Boris Kagarlitsky: China and Russia in the modern world-system — A dual challenge

By Boris Kagarlitsky

Published 23 September, 2024

[Editor's note: Marxist sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky is currently in a Russian prison for speaking out against the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In support of his release, the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign is hosting an online conference on October 8, “Boris Kagarlitsky and the challenges of the left today”. LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal is proud to be a co-sponsor of this conference and encourages all readers to read the program and register for the conference today.]

The following article is the result of six letters sent by Boris Kagarlitsky from Russian prison to his co-author Dmitry Pozhidaev, who has then, with Kagarlitsky's permission, compiled, translated and edited them into an article.

Debates over whether Russia’s current decoupling from the West and pivot to China constitutes a real delinking from the imperialist centre, as conceptualised by Samir Amin (Amin, 2017), have intensified following the conflict in Ukraine and imposition of unprecedented Western sanctions against Russia (Kolyandr, 2024). The official Russian narrative frames this pivot as a process of “liberation from the Western yolk” (Karaganov, 2023), promoting a mutually beneficial partnership based on common values, mutual respect and non-interference — in contrast to the political and economic dependency experienced with the West. However, there is no consensus among political scientists and economists regarding the consequences of this development. Several scholars, including my co-author Dmitry Pozhidaev (2024), argue that Russia’s decoupling presents an opportunity for potential delinking from the capitalist core (though I fear Pozhidaev may be overly optimistic about this). In contrast, Milanovic (2022), Torkunov and Streltsov (2023), Komolov (2023), and Kluge (2024) highlight various risks associated with Russia’s growing dependency on China and the threat of direct exploitation — ranging from monetary and financial, to technological and political.

We have started a new research project with Pozhidaev to analyse if Russia’s reorientation toward China signifies a genuine move towards independent, self-centred development or simply a transfer of dependencies to a new global power. Following Amin (2017), we conceptualise delinking as having two interlinked components: decoupling and self-centred development. Delinking is not merely isolation (decoupling), but the reorganisation of economic and social systems to serve internal needs and priorities rather than the demands of global capital (self-centred development). As Katz (2023) argues, a mere conflict with the capitalist centre does not mean true delinking.

In this context, it is essential to develop a comprehensive understanding of China’s role in the ongoing development of the world-system, its potential as a new global capitalist centre, and the prospects for its relations with Russia. Understanding China’s position is complex, particularly as its current trajectory challenges established frameworks of world-systems analysis. As China evolves, it has emerged not only into a significant player within the global economy but as a potential catalyst for the disintegration of existing structures. This analysis explores the relationship between China’s ruling elite, its conservative developmental strategy, and the implications for international dynamics.

The conservative nature of China’s development

The difficulty in understanding China’s place in the modern world-system is that its current development does not fit into established frameworks of world-systems analysis (Wallerstein, 1974). Looking ahead, we can surmise that China is objectively a factor in the disintegration of the world-system, in accordance with the prophecies of the late Wallerstein (2004). One notable outcome of discussions among representatives of the world-systems school is that none of their proposed formulations appear sufficiently convincing.

China’s problem lies in the fact that the current ruling elite of the Celestial Empire is neither attempting to separate from the system nor to submit to it, nor are they striving to take a dominant position within it (that is, become a new hegemon). The essence of the modern Chinese bourgeoisie and bureaucracy’s attitude toward the outside world is to view it as merely a resource (or a collection of resources) to be utilised for China’s development. This development is fundamentally conservative; it is focused on the need to incorporate new resources and technologies into the economy, but for the exclusive purpose of maintaining the status quo — or, if you will, to preserve the harmony that was finally achieved at least 20 years ago (Huang, 2019).

The global role of Chinese capital appears to be purely reactionary. While China does not seek to control the development of peripheral countries, it shows little interest in these nations and their territories, focusing instead on the resources it can extract — ideally at minimal cost. A notable example is that of water resources in Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian countries, where rivers originate in Chinese territory. China is effectively diverting water, which threatens to exacerbate the shallowing and potential death of Issyk-Kul Lake, echoing the fate of the Aral Sea (Katz, 2018). Moreover, the Chinese government is often unyielding in discussions with its neighbours, reflecting a pattern of predatory management observed in other regions, particularly Africa (see Bond’s discussion of BRICS as an “anti-imperialist fantasy and sub-imperialist reality”) (Bond, 2015).

These predatory practices not only exploit peripheral nations but serve to reinforce China’s internal economic strategies, which prioritise rapid industrialisation and resource accumulation over sustainable development. This focus can lead to short-term gains but may ultimately result in long-term instability, both domestically and internationally.

China's pragmatic engagement with the developing world

Since nothing is required from the outside world beyond resources, there is no aspiration for hegemony or domination. This is particularly evident in China’s policy toward Africa. In Africa, Chinese officials and business owners seek specific resources in each country they enter. They negotiate the acquisition of the necessary resource, often in predatory ways, but are entirely indifferent to the structure of the local economy, its political system, and so on (Alden, 2007; Chen, 2017). Unlike the International Monetary Fund, they do not impose reconstruction programs, nor do they concern themselves with human rights issues. They may, if necessary, implement a one-time assistance program in areas such as road construction, medicine, or transportation but, unlike Soviet specialists who previously worked in Africa, they show little interest in prospects for comprehensive development in any given country, including its ideology and management methods. This makes them ideal partners for conservative dictators (Zhang, 2018) who can then praise these “equal” relations. This predatory management is also characteristic of Chinese capital in Central Asia. Reports about Chinese activities in Siberia and the Far East paint a similarly bleak picture of China buying up forests in Siberia, conducting industrial activities resulting in significant environmental damage, occupying arable land, engaging in reckless poaching, and year-round extermination of fish in the Amur (Gotvansky, 2010).

The PRC’s policy is non-aggressive; instead, it is rarely offensive, and even defensive, tolerant, and wholly irresponsible. While the global bourgeoisie seeks to reshape the world, as Karl Marx suggested, in its own image, or as German researcher Mario Koestler posits, according to its needs, the Chinese bureaucratic bourgeoisie does not aim to reshape the world; it simply intends to extract from it everything it needs (including, incidentally, sales markets, which it actively occupies but never fully develops).

This approach has broader implications for global power dynamics. By prioritising resource extraction over equitable partnerships, China may inadvertently reinforce existing inequalities within the global economic system, creating dependencies that mirror those historically established by Western powers. Such practices risk alienating the countries involved and could lead to rising tensions, as local populations demand more substantial benefits from their relationships with Chinese investors.

China cannot and does not wish to become a new hegemon, as the outside world is indifferent to it. Anything that is not a necessary resource or a threat is simply not worth their attention. Of course, Chinese society is not homogeneous; it is also undergoing changes, and a significant question remains: how long will the current PRC elites be able to maintain this harmony that suits them?

Theoretical perspectives on China’s capitalism

Two tendencies have emerged in Marxist literature on contemporary China. One emphasises the capitalist nature of production and, more broadly, economic relations in the PRC, concluding that it is a capitalist country (Xing & Shaw, 2013). The other highlights the subordinate role of the bourgeoisie in China, the use of remnants of Communist rhetoric, and the continued existence of a substantial state sector with elements of planning, arguing that it is premature to declare capitalism victorious (Carchedi and Roberts, 2023; Nolan, 2019). However, neither perspective adequately analyses the Chinese elites themselves and their relations with society. Notably, Chinese Marxists in the 1920s described the phenomenon of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie that could dominate not only over the working masses but also over the commercial bourgeoisie, which had to share part of its surplus value (Hjellum, 2000; Li, 2020).

