We knew that the history of the rules-based international order was partly false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when it suited them. That trade rules were applied asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. ---- With these lapidary words, spoken during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 19, Mark Joseph Carney, economist, banker, leader of the Liberal Party, and Prime Minister of Canada, revealed the true essence of the global capitalist economic system: a single, vast arena where economic and political hegemony is based exclusively on the balance of power between various state economies, and where any treaty or alleged international law becomes the norm and enforceable only after their crystallization.
These are not words that escaped the Senate, as Carney has held top economic and financial positions, first in the private sector at Goldman Sachs, one of the world's largest investment banks, headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, New York; and later in the public sector, working in the Canadian Finance Department and then as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada. From 2008 to 2013, he served as the eighth Governor of the Bank of Canada, addressing the effects of the late 2000s financial crisis, and from 2013 to 2020, he served as Governor of the Bank of England. From 2011 to 2018, he served as Chair of the G20 Financial Stability Board, and finally, as Canada's twenty-fourth Prime Minister, starting in March 2025.
The awareness that the global economic system - which in the economic literature of the bourgeoisie and its lackeys is hypocritically described as a gathering of men and institutions of noble and high moral sentiments, bearers of democratic values, tending towards the continuous improvement and development of human progress - is in reality a cynical fiction is so acquired that in the continuation of his speech the Prime Minister goes so far as to state:
We no longer rely only on the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength. We are building this strength at home.[...]By the end of this decade, we will double our defence spending, and we will do so in a way that strengthens our domestic industries.[...]We are therefore working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic-Baltic Eight,[1]to further protect the Alliance's northern and western flanks, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar,[2]submarines, aircraft, and ground troops.
The Prime Minister's speech, tragically appreciated by our progressives, continues with the clear affirmation that the "old order will not return" and indicates the unity of these medium-sized state powers and any other "country willing to walk this path with us" as the only viable path for a possible other world order, with the aim of placing these "variable geometry" aggregates on an equal footing with the current hegemonic powers (USA, Russia and China).
The argument essentially states that in a world where economic and military power prevails, the goal is to become stronger economically and militarily, or at least equal. All the rhetoric about the magnificent and progressive fortunes of the capitalist economic system boils down to a playground dispute over who has the most muscle (weapons) to deploy. This strategy, preparatory to military conflict as the final stage of an increasingly exacerbated competitiveness, seems untroubled by this latest sorcerer's apprentice, as do all his admirers.
But every increase in strength of some temporarily allied state or interstate powers can only be accompanied by a decline in other economies and other commodity and commercial sectors. The uneven development of the capitalist economic system, intrinsically impeded by continuous and harmonious global development, appears to concern neither the Prime Minister nor the Italian political class at all; from the liberal conservative sectors, led by former European Central Bank Governor and former Prime Minister Mario Draghi, to the so-called sovereignists and the supposed progressives.
Indeed, the latter will tear their clothes one day and the next, so that the European Union becomes, through the procedure of majority and no longer unanimity, an economically and politically united entity; which is true even if we have already analysed in other pages the transience of such a project, due to the competitiveness of the different bourgeoisies and of the various European states manifested in the same rearmament projects and in the same industrial competition and could only represent another economic and military power, in opposition to the United States of America and China, exacerbating the level of inter-imperialist conflict. In this long list of useful idiots it is not possible to forget also those sectors of the left, self-defined as radical, who in the wretched logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", end up sponsoring and cheering for the BRICS[3]in an anti-American function.
The reality is that in the long global economic crisis of capitalism, the decline in global growth risks bringing us concretely to the brink of a new, war-torn world war. The kidnapping of Maduro, the Venezuelan head of state, was the consistent result of the abandonment of the old world order, constructed to the advantage of American imperialism since 1945; an imperialism that, following the Second World War, had dethroned and replaced the previously dominant British imperialism. All the institutions that had been built to defend that power, starting with the United Nations, are no longer fit for purpose in sustaining American hegemony.
