What Might Lenin Have Thought About the US-Israeli War on Iran (and the War in Ukraine)?

Facit indignatio versum

(Indignation makes my verses) – Juvenal

1 March 2026

Stephen Gowans

In his analyses of the causes of the first world war, Lenin stressed the importance of understanding the policies the belligerent states pursued before the war. Borrowing from the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, the Bolshevik leader argued that war is politics by other (namely, violent) means. Clausewitz put it this way: “War is policy itself, which takes up the sword in place of the pen.” Lenin echoed Clausewitz: All “war is but a continuation by violent means of the politics which the belligerent states and their ruling classes had been conducting for many years, sometimes for decades, before the outbreak of war.”

So, what policies were the belligerents pursuing by the pen, before they took up the sword? The answer, in Lenin’s view, explained what caused the war. If “you have not studied the policies of [the] belligerent groups over a period of decades … then you don’t understand what this war is all about,” he wrote.

All the belligerents, argued Lenin, were pursuing the same policy: they were reaching across the world for opportunities to dominate its economic surpluses wherever they could be found. They had been able to do this, for a time, without each greatly impeding the other. However, they had arrived at the point where this was no longer possible. The sum total of opportunities had been completely claimed, and acquiring new ones, could only mean encroaching upon the opportunities that other states, or more specifically, other ruling classes, claimed for their own. The cause of the war, then, was “the whole policy of the entire system of European states in their economic and political interrelations.” The war, said Lenin “steadily and inevitably grew out of this system.”

The word ‘system’ is important. Lenin saw powerful states as actors hopelessly entangled in a system of inter-state relations which pit one against the other for economic advantage. This was a system in which individual states, acting on behalf of, and as the instruments of, individual ruling classes, competed for opportunities to exploit labor and acquire raw materials in order to appropriate as much of the world’s economic surpluses as they possibly could. As a class, said Engels, the bourgeoisie has a common interest and this community of interest, which is directed against the proletariat inside the country, is directed against bourgeois of other nations outside the country. What do ruling classes do? Exploit the labor of subordinate classes. So, when the common interest of one ruling class is directed against the common interest of another, it is directed against encroaching on territory over which the other exploits labor. The community of interest against the ruling classes of other states took both non-violent (by the pen) and violent (by the sword) forms. “These policies,” argued Lenin, “show … continuous economic rivalry between the world’s … greatest giants, capitalist economies.”

In light of his analysis, Lenin believed that the question of which belligerent fired the first shot in the war—that is, which, in today’s terms, launched a war of aggression contra international law—was beside the point, for each was pursuing a policy that would inevitably lead to war. As he put it: “This war is the continuation of a policy of … conquest, of capitalist robbery on the part of [the states] involved in the war. Obviously, the question of which [state] was the first to draw the knife is of small account to us.” Why? To reiterate: “Everybody was preparing for the war; the attack was made by the one who considered it most auspicious for himself at a given moment.” Another would have turned to the sword first, if, in the moment, violence was the means judged to be most suitable to the pursuit of policy. For this reason, Lenin refused to blame Germany for starting the first world war, even though the Kaiser declared war on Russia and France and invaded Belgium. “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?”

Much of the discourse on the current war in Ukraine is concerned with the question of which state started it. If we take Lenin’s view, the question is of no consequence, since the origin of the war lies not in Valdimir Putin’s decision to send Russian troops thundering across the border into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, or the decisions of US and NATO leaders to renege on their promises to assuage Russian security concerns by forbearing from NATO expansion into the former Russian sphere of influence. It lies instead in the rivalry between the Atlantic Alliance and Moscow for the economic interests of their respective ruling classes.

When I say the economic interests of the ruling classes I don’t mean specific deals, or pipeline routes, or mining concessions, although they may be involved. I mean, something broader: the ability of a ruling class to exploit opportunities for capital accumulation over as wide a territory as possible—which means at home, and if the state is strong enough, abroad. The existence of multiple ruling classes obviously complicates matters. Since there are multiple states, hence multiple ruling classes, there are multiple ongoing efforts to exploit the same economic spaces. This isn’t to say that security concerns aren’t relevant. The first job of a ruling class is to survive. Security concerns very likely played a part in Moscow’s decision to try to conquer Ukraine. But why do exploiting ruling classes want to survive? To exploit.

The Imperialism of Peace

Lenin’s analysis produces the interesting and important concept of the imperialism of peace. If war, in Lenin’s view is simply one means of pursuing a policy for economic space and opportunity, then soft-power, diplomacy, and other non-violent forms of inter-state intercourse, are but alternative methods of pursuing the same policy. In the words of the German-Polish Marxist, and cofounder of the German Communist Party, the martyred Rosa Luxemburg, policy is pursued as either war or armed peace. Peace treaties may stay a violent hand for a time, but they do not eradicate the rivalry that gives rise to war. On this matter, Lenin and Luxemburg were ad idem with the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant argued that a “treaty of peace makes an end to the war of the moment, but not to the conditions of war which at any time may afford a new pretext for opening hostilities” (emphasis added). This is a radical view. To end war, the conditions of war must be eradicated. Peace treaties simply paper over the problem and fail to address the root of war.

In the view of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Kant, inter-state rivalry is ubiquitous and interminable; competition among states is always present, even when violence is absent from their intercourse. If we define war as the effort of one ruling class to impose its will on another, then states are always at war, even if they are not using violence to get their way. Kant again: “A state of peace among men who live side by side is not the natural state, which is rather to be described as a state of war: that is to say, although there is not perhaps always actual open hostility, there is a constant threat that an outbreak may occur” and “the separate existence of a number of neighboring and independent states…is in itself already a state of war.”

Incessant struggle, even in times of formal peace, calls to mind the observations of numerous other thinkers. Lenin’s view was hardly novel.

Clinias of Crete, a character in Plato’s final dialogue, The Laws, contended that “Even what most men call peace is but a name. The reality is that every state, by a law of nature, is engaged at all times in an undeclared war against every other state.”

In 1651 Thomas Hobbes argued in Leviathan that: “In all times kings, and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independence, and in ceaseless competition [for power], are in the state and posture of gladiators; having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns, upon the frontiers of their kingdoms; and continual spies upon their neighbors; which is a position of war.”

British prime minister Pit the Elder in 1763 accurately predicted that the Treaty of Paris, ending the Seven Years’ War, would be nothing but an armed truce.

French marshal Ferdinand Foch presciently characterized the Treaty of Versailles as “not a peace [but] an armistice for 20 years.”

