Ukraine: The Coalition of the Willing’s Risk Game

While arming itself to the teeth in its illusory “conquest of the world,” the “coalition of the willing” is pushing the Ukrainian population to sacrifice itself against Russia so it can secure its own interests and political influence, while waiting for an imaginary “post-war peace.”

The first time we heard of the “Coalition of the Willing” as a multinational cooperative effort—going beyond the bilateral and multilateral agreements of individual states and, of course, of a thoroughly imperialist nature—was in 1973, when the UN openly demonstrated its fundamental inability to manage the conflicts erupting in various regions of the world in order to restore, if not peace, then at least an acceptable balance for the imperialist powers involved, through the establishment of so-called “military peacekeeping forces,” more commonly known as “blue helmets.” As is often the case, the idea of a coalition of nations willing to engage in stabilization operations in contexts of international conflict—in the face of a total lack of UN initiatives—took shape within academic institutions, in this instance American ones (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harland Cleveland of the University of Minnesota). The initiator was a certain Professor Bloomfield, who publicized his idea through The New York Times. In 1973, during the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War and the oil crisis triggered by the Arab OPEC countries in support of the military actions of Egypt and Syria, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger took up this idea and put it into practice himself in the Middle East. Kissinger turned to several countries outside of European NATO in order to form, specifically, a coalition of “the Willing” to replace the UN troops, which would have required the approval of the Security Council—on which the USSR sat—and whose veto was certain, given that it supported Sadat’s Egypt and Hafez al-Assad’s Syria against Golda Meir’s Israel. After a month of war, Kissinger reached an agreement with Moscow on a diplomatic intervention, drawing on their respective spheres of influence, to end the conflict—especially since oil prices had skyrocketed and the European NATO countries had refused to align with the United States in supporting Israel, with France standing out in particular due to its excellent relations with the Arab world and its opposition to the United States. Even back then, Kissinger had warned Europe of “serious consequences” if it did not side with the United States in this war… Indeed, the oil crisis—undoubtedly caused by the OPEC Arab countries’ decision to raise the price per barrel—lasted throughout the 1970s, and it was primarily European countries, which were mainly importers, that bore the brunt of it, whereas the United States and Russia were also producers. In fact, this rift between European countries and the United States has never been bridged, and the recent Russian-Ukrainian war has brought it into full view.

UN peacekeeping forces were to serve as an intermediary force whose mission was to ensure compliance with the ceasefire agreements between the warring parties. Generally unarmed or equipped with light weapons, these forces were not tasked with military intervention, but only with observing and reporting any violations of the agreements to the UN Security Council. Since its creation, the UN Security Council has consisted of permanent members representing the five victorious powers of World War II—the United States, the USSR/Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China—as well as ten other non-permanent members, elected by the UN General Assembly every two years. This entire framework—endowed with laws, regulations, and parliamentary-style rules, and primarily funded and maintained by the major imperialist countries (including Japan and Germany, which are not part of the permanent Security Council)—serves, in practice, to proclaim to the world that the overarching goal of all the capitalist countries of the world is universal peace… even as they fuel wars all over the world.

But the very history of inter-imperialist conflicts—the cause of World War I and World War II, as well as all the wars that marked the second postwar period and the “post-second postwar period”— and which is driving the preparations for a third imperialist world war, is a history that shows that the true objective of all imperialism is to defend the market shares and spheres of influence it has already conquered, while seeking by all means to expand them—at the expense, of course, of its competitors’ market shares and spheres of influence. Wars serve to constantly disrupt the balances that have barely been achieved. And the fact that behind every outbreak of war, wherever it occurs on the planet, lie the hands and interests of one or more imperialist countries is an indisputable reality that even the most devout and naive democracies can no longer conceal.

The “Coalition of the Willing” emerged on the world stage in 1973, coinciding with the major oil crisis that dealt a severe blow to the world’s largest economies and foreshadowed the general crisis of the capitalist economy in 1975. Unlike the virtually unarmed UN peacekeeping forces, this Coalition called for the deployment of fully armed troops, under the authority of a sort of governing body composed of its founders, whose mission was similar to that of the Blue Helmets—namely, to intervene between two warring parties—but above all to defend the belligerent who, according to the formal tenets of pro-Western “international law,” had been attacked. There is no need to reiterate here what we have always maintained regarding the aggressor and the victim: for us, any capitalist country—all the more so if it is imperialist—is inherently aggressive; consequently, the fact that on any given date one or the other may fire the first shot does not alter the nature of war, precisely because war is the continuation of foreign policy carried out by military means by any ruling bourgeoisie. In fact, there is no state that is not armed; a country’s military force is represented by its state and serves two purposes: to attack or to defend itself against an attack; but, in essence, every bourgeois state is, by principle, an aggressor, because the economy and political power of which it is the expression demand it. In any case, since 1973, the “coalition of the willing” was once again mobilized during the war that the United States, alongside the United Kingdom, prepared and waged from 2003 to 2011 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, accusing it of possessing chemical weapons of mass destruction and of harboring international terrorism—allegations that were subsequently proven to be entirely false. This war was waged by a multinational coalition involving no fewer than 46 countries, in addition to the United States and the United Kingdom. It was evident that the large number of countries that had answered the “call” from Washington and London counted for practically nothing militarily, neither in terms of troop strength nor in terms of military power: the 140,000 American soldiers and 8,000 British soldiers accounted for 75% and 23%, respectively, of the military forces present in Iraq, with the other 46 countries accounting for the remaining 2%. It goes without saying that among the European imperialist countries, one was bound to find those that were best equipped militarily and most eager to derive some benefit from their support for the United States and the United Kingdom in their war against Iraq—such as Italy, Spain, Poland, and so on. This large number of countries that Washington and London could enlist for the war in Iraq served both to build consensus within their own countries and to justify a war that “had to” concern the entire world, even though it had not received UN approval. That is the reason for the Coalition of the Willing.