The official establishment in Davos on January 22, 2026, of the Board of Peace, a private club of states of which Donald Trump is president for life, complete with a military contingent and police force, is intended for now to oversee the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and ultimately "promote stability, restore accountable and legitimate government, and ensure lasting peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict." Access to the Board is only possible by invitation from the president himself, subject to the payment of a sum of one billion dollars.
After Ukraine and the Middle East (again), Latin America is also becoming a battleground between the hegemonic imperialist powers. China has now become the main trading partner of many South American states. Chinese companies have extensive and lucrative interests in both the oil and mining sectors. They have invested in Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina in lithium, which they use to supply their battery industry, and they have interests in the mining sector, particularly in copper mined in Chile and in the iron ore sector in Peru. In Peru, they effectively control the major port of Chancay, giving them the ability to dominate and dominate South American trade in the Pacific. Just like Cristobal and Balboa, the two main ports on the Panama Canal,[4]the second busiest artificial navigation line on the planet after the Suez Canal, managed until the end of 2025 by the Chinese conglomerate CK Hutchison, to which the Panamanian government, precisely because of pressure from Trump, blocked the concession on January 30th by means of a decree, resuming control of the two ports and thus opening a further international crisis through an immediate appeal by the Chinese government against the Panamanian government to the International Chamber of Commerce, an organisation that manages commercial disputes between States and private companies, and as a further immediate retaliation by intensifying customs inspections on important Panamanian imports, such as coffee and bananas.
China, still the "world's workshop" due to its low labor costs and overcapacity, geared toward continually increasing its exports, has long secured its own supplies of raw materials, as well as those of many other strategic ports around the world, including the port of Piraeus in Greece, one of the largest in Europe and controlled by the Chinese state-owned giant Cosco Shipping. This is forcing Trump to dust off the Monroe Doctrine, seeking to rebrand Central and South American states as his own backyard. China, in fact, has been one of Maduro's biggest supporters, purchasing his oil and providing him with loans and military assistance.
The US intervention in Venezuela therefore signifies a reassertion of control and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, and this time the intervention took place without any need to disguise it as a need to export democracy, just as American military interventions were forked-tonguedly justified following the Second World War, from Korea to Vietnam, to the Gulf Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the first bizarre accusations of drug trafficking against President Maduro, it was immediately clear, even by President Trump himself, that the true and only interest in the intervention in Venezuela is its oil and the resources needed to maintain US dominance, which is increasingly shaky due to its enormous and growing public debt. This stems from the profound economic crisis in key sectors, such as manufacturing, caused by the policy of offshoring. This outsourcing was attempted to reverse with tariffs, even though the US Supreme Court ruling of February 20 temporarily reduced their economic impact. This increased international chaos, with Trump's need to confirm his tariff policy with new federal laws rather than those previously used, risking arriving at the midterm elections, scheduled for next November, as a classic "lame duck," that is, with a hostile Congress. The US federal debt, which has grown for decades, now stands at approximately $40 trillion, meaning the US government pays interest over $1 trillion annually. Although the BRICS countries are trying to avoid the dollar as much as possible for their trade and financial transactions, the dollar's dominance remains strong, which is why, after Maduro's kidnapping, Trump mockingly and not at all paradoxically declared that "China will be able to continue buying the oil it used to get from Venezuela, only it won't pay for it in yuan like it did with Maduro, but in dollars."
This tenacious defense of the dollar as an international currency of exchange has deep roots. The 2003 intervention in Iraq against Saddam Hussein, who notoriously did not possess any weapons of mass destruction, stems from the attempt to exchange his oil not for dollars but for other currencies, particularly the recently introduced euro. Similarly, in 2011, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama intervened in Libya, in coalition with France and Great Britain, against Gaddafi, who was also guilty of seeking to free himself from the dollar's dominance. This need for control and economic supremacy by the Trump administration is the underlying reason behind its request for the acquisition of Greenland, which, although currently withdrawn, aims to completely appropriate the immense resources present in its subsoil, as well as control over the trade routes that will increasingly open up due to the melting of the glaciers. Indeed, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey (the U.S. government agency that studies land and natural dynamics), oil and gas deposits (estimated at 13% of the world's oil and 30% of its gas resources), gold reserves, as well as rubies, diamonds, and zinc, have been discovered beneath the Arctic island's surface. A veritable energy Eldorado, until now covered by rapidly melting ice due to global warming, is now revealing its full potential. These undiscovered resources are valued at $300-400 billion, according to the aforementioned report.
