Although most of the people just isn’t belligerent, the rolling of drums of struggle, the clomp of marching boots, and the clatter of breech-loaders develop louder. Under strain from Trump, navy budgets have begun an upward climb that’s set to speed up. They are to rise to five% of GDP for every Western nation by 2035. Several of them had, nevertheless, beforehand struggled to succeed in the two% goal. The price range of the US Department of Defense, by far the biggest on the planet at US$1 trillion per 12 months, will enhance to the astronomical sum of US$1.5 trillion. Japan permitted a document navy price range. Europe just isn’t lagging behind, with the German program being essentially the most bold: a big military (the biggest in Europe), and struggle industries to switch civilian trade hampered by “sanctions” in opposition to Russian fuel. Old revanchist urges are resurfacing. As the continent’s industrial heartland deindustrializes, it could reindustrialize by rearmament. Finally, a NATO financial institution will quickly be created to finance navy initiatives.
This huge reallocation of assets towards “defense” can solely be achieved on the expense of social wants, public providers, and infrastructure, even the economic system itself. Accumulated debt is already skyrocketing, and additional recourse to printing cash would result in hyperinflation and foreign money devaluation, significantly of the US dollar. The rapid goal is to fill the order books of the arms trade, through which US arms producers would have the lion’s share. But the provision of navy {hardware}, coupled with bellicose rhetoric, makes passing to motion simpler and factors towards an more and more violent future.
The European Commission is on a struggle footing; van der Leyen and Kallas are pushing relentlessly. With a martial tone and in battle order, Western European leaders have set a three- to four-year timeframe for the outbreak of hostilities in opposition to Russia. Even the German church is getting ready for the fateful second.[1] Two main conflicts are already underway in Ukraine and West Asia, whereas an armed confrontation with China is within the making. The struggle can be international if the main navy powersthe United States, Russia, and Chinawere to have interaction in direct battle, because the repercussions would prolong throughout the whole planet, together with to non-belligerent international locations.
The strategy on this article is twofold: first, to establish the circumstances that give rise to fears of a world struggle; then, to establish the elements that might counteract them.
The chance of a world struggle arises as a result of new developments in recent times make it conceivable. To grasp the important traits of our period, the evaluation should be located inside its historic context. Three distinct durations could be recognized.
Defensive imperialism
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States held a dominant place and wielded a hegemony unmatched by any earlier empire. While Europe lay devastated, the US managed practically half of worldwide industrial manufacturing, three-quarters of the world’s gold reserves, the world’s reserve foreign money, and just about limitless uncooked supplies. They had been ideally positioned to ascertain, for the primary time in historical past, a worldwide imperialism that positioned the whole world in a subordinate place, at their disposal. This is the defining attribute of US imperialism in comparison with its European and Japanese predecessors. However, the strengthening of the USSR throughout World War II, the entry of Eastern Europe into its sphere of affect after 1945, the revolution in China in 1949, and the decolonization of the Global South wrested a lot of the globe from US management. It was essential to attend and postpone the prospect of inserting the whole globe beneath the management of a single imperialism. From the Forties to the Nineteen Seventies, the prevailing winds blew in a liberating, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist path. American coverage was that of an imperialism thwarted, or on the very least, placed on maintain. It was largely defensive: to protect acquired possessions and forestall, by all means, extra international locations from becoming a member of or aligning themselves with the socialist camp.
The reversal started within the Nineteen Seventies. On the one hand, newly impartial international locations skilled huge difficulties in growing, reaching stability, and preserving their independence. Gradually, they misplaced numerous good points made due to decolonization and located themselves as soon as once more dependent and in a neocolonial place vis–vis their former colonizers or the United States straight. On the opposite hand, socialist international locations skilled financial malfunctions that they had been unable to beat, resulting in the lack of their standing as fashions, dependence on capitalist international locations, and in the end, the collapse of their programs and the dismantling of the USSR.
Conquering imperialism
The consequence was an entire transformation of the worldwide context from 1990 onward. Obstacles to US hegemony appeared to have been eradicated, and the trail appeared clear for the institution of a worldwide American imperialism. What had been placed on maintain between 1945 and 1990 now grew to become achievable. It was a second of euphoria, of self-congratulation for the ” sole superpower,” of celebration of “the end of history,” of the appearance of “freedom” worldwide, of the proclamation of an Americentric globalization that will profit everybody, of daydreams in regards to the finish of conflicts and the enjoyment of the “peace dividend.” Idealism ran rampant, optimism was at its peak, and utopia appeared inside attain.
