Trump’s is a policy of blind hubris and arrogance, which is bound to backfire to the detriment of US imperialism.
Every day that goes by further underlines how much Donald Trump’s re-election has changed the world. His regime of personal “strong man” rule is ripping up the fabric of world relations, economics and politics, at a time of deep overlapping crises of the capitalist system on all these fronts. And he has only been in office for a few weeks!
A public beating in the Oval Office
The most dramatic moment so far came with the televised humiliation of Volodymir Zelensky in the Oval Office on 28 February. News channels around the world interrupted programming to cut straight to scenes of Trump, JD Vance and the crestfallen Ukrainian President shouting over each other: “you’re not winning”, barked Trump, who closed the press conference saying the exchange would at least “make great television”. Within minutes, Zelensky was told to go home and come back when he was “ready for peace”. Within a couple of days, Trump had “paused” all US military aid to Ukraine.
Contrary to the line peddled by most of the liberal Western media, this spectacle was most likely not premeditated. The plan was in fact entirely different: Zelensky was there to sign an agreement with Trump, an agreement of classical imperialist subjugation — handing control of key resources and industries to the US. This was a “deal” which Trump very much wanted to do and which at the time of writing, is still very much on the cards.
The path for Zelensky’s visit had been laid in the days prior, by grovelling pilgrimages made by Macron and Starmer, whose “Trump whispering” (ego stroking) skills clearly outmatch those of their counterpart in Kyiv. The week was going well, they must have thought: Trump is listening to us, we have his ear and our seat at the table. Zelensky’s visit, despite achieving no concrete progress in terms of Trump’s position on the war, would be another small step in the right direction, and a European summit in London the following Sunday would cap it all off.
Instead, it was a summit of deep crisis, of scrambling to clean up the mess in the Oval Office. These efforts have continued in the days that followed, and will dominate events in Europe for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, however, they will be in vain: the mess is here to stay.
The end of the West?
Trump’s disruptive actions are only the first steps in a clear policy, which mark a crucial change in the dynamic of world relations. This policy is dynamiting the foundations of the so-called “Western alliance” which has been at the heart of the world imperialist balance of forces for more than a century. In particular, the nature of US imperialism’s relationship with the European powers is being transformed, and probably irreversibly so.
This is not a change which has fallen from the sky, but a tipping point in a process which has been decades in the making. It was under Obama that the US first articulated the doctrine of “pivoting to Asia” (aka to confront China’s rise) in 2012. As explained in an earlier article on internationalsocialist.net, Trump is now bringing this pivot to fuller fruition. It was plainly explained that this was the basis for his determination to disengage from the Ukraine conflict by Defence Secretary Pete Hesgeth in his controversial speech at the NATO Ukraine defense contact group meeting in Brussels some three weeks ago: “the U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs.”
However, the other underlying process in this shifting of the geopolitical tectonic plates is a fundamental one: the deep historic decline of European capitalism.
The so-called Western alliance has never been among equals, and since the end of World War II, the US has been the undisputed hegemon within it. It has always had a de facto veto in NATO, and with its “allies” in general. Its economic and military might is unequalled. “Defense spending by the United States accounted for nearly 40 percent of military expenditure by countries around the world in 2023 (…) more on defense than the next nine countries combined.” (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI).
This is nothing new to imperialism. As well as bitter struggle between rival powers and blocs, its dynamic is also characterised by relations of domination and submission within imperialist blocs and “alliances”.
For the so-called West, each major crisis and historic turning point has made this reality even starker, with the weight and position of European powers declining further and further throughout the decades. As recently as 1997, when Tony Blair became UK Prime Minister, Britain’s economy was bigger than those of China and India combined. It is now a mere minnow in comparison to each of them. As European decline accelerated, so too conversely did US dominance grow.
The Ukraine war had a contradictory impact on this process. Its immediate impact was to bring the alliance closer. The US, under Biden’s “America is back at the table” policy, was reasserting the centrality of alliance and bloc building, both in Europe and in the Pacific, after the — mild in comparison with today! — disruption of Trump’s first administration. The war’s outbreak and escalation into a bloody quagmire strengthened US leadership within NATO, increased cohesion within the Western bloc and even saw NATO expand significantly, admitting Sweden and Finland.
On the other hand, however, the war shone an unforgiving light on the uneven nature of the Western alliance: it was a NATO proxy-war effort on European soil, but which the European powers (and Canada) were completely dependent on the US to wage.
Indeed, the relative decline of European imperialism has a particularly sharp expression in the military sphere. Studies at the beginning of the war revealed that Britain’s ammunition supplies would barely last for a week in a conflict on the scale of the Ukraine war. Even today, two of the EU’s “big four” — Italy and Spain — still spend less than the NATO-mandated 2% of GDP on defence.
