Trump and Elon Musk’s provocations and the world war

Donald Trump adheres to the principle of “He who warns is not a backstabber”. In recent days, he has announced a barrage of imperialist demands ranging from the annexation of Canada as the 51st state of the United States; the intention to buy Greenland or occupy it militarily if the offer is rejected; or to apply strong tariffs against Mexico, in defiance of the current free trade agreement, if it does not stop immigration to the United States, abolish the right of asylum and stop the advance of the drug cartels. US governments blame China for the increase of fentanyl consumption on its territory, triangulated through Mexico. IThis is the typical list of objectives of an imperialist power in the context of a world war.

The vast majority of responses to these threats have been trivial, almost ironical. They fail to grasp that these threats are not localized in nature. Canada, for instance, it's not only under Great Britain and Charles II tutelage. Inside NATO, Canada has aligned with the powers of the European Union, especially in the matters related to the war in Ukraine and the calls to incorporate it to the EU. Former Deputy Prime Minister Christia Freeland, a spokesperson for this policy, has just resigned from the Trudeau government, precisely because of the latter's refusal to offer a comprehensive policy against Trump's threats. Trudeau's resignation and the expected electoral victory of the Conservatives would bring Canada closer to the American fiscal adjustment policy and to its international policy in general. Something similar is happening in Greenland, a territory rich in strategic raw materials (rare earths and uranium) whose exploitation and transport have been favoured by the relative melting of the Arctic. The Kingdom of Denmark, in charge of Greenlands external policy (including defense) has rushed to claim the territory “is not for sale”, well aware of the development of the movement for independence (and a republic) of its mere 60,000 inhabitants. Panama’s split from Colombia at the end of the 19th century to build the canal under the American domain proved to be more difficult.

Trump’s claims include the recovery of the Panama Canal if there is a military dispute with China for the strait that separates it from Taiwan. A war in the Sea of China would result in the immediate occupation of the Panama Canal.

The exhaustion of American hegemony, shown through its industrial decline, commercial setback and the looming threat of its inflated financial system as well as the successive military and political defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, explains the political realignment by American imperialism, including the world war. In this context, the Zionist state's genocidal war against the palestinian people, including the defeats inflicted to Hezbollah and Iran in Lebanon and Syria (thanks to American imperialism) is a metaphor of the developing world war.

Elon Musk, who has been appointed to restructure the American state, while he is its main contractor, has revealed the most subtle features of Trump's imperialist offensive, through the political policing of Europe. He has already said he intends to push for the ouster of Britain's Labour prime minister, Keith Starmer, well before his term expires. It is to be replaced by the far right Reform Party, under one condition - the destitution of its actual leader Nigel Farage. Musk has taken the reins of a fascist International, which could only prosper, given national rivalries, under the tutelage of a fascist movement in the United States. He has gone even further, announcing his support for the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany in the elections next February, to the detriment of the Christian Democrats, the historical ally of the American governments.

The AfD calls for the dissolution of the EU and the rebuilding of an unapologetic German state. In an interview arranged by Musk, Alice Weidel, the AfD candidate for Chancellor, dared to utter a colossal ‘mileiad’, calling her idol Adolf Hitler a “communist”. The woman's blunder was not fully understood: she meant that she was abandoning statism (the state built Volkswagen) for libertarian austerity. This turn of events shows that nazism is not a program of economic development but the ideology and practice of the destruction of the workers movement and democracy. The Frankfurte Allgemeine, the German financial newspaper, foresaw Musk’s incursion by denouncing Trump’s speech as an attempt to reach an agreement with Putin and to destroy the European Union and Germany’s hegemony. Just short of 40 years from its formation, the EU and the Euro are shaken by powerful centrifugal forces. History's great transnational experiment now crumbles under the weight of war and capitalist decadence.

These later political and diplomatic aggressions from Trump and Elon Musk have overshadowed the ones he had made previously, which are even more important. The most criminal is the one that promises to turn Gaza into a “hell” if, by the day of his inauguration, all the Israeli hostages that Hamas has tried to exchange for Palestinian prisoners are not released. It is clear the full weight of American imperialism is behind the zionist massacre, having given Netanyahu more weapons than Zelenski relative to the forces in each war. About these declarations there has been no formal or ironical responses. Syria and Lebanon have fallen under the tutelage of zionism and NATO. Considering the presence of Turkey, the middle east is the backyard of Ukraine and the Southern Caucasus war, especially in Georgia. If we consider Iran's presence, then it is the backyard of Central Asia and the alliance of China, Russia and the muslim ex-soviet republics.

The question of all questions, however, has not been clarified in the confusion of the beginning of this year – the cessation of the NATO war in Ukraine. It would no longer be solved in “the first 24 hours of my term” as Trump claimed. The topic has fractured the United States on one side, and the EU on the other, without common ground between the so called “neocoss” on one side, and the “MAGA” on the other. Among the Russian demands, according to very detailed recent statements by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, is the restructuring of the official Ukrainian state in addition to territorial partition sanctioned by referendums and military occupation. This includes the banning of Nazi groups and the equality of Russian and Ukrainian in matters of language, education, religion, social services, and more. Accepting these conditions would trigger a major crisis in the Baltic countries, whose countries are facing the same problems of national discrimination. International neutrality would imply limiting the Ukranian armed forces, no foreign bases or joining NATO or the EU. In opposition to this, Trump expects a long ceasefire in exchange for lifting international sanctions against Russia. The deadlock could not be greater.

The occupation of Syria by Turkey, the United States and Israel has put Russia and China on the defensive. Adding to this is the inflationary crisis in Russia, the deflationary crisis in China (with pressure of capital outflow) and the huge social crisis in Iran. In opposition Musk and Trump's international campaign, the BRICS have fallen into some sort of immobilism. American imperialism is at the forefront of a policy of global political restructuring, with the fundamental reservation that the tariff attacks and tax cuts for companies promised by Trump will trigger a financial collapse in the United States, in the context of enormous public and private debts, including bankruptcies in consumer credit and office mortgages. War emerges as a blind force of a system beset by an explosion of contradictions without parallel in history.

Publicado originalmente en español. Traducido al inglés por Felipe Eduardo González Argañaraz.