While every state may be at war with its neighbors, some states are more able, as a matter of their great size and strength, to wage it. Washington is at war with every state (that is every other ruling class) that does not submit to US hegemony. Almost always the war is carried out as the imperialism of peace. For decades, Washington has waged war on Iran by mainly economic means, punctuated, every now and then, by violence, but violence has been the exception. The rule has been daily non-violent coercion extending over decades. The US war on Iran aims to contain and weaken the state so that it is incapable of extending its own domain to territory the US state currently dominates; to demonstrate to other states that what happens to countries that fail to toe the US line is that they will be menaced, throttled, and undermined by the United States, its proxies, or both; and to make Tehran more compliant with US demands favorable to US ruling class interests.

Washington has long held Iran in a cruel economic vice that has immiserated Iranians. The predictable and intended outcome of this campaign has been civil unrest. The program has paid off handsomely for Washington, with the Iranian economy collapsing under the weight of US cruelty. Iranians took the street to demand their government provide relief from the pain, relief Tehran had not the power to provide. Even capitulating to US demands would not bring about the desired relief, since Washington refused to provide any immediate easing of its sanctions. On 20 January, The Wall Street Journal quoted US Treasury Scott Bessent: “U.S. financial pressure ‘has worked because in December, their economy collapsed. This is why the people took to the street. This is economic statecraft, no shots fired.’” To be clear, the reason why civil unrest erupted in Iran was because the United States brought it about, not by accident, not unintentionally, but by malice aforethought.

Bessent’s acknowledgement that the collapse of the Iranian economy is the product of US “economic statecraft”, which is to say the imperialism of peace, is virtually absent from the analyses of the quality, but all the same, Chauvinist and pro-imperialist, US media. No matter how sound their analyses might otherwise be, they cannot help but propagate the fiction that the collapse of economies undermined by US “economic statecraft” is due to the “economic mismanagement” of the targeted “regime.” Thus, the victim is blamed for the miseries the US ruling class visits upon the victim’s citizens. This is true of the US imperialism of peace in Venezuela and Cuba as much as Iran.

As shocking and deplorable as the current US-Israeli attack on Iran is, is it any more shocking and deplorable than the decades-long dropping of economic atom bombs on the people of Iran by the US state and its bootlicking vassals, Canada, the UK, Germany, and so on? Indeed, it may turn out that US “economic statecraft” has created more misery in Iran than will be created by all the US and Israeli bombs that will be dropped and all the missiles that will be fired in the current campaign of violence. This isn’t to lessen the gravity of the violence unleashed on the Iranians, but to point out that a program of deliberately wrecking an economy and immiserating a people in order to expand the domain over which US and allied billionaires can dominate the world’s economic surpluses is equally deplorable and is as richly deserving of condemnation and opposition as the use of violence to achieve the same end.

Mendacity

As to the claim that Washington and its toadies are engaged in an operation to deter an Iranian threat, we can dispense with this piece of nonsense immediately. The notion that Iran is developing a nuclear arsenal and ICBMs to reach the United States is the kind of bald-faced, shameless, mendacity in which the US administration specializes. As the New York Times reported two days ago:

President Trump and his aides assert that Iran:

Has restarted its nuclear program;
Has enough available nuclear material to build a bomb within days; and
Is developing long-range missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States.

But:

There is no evidence that Iran has made active efforts to resume enriching uranium or trying to build a mechanism to detonate a bomb.
American intelligence agencies believe Iran is probably years away from having missiles that can hit the United States.

What’s more, US intelligence is of the view that Iran is not actively pursuing nuclear weapons.

Iran, a country dwarfed in population, GDP, and military assets by the United States alone, to say nothing of the United States and its allies, is no more of a threat to the United States than a Boy Scout troop armed with peashooters is a threat to a platoon of US Marines. All threats the chronically mendacious Washington cites are greatly inflated because Washington regards as a threat any state that 1) does not submit to US “leadership” and 2) has a means of self-defense. Iran will only be characterized as a non-threat when it has given up every means of defending itself. Indeed, US demands in its phony negotiations with Iran can be understood as an ultimatum to surrender all means of self-defense or face a withering attack.

Even if Iran had ICBMs and nuclear-warheads to place atop them it still wouldn’t be a threat to the physical safety of any person in the United States. North Korea is a nuclear-armed state with, what might very well be the ability to deliver warheads to the continental US by ICBMs, but it is hardly a threat. The reason why is that Pyongyang can’t survive a war with the United States, and therefore would never start one. The same would be true of a nuclear-armed Iran. What a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat to is Washington’s latitude to bully Tehran and impose its will on the state. That, in turn, is a threat to the US ruling class project of dominating as much of the world as possible. This, of course, is the aim of every exploiting ruling class, but few have the resources to pursue the goal. Most must be content with defending spheres of exploitation within their own territory, either by resisting the aggressions of larger states seeking to encroach on their own domestic sphere of exploitation, or coming to an arrangement that makes concessions to the larger state’s menacing demands. As for Iran, its failure to follow the path of North Korea is largely responsible for the peril in which it now finds itself. No country in Iran’s position that wishes to pursue an independent path free from the domination of the United States (or any other meddling great power) can afford to be without a nuclear deterrent.* Washington may sincerely believe Tehran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program and developing ICBMs because it makes sense for the Iranian state to do so in light of Washington’s own conduct. It should be clear by this point that a view that is consistent with Lenin’s would deny that Washington will ever refrain from behaving in ways that encourage its victims to proliferate. The raison d’etre of the US ruling class is not to live in peace with other ruling classes, but to weaken them and turn them into vassals, and if that can’t be done, to crush them. Letting them be is not an option, any more than choosing not to try to score goals is an option for a hockey team.

International Law

Lenin’s view of war raises a question about whether international law has any practical significance. I would say that the answer is manifestly in the negative and I would hardly be alone in this view. Kant, for example, observed that “Codes [of international law] whether couched in philosophical or diplomatic terms, have not—nor can have—the slightest legal force, because states, as such, are under no common external authority.” Nothing has changed in two hundred years to contradict Kant’s thinking. Large powers and their proteges regularly violate international law without the slightest reservation and do so with impunity. They get away with it because there is no overarching, independent, authority equipped with the means to enforce compliance with international law. The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must. Given this sad reality, it is “an illusion,” remarked the Marxist economist Rudolf Hilferding, “to preach international law in a world … of capitalist struggle where [the] superiority of weapons is the final arbiter.”

