Between Trump and Putin

The Trump-Putin pact aims at the division of Europe and the imposition of austerity, and authoritarian, reactionary, and warlike regimes in their respective zones of influence.

In the short term, this plan involves the crushing of the Ukrainian people in the East and, in the West, support for the far-right Trumpist, nationalist and sovereignist parties. Both Trump and Putin are banking on the atomization of society and European disintegration.

Beyond that, the two despots will keep to their own agendas: to separate Russia from China for one, to reestablish Russia within the borders of the tsarist empire for the other. As with the Hitler-Stalin pact to divide Poland, reversals are likely, depending on the balance of power, with new war threats likely to follow.

In any case, from now on, the pact between Trump and Putin puts into deep crisis the bourgeois project conceived in the post-war period: the construction of an ultra-liberal European Union, privileged ally of U.S. imperialism and the European pillar of NATO. Now it is through this means, the European Union, that the European bourgeoisie seeks to impose itself as a major protagonist in the competitive struggle for global capitalist hegemony.

Now that its project is threatened with bankruptcy, the European ruling class is hastily developing a response even more fully aligned with the interests of big capital. The Moscow-Washington pact serves as an accelerator: remilitarization at breakneck speed, more austerity, more gifts to the bosses, the rolling back of already insufficient ecological measures, the hardening of the shameful policies of turning back migrants, and bowing to Trump, in the hope of sharing the Ukrainian cake of “reconstruction”.

When it comes to giving the Ukrainian people the means necessary for their legitimate defense, European governments balk. When it comes to producing weapons for a “powerful Europe,” nothing stops them. The dogma of budgetary balance suddenly no longer applies except to “justify” austerity, the repression of democratic rights, and ecological destruction, which continues unabated.

The “defense of Ukraine” is used as a pretext. In reality, EU leaders have been holding back support for Kyiv for three years. On the one hand, despite everything, the Ukrainian people are resisting heroically. On the other hand, Russia is exhausted by its enormous losses in men and equipment. If Ukraine falls, Moldova and Georgia will be in the crosshairs. But, beyond that, Putin is counting on political decomposition much more than on military conquest to increase his influence. The idea that his armies are preparing an offensive on the West of the continent is a manipulation, pure propaganda.

Under the current conditions, the provision by the EU of already promised military provisions, the cancellation of the Ukrainian debt, the transfer to Kyiv of [Euros] 200 billion of frozen Russian funds, a special levy on large fortunes, the support of civil society and a broad internationalist mass mobilization for democracy and peace (through the dissolution of all military blocs and respect for borders) would create the possibility of destabilizing Putin’s neo-fascism. Suddenly, another future would open up for the continent and for the world.

In any case, there is nothing to expect from an undemocratic European Union, which supports Netanyahu’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, causes the death at sea of ​​thousands of migrants every year, imposes unequal trade on peripheral countries, and defines itself as “an open market economy where competition is free”. The “defense policy” of this EU can only be a policy of defense of capitalist interests, on the backs of workers, young people, women, oppressed peoples and the planet.

If they refuse to be tossed around in the struggle between the U.S. and China for world hegemony, with Russia as the pivot, if they want to be agents of their own common history, the peoples of the old European continent have no other choice than to unite their social movements and their unions in the struggle for another Europe: democratic, social, open, generous, ecosocialist.

• A Europe that brings big capital into line by socialising finance, energy, the arms industry and other key sectors;
• A Europe that raises wages, develops social security, strengthens public services, fights inequalities, eliminates poverty;
• A Europe that expropriates the ultra-wealthy to finance an ecological transition worthy of the name, without fossil fuels, without nuclear power, without sorcerer’s apprentice technologies and without agribusiness;
• A Europe that cancels the debts of the countries of the South, renounces neocolonial plunder and shares the discoveries essential to the decarbonization of the economy;
• A Europe whose working classes will be keen to ensure their own defence if necessary, where conscription replaces professional armies.

The path to the foundation of this Europe is political: it involves the fight against national withdrawal and mobilization for the election of a European constituent assembly.

There is an emergency. Europe and the world are at the crossroads of History. Democratic and social rights were born in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe from the struggle of the working world against capitalist exploitation. Their future is at stake on a planet on fire that the despots dream of submitting to the limitless diktat of Capital.

Featured Image Credit:Image by Kremlin.ru modified by Tempest.

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