Imperialism Today: An Unstable Age of Imperialist Wars

We need a Class-Struggle Strategy to Resist Imperialism in Ukraine and the Middle East 

By Ramy Khalil

The world is a mess under capitalism. Multiple wars and national conflicts are ravaging the Middle East, Ukraine, and parts of Africa and Asia. A new Cold War – between the US and China – is developing, with proxy conflicts all around the globe, including the threat of a nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO.

After Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel unleashed a ferocious assault on Gaza, killing over 25,000 Palestinians, reducing much of Gaza to rubble, and displacing over 85% of the population in Gaza.

The root cause of today’s wars is imperialism – a global system of the powerful capitalist nation-states competing for power, markets, and resources. Capitalism is a decaying chaotic system wracked by multiple inter-related crises: climate destruction, mass migration, intensifying racism, growing inequality, and political polarization.

From 1945 until 1991 many countries were aligned with either the capitalist US or the Stalinist USSR. After the collapse of Stalinism (1989-91), US imperialism arrogantly declared it would impose its agenda on the world. But after a short period, the relatively stable bipolar world has been replaced by an increasingly unstable, unpredictable, multipolar world. The US’s ability to impose its will is in decline.

There is no end to heart-wrenching suffering under capitalism. To solve these heart-wrenching problems, Marxists seek to scientifically analyze the world as objectively as possible. We strive to understand how social developments are unfolding so that we can determine how to build mass movements capable of changing the world.

This article analyzes the two most prominent wars today, in Ukraine and Palestine, and why socialists need to use an independent class-struggle strategy in both conflicts.

Marxist seeks to scientifically analyze the world as objectively as possible so we can successfully change the world.

Two Overlapping Conflicts

The Western media portrays the Ukraine war primarily as Ukrainians defending their homeland from Russia’s imperialist invasion. While this is certainly a central aspect of the conflict, there is another critical feature of this war – a struggle over spheres of influence between the US (leading the Western countries) and Russia (supported by China and Iran).

Since the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, Russia and the West have been fighting over whether Ukraine will be under Western or Russian influence. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2021, the US posed as a defender of Ukraine’s democratic rights and rallied Western countries to oppose Russia. NATO has been gradually expanding eastward, and within NATO, the US’s leadership role has been strengthened. The US tried to use the war to undermine Russia and indirectly teach a lesson about US supremacy to its primary global competitor, China.

The rival ruling classes of China and the US view this war as a testing ground for future conflicts. If Russia gets away with seizing eastern Ukraine, China’s ruling elite may try to seize Taiwan as part of its drive to challenge US supremacy.

Ukraine’s Zelensky government served Western imperialism well during the first year of the war, initially wearing down Russian forces. Zelensky has combined resistance against the Russian occupation with repressing working-class rights, democratic organizing, a free media, and oppressing the Russian-speaking ethnic group in eastern Ukraine. 

However, over the last year, Russia’s military has held its ground and withstood the long expected Ukrainian offensive. Putin has recaptured some of the authority he initially lost from the devastating setbacks when his army tried to seize Ukraine’s capital. This has strengthened China and Iran, who are supporting Russia.

Now there is a stalemate. The Russian and Ukrainian armies keep grinding each other down, but neither side can get the upper hand. Casualties are mounting, there is mass suffering on both sides, and no end in sight.

How to Defeat Imperialism

To end this destructive war, a completely different approach is needed. DSA has correctly stood for both a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and an end to US imperialism’s intervention in the conflict.

Socialists need to promote an alternative class-based strategy to defend the Ukrainian people and help build a working-class peace movement in both the US and Russia. In Ukraine, the most powerful weapon in the struggle against the Russian occupation would be if the working class waged the war in its own class interests, politically independent from Western imperialism. This would include opposing any repression of the Russian-speaking ethnic group by the Zelensky government, supporting the democratic right of self-determination for the people of the Donbas and Crimea, and appealing to the Russian working class to rise up against Putin and turn their guns on their officers.

The high-tech weaponry from the US and NATO made Ukraine appear strong at first. However, Zelensky’s repulsive, repressive, corrupt, pro-capitalist government has failed to effectively harness the Ukrainian people’s determination to defend their country. Plus, the more the Ukrainian struggle is associated with the US/NATO, the more difficult it is for dissent to develop within Russia. The more weapons the US sends to Zelensky, the more Putin can convince the Russian working class that his war is needed to fight Western imperialism.

