Economic war and warfare are inherent characteristics. There is no
positive solution for the working class within the limits of thissystem. Workers must take their future into their own hands and fight
for their liberation from the exploitation of man by man and from wage
slavery. ---- The global economic and political scenario, characterized
by the choices of the new American administration, fuels the
increasingly strong rhetoric on the need for political and military
autonomy of the European Union, which has now materialized on the need
for its rearmament, indicated by the President of the European
Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, through the "ReArm Europe" plan of 800
billion euros over the next four years. In reality, the certain, planned
and common debt-backed European funds are 150 billion. The remaining 650
in fact should be spent directly by individual States that can resort to
the "escape clause", that is, the clause that allows derogation from the
spending margins provided for in the Stability Pact and therefore the
possibility of getting into debt, exceeding the limits of European
fiscal rules. Countries that request it will therefore be allowed to
increase their defense spending up to 1.5% of their GDP in the next four
years.
From these forecasts, the Commission has estimated that overall, more
spending could be made for around 250 billion per year once the various
governments have defined a clear investment plan and authorized by the
Commission itself. The "ReaArm Europe" Plan then identifies the
possibility that funds already allocated, such as cohesion funds, which
are allocated every seven years, mainly intended for the most backward
areas of the continent, such as in our South, very often not spent
entirely, can also be used and diverted for expenses related to Defense
and armaments. We are talking about 526 billion euros allocated in 2021
until 2027 and of which only 5% on average has been spent so far. Here
we are faced with the same mechanism set in motion by the Commission
that in May 2023, one year after the war in Ukraine, approved a similar
measure that allowed EU member states to divert part of the cohesion
funds and Next Generation EU itself to finance the purchase of munitions
and other military devices, even if after controversy in the European
Parliament and in some national governments, it seems that at the moment
no one has resorted to this instrument. To these logics that
significantly express the priority choices of the administrative and
political apparatuses of the European Union, planning to allocate
billions of euros for armaments instead of "welfare" policies, are added
and clash the different appetites and interests of the individual
national bourgeoisies within the European Union itself.
The search for economic and military supremacy and the constant attempt
to determine power relations in their favor, the search for economic and
military supremacy, are in the reality of economic and political events
the "leitmotif" that each individual State tries to pursue, masking it
with repeated and hypocritical statements on the need for autonomy of
the European continent or on the alleged political superiority of a
presumed European model compared to the USA with which, as often
happens, sycophants, acrobats, and useful idiots, self-declared
progressives align themselves.
The statements of Roberto Vecchioni from the Roman stage of the
pro-Europe demonstration, called by Michele Serra on an alleged cultural
superiority of Europe, are a tragic confirmation of this. The case of
the aerospace sector is emblematic in this regard. Italy has so far
secured an equal participation of 33.3% within the GCAP project, the
"Global combat air programme", a program aimed at providing
sixth-generation fighters, together with the United Kingdom and Japan.
Two states outside the European Union, one outside the continent itself.
This project should allow Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan to develop
an autonomous solution with respect to the F35 aircraft, a
fifth-generation fighter plane, produced by the US Lockheed Martin
Aerospace, even if soon, as foreseen by the Multi-Year Programming
Document (Dpp) 2024-2026. The Chamber and Senate will have to vote on
the green light to purchase an additional 25 F-35 fighters. In the very
recent conference "GCAP and the Country System: Challenges and
Opportunities for Italy" which took place on Thursday 13 March in Rome,
organized by the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), the Italian study
center for international relations, an institute that was bizarrely
founded by Altiero Spinelli, the man behind the Ventotene manifesto, one
of the 20 most influential study centers globally, Alessandro Marrone,
head of the Institute's Defense, Security and Space Program, observed:
"By investing in the GCAP with an equal position with its British and
Japanese partners, Italy aims to have full operational and technological
sovereignty over next-generation aircraft, and therefore greater
autonomy from the United States compared to the case of the F-35. The
GCAP was launched already in 2022, and today it is even more important
to invest in it and accelerate the program because the Trump
administration has made it clear in the most drastic and blatant way
possible that the security and defense of Europe are something that
concerns first and foremost the Europeans themselves".(1)
Later, the Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto explained: "The GCAP is an
ambitious project for the development, in collaboration with the United
Kingdom and Japan, of the 6th generation fighter aircraft. It will be
essential to ensure innovative operational capabilities as well as an
important competitive and technological advantage in the aerospace
landscape, essential to face future challenges".(2) Furthermore, the
Strategic Direction 2025-2027 of the Ministry of Defense considers the
GCAP an opportunity to promote investments in research and technology.