I point this out because much discourse about war, apart from ignoring the imperialism of peace, attaches itself to outraged diatribes against the failure of various states (usually the United States and Israel, the accustomed miscreants) to abide by international law. Carrying on a discussion as if international law and the rules-based order have any significance as guardrails on the conduct of powerful states, focusses attention in the wrong place. The Tartuffe of international law, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, admitted in his vaunted World Economic Forum address what anyone not stultified by the propaganda of the United States and its international lickspittles already knew: That “the story of the international rules-based order was partially false; that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient; that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying vigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.” If Venezuela, Iran, or Cuba were to violate international law, they would be held accountable and punished by the UN Security Council, largely a plaything and instrument of the United States.** When the United States and its proxies (Israel especially) violate international law, as they regularly do, nothing happens, except that a chorus of progressive voices bleats fecklessly about US and Israeli crimes, on the assumption presumably that ‘speaking truth to power’ will make the malefactors mend their ways. As the nineteenth-century French novelist Balzac is reputed to have observed: “Laws are spider webs through which big flies pass and little ones get caught.” Despite all the bleating, the big flies continue to pass through the spider webs with scarcely a concern.

To echo Hilferding, it is an illusion to preach international law in a world of struggle among states where the superiority of weapons is the final arbiter. As Lenin, and before him, Marx, argued, though not precisely in these words, inter-state war ends when inter-state rivalry ends. And inter-state rivalry ends, when states end. What should not be forgotten is that the long-range project of socialism is not only the end of class, which is to say the end of exploitation of one group by another, but, as a consequence of this, the end of states. We say, declared Lenin in a lecture on war and revolution, our aim “is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war.”

Notes

*On the other hand, nuclear weapons would not be a panacea for Iran. While they would very like dampen the war-lust of Washington and Tel Aviv for bombing Iran, they would do little to stop the US-led siege warfare that cripples the country and immiserates its people.

Moreover, Iran’s geopolitical situation is different from that of North Korea, and concluding that what is strategically sound for North Korea is also strategically sound for Iran, may be an error.

North Korea borders two significant powers, Russia and China. As states outside the US orbit, Russia and China are willing to trade with Pyongyang if it’s to their advantage. This makes the DPRK less vulnerable to US economic warfare than Iran, which is isolated geographically from China.

Additionally, Iran is located in, what is for Washington, a strategically important region. West Asia produces a substantial fraction of the world’s petroleum resources, which Washington aims to control in order to exercise leverage over China, Japan, and Europe, which depend on energy imports from the region. In order to control the region, Washington needs regional states to be submissive to US preferences. Inasmuch as Iran refuses to act as a US client, it has been the target of US conventional and economic warfare.

North Korea, in contrast, occupies territory that is less strategically significant for Washington, and therefore, Pyongyang can be more readily ignored. It matters little from the US coign of vantage that North Korea zealously asserts its independence. Doing so doesn’t affect US strategic interests. While it is true that China is considered the United States’ single most important strategic threat, and North Korea abuts China, Washington’s focus on the Indo-pacific region is mainly confined to maintaining control of the First Island Chain, the belt of islands running from Japan through Tawain to the Philippines and Malaysia.

An independent North Korea, then, is less of an impediment to US geopolitical ambitions than an independent Iran, and the United States is therefore less likely to be moved to attack it, nuclear arms or otherwise. It’s not clear that the same calculations apply to Iran. Why take a gamble on attacking North Korea, if the outcome might be a nuclear counter-strike? On the other hand, Washington might be prepared to gamble on attacking a nuclear-armed Iran, in light of Iran’s greater strategic importance.

** While the Security Council by no means invariably produces resolutions reflecting US preferences, on matters that do not abridge the interests of other permanent members, the council tends to go along with US wishes. Witness, for example, UNSC Resolution 2803 of 17 November 2025, which effectively ceded Donald Trump a personal autocracy over Gaza. It is from this very same resolution that Trump’s Board of Peace was born. There has been much talk about Trump using his Board, of which he is the chairman, as an alternative to the Security Council. A case might be made that the Security Council is not the plaything and instrument of the United States, for if it is, why would Trump seek to establish the Board of Peace as a new Security Council? It’s true that a whole loaf is better than nine-tenths of one, but wanting a whole loaf doesn’t prove that you don’t already have nine-tenths of it. In any event, the Board of Peace is comprised, apart from its chairman, of leaders of states with insignificant power that have joined to curry favor with the US president. The Board’s power is in no way equal, much less greater, than that of the Security Council. It may be able to compel its few members to go along with Trump’s whims, but the Security Council, in theory anyway, can compel the compliance of every UN member state.

Venezuela and the Imperialism of Peace

5 January 2026

Stephen Gowans

A careful reading of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times offers the following account of what led up to the Trump administration’s decision to abduct Venezuelan president Nicolos Maduro. This account also brings to the fore the distinction between the imperialism of war and what Lenin called “the imperialism of peace.”

In 2007, Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, changed the terms under which US oil firms could operate in his country, home to the world’s largest reserves of oil. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips were presented with new contracts giving Caracas majority control over joint ventures. The US oil giants balked, and sued. The two companies were compensated, but believed they were not adequately indemnified. [1] Ultimately, this would lead to Washington imposing sanctions on Venezuela which blocked US investment in the South American country’s oil industry with one exception: Chevron was granted a special licence to continue to operate in Venezuela, with restrictions. [2]

US sanctions crippled Venezuela’s oil industry and devastated the country’s economy. Since 2013, the year Maduro became president, GDP has contracted by 80 percent—the largest economic collapse in modern history outside of war. Economic misery has driven eight million Venezuelans, about one-quarter of the population, from the country. [3]

With Venezuela’s economy in crisis, the Maduro government backtracked, opening the oil industry to private investment on attractive terms. [4] The re-opening was orchestrated by Delcy Rodriquez, who would become Maduro’s vice-president, and, with Maduro’s abduction, the country’s new leader.

The US oil majors began to pressure the Trump administration to lift the sanctions that kept them from taking advantage of Rodriguez’s reforms. “They told Trump administration officials that … Caracas was so desperate that they would welcome U.S. firms with tantalizing terms not seen by the industry in decades—including no-bid contracts and little environmental or regulatory oversight.” Moreover, the US oil majors complained that Chinese and Russian firms were monopolizing the advantages the newly re-opened Venezuelan oil industry offered. [5]

The White House began to talk to Maduro about lifting US sanctions. [6] Trump told the Venezuelan leader that he wanted him “to push Chinese and Russian oil companies out of Venezuela and to open up a bigger role for American companies.” [7] Maduro agreed. In October, The New York Times reported that the Venezuelan president “offered Washington far-reaching concessions that would essentially eliminate the vestiges of resource nationalism at the core of Mr. Chávez’s movement.” In addition, he “also agreed to limit Venezuela’s economic ties with China, Russia and Iran and to stop selling oil to Cuba.” [8]

The two parties were keen to strike a deal because an agreement would be mutually rewarding. The US oil majors wanted the profit-making opportunities Venezuela could offer, and Maduro wanted out from under the crushing weight of US sanctions that had crippled his country’s economy.

