Donald Trump presents himself as a world peacemaker. He would have achieved - in the short month since he took office - a ‘ceasefire’ in Israel's genocidal war against Palestinian people of Gaza. And now, it would move decisively to also impose a cessation of hostilities in the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. We have already analyzed in other notes the character of the imposed agreement in Gaza, which in no way ends the Zionist repression - aimed at ethnic cleansing against Palestinian people - not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank (Jenin, etc.).

Most of the world's ‘public opinion’ is suspicious of the Trump administration's self-aggrandizing pacifist propaganda. And they are right. It contradicts not only the aggressive statements of the US president threatening to take over Greenland, Panama (and even Canada and -recently- Gaza), but also the general strategy of Trumpism which announces its intention to ‘make US imperialism great’ again.

As the declaration issued on 25 January at a plenary meeting of organizations from 16 countries states: ‘We fight any illusion that Donald Trump is coming to impose a policy of peace, against wars. We are not facing an isolationist and pacifist tendency of imperialism, but an expansionist and aggressive policy’.

The idyll between Trump and Putin

On negotiations initiated between Trump and Putin, we invite you to see the article by Facundo Miño published in Prensa Obrera on 18 February. The long telephone conversation of more than an hour and a half between Trump and Putin, held on Saturday, would have laid the groundwork for a ceasefire agreement and the beginning of ‘peace’ talks. The talks are to be resumed in person in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. These negotiations are taking place outside Ukrainian government of Volodomir Zelensky (whom Trump informed afterwards) and the European Union (EU).

It is worth pointing out that this is further evidence of the real character of the ongoing inter-imperialist war in Ukraine between the US-led NATO and Russia, where the Ukrainian people serve as ‘cannon fodder’ for Western imperialist plans. In the face of Zelensky's pseudo-sovereigntist tantrum over his exclusion from the negotiations, Trump bashed him up and down, calling him an ‘unelected dictator’ and ‘corrupt’. This is the fate of the sepoys who are used and discarded, according to circumstances, by imperialism!

Biden's stated aim was to bring about regime change in Russia, ousting Putin, and to continue the advance of imperialist restorationist colonization of Eastern Europe, now directly over Russia, Belarus and other countries where capitalism had been expropriated, displacing the oligarchic bourgeoisies propped up by Stalinist bureaucracies.

After three years of war, Western imperialism has not achieved this goal. Although the war has economically worn-down Putin's government - who will seek to make the Russian masses pay the cost - it has not defeated it. The fact that Putin appears to be the ‘winner’ does not make it any less clear that he is tributary to Trump's intervention, whom he has invited to encourage US capitalists to invest (on advantageous terms) in Russia. Putin has also failed to capture the entire Donbas area, where several capitals are still in Ukrainian hands, nor has he finished recapturing the Russian zone of Kursk that was occupied by a Ukrainian advance.

According to reports, the ‘ceasefire’ being negotiated by Trump and Putin would recognize Russian advances in Ukraine over Crimea and with the creation of the Donbas territories that have constituted themselves as independent and applied for integration into the Russian Federation. In negotiations for a final peace, Russia is reportedly demanding the handover of some of the capitals of these Donbas territories and the withdrawal of Ukrainian military forces occupying part of Kursk. Putin also reportedly called for a change of regime in Ukraine and a constitutional reform that would, among other things, formalize Ukraine's non-membership of NATO. Putin also wants the economic sanctions imposed on him by NATO and US imperialism to be lifted. And the return of the substantial Russian funds that have been seized.

Many of these claims will not be accepted, but... Russia should ‘guarantee’ the territorial ‘security’ of Ukraine and other EU countries after the deal is concluded. And Trump is reportedly offering Putin new political and economic deals. For example, on energy/oil: let's not forget that Russia is part of OPEC, a body that it integrates with Saudi Arabia and others, which regulates the number of hydrocarbons to be extracted in order to impose high oligopolistic prices.

EU in crisis

The EU member states, like Ukraine, are also not participating in the negotiations between Trump and Putin. Trump has deliberately taken this course. It has announced that its aim is to cut off US support for the Ukrainian army in terms of money, weapons and ‘advisors’. While the EU members of NATO have also been supporting the Ukrainian war, the US has a decisive role to play. Their withdrawal would immediately accelerate the collapse of Ukraine's military forces and Zelensky's government. Trump is calling for the military budgets of European countries to be doubled and tripled (incidentally also buying weapons from the US industry). He has also demanded that Zelensky repay the debt he owes to the US: he asked for the delivery of the so-called ‘rare earths’ - europium, praseodymium, neodymium, lanthanum, terbium, holmium, cerium, yttrium, promethium, samarium, gadolinium, dysprosium, thulium, holmium, erbium, ytterbium and others - minerals that are abundant on Ukrainian soil, much needed strategically by the US chip and electronics industry. But, according to Facundo Miño's note, a large part of the deposits of these minerals are occupied by the Russian army (‘coincidentally’ Greenland, one of Trump's ambitions, also has an abundance of these scarce minerals).

One of the variants of the ‘security guarantee’ demanded by imperialism would be the presence of troops on Ukrainian territory. Zelensky publicly demanded, already accepting part of the agreements, that 200,000 troops be sent to a ‘security strip’. This is something that Russia will surely reject. Because it would be a whole army, which would be installed on Ukrainian territory, in order to restart the war - with any excuse or provocation - against Russia, at a convenient time. It is said that it could be a force not of NATO, but made up of several countries, including some European ones.