Greenland, seven times the size of Italy but with 56,000 inhabitants (the majority of whom are Inuit), geographically American but politically Danish, was a little-known land until a few decades ago. Too distant from the global geopolitical stage, too underpopulated, and too cold. In short, too Arctic. Today's Greenland is coveted by many, and the Arctic more generally is a coveted route for many countries. From China, which calls itself a quasi-Arctic state and talks about the Polar Silk Road, to the United States and Europe, which have seized on the potential not only of the new Nordic trade routes but also of the immense energy and mineral resources these places hold.
It's been known for years that Greenland's subsoil contains uranium. But it was nearly inaccessible and considered a kind of forbidden fruit. So much so that Denmark itself, which remains responsible for the island's foreign and defense policy, recently changed its zero-tolerance stance toward nuclear power. For now, Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan are the major exporters. But given their enormous local reserves, Denmark and Greenland could also join the club, giving Denmark itself a leading role in the uranium market. Beyond uranium, global warming is revealing the presence of other treasures in its subsoil: vast reserves of iron, copper, gold, and rare earths, which international mining giants and countries like South Korea and China are beginning to interest. With the melting of the ice, villages that once depended on shrimp fishing, a crucial sector for the local economy, are disappearing. The shrimp have moved further north, seeking colder waters, resulting in rising unemployment and a skyrocketing suicide rate among the native population. Thus, a truly insane economic and political competition between the major powers, born out of the need for ever-increasing profit for the ruling classes, is leading us to World War III.
The reasons for a possible and imminent armed conflict between the major economic powers as an intrinsic necessity of the capitalist mode of production
War becomes all the more necessary the more it claims to save capitalism from its irreversible crisis. A crisis that grows ever deeper due to its overproduction of goods, geared not toward satisfying real needs, but toward profit and the constant decline of its interest rates.
Competition forces every business, from the smallest and most marginal to the largest monopolistic cartels, to innovate production, progressively replacing living labor with the dead labor of machines and new technologies. But only from living labor can profit be derived, by making the proletariat work longer than their wages. Thus, as the portion of goods produced by the dead labor of machines increasingly dominates, the profit rate, which is the only thing that interests the investor, will progressively decline. Thus, the lower the rate of profit becomes, the more difficult it becomes to find an investor willing to risk their capital for a progressively limited potential gain. The abnormal development of financial capitalism arises precisely from this implicit contradiction of the capitalist economic system, replacing the production of goods with a future bet on various stocks and bonds in that market, veritable casino, that are the various financial stock exchanges, where alternating financial fortunes or ruin are taken into account, but where the winner is always the house-that is, capitalism as a general class.
But capital, like savings, if not profitably invested, is progressively eroded by inflation, and any space left vacant by a lack of investment is occupied by increasingly fearsome competition. Thus, more and more capital from rich countries emigrates and seeks to be profitably invested in countries where backwardness curbs the crisis of overproduction, where labor and raw materials are cheaper, allowing for a broader market in which to sell the goods produced profitably. Thus, capitalists investing abroad will increasingly pressure their own states to develop imperialist policies to protect foreign investments. The countless military interventions since the Second World War, from Korea to Vietnam, across the Middle East, from Iraq to Afghanistan and even Ukraine, have this sole rationale . Just as the countless operations hypocritically called peacekeeping operations actually aim to protect national economic interests, maritime routes, and the specific interests of national industries, such as our ENI, a global energy giant with a presence in Libya and operations in the Gulf of Guinea, which has a memorandum of understanding with our Navy, renewed in February of this year. These imperialist policies, therefore, are necessitated by the need to secure new markets, labor, and low-cost raw materials (primarily energy).