But there was a problem. Trump’s top aides persuaded the president that Maduro couldn’t be trusted; that he would eventually renege on any deal the US struck with him. As a result, Maduro was told that a condition of the deal was his exit. If he refused to step down, the United States would use force to oust him. Maduro demurred, possibly believing that Trump was bluffing. [9] The Pentagon assembled an armada in the Caribbean to pressure the Venezuelan president to reconsider.

Meanwhile, Washington had to figure out who would take over from Maduro. The administration quickly settled on the country’s vice-president. She had “impressed Trump officials with her management of Venezuela’s crucial oil industry” and “intermediaries persuaded the administration that she would protect and champion future American energy investments in the country.” The White House believed they could work with her. [10] And why not? Both Washington and Caracas were keen on bringing US oil giants back to Venezuela and Rodriguez had taken the lead role in bringing about the oil sector renovations that had aroused the US energy companies’ interest. She could be counted on to do Washington’s bidding, because Washington’s bidding largely aligned with what she thought needed to be done. “She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said. “Very simple.” [11]

In the event US officials had misjudged Rodriguez’s tractability, they had a back-up plan. To ensure she played ball, she was warned that she would share Maduro’s fate if she stepped out of line. According to Trump, if Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Some sections of the US media complained that Rodriguez is a socialist who is railing against US encroachment on Venezuela’s sovereignty, and that Maria Corina Machado, the “conservative former member of the National Assembly from an affluent Venezuelan family [with] decades-long ties to Washington,” would have been a better choice. But Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security advisor, rejoined: “We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly … not what … they’ve done in the past.” [12] From Washington’s perspective, socialist or not, Rodriguez is clearly the better choice. She offers the reasonable prospect of producing what regime change would deliver—and within a framework of political stability. Installing Machado, in contrast, would mean incurring the enormous cost and uncertainties of waging a regime change war which, in the end, if it succeeded, would likely produce such great political instability that Venezuela would not be an attractive field for investment.

Imperialism can be defined simply as the process of one state imposing its will on another. The United States has clearly been trying to make Venezuela do what it wants, by using sanctions, and, of late, an oil blockade, to cripple the Venezuelan economy to force the country’s leadership to make changes to the terms under which it will allow US oil companies to operate. Washington has visited enough sanctions-generated devastation upon Venezuela to compel the government to change the rules governing its oil industry. These changes have aroused the interest of the US oil majors, but the energy companies are unable to take advantage of the new opportunities, unless the US sanctions that block them for operating in Venezuela are lifted. Accordingly, the industry has pressed the Trump administration to strike a deal with Caracas that would see US oil majors return to Venezuela.

The key to the imperialist process in Venezuela has been sanctions, not the armada the Trump administration has assembled in the Caribbean, and not the raid on the Venezuelan capital to abduct the president. Military measures have played a minor role compared to the role economic coercion has played; the imperialism of war has been less significant, in this case, than the imperialism of peace. It is true that military measures have been used to close the deal (to try to persuade Maduro to step down) but the deal was largely brought about by sanctions. Had it not been for Washington’s economic coercion, it is unlikely that Caracas would have changed the rules of investing in its oil industry.

I mention this because too little attention is paid to “the imperialism of peace”—what strong states do to impose their will on weak states without going to war. Lenin emphasized that strong states wage war against weak states as a continuation, by other means, of imperialist politics that are practiced during peacetime. Imperialism, in other words, is a broad category that includes war of aggression as only one mechanism of many for inducing another state to do one’s bidding. Imperialism doesn’t happen just in times of war; it is ongoing, even during peacetime.

The result of paying too little attention to the imperialism of peace is that voices aren’t raised in opposition to imperialist conduct unless it involves violence. People immediately took to the streets to protest Washington’s abduction of Maduro, but the abduction was small potatoes next to the enormous sanction-induced devastation Washington has wreaked on Venezuela. The sanctions have harmed and immiserated millions of Venezuelans; the abduction harmed less than 200. The sanctions have carried more weight in imposing the US will on Venezuela than has Maduro’s abduction; the ousted president had already agreed to the terms the US wishes to impose on Venezuela; the only condition he refused was his exit.

Economic coercion is sometimes referred to as “economic atom bombing” in an attempt to show that sanctions can be as destructive, if not more so, than the violence of war. John Mueller and Karl Mueller wrote a famous article in Foreign Affairs, titled “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” showing that sanctions have killed more people than all the weapons of destruction ever used, including the atomic bombs used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [13] A study published in The Lancet Global Health in July 2025, conducted by economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), estimated that every year US and EU sanctions are responsible for a half-million premature deaths worldwide. [14] In light of this, the necessity of building anti-imperialism movements that can take full account of the imperialism of peace should be examined. The danger of anti-war movements, from Lenin’s perspective, was that being so averse to war they would accept the imperialism of peace as a win, and therefore never overcome or even see the root cause of the wars of aggression they so loathed and feared.

Update

The Wall Street Journal has reported that a “classified U.S. intelligence assessment determined top members of Nicolás Maduro’s regime—including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez—would be best positioned to lead a temporary government in Caracas and maintain near-term stability.” (“CIA Concluded Regime Loyalists Were Best Placed to Lead Venezuela After Maduro,” Jan. 5, 2026)

“The report concluded that Edmundo González,” who ran against Maduro in the 2024 election, “and Machado would struggle to gain legitimacy as leaders while facing resistance from pro-regime security services and political opponents.”

The report also said that despite “initially striking a defiant tone,” Rodriguez has since “signaled her willingness to work with the U.S. and has spoken with Rubio.”

On January 6, The Wall Street Journal reported that Rodriguez “and Trump might be on the same page.” (“Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive”.) “Since becoming vice president in 2018, the 56-year-old has consolidated influence as Maduro’s top interlocutor with the private sector and trade partners. She has long advocated for American oil companies to pump crude in the country and says the only thing keeping them out are the economic sanctions leveled during Trump’s first term that bar companies from working in Venezuela’s energy sector.”

