GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – Will US vs China/Russia end in WW3?

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The Pentagon now agrees with anti-imperialists that the US is in decline and faces the rise of Russia and China. They term this the “loss of US primacy” or global hegemony, and want the US military to gear up to take on Russia and China.

China and Russia are engaged in purposeful campaign-like activities that are focused on the material reduction of American influence as the principal arbiter of consequential international outcomes. They seek to reorder their position in the existing status quo in ways that—at a minimum—create more favorable circumstances for pursuit of their core objectives. However, a more maximalist perspective sees them pursuing advantage at the direct expense of the United States and its principal Western and Asian allies. Each possesses substantial conventional and nuclear military capability. Further, each is aggressively pursuing interests in direct contravention of international norms and in ways that are threatening to U.S. and allied interests.

Thus, while the United States faces a clear resurgent great power challenge, the nature and character of that challenge is not a mirror image of past—especially Cold War—competition. Contemporary great power antagonism instead occurs principally in the “gray zone” where U.S. adversaries’ substantial military capabilities are sidelined, over the horizon, or only marginally employed, but deter more activist U.S. responses nonetheless. Meanwhile, the principal competition occurs in murkier, less obvious forms of state-based aggression, where “rival states marshal various instruments of influence and intimidation to achieve warlike ends through means and methods falling far short of unambiguous or open provocation and conflict.

What the Pentagon, along with Trump, fail to see is that this ‘gray zone’ reflects the early stages of “great power antagonism” where Russia and China can successfully compete with the US without resorting to world war. But that does not mean that we can avoid the inevitable armed clashes between the two imperialist blocs as the stakes get higher. Right now, we can see the stakes in the Middle East and East Pacific escalating rapidly. The US in decline, no more than the rise of Russia and China, cannot be stopped by the military might of the Pentagon because the decline is terminal. Only socialist revolution can avoid a WW3.

We argue that the US decline is terminal for two related reasons. First, US capitalism has exhausted its ability to survive without forcing workers worldwide to pay for its crisis of falling profits out of their wages and living conditions. Despite its boasts, it has failed because workers and other oppressed have refused to pay the price with their livelihoods and their lives. The US has not returned to profitability and GDP growth is largely fictitious.

Here it is important to make a clear distinction between Marxists who recognize that crises arise from the TRPF (tendency of the rate of profit to fall) which demands that terminal decline must necessarily be overcome by survival socialism, and those who advocate an under-consumption theory which explains crises as the over-accumulation of capital due to low wages and insufficient consumption and which can be overcome by reforms to equalize income-distribution.

Second, the US also faces (along with all other states) the devastating impact of climate change that will provoke massive social unrest and instability as there are more extreme climate ‘events’ such as Cyclone Harvey. The link between the two aspects of the terminal crisis is manifest in the contradiction between profits and nature; that the ‘value’ of the US ‘petro-dollar’ is backed by carbon production and a strong US state when this is the prime cause of impending climate catastrophe.

So, US imperialism is in decline and its military adventurism can only accelerate this. Trump is symptomatic of this decline and look to see him try to concentrate state power in the Presidency. China on the other hand is proving capable of out-competing the US in productive growth. Along with Russia it is developing an alternate financial structure which began well ahead of Trump and his populist rhetoric. It has the production of goods and services to back the yuan as a new global currency.

China’s and Russia’s success in restoring capitalism and projecting their global reach is mainly due to inheriting the command economies of the former degenerated workers’ states. They will not sacrifice this under political or military duress. We will never see a Wall St take over China’s state banks. This reality is clear to the EU powers that are now hedging their bets on the future of the Atlantic Alliance vs Russia/China. They can see that the balance of geopolitical power is shifting to Eurasia.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

For world’s working class, the future inter-imperialist wars can only be stopped by workers refusing to fight workers and instead turning their guns on their own ruling classes.

 

Dave Brownz is TDBs guest marxist blogger

6 COMMENTS

    • BRICS nations trading oil for physical gold significant risk of America not paying its debt. Unless to 2 billion odd worth of gold stored in US FED vaults is actually in there.

  1. “Right now, we can see the stakes in the middle East and the East Pacific escalating rapidly” .
    The same applies to Venezuela in South America . The medias depiction of President Maduro as a dictator follows a familiar pattern. The Corporate media are well aware of what side of the class war their bread is buttered .”Venezuela Leaps towards dictatorship” said the Economist.” Venezuela flirts with outright dictatorship”, exclaimed the Independent.The New York Times headlined with”Venezuela’s descent into Dictatorship.” and so on Ad Nauseum. Nowhere do the articles inform readers that the ANC was elected by Venezuelan voters .The opposition refused to field candidates for the ANC election,urged its supporters to boycott the vote, and resorted to violence, to prevent people voting.Nowhere do the articles inform readers that the Venezuelan constitution, which was ratified by voters in a referendum in 1999, allows for the election of an ANC. Ever since Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution in 1999 ,attempts have been made by the Corporate media to systematically demonize the Venezuelan leadership. as justification for the U.S Empire to procure the natural resources of the country.Craig Murray points out that Hugo Chavez revolutionary politics were founded on two very simple tenets:1.People ought not be starving in dreadful slums in the worlds most oil rich state. 2.The CIA ought not to control Venezuela. As “media Lens”points out, for many decades”Washington have funneled money,weapons, and U.S. trained Death Squads battling independent nationalism across Central America to achieve their nefarious objectives.
    The constituted assembly under Maduro have been about preserving the gains of the Chavez Revolution .The gains have been phenomenal. Since the Bolivarian Revolution poverty has fallen from 43% in1999 to 26% in 2017, and extreme poverty from 17% to less than 7%.Moreover, children’s attendance at school increased from 6 million to 13 million.Because of the expanding free universal healthcare in the country,infant mortality dropped by 50%. But rather than viewing these gains as a positive, the opposition seem determined to reverse them no matter what. Regime change , with an unholy partnership between the Venezuelan Fascist opposition and the U.S. Empire is the name of the game!! So, take sides, ladies and gentlemen, in the struggle between Fascist capitalism and the people of Venezuela!! [ resourced from Daniel Margrain and Joe Emersberger -BSNEWS ]

    • “an unholy partnership between the Venezuelan Fascist opposition and the U.S. Empire is the name of the game”

      One in the same. Borders and states are no boundaries to predators and bankers. Neither are decency of common good barriers to fascist activity.

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