Ram Seegobin on the Geo-Political Tendencies at Work
03.03.2022
It is not my intention to review ‘events’ one-by-one on the global level today. I will rather look at ‘trends’ and ‘tendencies’, especially those that affect the geopolitical balance of forces, whether it be economic or military.
So, first of all, there are huge realities that humanity is facing today that we must bear in mind that lie behind what I describe:
* There is climate change, and the issue of pollution – which entails all manner of economic and social consequences, even existential ones for humanity.
* There is a pandemic such as we have not faced in our lifetimes, and its economic and social effects.
* There is a war that Russia has declared against Ukraine, which will also have direct social and economic effects, as well as death and destruction, and even the ever-present threat of a nuclear war -- detonated either on purpose, or by mistake.
The USA and NATO are no longer ‘unipolar’
For a long period of time during the bi-polarization of the Cold War period (from 1949 when the USA established NATO, and then in 1955 when the Soviet union established the Warsaw Pact) it was said that there was a ‘nuclear balance’, the balance of mutual deterrence, between the USA and the USSR, an unstable equilibrium that stood firm for 35 years – despite continual regional wars. But, after the collapse of the Soviet Blok and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the world became ‘unipolar’, that is, under the hegemonic rule of the USA, which headed the process of ‘globalization of financial capital’ almost everywhere in the world. During this ‘unipolar’ era, NATO, instead of disbanding following the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, has continued reinforcing its military, expanding it, gradually encircling Russia, until it arrived at Russia’s borders. The previous ‘nuclear balance’ was unbalanced, when the USA became the dominant power with the force of a unipolar reign.
By the 2020s, we can look back and see the vertiginous rise of China. It even surpassed Japan as the No. 2 economy in the world after the USA. China has developed a political, economic, and commercial influence in Africa, Asia, and even South America, and the USA, accustomed to being the hegemon feels challenged.
During this era of capitalist globalization since 1991, which all its ‘delocalization’, that is, the movement of capital towards where work conditions are less good, this process has, at the same time, brought a global weakening of the working class, meaning a weakening of its political organizations, of its political parties, as well as of its ideology.
The rise of right-wing political parties
When the working class is weakened this drastically, it creates the climate for the growth of pro-capitalist movements and political leaders and parties and, worse still, for the rise of all manner of populist, nationalist and even fascist forces. We have even witnessed an attempted coup d’état in Washington DC on the 6th January 2021 – something that would until, say, 5 years ago been unimaginable – when a combination of the far-right leadership around Trump and an insurrection that attacked the parliament building of the USA, the Capitol, tried to prevent Biden, who had been elected, from taking power. There is a far-right leader in power in Brazil, Bolsonaro, and in India there is Modi and his BJP in power, in Europe there is Hungary’s Orban in power. At the same time, far-right parties have become strong in several other countries such as France, Netherlands, Austria, Germany and the UK.
Important Mutations in the Middle East
There has been a series of geo-political mutations in the Middle East, as well as the retreat of the USA and NATO from Afghanistan.
All the countries in and around the Middle East have suffered cruel imperialist military offensives and utterly destructive invasions and occupations – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – all of whom had had secular, if nationalist and repressive governments – have now seen the growth and expansion, during the last, say, 20 years of right-wing fundamentalist trends.
And we have seen the USA increased its military support to the al-Sisi government in Egypt. This is a government that has taken power through a coup d’état against the elected government. So, this military dictatorship continued to dominate Egypt.
Israel has continued its occupation of the Palestinian territory – and a piece of Syrian territory, the Golan Heights – with the full support of the USA. During the Trump era, the USA helped the Israeli Government break out of is long and well-deserved political isolation, and we still see Israel’s diplomatic offensive continue, be it in countries like the U.A.E, Bahrain, several African countries as well as towards the African union, even in Mauritius – recently in the press and via the Health Ministry.
A series of Coups d’état in Africa
In Africa, the military did not seize power only in Egypt. Over the last few months alone, there has been a series of new military coups d’état – Sudan, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and even in Tunisia. Mali has downright expelled the French military, which was providing soldiers and weapons to fight against fundamentalists. At the same time, there is a civil war in Ethiopia. All this to say, there is a new kind of instability.
What kinds of resistance are there?
What kinds of resistance is being born to face this drift towards the far-right, towards fundamentalism, and towards military take-overs? Some left-leaning, and working class supported political parties have managed to strengthen and even taken power. Take in Latin America. First in Chile, when a left-wing alliance with Gabriel Boric as leader has taken power in elections at the end of last year. This year, Honduras, which lived under military dictatorship after a previous coup d’état, managed to have an election and elected Xiomara Castro, from a left-wing movement, as President.
In Asia, there was another big victory of a different kind. There was an enormous, truly heroic, mobilization in India amongst literally millions of small farmers in alliance with agricultural workers. They won an extraordinary victory after a whole year of hard struggle against Modi’s government and his BJP.
And in the Indian Ocean, there have been the victories on the Chagos question – be it in the ICJ, in the UN General Assembly, be it the ship that the Mauritian Government together with Chagossians managed to take to Chagos and thus challenge the UK-USA physically.
All of these are part of the rare victories in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles all over the world.
These victories help change the balance of class forces world-wide a tiny bit in favour of the working class, even as the capitalist class has imposed defeat upon defeat on the world’s working classes over the past 30 years.
USA offensive
The USA is undertaking a new offensive to reestablish its hegemony, as China has come and “challenged” it. China’s existence challenged the USA.
The USA has weakened the anti-USA forces in the Middle East through a series of wars, as well as its military support to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Now the USA is using the Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to further strengthen NATO, and, at the same time, to weaken USA’s competitor/ally i.e. Europe, relatively to the USA. The USA has already, from before, with open support from Trump when he was President, weakened Europe by picking helping get the UK to choose “Brexit”, i.e. split away from the European union.
But all of this – weakening all independent countries in the Arab world, weakening Russia and strengthening NATO – is a prelude for the USA’s grand offensive, that it has been planning since the Obama era: what he himself called ‘China’s encirclement’. He aims to ‘contain’ China, ‘encircle’ it. That means the USA will expand its 700 military bases outside its territory, and China will not be able to put a foot outside its territory. Then they will definitely use Taiwan in order to confront China – as they are already doing.
As it is, the USA has already established its Quad, its AUKUS, and already had its Five-Eyes, an Anglophone fraternity for international spying set up out of a conspiracy during the World War II. So, we will see the USA abandon its politics of accepting the ‘One China Policy’ which means Taiwan is part of China (even the USA has had and still has, a series of intentional ‘ambiguities’ in its position) and look for a way to use Taiwan as an excuse for a new war.
Covid
As I said in the beginning, all of this is happening during a time of climate crisis and the threat of species collapse, during the era of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and during a pandemic – even if the epidemic is now under control in many countries, it is still in our world for a while.
Note: This is a summary of Ram Seegobin’s speech during a recent internal meeting of LALIT members on Zoom.
Translated by ‘S’ from original version published in Kreol on LALIT website on 28 February 2022. Link: https://www.lalitmauritius.org/en/newsarticle/3031/ram-seegobin-on-the-geo-political-tendencies-at-work-in-kreol/