Here’s what Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodriguez had to say about why the acting president is cooperating with the Trump administration (“Venezuela After Maduro: A Conversation With Francisco Rodríguez”, Foreign Affairs, Jan. 3, 2026) “If the Venezuelan government strikes a deal with the United States that lifts sanctions and where billions of dollars go into recovering the Venezuelan oil industry…Venezuela could see its GDP per capita in U.S. dollars triple in the next decade … [W]hatever government is in power could comfortably win free elections [with that record.]”

On why the White House rejected Machado, he observed: “Machado and her allies have advocated for imprisoning almost all of the Venezuelan military and political leadership. So I think if Trump were to simply install Machado, the risk would be ungovernability and chaos. It could also be a pathway to civil war, as ousted current military officers fight back against the government rather than risk going to prison.”

Finally, the Venezuelan economist confirmed that Maduro himself had “made an overture to Trump where he effectively said, ‘You can have whatever you want in terms of our oil industry’.” What is more, Rodriguez was seen as someone who “could deliver on that.”

On January 10, The New York Times offered more clues as to why the Trump administration has chosen Delcy Rodriguez as its key Venezuelan interlocuter (“How Venezuela’s New Leader Went From Revolutionary to Trump’s Orbit”).

“Maduro had already delegated practically all economic matters to Ms. Rodríguez, who simultaneously held the posts of vice president, minister of finance and minister of petroleum.”
“As foreign minister, she was part of the decision-making process seeking a reset of relations in 2017 with the United States at the start of the first Trump administration.”
Rodriguez’s record includes “a stealth privatization of natural resources” [my emphasis] which gave “foreign investors control over some coveted projects, such as oil fields, cement plants and iron ore mines.”

A January 14 New York Times report (U.S. Races to Sell Venezuelan Oil, Transforming Ties With Former Foe), explains why Rodriguez and the Venezuelan government are cooperating with the White House. The US blockade had “wiped out the bulk of the Venezuelan government’s revenues. Unable to sell its oil, the country’s limited oil storage facilities had filled to near capacity.” This meant two things:

1) “Venezuela’s state oil company was days away from shutting down the country’s main crude producing area, a move that would have caused some permanent damage to the oil fields.”

2) Caracas “estimated that the continuation of the blockade would set off a humanitarian crisis, by significantly reducing the government’s ability to import goods and maintain basic services.”

Unless something was done to keep the oil flowing, the country’s critical oil industry would incur long-lasting damage and Venezuelans would be plunged even further into an economic abys. Caracas faced two choices: Capitulate or starve. Rodriguez agreed to Washington’s selling about 50 million barrels of oil backed up in storage facilities. The oil has been sold and Caracas has received a share.

Washington has, for now, defeated Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. It has done so, hardly at all by the imperialism of war, and mainly by the imperialism of peace.

1. “Trump’s Claim That Venezuela ‘Stole’ U.S. Oil Fields Touches Nationalist Nerve,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 2025; “Trump Orders Blockade of Sanctioned Oil Tankers In and Out of Venezuela, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 16, 2025; “Trump Wants to Unlock Venezuela’s Oil Reserves. A Huge Challenge Awaits,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 3, 2026.

2. “Explainer: Why Chevron still operates in Venezuela despite US sanctions,” Euronews, December 29, 2025.

3. “Venezuela’s New Leader Is a Hardline Socialist Like Maduro,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2026; “Another U.S. Attempt to Topple Maduro Would Be a Disaster,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7, 2025.

4. “Trump’s Tanker Crackdown Paralyzes Venezuelan Oil Exports,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2025; “Venezuela’s Capital Is Booming. Is This the End of the Revolution?” Feb. 1, 2020.

5. “Trump Was Skeptical of Ousting Maduro—Until He Wasn’t,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2026.

6. “Trump Says U.S. Is ‘In Charge’ of Venezuela, While Rubio Stresses Coercing It, New York Times, Jan. 4, 2026.

7. “Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro,” New York Times, Dec. 16, 2025.

8. “Venezuela’s Maduro Offered the U.S. His Nation’s Riches to Avoid Conflict, New York Times, Oct. 10, 2025.

9. “Trump Was Skeptical of Ousting Maduro—Until He Wasn’t, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2026; “Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro, New York Times, Dec. 16, 2025.

10. “How Trump Fixed On a Maduro Loyalist as Venezuela’s New Leader,” New York Times, Jan. 4, 2026.

11. “Venezuela’s New Leader Is a Hardline Socialist Like Maduro, “Wall Street Journal January 4, 2026.

12. “Trump Says U.S. Is ‘In Charge’ of Venezuela, While Rubio Stresses Coercing It,” New York Times, Jan. 4, 2026.

13. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iraq/1999-05-01/sanctions-mass-destruction

14. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext

Venezuela and the Imperialism of Great Power

3 January 2026

Stephen Gowans

The US attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president with Washington’s avowed aim of “running the country” and “taking its oil” can be viewed on three levels: As the action of: 1) the Trump Administration; 2) US imperialism; or 3) great power. The level one selects is important, because it shapes what one believes needs to, or can, be done in response to the US aggression.

We can attribute the attack on Venezuela to the Trump Administration specifically, since it was the Trump White House that set the crime in motion. But inasmuch as the aggression is only one of scores of foreign aggressions the United States has undertaken in the last 135 years (since the end of the Indian Wars in 1890 and the closing of the US West, which saw the United States turn to expansion into the Western hemisphere and the Pacific), we might say that the problem of US aggression is not one of the Trump Administration alone, but of US imperialism generally. Some people argue that imperialism will only cease once the United States is brought down, as if the United States is the only country capable of dominating and exploiting other states.

I believe this perspective is too narrow (though it is vastly better than one that focusses on the Trump Administration, as if Trump’s foreign policy is an aberration.) Imperialist aggressions will not end with the end of the United States, since imperialism isn’t unique to the United States (or to the Trump Administration).

No single country, no single era, no single mode of production, is the progenitor of imperialism. Even Lenin, who many erroneously believe linked imperialism uniquely to monopoly capitalism, recognized that imperialism is a phenomenon as old as antiquity. “Colonial policy and imperialism existed before this latest stage of capitalism,” Lenin wrote in his 1916 pamphlet Imperialism, the Latest Stage of Capitalism, “and even before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and achieved imperialism.” Lenin’s point about imperialism and capitalism’s latest stage, was that imperialism in the capitalist era—which he defined as a handful of great powers vying to divide and re-divide the world—was a product of monopoly capitalism, as opposed to the earlier stage of what he called ‘competitive’ or ‘free trade’ capitalism.

