Category: China

The Real Reason Trump is Lashing Out at South Korea

It’s not widely known that South Korea is the world’s fifth ranked military power—more powerful than even Japan, Germany, France, or the UK. By contrast, its foe, North Korea, is ranked thirty-first. Trump is lashing out at South Korea, not because it free-rides on the Pentagon (it doesn’t), but because the Lee administration doesn’t want to become embroiled in Trump’s wars, either against Iran or China.

21 August 2026

By Stephen Gowans

Irritated that South Korea had declined to send warships to the Persian Gulf to help the United States open the Strait of Hormuz, US president Donald Trump lashed out at Seoul, accusing the US ally of free-riding on the United States.  The US “can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us,” complained Trump. “I said, ‘Wait a minute. We have 39,000 soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong-un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran?’” [1]  

The United States has 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, not 39,000. And opening the Strait of Hormuz is the antithesis of an easy military operation. But lay Trump’s arithmetical lapse and military ineptitude aside. Does the United States have to guard South Korea from Kim Jong Un because the country is incapable of defending itself, as Trump alleges? The answer turns out to be fairly obvious and non-controversial.  “South Korea could almost certainly defeat a North Korean invasion on its own.”  [2] That’s the view of Elbridge Colby, the US undersecretary of defense for policy.  So, if Trump thinks the Pentagon has to guard South Korea from Kim Jong Un, he must have slept through meetings with Pentagon staff.

In his 2021 book The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, Colby wrote that “South Korea can … defend itself from a North Korean invasion on its own or with modest US support.” He pointed out that in terms of military expenditures, South Korea spends “more than twenty-five times what North Korea spends” and that “the South Korean military also benefits from an advanced economy and access to US equipment and expertise.” In contrast, North Korea’s conventional military “is antiquated, even decrepit.” South Korea could, Colby concluded, “almost certainly defeat a North Korean invasion on its own.” [3]

This too is the view of South Korea’s defense minister Ahn Gyu-back. In May he said that “we wouldn’t have much trouble defending ourselves.” The country’s president Lee Jae Myung was more emphatic. “Actually, we wouldn’t have any trouble at all.” [4]

Colby’s, Ahn’s, and Lee’s assessments are backed by the numbers. South Korea’s population is twice as large as North Korea’s. Its GDP is 58 times larger. Seoul’s military budget alone is bigger than all of North Korea’s economy—40 percent larger. Its military expenditures are at least over five times as large as Pyongyang’s military outlays (25 times larger according to Colby). South Korea has 4.1 million soldiers (600,000 active-duty troops and 3.5 million reserves), more than twice as many as North Korea, which has 1.9 million soldiers (1.3 million active-duty troops and 600,000 reserves.)   

Of US allies, South Korea is the most powerful militarily—more so than even Japan, Germany, France, and the UK. South Korea’s military is ranked fifth in the world, behind only the United States, China, Russia, and India. North Korea, in contrast, ranks thirty-first, weaker even than tiny Greece. [5]

Currently, South Korean troops make up 99 percent of combined US-South Korean forces in South Korea, 95 percent of the naval forces, and 90 percent of the air forces. [6] In a war with North Korea, almost all of the fighting would be done by South Koreans. Americans would play a peripheral role.

Far from being a security burden, the world’s fifth ranked military power is a formidable US military asset, one Washington would like to use to check its top rival, China. The People’s Republic, according to the leading US military official in Korea, General Xavier Brunson, could “deny American access to vital global markets,” the rationale for dubbing Zhongguo America’s top security threat. [7] The “China problem” in the US view, is not that the country poses a military threat to the US homeland (it doesn’t) but that it could squeeze corporate America and wealthy US investors out of lucrative markets in East Asia.

Brunson heads three military commands.

  • US Forces Korea (USFK), the contingent of 28,500 US troops stationed on the Korean peninsula.
  • The United Nations Command, established by the UN Security Council in 1950 to evict North Korean forces from South Korea. While active hostilities ended on 27 July 1953 with an armistice, the belligerents have never signed a peace treaty and remain technically at war.  For this reason, the UN Command continues. Its current mission is to manage the armistice.
  • The Combined Forces Command. “Combined forces” refers to the South Korean military and USFK together. It is worth repeating that the combined forces are 95 percent South Korean. In peacetime, South Korea’s military is under the control of the the country’s top general. In wartime, it falls under Brunson’s command.

The mission of the UN Command is straightforward: to deter North Korean aggression and “uphold peace and security on the Korean peninsula.” But the missions of the two other commands are broader. Like the UN Command, both aim to defend and protect South Korea. But they are also pledged to “maintain stability in Northeast Asia,” according to the USFK website. As the Pentagon understands it, Brunson’s mission extends beyond the Korean peninsula to all of Northeast Asia. That means that US forces could use South Korea as a base of operations against both China and Russia. It also means that the world’s fifth ranked military power could be pressed into service under Brunson’s command to wage war against either or both of these US rivals. Needless to say, these interpretations raise serious concerns among some, though not all, South Koreans. Conservatives generally favor submitting to US leadership, even if it means becoming entangled in wars with China or Russia. Progressives, in contrast, worry about Washington embroiling South Korea in a military contest with a great power.