AFTER THE OPEN, MILITARY IMPERIALIST WAR COMES THE REMOTE CONFRONTATION KNOWN AS THE “COLD WAR”

It would be impossible to understand what has been happening in recent years without taking a look at what occurred during earlier periods. Once the imperialist Second World War had ended, the historical period known as the “Cold War” began—a period that lasted nearly 45 years, from 1946 to 1991. But the “Cold War,” in reality, was not the alternative to “hot war.” It was intended to be a kind of balance—a more or less lasting truce—between the victorious atomic superpowers of the war, at the time the United States and the USSR; but while these two atomic superpowers were “reorganizing” Europe by dividing it into two spheres of influence (the western part under American military control and supervision, the eastern part under Russian military control and supervision), the rest of the world still remained to be “reorganized.” At the end of the imperialist Second World War, although weakened, the British, French, Portuguese, and Belgian colonial empires still existed, while those of Spain and the Netherlands were now reduced to a few limited territories or islands, and that of Italy—of more recent origin—had practically disappeared (Libya and Eritrea came under British control; Ethiopia became independent, and Somalia was administered on behalf of Great Britain by democratic Italy until 1960, when it, too, became “independent,” while Albania, which had been under Italian rule since 1915, became independent in 1944).

The period of the imperialist “Cold War” encompasses all the wars that took place in various regions of the world: from the Indochina War of 1946 to 1954 to its continuation in the form of the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1975, from the 1948–1949 Arab-Israeli War to the Korean War of 1950–1953, from the Portuguese colonial wars of 1961–1975 in Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique to the Arab-Israeli “Six-Day War” (June 1973) and the Yom Kippur War (October 1973), from the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–1982 to the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988, and from the Falklands War of 1982 to the Gulf War (against Iraq, which had occupied Kuwait) of 1990–1991. In all these wars, the imperialist states have always been involved, both directly and indirectly, and not so much through “coalitions of the willing” as through their own armed forces or, by proxy, through the armed forces of countries under their control.

Much of this period was marked by a series of wars of liberation waged by the colonies, particularly in Africa and Asia, during which the colonized peoples took advantage of the weakening of the European imperialists—due both to the global economic crisis and to the difficulty they faced in maintaining firm political, social, and economic control over their colonies—to launch anti-colonial uprisings. The war of independence in Algeria (independent since 1962) was of great significance because of the influence it had throughout North Africa and Europe; the same is true of the Congo (both French Congo/Brazzaville and Belgian Congo/Kinshasa), both of which have been independent since 1960 but have been constantly torn apart by internal and fratricidal wars supported by mining companies and the former colonial powers. In 1980, when the last colony—Southern Rhodesia—gained independence (under the name Zimbabwe), a century of European colonialism in Africa came to an end, even though, due to historical events linked to the apartheid regime in South Africa (which formally gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1961), true political independence—with the end of apartheid—was not achieved until 1994!

In the meantime, in addition to France and the United Kingdom, other countries have acquired nuclear warheads—something the two superpowers were unable to prevent at the time; thus, China, Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Israel (1)—according to official government reports—have joined the ranks of countries possessing the atomic bomb. As is well known, Iran, too, attempted to acquire nuclear warheads, but even during the Shah’s reign, the United States had prevented it from doing so, while the very recent war waged by the United States and Israel against Tehran was justified by the need to prevent Iran from also acquiring the atomic bomb. It is clear that the possession of nuclear warheads is part of the deterrent used by any state that possesses them against other states that might attack it. At the time, people spoke of the “balance of terror”—the terror that a nuclear war might break out, with consequences capable of wiping out most of humanity from the face of the Earth and turning most of its surface into a desert. But with regard to this balance of terror, the end of the “Cold War” seemed to have paved the way for a long period of “terror of the balance,” prompting the major imperialist powers to threaten more frequently to use nuclear weapons ever since they acquired tactical nuclear weapons—that is, according to scientists, weapons with a partial destructive effect.

