The rules are changing in the great game of imperialist power politics. One picture tells the story. A horseshoe of diplomats around the table in an ostentatious Riyadh conference room. In the background, three flags: American, Russian, and Saudi.
Across Europe and North America, the liberal press howled: “Where’s Ukraine?” Where are America’s NATO allies, their partners in plunder for the last 80 years?
The Riyadh negotiations are proof of what communists have been saying since the Ukraine War began. Far from a struggle for Ukraine’s right to self-determination, it’s a proxy war between American and Russian imperialism.
The principal parties are now negotiating a settlement, not based on high-sounding, hypocritical rhetoric about “democracy” or the “rules-based international order,” but according to the real balance of forces on the front lines.
American imperialism humiliated
“This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.” So said George H.W. Bush in August 1990, after Iraq invaded the oil-rich emirate. Bush then assembled a 42-country coalition—amassing nearly a million soldiers, over 3,000 tanks, and 2,200 artillery systems. The ensuing Operation Desert Storm was more a massacre than a war. By February 1991, the American imperialists’ victory over a third-rate army was crushing and complete.
How different matters stand today! When the fate of small nations is to be decided, the world no longer snaps to attention at America’s command.
For 35 years, the American imperialists grew accustomed to getting their own way. Now, they’re forced not only to negotiate, but to do so from an inferior position. Despite Western sanctions, Russia’s military industries have far outproduced the West. After three years of war, it boasts the world’s only major military that has been tested in modern warfare.
The US imperialists’ opening negotiating position reflects their relative weakness. In effect, they’ve been forced to concede all of Russia’s major pre-war aims.
Ukraine will lose territory, with new borders based on “a realistic assessment of the battlefield.” Ukraine will never join NATO, nor will American troops set foot in the country. Any European “peacekeepers” will not be covered by NATO’s Article 5, and non-NATO (i.e., Russian-allied) troops would be included in any future peacekeeping force.
The kids’ table
It’s a humiliating climbdown for the US imperialists, but it’s nothing compared to the emasculation of the Europeans.
In the period of capitalism’s ascent, the fates of nations—and sometimes whole continents—were routinely settled by well-dressed diplomats in the great palaces of Europe’s capital cities. From the 17th to the 20th century, several dozen international agreements bore the name “Treaty of Paris.”
But last month, Paris played host to the kids’ table of world diplomacy, bringing together a host of divided and dejected European leaders who didn’t rate an invite to Riyadh. The “summit” was farcical from start to finish.
The Italians arrived late, and the Germans left early. Only the British and French committed to sending a handful of troops to Ukraine. Even this performative promise was empty bluster, since it was conditioned on Trump sending American forces as a “backstop”—which he’s already ruled out.
Europe’s increasing irrelevance in world affairs flows from its declining economic importance, which has come into particularly sharp focus during the war. Labor productivity in the Eurozone has stagnated for half a decade. In Germany, industrial production is down 7% since 2021, and energy-intensive industries are down 20%. British manufacturing is down 9% in the same period, with declines of 35% in metal production, 38% in chemicals, 39% in cement, and 49% in electrical equipment.
“When everyone is dead …”
With Europe in decline, Trump has taken a hacksaw to the liberal world order. In its place, a new great game has begun in which the US, Russian, and Chinese imperialists will redivide the world in accordance with their changing economic and military strength.
“When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before.” So said Rudyard Kipling about the struggle between tsarist Russia and the British Empire for dominance over Central Asia. The destructive forces available to the players in this new great game are incomparably greater than those the imperialist powers could marshal a century ago.
There is only one force on earth that can end the great game before everyone is dead—the world working class. Only through communist revolution will swords finally be beaten into plowshares.