Organization for the Communist Party of the Proletariat, Italy | Piattaforma Comunista | Translated for the Red Phoenix by Misha G.–

The Aug. 15 meeting in Alaska between Trump and Putin marks a decisive change in the relations of two large and militarist imperialist superpowers: the United States and Russia. The meeting showed that the United States and Russia are moving to draw closer together, pursuing common interests in order to consolidate both of their positions, avoid serious conflicts with each other, and prevent their strategic weakening—especially in relation to social-imperialist China. This meeting also symbolically marked the return of the ‘rehabilitated’ Putin to the Western diplomatic stage. 

At the meeting, both leaders regurgitated grandiose demagogy about ‘peace’ to throw up a smokescreen, behind which they conceal their warmongering, aggressive, and reactionary policies. Their ‘press statement’ also said a lot while really saying nothing (the secret diplomacy of the great powers hardly fits with the chatter of the bourgeois media or multipolarist daydreams). However, it is clear that, for now, there is no full agreement between the superpowers and that on key issues, serious disagreements remain.

In reality, Trump and Putin used the pretext of ‘peace in Ukraine’ to strike deals on trade, flights, investments, rare earths, the Arctic, energy, and more. They have major capitalist interests at stake..

For Ukraine, on the other hand, what looms is a de facto surrender and its transformation into a buffer state. Russia has long since gained the upper hand militarily and can dictate peace terms with Ukraine and its NATO masters (Crimea, Donbass, veto on Ukraine’s NATO membership, etc.). The time game has played well in Putin’s favor.

Pursuing a pragmatic line, Trump stepped up pressure on his puppet Zelensky and on the European allies who are unhappy with this arrangement. By offering them ‘protection’ and ‘coordination’ as incentives to accept a compromise between the US and Russia, he, at the same time, guaranteed U.S. arms sales (through NATO, meaning paid for by the allies) and secured privileged access to Ukraine’s natural resources.

The anxious EU leaders, alarmed by Trump’s shift on a global deal, immediately rushed to Washington following the meeting to seek ‘security guarantees’ for Europe and to bolster Zelensky.

They scramble to get into the talks with Trump, clinging to a ‘ceasefire’ even as they continue arming Kiev and approving sanctions packages against Russia. Yet Trump has already made it clear that the EU will only be ‘involved a little’—reduced to the role of observer, excluded from the decisive bilateral and trilateral summits.

To be sure, some crumbs of business will also fall to the Euro-monopolists, provided they do not put up obstacles with their warmongering policy with Russia—a policy as criminal as it is blind, which has deepened stagnation, driven up inflation, increased public debt, brought cuts to wages and social services to the European countries, for which European rulers, first of all Italy’s Meloni, must be held accountable.

This all signifies a significant blow to Europe, its interests, and its dominance in the international arena. For a long time, European capitalism has been in decay, but this new world order, which Trump is seeking to organize for American interests, is recognizing this. 

The strategic objective Trump pursues is to pull Russia away from China, to reduce its ties with Beijing in order to bring it closer to the USA. Of course, there is no love between Trump and Putin as the warmongering Democrats and Euro-monopolists present it; Trump’s realpolitik¹ serves only the interests of the US superpower, which wants to be ‘great again’ in order to maintain global hegemony.

For Putin, the success is tactical: economic deals, political marketing, etc. But either way, the contradictions with the USA remain, and Russia will continue to play on two fronts, gaining whatever it can both with deals with the United States without renouncing the ‘no limits’ partnership with China either.

The US and Russian imperialists, after waging a rapacious and murderous imperialist war on Ukrainian soil for over three years, now aim at an imperialist “peace”, unjust and undemocratic, which, far from preventing war, prepares new conflicts and new plunder. They are not interested in the rights of the peoples as they so boisterously proclaim, but seek to exploit the situation to strengthen their positions and spheres of influence, control strategic resources and markets, and exercise permanent interference in European affairs, setting themselves up as arbiters of problems concerning the workers and peoples of other countries.

The big bosses, Trump and Putin, wolves in sheep’s clothing, have launched in complicity and rivalry a cynical challenge to the proletariat, the peoples, the revolution. In the name of the interests of big capital, they demand that the exploited and the oppressed sacrifice their vital interests, their freedom and independence, their right to judge and act according to their own will in national and international life.

It is necessary to denounce openly and without the slightest hesitation the Trump-Putin understanding, as well as the EU’s warmongering line and Chinese maneuvers, since the chauvinist and warmongering policy of the bourgeoisie will inevitably rebound on the proletarians and the peoples, bringing colossal harm.

It is necessary to expose and oppose the reactionary, aggressive content of these bandits’ deals for the division of spoils, to denounce the counterrevolutionary and anti-popular plans, intrigues, and blackmail of all the imperialist powers, without siding with one imperialism against another.

At the same time, it is essential to denounce pacifist and multipolarist illusions, the lies and deceptions that the social-democratic and opportunist leaders spread to the four winds in order to persuade the people to abandon the revolutionary class standpoint, while inter-imperialist contradictions deepen.

It falls to the communists, the anti-imperialists, and the sincere lovers of peace to carry forward the struggle to drive the warmongers from power, to withdraw from NATO, from the EU, and from any war alliance, to reject the increase in military spending, supporting international proletarian solidarity and the struggle of the oppressed peoples, first of all the Palestinian people, against imperialist and Zionist aggression.

Faced with the counterrevolutionary union of the imperialists, the working class and the peoples must oppose it with their own revolutionary union, with their resolute and uncompromising struggle to foil the new plots directed against the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the peoples, to undermine and destroy the imperialist strategy, while building the anti-imperialist front.

Today’s events must reinforce in communists and advanced workers the conviction of working together to give back to the class its communist party, the indispensable instrument of the revolutionary process, and the victory of socialism.

1) Realpolitik is a term that refers to a pragmatic and practical, rather than an ideological or moral, approach to international politics.

Categories: Anti-War, U.S. News