With the Yugoslav Wars of 1991–1999, the so-called “Cold War” era came to an end, and a new era began in which the foreign policy of the world’s major powers—carried out by military means, that is, through armed conflict—made a forceful entry into Europe. In truth, ever since the extremely violent suppression of the proletarian uprisings in East Germany in June 1953 (Berlin, Halle, Magdeburg, Gera, Jena, Leipzig, Dresden, etc.), Stalinist Russia had helped maintain imperialist control over all of Europe, in accordance with the division of influence agreed upon with Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta Conference (in Crimea) in February 1945. The proletarian uprisings of 1953 in East Germany could have spread to the proletariat of West Germany; this is why the Western imperialists expected Stalinist Russia to do its “duty”: to use the full force of its army to suppress the revolt of the proletariat, which it had taken upon itself to control and dominate. The Russian military interventions in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 were carried out with the same aim of keeping Europe “pacified.” But the ambitions of young and aggressive Russian imperialism were bound to turn toward Central Asia, a region of historical interest to Russia given its Eurasian geography; that is why, when the pro-Russian government in Kabul was attacked by the Afghan mujahideen in 1979, Russia invaded Afghanistan. The war that broke out would last more than ten years, but Russia ultimately lost it, and in 1989, it reached an agreement with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the United States, and Pakistan to withdraw. The severe blow that Russia was about to suffer—resulting from a combination of various factors that were extremely detrimental to its Eurasian dominance—led to the collapse of the old political power structure, which was tied to an ideological-propaganda system and a Nomenklatura that had become obsolete and utterly ineffective: market imperatives demanded change, and that change did indeed take place—but not in the form of a Western-style “democratic turning point,” but rather a leadership transition that would take on the task of dealing with the collapse of the former USSR and the “independence-seeking” breakaway of the various formerly federated republics, while preserving the prerogatives and deepest ambitions of a power forced to tend to its wounds, yet one that had no intention of bowing to the dictates of Western imperialists. The wars in Chechnya (1994–1996 and 1999–2009) and in Georgia (2008) served as a warning to the United States and the European Union to stay out of the Caucasus, and the same was to be true of Ukraine in 2014, leaving Moscow with no choice but to launch a war of invasion—which came to a head in 2022—to prevent it, too, from falling completely into the hands of Western imperialists.

WORLD WAR II IS OVER, BUT IT HAS NEVER STOPPED, SOMETIMES IN ONE COUNTRY, THEN IN ANOTHER, THEN ON ONE CONTINENT, THEN ON ANOTHER, ONLY TO RETURN TO EUROPE, WHERE IT HAD BEGUN

We have already discussed the Yugoslav Wars. The Russian-Ukrainian war presented a situation different from what was typically observed in previous wars, where Western imperialist powers intervened directly with their own military forces, either from the outset or at a certain stage of the conflict; but it nevertheless bears some resemblance to the Yugoslav Wars, in that it was a proxy war, waged by local military forces but on behalf of foreign powers, until—after Slovenia and Croatia had been supported by Germany and Serbia by Russia— NATO (that is, the United States and its allies, including Italy, France, etc.) intervened first in Bosnia in 1995, then in Serbia in 1999.

In Ukraine, on the other hand, Russia was directly involved, with a powerful military; there was no question of a direct confrontation with a nuclear superpower to “defend” Ukraine (which, at the time, was a member of neither NATO nor the European Union), especially since the political-military strategy of Western imperialist powers called for the Ukrainian army to confront the Russians, while supporting it with funding, weapons, and political-propaganda campaigns that accused (and continue to accuse) Russia of every act of sabotage in European countries (whether real or alleged) and of seeking to… invade Europe. Ukraine represented, and still represents, after most  Eastern European countries, an additional target for Western imperialists—both from an industrial and agricultural standpoint and in terms of exploiting an educated and specialized proletariat, raw materials, and its geostrategic position relative to Russia—with the potential to block Russia, at least in its European part, to the south, within the boundaries of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, which fall under its sphere of influence. It is clear that Russia had every interest in extending its control over most of the northern shore of the Black Sea. In fact, it was last June that the news broke that Moscow had prevailed before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague against Ukraine, in the decade-long dispute with Kiev over maritime rights in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Kerch Strait—which, east of Crimea, connects the two seas (2). This ruling is significant for Russia because the Black Sea is a crucial hub for its maritime traffic (both commercial and military); as for Kiev, it has until now been the main route for 90 percent of its agricultural exports (wheat, barley, sunflower seeds, corn, etc.), of which it is also one of the world’s leading producers; as everyone knows, maritime transport is far less expensive than rail or road transport, making it strategic for both Kiev and Moscow.

Turning Ukraine into a military battering ram against Moscow’s expansionist ambitions was nothing more than the continuation of the political project set in motion by the Euro-American imperialists as soon as it gained “independence” in 1991, following the collapse of the USSR. Ukraine was to suffer the same fate as all the other Eastern European countries, formerly Moscow’s satellites, and find itself caught up in the tangled web of Western imperialist interests. Russia attempted to tip the balance of political power in Kiev in its favor through democratic elections; it was on the verge of succeeding, but this did not sit well with Washington, London, or a segment of the Ukrainian oligarchy. That is why protests, sometimes violent (such as the Euromaidan), were organized against President Yanukovych, who was, in essence, opposed to Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and NATO. Ultimately, Yanukovych was forced to flee to Russia, and Ukraine remained in the hands of the pro-Western oligarchy, which elected Zelensky—who is also well-regarded in Washington and London—as its representative and who would become their standard-bearer against Russia.

We have been following the course of the Russia-Ukraine war from its very beginning, and we will continue to do so until it comes to an end. For this reason, we will not revisit here the topics we have covered in numerous articles since 2022 (see the special page dedicated to Ukraine on the website https://www.pcint.org).