The Multi-Year Programming Document 2024-2026 (DPP), which takes stock
of Italy's strategic priorities, allocates 8.9 billion euros for the
sixth-generation fighter until 2050 and underlines its role in
strengthening Italian military capabilities. (3)
As can be seen, the European puzzle in the logic of the nation states
and on the possibility of a resolution through a "cold fusion" treaty
seems unsolvable. It is no coincidence that the greatest singers of a
European imperialist pole, such as the former Prime Minister Mario
Monti, speaking at a "panel" within the Second Congress of Action, a
centrist political group led by the former Minister Calenda, on 29 and
30 March, continue to indicate that to avoid a future of economic
irrelevance and subordination of the European Union and to arrive at a
true European State "it is necessary to shed blood", reaffirming the
convictions that he had already expressed in his interview with the
Corriere della Sera in May last year. (4)
And to better clarify this statement and to make it clear that he was
not speaking in metaphors, the senator for life made precise historical
references, stating: "During the Italian Risorgimento, much blood was
shed, and so it happened in the American Civil War and in the birth of
the German nation". (5) While part of the national public opinion is
cloaked in European blue flags, supported and waved in particular by the
supposed progressive and left-wing forces, who have discovered
themselves to be more nationalist and warmongering than the sovereignist
and nationalist right-wing forces themselves, ready to put on their
helmets and spears in hand against yesterday's friend, Italy is making
agreements for sixth-generation fighters with two countries outside the
European Union, while Germany, as regards the construction of
sixth-generation fighters, is preparing to become autonomous from the
USA, re-establishing relations with France, which in turn has left the
Eurofighter Consortium, formed by the industries of Germany, Spain,
Italy and the United Kingdom. The CEO Éric Trappier of Dassault
Aviation, a French aircraft design and manufacturing company, in a
recent interview with Handelsblatt, a German economic and financial
daily newspaper, states: "I am delighted that Germany wants to invest
massively in defense",(6) stressing that a historic turning point would
only materialize with the cancellation of the F-35 order by Chancellor
Friedrich Merz. At the same time, in France, which has always pursued an
idea of strategic national autonomy in the air defense sector, the war
industry is booming: in 2024 Dassault recorded a record profit of more
than one billion euros, with an order portfolio of 43.2 billion, largely
attributable to national programs such as the Rafale.
"This fighter - the Handelsblatt writes - although not fifth-generation
like the F-35, has proven to be competitive thanks to its versatility,
long range and ability to integrate effectively into joint operations
with allied forces, including the US. Dassault has achieved important
commercial successes, with billion-dollar orders from the United Arab
Emirates, Indonesia and Serbia, consolidating the Rafale as one of the
main Western competitors in the fighter aircraft market. (7) As can be
seen, each individual nation state faces this economic and political
situation with projects and programs that ultimately foresee and
determine its own military economic superiority, to the detriment of
other nation states, such as Germany itself, which has planned to
independently allocate 500 billion for defense, infrastructure and the
Länder over the next ten years, approving, with the bipartisan votes of
the SPD and the CDU-CSU and with the help of the Greens, constitutional
changes to overcome the debt brake, inserted in their constitution.
