Facing the ‘Thucydides Trap’…the military must step up its efforts. —Xu Qiliang, Vice-chairman of China’s military

[China] stated that war with the United States is inevitable…When you [U.S.] send an armored brigade combat team anywhere in the world…you have made a strategic decision to fight and win —Major General Richard Coffman of U.S. military

Imperialist rivals China and the U.S. are caught in the “Thucydides Trap,” an inevitable drive towards war when a rising power threatens to displace the established world power. Driven by their need for maximum profit and world supremacy, the capitalists are on the course toward World War III.

From signing the Iran deal to challenging the world’s currency, top-dog wannabe China marks more territory while the decaying U.S. flounders and loses allies along with its credibility. The U.S. reigned as a superpower since the end of World War II and established what they call the liberal world order, which has been in decline since the 1970s. Their dominance rests on U.S. financial and military power, its strategic control of the Middle East, and the flow of oil to Europe, Asia, and Africa. To sustain this dominance, they need to rebuild for war and foment nationalism against their arch-rival, China.

War, with working-class lives as cannon fodder, is how rulers resolve their contradictions. Progressive Labor Party calls on all workers to reject both U.S. and Chinese warmakers. Instead, the international working class must embrace their historic role of turning world war into a revolution for communism.

China’s big flex

Imperialist China is asserting its growing dominance against the U.S. by any means necessary. All areas of life have become arenas for war, including technology. China updated its “Made in China 2025,” a strategic policy to make itself the ultimate ruler in high-tech manufacturing (U.S. Department of Defense, 3/25). Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s sanctions, intensified by the current Joe Biden & Kamala Harris administration, cut China’s access to U.S.-licensed microchips, the technologies that industries, including defense, rely on (Asia Times, 3/14).

To counter this roadblock, China is spending $90 billion in hopes of developing groundbreaking technology that will render the U.S. irrelevant (The New York Times, 3/10).

The world’s economies are increasingly forced to choose between the U.S.-led world or China’s rapidly rising dominance. China officially expanded its imperialist influence with Asia-Pacific countries in the U.S. orbit (like South Korea, Australia, and Japan) through its RCEP trade agreement. Meanwhile, in true gangster fashion, China seeks to exacerbate tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a country of massive oil and geopolitical importance. Iran, hurt by U.S. sanctions, agreed to discounts on oil and greater “military cooperation” with China in exchange for $400 billion investment over 25 years (Seattle Times, 3/27).

In efforts to prepare for the Thucydides Trap, China strengthened its military systems with U.S.-rival-imperialist Russia. China’s rapidly developing military has now “achieve[d] parity with—or even exceed[ed]—the United States” in terms of its army, navy, and rockets (Congressional Research Service, 1/5).

To add insult to injury, China has been leveraging its imperialist Belt and Road Initiative (infrastructure deals with over 60 countries and two-thirds of the world population) to promote business in the yuan. Abandoning the dollar—the world’s principal reserve currency since the end of World War II—is a punch in the gut to U.S. world supremacy. The capitalist law is to compete and expand, or die.

U.S. empire’s crisis accelerates war plans

No empire falls without a fight. The botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the Trump debacle, exposed the emperor’s clothes for the whole world to see. The U.S. rulers’ clumsy efforts to maintain dominance are met with mistrust from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, to name a few.

Take the almost-completed Nord stream 2. This pipeline will provide cheap Russian gas directly to Germany, under the Baltic Sea, bypassing hostile Ukraine, a slighted U.S. ally. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is threatening their so-called friends Germany and the European Union to reject it (Reuters, 3/28). But the warlords whine, “[T]here is nothing…Biden and his team…can do to stop that [skepticism]. From now on, all countries, everywhere, must hedge their bets about the United States’’ (Foreign Affairs, March/April).

Like any predator, a superpower is most dangerous when wounded. The dominant finance wing of the U.S. ruling class, represented by Biden, will build fascism (see glossary, page 5). They seek to unify their own capitalist class for war. That’s the essence of Biden’s “Build Back Better” campaign. Biden’s cynical claim that he’s investing in workers is an attempt to win our class to the rulers’ imperialist agenda. Let’s make no mistake: reforms are part of the war effort.

U.S. capitalism—once a ruler, now a wound-licker—is incapable of coping with the international instability it faces. No wonder general Richard Coffman is desperately calling for troops and fighting vehicles (Military Times, 3/11).

Nationalism, racism part of U.S. arsenal

The finance capitalist wing of the U.S. ruling class has a contradiction on its hands. As they cry crocodile tears for the gutter racist attack on Asian women workers in Atlanta, the bosses still need anti-Asian racism and nationalism against their imperialist rival, China. Of course, anti-Asian racism is nothing new. A century ago, the U.S. locked Japanese families into homegrown concentration camps during World War II.

Every time the U.S. needs to prepare for war, they ratchet up their racism. They are using every opportunity to foment anti-China patriotism. “Beijing suspended the export of face masks…at the very moment when [U.S.] needed them most” (New York Times, 3/18). Their ideological strategy seems to blame China for the U.S. Covid-19 deaths while threatening that democracy is at stake.

So the hypocrites shed tears over the murder of 6 Asian women workers while trying to mobilize soldiers to kill millions of Chinese workers. One Pew Research poll suggests 90 percent of the U.S. population sees China as an enemy (Yahoo News, 3/4). Stoking anti-Chinese racism feeds the flames of war. The working class must reject this with fierce internationalism.

Turn imperialist war into class war

World wars lay bare the ruthlessness of imperialists and their readiness to shed workers’ blood. That’s why we must make communist revolution and rule this world for ourselves. World War I gave birth to the Bolshevik Revolution; World War II gave rise to the Chinese Revolution. The first proletarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union, the Soviet-led fight against fascism in World War II, the Chinese Revolution, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, along with the courageous anti-imperialist struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, gave hope to workers everywhere. The world saw that the oppressed could throw off their chains.

If wars are preconditions for communist revolution, China and U.S. imperialists are showing the working class a historic responsibility to break through this capitalist trap.

As the next world war approaches and capitalist oppression intensifies in every corner of the earth, Progressive Labor Party can make great leaps in infusing the class struggle with communist politics. Only through a protracted struggle through this slow period can we make gains towards a communist revolution. We can do that by fighting back in our workplaces, schools, and community organizations, with the principles of antiracism, antisexism, and internationalism. Come join the fight on May Day!

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