The history of successful resistance movements against imperialism, such as in Vietnam and South Africa, show that imperialism often cannot be defeated simply militarily. Politics is decisive.

The most powerful military in the world, the US, was defeated in Vietnam by the determination of the Vietnamese people to fight to the death to achieve the National Liberation Front’s demands for national and social liberation, which were inspiring (despite the NLF’s Stalinist politics). In addition, the US government was overpowered by antiwar protests within US society and a mass rebellion by US soldiers.

To defeat Russian imperialism in Ukraine in a lasting way, a domestic opposition needs to develop within Russia to challenge or even overthrow Putin. In 1917, a Russian working-class revolution overthrew the government and capitalism, which ended World War I. Another revolution against Putin and capitalism is needed today.

Although there isn’t a strong antiwar movement in Russia today, when Putin first began his invasion, mass antiwar protests exploded onto the streets. Protestors defied authorities who tried to arrest anyone who dared to criticize Putin. In June a year later, the right-wing Wagner mercenary group revolted and threatened to unseat Putin. Supporting left-wing resistance movements within Russia will be essential for ending the war.

For these reasons, Reform & Revolution collaborated with others to convince DSA that our DSA Congress members must vote against US military budgets, NATO expansion, and weapons shipments to Zelensky. Unfortunately, all DSA Congress members voted for these measures. Reform & Revolution fully supports Ukraine’s right to self-defense, and we have no objection to their acquisition and use of arms. But socialists, especially DSA members in Congress, must oppose the agenda of US imperialism in this conflict, which serves only to perpetuate this destructive war and has nothing to do with the democratic right to self-determination.

Supporting the people in Ukraine does not mean we should support the corrupt capitalist government in Ukraine. Zelensky and his pro-NATO policies are obstacles to defending the Ukrainian people from Putin’s war. The Ukrainians’ emancipation must come primarily from the Ukrainian working class themselves, with solidarity from the Russian antiwar movement and an international working-class movement.

War in the Middle East

Like in Ukraine, a class-struggle strategy is essential to effectively fight Israel’s war on Palestine as well as the growing danger that it will escalate into a full-blown regional war.

The brutality of Israel’s war on Palestine sparked unprecedented mass protests in the US and around the world. Global public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to Israel’s atrocities, which led to the UN General Assembly voting overwhelmingly for a Gaza ceasefire. 153 countries voted in favor, and 10 countries voted against – exposing the extreme isolation of the US and Israel. The global outcry finally compelled the Biden Administration in December to urge the Israeli government to scale back its war.

Nonetheless, as this article is being written, Israel is continuing to pound Gaza and exchange rocketfire with militias in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In January, the US and UK unleashed hundreds of airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthis, dramatically risking escalating the conflict into a full-blown regional war. Activists must step up opposition to this reckless cycle of escalatory retaliation.

Socialists stand unapologetically on the side of the oppressed Palestinians and the Arab masses against their oppressors – the Israeli state, US imperialism, and the Arab ruling elites. Socialists support the demands of Palestinians for a permanent ceasefire, an end to the siege of Gaza, an end to discrimination against Palestinians within Israel, the right to return for all refugees, and the right to form an independent Palestinian state.

Navigating Antisemitism

But we should acknowledge the reality that so far the Left has failed to achieve these demands over the last 75 years. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex terrain for the Left because US imperialism and the Israeli lobby are powerful and because they exploit public sympathy for the Jews who have suffered oppression for hundreds of years. Statements by DSA Congressmembers have been smeared repeatedly as antisemitic by the political establishment in order to intimidate the left.

Zionists and the US political establishment try to marginalize the Palestinian liberation movement by labeling us as pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist, and antisemitic. These arguments can often marginalize our movement unless we argue back with an internationalist class-struggle strategy.

While focusing on the root cause of the conflict – Israeli colonialism – the Left should not hesitate to separate ourselves from Hamas or other right-wing, antisemitic groups like the Houthi Movement. This makes it easier to center the conversation on the context that the Western media try to ignore – Israel’s 75-year history of colonial wars and occupation.

Some in DSA and on the left are resistant to disagreeing with Hamas, their targeting of civilians on October 7, or the Houthi Rebels. Comrades argue that this allows our opponents to set the terms of the debate or that we must follow the lead of Palestinian leaders. Reform & Revolution does not agree with this line of thinking. Rather than fight Zionist framing, we believe this actually hands ammunition to Zionists to fire against the Left.