This too further element confirms that the pro-European rhetoric is such
and that in reality individual nation states such as Germany, much less
indebted, will be able to borrow more and more easily with new debt to
finance their military industry to the detriment of those, for example
Italy, which has a strong debt exposure, thus confirming and determining
a productive and technological gap in armament possibilities,
reconfirming a leadership position that in the case of Germany harks
back to sad and dark past historical periods. This nationalist logic is
the same as that of the American administration of Trump who, not at all
a "bully" or "crazy", actually well represents the need of American
capital to reduce the immense foreign debt that, exceeding the record
figure of 23 thousand billion dollars, is seriously jamming and reducing
American global hegemony, already forced to withdraw from world
scenarios such as Iran, Afghanistan and now from Ukraine itself, trying
to obtain as a compensatory exchange the maximum economic result with
the future exploitation and management of rare earths and the future
reconstruction of that country.
The American objective at this stage is to reduce its debt exposure,
re-establish relations with Russia, detaching it from China and
competing with this, the only true nation capable at this historical
moment of countering American interests in the world, even if this
attempt seems desperate since the trade between Russia and China has
doubled for now. Following the Second World War, Europe, totally
destroyed, had a vassal role, determining and strengthening the
development and American imperialist hegemony throughout the world. But
at the moment in which the American crisis reverberates on international
conditions and the area of influence is reduced, the old vassals behave,
as we have seen, necessarily and ineluctably like Manzoni's famous
"Renzo's capons", pecking at each other. Moreover, Trump himself, when
he not casually and seriously states that Canada must become the
fifty-first state of the USA, or fears the need to re-appropriate the
Panama Canal and Greenland itself, with hegemonic aims in the
neighboring state of Mexico, affirms and confirms the need for the
capitalist economic system to have an ever-increasing geographical space
and economic and political monopolies through an exponential growth in
the centralization of capital. The new tariff policy therefore
represents an escalation of a policy of economic protectionism that,
although never completely dormant and overcome in the capitalist
economic system, was already announced and partly defined during the
first Trump presidency, continued under the Democratic presidency of
Biden and today strengthened and ratified by the second Trump
presidency. But protectionism and trade wars cannot resolve the crisis
of capitalism. Indeed, they will worsen it. After the stock market crash
in 1929, it was the policy of competitive devaluations and duties that
plunged the world economy into depression, resolved only and exclusively
after the scourge of the Second World War and the reconstruction of the
60s and 70s of the last century. The subsequent delocalization, used as
an element of reduction of labor costs and increase of profit margins,
passed off by the usual singers and lackeys of the capitalist economic
system, as a phenomenon with magnificent progressive destinies, through
the so-called globalization, has in reality determined a world
increasingly divided into economic blocks in fierce competition, of
which the echoes of a new war are the clear demonstration.
The harsh reality is that without a strong manufacturing background, as
in the 1950s and 1960s, it becomes more complicated to exercise
economic, political and military imperialist domination. The economic
and political "rationale" of tariffs presupposes that American
production and not only will relocate to the USA; but this will not be
the case. That line of economic and political direction called
"reshoring", or the phenomenon of the various phases of production
returning home, which Trump's tariff policy and not only would like to
determine is only a hope rather than a possible reality, as it conflicts
with the need for capital to always and everywhere have and seek
production sites and labor at reduced costs.
After all, the discussion between the various national bourgeoisies,
between supporters of tariffs and free traders is certainly not new.
Already towards the end of 1847, a Congress of free traders was convened
in Brussels, supported by English industrialists, who asked for free
access for their manufactured products in exchange for the passage
opened to the continent's cereals.
