By ERNIE GOTTA
The Trump administration has stunned the world with a radical shift in foreign policy. One of the crudest expressions of the new policy took place on Feb. 28 when, at an explosive meeting at the White House, President Trump and Vice President Vance teamed up to humiliate Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky for being “disrespectful” to the U.S. Their claims included the charge that Zelensky had not expressed sufficient thanks for past aid shipments. The session had been called in the context of an impending “deal” (steal) in which the U.S. would be given the right to extract key mineral resources from Ukraine. At the end of the meeting, however, Trump brusquely declared to Zelensky, “you either make a deal or we’re out!” Zelensky was then asked to leave the White House.
The meeting followed several other shocking statements by U.S. officials in the early weeks of the Trump administration. As a whole, they were read by many commentators as an expression of the destruction of the post-World War II global order in favor of a new configuration thought to be more beneficial to U.S. imperialism. What are the elements of this shift? What do they mean for the major capitalist nations in crisis? What will they mean for working people in the U.S. and elsewhere?
Elements of the U.S. change in policy
On Feb. 24, the U.S. refused to vote for a UN resolution condemning Russia on the third anniversary of that country’s invasion of Ukraine. The vote followed three shocking speeches from the Trump administration:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a Feb. 12 meeting in Brussels with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, an alliance of some 57 countries, made it clear that the U.S. was prioritizing containing China—and not Russia. He said, “We will only end this devastating war—and establish a durable peace—by coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield. We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.”
Hegseth laid out U.S. priorities, stating, “The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. We must—and we are—focusing on security of our own borders. We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail.”
Two days later, at the Munich Security Conference, JD Vance elaborated on the attitude of the Trump administration toward much of Europe. In front of European capitalist politicians and military officials, he mocked the European liberal “democracies” by saying that the greatest threat was not external but rather internal. Vance compared European “firewalls” against electoral collaboration with parties originating in fascism to the censorship of free speech. He compared the UK arrest of an anti-abortion protester who had violated the safety zone of a clinic to Stalinist repression of dissidents, and he painted a picture of liberal repression against Christians and people who hold far-right political beliefs and belong to far-right political organizations.
Vance reached out to European rightists by celebrating the “shared values and civilization of Europe and the U.S.”—a dog whistle to the proponents of white supremacy, anti-communism, and a reactionary traditionalism. He also went out of his way to meet with Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right German AfD, which made significant gains in the German elections. Vance and Weidel discussed the Ukraine war, German domestic policy, and freedom of speech.
The new reality of the reconfiguration of alliances was overwhelming for some European politicians. At the closing of the Munich Security Conference, the chairman, Christopher Heusgen, a German diplomat, teared up as he stated, “It is clear that our rules-based international order is under pressure. … It is my strong belief… that this multipolar world needs to be based on a single set of norms and principles, on the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This order is easy to disrupt, it’s easy to destroy, but it’s much harder to rebuild, so let us stick to these values. Let us not reinvent them, but focus on strengthening their consistent application.”
Days later, on Feb. 18, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to discuss reestablishing diplomatic relations in order to work out a peace deal in the war with Ukraine. Ukraine was left out of the meeting, and President Trump went so far as to say that Ukrainian President Zelensky was a “dictator without elections.”
Lavrov told Rubio that Russia would unlock opportunities for U.S. investment and access to minerals. They agreed to establish ways to consult on addressing grievances and reopen diplomatic missions. Based on a presumed agreement to allow Russia to continue to occupy rich Ukrainian territory, they spoke of future cooperation on issues of national interest and “historic” investment opportunities.
Capitalist nations in crisis
This is a dramatic shift from the previous year when the U.S. under the Biden administration gave Ukraine enough military support to keep their defense alive. This was in line with a strategic alliance with a Europe fearful of Russian encroachment in other border areas. Now, Washington sees its future better served by playing ball with Russia.
The U.S. expectation in these shifts is that Europe will begin to expand war budgets and defense expenses. How will the EU countries who have relied on U.S. aid for decades pay to defend Europe? One way is to ease up on laws that limit spending. Another way would be to slash social programs to fund defense expenses. Programs in Europe like universal health care and family subsidies that have been the envy of working people in the U.S. will be on the chopping block.
The EU nations will also drastically cut aid to the developing world, mirroring the U.S. dissolution of USAID. The fear among European capitalists is that slashing welfare in favor of weapons would unleash worker and youth protests and strikes across the continent like we saw in Britain and France in 2023.
Another aspect of this political turn is that the U.S. capitalist class recognizes the rise of Russia and China as new imperialist powers. This means that resources and markets around the globe must be redivided. Who will have the upper hand? Clearly, China remains the main economic and military competitor of the U.S. The question is how U.S. imperialism can contain China and maintain profitability.
This historic switch is tied to a new U.S. strategy for competing with China while in a period of economic decline. This decline pushed Biden to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in order to bolster a military presence in the Pacific.
Today a section of U.S. capitalists is taking a different approach, which looks similar to the Project 2025 playbook put together by the Heritage Foundation. Regarding U.S. foreign policy, Project 2025 tries to analyze the costs versus the benefits to the United States. The intention is to eliminate “wasteful spending,” which would weaken international and national organizations like NATO, the World Health Organization, and USAID. Of course, NATO and USAID were extensions of U.S. imperialism that utilized hard and soft power to project and protect U.S. interests.
Why does Trump consider this wasteful spending? We know that the U.S. is far behind in the ability to produce enough military equipment for war. Part of Trump’s rise to power is directly related to his ability to put the U.S. on a war footing to contain China. The need for a new military build-up and serious shifts in the Department of Defense are also outlined in Project 2025. This includes strategies around irregular warfare, necessary types of weapons procurements, whom the U.S. should ally with, and much more.
In May 2024, Roger Wicker, a senator from Mississippi, said, “It is far past time to rebuild America’s military. We can avoid war by preparing for it. When America’s senior military leaders testify before my colleagues and me on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors, they have said that we face some of the most dangerous global threat environments since World War II. Then, they darken that already unsettling picture by explaining that our armed forces are at risk of being under-equipped and outgunned. We struggle to build and maintain ships, our fighter jet fleet is dangerously small, and our military infrastructure is outdated. Meanwhile, America’s adversaries are growing their militaries and getting more aggressive.”
The people who will benefit from these shifts are far-right tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who will get billions in government contracts. These billionaires consider themselves the “counter-elite” and want to destroy what they see as the “globalist” order. Musk is openly intervening in the government. With one hand, he is slashing programs and departments, and on the other hand, he is accepting billions of dollars in government subsidies for SpaceX. Fortune.com writes, “SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell has said that the company has $22 billion in government contracts, Reuters reported. EV company Tesla, whose stock makes up the bulk of Musk’s nearly $400 billion net worth, has benefited from $2.8 billion in tax subsidies or grants, according to subsidy tracker Good Jobs First.”
What does this mean for the working class?
Trump’s “America First” declarations signal a concentrated effort by the United States to reassert itself as the preeminent superpower in the world—above any rivals such as China. As steps are being taken to increase funding for a modernized high-tech U.S. military force, the president has made it clear that Washington intends to threaten and bully other governments to get its way. The administration has shown that it is willing to pose as a “peacemaker” when that tactic seems useful, but that it will unleash its military power if necessary.
Workers have no stake either in the current economic conflicts or in the looming war of military destruction. If the U.S. were to go onto a full war footing, we could see drastic domestic changes as well—the reinstitution of a draft, a clampdown on dissent, efforts to regiment labor and outlaw strikes, and the continued gutting of social programs and regulations affecting corporate production.
Some sectors of corporate America believe that Trump’s policies will help their bottom line on the world stage. But ultimately, the capitalists have few means to increase their profits other than ramping up their exploitation of the working class. In order to fight back, working people and their allies can only depend on themselves. Democratic Party politicians claim to provide leadership, but have no real answers. We need to organize in our workplaces and unions, schools, and communities in order to mobilize millions of people in the streets in a powerful and united response to the Trump agenda.
Money for housing, health, and climate mitigation—not for the Pentagon! Self-determination for Palestine and Ukraine!