However, it is important to highlight one thing at this point: the behavior of the United States throughout the events involving Ukraine and Russia (and, in fact, all of Europe)—a behavior that, at first glance, may seem schizophrenic —Biden is 100% pro-Ukraine, in contrast to Trump, who cut off funding and weapons to Ukraine precisely when it needed financial and military support the most—but which, in reality, reflects the contradictions inherent in any imperialist operation, both politically and militarily. What was the Euro-American objective? To bring Ukraine into the Western camp (NATO and the EU) by wresting it away from Russia, which remains a major imperialist rival. It was therefore necessary to carry out economic, financial, political, and military actions (even if these were temporarily contradictory, particularly due to intra-European rivalries), while planning the means and timeline for intervention in order to ultimately achieve the goal of turning Ukraine into a Euro-American outpost. It was therefore necessary to carry out economic, financial, political, and military actions (even if these were temporarily contradictory, particularly due to intra-European rivalries), while planning the resources and timeline for intervention in order to ultimately achieve the goal of making Ukraine a Euro-American outpost. The war—toward which we were inevitably heading, given that Moscow would never have accepted the presence of NATO missiles in Ukraine—was intended to bring political and economic benefits not only to Europeans but, above all, to the United States; it was essential to prevent that country from becoming an economic territory of Russian imperialism. In managing its relations with Ukrainian political and military forces, Washington could not fail to take into account the presence of European imperialists, with their interests, their relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and, of course, their imperialist ambitions, which did not coincide with those of the United States. Trade relations with Russia—particularly those of Germany and Italy, but also of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom—had been very positive for many years: Russia is, above all, a source of raw materials of vital importance to the European industrial economy (crude oil, its derivatives, natural gas, palladium, platinum, gold, silver, copper, aluminum, etc.), all at favorable prices. However, waging war against Russia—without sending a single soldier into the field and using only Ukrainian cannon fodder —meant that Washington would sever Europe’s privileged trade relations with Russia and force Europeans to source raw materials—primarily crude oil and its derivatives, as well as natural gas—from the United States, given that Europe has always had a deficit in this area; for Europe, this meant above all losing its excellent trade relations with Russia regarding vitally important raw materials, as well as a major market for its own industrial products. This is why the war against Russia waged through Ukraine led to even greater dependence on the United States for European countries and entailed a very high economic cost.

The Biden administration—in concert with London and the EU—sought to plunge Russia into crisis by both drastically reducing its oil and gas exports, and by imposing an endless series of economic sanctions aimed at isolating Russia on the global stage and weakening its economy (with the exception of relations between Russia and China, over which neither Washington, nor London, nor even the EU had—or has—any possibility of interfering). But the twenty rounds of sanctions adopted so far against Russia have, in reality, harmed the economies of European countries more than they have harmed Russia’s.

Biden, London, and the European allies were counting on a Ukrainian victory over Russia, after having weakened it economically and politically; but above all, they were counting on a war that would last for years, not months, which is why they pressured Kiev not to accept a deal with Moscow less than a month and a half after the invasion. War serves to destroy the surplus productive forces that clog the markets; it serves to rebuild the future on the ruins of the devastated country; but in the meantime, it also serves to generate enormous profits from arms sales and the supply of all products and infrastructure needed to sustain the war effort. The Ukrainian people—and first and foremost its proletariat—have been and continue to be sacrificed on the altar of the god of the dollar, the god of the euro, and the god of imperialist capital, which feed on the blood and sweat of the proletariat to satisfy exclusively capitalist interests. The same fate also befalls the Russian proletariat, the target of imperialist-nationalist propaganda presented under the guise of anti-Nazi resistance and defense against an aggressive NATO, and forced to shed its blood not for its own class interests, but for those of its principal exploiter, Russian imperialism. Ukraine didn’t really have a choice: either it would once again become a country tied to Moscow—and its working class would have been exploited to serve the interests of Russian imperialism as well as those of Ukrainian national capitalism—or it would become a country tied to the Euro-American imperialists, who would have exploited its working class just as much, if not more, than Russia. But Kiev was too valuable a prize for the imperialists of Europe and America, and the war launched as early as 2014 against the pro-Russian forces in the Donbas, and then, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, directly against Russia, confirms that capitalism—regardless of the capital to which it refers—can survive its periodic crises only by waging wars of plunder, initially local, as we have described in the previous chapters, but in preparation for a truly global war.

Washington’s policy, beginning in 1945, called for Europe to become its sphere of exploitation. The fact that European countries were highly industrialized and thus constituted a first-rate economic and financial territory was an advantage for American capitalism, for after making them dependent on the dollar and the U.S. military, it forced—and continues to force—them to prop up its economy despite the staggering rise in its public debt. From this perspective, American imperialism cannot do without the European imperialists, and the European imperialists cannot do without American imperialism; their respective markets are highly integrated and constitute a fundamental part of the global market, just as is the case with international finance; whereas, from the perspective of “military protection,” the United States, thanks to its dozens of military bases in Europe, has played both the role of a superpower “defender” against Russia and that of a dominant power in the technological, digital, and space domains. This does not detract from the fact that, over the course of these eighty years of submission to His Majesty the Dollar, the inevitable inter-imperialist conflicts have contributed to the disintegration of an alliance that seemed unshakable under a single banner called “the West.”