For the Biden administration, this state of affairs was essentially viewed as American leadership in action. But Trump views it in a fundamentally different way, more like a real estate billionaire than a “statesman”. He sees the balance of power at play and throws his weight around to take advantage of it. In this case, that means pushing the Europeans, who lack “hard power” and leverage, around. His treatment of the once high-and-mighty French and British imperialists is more akin to that traditionally meted out to neo-colonial powers. But it is a treatment they will have to learn to get used to.
What now for Europe?
The level of their dependence on the US has thus far meant that the knee-jerk reaction of the main players in Europe has been to grovel to Trump and bend over backwards not to offend him. Indeed, while most European leaders were full of words of public solidarity with Zelensky after his dressing down in Washington, their behind-closed-doors message to him was clearly that he needed to do everything to get back into Donald’s good books. NATO chief Mark Rutte’s remarks after the spat stated simply that Zelensky “must find a way to restore his relationship with the American president” and to “really respect what President Trump has done so far for Ukraine.” Even after the US paused its military aid to Ukraine, the UK government merely tried to keep the show on the road, refusing to criticise Trump’s decision.
This approach bore some fruit in Zelensky’s 4 March statement, which expressed regret over the Oval Office incident, and promised to “to sign a minerals and security agreement with the United States and to work under president Donald Trump’s strong leadership.” This appeared to have had at least some of the desired effect, as Trump proudly read excerpts of the text during his nauseatingly triumphalist address to US Congress on the same day.
While the main European powers have no choice, for now, but to submit to Trump’s whip and hope for the best, a longer-term shift is undoubtedly gathering pace. A concerted push is underway across the continent to accelerate its independent military build-up, with a slew of militarist pledges being made, including a major (if somewhat vague) agreement by EU states to raise up to 800 billion euros for continental defence spending. Macron addressed the nation on 5 March, warning that “I want to believe that the U.S. will stay by our side, but we have to be ready if they don’t.”
While Trump remains committed to NATO and its “article 5” in words, the future of the alliance and the organization itself has never been more uncertain. With the current Trumpian pace of wreckage, its next major summit in the Hague in June feels like an age away and could be explosive. From military spending demands, to the state of play regarding Ukraine, to Russia sanctions, the landscape is a minefield for further escalations in the growing transatlantic breach. In his TV address, Macron seriously raised the prospect of a separate European nuclear defence umbrella (presumably based on French and British nukes), showing the degree to which confidence in NATO’s future has been shaken.
As Trump’s administration pivots away from confrontation with Russian imperialism in Europe, the mainstream of European ruling class thinking has moved in the opposite direction. In country after country, the tone is being set that Europe is preparing for war with Putin. The Swedish Prime Minister went so far as to state publicly in January that his country was “neither at peace nor at war”.
European leaders’ statements zig zag bizarrely between asserting that Russia is a spent force in Ukraine on one hand, and that it is on the verge of invading other Eastern European countries on the other. But it is clear that they see the likely outcome of the Ukraine war — a relative success for Russia — as being a step towards further conflict with an emboldened Kremlin. Already, there are many reports of unprecedented spikes in so-called “grey zone” (hostile action short of the declaration of war) warfare by Russia against European countries, such as the sabotage of undersea cables, cyber attacks and Russian “shadow fleet” surveillance of infrastructure facilities. In Romania, courts even took the bizarre and — it must be said — undemocratic and hypocritical move of cancelling the first round of Presidential elections based on claims of Russian interference.
The urgency of the push for rearmament is also reflected in the Covid-style jettisoning of the neoliberal playbook by EU authorities. With the usually fiscally-conservative German ruling class in the vanguard, they are dropping debt and deficit limits in order to speed up the flow of money to the war machine.
This push is a deep-seated one, though it faces many obstacles. Crucially, it is also the beginning of a decisive political battle on the continent, which will have important implications for the class struggle. We are entering a phase in which governments everywhere will demand more “tough choices” in the name of “national security”. The drive to build up the imperialist war machine will be at the centre of a new wave of austerity, in a situation where the European working class has suffered from decades of cuts and inflation.
While governments — even those who have been in crisis, as is the case in France, Britain and elsewhere — may benefit from a rallying to the flag, this will be temporary at best. In this situation, the labour movement and left adopting a consistently antiwar and anti-imperialist position is crucial, both for the struggle against ruling parties and against rising European Trumpism.
Ukraine — what is the deal?
