The imperialist world order Washington has dominated since it emerged as the victor from World War II is being shaken by cutthroat competition between rival capitalist rulers for markets, raw materials and which of them will grab the biggest slice of the wealth produced by the world’s working people.
These rivalries — built into the workings of capitalism — drive trade conflicts, national tensions, the rise of fascist outfits and the threat of a third world war, posing vital political questions for the working class.
For over three years, the largest ground war in Europe since World War II has been unleashed against Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin. His regime’s bloody attempt to crush the Ukrainian people and seize their resources for the ruling class in Russia has been met with courageous resistance by working people.
Workers in the U.S. and worldwide have big stakes in unconditionally backing the struggle of the Ukrainian people to defend the country’s sovereignty.
An opposite class standpoint is being advanced by the U.S. rulers and other “democratic” imperialist powers. Each is utilizing the prospect of talks aimed at ending the war to assert their own profit-driven economic and political interests, and to make advances against their rivals. Ukrainian sovereignty does not concern them one bit.
President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance used their Feb. 28 meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to further their shift toward a bloc with Moscow to better defend U.S. interests. A dressing down normally hidden behind closed doors was seen around the world.
The sharp differences are one reflection of the broader national tensions wracking the world order, accelerated by the watershed events of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and then the Tehran-backed Hamas pogrom in Israel, Oct. 7, 2023.
“I’m aligned with the United States of America,” not with Kyiv or Moscow, Trump told Zelensky. His predecessor, Joseph Biden, had the same exact perspective.
Trump seeks to rekindle relations with Moscow by brokering “peace” in Ukraine on terms acceptable to Putin’s expansionist regime. Such a resolution contains the seeds of future conflicts.
After their clash, government heads in Europe showered Zelensky with hugs and kisses at a summit in London March 2. They did so for the exact same reasons that Trump upbraided him, to try to advance their own imperialist interests.
Weaker capitalist powers, like the rulers in France and the U.K., depend on Washington’s military might to provide stability across the continent. They hope to convince the U.S. rulers to guarantee Ukraine’s defense against further incursions from Moscow. More importantly, they hope to defend their own interests, against Washington, Moscow and each other.
Zelensky had gone to the White House looking to U.S. imperialism to provide a military force to guarantee Ukraine’s defense in return for granting Washington a lucrative mining deal. This would allow the U.S. rulers to grab a large part of Ukraine’s critical mineral resources. Trump calls this “compensation” for past U.S. military and financial aid. He suspended military aid to Ukraine March 3 to try to force Zelensky to concede to his demands, which he claims are made in the name of securing “peace.”
Washington’s pivot toward Moscow is aimed at slowing down growing ties between Moscow and Beijing. The U.S. rulers see Beijing’s rising economic and military clout as a threat to their interests in the Pacific, South America and worldwide. Closer ties with Moscow open the door to Washington drawing the Russian rulers into cooperation with its intervention elsewhere in the world, including imposing stability for its imperialist interests in the Middle East.
Trump claimed Zelensky’s objections to any compromise deal with Moscow was the obstacle to peace. He said the Ukrainian president was “gambling with World War III.”
But it’s the U.S. rulers and rival capitalist powers that have accelerated preparations for more wars since Moscow’s invasion began, including extending the U.S.-led NATO alliance in Europe. The Socialist Workers Party demands that Washington get all U.S. forces and nuclear weapons out of Europe.
The most important ally of working people in Ukraine are fellow workers in Russia who also confront the Putin regime, which uses them as cannon fodder and attacks their political freedoms. U.S. sanctions on Russia hit working people there the hardest and should be lifted immediately.
The working class, in alliance with other exploited producers, is the one force capable of stopping another imperialist world war by taking power from the capitalist warmakers. It will take a party, organized like the Bolsheviks under V.I. Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution, to make that possible, and to organize workers in our millions to end capitalist exploitation and join the fight for a socialist world, changing the course of history.
This is the course being pursued by the Socialist Workers Party.