And here we go again: America—as the United States is commonly called because of its global power—has not lost the tendency, acquired with its victory in the Second Imperialist World War, to view Europe as a continent that owes its survival, its development, and its economic and financial vitality solely to American intervention during World War II and, above all, in the postwar period, through millions of dollars in aid to revive its war-ravaged economy. This devastation was not caused solely by Germany, but also by America, which bombed train stations, ports, bridges, and entire cities. That is why, for us, members of the Italian Communist Left, who remain convinced that “it is money, capital, and the means of production that matter when it comes to waging war; military skill and courage are commodities for sale on the world market, teeming with super-clever and super-foolish people” (3), it was important to us to make clear—in the face of propaganda claiming that peace was due to the Anglo-American “liberators” of fascism and Nazism—that in reality, another world war was already brewing, and that it was precisely America—the only world power to have suffered no catastrophe on its own territory and to have kept its powerful production apparatus intact—that was approving massive war appropriations while declaring that its “living space” was the entire world and not just the American continent. World War III, we wrote, would be “the most far-reaching act of aggression, invasion, oppression, and enslavement in all of history. This is not merely a potential or hypothetical war, for it is already underway; this campaign is a direct continuation of the interventions in the European wars of 1917 and 1942, and essentially constitutes the culmination of the concentration of an immense military and destructive force into a supreme center of domination and defense of the current class regime, the capitalist regime, and the creation of optimal conditions for stifling the workers’ revolution in any country” (4). These words were written in 1949, as the U.S. war in Korea was being prepared, and it is no coincidence that the article devoted to it was titled “Korea Is the World” (5).

We repeat: for us Marxists, one thing was clear: “The living space of the American conquerors is a belt encircling the Earth; it is the culmination of a method that began with Aesop, when the wolf accused the lamb of muddying the water while he was drinking downstream. White, Black, and Asian—none of us can take a sip of water without disturbing the cocktails served to the kings of the plutocratic Camorra in nightclubs across the United States” (6). At the time, the world was divided between two superpowers: the United States and Russia, and just as America’s sphere of influence was a belt encircling the Earth, so too was Russia’s; consequently, the anticipated world war would have pitted these two superpowers against each other. But another hypothesis was also put forward, given America’s undisputed superiority in terms of advanced industrialization across all economic sectors—including agriculture—and in terms of financial capital, namely this: American domination of the world could have been achieved “even without a war in the strict sense between the United States and Russia,” but under what condition?  “if the subjugation of the latter [Russia] could be secured, not through military means and a full-scale campaign of destruction and occupation, but through pressure from the dominant economic forces of the world’s largest capitalist organization—perhaps, in the future, the single Anglo-American state already being discussed—through a compromise whereby the Russian leadership would allow itself to be bought off on favorable terms; and Stalin has already set the amount at two billion dollars.”

The fact that, over several decades, a full-scale war between the United States and Russia has not broken out shows that both powers have resolutely pursued this latter scenario—and, on the American side, with the conviction that time would work in Washington’s favor; Meanwhile, a series of anticolonial uprisings broke out in Africa and Asia, triggered by the disastrous economic and social consequences in the colonies, which in turn led to a real weakening of the former colonial powers, now unable to maintain the colonial control of the past. Thus, the contradictions of capitalism on a global scale further entangled inter-imperialist relations, while at the same time offering the United States—and, to some extent, Russia as well— further political weakening of the former European powers, which facilitated the dollar’s dominance over the postwar reconstruction of European countries and their reduction—without a fight—to a status of vassalage to Washington. We know that the practice of vassalage also applied to Eastern European countries in relation to Moscow and that this situation had been agreed upon between Moscow and Washington. But how long could the political domination of a power like Russia last over a significant number of European countries that, from an industrial standpoint, could rival Russia—such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and, to some extent, Poland? The economic gap—especially in industrial terms—between the United States and Russia during the thirty years between 1945 and 1975 remained very wide, however, and this prevented Russia from industrializing and reindustrializing the Eastern European countries over which it exercised political and military dominance—unlike what the United States succeeded in doing in Western Europe, particularly because those countries were already advanced in capitalist terms. If we add to this the fact that in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany’s reunification brought the other half of Germany into NATO, and within a decade starting in 1999, ten other countries—including former Soviet satellite states and former Yugoslav republics—joined NATO; in 2017, Montenegro will join, and in 2020, North Macedonia, meaning that even the Balkans—with the exception of Serbia—have been swallowed up by NATO. After Belarus, “independent” since 1991, firmly aligned itself (at least until now) with Russia, both economically and in political and military terms, Ukraine was the only major country in Eastern Europe to remain a pivot between the Anglo-American “West” and the Russian “East.” The Russian invasion of February 2022 aimed to prevent Ukraine from falling into the Western orbit, and once again, Washington, alongside London and its European allies, deemed it not in its interest to engage in a head-on war against Russia, while the Ukrainian army was designated as the “front line” of the Euro-American West in the war against Russia. After three years of war since February 2022, the situation on the ground was already proving unfavorable to Zelensky’s Ukraine, to the European imperialists who had financed and armed it so that it would wage war against Russia on their behalf, and to the United States, which—in light of the series of defeats it had suffered over the past decades—the most stinging of which, in Afghanistan, is the most stinging—was far more interested in the Indo-Pacific and Middle East regions than in continuing to engage in a war where too many conflicting interests among the Western allies themselves prevented a single (obviously American) command of the entire operation.

