‘New Cold War’ Continues To Escalate As 2024 Comes To A Close

In August of this year, Brendan Young and I wrote an article applying a Marxist lens to the “New Cold War,” the growing conflict between the Western powers in and around Nato on one side, and China, Russia, Iran, and their proxies on the other. As we lay out in this short update, the last four months have only confirmed the theoretical framework we laid out in our first contribution, as the conflict has escalated on a number of fronts.

Four Months Of Continued Military Escalation

As we made final changes to our first article, Ukraine had just launched its operation over the border into Russia, and so, for the first time since the Second World War, German-made tanks were fighting on Russian soil. Although the Ukraine conflict seems to be winding down, as Zelensky has made overtures towards a negotiated settlement, this has not stopped continued escalations. Also in August of 2024, Ukraine received its first deliveries of F16s, and this month the US announced an additional $266 million support package for Ukraine’s F16 program. 

Then in November, Ukraine fired US-supplied ATACMS missiles and then UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles into Russia, another major tactical escalation of the conflict. Russian forces responded by firing an intermediate-range ballistic missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and was effectively a reminder of Russia’s ability to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.

North Korea also directly entered the hot engagements of the New Cold War by sending some 10,000 troops to support the Russian front line in Kursk. Although these troops will not change the balance of forces in a major way, they are likely to make a material impact on the front line. And in exchange, Russia has agreed to provide North Korea with MiG-29 and Su-27 aircraft, providing advanced capabilities that China has been reluctant to provide, instead preferring to keep North Korea dependent upon it. The strengthening of North Korea’s military capabilities is in turn sparking concerns in South Korea and Japan.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, over the last four months Israel escalated its aggression in the region. Following several dramatic attacks on Hezbollah through compromised pagers and missile strikes, Israel launched a full-blown invasion into Lebanon on October 1. With Hezbollah largely weakened, Israel agreed to a ceasefire in late November. 

During this conflict, the kinetic action between Israel and Iran also reached an unprecedented level. In response to Israel’s invasion into Lebanon, on October 1 Iran launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, its second direct attack on Israel in history following an earlier barrage in April of 2024. In response, on October 26 Israel launched its Days of Repentance operation, involving over 100 Israeli aircraft and constituting the largest attack on Iran since the Iran-Iraq war.

Then, seemingly just as the ceasefire in Lebanon took effect, Turkish-backed forces in Syria’s north west Idlib province launched a lightning attack on Syrian Arab Army positions at Aleppo, quickly taking the city and within a week sweeping the entire country and ending the 50 year rule of the Assad dictatorship.

Netanyahu took credit for helping precipitate the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, including through its assassination of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah. Israel immediately capitalized on the fall of Assad, launching hundreds of strikes on targets in Syria, wiping out virtually the entire Syrian air force and navy, destroying missile and chemical weapons production facilities, and pushing through the Golan Heights to seize additional Syrian land to create a new “buffer zone.” 

Ukrainian forces also appeared to have assisted the HTS rebels through training and intelligence, in order to undermine Russian influence in the region. And now the fate of Russian military installations in Syria, including an important warm-water port at Tartus, are uncertain.

Reports indicate that HTS forces were augmented with up to 4,000 Uyghur fighters organized in the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP). China asserts that TIP is merely a continuation of the armed Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) which waged a militant insurgency in Xinjiang in the 1990s, with China threatening to “strike down” ETIM/TIP forces, showing how the escalation is drawing in even China, which has managed to remain relatively distant from the unfolding conflict in the Middle East.

Political Escalation

The escalation of the inter-imperialist conflict has not been limited to the military-kinetic dimensions, but has also been exacerbated in the political and economic fields.

Trump’s election will lead the US to pivot towards a continued escalation with China. Although Trump does desire a decrease in tensions between Nato and Russia, this is mainly for the purpose of avoiding pushing Russia and China closer together, as the Ukraine war has done, in order to better take on China.

Trump’s appointment of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State further confirms that Trump will take an antagonistic approach to China, while his reliance on trade czar Robert Lighthizer confirms his hardline approach to trade policy.

The impact of the Russia-Nato conflict in Ukraine has continued to be a key driving force weighing on the politics of EU member states. A formerly unknown Russia-friendly candidate, Călin Georgescu, recently topped the polls for the first round of the presidential election of Romania, securing him a space in the run-off.. But Romania’s top court then suspended the run-off election and overturned the results of the first round, on the basis that the election had been a target of mass interference by Russia. Romanian police also arrested 20 armed men including former mercenaries who were headed to the capital to counter anti-Georgescu protestors and intimidate journalists and politicians. 

Similarly, in the country of Georgia the divide between Russian and the EU has weighed on domestic politics in an explosive way. That country’s government has just installed a pro-Russian president after months of civil unrest divided along the same pro-EU and pro-Russian axis.

Meanwhile, in the far-eastern sphere, the Financial Times recently argued that the recent failed coup by the right-wing president of South Korea is a symptom of the growing tension between the US and China, as the two political camps in South Korea are torn between an aggressive stance against China forwarded by the right wing, and a more moderate stance seeking a middle position between the US and China supported by the center-left.

Economic Escalation

Finally, the escalation of the “New Cold War” has continued in the economic sphere.