Preserving elements of the Communist system of the Soviet (Maoist) type is a vital tool not only for controlling the masses but for intra-elite resource redistribution, as seen, in part, in Russia. Moreover, it is naive to view the commercial bourgeoisie as definitively losing in this scenario; it purchases stability, security, access to resources, etc., all of which are integral to the aforementioned harmony.

China’s status in the world-system

Thus, today’s China poses a challenge to both orthodox Marxism and the world-systems school, whose main concepts were developed in the 1970s (Wallerstein, 1974). This does not imply that the methodologies of Marxism or world-systems analysis are outdated; rather, they need to be reapplied to analyse new phenomena without forcing them into existing templates.

This raises another issue that affects the conventional frameworks of world-systems analysis. Typically, we associate the peripheral status of a particular economy mainly with the negative aspects of its functioning and development. However, this is not always the case. For instance, in the 17th century, the emerging European semi-periphery and world periphery often received more silver than they gave away (see my works “Peripheral Empire” and “From Empires to Imperialism” for further details) (Kagarlitsky, 2008; Kagarlitsky, 2020). At the beginning of the 21st century, we can identify both prosperous and declining economies in the centre (for example, Saudi Arabia and Great Britain).

It is fundamentally important to note that neither the prosperity of some nor the decline of others changes their position and status within the system as a whole. The ability of certain countries to maximise benefits from a peripheral (semi-peripheral) type of integration into the world system helps ensure the political and social stability of conservative, even reactionary regimes, creating a sort of global pole of reaction (though not necessarily a unified political or ideological bloc).

In this respect, we could technically describe China as a prosperous semi-periphery, uninterested in altering the system as a whole or even in changing its place within it. The pressing question remains: how long can this harmony can be sustained under modern conditions, given the contradictions inherent in China’s internal development? (Here, a traditional Marxist sociological approach is more relevant than a world-systems perspective).

The role that China plays is not classical imperialism, as seen in the 19th century, which involved territorial control and investment in development. Nor is it hegemony, which implies a level of responsibility. Instead, it embodies a predatory extraction of resources, operating on the principle of “take and leave” (Katz, 2023).

Contrasting with Russia: The peripheral empire

Russia presents a different case. The specificity of a peripheral empire is that the ruling class periodically faces the temptation to use its power resources to enhance its status and position in the world-system without altering socio-political relations, and sometimes even to preserve them. This pattern was evident throughout much of imperial Russia’s history, and similar trends have been observable during Putin’s tenure in post-Soviet Russia (Roberts, 2019).

Giovanni Arrighi’s analysis of capitalism offers a useful framework for understanding Russia’s situation. Arrighi identifies two primary logics of capitalism: the logic of accumulation, which emphasises profit maximisation through capital investment; and the logic of coercion, which relies on the use of power and force to secure resources and maintain control (Arrighi, 1994). In Russia’s case, the ruling class often oscillates between these two logics, leveraging both economic resources and political power to assert its position within the global hierarchy.

However, such attempts often lead to internal crises (the Crimean War, the First World War, and even the Decembrist uprising after the Napoleonic Wars can be understood in this context). It is essential to recognise that using power resources to elevate the systemic status of the state is not unique to Russia; this phenomenon has been seen in various other peripheral (or semi-peripheral) countries, from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to the Argentina of the generals in 1982. Crucially, such attempts always occur against a backdrop of a certain period of “peripheral prosperity” that, however, is often brief and unstable. We have observed how external failures or unforeseen difficulties that have derailed elites’ initial plans have historically marked turning points for changes that can potentially affect the development of the world-system as a whole.

Conclusion

As this analysis has demonstrated, while Russia’s pivot to China may initially appear as a strategic delinking from the imperialist centre, it risks merely transferring dependencies from one global power to another. The notion of self-centred development, as articulated by Amin, remains precarious under the weight of increasing Chinese influence and economic demands.

China’s role as a significant player in the global economy is marked by a conservative developmental strategy that prioritises resource extraction over genuine partnership with peripheral nations. This approach, while beneficial in the short term, may lead to growing tensions and discontent among the countries involved, as seen in regions such as Central Asia and Africa. For Russia, the temptation to leverage power resources for status enhancement could provoke internal crises and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities.

Looking ahead, the future itself raises questions for China. I believe that the next 5-7 years will see an intensification of the contradictions of the neoliberal economic model, to the point that change will become inevitable. Many, including myself, interpreted the financial and economic crisis of 2008-10 as the beginning of the end for liberalism, but it turned out, in Churchill’s words, to be “only the end of the beginning”. The subsequent influx of capital, largely facilitated by China, has played a significant role in sustaining the model favoured by the Chinese elite (Li, 2020).

However, what suited the Chinese elites 15 years ago may not serve them well in the coming years. As global dynamics shift and the world-system evolves, the very framework that has underpinned China’s economic strategy may become increasingly restrictive. If the contradictions of the neoliberal model continue to exacerbate, the Chinese elite may find themselves navigating a landscape that demands a reevaluation of their strategies and partnerships. This potential shift poses both risks and opportunities, compelling Chinese leaders to adapt to a rapidly changing global environment that could threaten their established position.

Ultimately, both China and Russia are at a crossroads. Despite lacking explicit plans or strategies for transforming the world-system, they are key factors in its disintegration, initiating a series of broader transformations. Their actions and policies in the coming years will not only shape their own futures but influence the broader trajectory of global capitalism. As they navigate these complex challenges, the potential for unforeseen consequences remains high, highlighting the need for adaptive strategies that prioritise sustainable development and equitable international relations.

References

Alden, C. (2007). China in Africa: Partner, Competitor or Hegemon? Zed Books.

Amin, S. (1990). Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World. Zed Books.

Arrighi, G. (1994). The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times. Verso.

Bond, P. (2015). "The BRICS: The Anti-Imperialist Fantasy and Sub-Imperialist Reality". In Global Capitalism and the Future of Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Carchedi, G., & Roberts, M. (2023). Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century: Through the Prism of Value. Pluto Press.

Chen, J. (2017). "China’s Africa Policy: An Overview". China Quarterly, 229, 404-423.

Gotvasnky, V. (2010). "China’s quiet expansion". Nezavisimaya Gazeta. https://www.ng.ru/regions/2010-09-23/5_china.html

Hjellum, T. (2000). "Features of capitalism and the restructuring of ruling classes in China". The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 14, 105-129.

Kagarlitsky, B. (2008). Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System. Pluto Press.

Kagarlitsky, B. (2020). From Empires to Imperialism: The State and the Rise of Bourgeois Civilisation. Routledge.

Karaganov, S. (2023). "We are throwing off the Western yolk". Business Gazeta Online. https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/595204

Katz, C. (2018). "China and Water Politics in Central Asia". Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 4(2), 171-188. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057891118781181

Katz, C. (2023). Dependency Theory After 50 Years. Haymarket Books.

Kluge, J. (2024). Russia-China economic relations: Moscow's road to economic dependence (No. 6/2024). SWP Research Paper.

Kolyandr, A. (2024). "West Seeks to Increase the Costs of Russia Sanctions Evasion". Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/09/russia-eu-sanctions-trade?lang=en

Komolov, O. (2023). "Global’naya rol’ dollara I tendencii dedollarizacii mirovoy ekonomiki v novyh usloviyah" [The Global Role of the Dollar and Trends in the De-dollarization of the World Economy in the New Conditions]. Ekonomicheskoe vozrozhdenie Rossii, 2(76), 102-118.

