Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) represents a major step toward war between capitalists in the U.S. and China. With the two imperialist powers locked in an escalating competition for global dominance, the TPP is more than a trade deal that will heighten exploitation and destroy jobs for U.S. workers. It’s a sign that U.S. bosses are preparing to square off against their ascending rival.
The international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is fighting to unite workers worldwide to smash imperialism at its source: the capitalist system. We call on all workers to march with us on May Day and fight for our class, not the bosses’ country. Join PLP and the fight to turn imperialist war into class war for communism!
TPP: A Provocation to China
In late March, the liberal Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank, bankrolled by ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, published a special report: “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China.” The bloodthirsty authors Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis previously planned strategy and tactics for the National Security Council during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their preamble sets a warlike tone:
Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power….[I]t must involve crucial changes to the current policy in order to limit the dangers that China’s economic and military expansion pose to U.S. interests in Asia and globally….[P]reserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century.
According to Blackwill and Tellis, the TPP is an essential step toward squaring off with China. Framed as a regulatory and investment treaty, it projects an anti-China trading and military bloc consisting of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the U.S. and Vietnam, and, prospectively, South Korea and Taiwan.
For the past four decades, U.S. capitalists have raked in trillions by exploiting cheap labor and vast markets in China’s booming economy. While voicing concern over the gradual rise in China’s worldwide might, U.S. rulers have yet to formulate a coherent plan for countering it. Obama followed up his “pivot-to-Asia” policy with a chaotic series of half-measures, among them the stationing of 2,500 Marines in Australia and four Navy ships in Singapore. But the TPP represents an explicit confrontation with China — economically, politically, militarily. If the Exxon/Chase forces — the dominant faction of U.S. capitalism — hold sway, an armed conflict will be closer than ever.
Capitalist ‘Peace’ = Preparation for War
While “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China” is not quite a declaration of war, it points in that direction. Its authors warn, “No nation in Asia, least of all China, will take seriously U.S. military enhancement in Asia unless the United States takes the following vigorous and comprehensive steps”:
A substantial increase in the U.S. military budget and military aid to pro-U.S. regimes in Asia;
Maintenance of the current nuclear weapon balance between the U.S. and China;
An even greater U.S. advantage in long-range stealth unmanned drones and undersea war capability;
More ballistic missiles (fast-traveling weapons that fly out of the atmosphere) to back U.S. allies in the Pacific;
An intensive naval and air presence in the South and East China Seas.
In addition, the U.S. bosses want their junior partners in Japan and Australia to accelerate their remilitarization and military cooperation. In India, the U.S. capitalist butchers hope to use a 1.25-billion-strong working class as cannon fodder in the possible imperialist war with China. To keep India’s bosses in the U.S. imperialist camp, Blackwell and Tells argue that the U.S. should ease restraints on military technology transfer to India, increase military cooperation (especially between the two countries’ navies), and regard India’s nuclear weapons arsenal as an asset.
On behalf of their ruling-class masters, Blackwill and Tellis argue that it’s a mistake to view China as a potential ally or partner. They understand that all alliances among capitalists are temporary, and the current illusion of China-U.S. harmony is no different. The two imperialist powers may seem to be cooperating for the moment, but their interests are rapidly diverging:
That self-defeating preoccupation by the United States based on a long-term goal of U.S.-China strategic partnership...should end. It is unrealistic to imagine that China’s grand strategy toward the United States will...accept American power and influence as linchpins of Asian peace and security. The central question concerning the future of Asia is whether the United States will have...the right grand strategy to deal with China to protect vital U.S. national interests.
Flashpoint for Armed Conflict
The Pacific region represents one of several possible imperialist flashpoints for a massive armed confrontation. Vital U.S. capitalist interests are also at risk in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, among other potential hot spots.
The capitalists’ maneuvers toward broader wars will affect every worker on the planet. In the U.S., Black, Latin, and immigrant workers will be hit the hardest. These workers are already suffering from racist mass incarceration, mass unemployment — and, for Black workers in particular — a recent upswing in murders and assaults by the kkkops.
The bosses arrogantly assume that the working class will continue to spill its blood indefinitely for their imperialist holocausts. They are wrong. The international working class, led by PLP, will be their undoing. Our Party is growing as it unites workers under the red flag.
May Day means that ALL workers stand together as a single class and fight for their class interests. This May Day, PLP will march in 27 countries. We are calling on all workers to join us in building a mass movement of millions for communist revolution!
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Obama Seeks to Secure U.S. Backyard
U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent trip to Latin America represents another step in the bid to out-do U.S. imperialist rivals, China and Russia. Obama seemed to be right at home, shouting colloquial greetings at a cheering crowd in Jamaica and touting the economic and diplomatic possibilities that would result from renewed relations with Latin America at the summit in Panama. For Obama and the capitalists he serves, the trip was crucial in securing relations in a region where rivals China and Russia are gaining influence. Chinese banks’ investments, for example, in Latin America increased by 71 percent last year (CNN, 03/04/15) and Russia has outlined plans to build military bases in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela (CSIS, 03/24/15). Obama and his capitalist bosses thus have many reasons to be worried about Russia’s and China’s activities in their “backyard.”
Workers should be leery however at Obama’s attempt to attract support. The U.S., after all, has never acted in the favor of workers in Latin America. Countries like Jamaica are in utter debt because of the U.S. policies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the imperialist bank led by the U.S. and other world powers, imposes harsh austerity measures on Jamaica in order to collect an insurmountable debt that continues to stifle its fragile economy. Workers have no stake in this fight between imperialist rivals.