The danger of world war – can it be stopped?
by Simon Korner
The dangers of direct conflict between the great powers have multiplied greatly over the past year. The US’s refusal to accept its declining supremacy, to compromise or negotiate, means that ongoing conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East are in danger of reaching a point of no return. This “extreme adventurism”, and “belief in their own impunity” as President Putin warned in July could “turn into a tragedy.”
APPROACHING WAR
Historically, impending international conflict has been signaled by at least three factors: first, a major arms race; second, the formation of rival armed blocs; and third, a series of smaller inciting wars leading to a general conflagration.
Before World War 1 a huge naval arms build-up began between Britain and Germany, followed by the formation of enemy alliances – Britain, France and Tsarist Russia against Austro-Hungary, Germany and Italy. Then there was a series of armed incidents – in Morocco in 1911 between Germany and France over colonial possessions, and in the Balkans where regional war soon sparked the outbreak of World War.
Before World War 2, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and fascist Italy all re-armed massively, as did Britain and France – remember the supposedly impregnable French Maginot line. The 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact of the Axis powers against the Soviet Union cemented the fascist bloc. Soviet diplomatic efforts to form an opposing anti-fascist alliance were repeatedly rebuffed by Britain and France. Subsidiary wars leading up to this World War, included Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931, Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia and Franco’s war against the Republican Spanish government beginning in 1936. Each on its own fell short of global conflict, but moved the world towards war.
WARNING SIGNS
Similar signs of impending international war are visible today. First, an arms race is taking place among the NATO nations – Germany, France and Japan have doubled their military budgets. US arms spending is approaching $1trillion a year. Britain’s spending has risen to 2.5% of GDP, with Poland’s 3.5%, providing it with the biggest land army in Europe. And of course, unprecedented profits are rolling in for arms companies like Germany’s Rheinmetall, whose shares are worth 245% more than in 2022, and for Britain’s BAE Systems up by 101%.
The western rush to militarisation has pushed China, still a developing country, to divert much-needed domestic investment into defence – last year almost $300 billion, while Russia has boosted its spending to just over $100 billion a year. (1) It was the West’s arms race during the Cold war, forcing the USSR to prioritise defence over other crucial investment, that contributed to socialism’s demise and the same strategy is in play today against capitalist Russia and Communist-led China.
As regards the second sign of potential war, bloc-formation, the NATO alliance has expanded to include Sweden and Finland, and western power is expanding around the Pacific, including a major increase in cruise missile deployment in the US’s Japanese and Philippine bases, and in South Korea. Billions are being spent arming Taiwan along with the training of Taiwanese troops in the USA. The nuclear submarine AUKUS deal between the US, Australia and UK aims at choking off China’s maritime trade and seals Australia’s fate as a US subaltern.
So far no opposing bloc has formed, but Russia and China have become, “allies in every sense of the word”, according to Putin, co-operating strategically across the board. Chinese-Russian relations are the closest they’ve ever been, with record trade, and the use of their national currencies rather than the dollar. The Russian language is increasingly popular in China, as Mandarin is in Russia. The two countries have also conducted their first joint patrols near the Arctic. Meanwhile, Iran has been driven closer to both, along with other sanctioned countries that now make up 30% of the world’s population. Russia and Iran have committed themselves to comprehensive mutual defence and China has signed a 25-year strategic partnership with Iran worth $400 billion, in the teeth of unilateral US sanctions. All three countries conducted a joint naval drill earlier this year in the Gulf of Oman, the fifth of its kind. More broadly, the growth of BRICS, which now includes Iran, points to a potential longer-term rebalancing of world power.
In terms of the third indicator of global conflict, regional wars, the US/Israeli/British genocide of Palestinians and the war against the resistance forces allied to Iran – and potentially against Iran itself – has become as dangerous as the Ukraine war in terms of potential for uncontrolled expansion. Meanwhile, western naval gunboat provocations close to China’s coast, claiming “freedom of navigation”, are relentlessly ramping up tensions in East Asia.
These three fronts are the current fault lines along which the US is fighting to maintain its global hegemony. All three are interlinked and, because of that, all are potential catalysts for world war.
THREE WAR FRONTS
Looking at the Ukraine front first, the war aims not only to weaken Russia, the US’s opponent with the biggest nuclear arsenal, eventually dismembering it, but to create more favourable conditions for the coming war with China by tying down and disabling its principal partner.
Now that NATO has ignored Russia’s unambiguous warning against the use of long-range weapons, the regional war using Ukrainian cannon fodder to do NATO’s fighting has “acquired elements of a global character,” according to Putin in a speech on November 21st, he also pointed to the fact that it is NATO itself, not Ukraine, operating the hi-tech weapons.
Starmer’s belligerence puts Britain on the frontline. Macron’s grandstanding does the same for France. If Polish airfields are used to launch bombing raids on Russia they could become a target. The fact that Germany is building its first military base abroad since 1945, near Lithuania’s border with Belarus and hosting 4,000 soldiers, brings Germany closer to conflict too. Meanwhile, Moldova bordering south-western Ukraine, is being systematically destabilised to be made ready for war; Georgia likewise.