Li, C. (2020). "Neoliberalism in contemporary China". In Economic neoliberalism and international development (pp. 165-183). Routledge.

Nolan, P. (2019). China's Rise: Challenges and Opportunities. Palgrave Macmillan.

Pozhidaev, D. (2024). "Russia’s delinking from the West: The great equalizer". LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. https://links.org.au/russias-delinking-west-great-equalizer

Roberts, M. (2019). "Imperial Russia and the Politics of Power". Socialist Register, 55, 138-158.

Torkunov, A., & Streltsov, D. (2023). "Russian Policy of Turning to the East: Problems and Risks". World Economy and International Relations, 67(4), 5-16.

Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century.

Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-systems analysis: An introduction. Duke University Press.

Xing, L., & Shaw, T. M. (2013). "The political economy of Chinese state capitalism". Journal of China and international relations, 1(1)

Zhang, L. (2018). "China’s Engagement with Africa: Challenges and Opportunities". Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 4(2), 137-156. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057891118766711

(Online conference) Boris Kagarlitsky and the challenges of the left today

By Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign

Published 23 September, 2024

Ever defiant in the face of repression and a five-year jail term, Boris Kagarlitsky, Russia’s best-known socialist thinker, has just published his latest book, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left.

In Kagarlitsky’s honour, a special online conference will be held on October 8 to address the double aspect of his invaluable contribution to the left: his wide-ranging analysis of the left’s dilemmas in the face of multiple global crises and the advance of the far right; and his resistance — together with other persecuted anti-war activists in the Russian Federation — to the authoritarianism of the regime of Vladimir Putin.

Register here

Speakers include:

• Nancy Fraser American philosopher, critical theorist, feminist, professor of philosophy at the New School in New York City. Fraser is widely known for her critique of identity politics and her work on the concept of justice.
• Patrick Bond Distinguished Professor at the University of Johannesburg Department of Sociology, where he directs the Centre for Social Change.
• Greg Yudin Russian sociologist, expert on public opinion and polls in Russia. Candidate of Philosophical Sciences. Professor at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences.
• Alex Callinicos Rhodesian-born British political theorist and activist. An adherent of Trotskyism, he is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and serves as its International Secretary.
• Hanna Perekhoda Member of solidaritéS in Vaud Canton, Switzerland, and a PhD candidate in Political Science (University of Lausanne).
• Robert Brenner American economic historian. He is a professor emeritus of history and director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, editor of the socialist journal Against the Current, and editorial committee member of New Left Review.
• Ilya Matveev Political scientist formerly based in St Petersburg, Russia. Currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley.
• Ilya Budraitskis Moscow-based historian and political writer. He is current member of editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine, Openleft.ru and LeftEast.
• Bill Fletcher Jr Former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects.
• Ksenia Kagarlitskaia Daughter of Boris Kagarlitsky, organizer of the international festival in support of political prisoners "Freedom Zone".
• Speaker from Feminist Anti-War Resistance Group of Russian feminists founded in February 2022 to protest against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• Speaker from Memorial Non-profit organization engaged in the study of political repression in the USSR and modern Russia, promoting the moral and legal rehabilitation of persons subjected to political repression.
• Trevor Ngwane South African socialist, anti-apartheid activist, author and teacher at the University of Johannesburg.
• Pavel Kudyukin Co-chair of the University Solidarity Trade Union, a member of the Council of the Confederation of Labour of Russia, and was the Deputy Minister of Labour of Russia (1991-1993)
• Jayati Ghosh Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (US) since January 2021. Her latest book is The Making of a Catastrophe: The Disastrous Economic Fallout of the Covid-19 Pandemic in India.

Conference program

Note on format: Each session will run for 90 minutes, made up of a 10-minute introduction by the moderator, 20-minute presentations by the speakers and 20 minutes discussion. The main time given is Eastern Daylight Time (US and Canada), while the times in parentheses are, respectively, Central European Time, Indian Standard Time and Australian Eastern Standard Time.

09:15 – 09:30 (15:15 -15:30 CET, 18:45 -19:00 IST, 23:15 - 23:30 AEST)
Introduction: Andrea Levy (Coordinating editor of Canadian Dimension) and Fred Fuentes (editor, Links, International Journal of Socialist Renewal) present the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign and the aims of the conference.

09:30 – 10:00 (15:30 -16:00 CET, 19:00 -19:30 IST, 23:30 - 00:00 AEST)
Opening address: Nancy Fraser

10:00 – 11:45 (16:00 -17:45 CET, 19:30 - 21:15 IST, 00:00 - 01:45 AEST)
The Long Retreat (presentation and discussion)
Moderator: David Castle (Editorial Director, Pluto Press)
Speakers: Bill Fletcher, Alex Callinicos and Jayati Ghosh

11:45 – 12:00 (17:45 -18:00 CET, 21:15 - 21:30 IST, 01:45 - 02:00 AEST)
Break

12:00 – 13:30 (18:00 -19:30 CET, 21:30 - 23:00 IST, 02:00 - 03:30 AEST)
The situation for the left in Russia today
Moderator: Anna Ochkina (professor of sociology, Penza State University)
Speakers: Greg Yudin, Ilya Budraitskis and a representative of Feminist Anti-War Resistance

13:30 – 13:40 (19:30 -19:40 CET, 23:00 - 23:10 IST, 03:30 - 03:40 AEST)
Presentation of the Daniel Singer Prisoner of Conscious Award
Suzi Weissman and Ksenia Kagarlitskaya

13:40 – 14:30 (19:40 - 20:30 CET, 23:10 - 00:00 IST, 03:40 - 04:30 AEST)
Break

14:30 – 16:00 (20:30 - 22:00 CET, 00:00 - 01:30 IST, 04:30 - 06:00 AEST)
Imperialism(s) today
Moderator: Adam Novak
Speakers: Robert Brenner, Ilya Matveev and Hanna Perekhoda

16:00 – 16:15 (22:00 - 22:15 CET, 01:30 - 01:45 IST, 06:00 - 06:15 AEST)
Break

16:15 – 18:00 (22:15 - 24:00 CET, 01:45 - 03:30 IST, 06:15 - 08:00 AEST)
Repression and the threat to intellectual freedom: Russia and beyond
Moderator: Fiona Dove (Executive Director, Transnational Institute)
Speakers: Pavel Kudyukin, Patrick Bond and Trevor Ngwane

Launch of the Kagarlitsky Network for Academic and Intellectual Freedom

Russia Boris Kagarlitsky Conference

 

Strategic reflections on the escalation of Israeli intimidation in Lebanon

By Gilbert Achcar

Published 26 September, 2024

First published in Arabic at Al-Quds al-Arabi. Translation from Gilbert Achcar's blog.

Not even an hour had passed after I wrote my article of a week ago (“Lebanon and the Israeli Strategy of Intimidation”, 17/9/2024) when the Israeli intelligence agencies launched a mass terror operation in Lebanon by blowing up individual communication devices in two successive waves over two days, killing more than 40 people and wounding more than 3,500. These two waves of mass terrorism were followed by an escalation in the exchange of shells across the border, between Hezbollah and the Israeli Aggression Forces (aka IDF), preluding to the intense violent bombardment that poured down on Monday on southern Lebanon and other areas where Hezbollah is present, killing nearly 500 people and wounding more than 1,600. The bombardment is still ongoing as these lines are written.