Brunson has done little to allay South Koreans’ concerns about the United States enmeshing them in a war that would inevitably have devastating consequences for their lives. South Koreans are not unaware of the fate of the United States’s Persian Gulf allies in the Iran War, countries which, like South Korea, host US military bases in the neighborhood of a US enemy.  Brunson has referred to the Korean Peninsula as “a key strategic terrain vital to … advancing American interests in the region.” [8] When one considers that the key American interest in the region is checking China, and more specifically, preventing it from asserting sovereignty over Taiwan, then South Koreans can be understandably apprehensive about the role the Pentagon foresees them playing in pursuit of US objectives.

A year ago, Brunson told an audience, “If you were to draw a triangle from Tokyo to Seoul to Manila, about 52% of global trade comes through that area. And I think there’s a recognition that we all ought to have that if something happens in the region, there’s going to be a call for nations to react accordingly.” [9] The South Korean newspaper, The Hankyoreh, reported that Brunson was “advocating for building the capacity for the US and [South] Korea to respond to common enemies,” the most important of which, in the US view, is China. [10] Brunson has “repeatedly defined [South] Korea as a military hub for the US containment of China” and believes “that [South] Korea, the US and Japan should join forces to hem in China.” [11]

Washington is modernizing its alliance with South Korea, as part of the Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy. The strategy seeks to prevent China, Russia, and Iran from becoming hegemons in their respective regions. If any of these powers become regionally dominant, they will, in the strategy’s assessment, be in a position to deny US investors and business-owners access to their regional markets. US strategy and war-planning documents almost invariably cite the need to safeguard US access to foreign markets as a key security aim. The Pentagon and US foreign policy establishment plan wars around the pursuit of business and investor interests.

The plan goes on to assess that the United States does not have the resources to fight more than one potential hegemon at any one time. It must therefore prioritize its efforts and focus on the largest region and most significant potential hegemon: China.

If China is not contained, the plan’s authors write, it will use force to dominate its neighbors, beginning with Taiwan, and achieve regional supremacy. If it achieves regional supremacy, it will be in a position to deny US businesses and investors access to Asian markets.

In order to prioritize China, the strategy calls on the United States to:

  • Offload responsibility for preventing Russia from seeking hegemonic status in Europe to its NATO allies;
  • Transfer resources for defending Ukraine to defending Taiwan;
  • Contain Iran by arming Israel;
  • Modernize its alliance with South Korea. [12]

Modernizing the US-South Korea alliance means shifting command of the officially ongoing war with North Korea from Washington to Seoul. This will free up US resources to concentrate on preventing China from seizing control of Taiwan, and ensure that if China and North Korea initiate concurrent military actions—China against Taiwan and North Korea on the peninsula—that US forces can remain focused on China, while South Korea holds down the Korean front.  As we have seen, Washington recognizes that the world’s fifth ranked military power can easily take on the thirty-first. But for South Korea to assume its new responsibility, authority to command its own forces in wartime must pass from Brunson and the Combined Force Command, where it currently sits, to a South Korean general. The process of carrying out this transition is called OPCON (operational control) transfer.

South Korea regained peacetime OPCON in 1994, and Washington has promised at various times to transfer wartime OPCON. Its promises, however, have always proved empty. South Korean progressives have been in favor of regaining sovereignty over the country’s armed forces and most conservatives, being strongly inclined to philodespotia (love of their imperial masters) have opposed it.  South Korea’s Ministry of Defense has been pushing for the transfer to take place next year but Brunson favors delaying until 2029. [13]

Along with OPCON transfer, Washington has also been pursuing the idea of strategic flexibility: the notion that US forces in Korea should be deployed to missions throughout Northeast Asia, rather than being limited to action on the Korean peninsula. “Colby thinks that USFK’s primary role shouldn’t concern North Korea but China, and has consistently referred to the possibility of either withdrawing or redeploying US troops in Korea.” [14] In Brunson’s words, having the USFK “moored in place is not militarily expedient.” [15] If strategic flexibility means the exit of US forces from South Korea, this would be a boon for all Koreans, even if the exit would be vigorously opposed by conservatives. US forces remaining on the peninsula is quite a different matter. If Washington intends to use South Korea as a platform from which to attack China or Russia, South Koreans will end up as pawns sacrificed in a great power game of international chess.  

