The United States ruling class has chosen the road of mass violence—and there is now likely no turning back. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, under Donald Trump, the US military has launched more military strikes against more countries than it has under any other president in the modern era. This is just the beginning of what could come. Vexed by the reality of its relative industrial decline and by China’s rise as the world’s most powerful manufacturing economy, Washington is making a desperate gambit to maintain its global domination: leveraging its military and financial power to bulldoze all opposition. We have to resist.
Bombing Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Venezuela, not to mention its role in the Gaza genocide. Strikes in international waters near Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico and across the Caribbean. Starving Cuba through sanctions and a trade embargo. Threatening Greenland, Canada and other governments in the Western Hemisphere. Bringing a loaded gun to every economic negotiation in an attempt to rewrite the rules on global trade. Demanding that every ally double or triple their military spending, while ditching, in the words of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “massive welfare states”. Encouraging and supporting, through proxies such as Elon Musk, every far-right and fascist political challenge in Western countries.
This is all part of a singular agenda. US imperialism is lining up its ducks to take on China more forcefully. Whether it can or will succeed in Iran or anywhere else is moot. The point is, Washington is not going down wondering. It has switched gears. This is a crash or crash through operation, to hell with laws, rights, decency and humanity. Don’t take our word for it. Listen to White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper in January:
We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world—the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time ... The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we’re going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.
And no one in official politics or the official institutions is lifting a finger to stop this descent into barbarism. Not the United Nations. Not the liberal governments of Europe. None of them. Anthony Albanese’s Labor government, by supporting to the hilt everything Trump does and by tightly integrating Australia’s military and intelligence services with the American empire, is complicit in—a partner with—far-right gangsterism and war crimes. We have to build opposition to our own government and rebuild an anti-imperialist socialist movement in this country.
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The latest from Red Flag Radio
Emma and Chloe discuss the meaning of the Epstein files and what they reveal about how the rich and powerful rule. In the main segment, they discuss One Nation’s rise in the polls, the intense Islamophobic atmosphere in Australia and the realignment of the Coalition under new Liberal leader Angus Taylor.