The United States’ coverage then consisted of increasing the boundaries of American imperialism to make it really international. The previously defensive coverage grew to become offensive and expansionist. Many international locations had been reluctant or gradual to fall into line and assume the subordinate place assigned to them within the hierarchy of worldwide imperialism. In that system, additionally known as neoliberal globalization, sovereignty just isn’t acknowledged and is taken into account a hindrance to its clean operation. Independence is antithetical to imperialism. It was subsequently essential to resort to drive to compel recalcitrant states to bend and submit.
It all started in 1991, with the struggle in opposition to Iraq serving as a present of drive by the hegemon to impress them. Among different issues, a spread of weapons programs was exhibited to intimidate them. This was solely the start. The neoconservatives, fanatical warmongers, had been in cost within the West and, like their Israeli siblings, had been satisfied that drive was the suitable means to beat the resistance of “enemies,” demonized and slandered because the “Axis of Evil,” “rogue states,” “terrorists,” and so forth. For three a long time, triumphant and hubristic, the United States waged limitless wars. At no level had been they at peace, nor did they go away the world at peace. Turning into an absurdity, the guarantees of 1990-1991 proved to be nothing however a sham, at greatest a mirage. And demagoguery about imperialism being humanitarian or aiming to unfold human rights and democracy served to hoodwink public opinion.
From Iraq to Somalia, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine, the United States attacked straight, by proxy, or by hybrid warfare (navy aggression mixed with destabilization by numerous means). Direct wars had been militarily profitable as a result of the targets had been at all times weaker international locations, and the wars resembled the colonial campaigns of the previous, with a staggering imbalance within the variety of deaths. However, navy victories resulted in strategic failures as a result of the United States was unable to manage the international locations it occupied and was compelled to withdraw, typically ignominiously, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was fast to declare victory, however unable to ascertain peace. Therefore, it most well-liked proxy wars, which allowed it to stay on the sidelines. Simultaneously, it launched “color revolutions” with “regime changes” to deliver international locations beneath its management (Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, Venezuela, Iran, Kazakhstan, Belarus). The document was blended. The United States was primarily energetic in two instructions: in opposition to the Arab world by violence (help for Israel, wars, destabilization), and in opposition to Russia by NATO growth eastward and “color revolutions” geared toward taking management of nations surrounding Russia.
Intoxicated by its energy, that it took to be everlasting, oblivious to any sense of proportion, the United States did because it wished on the planet, having fun with extraordinary impunity. It thought-about itself an “exceptional” and “indispensable” nation, above the regulation, not topic to the principles that apply to others. The “rules-based world order” imposed by the United States was meant as an alternative to worldwide regulation. The victims of their misdeeds worldwide quantity within the thousands and thousands. An article in The Lancet highlights that American “sanctions” prompted 38 million deaths between 1971 and 2021.[2]As for his or her Israeli confederate, it behaved likewise on a West Asian scale. The UN resolutions it violates would fill volumes. Both are unrepentant outlaws who consider that, for them, something goes. Lately, trampling on agreements reached (notably the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, the 1987 Intermediate-Range Missile (INF) Treaty abolished in 2019 and the June 2026 Protocol with Iran), cavalier U-turns contradicting coverage statements made the day earlier than and assassinations, together with beneath the guise of negotiations, have gotten commonplace.
Distressed imperialism
The twilight of the unipolar period started with the failure of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The sequence of fiascos that adopted solely confirmed that reality. The United States struggled to increase its hegemony, regardless of the large energy hole in its favor and the usually keen help of Western international locations linked to it (the allies-vassals) inside the framework of imperialism. Meanwhile, the world order was evolving. First, the Americacentric globalization, introduced as the final word mannequin for humanity, revealed the depth of its flaws in the course of the 2008 monetary disaster after which in the course of the 2020-2022 pandemic. Second, because the world continued to evolve, non-Western international locations developed quickly, recovered, strengthened themselves, and loosened their bonds of vassalage. This phenomenon is putting within the case of China and Russia, however it may be noticed elsewhere as nicely.
As a end result, the steadiness of energy, overwhelmingly in favor of the United States in the course of the Nineteen Nineties, shifted in favor of the non-Western world. Consequently, the potential for integrating them right into a subordinate place inside US international imperialism pale. On the opposite, the rising development was considered one of emancipation from the American order, of weakening the grip of the dollar, of regaining financial and political independence, and of transitioning from unipolarity to multipolarity. For the United States, the outlook was alarming: to the blended outcomes of using drive that underpins imperialism can be added the lack of the privilege of exploiting the world’s financial assets at will by printing {dollars} and dwelling off the backs of others.