The Lee Jae Myung administration “has drawn a line in the sand, holding to the position that the potential for USFK to intervene in the event of a conflict over Taiwan is not up for discussion.” [16] This may be one of the top reasons Trump has lashed out at Seoul. Recently, the Pentagon sent a questionnaire to NATO members, outlining what Trump expects from US subordinates: Support for US foreign policy; access to their military bases; and purchases of US weapons. [17] Lee’s clear opposition to the Pentagon using South Korea as a platform from which to attack US rivals has very likely agitated Trump. Chiding Seoul for failing to assist the United States in the Iran War debacle, and falsely accusing South Koreans of free-riding on the Pentagon, reflects his frustration over the refusal of Seoul to sacrifice South Koreans for US, and Trump’s own, self-serving interests. In short, Seoul is balking at the possibility of South Koreans being used as cannon fodder in a US war against China whose aim is to prevent wealthy US investors and business owners from possibly losing access to lucrative Asian markets.

Stephen Gowans is the author of Patriots, Traitors, and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Fight for Freedom.

1. “Korea latest casualty of Trump’s misplaced frustration over mess in Iran, says US media outlet,” The Hankyoreh, 2026-08-19.

2. Elbridge A. Colby, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, Yale University Press, 2021, p. 263.

3. Colby, p. 263. 

4. “Lee calls sovereign defense ‘fundamental’ amid rift with US over OPCON transfer timing,” The Hankyoreh, 2026-05-27.

5. 2026 Military Strength Rating, Global Firepower,https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php; “N. Korea ranks 34th in global firepower ranking; S. Korea 5th,” The Korea Times, Jan 14, 2025; “Kim Jong Un Wants a Military That’s More Than Just Nukes—and Russia Can Help,” The Wall Street Journal,  Sept. 23, 2025; “USFK commander sets early 2029 as target date for OPCON transfer,” The Hankyoreh, 2026-04-24; “Lee says Korea must be able to defend itself without foreign troops, states resolve to reclaim OPCON by 2028,” The Hankyoreh, 2026-04-29.

6. “Korea is more than ready to regain OPCON. Is the US ready to relinquish it?” The Hankyoreh, 2026-06-24.

7. Statement of General Xavier T. Brunson, before the 119th Congress Senate Armed Services Committee, April 22, 2026.

8. Ibid.

9. “USFK commander hints at changes to US troop presence in Korea,” The Hankyoreh, 2025-08-11.

10. Ibid.

11. “Why does the USFK commander keep butting heads with Seoul?” The Hankyoreh, 2026-06-29.

12. National Security Strategy of the United States of America, November, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

13. “Lee calls sovereign defense ‘fundamental’ amid rift with US over OPCON transfer timing,” The Hankyoreh, 2026-05-27.

14. “Korea mulls how to respond if US demands ‘strategic flexibility’ of USFK at summit,” The Hankyoreh, 2025-08-20.

15. “USFK commander stresses changing geopolitical environment in pitch to ‘modernize’ alliance,” The Hankyoreh, 2025-08-11.

16. “Korea mulls how to respond if US demands ‘strategic flexibility’ of USFK at summit,” The Hankyoreh, 2025-08-20.

17. “Korea latest casualty of Trump’s misplaced frustration over mess in Iran, says US media outlet,” The Hankyoreh, 2026-08-19.

Xi Jinping and His Republican Party-Style Contempt for Socialism

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“Socialist” China and Its Many Illusions

Growth that depends in large part on US cooperation goes away when you no longer fulfil the prerequisites of US cooperation.

By Stephen Gowans

August 9, 2023

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal, “U.S. to Ban Some Investments in China,” and relatedly, China’s recent economic tribulations, prompted the following thoughts on what was not too long ago presented by Sinophiles as the world’s paragon economic model.

The take-off Sinophiles celebrate as the outcome of China’s so-called ‘unique’ economic paradigm, began soon after Beijing decided to transition from its role as communist competitor of the United States to capitalist economic partner of its former enemy.

Deng Xiaoping’s “If you can’t beat them, join them” project, opened the gate to US, European, and Japanese investment, which drove the country’s development.

China was—and remains—an investors’ dream. It offered a vast pool of educated, disciplined, low-wage workers, a stable political environment, a government eager to cater to foreign investors, and a huge market—all the ingredients that investors needed to pull in huge returns.

What made the model unique was China’s history, size, and demography, as well as its Communist Party, which had the legitimacy and Washington’s backing to mold China’s vast population—at that time the largest in the world—to its will of catering to foreign investment. The model couldn’t be transferred to other places, because other places lacked the combination of education, political stability, infrastructure, size, proximity to sea routes, and willingness to collaborate with the United States, that made China the world’s premier investment opportunity.

Times have changed.

Having used Western investment to vault to the first ranks of the global capitalist economy, Beijing has embarked on a second transition, this time from US economic partner to US economic competitor. Chimerica, the integration of China into the US economy, with the US as the union’s finance, R&D, and marketing arm, and China as its manufacturing base, has yielded to China 2025, Beijing’s plan to dominate the industries of the future, provoking Washington’s counter-measures to stop it.