But the more an imperialist power rearms to expand its economic sphere of influence, the more other powers, to avoid being swept away by competition, will be driven to develop similar policies, as the Canadian prime minister teaches. Hence the need for rearmament, a categorical imperative for all national bourgeoisies, including the various bourgeoisies of old Europe no longer, or increasingly less, protected by the umbrella of NATO and therefore the United States. Furthermore, the weapons produced, in addition to guaranteeing an unlikely deterrent, must be sold at a profit, and possibly consumed like all commodities, to make room for new weapons. Thus, the potential for inter-imperialist conflicts will increase. So to resolve the capitalist crisis, in the hope that no Dr. Strangelove can actually trigger a nuclear conflict, we move on to the destruction of overproduced capital, goods and labour force, through the classic conventional warfare,[5]for a new season of investments and recovery that will inevitably arrive at the exact same conclusion, but with ever greater means and destructive force, through ever greater expenditure on armaments, to the detriment of the already reduced welfare policies and therefore of indirect wages for the working masses, expenditure which is moreover socialised as it is paid and financed by the national states, therefore by general taxation, while the profits it generates will be privatised.
Faced with such a scenario, it becomes redundant to be surprised or condemned, as our democrats and progressives do, by an authoritarian shift in so-called democracies, which is nonetheless real. Imperialism, monopoly capitalism, is antithetical to democracy, both that etymologically expressed as "government of the people" and to liberal parliamentary democracy itself, the fruit of a still-evolving capitalism, which still needed to saturate national markets while simultaneously ensnaring and mediating, through parliamentary logic, a rising organized labor movement demanding its emancipation and freedom from exploitation. Competition itself, which in capitalist society tends to produce monopoly, inevitably leads to and determines the law of the jungle, that is, the law of the strongest. With the rise of monopolies and finance capital, just as the original free competition, which had evolved into the political competition of the various and diverse bourgeois tendencies, began to fade, the liberal-democratic regime within the bourgeoisie itself, now a cosmopolitan class, also tended to fade. Meanwhile, due to declining profit margins, there were increasingly fewer economic margins to redistribute, both to the middle classes and, even more so, to the working masses. To this end, the ruling class desperately needed the repressive apparatus of the state, such as the army and the police. Where repressive apparatuses are insufficient, because the labor movement organizations were not yet completely subdued and their organizational and social presence in the local communities was reduced, it became essential to mobilize the squadrismo, guaranteed by the right wing of the petty bourgeoisie and the impoverished middle class.
The development of ICE ( US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ), responsible for controlling customs and immigration security in the United States, established in 2003 but disproportionately increased in its personnel and organized and overfunded as a veritable military militia at the service of Trump, that is, the executive, as well as the establishment of Orban's TEK ( Terrorism and Terrorism Force ) in Hungary, founded in 2010 after his rise to power as a true praetorian force at his service, are for now paired with the security legislation of the Meloni government, even if the re-emergence in Italy of openly neo-fascist formations, from CasaPound to the entire right-wing galaxy responsible for the attack on the CGIL headquarters in 2021, to the newly minted political formation of General Vannacci, is explanatory of the new phase underway. Thus, capitalism and its recurring crises generate, along with monopolies, imperialism and that form of government we might define as "Bonapartism," in the sense of an authoritarian regime founded on personal prestige and plebiscitary popular consensus. However, this does not currently require transforming into a true, preventive counterrevolution like the one in Italy after the First World War. Instead, it involves radical right-wing forces that have governed, or continue to partially govern, countries like ours, the Netherlands, Austria, and Poland, or that could govern countries like France with the National Front, Germany with Alternative für Deutschland, and the United Kingdom with Reform.
The only force capable of stopping the prospect of a generalized war is the working class.