TRUMP'S AMERICA IS WITHDRAWING FROM THE CONFLICTS IN UKRAINE, AND THE EUROPEAN IMPERIALISTS ARE REINVENTING THE COALITION OF THE WILLING

The U.S. reversal regarding its commitment to its European allies and Ukraine occurred when the outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian war was already a foregone conclusion: Ukraine would never prevail and would ultimately have to agree with Russia to end the fighting at the cost of losing a significant portion of the Donbas (if not all of it), as Trump himself had hinted to Zelensky during one of their first meetings; furthermore, in order to prioritize American interests over the diverse and conflicting European interests, the Trump administration had decided to exclude the Europeans from negotiations with Moscow, for two reasons: first, because the war that the Europeans themselves had sought and supported had not yielded the expected result (a Ukrainian victory and its accession to NATO, thereby placing it under U.S. command); second, because Washington had gained virtually nothing from this war after having spent billions of dollars on loans and weapons and having expended its own political capital in support of Ukraine (7), at the risk of completely compromising its relations with Moscow—a relationship in which it nevertheless retains an interest as a counterweight to China. During one of his first meetings with Zelensky, Trump forced him to sign—as compensation for the support and expenses incurred on Ukraine’s behalf—a concession contract covering Ukraine’s mineral resources, which, as luck would have it, are located primarily in the Donbas. Trump was the one who, right from the start of his presidential term in January 2025, had declared to the whole world that, thanks to his personal relationship with Putin, he would end the war in the blink of an eye. We’ve seen how things turned out, and it’s certainly not entirely the fault of the European allies…

The fact that the war was not stopped was not only due to the constant pressure exerted by the European imperialists on Ukraine to continue the war… “until victory”… but also served the interests of American multinational corporations—and not just those in the military sector—which wanted to reap maximum profits from this war, just as they would from any other war. This also served to highlight, in all its scope, Europe’s permanent subservience to the United States. The main U.S. diktat concerns NATO, for which the United States has forced member countries—especially European ones—to increase their financial contributions within a few years to 5% of their respective GDPs, which would have allowed the United States to reduce its own financial contribution while maintaining a decisive position within the Atlantic Alliance. At the same time, they excluded the Europeans from negotiations with Putin aimed at discussing a possible “peace plan,” and then—given Moscow’s reluctance to compromise with Trump, except on Russian demands declared “non-negotiable ”—in the face of the Europeans’ stubborn determination to continue supporting Ukraine’s war against Russia and to refuse to bow to Washington’s will to suspend, at least formally, the political initiative aimed at negotiating with Putin, leaving the hot potato in the hands of the United Kingdom and the EU and deciding, as previously indicated, to withdraw their financial support and arms aid to Kiev.

What are the demands that Moscow describes as “non-negotiable”? International recognition of Crimea and the Donbas as part of the Russian Federation, a drastic reduction of the Ukrainian military, the exclusion of Ukraine from NATO membership, the refusal to allow troops from NATO countries to serve as peacekeepers along the demarcation line between Ukrainian and Russian territory, and the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions and the freeze on Russian assets located primarily in Belgium. These are precisely the demands that Ukraine and, above all, the European imperialists have never been willing to accept or even discuss. With the now-worn-out refrain of calling for a “just and lasting peace”—which would entail the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, the restoration of Kiev’s national “sovereignty” over the entire territory of Ukraine as it existed in 1991, and Russia’s payment of war reparations for Ukraine’s reconstruction—the European imperialists, while rearming themselves to the teeth at the national level by plundering resources intended for their own social policies, are pushing Zelensky and what remains of his government—reshuffled dozens of times and corrupt to the core—as well as his top military officials, to send tens of thousands more soldiers to their deaths in a war that all American generals—and even Ukrainian generals who have not sold out to their respective military oligarchies—have considered lost since 2023, that is, since the Ukrainian “counteroffensive” aimed at… recapturing the Donbas and Crimea, announced with great fanfare and which ended in failure.

The United States’ near-total withdrawal has left a void that the EU and the United Kingdom have attempted to fill. How? By purchasing weapons from the United States to supply them—in some cases even for free— to Ukraine, by allocating several tens of billions of euros in additional funding to support both the war effort and military and civilian administration, and by organizing a “Coalition of the Willing” with the aim of entering Ukraine as soon as hostilities end, in order to “ensure” that ceasefire and end-of-war agreements are not “violated.” At the initiative of the United Kingdom and France, 35 other countries (both NATO members and non-members) from Europe, Asia, and the Commonwealth have apparently voluntarily joined this initiative; in addition to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, these include, for example, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Of course, the stated objective is as follows: support for Ukraine and Europe’s collective security! Beyond any potential negotiations between the United States, Russia, and Kiev, the European imperialists want to play their own game… but when will the war end… And who will decide that the war is over? Neither the Europeans, nor the “Coalition of the Willing,” nor even the EU or NATO. Everything suggests that it will be Russia that decides the outcome, after consolidating its conquest of the entire Donbas (it doesn’t have much left to take, but time and the battlefield are on its side), and by forcing Zelensky or his representative to signal a willingness to negotiate an end to the war—and, of course, by involving the United States, from which Russia is seeking international recognition to reestablish itself among the major powers of the G8 (still known today as the G7, as Russia was excluded following the annexation of Crimea in 2014).