As China challenges US supremacy, its once torrid growth has slowed. Direct U.S. investment into China has hit a 20-year low. U.S. venture-capital investment has hit a 10-year low. Without US commitment to building China as the factory floor of the US, EU, and Japan, China’s economic prospects are no longer as sanguine as they once were.

People’s China, contrary to a myth perpetrated by Sinophiles and apostles of multipolarity, didn’t develop in a world of its own making, insulated and kept separate from capitalism, neo-liberalism, US leadership, and the US economy. It developed precisely because it willingly became a part of all these things.

Now that it’s trying to extricate itself from its former submission to US economic leadership in order to vie with US capital for economic supremacy, foreign and venture capital investment is drying up and China’s torrid growth has disappeared in a puff of political reality, viz., growth that depends in large part on US cooperation goes away when you no longer fulfil the prerequisites of US cooperation.

China’s economic model is not so different from the state-led capitalist development of Germany’s Second and Third Reichs or Meiji-restoration Japan that we should regard it as unique; we certainly shouldn’t regard it as socialist.

Nor, given that China’s rulers have adopted a state-led capitalist development model, guided moreover by a nationalist ambition to restore China to the great civilization it once was, should we harbor illusions about the political project of the Chinese Communist Party. It is not the worldwide proletarian revolution, nor even, it would seem, the proletarian revolution in China, but the vaulting of China to supremacy in the world capitalist market—the same ambition of every other capitalist power with heft.

We should not, therefore, regard the political primacy of the communist party in China as investing the country’s rivalry with the US and EU with a character any different from Germany’s earlier rivalry with Britain for supremacy in Europe or Japan’s erstwhile rivalry with the United States for pre-eminence in the Pacific and East Asia.

China is not a paragon, a model for other countries to emulate. It is just one more capitalist power vying for markets, raw materials, investment opportunities, strategic territory, and the power to shape the global economy to its advantage.

The Era of Ultracheap Labor Is Under Threat

Factories in China and Vietnam are struggling to attract young workers, which is bad news for Western businesses accustomed to offshoring jobs at subsistence-level wages.

August 8, 2023

The world’s largest capitalist enterprises, having located their factory floors in low-wage Asia, are running into a big problem: The young people of China and Vietnam, two Asian giants ruled on behalf of Western businesses by Communist parties, don’t want to work in factories at dehumanizing jobs for subsistence-level wages. 

The twilight of ultracheap Asian factory labor is emerging as the latest test of the globalized manufacturing model, which over the past three decades has delivered a cornucopia of profits to wealthy investors around the world. American businesses accustomed to bargain-rate labor in Communist-controlled China and Vietnam might soon be reckoning with higher prices.

“There’s nowhere left on the planet that’s going to be able to give you what you want,” said Paul Norriss, the British co-founder of the Vietnam garment factory, UnAvailable, based in Ho Chi Minh City. CEOs of the world’s largest enterprises are going to have to change their business models.

Workers in their 20s routinely drop out of training programs for low-wage factory jobs.  Those who stay often work for just a couple of years.

“Everybody wants to be an Instagrammer or a photographer or a stylist or work at a coffee shop,” rather than a factory worker who toils long hours doing mind-numbing tasks for survival-level pay.

In response to the crisis, Asian factories have had to increase wages and adopt sometimes costly strategies to retain workers, from improving cafeteria fare to building kindergartens for workers’ children. 

Toy and game maker Hasbro said this year that labor shortages in Vietnam and China had pushed up costs from subsistence-level to barely above subsistence. Barbie-maker Mattel, which has a large production base in Asia, also is grappling with the pressure of higher labor costs in China on corporate profits and bonuses for its hyper-wealthy CEO. Both companies have raised prices for their products, to protect investors’ profits. Nike, which makes most of its shoes in Asia, flagged in June that its product costs had gone up because of higher labor expenses. 

For U.S. businesses that have been accustomed to having low-wage workers as a certain and relatively stable part of their business model, that foundation is going to have to be rejiggered.

Starting in the 1990s, China and then other Asian manufacturing hubs integrated into the global capitalist economy, turning nations of poor farmers into nations of poor factory workers. Labor was available at dirt-cheap wages, allowing businesses to expand their margins and reap a cornucopia of profits off the toil of Communist-led workers reduced to the status of machines for producing surplus value. 

Now those manufacturing nations are running up against a generational problem. Younger workers, better-educated than their parents and veterans of Instagram, TikTok and other social media, are deciding their work lives shouldn’t unfold in dehumanized toil inside factory walls at barebones pay for the benefit of billionaires in New York and Shanghai.

Demographic shifts are playing a role. Young people in Asia are having fewer children than their parents did, and at later ages, which means they are under less pressure to earn a steady income in their 20s. A booming services sector offers the option of less-grueling work as store clerks in malls and receptionists at hotels.

