IN A KEYNOTE foreign policy speech at London’s Mansion House last night, Tory foreign secretary Liz Truss dispensed with the fiction of the imperialist powers merely offering support for a beleaguered Ukraine and revealed that the aim was for a war across Europe to crush Russia completely.
In what amounted to a declaration of World War III, Truss warned of ‘misery across Europe and terrible consequences across the globe’ if Russia succeeds in holding back the steady encroachment of the country by NATO, before adding: ‘We would never feel safe again. So we must be prepared for the long haul.’
She argued that the existing global security architecture ‘designed to guarantee peace and prosperity’ had failed, and that the ‘free world’ needed to ‘reboot, recast and remodel’ itself, declaring that ‘Ukraine has to be the catalyst for wider change.’
Insisting that a victory over Russia was a ‘strategic imperative for us all’, Truss urged a ‘doubling down’ on support by massively increasing the flood of weapons into Ukraine.
Truss called on the West to drive for ‘military strength, economic security and deeper global alliances’, with NATO becoming more ‘assertive and confident’ while their enemies – Russia and China – will be ‘contained and moving towards a better path.’
The ‘better path’ Truss and the imperialists want to move both Russia and China down, is the path of regime change and counter-revolution – the overthrow of the socialised property relations established by revolution in the 20th century and return these nations to capitalist plunder and exploitation.
This will be the ‘security’ that world capitalism craves as the only way it can survive as its global economy collapses into recession.
Truss’s speech was a stark contradiction of the line being peddled the day before by prime minister Boris Johnson, who in an interview on Talk TV rejected the idea that the Ukraine confrontation was a ‘sort of stand-off between Russia and the West’, insisting: ‘We do not want the crisis to escalate beyond Ukraine’s borders.’
But this is precisely what Truss is calling for. She wants a war between the imperialist powers to smash Russia. That will certainly spin out of control to engulf the whole of Europe.
Truss is clearly resurrecting her earlier posture of a great war leader, presenting herself to the Tory party and the ruling class as a latter-day Margaret Thatcher, prepared to wage war abroad against Russia and against the working class at home.
With Johnson clinging onto power by his fingernails, Truss is making a move to prove her worth as Johnson’s successor – by being a willing lapdog to the war ambitions of US imperialism with her enthusiasm for a world war to ‘save’ capitalism.
The US has prepared for this war of conquest for years by continually pushing NATO to encircle Russia with a ring of nuclear steel, to provoke a response that it hopes will bleed the Russian economy dry and leave it open to regime change.
This was laid out in a 2019 report by the Rand Corporation, a defence contractor that advises the US on how to achieve its long-term goals.
This report carried a section headed ‘Providing lethal aid to Ukraine’ in order to ‘exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability.’
All that lethal aid that the UK, the US and NATO countries are pouring into Ukraine to fast propel a war across Europe, is being paid for by the working class, while the sanctions imposed on Russia have driven the price of energy and food sky high – pushing millions of workers into destitution and poverty.
The working class in Britain, Europe and the US is not standing by and accepting being driven into the ground to finance imperialist war to save a collapsing capitalist system that has long outlived its historical stay.
The way forward for the working class internationally is to mobilise its massive strength to bring down the capitalist governments and advance to workers’ governments, that will expropriate the bosses and bankers, nationalise the economy under workers’ management and put an end to imperialism’s war drive against Russia and China.
Only by the working class taking power and establishing world wide socialism can imperialist war be ended forever!