Thinking about the origins of imperialism as a phenomenon that spans many eras, Kenneth Waltz, a theorist of international relations, attributed imperialism, not to a particular mode of production (or stage), or to a particular form of political organization, but to what Marxist-Leninists call “uneven development” and what Waltz called “great power.” Owing to the uneven development of the world–as present in antiquity as it is today–some states are blessed with great power and others cursed with great weakness.

In his 1979 Theory of International Politics, Waltz wrote: “Weakness invites control; strength tempts one to exercise it, even if only for the ‘good’ of other people.” This he called “the imperialism of great power.” Whenever and wherever great power is found at one pole, weakness is found at the other. And whenever and wherever vast gulfs of power exist, so too does imperialism.

Where does great power come from? A “country that sustains an imperialist movement must produce … ‘surpluses’,” argued Waltz, by which he meant economic surpluses, “in the specific sense that the imperial country requires a margin of superiority over the people it controls.” The margin of superiority derives from the ability of a state to command, in excess of what other states can, the economic resources necessary to bribe, cajole, intimidate, and coerce other nations.

“[H]ow the ‘surplus’ is produced, and the nature of the state producing it, appear to be quite unimportant,” Waltz observed. “Republics (Athens and Rome), divine-right monarchies (Bourbon France and Meiji Japan), modern democracies (Britain and America) have all at times been imperialist. Similarly, economies of great variety—pastoral, feudal, mercantilist, capitalist, socialist—have sustained imperialist enterprises.”

Imperialism arises independently of the mode of production and the form of political organization, except insofar as the most advanced mode of production or a political arrangement compatible with it, allow a state to command a greater surplus than states around it can. “The economic organization that will cause imperialism (in the sense of enabling a country to pursue imperialist policies) is whatever economic form proves most effective at the given time and within the pertinent area.” Hence, “the phrase that expresses the root cause that operates across differently organized economies is ‘the imperialism of great power.’” The handful of great powers that Lenin defined as imperialist were precisely those states that operated at the highest level of economic organization, i.e., monopoly capitalism. Waltz asked:

“Are the advanced countries ‘imperialist’ because they are capitalist or because they are advanced? The growth of industrial economies in the nineteenth century spawned a world-girdling imperialism. Was the hegemony of the few over the many produced by the contradictions of capitalism or by the unlocking of nature’s secrets, the transmuting of science into technology, and the organization of the powers of technology on a national scale? Is imperialism the highest stage of capitalism or are capitalism and imperialism the highest stage of industrialism?“

Great power also critically depends on population size. Luxembourg will never exercise great power, no matter how advanced its economy. But populous countries—the United States, China, Russia, India, Brazil, and a few others—have the potential to dominate and exploit smaller and weaker states, if they organize their economies to produce great surpluses. So far China appears to be the only country even remotely able to match the United States in surplus creation, but the gulf between the two remains enormous and shows no sign of narrowing. True, China is growing economically and militarily, but US GDP per capita—a critical component of state power—is growing faster in absolute terms, and the United States retains many power-relevant geopolitical advantages that China will never match. (See, for example, Michael Beckley’s analyses here and here.)

The imperialism of great power explains why the United States launched its aggression against a weak Venezuela. The vast US economic surplus—a product of the large US population and an advanced and efficient economy—has furnished Washington with what is far and away the world’s leading military. Washington uses its unparalleled military strength (plus its unmatched soft power) to impose its will on weak states. Venezuela, a country of insignificant power, greatly hobbled by years of US economic warfare, refused to develop the world’s largest reserves of oil in line with US elite economic interests. In a world of the imperialism of great power, it was—and has for some time been—the greatest power’s inevitable target.

How Aid to Ukraine Harms Most Canadians (and Most Citizens of Other NATO States) and What to Do About It

4 December 2025

By Stephen Gowans

Canada has shelled out $22-billion of taxpayer money on assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February, 2022. [1] Might our money have been better spent on other matters?

For example, 20 percent of Canadian adults do not have a family doctor. [2] Could this money have been used to help provide Canadians with access to physicians and nurse practitioners?

“Affordable housing,” according to The Globe and Mail, “is out of reach everywhere in Canada.” [3] Could Ottawa’s generous aid to Ukraine have been spent instead on helping to solve Canada’s housing and rental crisis?

Ottawa plans to cut over 11 percent of the federal public service, a move which, on top of increasing the jobless rate—already near 7 percent—will likely mean longer wait times for unemployment benefits, passports, and government assistance programs. [4] Might future outlays slated for aid to Ukraine be better spent on maintaining public services for Canadians?

According to the government’s own statistics agency, “Over one in four Canadians live in a household experiencing financial difficulties.” [5] Could $22 billion have helped relieve these Canadians of their financial burdens?

Prime Minister Mark Carney says that “Canada will always stand in solidarity with Ukraine.” [6] In practice, helping Ukraine means doing less for Canadians. It means poorer public services, under-funded health care, less affordable housing, and more economic insecurity. Carney doesn’t say why Canadians must make sacrifices to stand with Ukraine, but knowing why is important if pressing domestic needs are to be ignored. Is the diversion of funds that could be used to meet Canadians’ needs justified?

To answer that question, we must first understand why Ottawa is backing Ukraine. The answer has a lot to do with Canada’s place in the informal US empire.

Canada is part of a US-led alliance that regards Russia as a “revisionist” power—that is, as a country which challenges the US-led world order—an order which naturally puts the United States at the top. The war in Ukraine is a contest between Washington, on one side, and Moscow, on the other. Russia is one of two states (along with China) powerful enough to challenge US ‘leadership’, or, to put it less euphemistically, US tyranny. While the word tyranny seems harsh, what else would one call a US-led global defined by Washington to, by its own admission, put US interests above all others? [7] Napoleon’s order in Europe was summed up by the watchword France avant tout, while Nazi Germany sought to create an order in Europe defined by the phrase Deutschland uber alles. Implicitly, Washington predicates its own global order on the idea of the United States above all others, or, America First.

Russia, Washington says, wants to revise the US-led world order. There’s no question that Moscow wants to do this. It has no intention of acquiescing to the will of Washington, and because it’s strong enough—unlike most other states—to challenge US primacy, it resists integration into the informal US empire. Russia prefers to carve out its own empire, where its own billionaires exercise influence and monopolize profit-making opportunities. The war is, thus, au fond, a contest over which country’s billionaires will get to exploit the profit-making opportunities Ukraine has to offer—the United States’ or Russia’s?

On a broader level, the war is being fought—with Ukraine as the tip of the US spear, or proxy—over the question of who will dominate parts of Eastern Europe that have historically fallen under Russian, or Soviet, domination. Will it be Russia or the United States? Ukraine, being the largest and most significant part of the contested territory, is the cockpit of the current struggle. The prize for the winner is lucrative investment opportunities and strategic territory, vital to the questions of a) whether the United States will continue to lead a world order as rex, and b) whether Russia will successfully resist US efforts to make it bow to US pre-eminence.