The problem is acute in China, where urban youth unemployment hit 21% in June even though factories had labor shortages. Multinational companies have been moving production from China to nations including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and India. Factory owners there said they, too, are struggling to get young people to sign up.

In the past, manufacturers, scouring the globe for workers deprived of all options but to condemn themselves to lives of ceaseless, demeaning toil at wages incapable of supporting their families in anything but conditions of squalor, might simply have moved to less expensive destinations. That’s not so easy these days. There are nations in Africa and South Asia with large labor pools, but many are politically unstable, or lack good infrastructure and trained workforces.

That’s why China has been so attractive to the world’s largest capitalist enterprises. The infrastructure is excellent, the workforce is trained and disciplined, and Chinese workers can be hired to toil long hours for little pay. The Communist Party of China ensures that conditions are highly favorable to investors by making conditions highly unfavorable to workers.

Clothing brands were stung when they expanded into Myanmar and Ethiopia, only to find operations disrupted by unrest and civil war. Bangladesh has been a reliable base for producing clothes, but restrictive trade policies and clogged ports have kept it from making much beyond that.

India has a huge population, and firms seeking alternatives to China are expanding there. But even in India, factory managers are beginning to complain about the difficulties of retaining young workers. Many young people prefer farm life, no matter how gruelling, to equally gruelling lives in factory dormitories in industrial hubs.

Asian factory owners are trying to make the jobs more appealing, including subsidizing kindergartens and funding technical-training programs. Some are moving factories to rural areas where people are more willing to do manual labor, but that puts them farther away from ports and suppliers and forces them to accommodate rural life, including worker absences during harvest. 

Christina Chen, the Taiwanese owner of a furniture maker that sells to American retailers such as Lowe’s, decided to move her factory out of southern China four years ago, hoping it would be easier to recruit. She first considered industrial zones near Ho Chi Minh City, but she heard nightmarish stories about workers demanding wages above subsistence levels.  How are capitalists to earn fat returns when workers balk at a life of penury?

Young people from developing countries who otherwise might take factory jobs are finding work caring for the growing numbers of the elderly people in developed nations, as well as plugging gaps in those countries’ aging workforces. The pay is low, but above the subsistence-level pay of factory labor back home.

Susi Susanti, a 29-year-old from Indonesia, said she tried factory jobs after graduating from high school. She hated being pressured to work faster by her managers at an electronics factory, and in a second job making shoes. She told her mother she had to do something else.

A six-month training course taught her rudimentary Mandarin, and she set off to work caring for an elderly couple in Taiwan. Her pay is three times as high as she earned in factories back home, she said, and it’s less exhausting. “When the person I’m looking after is doing well,” she said, “I can relax.”

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This article is from The Wall Street Journal of August 7, 2023. It has been edited for class perspective. The original article, written by Jon Emont, is titled  “The Era of Ultracheap Stuff Is Under Threat.”

“People should be awake to this tactic, and refuse to be fooled by it”

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The Multipolaristas’ Theory of Ultra-Imperialism Doesn’t Fit a Multipolar World

December 27, 2022

By Stephen Gowans

Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Mr. Putin” is “convinced Russia’s Western enemies” are “seeking to yank Ukraine from Russia’s orbit.” Clearly, the United States and Russia are locked in a struggle over Ukraine; each wants the territory in its own orbit—that is, in its own empire. US efforts to yank Ukraine from the Russian orbit have been largely successful. Russia is yanking back, but it’s unlikely to win the tug of war.

The idea that the war in Ukraine is but one battlefield in a larger war between two empires is difficult to grasp for people whose understanding of imperialism is influenced by dependency theories developed in the immediate post-WWII period. That period was characterized by one capitalist empire, that of the United States, absorbing most of its former capitalist rivals into its orbit. Under US supervision, the now combined powers, once rivals, jointly exploited the periphery.

People who subscribe to this view, whether consciously or through osmosis, look at the world through a lens whose purpose, when the lens was crafted, was to explain the international system at a time when neither Russia nor China existed as capitalist powers and rivalry among capitalist powers was muted by US primacy. Glimpsed through this lens, Russia and China appear as what they once were, but are no longer: socialist counterweights to a capitalist metropolis.

This, to be sure, is a view of a world that expired 30 years ago, when the Soviet Union was succeeded by a capitalist Russia, and China was at least a decade along the path of capitalist development and integration into the US economy as a low-wage manufacturing center.

Today, Russia and China are capitalist powers. But if they appear to some, not as metropolitan powers keen on integrating regions into their own expanding economies, but as powers lying outside the metropolis, as opposed to merely outside the US empire, it’s because they are understood incorrectly as being what they once were, rather than what they have since become. Both powers are external to the US empire (to some degree; China is so only partially), but the US empire is no longer equal to the metropolis; it is now only one part of it.