Our anti-imperialism is not limited to the United States or the West, but is opposed to every state. Our struggle is against all capitalism, which as an economic and social form continues to confirm its immutable barbarism in every geopolitical quadrant. From the economically and politically defined West, to the lands of East Asia, to the wretched lands of the Middle East and Africa, the economic interests of opposing national or transnational bourgeoisies continue to determine the global balance of power.
The latest episode of war, which broke out as we were writing these notes and which we don't know whether it will still be ongoing when they are published, is the joint attack by Israel and the United States on Iran, resulting in the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This war, too, has the sole and real goal of restoring American economic and political hegemony in the web of interests that is the Middle East, where multiple states are playing their part as regional powers, starting with Israel, a historic US ally, versus Iran, supported militarily by Russia and commercially by China; as well as Saudi Arabia, also a historic US ally but attempting to independently play an anti-Iranian and anti-Israeli role; and finally, Turkey itself, with its military presence in Syria.
The ongoing and impending wars are not the work of madmen in power. They are the natural product of a capitalist system that cyclically requires wars, as well as so-called natural disasters that are not, to revitalize its accumulation. Wars continue to be waged for control of markets, raw materials, energy sources, and rare earths, increasingly necessary for the development of production; through new technologies, far from neutral but indispensable for an ever-increasing extraction of surplus value from the workforce. Despite the countless advocates of a temperate capitalism, capable, they claim, of ensuring the right balance between the different interests of social classes, and the recurring master thinkers of supposedly new and unprecedented forms of capitalism, this new season of conventional conflicts testifies to the invariance of the capitalist economic system. The materiality and tragedy of the ongoing wars confirm the materiality of capitalism and the necessity of its overcoming. Wars, even with drones and advanced technologies, are fought for ancient reasons and in a conventional manner[6]on a defined battlefield. The opposing military forces are clearly recognizable and aim to defeat the adversary through logistical, technological and tactical superiority. If, as it appears to us, all this has some credibility, the need for an internationalist battle is increasingly pressing. We have no other choice.
Those who truly work for peace among peoples cannot simply tear their clothes over the supposed demise of so-called international law. In this case, the UN is the problem, not the solution. If we have reached these conclusions, it means that this body has formally balanced the inter-imperialist conflict, as the Canadian Prime Minister reminded us, for as long as it was convenient. The same will apply to the Board of Peace and other similar factions. It must be said, loudly, that there is only one war for freedom: the one waged in every country, Arab or Western, in the global North or South, by the exploited against the exploiters. Our task is to push workers against their bosses. This is possible if, in Italy, as throughout the world, the labor movement, its political organizations, and trade unions point the finger of blame at the increase in military spending and the war industries; Against the government, increasingly a business committee for the interests of the bourgeoisie, as Minister Crosetto, a good arms lobbyist and with disregard for his own safety, demonstrated with his presence in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) after war was declared; against the attempt to make workers, both male and female, and the younger generations, pay the price of their lords' war. Increased fuel prices, lower social spending, inadequate contracts, essentially worsening social conditions for the working masses: these are the decisions made and will be made, justifying them with war. Greater and widespread social involvement is needed.
The stronger the class struggle develops, the lower the risk of war between states.
Note
[1]The Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) is a regional cooperation format that brings together eight Nordic and Baltic countries, all members of NATO. The group includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. This informal alliance coordinates the security and defence of Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea.
[2]Remotely piloted aircraft capable of operating and transmitting data at distances greater than the operator's direct visual or radio range, overcoming the curvature of the Earth. This capability allows for very long-range control, essential for military surveillance and attack missions.
[3]See Cristiano Valente, Pecunia non olet: economic relations between Israel and the BRICS , «il Cantiere», n. 40, 2025.
[4]See The Spider Web , «il Cantiere», n. 35, 2025.
[5]See Fabrizio Coticchia, Matteo Mazziotti di Celso, The future of rearmament: Causes, costs and dilemmas of a historic turning point , «ISPI», February 2026 (https://www.ispionline.it/it/il-futuro-del-riarmo).
[6]Conventional warfare is an armed conflict between states using traditional tactics and standard non-nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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