In disbursing $22 billion to the US side of the contest, instead of using the funds to improve the lives of Canadians at home, Ottawa is playing a vassal role to US investor and corporate interests and aiding, what in the end, is a project of furnishing US billionaires with investment opportunities at the expense of Russian magnates.

Defenders of Ottawa’s decision to aid Ukraine will point to a moral obligation on the part of Canadians to defend a victim of illegal aggression. To be sure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is both a contravention of international law and an aggression.

However, Canada does not aid all, or even many, countries that fall prey to the aggression of imperialist marauders. If it did, it would soon fall out with its patron, the United States, the world’s imperialist marauder par excellence. If Ottawa genuinely stands with the victims of aggression as a matter of principle, it would have funneled military and other aid to Iran (only recently the target of a blatant and flagrantly unlawful US-Israeli aggression); to Syria, when Washington was bankrolling Al-Qaeda to bring down the Arab nationalist state (which it did do, successfully); to Cuba, the victim of a cruel six-decade-long campaign of US economic warfare aimed at ensuring that an alternative to the capitalist order will never thrive; to Venezuela today, the target of a US military pressure campaign whose object is to install a puppet regime in Caracas to better loot the country’s land, labor, and resources, especially its oil; and on and on, ad nauseum. Need I mention Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya?

Which brings us to the Palestinians. If the Canadian government was really motivated to defend the victims of expansionary rogue regimes that flagrantly violate international law, it would have provided aid to the Palestinian national liberation movement long ago. Palestinians are the principal victims of Israel, a notorious practitioner of rapine, aggression, territorial expansion, and contempt for the UN Charter. Instead, Canada has faithfully assisted the Zionist state to carry out what the United Nations, countless human rights organizations, and top genocide scholars, have called a genocide. Ottawa has sent arms to Israel; banned Canadians from sending aid to Palestinians standing up to the aggression and demonized Palestinian freedom fighters as terrorists; lavished diplomatic support on the Zionist state; and has refused to take meaningful action to pressure Tel Aviv to abide by the countless UN resolutions directing Israel to end its illegal occupations of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

So, no, Ottawa isn’t sending billions of dollars to Kyiv because it deplores aggression, champions international law, and feels morally bound to stand with the victims of Russian imperialism. To believe this is to close one’s eyes to Canada’s record as faithful backer of US and Israeli imperial aggressions. The reality is that Canada is furnishing Kyiv with generous aid because Ottawa’s standard operating procedure is to support—or at the very least, not get in the way of—the foreign policy preferences of its US master. If backing Washington and its proxies in West Asia (Israel) and Eastern Europe (Ukraine) means skimping on satisfying the needs of ordinary Canadians, then, from Ottawa’s perspective, so be it.

While this is bad enough, it’s about to get much worse. Ottawa has committed, along with other NATO countries, to significantly increasing its military spending to five percent of GDP from a little over one percent today. This is part of a Pentagon strategy to shift responsibility for confronting Russia from the United States to Washington’s NATO subalterns, so the US military can either turn its full attention to intimidating China [8], by one plan, favored by so-called prioritizers in the US state, or concentrate on shoring up US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, advocated by so-called restrainers [9].

The problem here is that there is no compelling rationale to increase military spending almost five-fold. The ostensible reason for the increase is to ‘deter’ Russia from further aggression in Europe. But no serious observer believes Russia is able to take on NATO, even at NATO’s allegedly paltry current levels of spending. Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that “A senior NATO official said Russia doesn’t have the troop numbers or military capability to defeat the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe.” [10]

The idea that the United States carries the burden of defending Europe and that Europe could not defend itself without US assistance—and that therefore Washington’s NATO subalterns must significantly boost their military outlays—is false. In point of fact, the United States contributes much less to the defense of Europe than Europe does itself. Table 1 shows that the United States spends $50 billion annually on military operations in Europe, overshadowed by the $476 billion that Europe’s NATO members spend yearly. Whereas 100,000 US troops serve in Europe, the alliance’s European members contribute over 2 million infantry, air crew, and sailors to the continent’s defense.

Table 1. Russia vs. NATO in Europe
	Military spending ($B)	Military personnel
Russia	$142	1,200,000
European NATO members	$476	2,041,300
US contribution to Europe	$50	100,000
European NATO members + US contribution	$526	2,141,300
(Europe + US contribution) / Russia	3.7	1.8
Sources: Russian military spending: Robyn Dixon, “Russian economy overheating, but still powering the war against Ukraine,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2024. Russian military personnel: CIA World Factbook. NATO military expenditures and personnel: “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2024)” NATO. March 2024. US military spending in Europe: Steven Erlanger, “NATO Wants a Cordial Summit, but Trump or Zelensky Could Disrupt It,” The New York Times, May 26, 2025. US military personnel: Daniel Michaels, Nancy A. Youssef and Alexander Ward, “Trump’s Turn to Russia Spooks U.S. Allies Who Fear a Weakened NATO,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 20, 2025.

What’s more, together, NATO’s European members spend over three times as much on their militaries as Russia does on its armed forces, while the number of NATO personnel in Europe, excluding the US contribution, is almost double Russia’s (Table 2). Were Europe’s NATO members to meet Trump’s five percent target, they would exceed Russia’s military spending by a factor of eight. To be sure, this would deter a Russian offensive in Europe, but it would be overkill. When the idea of the five percent target was first broached by the incoming Trump administration, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder dismissed it as “a made-up number with no basis in reality.” He said that “European NATO members now spend three times as much as Russia does on defense, and at five percent Europe would outspend Russia by $750 billion annually, spending roughly 10 times what Russia spends.” [11] Daalder’s numbers and those of Table 2, while differing slightly in some respects, point to the same conclusion: the five percent target is far too high.

Table 2. Russia vs. NATO (European members)
	Russia	European NATO members	Europe / Russia
Population	143,800,000	592,872,386	4.1
GDP ($B)	$2,021	$23,023	11.4
Military spending ($B)
At current levels	$142	$476	3.4
At 5% of GDP (NATO)		$1,151	8.1
Military personnel	1,200,000	2,041,300	1.7
Sources: NATO population: CIA World Factbook. NATO GDP, military expenditures, and personnel: “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2024)” NATO. March 2024. Russian military spending: Robyn Dixon, “Russian economy overheating, but still powering the war against Ukraine,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2024. Russian military personnel: CIA World Factbook. Russian population and GDP: World Bank.