Karl Kautsky developed a theory of ultra-imperialism. Kautsky argued that the stress might shift from conflict between imperialist powers to maintenance of a world system of exploitation, i.e., conflict between the metropolis and periphery. It is surely the latter, the worldwide exploitation of colonial peoples by the metropolitan bourgeoisie, observed Anthony Brewer, which is generally understood by the term ‘imperialism’ today. At the time, the very suggestion that such a shift was possible aroused vehement hostility from the left. For the left, inter-imperialist rivalry leading to war was the very essence of imperialism. The concept of imperialism has shifted its meaning between then and now, but the emergence of a multipolar international system, or of great power rivalry in Washington’s terms, means that the understanding of imperialism now lags developments in international relations. Contemporary international relations now bear a greater affinity with the classical Marxist theory of imperialism than with Kautsky’s ultra-imperialism.

None of this is to say that theories about metropolitan exploitation of the periphery are wrong, only that the notion that Russia and China are external to the capitalist metropolis is mistaken. The former socialist giants have joined the metropolis, not as a part of a Kautskyist ultra-imperialism led by Washington, but as rivals of the USA, EU, and Japan.

Is there a better theory?

In its emphasis on rivalry among capitalist powers, the classical Marxist theory of imperialism comports more fully with contemporary developments than dependency theories. If we accept that the contemporary international system is marked by an emerging multipolarity, and that the principal powers in the multipolar system are capitalist, then the world of today bears a much stronger resemblance to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to which the classical Marxist theories of imperialism referred, than it does to the 20th century period of US-led ultra-imperialism.  

That’s not to say that the classical Marxist theory is without its problems. But it does say that despite its problems, the classical theory is a better fit with an emerging multipolar world than theories which were developed to explain a world characterized by a US-led metropolis exploiting a periphery, opposed by a socialist Russia and socialist China.

Continuing to see Russia and China as socialist powers that lie outside the metropolis, when they are now large capitalist powers with unconcealed projects of integrating regions into their own economies, is tantamount to applying the geology of the desert to the rainforest, and on this basis, declaring that trees (i.e., an imperialist Russia and an imperialist China) don’t exist.

To summarize, here are four errors that are made by seeing the contemporary multipolar world through a Kautskyist ultra-imperialist lens.

  1. Adopting the now extremely dated view that Russia and China are socialist, rather than capitalist.
  2. Seeing Russian and Chinese opposition to the US empire as rooted in socialism, rather than capitalist rivalry for economic territory.
  3. Perceiving the US empire as equal to the metropolis, rather than as only one part of it, along with Russia and China.
  4. Regarding the periphery as exploited by the US empire alone, rather than by Russia and China, as well.

For the Friends of Socialist China, a Very Bad Week

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Socialist China or Capitalist China? It’s All the Same to the Country’s Communist Rulers

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Why China Is Not Socialist

Colonial politics and imperialism are not healthy, curable deviations of capitalism…they are the inevitable consequence of the very foundations of capitalism. Competition among individual entrepreneurs either to become ruined, or to ruin others; competition between individual countries places before each of them the alternative of their remaining behind, running the risk of [falling behind], or ruining and conquering other countries, thus elbowing their way to a place among the great powers. – V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism and Socialism in Italy”

May 12, 2022

By Stephen Gowans

From The Wall Street Journal we learn that China’s President Xi Jinping has hammered home the need for tighter party control over the economy with a wider role for state enterprises. Under Xi, China’s Communist Party has tried to transition from ‘economics in command’ to ‘politics in command.’

But now “China’s economy is struggling, and its financial markets are suffering. Some economists expect growth to contract this quarter. Millions of graduates are struggling to find jobs.”

Premier Li Keqiang is “helping press Xi to dial back some measures that have contributed to China’s economic slowdown.”

“As a young man, Li pursued a doctorate in economics under a prominent Chinese economist known for advocating Deng Xiaoping’s market-reform agenda and privatizing state firms.”

“Under Mr. Li’s influence, Beijing recently eased a regulatory crackdown on private technology firms, loosened lending to property developers and home buyers, and acted to help some manufacturers”, including Tesla, controlled by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, “resume production when much of China has been forced into lockdowns by Mr. Xi’s zero-Covid approach.”

As the Marxist sociologist Albert Szymanski once pointed out, communists, like Xi, who choose to operate within the capitalist system soon discover that state policy is structured by capitalism, not by their policy preferences. Decision-makers who defy capitalism’s imperatives find their actions precipitate crises. Humbled, they quickly back peddle.

In a Chinese idiom, economics, i.e., capitalism, is in charge.

I explore this issue in my new book The Killer’s Henchman: Capitalism and the Covid-19 Disaster.

