New Cold War Archives - Friends of Socialist China

Webinar: Imperialism vs multipolarity – The US and China’s clashing visions of the international order (21 June)

📆 Sunday 21 June 2026, 2pm Britain, 9am US Eastern, 9pm China

A discussion of the Trump-Xi summit, the tariff war, US military aggression across the Global South, and the prospects for the world to come.

When Donald Trump arrived in Beijing in May for talks with President Xi Jinping – the first visit by a US president in nine years – the observant could detect a major shift in the international order. Successive US administrations’ increasingly desperate efforts to maintain dominance – through tariffs, sanctions, military aggression and technology warfare – have been failing as China’s economic might and diplomatic influence have grown. The trip Trump had hoped to make in triumph had to be made amid the disaster of his failing war on Iran, on top of the earlier failure of his tariff war against China.

Rather than projecting power, Trump was left with no alternative but to treat China as a peer. China now accounts for roughly 30 percent of global manufacturing output; the Belt and Road Initiative spans continents; and a growing majority of the world’s people are orientating away from US hegemonism and towards a pluripolar future. Xi’s quietly confident offer of “a new paradigm of major-country relations” and a “constructive relationship of strategic stability” went largely unchallenged.

Trump will undoubtedly flail against this new reality, and that flailing will bring further misery to the world. But there are signs that a critical corner is being turned in the journey towards a multipolar world order based on sovereignty, development and peace.

Join our panel of analysts, activists and scholars for a wide-ranging discussion of the Trump-Xi summit and its aftermath, the tariff war, US military aggression across the Global South, and the prospects for the world to come.

This webinar is organised by Friends of Socialist China and the International Manifesto Group.

Confirmed speakers

Cheng Enfu (President of the World Association for Political Economy)
Ben Norton (Founder and editor-in-chief, Geopolitical Economy Report)
Carlos Martinez (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China)
Jacquie Luqman (Black Alliance for Peace)
Jenny Clegg (Author and peace campaigner)
Ken Hammond (Professor of History, New Mexico State University; Pivot to Peace)
Mick Dunford (Emeritus Professor, University of Sussex)
Mike Klonsky (Educator, author and activist)
Moderator: Radhika Desai (Convenor, International Manifesto Group)

Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port and the complete collapse of the “debt trap” narrative

For years, Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port was the textbook example of what Western politicians called Chinese “debt-trap diplomacy” – the claim that Beijing lures poor countries into unpayable loans and then seizes their strategic infrastructure. In the following article, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez shows how comprehensively that story has collapsed.

Drawing on studies by Chatham House, the Johns Hopkins economist Deborah Bräutigam and Sri Lankan officials themselves, Carlos sets out the facts: the port was a Sri Lankan initiative, not a Chinese one; Washington and Delhi were asked to fund it and declined; and Chinese loans made up just 9 percent of Sri Lanka’s government debt. As the country’s then ports minister put it, “We thank China for arranging this investor to save us from the debt trap.” Sri Lanka’s debt crisis “was made on Wall Street, not in Beijing.”

Far from a predatory white elephant, Hambantota has become one of the fastest-growing trans-shipment hubs in the Indian Ocean, drawing the largest foreign investment in Sri Lankan history. The real debt trap, the article argues, is sprung by the IMF, the World Bank and Western bond markets – and the campaign against the Belt and Road is “a blatant act of self-projection.”

Socialist and anti-colonial movements laid groundwork for multipolarity

The following article, by Gregory E. Williams, argues that we can’t understand multipolarity through an international relations or geopolitics lens alone; it is primarily a class question.

The post-1991 “unipolar moment” wasn’t simply the absence of a rival superpower. It was a counter-revolutionary opening for the global capitalist class – Wall Street ascendant, the IMF and World Bank disciplining the Global South, Reagan and Thatcher austerity at home, an unbroken line of attack on the working class running from there down to Musk’s DOGE cuts.

And the multipolar trajectory we witness today has its origins in the revolutions of the twentieth century: the Bolshevik Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the wave of national liberation movements from Algeria to Vietnam, Bandung 1955, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the long resistance in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen. China’s industrial power today is the inheritance of 1949. Iran’s defiance is the inheritance of 1979.

The class character of the two camps isn’t symmetrical. The forces driving towards the defeat of US-led imperialism represent the working class and the oppressed peoples of the Global South.

China and DPRK reject Quad moves to stoke tension in the Asia-Pacific

The foreign ministers of the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) met in the Indian capital New Delhi on May 26. This US-led body which also comprises Japan, Australia and India plays a provocative role in US imperialism’s attempts to encircle and contain China as well as other socialist countries and anti-imperialist forces in the Asia-Pacific region.

