Intensifying Global Crisis and Conflict
- Part 1 -

Malcolm Guy *

(This paper was presented by Malcolm Guy on 6th Ojha Sanajaoba Memorial lecture held at VC's Court room on December 30, 2016)

As this paper is being written and updated in early December 2016, the US President-elect Donald Trump is selecting his cabinet of billionaires and multi-millionaires and trying to decide which of his many often-bewildering promises he will actually keep.

As the cabinet choices show, despite some hypocritical criticisms of the "elite" and big bankers, this will be business as usual for the world's No. 1 superpower as it steps up its aggressive anti-people policies. Such policies, both within the US and globally, will simply be carried out more blatantly and in your face by a billionaire businessman and his Wall Street buddies without the "liberal" veneer provided by outgoing African American President Barack Obama and the unsuccessful Democratic Presidential woman candidate, Hillary Clinton.

It is direct rule by a capitalist for the capitalist class, of a billionaire for the billionaires, without the necessity of relying on the smokescreen of an Obama or Clinton. Clinton, by the way, if her record and pronouncement were anything to go by, including supporting a "no fly zone in Syria," would have been just as, if not more, aggressive and militaristic than Trump. As Julian Assange notes, "Under Hillary Clinton, the world's largest ever arms deal was made with Saudi Arabia, [worth] more than $80 billion. In fact, during her tenure as Secretary of State, total arms exports from the United States in terms of the dollar value, doubled."

And as for Obama, among other things he perfected drone warfare, embarked on a $1 trillion nuclear modernization program, gave even more money to the Zionist state of Israel, all the while deporting hundreds of thousands at home and further militarizing police forces that have proceeded to gun down working people, especially black men, in record numbers.

The US is a superpower in decline, as was illustrated in large part by the US elite's inability to ensure the election of Clinton and their now desperate attempts to "normalize" and legitimize this foul-mouthed and more transparent fellow member of the ruling elite. The disarray among factions of the US elite has led to accusations of voting manipulation and serious calls for a recount.

As Trump reveals, a fading superpower can be even more dangerous and reactionary and the possibilities of a true fascistic regime, in which US imperialism completely sheds its democratic shell and the true face of the capitalist class dictatorship is exposed, like of Hitler in the 1930s, remains extremely high.

Besides the election of Trump, 2016 has been a major year for events exposing the profound and deepening crisis of imperialism. These include the 52-48 BREXIT decision to support the exit of Britain from the European Union, the devastating purges, arrests and detentions of opponents and critics of NATO-ally and strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey following a failed military coup, the widening chaos in Libya, the prolonged migration crisis, as well as the dead-end COP discussions as the globe faces an unmitigated climate crisis.

As if to exemplify the growing divide between rich and poor and North and South as 2016 draws to close, while countless millions of the world's toiling people mourned the loss of a beloved and respected revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, the ruling elites in the US and their imperialist allies (including Canada's "pretty boy" Justin Trudeau) boycotted Castro's funeral.

It's currently 3 minutes to midnight according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. By that they mean the world is as close as it has ever been to the brink of nuclear holocaust that threatens humanity's very existence.

If we go by the mainstream press who parrot every lie and spin from Washington and Brussels, the enemy of peace is clearly Russia for annexing Crimea, for propping up a murderous regime in Syria, even for hacking Clinton's emails in order to influence the outcomes of the US elections. Iran is another war-mongering state that threatens world peace by attempting to develop nuclear weapons and for supporting other evil regimes in the region.

In truth, as John Pilger wrote in May 2016, "In the last eighteen months, the greatest build up of military forces since World War Two – led by the United States – is taking place along Russia's western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia. What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel US campaign against China."

US-led militarization and war

Pilger points out that it is the US "that has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 government, many of them democracies, and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of millions of people.(And) most of America's wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats : Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama."

"Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn't want to go to war with Russia and China." As a result, Pilger, in an article written before the US elections, quite rightly points out the dangers of a Hillary Clinton. "She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted 'exceptionalism' is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face."

Indeed, under Trump, as under Obama, US imperialism stands as the principal purveyor of militarism and war, and the biggest destabilizing factor in the world today. The protracted economic crisis of the global capitalist system has impelled US imperialism to become ever more aggressive in controlling more territory as sources of raw materials and low-cost labor, as captive markets and supply routes, and as launching pads for projecting military force overseas. Its aim is "full-spectrum dominance" of the entire planet.

The US also sees the emergence of new powers such as Russia and China as a threat to its global hegemony. The US is worried by the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alliance to counter the US-NATO alliance, as well as the establishment of the BRICS economic bloc made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. China is also pursuing its own regional trade accord, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which excludes the United States.

To preserve its global dominance the US has proceeded to unleash wars of terror throughout the world under the guise of waging a global war "on terror". Over the last 15 years the US and its allies have bombed, invaded or occupied at least seven countries. In 2015, the US officially dropped over 22,000 bombs, including drone strikes, on Iraq and Syria alone, an average of over 60 bombs per day.

(To be contd......)