The question that imposed itself on everyone, starting with those targeted in Lebanon, is whether this sudden escalation in what we called the “Israeli strategy of intimidation” is paving the way for a full-scale aggression against Lebanon that would include indiscriminate heavy bombing of all areas where Hezbollah is present, including the densely populated southern suburb of Beirut, with the aim of making it “look like Gaza” in the words of one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s close associates. It is indeed feared that the Zionist state will carry out a brutal aggression on parts of Lebanon, similar to the aggression that targeted the entire Gaza Strip, in line with what one of the overseers of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon in 2006 called the “Dahiya doctrine” (a reference to the southern suburb of Beirut, the Arabic word dahiya meaning “suburb”). This doctrine aims at achieving deterrence against anyone who has the intention of confronting Israel, by threatening to inflict a high level of violence on areas inhabited by the civilian population to which those who nurture that intention belong, like what happened to the southern suburb of Beirut in 2006, which is the main area where Hezbollah’s popular base is concentrated.

It is a fact that the 2006 aggression that followed an operation carried out by Hezbollah fighters across the southern Lebanese border against Israeli soldiers, killing eight of them and capturing two, had a deterrent effect, which was acknowledged by the Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in declaring his regret, when he famously said on television in the aftermath of that war: “If I had known for one percent that this abduction operation would lead to a war of this magnitude, we certainly would not have done it for humanitarian, moral, military, social, security and political reasons.”

What the Western media, which are quick to condemn war crimes when they are committed by the West’s enemies, such as the Russian regime in Ukraine, do not say, is that the “Dahiya doctrine” is not an instance of military genius and a doctrine worthy of being taught in the military colleges of civilized countries, but rather a blatant violation of the laws of war, which consist in the practice of war crimes on a large scale, up to a genocidal level in Gaza, through an explicit intent to target civilians in order to deter combatants. It is, in other words, a terrorist strategy formulated by a terrorist state par excellence, which constitutes a stark confirmation that state terrorism is much more dangerous than the terrorism of non-state groups, as it applies the same logic, i.e. the killing of civilians for a political purpose, but with immeasurably greater potential for lethality and destruction.

Hezbollah learned two lessons from the 33-Day War in 2006. The first translates in that it has since then taken into account what it sees as a red line that, if crossed, would give the Zionist state a new pretext to attack Lebanese civilians. In order to ward off its popular base in the first place, Hezbollah did not carry out any bold operation like the one that sparked the 2006 war – or the one carried out by Hamas about a year ago, igniting the war to destroy Gaza and exterminate its people. The second lesson led Hezbollah to acquire a huge arsenal of missiles that established a counter-deterrent by threatening civilian areas inside the Zionist state, thus achieving what is called in the vocabulary of nuclear deterrence a “balance of terror”.

This equation is what explains Hezbollah’s initiative of starting a limited war of attrition with the Zionist state the day after Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood”, in response to Hamas’s call for it to join what it had initiated. That call came in a message from the military leader of the Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip, Muhammad al-Deif, broadcast at the start of the operation: “Oh our brothers in the Islamic resistance, in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, this is the day when your resistance will merge with your people in Palestine so that this terrible occupier will understand that the time in which it rampages and assassinates scholars and leaders has ended. The time of plundering your wealth has ended. The almost daily bombing in Syria and Iraq has ended. The time of dividing the nation and scattering its forces in internal conflicts has ended. The time has come for all Arab and Islamic forces to unite to sweep this occupation from our holy sites and our land.”

However, Hezbollah was smarter than to be overcome by euphoria to the point of believing that the day of victory over Israel and liberation of Palestine had come. It decided therefore to enter the battle as a supporter rather than a full participant, a decision that translated into the limited war of attrition. The party wanted to express its solidarity with the people of Gaza, but without exposing its popular base to a fate similar to that of the residents of the Strip. However, this calculation is now backfiring on Hezbollah, as the Zionist aggression army, having finished its intensive large-scale operations in Gaza, is now focusing on its northern front, launching what we called the “strategy of intimidation”, which is a gradual escalation in attacks with a threat to shift to implementing the “Dahiya doctrine”.

This Israeli behaviour demonstrates the effectiveness of Hezbollah’s counter-deterrence, as the Zionist government is forced to be cautious about igniting a full-scale war that it knows will be costly to Israeli society, even if the cost to Hezbollah’s base will be much higher given the great superiority of Israeli military capabilities. The Zionist government hence resorted first to escalation through “asymmetric warfare”, a term that usually describes the actions of an irregular force against a regular army. Here, it is the Zionist state that is dealing a devious and painful blow to Hezbollah and its civilian milieu by blowing up communications devices. This was followed by an escalation of conventional war that began on Monday, constituting a dangerous escalation of pressure on Hezbollah to force it to surrender and accept the conditions set by Washington with the approval of the Zionist government, the most important of which is the withdrawal of the party’s forces to north of the Litani River.

Confronted with this escalating pressure, the party finds itself trapped in mutual, but unequal, deterrence. It does not possess the capabilities of waging “asymmetric warfare” deep inside Israel and cannot strike there in a way that would cause hundreds of deaths, like what the Zionist army inflicted on Lebanon on Monday, for fear that the response would be overwhelming, knowing that Israel is fully capable of responding at a much higher level. The Zionist government is wholly aware of the conditions of the equation. While it wishes to dismantle Hezbollah’s deterrent capacity, it cannot initiate a comprehensive war without ensuring full US participation in it, similar to Washington’s participation in the war on Gaza during several months, the most deadly and destructive months, to the point of countering all calls for a ceasefire. The Zionist government needs such full US complicity in the event of launching a full-scale aggression on Lebanon, the political conditions of which have not yet been met. It is working to achieve them, however, and may well issue a warning with a limited deadline to Hezbollah for that purpose, as we mentioned a week ago.

From all of this, it appears that Netanyahu has begun to fear that his friend Donald Trump might well fail in the upcoming US presidential elections in about a month and a half. It seems that he therefore decided to escalate matters, taking advantage of the last months of presence of his other friend, the “proud Irish-American Zionist” Joe Biden, in the White House. The question now is: will Biden pressure Netanyahu firmly enough to prevent a war that is likely to negatively affect the campaign of his party’s candidate, Kamala Harris, or will he once again go along with his friend’s criminal endeavour, even if accompanied by an expression of regret and resentment meant to deflect the blame in his and his Secretary of State Blinken’s usual hypocritical way?

Israel’s offensive against Lebanon represents an escalation of Netanyahu’s project of death

By Israel Dutra

Published 27 September, 2024

First published in Portuguese at Movimento Revista.

“Significant opportunities, heavy risks”. That was how Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, with his usual dose of sadism and lack of aplomb, defined Zionism’s new offensive in Lebanon. This new phase in Israel’s military operation across the Middle East — which has involved carrying out genocide in Gaza for almost a year— began with an unprecedented terrorist attack against Hezbollah at the start of last week. In two stages over two days, Mossad blew up thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanese territory, killing about 40 people and leaving hundreds injured. Following this terrorist attack, Israel carried out a bombing raid on Beirut that hit Hezbollah targets and a school, killing 37 people (including 13 children).

Developing a deeper analysis of the dynamics behind Israel’s offensive in the Middle East is decisive for understanding the immediate future of global geopolitics, its central conflicts and developments. We have contributed to this effort through our contacts and publications, including with the recent interview we published (before the current offensive on Lebanon) with Lebanese Marxist intellectual and Middle East specialist Gilbert Achcar in Movimento Revista.

