THE old world order of an all-powerful American capitalist system engaging in a rule-based and peaceful relationship with its allies in the UK and Europe for the benefit and profit of the global capitalist class has not just been dented – it has been shattered!
Former allies are now the enemy while a former deadly enemy is now embraced, at least for the present, as a valued partner.
US president Donald Trump has declared war on the UK and European governments with the threat of trade tariffs similar to those imposed on other ‘close’ friends and economic partners in Canada and Mexico.
At the same time, Trump has ditched all ‘cast iron’ unending support for the fascist supported Zelensky regime in Ukraine, even cutting off all military supplies and denying the Ukrainian military access to US intelligence.
This is a devastating move that closes down any hope Zelensky has of prolonging the war on Russia – a war that US imperialism deliberately provoked and which Trump now wants to end with the total defeat of its former ally.
Instead, Trump is now seeking agreement with the Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Stalinist bureaucracy to exploit whatever resources can be extracted from the region.
This division of labour between US imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy has left British and European leaders in a state of panic and absolute confusion.
The term ‘seismic’ is now commonly used in the bourgeois press and amongst UK and European governments to describe this complete rupturing of all the old relationships, as former enemies become friends and former friends become enemies.
The US now openly views Europe as the enemy, in Trump’s quest to make America great again, by destroying its economies with a tariff war, and even threatening military action to grab Greenland.
This has led to total chaos amongst all the political parties in power in Europe, with Starmer’s Labour government along with France and Germany proclaiming their never ending support for Ukraine, and attempting to whip up a war hysteria about the threat of Russian invasion, to justify massive increases in defence spending.
These increases will be paid for by the working class through savage austerity cuts, with workers and their families required to make even more ‘sacrifices’ for an imperialist war that they lost a long time ago.
The seismic split between the European ruling classes and the US is now being publicly displayed in the pages of the bourgeois press.
On Wednesday the Daily Telegraph published an article by Ben Wallace headed ‘Trump and Vance aren’t clever, they’re clueless’.
Wallace is not just a political commentator, he is a former British army officer and Tory MP who served as Secretary of State for Defence until 2023.
His fears, reflecting those that now dominate amongst the military and political establishment, is a vision of ‘a new era’ where Trump carries through his threats and breaks with NATO, and where ‘Britain is treated as a quaint exception to Europe’. While the ‘Sovereignty of others doesn’t matter. Might is right. Oppressing opponents, judges and the bourgeois press is acceptable, in the cause of America First’.
The only quibble with Wallace is that this is not a ‘vision’ of the future but the reality today, with European nations now seeing the US, not as a protective ally, but as the main enemy.
It is an enemy that has pushed them aside as it embarks on a desperate struggle to keep American capitalism from collapsing into bankruptcy, by launching frenzied attacks on its imperialist allies, now regarded as leeches sucking the US dry.
Capitalism, in its final imperialist stage, is reduced today into warring and competing nation states tearing each other apart and determined to drag the working class down with them!
The working class internationally has the strength and power to put an end to this historic crisis by smashing capitalism and driving out the Stalinist bureaucracy, by organising mass general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments and going forward from general strikes to taking the power and establishing a worldwide socialist planned economy.
With capitalism internationally tearing itself apart, now is the time to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to organise the victory of the world socialist revolution.