What, then, is the point of forming an armed “Coalition of the Willing” if this coalition has no power to intervene—neither to wage war, nor to influence its outcome, nor to dictate the terms of its cessation—and thus reap not only political but also economic benefits from the war and its aftermath? This makes sense only as a way to test the alliances that might form in the face of a hypothetical battlefield where one intends to intervene, exert pressure, or engage in a confrontation aimed at conquering territories and subjugating the forces and countries against which one has fought. But today’s Ukraine, for the European imperialists and for the United States itself, is not a battlefield on which they intervene with their own armies, seeking to determine the outcome in their favor; it is a battlefield on which only the armies commanded by Kiev and Moscow are present and fighting. If it is true that war can only be won on the battlefield through military confrontation, with flesh-and-blood soldiers, then either Ukraine will prevail or Russia will prevail. Admittedly, both sides are supported by other countries and other economic and financial forces, but the soldiers on the ground obey either Ukrainian generals or Russian generals. There may be, on one side or the other—or even on both sides—mercenary or partisan militias, as is the case in many wars, but the fact that neither American nor British soldiers, nor soldiers from EU or NATO countries have been sent to wage war against Russia means that none of these imperialist powers intends—given the current economic, political, and social situation in their respective countries—to launch a war that would lack both the military capabilities required for a world war and a sufficiently broad and firm domestic consensus. It takes time for this to happen, and it is above all the European imperialists who have demonstrated this: on the one hand, they are pressuring the Ukrainians to continue being massacred in their stead, and on the other hand, they are trying to buy time to equip themselves as best they can in preparation for World War III; which is why the arms race makes sense for the European imperialists, driven as they are to adapt their armies and weaponry to a world war that will unfold very differently from the First and Second World Wars. It will be a war fought in the trenches as well as in the air, at sea, and on land, in which new instruments of war—in addition to ballistic and intercontinental missiles and conventional air and naval bombardments—such as drones and robots, will be an integral part of the weapons used not only against armies in the strict sense, but also, and probably above all, against the civilian population. Already during the Second Imperialist War, the tactic of bombing cities to weaken and terrorize soldiers at the front had been employed; Italy and Germany know something about this, and especially Japan, against which—in order to crush it once and for all, even though they had practically already won the war—the United States did not hesitate to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. At the time, they were the only ones with the technology and resources necessary to build the atomic bomb and deliver it over the selected Japanese cities—not as a “warning” intended to make the Japanese armed forces cease resisting the American advance, but as specific targets for extermination, the aim of which was to wipe out the entire Japanese population for generations to come. Today, the United States is no longer the only country capable of using nuclear weapons; as mentioned above, in addition to Russia and China—which have historically not been friends of the United States—there are other countries, such as North Korea and Pakistan, that certainly cannot be considered reliable allies of Washington… Consequently, given that capitalism and the political power that relies on it are not bent on collective suicide, no nuclear power has any interest in starting a nuclear war, because it knows that the first atomic bomb launched by either side would be followed by an “automatic” and even more devastating retaliation from the adversary. It is one thing to use terrorism based on the threat of dropping an atomic bomb on London, Washington, or Moscow; it is quite another to actually drop one. It is true that imperialist capitalism needs to destroy—even an entire country, as it did with Italy, Germany, and Japan—in order to rebuild it and profit from both the destruction and the reconstruction; it would be quite another matter if the entire industrialized world were to destroy itself, thereby depriving the hypothetical victors of the war of the opportunity to restart the productive machinery in order to increase the valorization of capital that economic recovery would guarantee. It would be like saying: let’s eliminate the entire wage-earning workforce—not just from one country, but from the entire world—and replace it with robots capable of “working” 24 hours a day without ever stopping, without going on strike, and without organizing against the bosses. What would become of the unpaid labor time of wage workers, which constitutes surplus value—and thus the very essence of capital, its accumulation, and its valorization? It would no longer exist, because robots do not receive wages and, above all, their daily “working time” cannot be divided into paid and unpaid labor, but would be entirely “paid,” just like the raw materials to be processed, and therefore ineffective from the standpoint of capital valorization. It is one thing to automate a series of work operations; it is quite another to completely eliminate the exploitation of human labor, which consists of failing to pay for an increasingly significant portion of the workday.

THE RISK GAME BOARD!

The Willing have drawn up a world map focusing on Europe, Russia, North Africa, and the Middle East. And before long, they will once again have to focus on the Atlantic—due to the continuing significant interests in African countries—and on the Indian Ocean—due to interests related to raw materials essential to any advanced capitalist economy, which include the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the straits connecting them—on which, not coincidentally, U.S. attention has been focused, starting with the Strait of Hormuz.

The general impression that Europeans express not through words but through actions is that they feel surrounded—not by a single non-European power, as might have been the case in past centuries, but by all the major imperialist powers that exist today: first and foremost the United States, Russia, and China, followed by a significant group including countries such as India, Brazil, Turkey, and so on. The Atlantic, instead of remaining a friendly ocean, is becoming an “enemy” ocean, and it is for this reason that within the “Willing of 2025,” an exclusively European group mobilized in July of this year with the aim of developing a joint program to build what they have called the missile shield. The meeting of the Coalition of the Willing held in Paris on July 13, in which Zelensky also participated, provided an opportunity for nine other countries (Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and, of course, Ukraine) to join this initiative, promoted by France. After dozens of attempts—particularly between France and Germany—to launch a “European army” project, all of which ended in failure, the wartime experience—particularly that of Ukraine—with drones, along with the need to break free from dependence on the U.S. missile defense shield, have prompted these ten countries to collaborate on equipping most European nations with defenses against ballistic missiles, that is, the types Russia is using in Ukraine and which apparently can only be intercepted by Patriot systems—systems the United States has no intention of supplying to Ukraine, not even in the form of licenses allowing Kiev to build them. In concrete terms, the European imperialists are taking action, capitalizing on the experience of the war—and the massacres that accompanied it—which they sought and supported from the very outset and from which they intend to derive the greatest possible benefit, if only in the field of military technology developed by Ukraine. It is no coincidence, moreover, that during this meeting in Paris, major military agreements were signed—for example, between France and Ukraine regarding SCALP cruise missiles, AASM guided bombs, and Aster interceptors; in addition, France will sell Ukraine sixteen Rafale fighter jets in the coming years, which could be operational as early as 2028–2029. The United Kingdom could not fail to express its interest in participating in a military framework based not on projects that still need to be verified and tested, but on direct experience gained in the field—so much so that London announced its participation in the 90 billion euro loan granted by the EU to Ukraine, in exchange for the participation of British companies in the development of new weapons (8). In fact, this would involve granting licenses to Zelensky to produce even Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles, although British industries are strongly opposed to this, both because of the extremely high production costs (money that Kiev does not have and would have to borrow on top of everything else), as well as the widespread arms smuggling whose operations span the globe and whose nerve center is located precisely in Ukraine; the United Kingdom is in fact seeking access to data collected on the Ukrainian battlefield for training artificial intelligence; this data, “collected by thousands of cameras and sensors along the front lines, includes targets such as tanks, artillery, infantry, attack drones, and reconnaissance drones” (9). Meanwhile—and it could not be otherwise—Zelensky has once again appealed for donations: to prepare for the coming winter and continue the fight, Ukraine needs about 10 billion immediately, and an additional 20 billion to pay military salaries and provide compensation to the families of soldiers killed in action. Indeed, as we wrote in 1949, “it is money, capital, and the means of production that matter when waging war”…