Right now, given the genocide in Gaza and the terrifying data accompanying it — for example, the fact that it is, proportionally, the largest child genocide in history — we need to understand three key elements: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s real strategy, including it scope and limits; the military and diplomatic relationship of forces at the international level; and the capacity for popular and military resistance of the Palestinian, Lebanese and allied forces. Genocide is being imposed through killings, starvation and the multiplication of diseases such as polio.

Netanyahu is doubling down. Besieged by criticism and mobilisations, including a September 2 general strike and marches of more than 400,000 people on September 7 demanding negotiations to free the hostages, Netanyahu has no choice but to go on the offensive. Despite his rhetorical claims that his military objective is to neutralise Hamas, in reality Netanyahu and his closest allies want to redesign the map of the Middle East, with a new “Greater Israel” becoming a supremacist and colonial reference point for the global far right. Faced with this situation, in which the Palestinian resistance continues to fight, there has been a shift in the axis of focus in recent months: an offensive tied to the use of intelligence (including a series of assassinations, such as that of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and suspected participation in the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi) and expanding the conflict to the whole region. Mossad had already planted the explosives used in the attack in Lebanon about two years ago — before its current offensive began on October 7. As Achcar wrote in his most recent article:

Netanyahu himself has contributed to the beating of the drums for the coming war on Lebanon, through one of his close associates in the Likud Party who attributed to him the intention to launch a war that will make the Beirut suburb “look like Gaza”.

On the other hand, the siege on Jenin corroborates an intensification of attacks in the West Bank. Brutal images have shown Israeli soldiers throwing Palestinians off high-rise buildings as part of this new offensive.

How has the United States — the main guarantor of the genocide in Gaza — responded? On one hand, it has sought to block countless United Nations resolutions calling for a ceasefire and condemning Netanyahu and the State of Israel; on the other, it is seeking to negotiate to avoid a regional war, given the uncertainty surrounding the November 5 presidential elections. President Joe Biden has been worn down, Kamala Harris wants to maintain her commitment to Zionism, and Donald Trump is a key Netanyahu ally when it comes to lending legitimacy to his “final solution”. The US faces a delicate situation, throwing everything it has to hold onto its geopolitical hegemony in the face of growing competition from China and the US capitalist class facing its biggest split in recent history.

The third element is how those fighting back on the ground will respond. Hezbollah has been dealt a heavy blow, both in terms of demoralising its intelligence service and the assassination of two of its main commanders, Ibrahim Aquil and Ahmed Wabbi. Anyone who saw Nasrallah’s statement after the offensive sensed a certain measured response, despite the increase in missile fire that was intercepted by the Israeli defence system. Recep Tayyip Erdogan again spoke out, calling on “Western nations” to avoid the worst, namely an escalation of the war. Iran condemned the offensive, but made no sudden military moves. The Houthis continue their maritime military operation, exchanging fire and consuming Israeli efforts on this front.

Hezbollah is the fruit of the aftermath of the long Lebanese civil war, part of the Shiite and Islamic movements that hegemonised the struggle against Zionism after the weakening of secular and national liberation movements. As one Spanish analyst put it, it is “bigger than a militia, smaller than a state”. The overall response of Lebanese society, fractured by wars and crises, will be decisive in ensuring the fight against the Zionist offensive does not just become a religious struggle in defence of Shiites.

The international response will also be fundamental. Bolstered by public opinion, ranging from UN resolutions to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu, movements in solidarity with the Palestinian people must step up their efforts. Partial measures such as the suspension of Britain’s arms trade with Israel help weaken Zionism. This battle is also taking place on the domestic front in Brazil, around the campaign to suspend agreements with Elbit, to break diplomatic ties with Israel and strengthen the BDS campaign.

The offensive in Lebanon is an example of how far Netanyahu’s project of death, neo-colonialism and neo-fascism is willing to go. Solidarity with the Lebanese people is an integral part of our immediate program for stopping the supremacists who want to impose their “final solution” as a new standard for the dehumanisation of the other, thereby naturalising the catastrophe we confront on several fronts.

Israel Dutra is a sociologist, PSOL's Secretary for Social Movements and member of the party's National Directorate, and a member of the Socialist Left Movement (MES/PSOL) National Directorate.

 

Gilbert Achcar: ‘We are witnessing the first genocide in history to be televised and openly supported by the West’

By Gilbert Achcar, Israel Dutra & Victor Gorman

Published 25 September, 2024

First published in Portuguese at Revista Movimento.

Israel’s escalating war, the genocide in Gaza and the opening up of new fronts of Zionist-led violence have once again focused the world’s attention on the Middle East region. To better understand the situation and the challenges that lie ahead, Revista Movimento spoke with Gilbert Achcar, a University of London professor and Lebanese activist affiliated to the Fourth International. In this interview, Achcar provides an overview of the complex political situation in the region, situating it within the context of the political project of the global far right of which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a main exponent. The interview was conducted by Israel Dutra and Victor Gorman on September 16.

After almost a year of aggression, we are facing an impasse in terms of a possible ceasefire in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government is confronting major protests and an internal political crisis. What are the short-term prospects for the war under the current Zionist government?

It was clear from the beginning that this war was going to last. The Israeli side made it very clear that it will take no less than one year. That is because they intended to seize the opportunity of October 7 to reoccupy the Gaza Strip and completely flatten this very dense concentration of Palestinians in order to create a condition whereby they could control it forever. And that indeed entailed a genocidal intent — the intent, that is, to kill a large part of the population. They have already killed more than 50,000 people, including the dead estimated to be under the rubbles, and it is not over yet. The onslaught is still ongoing.

Within the Israeli power elite, there is no consensus yet on what they will do with the Gaza Strip after the onslaught. There are disagreements about this between the far right and the Zionist mainstream plus, of course, the perspective of the US election, which Netanyahu factors into his calculations. He is certainly hoping that Donald Trump will win. If this happens, Netanyahu will feel that he can do even worse and more than what he has done until now, not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and against Iran, of course. So, these are the factors that determine the present situation.

How do you view the relationship between the current Israeli government and other expressions of the far right in the world?

Netanyahu has been a key figure of the international far right. He came back to power in 2009 and remained prime minister uninterruptedly for 12 years. After a few months of interruption, he got back in government at the end of 2022. He has thus accumulated an exceptional longevity in power, with a specific, very demagogic style in politics, which has been a source of inspiration for the international far right that developed during those years, in the wake of the global economic crisis of 2008.

Netanyahu connected with all the key figures of the global hard right and far right, notwithstanding the antisemitic tradition and current profile of most of them. He befriended antisemites such as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Trump. Netanyahu provided the international far right with a cover for their past and/or present antisemitism. He went as far as explaining in a public event that Adolf Hitler had no intention of perpetrating the genocide of the European Jews, and that it was the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, who inspired him to do that. This was a grotesque falsification of history, of course, and it was vehemently denounced by historians of Nazism and the Holocaust, but it shows to what extent Netanyahu is willing to go to please the far right.

This kind of discourse obviously suits them in that it shifts the blame of antisemitism from the European far right to Palestinians and Muslims. It feeds into Islamophobia, which Netanyahu has made a central part of his discourse, in accordance with today’s international far right that is much more Islamophobic than antisemitic because the migrants into Europe today are mostly Muslims. It is easy to see how this works, for instance with Marine Le Pen in France, who is heir to a long antisemitic political tradition. Such far right currents are now 100% pro-Israel and anti-Palestinians, as well as anti-Muslims. They even claim to be against “antisemitism”, which they attribute to Muslims and even to the left. They now accuse the left of being antisemitic because it criticises Israel. This hypocritical discourse has been buttressed by Netanyahu and the Israeli far right, of which he is a major figure.