On May 27, the Xinhua News Agency released a commentary stressing the need to guard against what it called the Quad’s “bloc politics”, noting that its members had “again hyped maritime issues related to the East and South China Seas.”

It added: “In recent years, nearly every joint statement issued after Quad foreign ministers’ meetings has reiterated these themes. Yet such patronising rhetoric about safeguarding so-called ‘freedom of navigation’ cannot obscure the reality that the bloc itself has become a source of turbulence, fueling tensions and deepening confrontation in the region.

“At a time when most Asia-Pacific countries are focused on economic recovery and regional integration, the Quad appears to be moving in the opposite direction by unveiling a raft of new measures — a move widely seen as driven by a Cold War mentality aimed at containing China’s development.”

According to Xinhua: “While the Quad foreign ministers voiced concern over regional peace and stability, few will overlook the irony that the war against Iran launched by Washington is itself undermining supply-chain resilience across the Asia-Pacific.

“Regional economies such as India — also a Quad member — are already bearing the brunt of the resulting turmoil in global energy markets. In the meantime, the still-undecided date for the Quad leaders’ summit offers a glimpse into the grouping’s growing disarray.”

However, it warned that “the world should still stay vigilant against countries like Japan [attempting] to use this bloc as a cover to hype up groundless security concerns in the region for its own militarist agenda… What the region needs is cooperative frameworks that prioritise development, mutual trust and shared prosperity over ideological alignment and geopolitical calculation. The Quad should recognise that Asia’s future lies in cooperation, not confrontation.”

The following day, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported the answers given by a spokesperson for the foreign ministry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) regarding the meeting.

The spokesperson noted that the joint statement issued by the meeting “not only seriously distorted the immediate and urgent challenges and threats faced by the countries in the Asia-Pacific region but also clearly exposed the hostile intention against specific countries.

“Quad talked about the strengthening of cooperation while expressing ‘concern’ over the situation in the South Sea and East Sea of China. It is aimed at justifying Japan’s moves for rearmament and Australia’s possession of a nuclear submarine, which are arousing concern of the international community.”

They continued: “In particular, the US-led Quad members took issue with the DPRK’s legitimate exercise of sovereign rights, calling for ‘denuclearisation’. This goes to prove that Quad is nothing but a political and diplomatic tool serving the US strategy for unipolar domination… The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK resolutely denounces and rejects the US-led Quad’s hostile stand against the DPRK and other regional countries and strongly demands that it drop its attempt to escalate inter-camp confrontation destroying regional peace and stability.”

The Trump-Xi summit: stalemate or stabilisation?

In the following article, which was originally published in the Morning Star, Jenny Clegg assesses the recent state visit to China by US President Donald Trump and argues that, “for all the ceremony and general bonhomie there seemed in the end to be little for Trump — who asked for the meeting in the first place — to show for it.”

Referring to Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Jenny notes that: “Xi’s opening remarks were then apposite, warning in no uncertain terms about the dangers of war as he referenced the Thucydides Trap — the scenario when a rising power and a declining power go to war — the subject of much debate recently in US foreign policy circles.

“Xi then drew the red line on Taiwan, his eyes on Trump in an effort to impress upon him the importance of laying off the island. He, in effect, was telling Trump: don’t make a mess of relations with China like the mess you’ve made in the Middle East.”

Having reviewed the steadily mounting US hostility in the nine years since a US president – also Donald Trump – visited China, Jenny concludes:

“Meanwhile China’s popularity with the American people has grown even as Trump’s approval rating drops: 72 per cent of the US public now say they don’t see China as an enemy.”

Referring to the large number of top US capitalists who accompanied the president, she notes: “The fact that Trump, fielding the better part of the top echelons of the US ruling class, came away with so little is remarkable.

“More than anything he was looking for a big economic win to take back to the US electorate — but discussions about China’s purchase of Boeing aircraft and those millions of tons of soya beans are only ‘preliminary.’ Such was the disappointment that as the summit ended Boeing’s shares fell.”

China’s view that the Hormuz strait should reopen and Iran should not have nuclear weapons is nothing new and whilst Trump’s threats and wars may continue and even intensify elsewhere, greater stability in relations between the world’s two major powers may also create breathing space in other areas, easing pressure on countries to choose between the US and China. Jenny concludes that:

“As space for manoeuvre among Global South countries increases, their growing autonomy will keep driving the multipolar trend forward.”