This is therefore to the detriment of the entire Ukrainian population, and in particular its proletariat, who are called upon to bear—both at the front, behind the lines, and in the cities—the burden of a war that serves only the interests of the capitalists, our own imperialists, who, while profiting from the war, are preparing to profit from an upcoming world war—a war they are doing everything in their power to bring about. The proletariat—with the exception of a few revolt movements from the 1950s to the 1980s, from Berlin to Prague, from Budapest to Gdańsk and Turin, including the magnificent and heroic struggles of the English and Russian miners—which were quickly co-opted and suppressed with the help of opportunist forces that appeared at various times in the forms of Stalinism, post-Stalinism, Maoism, guerrilla warfare, or armed struggle—while never renouncing classical social democracy—remains trapped in a very long historical slump in the realm of the class struggle, which is the only struggle in which the proletariat of all countries expresses its social power of emancipation in the face of capitalist exploitation and imperialist wars. The history of capitalism will inevitably lead to a historic and international confrontation between the proletarian class and the bourgeois class—of this we are certain; once the objective factors of the class struggle—generated by the very contradictions of bourgeois society, which can only maintain its dominance by reproducing even more serious and profound contradictions—have ripened, this condition is indispensable for wars to turn into revolutions: “that in every country the core of the international revolutionary class movement survive—a movement entirely detached from government policy and the maneuvers of military high commands—which places no theoretical or tactical reservations of any kind between itself and the possibility of defeatism and sabotage on the part of the ruling class in times of war, that is, on the part of its political, state, and military organizations ” (10). We, the International Communist Party, are working to ensure that this core of the revolutionary class movement survives!

(1) See Sung Chul Jung, « Nuclear aggressors, nuclearizing targets: nuclear weapon development and preventive conflict », in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, vol. 17, n° 1, 2017, p. 137-162, DOI : 10.1093/irap/lcw006. See also “Which Countries Have the Most Nuclear Weapons?” on Euronews, July 3, 2017. According to the most recent estimates (2025), the number of nuclear warheads is as follows: United States 5,555, Russia 5,459, China 600, France 290, United Kingdom 225, India 180, Pakistan 170, North Korea 50, Israel (undeclared) 90.

(2) See https://www.ilmessaggero.it/mondo/russia_vince_ucraina_tribunale_cosa_cambia-9595811.html - voir également : https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretto_di_ Kerč%27

(3) See “Aggression Against Europe,” an essay by A. Bordiga (Alfa) published in the party’s former journal Prometeo, No. 13, August 1949.

(4) Ibid. With regard to World War I and World War II, the dates 1917 and 1942 do not correspond to the start of those European conflicts, but rather to the dates on which the United States entered those respective wars.

(5) See “Korea Is the World,” an article published in the party’s former journal Prometeo, second series, No. 1, November 1950.

(6) See “Aggression Against Europe,” op. cit.

(7) Unlike European countries, the United States has never transferred funds directly to the Ukrainian government. This is according to “affaritaliani.it.” It appears that the figures reported by Washington regarding military aid to Ukraine have always been inflated; for example, in February 2025, Washington reported having provided Kiev, over the course of three years of war (2022–2025), “a total of $50.9 billion, broken down into $18.3 billion in military aid and $32.6 billion in support for the state budget, disbursed in the form of reimbursements through the World Bank or loan guarantees.” Furthermore, given the age of the weapons supplied to Ukraine, their value, their total depreciation, and the failure rates that render them unusable, their value is estimated to be 60 percent lower—or even more. https://www.affaritaliani.it/economia/guerra-ucraina-aiuti-usa-soldi-militari-958600.html

(8) See https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/mondo/2026/07/13/cremlino-i-volenterosi-sono-istigatori-della-guerra_b1dc532d-1203-471e-b699-66414436d946.html ;  as well as https://www.linkiesta.it/2026/07/coalizione-volenterosi-parigi-macron-ucraina-scudo-antimissile/

(9) See https://www.analisidifesa.it/2026/08/i-volenterosi-puntano-sullescalation-con-mosca-per-scongiurare-le-trattative/

(10) See “Aggression Against Europe,” op. cit.

September 2, 2026

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