Why did the Netanyahu government open up a second front in the West Bank, starting with the siege of Jenin?

The genocide in Gaza has been accompanied from the beginning with an escalation of the Zionist settlers’ violence in the West Bank. This violence had already reached a high level after the inclusion of neo-Nazi ministers in Netanyahu’s latest cabinet, in positions crucial to the operation of the settlers. This has radicalised many young Palestinians, leading to new groups forming and taking up arms in the West Bank to fight back against the colonial settlers. The Israeli army is trying to break the Palestinians’ resistance spirit and prevent the further build-up of a network of armed struggle in the West Bank. They want to terrorise the Palestinians and deter any form of resistance. That is why they launched their recent brutal offensive in the West Bank, turning parts of it into Gaza-like scenes of destruction.

What is your opinion on the involvement of Lebanon and Hezbollah in this conflict? Is an escalation from Lebanon possible? Could you also tell us a bit more about Lebanese domestic politics?

The involvement of Lebanon is essentially the involvement of Hezbollah, because the Lebanese state is not involved as such, and neither are most other Lebanese political parties. Hezbollah, however, is a major military force, stronger than the Lebanese army.

When Hamas launched the October 7 attack, they called on Hezbollah, Iran, Syria and Yemen to join them in the fight against Israel, believing — with a lot of illusions and religious thinking — that October 7 would be the beginning of Palestine’s liberation and Israel’s destruction. Hezbollah faced a dilemma, because they felt a moral obligation to act in solidarity with Gaza, especially in light of the terrible violence of the Israeli onslaught that started immediately after the October 7 attack. But they did not want to take responsibility for a major war in Lebanon, like that of 2006. In that year, Hezbollah launched an attack across the border in South Lebanon, killing eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two. This led to a major Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, which was highly destructive. Thus, Hezbollah did not want to take the responsibility of offering Israel a pretext for a second onslaught, which could be even worse than that of 2006.

The result of these two contradictory pressures has been that Hezbollah decided to launch a limited war, consisting of a limited exchange of bombing with the Israeli side. This led to a population displacement on both sides of the border: close to 100,000 people displaced from South Lebanon and 80,000 people displaced on the Israeli side. This could happen and remain within limits for almost a year now, because the Israeli army was concentrating its effort in Gaza and would have found it difficult to wage war on both fronts at the same time. But the most intensive part of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza is ending, and it is very likely that Israel will now turn against Lebanon, and against Hezbollah specifically.

It will also depend on the outcome of the US elections, as I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation. If Trump wins, a green light to Netanyahu for a new onslaught on Lebanon will become very likely. If Trump is not elected, Netanyahu will increase the pressure on Lebanon and probably give an ultimatum to Hezbollah: either they backtrack and withdraw from the border to north of the Litani River, or they refuse and face a major Israeli onslaught. Whereas there is some disagreement today in Israel between Netanyahu and the opposition about the next phase in Gaza, there is no substantial disagreement about Lebanon. The opposition is even blaming Netanyahu for prolonging the war in Gaza, instead of dealing with Lebanon, which they now see as the priority.

As for Lebanese domestic politics, Hezbollah is in alliance with another Shia sectarian force, Amal, but most other Lebanese political parties are rivals or opponents of Hezbollah and blame it for involving Lebanon in the war. They argue that there is no reason why Lebanon should be involved and pay the price whereas Syria, which is much stronger than Lebanon and an ally of both Iran and Hezbollah, is not doing anything. Even Iran, for that matter, is hardly taking any risk. So, that is part of the political equation that Hezbollah must consider.

What about the role of other countries in the region, such as Egypt and Jordan?

Both Egypt and Jordan are part of the US military arc of forces in the region. Both are major recipients of US military aid. Therefore, even though they criticise Israel’s war on Gaza to appease public opinions and they do not like Netanyahu because he is too extreme for them, they will not do anything that could provide real support for the Palestinians. Syria also shares a border with Israel, like Jordan and Egypt, and a major stretch of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights has been occupied and even annexed by Israel since 1967. And yet Syria’s demarcation line is Israel’s quietest border. None of these states are willing to take any risk in defence of the Palestinian people. Egypt and Jordan are rather eager to see its resistance subdued.

The Houthis in Yemen have been targeting ships in the Red Sea, which has impacted on global maritime logistic routes. Why are they doing this, and what have been the impacts of their action?

The Houthis are a very reactionary force from a social and ideological standpoint — closer to the Afghan Taliban than they are to the Iranian regime — but they are linked to Tehran because they belong to a sect related to Shi'ism, the dominant branch of Islam in Iran. They are seen in the region, therefore, as part of a sectarian arc of forces led by Iran and composed of Shias in Lebanon; Alawis, the sect of the ruling elite in Syria; pro-Iran Shia militias in Iraq; and Yemen’s Houthis.

The Houthis started their intervention in the Red Sea as a way for them to gain legitimacy against their opponents in Yemen itself, where there has been a civil war in which the Houthis have confronted the southern half of the country, which is Sunni. By outbidding everyone on the issue of Israel with their action in the Red Sea, the Houthis have been doing a propaganda stunt in the face of their rivals in Yemen, as well as in the face of the Saudis, the main enemies of both the Houthis and Iran. The Saudi rulers are annoyed by the way that the Houthis are outbidding them on Israel.

However, the attacks in the Red Sea are not really harming Israel: the country that is most harmed is Egypt, because of the sharp drop in the use of the Suez Canal, a major source of income for Egypt. China too is harmed, because it is a major user of the Suez Canal, and now needs to ship its exports to Europe around Africa, which increases time and cost. By their action, the Houthis have given further incentive to European countries and the US to develop a way to bypass the Red Sea and the Suez Canal through a transport corridor going from India by sea to the United Arab Emirates, and from there by land to Israel through the Saudi Kingdom and Jordan, and then to Europe via the Mediterranean. This project is also obviously designed to enhance the collaboration between the three Arab countries and Israel.

In your evaluation, what has been the impact of international solidarity in support of Palestine? How has this affected the political fight in the US? What does each sector in the presidential election campaign represent?

We are witnessing the first genocide to happen in front of the eyes of the whole world, directly reported on TV, and openly supported by Western countries. It is therefore a major historical event, as well as a terrible disaster for the Palestinian people, of course. The only ray of hope, however; the only little positive point amid this very gloomy, very dark picture, is the spectacular development of international solidarity with the Palestinian people. The cruelty of the Israeli genocidal war has been such that it led to an awakening of conscience in many countries, and the development of solidarity in the Global North, in Western Europe and in the US.

What happens in the US is crucial for Israel, due to Israel’s dependence on Washington. The movement that has been developing in the US among the youth, particularly among students, is very important for the future of the Palestinian struggle. It has already managed to influence the campaign of the Democrats: Biden was denounced for his complicity and full participation in Israel’s genocidal war and could see that this was going to cost him a lot of votes. He somewhat shifted his position accordingly: after having long opposed the call for a ceasefire, the Biden administration started calling for one. Trump, of course, even called Biden “Palestinian”, as if it were an insult. He is accusing the Democrats of being “against the Jews”.