“The political orientations of the people who hold high-level positions in the capitalist state are largely irrelevant. The logic of capitalism structures the policy boundaries within which policy- and decision-makers operate, forcing conservatives, liberals, social democrats, and even communists who elect to work within the capitalist system, to operate within the same narrow pro-capitalist policy space. The prosperity and stability of a capitalist society depends on the private owners of capital accumulating sufficient profits. If they cannot generate enough profit, they cease to invest, and economic activity grinds to a halt. To maintain stability, governments must pursue policies to support the profit-making activities of their business communities. If they choose not to, their only option is to mobilize popular support to bring the economy under public ownership and control, so that investment decisions can be transferred from private hands to the public sphere, from profit-making as its goal to satisfying public needs as its end. There is no middle ground, where working-class interests can be robustly and continually expanded within a capitalist framework at the expense of the capitalist class.”

Capitalism structures state policy, not only in the realm of domestic matters, but in foreign relations, as well. Communists who elect to operate within the capitalist system are constrained to compete with other capitalist states for markets, raw materials, spheres of investment, and strategic territory, vital to their investors and profit-accumulating enterprises. If they are to play the capitalist game, states can no more absent themselves from rivalry with other states— with potential to escalate to war—than a private firm can absent itself from rivalry with its competition.

As two Bolsheviks wrote in their ABC of Communism, each “producer wants to entice away the others’ customers, to corner the market. This struggle assumes various forms: it begins with the competition between two factory owners; it ends in the world, wherein capitalist States wrestle with one another for the world market.” And in the struggle of capitalist states for the world market—in arms, oil and natural gas, rare earths, vaccines, robotics, supercomputers, AI, autonomous vehicles, 5G, and other commodities—lies the potential for war.

There is no doubt that Beijing has chosen to play the capitalist game. It is the centerpiece of its  development project. There is, therefore, no option for China to excuse itself from imperialism. If it is to develop along capitalist lines, it must behave as a capitalist state, including by vying with other states for capitalist advantage around the world and indulging billionaires like Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook, capitalists who have grown immensely wealthy by exploiting cheap Chinese labor.

That China’s capitalist development project is under the command of communists, neither negates the reality that the project is one of integration into a world capitalist system based on exploitation, or that, as Xi is finding out, politics in command can be checked by capitalism in command.

As political science professor Minxin Pei told The Wall Street Journal, Xi may be a “leftist deep down, but he has to make tactical compromises over the economy.” That is, the world capitalist economy.

In sum, despite the Communist Party being nominally in charge, and the president being a leftist “deep-down,” China is integrated into the world capitalist economy as a major, if not the major player, by the choice of China’s Communist Party rulers. State policies are not structured by communists seeking to end the exploitation of one human by another, but by the imperatives of the capitalist system Chinese communists have consciously embraced.

The idea that China is socialist is as far-fetched as the idea the moon is made of cheese.

Imperialism and the Solomon Islands

By Stephen Gowans

April 21, 2022

In Lenin’s view, imperialism is immanent in capitalism as a global system. Inasmuch as China is one of the most significant players in this system, if not the most significant, the implication of Lenin’s view is that imperialism is also immanent in China.

A number of people who claim to be anti-imperialists and to understand the concept thoroughly, to the point of holding workshops, participating in panels, and writing articles to instruct others on what it means, have, despite their professed knowledge, defined the concept in a manner that departs significantly from the way in which imperialism has been understood historically. Until Russia invaded Ukraine, there was little mystery about what imperialism is. Now, it has become altogether different from what it has always been understood to mean. And while many of these same people claim at least a passing knowledge of Lenin’s view of imperialism, the Bolshevik leader would have been baffled by their understanding.

In opposition to commonly accepted definitions and the Leninist tradition, the anti-imperialist docents have developed a view of imperialism that resonates less with Lenin and more with a view developed by Shintoist Japan in the 1930s. According to this view, imperialism is North American and Western European domination of the world. Anti-imperialism is the effort of a rising power to liberate its neighbors from this domination by folding nearby states into its own (declared or undeclared) regional empire (the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in Japan’s case.)

Hence, Russia’s efforts to “liberate” Ukraine from the United States and Europe, and to incorporate parts or all of it into a palingenetic Russian empire, is viewed as anti-imperialist. Likewise, China’s new security agreement with the Solomon Islands is seen as anti-imperialist—a weakening of US and Australian domination of the islands. While it certainly is this, it is also an effort to define a security architecture that allows Beijing to protect Chinese investments abroad and to safeguard shipping routes that are vital to the unimpeded access of Chinese billionaires to foreign markets and sources of raw materials.

The Leninist view of imperialism as inherent in a globalized capitalism can be used as a lens to parse the New York Times’ reporting on the recent China-Solomon Islands security agreement. According to a leaked draft of the accord, Beijing is empowered to dispatch police, troops, and warships to the islands to protect Chinese investments and Chinese citizens, an agreement that resonates with multiple similar accords struck between Washington and countries in Latin America and beyond.