Similarly, the Middle East front is vulnerable to expansion, because of the constant enlargement of Israel and its attempts to pull the US into attacking Iran. Also Iran is the principle impediment to total US control of the region’s energy and it has the bigger strategic aim of choking off vital Chinese energy imports. Direct US (and British) involvement has included, assassinating Iranian general Suleimani in 2020, occupying Syria’s oil fields, targeting Gaza, bombing Yemen and Iran, and manning the new THAAD missile defence system in Israel. This could also spark conflict with Russia, whose Syrian airbase has already had to use its air defences against Israeli attacks nearby. Ukraine’s provision of drones and advisers to Al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, for use against Russian bases again illustrates the interlinking of the different war fronts, just as the use of Britain’s base in Cyprus for transporting war supplies to Israel could draw that country into the war.
On the third front in the Far East, the re-arming of Japan, which has revised its peace-oriented constitution, is highly provocative. War could break out over the Chinese and Russian islands which Japan now claims for itself, in breach of its surrender terms at the end of World War 2. Both Russia and China are also worried about the proliferation of US missiles within range of them on land, in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines and at sea.
Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin commented, “Rarely has the world been as combustible and dangerous as it is today… In the past, barriers of distance, slow communications and limited exchanges contained conflicts naturally. Today, by contrast, humanity is fully interconnected and interdependent”. (2)
US AGGRESSION THE MAIN DANGER
On all three fronts, it is the USA, “the most violent country in the world since 1950”, according to Professor Jeffrey Sachs, once a US establishment insider, that’s pushing the world towards the brink. President Biden boasted that the US can fight multiple wars simultaneously: “Not only does the US “have the capacity to do this,” he said, “we have an obligation to. We are the ‘essential nation’.” President Trump is no better: more bellicose against China, he’s also even more militantly pro-Zionist. Let Israel “finish the job” is his slogan on Palestine.
FT journalist Gideon Rachman reported from Washington in 2023 “how commonplace talk of war between the the US and China has become. Many influential people seem to think that a US-China war is not only possible but probable”. (Financial Times 24/4/23) Those include the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown, who said in July that he was “fully confident” the US would win a war with China over Taiwan, while the head of the US Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, predicted such a war would break out by 2027. (3) There’s some basis for Charles Q. Brown’s boast. In 2017, the US developed a new guidance system or “super-fuze” for their nuclear warheads, doubling their destructive capacity. The US can now destroy all of its enemy intercontinental missile silos using only about 20% of its warheads, according to the National Interest journal – an advantage that gives them nuclear first-strike capability. (4)
This under-reported development should be understood along with the deployment of US nuclear weapons in Romania and Poland, the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001 and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, as well as the threat made by Zelensky in 2022 of Ukraine joining NATO and years of Ukrainian bombardment of its own Russian-speaking population. These were developments that forced Russia into its attack to pre-empt a NATO move into the Donbas, Crimea, and Russia itself. Even the compliant Boris Yeltsin had warned President Clinton against expanding NATO eastwards. By continuing to escalate the conflict in his final weeks of office, Biden wants to ensure that the US aim of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia continues under Trump.
American warmongering is echoed in Europe. Andrius Kubilius, former prime minister of Lithuania and now the EU’s first defence commissioner, said Europe must be ready to fight Russia within 6-8 years. Already NATO is massing troops in eastern Europe and preparing new land corridors to transport them to the frontline against Russia. The recent vote in the EU parliament for long-range weapons use against Russia showed the prevailing recklessness. This was led by Ursula von der Leyen whose mission is to ensure absolute compliance with US policy and continued massive European expenditure on Ukraine by EU countries – €110 billion so far, exceeding by a long way the US’s €75 billion.
Meanwhile, the same ironclad commitment to war can be heard in Israel’s public statements. One Israeli official was quoted by NBC, saying: “We decided to kill Nasrallah after concluding that he will not agree to any solution that isn’t tied to ending the war in Gaza”. This insistence on war, on violence, is an enactment of deliberate US policy.
CHINA AND RUSSIA HAMPER US
Against these forces of destruction, Russia and China are imposing limitations on the West’s room for manoeuvre. For months, Russia succeeded in delaying western escalation by restating its red lines against long-range rockets. When the Biden administration ignored these warnings, Russia’s formidable response using its Oreshnik ballistic missile to destroy a Ukrainian military factory provided further opportunity for the US to pause and reflect.
Meanwhile, China’s Ukraine peace plan, together with Brazil, is supported by more than 110 countries – ignored for now, but potentially exerting important diplomatic pressure in the longer term.
Both China’s and Russia’s ties with Iran, coupled with Iran’s ability to break through the Iron Dome, have so far limited further attacks on Iran by Israel, though the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon has not been prevented.
China’s diplomacy last year in bringing Iran and Saudi Arabia closer has borne fruit – to the extent that the Saudis, only days after Iran’s retaliatory missile strike against Israel in October, publicly reinforced the friendly relations between the “brotherly states” according to Xinhua news. More significantly, the Saudis, UAE and Qatar have refused Israel access to their airspace to bomb Iran, having experienced damaging Yemeni attacks on their oil production in the past. Normalisation seems to be on hold.