Amid all the noise about Ukraine, it must be remembered that no deal has been done. The war is raging on with intensified drone attacks. Indeed, while Trump is very keen to proclaim a deal, what it will look like and when or if it can be done, is far from clear.
From what we know of the negotiating positions of both sides, and the proposals of the US administration, very challenging gaps remain. When Trump told reporters that Putin had agreed to the stationing of European “peacekeepers” in Ukraine, he was rebuked by the Kremlin. In public, the Russian regime still demands to forcibly limit the size of Ukraine’s army, and be given control of major cities (including Kherson and Zaporizhia) which it has not even been able to occupy. On the other hand, the Zelensky regime still insists on the idea that it will not recognize any Russian annexation of territory. Proposals for partial and temporary ceasefires in various forms have been floated by both France and Ukraine, though these are mostly for show.
What is clear is that Trump’s policy has tipped the balance on the battlefield even further in Putin’s favour. Though the suspension of US aid will not have a major effect on the frontline for some months, the curbing of US intelligence provision to the Ukrainian army is more immediately significant. It severely limits Ukraine’s ability to continue drone and missile attacks against military and energy infrastructure in Russia, some of which have been quite successful.
For Russian imperialism, there is no rush to do any sort of peace deal in these circumstances unless, of course, it is a very good one for their interests (and therefore one which the European powers would be loath to get on board with).
However, while Putin is relatively happy to sit back, carry on, and watch the crisis unfold on the other side, it would be an exaggeration to suggest his regime has no interest in ending the war. Their concern is less for the thousands of bodies they send to the meat-grinder, but more for the tantalizing prospect of the lifting of economic sanctions and the benefits of a Trump-led recuperation of prestige and credibility on the world stage.
Several potential scenarios exist for the future of the war. It is unclear how long Trump’s suspension of aid to Ukraine will last, but if it is to endure for several more months, then a major short-term increase in European assistance would be required in order to avoid a collapse of the front, even if only to maintain the current slow but steady losing trajectory for Ukraine.
In order to curry Trump’s favour, it is likely that the Ukrainians and European powers will be forced to engage in at least a pretence of negotiations with Russia in the near future, potentially accompanied by a partial or temporary ceasefire. However, despite Washington’s intentions, such a process would be as problem-filled as the twists and turns which preceded it.
It is also quite possible that eventually, Trump succeeds in undermining the authority and position of Zelensky sufficiently to bring about his removal. Alongside a widespread rallying to Zelensky’s defence after the Oval Office debacle, reports quickly began to surface of growing criticism of Zelensky within Ukraine. On 4 March the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter reported that bourgeois opposition figures had begun to “accuse Zelenskyy of having ruined relations with the United States and thereby plunged Ukraine into a catastrophe.” If a debacle begins to unfold on the frontline amid continued friction with Washington, such voices could gain the upper hand, paving the way for a more pliant leadership in Kyiv. Opposition figures within Ukraine, including Zelensky’s archnemesis Poroshenko, have confirmed that they are in discussion with the Trump administration already.
In terms of a deal, the type which Trump desires has become abundantly clear: a good old-fashioned imperialist carve-up of Ukraine. Much more significant than any statement on Ukraine’s territory or NATO membership by his administration was its attempt to strong-arm the Ukrainian government into a “deal” which would have seen them surrender a higher share of GDP than Germany was forced to accept in the infamous Versailles treaty of 1919. Initially, the Ukrainians were not even promised anything in return, rather this would be merely “payback” for aid the US had already provided.
Moreover, the qualms of Zelensky with this deal — a variant of which he himself proposed in his ill-fated “victory plan” in 2024 — were not with the plundering of his country’s resources, but rather with the lack of attached “security guarantees”.
This episode is extremely revealing, both of the predatory nature of US imperialism today, which has never changed its spots, and of the nature of the imperialist proxy-war which has caused so much pain and destruction for ordinary Ukrainians (and Russians). Rival imperialist looters are fighting it out over who gets to plunder the country’s wealth, resources and people. Socialists stand for an end to the bloodshed, and for independent working-class organization and resistance to the ugly interests represented on both sides, linked to an international struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
Openings for Chinese imperialism
Trump’s approach is based on a crude, brutal banging of the American fist on the table, both with adversaries and “allies”. In some cases, this will bring short term results, as seen for example in his apparent success in undermining Chinese power on the Panama Canal, where the infamous Blackrock corporation is poised to take over two controversial strategically-placed ports owned by the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Holdings
However, overall Trump’s is a policy of blind hubris and arrogance, which is bound to backfire to the detriment of US imperialism.