The eyes of the world were on Beijing and the much-hyped Xi-Trump meeting last week, but for all the ceremony and general bonhomie there seemed in the end to be little for Trump — who asked for the meeting in the first place — to show for it.

It is of course a good thing that the leaders of the two largest economic powers met, and Trump’s invitation to Xi to visit the White House in September – which Xi accepted — indicates a certain degree of stability amid the international chaos he has wreaked elsewhere. So rather than pass by on the event as much ado about nothing, it is worth taking stock.

A successful visit to Beijing: is the US ruling class starting to face reality?

In the following article, our co-editor Carlos Martinez assesses Donald Trump’s 13-15 May state visit to China, arguing that the positive mood music between Trump and Xi Jinping reflects a (slowly) growing understanding in US policy circles that a hawkish anti-China strategy simply is not working. The semiconductor war has accelerated Chinese self-sufficiency rather than slowed it; Trump’s 145 percent tariffs collapsed within days of Beijing tightening rare-earth export controls; and the US-Israeli criminal war on Iran has strengthened, rather than weakened, the multipolar trajectory.

The deeper meaning of this summit is that the US ruling class is having to, very reluctantly, start to come to terms with the world as it actually is. It does not “hold the cards”. As Xi put it at the Great Hall of the People, “the world is big enough to accommodate both countries, and one country’s success is an opportunity for the other.” The Chinese have been consistently saying this for years. The difference now is that, as a growing number of US analysts are admitting that they’re right: win-win cooperation between major powers is possible; what isn’t possible is the indefinite extension of unipolar US hegemony.

NB. An expanded version of this article, including analysis of Vladimir Putin’s visit a few days later, has been published in Beijing Review.

Donald Trump’s 13-15 May state visit to China has produced a raft of headlines that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. “This time, Trump and Xi meet as equals”, declared The Times. The White House spoke of a “constructive relationship of strategic stability”.

A delegation of CEOs – Nvidia’s Jensen Huang (who joined at the last minute), Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook and more – accompanied the president to Beijing, signalling that the decoupling project has, at least for the moment, run its course. Trump publicly defended the right of half a million Chinese students to attend US universities. He called Xi a “great leader” and said “the relationship is a very strong one”. The Times columnist Gerard Baker, who has spent years cheerleading for the China hawks, conceded that “the unipolar moment was fleeting” and that “there are two true superpowers”.

This is a remarkable shift. Trump has cast himself as a China hawk since at least his 2016 campaign. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country”, he infamously told a rally in Indiana. He pledged to label China a currency manipulator on day one, accused Beijing of “stealing our jobs” and made tariffs on Chinese goods a centrepiece of his platform. Once in office, he initiated the trade war, banned Huawei from US 5G networks, expelled Chinese journalists, signed bipartisan legislation funnelling weapons to Taiwan, and oversaw the 2017 National Security Strategy that designated China as a “strategic competitor”.

Working people around the world look for Cold War reset as Xi and Trump meet

As Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down with his US counterpart and guest Donald Trump in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on May 14, the US publication People’s World published an article issued in the name of its editorial collective, saying that “the eyes of working people around the world are fixed on this two-day summit with both urgency and hope.”

It went on to note that the “relationship between the United States and China has deteriorated badly in recent years. Military posturing in the Asia-Pacific and the signing of new war pacts like the AUKUS nuclear submarine scheme have raised the specter of catastrophic conflict. A ‘new Cold War’ framework—driven by Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment—has pushed the two largest economies on earth toward confrontation rather than cooperation… This summit is an opportunity to step back from the brink and push the reset button.”

According to the US comrades, in his opening remarks addressed to Trump, President Xi posed the right question: “Can the United States and China avoid the ‘Thucydides Trap,’ the historical pattern in which a rising power and an established one blunder into war? That question deserves a serious answer, and it demands more than diplomatic pleasantries. It demands concrete commitments.”

We reprint the article below.

As U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping sit across from one another at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the eyes of working people around the world are fixed on this two-day summit with both urgency and hope.

The relationship between the United States and China has deteriorated badly in recent years. Reckless tariff wars have disrupted global supply chains and squeezed workers and consumers in both countries with inflation and layoffs. Military posturing in the Asia-Pacific and the signing of new war pacts like the AUKUS nuclear submarine scheme have raised the specter of catastrophic conflict.

Shield of the Americas: The pinnacle of subordination in the silent war against China

While the world’s attention has been focused on Washington’s wars of aggression in the West Asia, the Trump administration has been quietly advancing a parallel offensive in Latin America – one whose real target, as Oscar Rotundo makes clear in this incisive analysis (originally published in English on the website Internationalist 360), is China.

