The war in Ukraine serves the US to weaken Europe

(From ”Il comunista”; no. 176 ; Junuary-February 2023)

Back Sumary

 

 

Regarding the weaponry used in the war in Ukraine and that which Zelenskiy so adamantly calls for, such as German Leopard 2 tanks and American Abrams tanks, the online magazine "Analisi Difesa" (1) wrote the following lines in January 2023, setting alarm bells ringing about the weakening of Europe, not so much in relation to Russia, but rather in relation to the US:

"Leaving aside the states that are most belligerent towards Russia and that are already heavily engaged in the conflict (such as the UK, Poland and the Baltic republics), it is evident that Germany and other European states do not want to undergo a further escalation of the confrontation with Moscow by supplying heavy and "offensive" weapons such as tanks, which Ukraine is calling for in order to restore its capacity to regain lost territories in the coming months. A German government source told the Wall Street Journal that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly said behind closed doors that a condition for providing Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv is that U.S. Abrams tanks also be sent to Ukraine."

From a political point of view, "the German government's appraisal is quite understandable, since it implies that European states will further exacerbate the confrontation with Moscow, which has already weakened Europe on an energy and economic level, and, moreover, that there will be a rapid continuation of the further weakening of its military apparatus through the continued supply of arms and ammunition to Kyiv, which no European NATO country has in sufficient quantities."

However, the pressure from the United States on Germany to send its tanks is not letting up. "It is paradoxical," Defence Analysis continues, "that the US, which has many hundreds of Abrams tanks in reserve, is not going to supply them to Ukraine, but is pressuring European states to give up their already limited stocks of German-made tanks. It is also paradoxical because Washington is about to supply 100 eight-wheeled Styker armoured fighting vehicles and probably also high-precision missiles for the M142 HIMARS light multiple rocket launcher and the M270 MLRS armoured self-propelled multiple launch rocket system with a range of 150 kilometres using GLSDB (Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb) rocket ammunition, thus capable of striking deep into Crimea and Russian territory'. The paradox does not really exist, since, as the same 'Defence Analysis' admits, 'the weakening of European armed forces, armoured or otherwise, will favour (and in fact already does favour in many Eastern European countries) the acquisition of new or second-hand US equipment, given that the European defence industry would need large investments and several years to produce new assets and weapon systems (including tanks) in more substantial quantities. Thus, the war in Ukraine continues to damage the interests of an increasingly weak, poorer, less competitive and less and less armed Europe, which is destined to be an increasingly docile ally of the United States. It thus shows that the US has set itself an objective regarding the war in Ukraine that no major bourgeois media talks about: to weaken Europe (read: above all Germany) and make it more docile to US imperialist interests.

Russia's aggression against Ukraine has provided the US with an opportunity to pursue further aggression against Europe. Why are we speaking of further US aggression against Europe? Because through the Second World Imperialist War and its conclusion, the United States effectively invaded, seized and occupied Europe with its troops and capital. England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, the old colonial powerful and tyrannical powers waged war on a continent where borders are a stone's throw away. But by engaging in the war, the United States decided that New York or San Francisco was to be defended "on the Rhine or the Elbe, in the Alps or the Pyrenees." Germany defended its "living space" on the continent, starting with the 1,052 kilometres separating Berlin from Paris, 1,324 kilometres from St. Petersburg, 1,504 kilometres from Rome, and 1,825 kilometres from Moscow."The living space of the US conquerors," Bordiga wrote in 1949, "is a ribbon that wraps around the whole earth"  (2), which is very reminiscent of the method Aesop depicts in his fable The Wolf and the Lamb, in which the lamb muddles the wolf's water even though it drinks it lower down. The comparison is of course obvious, the wolf being the USA, the lamb the European states. There is no doubt that the USA is the most powerful gendarme of world capitalism, and there is no doubt that it has always had the objective of subjugating Russia – in the past and today – to its interests, excluding those stupid democrats who still believe in the fairy tale of 'good' imperialism fighting 'bad' imperialism. It should be pointed out that the interventions of the United States in the European wars (in 1917 and 1942), with its military, economic and political superiority in the subsequent post-war period, represented "the crowning of the concentration of an enormous military and destructive force in the highest centre of domination and defence of the present class regime, i.e. the capitalist regime", which is tantamount to "creating the optimum conditions which make it possible to stifle the revolution of the proletariat in any country" (3). Here again it is reiterated that among the vital objectives of imperialism – which is nothing other than the actual development of monopoly capitalism – is not only the competitive war between the various imperialist blocs over the partition of the world, but also the creation of the optimum conditions that make it possible to stifle the revolution of the proletariat in any country.

And to create such conditions, as has been seen so far, a war between the US and Russia was not necessary (the Russian-US co-domination of Europe and the world that existed from the end of the Second World Imperialist War until the collapse of the USSR is proof of this) and will not be necessary, as Bordiga's article quoted above states, "if the vassalage of the latter [Russia] could be ensured, instead of through military means and an actual campaign of destruction and occupation, through the pressure of the more powerful economic forces of the highest capitalist organisation in the world – that is, perhaps tomorrow by the sole Anglo-American state which there is already talk of – and through a compromise which would allow the Russian ruling organisation to be bought off on highly advantageous terms; Stalin is said to have already specified the amount at two billion dollars". The way things have developed so far between the US, Europe and Russia, the eventuality outlined by Bordiga has actually been realised in its general outlines, except that the more powerful economic forces of the US-Great Britain, allied to the reborn economic forces of the new German superpower, have already achieved one remarkable result: the fall of the Moscow empire and its relegation to the position of a second-rate imperialist power, but one which is not yet in a position to be willing to be bought out for many more billions than those promised to Stalin in 1949.

The other change in the inter-imperialist balance of power compared to 1949 and 1989 concerns China, a new imperialist power that is rising against Yankee (or Anglo-American) imperialism and whose ambitions and prospects are much broader than those that characterised Stalin's Soviet Union. And the current Russian-Ukrainian war reveals not only Europe's military and political weakness vis-à-vis the United States, but also its innate difficulty in facing the challenges posed by the partition of the world due to the inevitable internal contradictions between European countries; something that the United States and China are clearly exploiting to consolidate their reciprocal positions in view of a possible future war clash in which Russia would no longer be the primary co-protagonist.

 

---

 

(1) Cf. https://www.analisidifesa.it/2023/01/leuropa-fornira-allucraina-carri-armati-e-missili-che-non-ha/

(2) Cf. Aggressione all’Europa (Alfa), in “Prometeo” n. 13, August 1949. Available at www.pcint.org. Alfa was one of the pseudonyms used by Amadeo Bordiga during these years.

(3) Ibidem

 

 

International Communist Party

www.pcint.org