"Geopolitical rivalries have stormed back to center stage," wrote Walter Russell Mead in Foreign Affairs, the magazine of the CFR (Council on Foreign Affairs). By geopolitics, Mead means inter-imperialist rivalry.

Russia's annexation of Crimea, China's greater assertiveness in the South China Sea, and Iran trying to dominate the Middle East were some examples he gave of sharpening geopolitical rivalries. To this we can add the new developments in Iraq.

Richard Haass, president of the CFR,  criticizing Obama's West Point speech, wrote that his speech, aimed at many audiences, "failed to meet any, much less all, of its goals" and [although many things said] "are all arguably true, such generalities are more fitting for someone starting out in office than for an incumbent in his sixth year."

The Republicans also bash Obama, but Haass and Mead come from the clan of imperialists that Obama represents. The CFR speaks for the dominant wing of US imperialism. It plays a decisive role in deciding US international policies.

These imperialists are mad at Obama, among other things, for omitting from his speech their main international policies for "the part of the world most likely to shape this century, the Asia Pacific." He failed to mention their pivot to Asia and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact). 

The pivot is US imperialism's main strategy to contain and eventually confront China, their main rival for world domination. "One part of this pivot is a commitment to increase the presence and role of US military forces, the ostensible subject of Wednesday's address," insisted Haass.

The TPP, a regional trading pact, aims to increase US exports of goods, capital and services. Its main goal, however, is to exclude China, limiting its economic ability to build a blue-water navy.

Obama did talk, however, about US leadership being indispensable for bringing about "international order," the US bosses' euphemism for imposing their world domination.

Haass understands this task won't be peaceful. Thus, for him, Obama's biggest sin is not preparing "the American people… to back such a role for their country."  They want a working class willing to sacrifice blood and pensions for the rulers' profits and empire.

Geopolitical Rivalries Leading to World War III

Mead also assailed Obama for building "his foreign policy on the conviction that… the US's most important priorities involved promoting the liberal world order, not playing classical geopolitics."

Mead rightfully claimed these rivalries are intensifying because China, Iran, and Russia don't accept the geopolitical settlement following the Cold War. He says that they "are making increasingly forceful attempts to overturn it," and "that process will not be peaceful."

These countries, he explained, "want to avoid direct confrontations with the United States," except when the odds are in their favor. They prefer to "chip away at the norms and relationships that sustain" the status quo (US world domination).

He fails to mention that no imperialist power has ever abdicated its top-dog position peacefully, and that World War III is looming as these rivals prepare for an eventual military clash with the US. He does, however, predict that figures like Putin will not, as the poem says,  "go gentle into that good night, and they will rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Communism Will Turn Off Capitalism's Lights Forever

Mead says that the fall of the Soviet Union meant "the ideological triumph of liberal capitalist democracy over communism, not the obsolescence of hard power."

He is right about the hard power to which the imperialists inevitably recur, launching local, regional, and world wars. He is wrong, however, about capitalism defeating communism. The fall of the Soviet Union was the fall of an empire built on state capitalism. It was the product of socialism, the goal mistakenly fought for by the 20th- century communists.

Class struggle – the life and death struggle between the working class and the capitalist class – is the determining factor in transforming society. The 21st century will be the century of the triumphant communist working class.

Today more than ever we are positioned to be the gravediggers of capitalism and the builders of the communist world we need. 

Our class is bigger, numbering in the billions, and more international than ever. Learning from the errors of our predecessors, we are guided by the most advanced political line: Mobilize the Masses for Communism.

All we need is organization. That means building the International Communist Workers' Party and networks of our newspaper Red Flag massively worldwide. Masses of workers, soldiers, and students organized and mobilized for communism will turn off capitalism's lights forever.

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