Here is how, in the preface to the speech given by Karl Marx, who was
also present at this Congress, Engels masterfully outlines the
schizophrenia of such processes, even then presented as the panacea for
the economic fortunes of an England which at that historical moment
needed new markets for its goods. "But the worst thing about
protectionism is that, once introduced, it is not easy to get rid of. If
a fair tariff is difficult to arrange, the return to free trade is
immensely more difficult... .. Thus the protection of silk products (the
only ones that still feared foreign competition) was prolonged for a
series of years or with truly unworthy ways; while the other textile
industries were subjected to the Factory Act, which limited the hours of
work for women, young people and children, the silk industry was favored
with significant privileges, authorizing it to employ tender children
and for more hours than in other textile industries. The monopoly, which
the hypocritical free-traders abolished with respect to foreign
competitors, they reconstituted at the expense of the health and lives
of English children"(8) The supply lines, today more than ever, cross
national borders. Any interruption will cause economic damage that
capitalists will make workers pay for through higher prices, layoffs,
intensified exploitation and factory closures. The reborn and incipient
phenomenon of economic and political nationalism essentially means the
attempt to export unemployment. This is the meaning of the "America
First" policy; specularly the same as "Europe First" or "Italy first"
and so on, in a crescendo of particularisms of the different national,
territorial bourgeoisies, all seasoned with patriotism and presumed
cultural, even racial superiority. Tariffs and trade wars are yet
another manifestation of the crisis of capitalism.
There is no lasting solution for the working class within the limits of
this system.
It is time for workers to take their future into their own hands and put
aside wage slavery once and for all.
Beyond all borders and for the unity of the international working class.
Notes:
(1) Italy aims for autonomy with the sixth-generation fighter Gcap. F35,
Chief of Staff Goretti: "If the US turns off the light we will operate
anyway" Il Sole 24 ore .13 March 2025
(2) Idem
(3) Idem
(4) "We should recover an obsolete word: sacrifices. Can we really
advance in European integration, withstanding two wars on our borders,
without sacrifices? Italy was not made without bloodshed".Interview with
Corriere della Sera on May 6, 2024
(5) Idem
(6) F 35 Germany torpedoes the American Lockheed and embraces the French
Dassault? STARTMagazine March 14, 2025
(7) Idem
(8) Marx-Engels Archive Protective duty and free trade (1888) Preface to
the "Discourse on Free Trade" by Karl Marx. Translated by Filippo Turati
and published in: Discourse on Free Trade by Karl Marx with a Preface by
Frederick Engels, Uffici della Critica Sociale, Milan, 1894, pp.3-21.
Transcribed by Leonardo M. Battisti, November 2017
The spider web
The intricate web of economic interests of the various national states
within the inevitable process of capitalist centralization and concentration
Since the end of World War II, military supremacy in the oceans has been
the fundamental objective pursued by the United States, which has built
naval bases practically all over the world. During World War II, the
United States inherited the role that for a long time belonged to Great
Britain. Today, this superiority is threatened by China. The World Trade
Organization has estimated that the maritime sector is responsible for
53% of Chinese trade. For this reason, over the years China has
developed the first commercial fleet in the world and seems to want to
surpass the United States in the number of warships. The largest
investments are in port infrastructure and logistics. The so-called new
"Trumpian" course is nothing other than the attempt not to lose this
strategic game with China, whose economic structure, its territorial
size, its demographic development, the enormous technological and
scientific progress, together with its social discipline, are such as to
make that country rise to the absolute pinnacle of world economic and
political power. The announced acquisition of Greenland and the Panama
Canal, not a "boutade" at all, should be placed within this scenario.
