US Imperialist Spokesman Calls for Focus on “Great Power Competition”
October 30— Trump’s announcement of the assassination of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is US imperialism whistling in the dark.
The real news in Syria is US tanks being pelted with rotten potatoes as they exit Qamishli. It’s Russian videos of footballs, animal crackers and a refrigerator full of soft drinks in an abandoned US base in Manbij. It’s fifty US nuclear weapons stranded in Turkey that the US neither controls nor knows how to remove.
The raid that killed the ISIS commander was one of the last gasps of US power in the region. It took place with the assistance of the Kurdish allies Trump has abandoned, and in spite of the chaos that Trump’s surprise declaration of US withdrawal has caused.
On October 6, Trump tweeted that the US would withdraw US troops from the Kurdish region of Rojava in northern Syria. This allowed Turkey’s Syrian jihadi thugs to carry out genocide in a 20-mile-deep “buffer zone” along the Turkey-Syria border.
The result: a new alignment of forces in the region.
First, Russia brokered a deal. The Syrian Kurds asked the Syrian government, backed by Russia and Iran, to support them in the fight against the Turkish invasion. This has not stopped the attacks. Syria reestablished authority over an area from which it had been expelled. Syria promised to take over the prisons where Kurds guarded ISIS captives.
Then Russian President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan met in Sochi, Russia. Erdogan agreed to Russian limits in the buffer zone and joint patrols by Russian and Turkish forces.
Russia and Iran have been the main backers of Syrian President Assad. Russia is now brokering deals with both the Kurds (formerly protected by the US) and with Turkey (formerly a NATO bulwark against Russia).
Russia has achieved a major victory. This is the end of the US as a dominant power in the Middle East.
This situation did not begin with Trump’s October 6th tweet. It didn’t begin when the US refused to respond to an attack on a Saudi oil refinery by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. Both events are part of a pattern of a declining imperialist power in retreat from the Middle East.
Pivot to Asia
The latest US Defense Secretary, Mike Esper, laid out the consequences in a press conference at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels on Oct. 24.
Esper said that Turkey was going to invade northern Syria whether or not fifty US troops were there supporting the Kurds. So he just decided to get them out of the way. The US was already irrelevant in Syria. Events in October just sealed that.
Esper urged other NATO nations to “make sure Turkey trends back to being the strong, reliable ally they’ve been in the past.”
Why? Because, he said, the US from now on “prioritizes China first, Russia second, as we transition our primary focus towards great power competition.” That means war between the major imperialists: world war.
Mostly Esper spoke about China. He railed against China’s Belt and Road Initiative. He cautioned NATO allies against underestimating the threat to their national security by Chinese economic and military expansion. He denounced in particular the militarization of the South China Sea. He called it an example of “Beijing’s unwillingness to abide by international rules and norms.”
Not Peace but War
The US withdrawal from the Middle East to “pivot to Asia” began under the Obama administration. This is not a pivot from strength. It is an act of desperation of a declining imperialist power.
The US is in decline, economically, politically and militarily. Russia’s ascendance in the Middle East is matched by Chinese ascendance as an economic power worldwide.
Esper’s speech makes it clear that US imperialism does not plan to go down without a fight. It can’t. Capitalism’s competition for maximum profit makes inter-imperialist rivalry inevitable. And so are the wars for profit – including world war – that it spawns.
We must see these wars as opportunities to end capitalism and imperialism once and for all with communist revolution. This means recruiting more members to build a mass International Communist Workers’ Party, especially in the factories and in the military.
It’s up to us.
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