Russia is militarily incapable of territorial expansion beyond Ukraine, and even in Ukraine—a country with only one-quarter of Russia’s population—its capabilities are severely tested. Russia is no match for an alliance, whose European members alone, have four times its population and over 11 times its GDP. The idea that Russia has the capability to invade a NATO-alliance member is—to use a favorite phrase of US international relations specialist John Mearsheimer—“not a serious argument.”

Despite these realities, various NATO governments, Canada among them, are trying to foster the illusion that Russia threatens Europe. They are doing so in order to manufacture consent for a stepped-up level of military spending that is far in excess of what is necessary to defend the continent from a Russian invasion. Not only is military spending at this level unnecessary, it will harm the interests of the vast majority of Europeans and Canadians. Higher defense spending will almost certainly mean cuts to public services. During a visit to Britain, the NATO secretary general warned British citizens that if they chose to funnel public-spending into maintaining the National Health Service and other public services, rather than meeting Trump’s arbitrary five percent target, they had “better learn to speak Russian.” [12] The message is clear: Important pubic services that benefit most of us, must be sacrificed in order to squander public funds on the military to meet a spurious threat. “Ramping up to 5 percent would necessitate politically painful trade-offs”, warns the New York Times. [13] Painful trade-offs mean painful for all but business owners and the wealthy. Within the current climate, the idea that higher military outlays will be underwritten by higher taxes on the rich and big business is unthinkable. Instead, the formula is: gull the public into believing a Russian offensive is imminent so they’ll accede to the gutting of public services.

Why would NATO countries commit to spending far more than necessary? There are three reasons that suggest themselves as hypotheses.

The expenditures are intended for offense rather than defense. You don’t spend 8 to 10 times as much as your rival on weapons and troops to defend yourself. Doing so would be wasteful. But you do vastly outspend your rival if your intentions are intimidation and aggression, or your aim is to arms-race your opponent into bankruptcy and submission.
Punishingly high military expenditures offer a pretext for NATO governments to ween people off public services. Public services are increasingly starved of adequate funding, often to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and increases in military expenditures. That governments routinely make these trade-offs show that they favor the wealthy, who rely little, if at all, on public services, but benefit from tax cuts. The wealthy also benefit from robust military spending, inasmuch as it provides investment opportunities in arms industries and underwrites hard-power which can be used to defend investments and trade routes and exact trade and investment concessions around the world.
Much of the increased spending will flow into the coffers of US weapons makers, to the greater profit of investors who have stakes in the arms industry, while improving the balance of US trade, a major Trump administration obsession. By diverting public funds from public services to US arms dealers, NATO’s non-US members are submitting to US economic coercion and arm-twisting in order to placate their master.

Given that the accelerated spending increases will almost certainly be financed by budget cuts to public services, Canadians will see their healthcare, education, and pensions suffer—even more than they already do—so US arms manufacturers can enjoy generous profits. Canadians, perhaps, should have expected no less for having recently elected as prime minister the former head of Brookfield, a leading global investment firm. But even if they hadn’t, Canada, like all other capitalist countries, is so thoroughly under the sway of the leading lights of the business community—as a result of the community’s lobbying and other direct efforts to influence the government and its policies, but also as a consequence of the power the community wields by virtue of its ownership and control of the economy—that it doesn’t matter who is prime minister. With or without Carney, the policy and direction of the government would be the same. The only way it is going to change is if the power of private business to dominate government and public policy is ended by bringing private industry and private investment under democratic control.

NATO governments are presenting their citizens with a spuriously inflated threat as a pretext to significantly increase military expenditures. We’re expected to believe that over 590 million Europeans are unable to defend themselves against 144 million Russians who, after almost four years, still can’t defeat 40 million Ukrainians. (Of course, a big reason they can’t defeat Ukraine is because they’re also fighting the United States and its NATO lackeys, Canada included, who furnish Ukraine with training, weapons, and intelligence.) We’re expected to believe that even though Europe’s NATO members spend three times as much on the military as Russia does, and have almost twice as many troops, that the alliance is vulnerable to a Russian invasion. These military spending increases—totally unnecessary for self-defense—will not come without a cost. Already, officials of various NATO governments have initiated a discourse on the necessity of making painful cuts to public services. The Russia threat is spurious—a stalking horse for advancing the sectoral interests of wealthy investors. If we allow this deception to stand and meekly submit to runaway militarism, all but the superrich—friends and class cohorts of the Trumps, the Carneys, the Merzs, the Macrons, and the Starmers—will pay a heavy price.

With one in five Canadians without a family doctor, one in four households in financial straits, 40,000 public servants on the chopping block, and the housing and rental markets in crisis, we are already paying a price. Unless we act now—by withdrawing from the war over Ukraine for billionaire profits, prioritizing the needs of Canadians, and bringing industry and investment decisions under democratic control—the price will grow larger still.

1. Steven Chase, “Canada buying $200-million in weapons for Ukraine from U.S. stockpile,” The Globe and Mail, 3 December 2025.

2. Tia Pham and Tara Kiran, “More than 6.5 million adults in Canada lack access to primary care,” Healthy Debate, 14 March 2023.

3. Steven Globerman, Joel Emes, and Austin Thompson “Affordable housing is out of reach everywhere in Canada,” the Globe and Mail, 2 December, 2025.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQHljrFMbfA&t=46s

5. Labour Force Survey, October 2025, Statistics Canada, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/251107/dq251107a-eng.htm

6. Bill Curry and Melissa Martin “Carney pledges support for Ukraine, unveils defence aid details at Independence Day visit,” The Globe and Mail August 24, 2025.

7. John McCain once wrote that “We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values. We have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under those rules.” John McCain, “John McCain: Why We Must Support Human Rights,” The New York Times, 8 May 2017.

8. Michael R. Gordon and Lara Seligman, “Pentagon Official at Center of Weapons Pause on Ukraine Wants U.S. to Focus on China,” The Wall Street Journal, 13 July 2025.

9. Yaroslav Trofimov, “A Newly Confident China Is Jockeying for More Global Clout as Trump Pulls Back, The Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2025.

10. Matthew Luxmoore and Robbie Gramer, “Marathon Russia-U.S. Meeting Yields No Ukraine Peace Deal”, The Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2025.

11. Daniel Michaels, “Trump’s NATO Vision Spells Trouble for the Alliance,” The Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2025.

12. Mark Landler, “NATO Chief Urges Members to Spend Far More on Military,” The New York Times, 9 June 2025.

13. Landler.

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