In some ways, the economic conflict between East and West has taken the form of quasi-military operations. Shortly after the publication of our first article, the Wall Street Journal published an expose claiming that Zelenksy was responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream, contrary to the Western-backed narrative that the Russians had sabotaged their own pipeline. And in a somewhat similar operation, in late November Nato ships surrounded a Chinese transport vessel which had allegedly intentionally dragged its anchor to cut cables in the Baltic.

The recent Chinese-backed Salt Typhoon hack, which compromised the data of at least 8 US telecoms companies and may have involved data spanning dozens of countries, including the text messages of senior government officials, is just the latest in a series of back-and-forth cyber attacks between the Eastern and Western powers. 

But mostly, the economic dimension of the inter-imperialist escalation is mostly being fought through tariffs and industrial policy. 

In early December, China announced a new set of trade restrictions for critical minerals, in direct response to the US’s escalation restrictions on exports of “dual use” technologies to China. Trump also recently threatened the BRICS economic formation with a 100 percent tariff, challenging their efforts to develop an alternative reserve currency to the US dollar. 

The economic dimension of the inter-imperialist rivalry is perhaps no more evident than in the auto-sector. Many titans of the traditional auto industry appear on the brink of collapse. In Europe, German auto-makers and their downstream suppliers face extreme economic pressure, forcing them to make mass-layoffs and consider closing factories. The EU’s attempt at domestic production of batteries, NorthVolt, seems on the edge of total failure as the venture has recently filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, China continues to curry favor among oppositionist EU states, advancing its auto investments in Hungary in order to expand both its share in the European auto market and its political heft within the EU.

Much more could be said about the economic conflict, but in the main the fight for dominance between Chinese and American industry continues to escalate, with Europe caught in the middle and pulled between both sides. 

Momentum and Entanglement

The critical observer who treats the above military, political, and economic developments as a series of unique and unrelated incidents seriously misses the overarching logic of inter-imperialist rivalry and entanglement which is increasingly driving political and economic events around the globe. 

The logic of inter-imperialist rivalry is sparking increased conflict, as secondary conflicts pull in larger forces by the logic of the bi-modal zero-sum game. But also, this conflict then has a logic of its own; as it unfolds, it gains an unanticipated momentum and draws in various forces into a dynamic entanglement beyond the intentions of its actors.

The 14 months following the October 7 armed actions by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other armed Palestinian groups is a helpful case study. Arguably, the action was launched by Hamas in order to disrupt the consolidation of the Western-backed bloc in the Middle East, as Israel and Saudi Arabia moved towards normalizing relations. But the conflict quickly grew, engaging actors including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, and the Assad regime, as well as Western actors. Although neither Iran nor the US desired the initial escalation, both felt obligated to intervene in order to maintain their overall position. And now 14 months later, the “Axis of Resistance” forces are arguably far weaker than before, with Hamas decimated, Hezbollah seriously curtailed, Assad toppled, Iran weaker by the loss of its proxy forces and allies, and Israel extending its forces even further within Syrian territory. Meanwhile, the conflict was a huge weight around the Biden/Harris administration, and may have made the difference in the election of Trump, who will offer even more support for Netanyahu and the Saudis than did Biden and Harris.

So we see how conflicts between individual actors become conflicts between blocs. As these conflicts unfold, they tend to drag in each bloc as a whole, further increase the tension between the two blocs, and also consolidate the blocs upon themselves. Once launched, these conflicts have a momentum of their own as they set off actions and reactions. And the overall trend is towards continued escalation.

Fighting Imperialism In the New Year

Just the last four months have seen an almost-continuous escalation of the so-called “New Cold War.” 

Arguably the only marked example of “de-escalation” was the ceasefire signed between Israel and Lebanon. But this is the exception to escalation which proves the rule; even before the ceasefire had been fully enacted, another member of the Western bloc, Turkey, escalated its proxy war on Assad, leading a swift victory which probably surprised its own proponents.

Socialists should be prepared for a continual escalation of the conflict between the two major inter-imperialist blocs in the next year. It is necessary that socialists continue to advance an anti-imperialist agenda. 

It is very likely that the main focus of the US anti-war movement and the left in general, at least in terms of anti-imperialism, will remain opposing Zionism. With Trump at the helm of the US state and likely to increase the US backing for Netanyahu, it is almost certain that the existing anti-war movement will transform from an anti-Zionist/anti-Biden-Harris movement into an anti-Zionist/anti-Trump movement. While this leaves the movement more exposed to cooptation from liberal forces, it also likely will greatly expand the scope of potential participants.

For many on the left in the US, it is necessary to expand beyond the narrow scope of anti-imperialism as anti-Zionism only, developing an understanding of how Israeli and US Zionism fits into the broader global imperialist system. 

While Trump will almost certainly drive an increased escalation with China, it is also likely that he will seek a de-escalation with Russia. While opposing any escalation with China, the anti-war movement should seize the opportunity to advance the cause of a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. A peace agreement in Ukraine will not stop the inter-imperialist conflict from expanding, but it will materially improve the lives of millions of Ukrainians and Russians, offer some relief to the bi-modal bloc politics, and reduce the likelihood of near-term dramatic escalations like the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

As the New Cold War continues to escalate, growing the understanding of the framework of the inter-imperialist “New Cold War” is a crucial task for Marxists within the anti-war movement in order to strengthen the perspective of the movement for what is to come.