The Times, tacitly defining US ruling class interests as humanity’s interests, presents the accord as a danger to the world. “China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and his army now have a foothold in an island chain that played a decisive role in World War II and could be used to block vital shipping lanes,” the newspaper warns. What isn’t mentioned is that the United States and its satellites control the shipping lanes. The deal allows China to challenge US control of the maritime routes on which it depends—or more precisely, on which its capitalist economy depends—for access to foreign markets and sources of raw materials. The deal doesn’t threaten humanity so much as it threatens US leverage over a capitalist rival.

The Times continues its diatribe against the accord by noting the pact’s imperialist features, all the while avoiding any mention of the similar accords Washington, London, Paris, and other imperialist capitals have signed with numberless governments around the world for centuries, sometimes at the point of a gun.

“To start,” the accord “provides a broad mandate for China to potentially intervene when its foreign investments and diaspora are under threat, as it stretches its projection of military power.”

The newspaper quotes Richard Herr, a law professor at the University of Tasmania, who observes that “With the pact, China is essentially trying to establish a principle of using military force to protect its economic presence in places where it claims the government does not have the capacity.” In this, China acts no differently than the United States.

“What the Solomons’ deal tells the world, at the very least,” he adds, “is that China believes that if its major projects are threatened, it wants a right to protect them.” Again, this is standard US procedure, or, to put it another way, standard procedure for major capitalist powers. Consider also France’s intervention in Africa to protect access to and investments in uranium mines, vital to an important form of French energy.

“The lesson for the rest of the world is that China is looking to rebalance the global order in its favor,” Herr continues. “And whether that means opening trade routes, establishing a military facility or signing a security agreement, Beijing will act to benefit its own interests.” Herr goes on to say that Beijing will do so at the expense of “democracy and an open and free world”, euphemisms for the US empire.  In other words, the expansion of a Chinese empire comes at the expense of a US empire.

What the Times’ article shows, albeit in a clearly chauvinist way, is that large capitalist powers and blocs—the United States and its satellites, Europe (to the extent it acts independently of the United States), China, and Russia—seek to fashion the world order in their favor.  They seek to bring as much of the world economy as possible under their own control. This means security arrangements and treaties to protect their investments abroad, and to safeguard their access to foreign markets, sources of raw materials, strategic territory, and investment opportunities. To be sure, the United States is by far the strongest of the rivals, but that doesn’t mean that Russia and China are not driven by capitalist compulsions to dominate the planet every much as strong as those that drive US expansion—a compulsion to settle everywhere, to nestle everywhere, to establish connections everywhere.

With multiple capitalist power centers existing within the framework of a globalized economy, rivalry for profit-making opportunities is inevitable. The rise of one power center at the expense of another may appear to be anti-imperialist, but only so far as the declining power is erroneously viewed as the sole imperialist, i.e., as the lone capitalist power in search of investment opportunities, markets, and raw materials. The decline of US and Western European influence in East Asia with the rise of Japan beginning in the 1930s may have appeared to the naïve as an anti-imperialist victory—this was certainly the illusion Tokyo aimed to create—but it was an illusion all the same. So too is China’s rise an illusory anti-imperialist victory. It may be a victory against China’s domination by the United States, as the rise of the United States was a victory against US domination by Britain, or Germany’s rise was a challenge to British hegemony, but it is in no way a victory over the persistence of capitalist rivalry for markets, raw materials, investment opportunities, and strategic territory. It is simply a continuation of this process.

Imperialism within a globalized capitalist economy can be envisaged along two axes. One axis concerns the process of large countries exploiting profit-making opportunities in smaller countries. The anti-imperialist docents err in thinking of imperialism in these terms alone. The other axis concerns the rivalry among large countries for profit-making opportunities within the borders of the countries its rivals dominate and within the borders of its rivals themselves. The first axis is one of large countries dominating weaker ones. The second is of large countries competing among themselves to monopolize the sum total of the world’s profit-making opportunities—to shape the global order in their favor, to use terminology favored by the New York Times.  

The security pact between China and the Solomon Islands is a manifestation of imperialism, in three acts:

  • In China seeking to create a security architecture to protect its tycoons’ investments beyond China’s borders.
  • In Beijing’s efforts to counter US domination of shipping lanes important to China’s capitalist economy.
  • In the opposition of the United States (and its sub-imperialist partner, Australia) to China’s challenge to US-led control of maritime routes.

Capitalism need not be invoked to define China and Russia, along with the United States, France, and Great Britain—the permanent members of the UN Security Council—as imperialist states. As victors of WWII, these self-defined “model” nations have assigned to themselves rights and privileges senior to those of all other nations. Russia, for example, can test a new ballistic missile with impunity, by virtue of its permanent membership on the council and access to veto powers, while participating, along with China, in the imposition of international sanctions on a small country, North Korea, for doing precisely the same.

Large countries, including the largest of all, China, have historically dominated their weaker neighbors, even if some of them, China not excepted, were dominated themselves. A fortiori, we would expect large capitalist countries, driven by an expansionary capitalist logic, to continue in this manner. China shows no evidence that it is an anomaly or a departure from expectation.