The “Shield of the Americas” summit, hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem at Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami, brought together twelve compliant Latin American governments and committed them to a Washington-monitored protocol covering security, economic and digital cooperation. As Rotundo shows, this is nothing new: the US has long used regional proxies to advance its interests while making others pay the bill. What’s relatively new is the explicit anti-China dimension.

Every country invited to Miami has significant economic ties with China – ties that are, in most cases, irreplaceable. China is the largest trading partner of Chile; it is Bolivia’s largest creditor; a key investor in Ecuador; and a key destination for much of the region’s commodity exports. The Chancay megaport in Peru, Chinese EVs and green energy investment are all in Washington’s crosshairs.

But as Rotundo argues, the US has nothing comparable to offer. It brings no investment, no infrastructure, no technology transfer – only threats, sanctions and hegemonism. China, by contrast, “builds quality infrastructure and incorporates cutting-edge technology” without demanding political submission.

“The train of the future,” Rotundo concludes, “has left Trump stranded.”

The so-called “Shield of the Americas,” which includes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago , met at a golf club in Doral, Miami, and was hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem, former Secretary of Homeland Security, who will now serve as special envoy for the “Shield of the Americas.”

The idea behind this meeting is to commit those present to a regional control protocol in security, economy, and digital cooperation, monitored from Washington.

Just as the United States once turned to private contractors such as DynCorp International (now part of Amentum), a US security and aviation contractor for the Pentagon and the State Department, who operated in “Plan Colombia,” it is now turning to the military forces of these countries to act as police officers under its command.

Sending migrants to prisons in El Salvador or Guantanamo in Cuba, the kidnapping of the sitting constitutional president Nicolás Maduro and the deputy Cilia Flores in Caracas, Venezuela, the threats of invasion or overthrow of the legitimate government of Cuba, the constant extortion against Mexico, are all part of the same package to which the cohort of lackeys is added.

The United States, with the same zeal with which it bombs boats under the pretext of drug trafficking, taking the lives of people who cannot be held responsible for any crime; under this cloak of suspicion, it intends to implement a regional security policy with military forces paid for by each State to multiply the protection of its interests in the region.

What is hidden beneath that shield

Supposedly a shield protects, but not always. We could say that the TIAR (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance) – a mutual defense pact signed in 1947 by countries of America, under the principle that an armed attack against a member state is considered an attack against all, obliging cooperation – was also a shield promoted by the northern hegemon, which, when it came to intervening and discouraging the aggression of an extra-continental force like Great Britain, which since 1833 has illegitimately occupied the Falkland Islands, a territory belonging to Argentina, a member country, did the opposite and joined the aggression by logistically supporting the colonialist force.

Under this shield, “friendly” countries agree to hand over natural resources and sovereignty over these and over the territories where interoceanic passages are located, so that the United States can exercise control over the movement of goods and military resources that can be moved from one place to another, as Donald Trump has just proposed regarding the Strait of Hormuz, which he is “considering taking control of,” a strategic maritime passage through which 20% of the world’s crude oil and also significant quantities of liquefied natural gas (LNG) circulate.

Also, as seen in Ecuador with the presence of Erik Prince, founder of the private military company Blackwater, who in 2025 collaborated with the government of Daniel Noboa to combat organized crime and drug trafficking, participating in operations in Guayaquil and in the training of security forces, it would not be surprising if contractors of this nature were to occupy the ground and the operation of this purported fight against Narcoterrorism, under the auspices of this “strategic protection” in the associated countries.

The claws of a dying beast: US imperialism’s existential quagmire

As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its second month, a striking vulnerability has emerged that the mainstream media has largely chosen to ignore: the Pentagon’s ability to replenish its rapidly depleting weapons stockpiles is now to a significant degree dependent on China’s rare earth exports, which are essential to everything from jet engine coatings to precision guidance systems. Alternative supply chains are three to five years away at best. China’s leading position in critical minerals processing gives important leverage in any confrontation with Washington.

In the following article, Ileana Chan, Director and Producer at Empire Watch, illuminates this contradiction, situating the criminal war on Iran within the broader imperial logic of a system that is simultaneously dependent on China and desperate to contain it – recognising that China will have surpassed the West in most economic and technological measures within the coming years, and calculating that the window for action is closing.

Ileana highlights the role of China’s steady, principled diplomacy as a counterpoint to US belligerence – a model of sovereignty, development and mutual respect that meets the needs of a rising Global South.

While we grieve for lives lost today and those to come, we know the Global South is building something new. A world defined not by bombastic slogans, but by the steady, even-keeled diplomacy China exemplifies, where sovereignty, development, and mutual respect are paramount.