Reflecting these realities, the geopolitical state of affairs underwent a major transformation. US wars modified in nature. Previously undertaken to broaden imperialism, they had been now waged to gradual its disintegration and try to return to the bygone period of absolute hegemony of the Nineteen Nineties. All of this was harking back to King Canute and the legend that he commanded the waves of the ocean to recede. Offensive and aggressive within the rapid tactical sense, took on a strategically defensive character geared toward preserving an imperialism on its final legs. A belligerent agent and troublemaker on the planet in the course of the growth part, the United States is much more so within the present part of contraction. The conquering imperialism of the late twentieth century is now an anguished, anxious, and bewildered imperialism. It is flailing about to reverse the course of historical past and return to the previous. Erratic, irrational, devoid of even essentially the most fundamental logic, a cartoon character, Trump is its very embodiment. Mistaking its needs for actuality, underestimating its victims, overestimating its energy, the United States suffered a string of main setbacks: failure in opposition to Russia within the proxy struggle in Ukraine, open defeat (collectively with its Israeli affiliate) in a direct struggle in opposition to Iran which revealed to the world the constraints of their devices of coercion, important to domination. The solely solace is the concoction of more and more ludicrous “stories” and “narratives.” Faced with an implacable actuality, the US management takes refuge in mythmaking (“alternative facts,” “parallel world”) within the hope of discovering aid and deceiving the general public. And the anticipated confrontation with China is but to come back.
Facing the specter of a brand new world struggle
The United States nonetheless clings to the fantasy of imposing its international imperialism on the whole world, simply as its accomplice Israel cherishes the chimera of changing into the hegemon in West Asia (Greater Israel) and redrawing the areas map (a continuation of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, secretly concluded by Great Britain and France). Two entities, every representing a tiny minority of their respective worlds (4% of the worldwide inhabitants and 1.5% of the inhabitants of West Asia, respectively), aspire to dominant roles. Both are unhinged, regardless of their setbacks in Iran.
As for the geopolitical panorama, it boils all the way down to this: the United States is desperately preventing in opposition to the pure evolution of the world, believing it might halt the course of historical past. Its failures solely make it extra belligerent, extra insensitive to threat, and extra susceptible to delusion. It is placing the world in danger and endangering it. The “color revolutions” and conflicts on Russia’s periphery have escalated right into a struggle in opposition to Russia by the instrumentalization of Ukraine, after which right into a struggle with direct navy intervention in opposition to Iran. The United States is striving to grab the sources of China’s oil and fuel provides (Venezuela, Iran) and to disrupt its traces of communications (Asia, the Indian Ocean) with the purpose of strangling it. All that continues to be is direct confrontation with Russia and open struggle in opposition to China – in different phrases, world struggle. The present international battle can flip right into a world struggle.[3] These are usually not mere conjectures. Currently, missing different options, the US authorities, with their typical weapons stockpiles wasted in Ukraine and Iran, are debating using tactical nuclear weapons, as if their use might be confined to the “theater of operations” with out resulting in strategic missiles of mass destruction, international thermonuclear struggle, and the extinction of life on Earth. This relentless pursuit of hegemony is the first supply of instability, dysfunction, and battle on a worldwide scale. The continuity of this coverage is clear within the Trump presidency. Elected on a promise to finish the neoconservative warmongering line, he’s proving to be its zealous executor.
Two far-reaching and contradictory developments are clashing. On the one hand, the United States can’t droop its imperialism as a result of it is dependent upon it. Lacking adequate profitability, its industrial manufacturing has been deserted or transferred overseas, whereas the United States retains the navy industries, the higher echelons of finance, and the instruments of command and management (data applied sciences, the trade for manufacturing ideology in all its varieties, and the equipment of psychological warfare and cognitive distortion). The privilege of the dollar permits it to draw overseas funding with out financial justification, to freely print cash and import cheaply, and to stay past its means as a rentier. This system constitutes the imperialism of our time. It is completely to its benefit and will probably be defended by drive of arms. Unable to compete or keep its financial place, it pursues a coverage of “sanctions,” destabilization, disruption, and the promotion of chaos in opposition to international locations that threaten to slide from its grasp, because it exploits their vulnerabilities and the fault traces inside and between them. Unable to take care of its dominance or flip again the clock to the Nineteen Nineties, it resorts to destroying something that evolves exterior its management. Its coverage is only unfavourable. It has nothing constructive to supply.