Kamala Harris has a different tone than that of Biden in recognising Palestinian suffering, but she has not dared until now to take any distance from Biden and she will not as she is still Biden’s vice president. If she gets elected, we shall see whether she will continue the very pro-Israeli policy of Biden or revert to the Obama kind of cold support to Israel, with an attempt to moderate the Israeli attitude. The Democrats, in general, are dedicated to the defence of Israel as they keep saying, however, so we cannot expect them to do what needs to be done, which is for Washington to stop arming Israel and force it to withdraw from the 1967 occupied territories in accordance with what is supposed to be the official position of the US. The only way for anything like this to happen is for the solidarity movement to reach enough force to impose it on the US government.

Lastly, what are your views in terms of the strategy or possibilities for building the radical left in the Arab world?

The radical left in the Arab world has been very much weakened by the defeat of the two successive waves of what has been called the Arab Spring or Arab uprising. The first wave in 2011 saw major uprisings in six Arab countries along with a big rise in social and political protests in most other Arab countries. This created conditions in which the radical left could play an important role in several countries, including Tunisia, where it all started, and Egypt. The second wave in 2019 included four countries. In one of them, Sudan, the radical left played a very important role. Unfortunately, however, the defeats of those uprisings — especially the 2013 coup in Egypt, the 2021 coup in Tunisia, and the civil war among the military that unfolded in Sudan after the 2021 coup — all had a hugely negative impact on the radical left in the Arabic-speaking region.

But the key point to understand is that the social and economic crisis in the region is very deep, and it is this crisis that led to the two successive waves of uprisings in 2011 and 2019. Not only is the crisis not solved, but it is getting worse and worse, year after year. This means that there will inevitably be further social explosions. The key condition for the necessary radical change is that young people manage to find new ways and forms of organisations in order to build a new radical alternative to the existing situation.

Techno-Fascism, Techno-Terrorism, And Global War

By Boaventura de Sousa Santos

September 25, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by David Merrett



The world is moving inexorably towards war. Any imaginary poll of the world’s population would show that nobody wants war. But war will probably break out before the end of the decade. Most countries in the world claim to have democratic regimes, but no party with any electoral significance, from left to right, considers war an imminent danger and takes up the fight for peace as its main banner. Peace doesn’t win votes. War brings dead people and dead people don’t vote. No party can imagine carrying out electoral propaganda in cemeteries or mass graves. Nor does it imagine that without the living there are no parties. All this seems absurd, but absurdity happens when reason sleeps, as Francisco de Goya warned us 225 years ago in his painting El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. We don’t need to go that far back.

The lessons (or illusions) of history

Let’s go back to 1900. England was then the most powerful country in the world. But as every apogee means the beginning of decline, the peaceful competition of the US was beginning to be feared. Economic growth in the US was vertiginous, the latest inventions of the industrial revolution were taking place there and, among the many advantages over Europe, one was particularly precious: the US spent very little money on weapons. According to reports at the time, a country of 75 million inhabitants had an army of 25,000 men and a ridiculous defense budget for a country of that size. On the other hand, the most developed European countries (England, Germany and France) were in increasingly fierce competition with each other over colonial sharing and industrial superiority (Germany was increasingly in the spotlight) and were entering the arms race. In addition, between 1899 and 1902, England was fighting a sordid colonial war against the Boers in South Africa. At stake was the control of gold production and Cecil Rhodes’ imperial dream: from the railroad between Cape Town and Cairo to total control of the world so that “wars would become impossible for the good of mankind”. Imperial capitalist domination demanded war and the arms race, allegedly to make war impossible in the future. Are there any similarities with the current war speeches of the US and the European Union to defeat Russia and China? There are, but there are differences.

In the first decade of the 20th century, two movements were visible: one in public opinion and the other in business. Public opinion was dominated by an apology for peace against the dangers of a war that would be fatally deadly. The 20th century was to be the century of peace, without which the prosperity that was being announced would not be possible. In 1899, the first International Peace Conference was held in The Hague and, the following year, there was the World Peace Congress. From then on, there were many international congresses and meetings on peace. It was deplored that international cooperation was deepening in all areas (postal services, railways, etc.) except politics. Between 1893 and 1912, 25 books were published against the arms race. Who is Who in the Peace Movement was widely published. Recent inventions in war material (smokeless gunpowder, rapid-fire rifles, explosive substances such as lyddite, melinite and nitroglycerine, etc.) were said to make war not only very deadly, but impossible to win for either side in the conflict. War would always end in a stalemate and after much death and devastation. A journalist from the English Echo resigned from the paper so that he wouldn’t have to defend the war against the Boers, and 200 high-profile English intellectuals organized a dinner in his honor. Between 1900 and 1910, more than a thousand pacifist congresses were held: workers, anarchists, socialists, freethinkers, Esperantists, women. The growth of democracy in Europe and the USA was said to be incompatible with war and that the large number of arbitration agreements was the best demonstration of this. The Russian sociologist Jakov Novikov demonstrated that the well-being of the masses had never improved with the wars, quite the opposite. People wrote about “the illusion of war” and the publications sold many thousands of copies.

There was a current of opinion that the real illusion would be the “illusion of peace” if the struggle were not reoriented against capitalism. If this didn’t happen, war would be inevitable. This was the position of socialists, anarchists, and the workers’ movement, which socialists and anarchists sought to control. War was the great obstacle to social revolution. The general strike and the refusal of military service were two of the most frequently mentioned forms of struggle.

But the world of public opinion was one thing and the world of business was another. In the business world, since 1899 the arms race had been advancing at a rapid but discreet pace. At the 1907 International Workers’ Congress in Stuttgart, Karl Liebknecht revealed the extraordinary growth in arms spending, which meant that countries were in fact preparing for war. The profits of the big arms companies reflected this: Krupp in Germany, Vickers-Armstrong in England, Schneider-Creusot in France, Cockerill in Belgium, Skoda in Bohemia and Putilov in Russia. It was clear that the accumulation of weapons would lead to war. In fact, the big companies were beginning to use a new propaganda weapon: paying journalists and newspaper owners to publish fake news about the growing armament of their probable opponents in the coming war in order to justify spending more on weapons. Sounds familiar to today’s ears? Yes, but there are differences and for the worse, much worse.

The socialists were right: the fight is against capitalism

The apogee of US-led global capitalism came in 1991 with the end of the Soviet Bloc. Just like a hundred years before, the apogee of the most powerful power meant the beginning of its decline. And just as before, the most profitable industry in periods of decline is the one that produces goods whose use consists of destroying and being destroyed. Such goods have to be ceaselessly replaced by others for as long as the war lasts. The longer the war lasts, the greater the profits. Eternal war is therefore the most profitable. Now the big arms companies are no longer European, they are American, and the US, unlike a hundred years ago, is by far the country that spends the most on armaments and therefore has the greatest need to use them (that is, to use by destroying and replacing). The US spends a trillion dollars on armaments, but it’s certainly not enough because war entrepreneurs invent disadvantages for the US in relation to its enemies which have to be overcome promptly.

The struggle for peace is now more than ever a struggle against capitalism. Why more than ever? If, in the wake of Immanuel Wallerstein, we take the world as a unit of analysis, we can say that between 1917 and 1991 the world experienced a period of intense transnational civil war. It was a civil war because it took place within a single system – the modern world system. Although globally dominant, capitalism had to contend with another strongly competing economic system, state socialism, whose influence extended far beyond the Soviet Union. This civil war was fought by multiple means, including counter-insurgency, development aid to dependent countries and proxy wars (Korean War, Vietnam War, etc.).