His actions are already creating openings for its main imperialist rival, China, which has spent some years on the back foot and is beset by deep economic problems. The turmoil described above leaves the Xi regime not only with a strengthened ally in Moscow, vindicating its position of pro-Russian fake “neutrality”, but more importantly, with opportunities to exploit fractures in the West.
Already, amid the growing breach with Trump, European governments are beginning to rethink relations with Beijing. The Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told the Financial Times on 25 February, “Europe must take its own decisions, on its own. And we have to decide when China can be a partner and when China is a competitor.”
After Trump engaged in a brutal showdown with Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, threatening tariffs in response to the latter’s opposition to the inhumane treatment of shackled Colombian deportees from the US, China’s ambassador in Bogota conveniently declared that the two countries were “experiencing the best moment in our diplomatic relations”. Since Trump’s election, both Colombia and Brazil have fast-tracked the opening of new shipping routes via China’s new flagship mega-port in Chincay, Peru.
Trump’s trade war, which is set to escalate, while inflicting serious pain on China’s economy in the absence of any negotiations or “pause”, will also open new economic and trade opportunities for China, from Latin America, to Canada, and Europe.
However, in addition to these important factors, Trump is also handing his rivals a big win in the court of global public opinion, which China has been courting successfully, especially in the so-called global south. In Trump 2.0, the Xi regime now faces a US administration which is openly pushing for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and making bizarre racist attacks on the South African government. Along these same lines, Trump and Elon Musk’s throwing of USAid “into the wood-chipper” is a significant undermining of the historic “soft power” approach which has been an important part of US imperialist strategy since WWII. While the Chinese regime cannot fill the vacuum of cancelled aid projects (its focus in the Global South is on transport and energy infrastructure that win fat contracts for Chinese construction companies), it will squeeze the maximum propaganda value from Trump’s callousness.
Following the Zelensky Oval Office beat-down, the US Guardian interviewed a hawkish former PLA colonel, Zhou Bo, whose assessment was that “America is going down”, creating opportunities for Beijing, including in relation to Taiwan. He mused, ““How confident would the Taiwanese be with the United States, especially with the Trump administration?…Maybe the Taiwanese will one day consider, ‘Well, we cannot move away anyway. We will have to stay here. Maybe it’s not bad for us to be a member of the strongest nation on earth.”
Though this is extremely wishful thinking from an arrogant “wolf warrior”, it is indeed the case that Trump’s dramatic pivot away from Ukraine’s defence will have a chilling effect across the Taiwan strait. In Taiwan itself, a shift in the public mood away from illusions in US imperialism has begun to register, with deep public concern over chip giant TSMC’s announcement of an $100 billion investment deal with Trump to produce advanced chips at five new factories and even open a research center in the US. The world’s biggest chip maker is Taiwan’s “crown jewels” and many Taiwanese are unnerved by Trump’s remark that the deal would protect chip making, “if something should happen with Taiwan”.
Of course in his actions in relation to Ukraine, Trump probably intends not to benefit China but to damage it, by winning Russia away from its sphere of influence. However, this is very unlikely to bear fruition given the strategic importance of the Moscow-Beijing alliance to both sides, especially to the weaker Russian partner.
The backlash is coming — revolutionary change is needed
In the chaotic first weeks of Trump’s presidency, it has at times appeared as if his reactionary juggernaut was plowing on full steam ahead, and nothing could stand in its way. And it is true that he has faced no serious resistance from the official liberal “opposition”, which both in the US and internationally has instead tended to bend the knee, at best offering toothless criticism (or wearing pink in Congress!). Indeed, those who may be hoping for Trump to be pushed back by Congress, or the Courts, or the CEOs, will be sorely disappointed. Trump’s erratic and destructive policy of hubris and overreach will undoubtedly open up divisions in the US ruling class as his regime unfolds, which could intensify rapidly if Trump’s tariff war provokes a full-scale economic crisis. But the only thing that can fundamentally upset the Trump 2.0 applecart is class struggle.
The ultimate backlash will come, in the form of resistance by the working class and oppressed people against the full spectrum assault which this government of distilled misery is inflicting upon society and the planet. It is already beginning to show its head in the US. This is the process upon which Marxists base our perspective of revolutionary determination and optimism.
The difficult days of 2025 are at the same time a valuable lesson for millions around the world in the hard reality of what this system represents: a government of billionaires; a US President whose right hand man, the richest one there has ever been, delivers nazi salutes from podiums; a new world order of “hard power” and personal rule by “strong”, nasty men. Marxists understand that it is the fundamental nature of the system, of capitalist ownership and control of the economy, which lays the basis for this political barbarism. The opposition to Trumpism must be linked to a political alternative of revolutionary socialist transformation.