n the opposite hand, the world past continues to develop, whether or not the United States approves of it or not. This growth just isn’t directed in opposition to it, however its success demonstrates that subordination to US imperialism is pointless and that it’s even advantageous to do with out it. Economic interactions impartial of the United States will ultimately happen in nationwide currencies, thus stripping the dollar of its exorbitant privilege. Representing the head of imperialism, the dollar’s distinctive standing permits the United States to siphon wealth from overseas. The growth of the remainder of the world results in its strengthening and, as a corollary, to difficult any submission to a overseas rentier, a parasite fattening itself on a synthetic financial establishment. Ultimately, the imperialist system can be known as into query.
These are the 2 profound forces whose contradiction underlies the present international wrestle, which may degenerate right into a world struggle. Were it not for nuclear weapons, a traditional world struggle, like these earlier than it, would have already damaged out. Faced with the Russian and Chinese arsenals, the United States is compelled to think twice, if solely to outlive. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction stays operative, however the inclination of sure hotheads to play with hearth. Paradoxically, the damaging energy of nuclear weapons can dampen warlike fervor. Above all, it compels a distinct strategy. This is why the struggle in opposition to Russia has a hybrid character. The United States prioritizes exterior strain to advertise destabilization, “color revolutions,” and “regime change” to be able to prevail with out exposing itself to reprisals. It counts on inner collapses to realize victory and not using a combat. The first devices of exterior strain are “sanctions”, asset freezes and a spread of hostile actions meant to incite a inhabitants to revolt not in opposition to the United Stated however in opposition to its “regime”.
This was performed out in current weeks with the drone marketing campaign on Russian territory. Russia refrains from retaliating as a result of a lot of the drones are shot down and the harm stays minor and simply repairable. It just isn’t permitting itself to be distracted from the struggle in Ukraine by a diversionary operation whose solely tangible result’s the continued stream of arms and cash to Kiev. Nor does it need to play into the fingers of European leaders who’re calling to arms whereas chanting in unison that Russia intends to beat Europe (whereas being pathetically inept within the face of Kievs victorious troops). A contradiction in “narratives.” The expensive penalties of their 2022 resolution to comply with the United States down the trail of battle with Russia dictate their want for a everlasting struggle psychosis to absolve themselves of accountability. Furthermore, the Russian inhabitants, which suffered 27 million deaths between 1941 and 1945, doesn’t flinch due to a focused bus or a burned-down refinery. So the West is elevating the stakes within the hope of getting an affect. Soon, this will probably be adopted by the boarding and seize on the excessive seas of tankers carrying Russian oil. Therein lies the hazard: from one provocation to the subsequent, the escalation may very nicely sooner or later contact an important Russian curiosity, set off a response, and result in struggle. We know that NATO’s growth towards Russia since 1994 ultimately reached Ukraine, a area extraordinarily delicate for Russian safety, and that this in the end resulted in struggle.
The march towards world struggle is apparent, however it isn’t inevitable. At the very least, it may be delayed and postponed to an indefinite future. Globalization and, for the United States, the pursuit of imperial aims throughout the globe, have drained Western economies of their industrial substance. War requires rearmament (which has already begun) that may solely be achieved on the expense of the inhabitants’s social wants and thru elevated debt and taxes, to not point out additional inflation. The sacrifices this entails, the pressures on social cohesion, the rise in tensions, and the expression of political opposition will comply with, as we’re witnessing in Europe. It is true that we should guard in opposition to illusions: in 1914, highly effective socialist events and main commerce union federations, all devoted to peace, had been swept away by the tsunami of chauvinism that engulfed the continent.
Nevertheless, it isn’t a foregone conclusion for both the peacemakers or the warmongers. As the hazard materializes, consciousness will develop. If social and political forces unite to emphasise the precedence of collective well-being, saber-rattling governments might be ousted from energy. This is not going to assure peace, however its possibilities will probably be improved.
[1]https://braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/pascal-lottaz-germanys-churches-ready-for-war/
[2]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext
[3] Samir Saul, Michel Seymour, Le conflit mondial du XXIe sicle, Paris, L’Harmattan , 2025.
Samir Saul – Michel Seymour