The Second World War was a period of calm in this civil war, since the USA and the USSR were allies against German Nazism. With the end of the Soviet Union and the transformations that had taken place in China in the meantime, which would integrate the Chinese economy into the world capitalist economy, albeit with some specificities (maintaining national control of financial capital), the transnational civil war between capitalism and socialism ended. There was an interregnum, which lasted just over ten years, in which Russia was a capitalist country of intermediate development like any other and China was an economic partner, also of intermediate development, but with strategic value for US multinational companies bent on the monopolistic conquest of the world.

After the global financial crisis of 2008, a new transnational civil war began, this time between the capitalism of US multinationals and the state capitalism of China. In order to neutralize China, it was necessary to block its access to Europe for two reasons: Europe was, alongside the US, the other major affluent consumer in the world; through cooperation with China, Europe could have some claim to escape the increasingly evident decline of the US in the world economy and become an additional factor of competition and weakness for the US. In order to block China’s access to Europe and subject the latter to the US, it was necessary to separate Europe politically and economically from Russia (whose territory is mostly in Europe). Russia, with its thousands of kilometers of borders with China, is not only China’s access route to Europe, but also the strategic territory of Eurasia. The idea that whoever controls Eurasia controls the world has been around for a long time. This has led to a new transnational civil war, the first proxy wars of which are the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Palestine war.

This civil war is totally different from the previous one. In the previous one, the struggle was between two economic systems (capitalism versus socialism), while now it is between two versions of the same economic system (multinational capitalism versus state capitalism). Nothing guarantees that this war will be less violent than the previous one. On the contrary, as we have seen, at the beginning of the 20th century, the dispute took place between countries with a long common past located in a small corner of Eurasia. Today, it is a struggle for global domination that extends beyond the planet. Monopoly capitalism was born in 1900 when US financial capital began to expand into railroads and from there into many other sectors and, potentially, into every country in the world.

For monopoly capitalism, the idea of a multipolar world is as threatening as the idea of competition with other economic systems, and the same destructive drive is present in both cases. What’s more, the potential and degree of destruction are now immensely greater than before. I’m not referring to the existence of nuclear weapons, a life-destroying technological innovation that makes the preoccupation of commentators at the beginning of the last century with the warlike inventions of their time ridiculous. I’m talking about the nature of today’s global capitalism and (dis)governance, and the emergence of two of its consequences. We are entering an era in which forms of potentially destructive power without limits are strong enough to neutralize, circumvent or eliminate any democratic process that seeks to put limits on them.

Global techno-fascism: Elon Musk

At the beginning of the 20th century, we saw that the struggle for peace and the peaceful resolution of conflicts saw sovereign states as the units of analysis and the privileged political actors. We know that sovereignty was an abstract good that only the most developed countries could really enjoy, and that much of the world was subject to colonialism or the tutelary influence of Europe. Today, however, technological development, neoliberal globalization and the concentration of wealth mean that the power to control human and non-human life is no longer subject to democratic scrutiny. At the beginning of the 20th century, the illusion of peace was based on the rise and strengthening of democratic governments. After all, democracy was based on replacing enemies to be defeated by war with political opponents to be defeated by voting. Hence the mobilizing capacity of the fight for suffrage. For many, democracy had the capacity not only to promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts, but also to regulate capitalism in order to neutralize its “excesses”.

Today, most national governments consider themselves democratic, but democracy, if it was ever capable of regulating capitalism in any country, is now strictly regulated by it, and is only tolerated insofar as it is functional for the infinite expansion of capitalist accumulation. Undoubtedly, the most powerful national states continue to exercise formal power, but the real power that controls their decisions is concentrated in a very small number of plutocrats, some with their faces blatantly visible, others, the majority, faceless. Real power is enhanced to an extent that is hard to imagine by a toxic fusion of the technological capacity to control the human life of vast populations down to the smallest detail and regardless of their nationality, with the financial capacity to buy, co-opt, blackmail or obliterate any obstacle to its purposes of domination.

This is a new kind of fascist power, a global techno-fascism that knows no national boundaries. Elon Musk is the metaphor for this new type of power. Unlike Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, Musk’s specific personality, although repugnant, is of little importance, since what matters is the power structure that he commands today and that tomorrow may be commanded by another individual. The strength of this new global techno-fascism is well expressed in the worldwide dramatization of the struggle of a relatively powerful national state against a simple foreign individual simply because he is a global techno-fascist. When, on August 31st of this year, the X network was suspended in Brazil by a decision of the Supreme Court because its owner refused to delete accounts on the network that reached millions of people and whose content spread fake news, seriously violated the most basic democratic values and incited hatred, violence and even murder, it was news all over the world. Was it imaginable ten years ago that a lone individual, and a foreigner at that, could afront a sovereign state?

Global techno-terrorism: from the Trojan Horse to killer pagers

On September 18th, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in Lebanon, killing dozens of people (including children) and injuring thousands. These transmitters had been bought by Hezbollah apparently because they are secure devices that allow communications without locating the users. This terrorist act has been attributed to Israel’s secret services and its origin was the implantation of an explosive substance next to the battery, coded to explode by remote control.

The killer pagers are not just a new edition of the Trojan Horse, the huge hollow wooden horse built by the Greeks to enter Troy during the Trojan War. The horse was built by Epeius, a master carpenter and boxer. The Greeks, pretending to abandon the war, sailed to the nearby island of Tenedos, leaving behind the false deserter Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena (goddess of war) that would make Troy impregnable. Despite warnings from Laocoon and Cassandra, the horse was taken inside the city gates. That night, Greek warriors got off the horse and opened the gates to let the Greek army in. The story is told in detail in Book II of the Aeneid.

The similarity between the Trojan Horse and the killer pagers lies only in the fact that the term “Trojan Horse” has come to designate subversion introduced from the outside. The visibility and transparency of the device, embodied in an object that was not in common use, prevented it from being realistically reproduced (if ever) effectively in the future. On the contrary, killer pagers signify a qualitative change in the technology of war and population control. The same technology and the same murderous complicity that insidiously installed explosive material in these devices could tomorrow install in any other electronic device (cell phone or computer) any substance that, instead of killing, might damage the health, create panic or alter the behavior of its user, without any possibility of control by the user. With the development and spread of artificial intelligence, any everyday device can be used for this purpose, whether it’s a car or a microwave.

The international conventions against terrorism, which the Gaza genocide reduced to a dead letter, will no longer even make sense in the future when any citizen not fighting in any war is condemned to live in a society in which the most trivial act of consumption can bring with it, in addition to the guarantee and the expiry date, your death certificate, your certificate of mental insanity or your compulsion to commit a crime.

The international division of the labor of war and Cassandra’s curse

In an environment of global techno-fascism and techno-terrorism, Euro-North American capitalism is actively preparing to move from cold war to hot war. Faced with the blank or revoltingly impotent gaze of its citizens, a strange international division of the work of killing is being prepared: Europe will take care of beating Russia while the US will take care of beating China. At almost the same time, the European Union’s first defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, former prime minister of Lithuania, says that Europe must be prepared for war with Russia in 6-8 years, and a high-ranking US Navy officer declares that the US must be prepared for war with China in 2027.

There is little point in predicting that the war will take place, but that its outcome will be very different from what is imagined by these war entrepreneurs intoxicated by the think tanks financed by arms producers. Cassandra’s curse hangs over the few who dare to see what is obvious.


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Boaventura de Sousa Santos is the emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. His most recent book is Decolonizing the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice.