Statement by the International Workers’ League
The first month of the Trump administration has been met with shock around the world, adding serious elements of crisis to the world order, such as the policy towards Putin, Europe, and his annexationist impulses.
Trump is leading a far-right government in the most important imperialist country on the planet. He will try to deport millions of immigrants, although so far he has lagged behind Biden’s daily totals due to the level of resistance from the immigrants themselves.
He is also attacking LGBTQ rights and all the gains of struggles against oppression. In addition, he is trying to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers and roll back scant environmental regulations, while Musk is in full operation to qualitatively reduce the welfare state and deregulate for big business.
Trump defends his far-right project in the name of “freedom,” which means total freedom for big business to do whatever it wants, including controlling social media and spreading fake news. He is promoting an authoritarian project, with a drastic increase in the power of the executive to override Congress, and he is already pushing the limits of the Constitution. That’s why he’s changing the leadership of the armed forces.
U.S. imperialism is still hegemonic economically, financially, militarily and geopolitically, but it has to face the rising Chinese imperialism. Trump, with his “Make America Great Again,” is trying to restore this hegemony, but in a different way than the other imperialist bourgeois faction represented by the Democratic Party. In a sense, he accepts the decadence of the U.S. as a fact and wants to focus his efforts on confronting Chinese imperialism.
The increase in tariffs he has put in place is a defensive stance against the classical openness of globalization, which was based on the clearly superior productivity of imperialism.
Trump expresses the decline of the U.S. in his change in his stance towards Russia in the war in Ukraine, legitimizing Putin’s invasion. He says that European security is the job of Europeans, which fits into his logic of reducing U.S. spending in the region to focus on confronting China. He seeks an alliance with Putin to distance him from China and to strengthen the European far right, which they both support.
All support to the Ukrainian resistance!
Trump has changed the policy of U.S. imperialism on the war in Ukraine, accepting and legitimizing the Russian invasion and annexation of the occupied territories. He tried to force Zelensky to sign an agreement on the exploitation of rich lands and rare minerals as a kind of compensation for the U.S. spending on the war. Such a colonial agreement was so unfavorable for Ukraine that the Ukrainian president was forced to reject it, making things much more difficult for the Ukrainian resistance, which is already in a complicated situation but is not yet defeated. The Ukrainian people have heroically resisted the invasion of a much stronger army for three years. The trench warfare in the Donbass region shows a slow advance of the Russian invasion, but with heavy losses for the invaders.
Zelensky staked everything on the support of U.S. and European imperialism, and now they have pulled the rug out from under him. Trump and Putin have begun negotiations, excluding Europe and Ukraine, for an “agreement” that legitimizes the Russian annexation of part of Ukraine.
Imperialism doesn’t do what it wants. It does what it can. North American imperialism can do a lot because it is the strongest. But the result of its actions depends on the balance of political, economic and military forces.
The war in Ukraine will not end because Trump wants it to. A feeling of indignation against Trump is running through the Ukrainian people today. The heroic struggle of the Ukrainian resistance continues and this requires more support from the activists and masses of the world than it has had so far.
Global neo-Stalinism, which mostly supported Putin’s invasion with a discourse “against imperialism,” is now on the same side as Trump.
At the IWL, we stand for the defeat of Putin’s invasion and occupation and the defense of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. We reject the Trump-Putin “peace deal” and denounce the proposed imperialist plunder of the Ukrainian economy. We maintain our call for the active solidarity of the world working class with the Ukrainian resistance and support its right to obtain the arms it needs to continue the struggle.
We demand the cancellation of Ukraine’s foreign debt to the IMF and all imperialist loan sharks! We also denounce European imperialism, whose trickle of aid to Ukraine was never intended to ensure its victory, but to weaken Putin. Its arms and military spending plans are also not intended to help Ukraine, but to serve its imperialist objectives. There is no good imperialism!
We defend the political independence of the Ukrainian workers against the neoliberal government of Zelensky. We defend the independence of the workers against all imperialism.
All support to the Palestinian struggle!
The ceasefire agreement in Gaza was a very important victory for the Palestinians, even if it was only a partial one. Israel, even after a year of barbaric genocide, has failed to wipe out Hamas and put an end to the heroic Palestinian resistance.
Israel’s brutal military superiority, the murder of more than 60,000 people, the destruction of most homes, hospitals and schools have failed to achieve Netanyahu’s genocidal goals of wiping out Hamas and rescuing the hostages by force.
The Palestinians secured the release of hundreds of prisoners and their ceremonies to hand over the Israeli hostages turned into demonstrations of the strength that the Palestinian resistance has maintained. Moreover, they will achieve temporary relief from the constant bombardments that allowed them to rebuild their forces. Zionism has never been so questioned in the eyes of the world.
At the same time, the Israeli government continues to actively attack the West Bank. More than 800 Palestinians have been killed by IDF forces in the West Bank since October 7. They have also evacuated the Jenin refugee camp and sent in tanks for the first time since 2002.
Israel has so far failed to stabilize its land occupation in either Gaza or Lebanon. As in anti-colonial wars such as Vietnam and Algeria, this could be an important factor in Israel’s future defeat.
In this situation, Trump’s statement advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and its appropriation by the U.S. to turn it into a “Middle Eastern Riviera” has had an explosive effect. In practice, it is the legitimization of a new qualitative step of the Nakba, linked to the attempt to annex the West Bank. This threatens the second and third phases of the ceasefire agreement and may lead to the resumption of genocide by Israel.
Trump’s statements demanding that Jordan and Egypt accept the Palestinians expelled from Gaza have not been accepted by these countries, nor by Saudi Arabia. The situation throughout the region is explosive and has been further radicalized by Trump’s statements. These regimes fear that accepting Trump’s plan could provoke the outbreak of a new Arab Spring against these governments. But they will continue to try to make a deal with Israel and Trump.
The overthrow of Assad in Syria is an important victory for the Syrian people and a stimulus for the masses throughout the region. The HTS is rebuilding the bourgeois state in the country and has a project to impose a new bonapartist regime. Its plan is to rebuild the country in agreement with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the imperialist countries without confronting Israel. But it has not succeeded in destroying the freedoms won by the revolutionary process that overthrew Assad. The Syrian process is still going on and will be intertwined with the whole conflict in the region, although it is severely limited by the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. It is an example of victory that encourages the struggles against local dictatorships.
We call for the continuation and expansion of the campaign in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli genocide and the rejection of the cynical “two-state” policy. We unconditionally defend the right of the Palestinian resistance to defend itself and to obtain weapons from wherever they can.
The defeat of Israel and the destruction of the Zionist state will only be possible through a combination of the continuation and expansion of direct military struggle, a new Arab Spring, a new Intifada in the Palestinian territories and the expansion of solidarity struggles throughout the world. In other words, a revolutionary process that overcomes and confronts the leaderships that capitulate to or collaborate with Zionism.
We denounce the Arab governments for their complicity in the Israeli genocide and their inaction against Israel. We call on the workers of these countries to mobilize independently of their governments and demand arms for Palestine.
We defend a free, democratic and secular Palestine, from the river to the sea, linked to the strategy of permanent revolution, aiming at the struggle for a workers’ government and socialist revolution, for a federation of socialist Arab republics.
Perspectives
Trump’s measures, in addition to aggravating the crisis of the world order, tend to produce greater political polarization. This does not mean that the resistance will be destroyed, but it will lead to more political crises and more struggles, for which we must be prepared.
We do not believe that the resumption of Netanyahu’s attacks, if the ceasefire agreement is ended, will end the Palestinian resistance, as the last year of genocide has shown.
In Ukraine, Trump’s decree will not stop the war. Since Trump attacked and humiliated him, Zelensky’s popularity rating has risen by 7 points. And there is more willingness to resist militarily. And even if there is a defeat in the war, Russian imperialism will have to maintain a land occupation in the region, with all that this means.
The crisis of the EU is coming into view because of the humiliation imposed by Trump and the inability to reach a united European response. The strengthening of the far right in the region is an expression of the same phenomenon, as can be seen in the growth of the AfD in Germany, which doubled its results in the last federal elections and came in second. But the mobilizations that are beginning to take place in Germany itself against the far right point to this growing polarization, as do the results of Die Linke, which has captured the votes of young people.
The mobilizations against Trump in the USA can be expanded. It is no coincidence that the largest mobilizations in the country in recent decades were those that arose from the murder of George Floyd during Trump’s first term. But so far these mobilizations have had to face the obstacles of the Democratic Party and the division of the mass movement.
The measures, interventions and attacks of Trump, the naked face of imperialism, are encouraging the rise of anti-imperialist consciousness in the world. Therefore, it is necessary to advance the anti-imperialist struggle against Trump while maintaining independence from Russian and Chinese imperialism.
Get Trump, Putin and Netanyahu out of Ukraine and Palestine!
Arms for the Ukrainian and Palestinian Resistance!
Against the arms race of the imperialist powers!