Trump's strategy in fact aims at several objectives: getting his hands
on the potential of rare earths, gas and oil, which a report by the US
Geological Survey (the American state agency that studies the territory)
estimates at 300-400 billion dollars in value and the control of a trade
route that risks ending up, in the future, in the hands of Moscow and
Beijing. Greenland has so far been a land of ice without the
technological possibility of getting his hands on its impressive raw
materials. In the subsoil of the Arctic island, deposits estimated at
around 13% of the world's oil resources and 30% of those of gas have
been discovered. In addition to gold reserves, but also rubies,
diamonds, zinc and uranium. Furthermore, global warming, causing the
melting of almost 300 billion tons of ice per year, predicts not only
the prospects of extraction, but also the opening of new maritime
routes. In fact, sailing along the Arctic shortens the route by about
40% compared to the passage from Suez. According to data from the Arctic
Council, with the melting of the ice and the opening of new routes,
commercial traffic has already increased significantly in the last
decade and on that area of the world, halfway between the USA and
Europe, Russia and China have already set their sights, having already
signed an agreement to develop the Arctic routes together. The largest
island in the world, which is currently an autonomous territory of
Denmark after having been a colony, is also a key place for the security
of the USA, which sees it as a crucial military defense outpost.American
forces have been present since the end of the Second World War with the
important Pituffik Space base, a base that Vice President Vance visited
a few days ago, considered strategic in the event of a nuclear attack by
Moscow. Similar reasoning applies to the Panama Canal, which well
represents the clash between US and Western capital on one side and
Chinese capital on the other and the further increasingly tight global
intertwining of ports, supply chains and military strategies. It is no
coincidence that the first visit abroad by US Secretary of State Marco
Rubio was to Panama and that at the beginning of 2025 Panama withdrew
from the agreements on the "Belt and Road Initiative", the new Silk
Road, distancing itself from China after being the first country in
Latin America to sign a memorandum of understanding with Beijing. Trump
has often stated in his election rallies that he wants to take back the
Panama Canal, even by force if necessary, confirming the American desire
to secure a position in the "hot spots" of maritime traffic; from Panama
to the control of the Arctic routes. With a preliminary agreement of 23
billion dollars, on March 4 the BlackRock-MSC consortium committed to
acquire 43 terminals of the Hong Kong company, CK Hutchison, present in
Panama. Among these, the ports of Balboa and Cristobal, ports located at
the two ends of the Canal that connects the Atlantic and Pacific. More
than a month after the announcement, the purchase proposal should have
been transformed into a definitive contract on April 2, but the
operation was suspended, after the pressure that the conglomerate led by
the 96-year-old magnate, Li Ka-Shing, and his son, Chair Victor Lista,
is receiving in China, to cancel the signature on the agreement.
Specifically, the preliminary agreement with CK Hutchison was reached by
a consortium formed by the giant US investment fund BlackRock, the
specialized fund Global Infrastructure Partners (recently acquired by
BlackRock itself) and Terminal Investment Ltd (Til), a group based in
Switzerland, which is headed by the shipping company MSC and of which
Gip holds a third of the shares. The new game, of reconquering the
Panama Canal, is in short played by BlackRock and MSC. The movers are
the largest US investment fund with the help of the Aponte family, today
the spearhead of the shipping groups that operate in the Western sphere
of influence. The agreement provides for the acquisition of the 90% that
Hutchison holds in Panama Ports Company and 80% of CK Hutchison, which
manages 43 terminals around the world, from Egypt to Australia: a total
of 199 docks spread across 23 countries. In Europe, this includes
container docks in Rotterdam, Le Havre, Hamburg and Antwerp, major
European and global trading ports. With this possible acquisition of CK
Hutchison,The Aponte family, which already manages 70 container
terminals, managed by its subsidiary Til, would become the group with
the largest container handling capacity in the world, even surpassing
the PSA Singapore group which (2023 data) managed 62 million TEUs
(twenty-foot equivalent units - standard unit of measurement of length
in container transport) in its 40 terminals. In fact, Til alone owns 70
container terminals in 31 countries. The Til-Hutchison duo would
currently handle over 80 million TEUs per year in 113 port terminals. As
can be easily seen, these numbers confirm that process of gigantism and
the powerful capacity for vertical integration of supply chains, in this
case by MSC, which is inevitable in the global capitalist competitive
system, fueling that continuous process of centralization and economic
concentration, therefore monopolistic or oligopolistic, capable of
controlling and decisively influencing the production and distribution
of profits. Paraphrasing the famous expression "It's the economy,
stupid!" coined by Bill Clinton during the 1992 electoral campaign, when
he managed to oust George Bush Sr. after his first term, we could say
"this is imperialism, stupid!"
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