resistance to the neoliberal order either quickly dissipates or becomes absorbed by corporate mass consumerism.¹ Commodified Che Guevara T-shirts come to mind, as do counterculture movements like punk rock and Burning Man.

In the age of social media our personal absorption into the commercial sphere is even more ubiquitous; we put ourselves under surveillance and freely subject our activity to data harvesting and resale. Han writes:

System-preserving power has now taken on a smart, friendly form, and it has thereby become invisible and unassailable. The subordinated subject is not even aware of its subordination. It believes itself to be free. This technology of rule is a highly efficient way of neutralizing resistance.²

In the absence of polling data, this view is likely mainstream even on the left where it is echoed by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Fredric Jameson and Mark Fisher.³ While nobody would rule out revolutions in economy and culture, it is that all-important political revolution that feels forever achingly out of reach.

It is easy to forget about the movement of tectonic plates once accustomed to the ground under our feet. Even Lenin was once discouraged about the prospects of revolution—with similar doubts over the level of adequate resistance to Russia’s ancien régime. But the absolute monarchy of the Tsar was doomed once industrial production began melting away the feudal relations in countries to Russia’s east and west. This caused Tsarist Russia to lose badly in wars against Germany and Japan. The question of revolution was never an “if” only a “when.”

To understand why revolution is inevitable, we need only turn to one of the most important paragraphs that Karl Marx ever wrote:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.⁴

For Marx, a social revolution is not simply a change of government, policy or cultural norm—it is a complete change of ruling class. Notice that he does not speak of “adequate resistance” when he lays out the conditions of revolution. Revolution appears as a tectonic economic shift away from the existing ruling class, first and foremost.

This occurred in the West when royal authority and the landed aristocracy became an impediment to merchant capital accumulation. It happened in Russia and China after their industrialized neighbours attacked, pecking at the morass of decaying feudal orders. It happened intercontinentally, across the Global South, as colonial regimes experienced diminishing returns from ransacking the economic productivity of their subjects.

The revolutionary potential of the West has been non-existent for almost a century now. The last time it emerged was during Great Depression. This was when the rapidly industrializing Soviet Union garnered the appeal of unemployed masses and western governments swiftly countered with a barrage of social democratic compromises, including public works projects and social security payments.

The next economic catastrophe will not experience the same social democratic outcome. Liberal capitalism emerged as the political analog to economies dependent on territorial expansion and the steady opening of new markets to capital interests. Almost single-handedly, China is now melting down the western dependency on rent-seeking profits. Vertical integration of supply chains, overproduction of renewable energy, suppression of private financial capital, managed deflation and strategic technological development are saturating the world with low-cost goods and medicines and high quality open source software. The addressable market for western conglomerates is shrinking, evermore reliant on debt and speculation to fund operations. Western governments are flailing, pouring money into the furnace of war and doubling down on fossil fuels in the faint hope of maintaining dominance with atavistic 20th century strategies.

The liberal paradigm cannot conceptualize this technological levelling of the global economic pyramid. It is collapsing inwards like a dying star. Drone warfare has seen ragtag armies grind the world’s mightiest militaries to a halt. Cheap solar panels bring miniature power plants to even the most remote of African villages. Open source A.I. is shredding the U.S. Big Tech profit model to pieces. Multiparty “democracy” has factionalized society into camps of superficial enemies, denying even the possibility of long-term strategic planning. Rampant inflation is quietly brandished as an escape from heaving debt loads handcuffing public and private entities. U.S. dollar dominance is declining with the overuse of criminal sanctions. Social media has turned “free speech” into a vector of weird conspiracies, sensational propaganda and pornography. “Free market” ideology has become the ramparts of financial monopolies and homelessness and hardcore drug addiction.

In short, the social relations of the West are in open contradiction with the new productive forces being unleashed. This is the smoke signal for revolution.

The technological levelling described above means that the liberal order will not be able to rejuvenate itself with a social spending package and a war, as it did during the Great Depression. The rent-extracting platforms of the current ruling class of CEOs and financiers are cracking. When they finally break, the only way out will be a political order that subsumes the new powers of production and seizes the means of finance, construction, resource extraction and strategic industries. Only then will it be possible to fix the underlying mechanical problems hampering our historical progression on a livable planet.

As it disintegrates before our eyes, movements rejecting liberalism will grow. We must embrace long-term planning, direct democratic implements, international cooperation, green development, abundant housing and services, livable communities and expedient public infrastructure. The capitalist ruling class will be supplanted as a political authority or else destitution will result. Some countries have discovered this already and some will take fascistic detours before arriving at the right destination. It is inevitable.

Thanks for reading!
1. Byung-Chul Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive (Polity Press, 2019): 15. ↩︎
2. Ibid, 17. ↩︎
3. The inescapable totality of capitalist consumerism is one of the primary focuses for each of these thinkers. ↩︎
4. Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. ↩︎
24 Jun 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
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