With the EU being sidelined by Trump (with Russian approval) from the ‘peace negotiations’, French President Emmanuel Macron has called an ‘informal’ emergency meeting of presidents and prime ministers of the EU's most important countries to establish a common position. The premiers of Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, France, the EU secretary, etc. attended. But they could not agree: major differences were evident on sending troops to Ukraine (with the financial cost that implies) and on other issues (including the type of relationship with Russia). Britain announced its commitment to send troops; the Netherlands, Belgium and others as well. Germany's Olaf Scholz, a week before the elections, avoided making a statement. Poland objected. But... all agreed that military budgets need to be increased in order to have a greater capacity for intervention and eventual assistance to Ukraine.

What was discussed ‘informally’ is whether Trump's economic, political (and military) offensive against the EU will be confronted. The crux of the matter is the advance that US imperialism has long been making against the imperialist powers of the EU, in particular against Germany. The economic war that US imperialism has been threatening for a long time against the European imperialist ‘allies’ has now been openly declared with the introduction of ‘reciprocal’ tariffs to curb imports from Germany and others. This would be a severe blow to the German economy. This is not a new process: it is an American ‘state policy’. It was under the administration of ‘Democrat’ Joe Biden that gas pipelines running through the Baltic Sea carrying cheap energy from Russia to Germany and other EU countries were blown up - six months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 - dealing a death blow to European industry's costs for export manufacturing and to the pockets of European workers. Trump wants to stop the export of German cars to the US and force them to open their markets to US products.

imperialist competition, under the conditions of the development of capitalist crisis, has become more intense.  Monopoly and inter-imperialist competition are in the nature of the capitalist/imperialist system. The crisis into which imperialism has entered on a world level has relaunched (it never disappeared) the competition between them. Lenin used to say that when the capitalists are put out to tender for the purchase of rope to hang themselves, they will fight to sell it.

The European imperialist bourgeoisie is torn between subordinating itself to US imperialism (as it has largely done so far) or developing a course independent of Trump's diktats. At the ‘informal’ summit convened by Macron, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared: “Europe is a strong political project, representing the world's leading trading bloc, and together we represent the world's leading economy. We can continue to enlarge and expand this great project”. Will they be able to? Macron, who took the initiative to convene the summit, does not know how long he will be in office: France has been losing hegemony in its African dominions (the backyard of Gallic imperialism) and is in a minority in France, beset by growing political crises and potential threats of active intervention by the working masses.

China is the target

We are going through a time of intense inter-imperialist struggles for world domination, which are paving the way for a world war. By no means should each ‘partial’ war (Ukraine, Gaza, Congo, etc.) be taken in itself, but as part of a general trend. The international capitalist crisis, which had a leap in 2008, with its epicenter in the USA, accelerates this process. It is not just a question of a new division of the world among the imperialist powers, but of who intends to dominate it.

The capitalist crisis has hit the US imperialist regime hard, which has been losing its global hegemonic role. At the center of the struggle, the Americans must confront the colossus China, transformed into a great capitalist power. And the ‘state policy’ of the US bourgeoisie for almost two decades now has been to march to a settling of scores with China. The most important threats of world war revolve around the confrontation between the US and China.

It is necessary to follow closely what realignments are taking place. In order to get the EU to almost fully sign up to NATO's war against Russia, Biden blew up (clandestinely and terroristically) the Baltic gas pipelines and exerted all kinds of political and economic pressure on its members. Trump now intends to concentrate all efforts on isolating China and rallying allies against it. The ongoing trade war of tariffs is part of this aim. With his threats against Germany and the EU, he wants the EU to discipline itself into an anti-Chinese front (a significant part of German investments is in China, etc.). The ‘peace’ with Putin is also aimed at distancing Russia from the alliance it has been maintaining with China in the course of the Ukraine war. Putin is also concerned about the ‘bear hug’ China is giving him with its ‘support’. The ‘celestial empire’ is steadily advancing also on the countries of Russia's Asian periphery under its political/economic domination.

China is intervening in the debate taking place within the EU imperialisms: it refuses to rival them and called for partnership to create an international reality of multipolar power (against Trump's totalitarian orientation). China supports the EU's participation in the Ukraine peace talks with the US and Russia, defends the validity of the UN, and so on.

The inter-imperialist clashes are developing under the beating of the drums of world war and the growing right-wing, repression and fascistation of the bourgeois political regimes against the working masses and the fighters for democratic freedoms, seeking to impose ‘national unity’ in each country. Without such ‘unity’ it is difficult, impossible, to wage war.

It is necessary that the forces that claim to be revolutionary and the militant workers' movement adopt a position of political independence and do not allow themselves to be dragged behind the pseudo-democratic “oppositions” of the class-collaborationist fronts, nor behind the warlike adventures made also in the name of “civilization” and against “totalitarianisms”. Organize and mobilize against the imperialist war and against the starvation plans of ‘adjustment’ against the peoples. Down with the capitalist governments of hunger and war!

The eventual ‘peace agreements’ between Trump and Putin will not bring peace. Trump's foreign policy is part of a strategic objective of imperialism that aims at a geopolitical redesign of the planet according to its interests and to regain the leadership that has been weakened in recent decades. They will be, if consummated, only an interregnum until the next and bloodier war of the monopolies. The reordering of the world political map to regain the full hegemony of US imperialism, which Trump intends to implement, will not be possible without major political crises and wars Workers’ enemy is within their national borders, it is their ruling capitalist class.

The struggle for peace is the struggle against imperialist war, it is the struggle against imperialism, for world socialist revolution.

We actively support the call to organize a conference of internationalist organizations against the imperialist war to be held next June in Italy. Proletarians of the world: unite!

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