US PRESIDENT Joe Biden turned up in the Japanese city of Hiroshima yesterday for a meeting of the G7 leaders over the weekend designed to underline and reinforce the commitment of the US and its allies to a war alliance against China and Russia.
Originally, Biden planned on a whistlestop tour following this G7 summit, visiting Australia and Papua New Guinea.
These two stop overs were meant to whip up support for war against China, and re-affirm the steadfast commitment of US imperialism to the Pacific region against its perceived mortal enemy.
In the event, both these trips had to be cancelled at the last moment, as Biden has been forced to make a hasty return to Washington as the crisis over the US debt ceiling threatens the survival of US capitalism.
The fact that Biden had to abandon this high-profile tour of Pacific nations immediately cast doubts in the region about US credibility and its supposed economic supremacy.
Hal Brands, professor of global affairs at Johns Hopkins University, told the New York Times: ‘And you can bet China will make hay of this – the message to countries in the region will be: “You can’t count on a country that can’t even perform basic functions of governance”.’
The fact that Biden was forced to cancel these meetings, shows the huge crisis that is confronting him as he jets off back for meetings with the Republican Party leaders to reach a compromise deal over increasing the US debt ceiling.
Increasing the debt ceiling, currently standing at $31.4 trillion, is being held up by the Republicans who hold a slim majority in Congress who are demanding Biden agrees to savage multi-billion dollar cuts to Federal spending as the price for agreeing to any increase.
While a stand-off over increasing the US debt ceiling between Democrats and Republicans has taken place many times in the past, this latest confrontation has assumed historic significance as witnessed by the increasingly hysterical pleas from US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that if agreement isn’t reached by June 1st, the entire US government will run out of money and default on all its massive debt repayments.
Even if default is avoided at the last minute, an estimated 200,000 jobs would be wiped out. A short default while an emergency deal is struck would cost half a million jobs, and a protracted default would wipe out 8.3 million jobs, and cause the US stock market to crash bringing down the global financial market.
Unlike other debt ceiling stand-offs, this latest is taking place at a time when the US economy is being battered from all sides.
Three large US banks have collapsed already this year, while almost half of America’s 4,000 banks are reported to be insolvent.
On top of this, Congress has pledged over a trillion dollars on military expenditure for an imperialist war against Russia in Ukraine and war preparations against China in the Pacific region.
It is no wonder that not just the Pacific nations but also US allies in Europe are questioning the reliability of standing with American capitalism, not just because Biden has no control in Congress, but because the entire economy of the biggest, most indebted, capitalist nation in the world is on the brink of collapse.
Already Donald Trump, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, despite all the charges against him, has signalled that he would end US support for Ukraine.
Trump represents the section of the US ruling class that can see that a war on two fronts against Russia and the working class at home to make them pay for the economic crash will be catastrophic for a bankrupt capitalist system.
The US ruling class is preparing to dump all its erstwhile allies as it fights it out with a powerful working class at home, to impose the crisis on the backs of workers, smashing forever the fiction of a global capitalist system dominating the world forever.
The time has come for the working class in the US, Britain, and throughout the world to put an end to this broken, bankrupt capitalist system with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International worldwide to lead the struggle for the victory of the world socialist revolution, which will include restoring rule through workers’ soviets in Russia and China.