China also helped bring the Palestinian parties together, in particular Hamas and Fatah, in an important meeting in Beijing earlier this year.
In East Asia, China has resisted US attempts to lure it into using force to reclaim its province of Taiwan. It has also helped calm tensions with Vietnam over disputed waters – with Vietnam’s president Tô Lâm stressing during his recent state visit to China Vietnam’s full support for the one-China policy – and it has defused its Himalaya border dispute with India.
With Russian backing, a peace and decolonisation process has begun in the Sahel in Africa, supported by Algeria. Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali are uniting in the Sahel Alliance to take control of their own mines – gold and in Niger’s case, huge uranium mines too – and to tackle the violent Islamist militias which emerged out of the western destruction of Libya and which are controlled by the French Foreign Legion. Niger has closed down the huge US drone base near its capital. Burkina Faso has forced France to shut its military base. Chad has expelled US troops. The fact that the Green Berets will probably move to pro-western Ivory Coast or Benin doesn’t detract from the achievement. As Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, maintains, “Russia is defending a multipolar world order.” The legacy of Soviet solidarity with Africa persists even today – thousands of Africans study at Russian universities every year.
Overall, the global south is asserting its place on the world stage. South Africa’s case against Israeli genocide at the International Court of Justice, founded after World War2 and known as the World Court, has led for the first time in 42 years to the UN General Assembly voting overwhelmingly for sanctions against Israel. In turn this put further pressure on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to act. Its jurisdiction applies to individuals rather than states and it eventually issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
Meanwhile, “the Palestine flag has become the global symbol of freedom and liberation”, according to Husam Zomlot, Palestine’s ambassador to the UK. The Israeli genocide and unbridled aggression have created a new unity between former enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, both of whose prestige has risen after defying Israel and remaining undefeated. Hezbollah is regarded by most Lebanese as the sole force capable of defending Lebanon against Israel.
DIFFICULTIES FOR THE WEST
The growing disgust at the western-supervised genocide is putting pressure on western governments. Malta has refused access to Israel-bound ships carrying weapons. Ireland has refused to evacuate its peacekeeping force from Lebanon – despite Israeli threats. Italy has condemned Israel for targeting its UN contingent in Lebanon and has announced a full suspension of arms sales to Israel. Several western countries have stated they would abide by the ICC arrest warrants. Public outrage at her position on Gaza contributed to Kamala Harris’s election defeat.
In Europe, pessimism about defeating Russia, which is steadily pushing back Ukrainian forces on the ground, has imposed a degree of realism among sections of the ruling circles. Forced to deindustrialise after the US ordered them to cut off their cheap Russian energy supplies and sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline, some elements are realising that their subordination to the US and its reckless war cuts across their own interests. French commentator Emmanuel Todd put the case clearly, “… if Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans will last for a century”. It’s a vassalage millions of Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Slovakians, and many French and Poles too, reject, just as they reject war: a recent poll in Germany revealed that 59% are for peace talks with Russia, rising to 68% in eastern Germany. This is reflected in the plunging popularity of the ruling coalition and the growth of pro-peace parties.
Meanwhile, in the US, the isolationist wing of the establishment wants to settle the war with Russia, and there are worries about the accelerating movement away from the US dollar due to the freezing of Russian reserves, and loss of global market share due to sanctions.
BRITAIN
Britain, for its part, continues to serve US power faithfully, promoting the Ukraine and Middle East bloodbaths with exceptional vigour and preparing to host nuclear missiles at Lakenheath. Britain’s warmongering “serves as a historic British power enhancer” according to analyst Sumantra Maitra of the Responsible Statecraft thinktank, increasing its ability to wield influence over its European rivals in the military sphere and ensuring that the EU never gains autonomy from the US. Britain also sees itself as the defender of the imperialist system in general – as a world power, second only to the USA in the number of overseas bases. (5) (6)
Our country’s rulers are united for war, and that makes our task both difficult and crucial. The TUC Congress this year supported Palestine and called for peace in the Middle East. We need to extend that positive understanding and argue that it’s the same warmongers destroying Gaza, Lebanon and Iran who are destroying Ukraine, attacking Russia and preparing for war on China.
This period is one in which the global rulers can no longer rule in the old way – the West’s stranglehold and unbridled violence have become visible to many. The growing appetite for change – away from war, immiseration, sham democracy, climate catastrophe – means that millions of people are disillusioned with the entire system.
The acute dangers – including the danger of the Right cashing in on mass disaffection – make our job in promoting the socialist alternative vital. Given the opportunities for radical change that major wars have opened up in the past, we can point to what may open up in the future, as we try to ensure that the world survives the destructive trajectory of US decline.
2 https://mondediplo.com/2024/06/02france-foreign-policy
6 https://bfpg.co.uk/2023/02/why-is-britain-so-strongly-behind-ukraine/
The genocide in Gaza continues photo by WAFA
F16s at Kunsan US Air Base South Korea photo by Brittany Auld
Andrius Kubilius, EU Defence Commissioner – preparing for war Photo by European Commission