To strengthen the Palestine solidarity movement, we have to take into account the strong consciousness among working-class people around the world, both Jews and non-Jews, who recognize that antisemitism is real and continues to cause ongoing violence. Ever since the Holocaust, many Jews around the world teach their children to view Israel as “a beacon of security for Jews worldwide,” as the New York Times put it (January 3, 2024). After centuries of oppression, the rise of antisemitic violence and right-wing populists like Trump are heightening fears among Jews. In this context, we should clarify explicitly that we are not aligned with antisemitic forces like the Houthi Movement.

The historic rise in unions calling for a ceasefire in Palestine has been both inspiring and instructive on how to build mass support for Palestinian justice. In almost all these unions, the resolutions explicitly opposed Hamas’s killing of civilians, called for the release of Israeli hostages, and opposed both Islamophobia and antisemitism – while keeping the focus on stopping Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

A Class-Struggle Strategy

Like in Ukraine, standing in solidarity with an oppressed people against imperialism does not mean that we must automatically support the official leaders who happen to be leading the struggle at this point in time. The Palestinians have a long rich history of struggle that have used much more effective strategies than Hamas’s counter-productive strategy. The first intifada (uprising) in the 1980s involved tens of thousands of popular committees of Palestinian resistance. They were not self-selected militants claiming to act on behalf of the oppressed masses; it was a democratic mass uprising by the oppressed masses themselves. A new uprising of the Palestinian people, like the first Intifada, will be essential to win Palestinian liberation today.

The Reform & Revolution statement on Palestine (December 1, 2023) elaborates the key elements of a democratic socialist strategy:

A mass uprising against the brutal IDF requires taking up arms, which is the right of all occupied peoples. 

The reality of armed struggle, however, means it is essential to have a strategy that does not lead to new purges, new mass displacements, or deepened divisions along national, religious, or ethnic lines. Any democratic or socialist future of the region will have to be one based on cooperation between diverse communities. The idea of ethnically, religiously, or nationally “pure” territories is completely antithetical to such a project.

This is why it’s vital to emphasize support for democratic rights for all, especially minorities. This means unambiguously defending the rights of both the Palestinian and Jewish people living in the region, and openly opposing Jewish supremacism and Zionism, as well as anti-semitism and right-wing political Islam. 

Such a struggle can defeat the Israeli state by making clear to the Israeli working class, on the one hand, that there will be no peace until Israeli oppression of Palestinians ends. On the other hand, it would need to drive a wedge between the Israeli ruling class and the largest possible sections of its working class and oppressed ethnic groups. This requires extending an offer of a peaceful future together on the basis of defending the democratic rights of both peoples, Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Class appeals have an essential role to play in splintering working-class support for the far-right Zionist government and undermining the social base of the IDF.

Standing in solidarity with an oppressed people against imperialism does not mean that we should necessarily support the official leaders of the movement.

Anti-Imperialism Today

The wars in Palestine and Ukraine highlight the central role of imperialism within the increasingly violent, unstable system of global capitalism. There is no prospect for justice for the Palestinian people within the framework of capitalism. Palestinian liberation is in fundamental contradiction with the huge power of US imperialism and the Israeli state. Nor can Palestinians’ basic needs for water, electricity, jobs, and housing be satisfied on the basis of a capitalist Palestinian state and the continuation of Israeli capitalism.

These problems can only be solved by a mass movement of the Palestinian working class against the Israeli occupation and the corrupt Palestinian Authority, aligning itself with uprisings of the Israeli working class and Arab masses throughout the region. Similarly in Ukraine, there will be no lasting solution until the working class of Ukraine takes on Zelensky’s corrupt, pro-capitalist regime and the working class of Russia overthrows Putin.

The biggest obstacle we face in movements against imperialism is the historically low level of support for socialist ideas. However, we can win our liberation if socialists patiently build support for an independent working-class strategy within these movements against all the rival imperialist blocs, and boldly advocate for democratic socialism.

Here in the US, our immediate task is to build a movement to stop the US’s brutal interventions around the globe:

• No US military aid to Israel! US out of the Middle East!
• End US/NATO imperialist intervention in Ukraine!
• Slash the Pentagon budget – close US military bases around the world! Bring US troops home now!
• Money for jobs and education, not war and occupation!