This article was first published on the Empire Watch Patreon.

The latest US-Israeli war on Iran exposes the desperate belligerence of an empire in inevitable freefall.

It is a war decades in the making, completely aligned with Washington’s geopolitical maneuvering to perpetuate a unipolar world. This empire demands fealty from its vassal states and allies, without being able to articulate a rational strategy and objective. It claims self-defense while committing war crimes and breaking international law with impunity. Yet, somehow, behind the shock and awe tactics and tired propaganda tropes, the US seems utterly unprepared for the reality it has unleashed.

Stop the War Coalition reaffirms campaigning priorities and highlights heightened danger of war in the Pacific

Several hundred people packed central London’s Hamilton House on Saturday March 14 for the annual conference of Britain’s Stop the War Coalition (StW).

Amidst the most dangerous international situation in the lifetime of most if not all of the delegates, the day’s proceedings represented a powerful, united and militant expression of determination to do everything possible both to end the brutal imperialist wars currently being waged against Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere and to prevent the outbreak of a third world war that would threaten the very existence of humanity.

Stop the War’s website reports that during the opening session, Mustafa Barghouti, the renowned Palestinian figure, thanked StW for its solidarity with the Palestinian and Iranian people and drew attention to the devastating attacks Israel is currently conducting against Lebanon.

Jeremy Corbyn MP spoke of StW as a voice for peace, and of UK complicity in the destruction of Gaza, noting how the UK continues to send weapons to Israel.

Maryam Eslamdoust, railworkers’ union TSSA general secretary, who has family in Iran, reminded conference of the human tragedy of war. Maryam said Trump’s attacks were designed to strike fear and terror into civilians to achieve an uprising, fast victory and regime change. However, she believed Iran would not crumble as the imperialists hoped, and that the US would face a Vietnam-style defeat.

A motion on opposition to British foreign policy, moved by Stop the War deputy president and founding chair Andrew Murray, in an exceptionally fiery and impassioned speech, notes that:

The Trump administration has embarked on a rampage of aggression that is imperilling the entire world.

It has launched a barbaric and illegal attack with Israel on Iran (including murdering its leader) and Lebanon, kidnapped the President of Venezuela, bombed Yemen and Nigeria and is trying to bring down the government in Cuba. It has also threatened Panama, Colombia and Greenland. It has embarked on an intensification of the nuclear arms race.

All this is aimed at reversing the relative decline of US imperialism, particularly in the face of China’s growing strength, and securing a new redivision of power and profit in the world to its advantage. It threatens a third world war.

Keir Starmer has committed the British government to support for this reckless and bloody policy. All his professed support for international law disappears in the face of Washington’s illegalities. He is craven in his appeasement of Trump when he is not actually joining in with his wars.

Instead of aligning with most of the world in condemning this war drive, Britain backs the aggressors. This policy also threatens to beggar the British people with entirely unsustainable and unnecessary increases in military spending, on a scale which will make urgent social improvements all-but impossible.

The government also works to prolong the dangerous conflict in Ukraine and to engage in military provocations directed towards China in the Far East.

This is all accompanied by a war psychosis designed to condition the population to the inevitability of an impending great power war.

Conference resolved:

Interview: Understanding China’s foreign policy

In the video embedded below, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez joins Roger McKenzie for a detailed exploration of China’s foreign policy, its domestic progress, and the geopolitical strategies shaping the 21st century. The two discuss the importance of understanding China’s rise, the global shift towards multipolarity, and the need for solidarity against imperialist pressures.

Some of the key ideas put forward include:

• China’s foreign policy rests on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, first formulated by Zhou Enlai in 1954 and adopted at the Bandung Conference the following year. These principles – mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence – elevate what Lenin conceived as a tactical necessity into a principled theoretical framework. The core insight is that countries with fundamentally different social systems can and must coexist, and that all non-imperialist countries share a common interest in opposing domination and pursuing their own development paths. Today these principles find expression in China’s vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, underpinned by the Belt and Road Initiative, BRICS (which now surpasses the G7 in GDP, population and landmass), the SCO, and the G77. Multipolarity – a negotiated international order in which no single power can impose its will – is not only urgently needed to address existential challenges like climate change and nuclear war, but is, as Samir Amin argued, the necessary framework for the possible overcoming of capitalism itself.

• The United States is not accepting this shift passively. Brzezinski identified the nightmare scenario decades ago: a grand coalition of China, Russia and Iran. US responses have included proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, military encirclement of China through AUKUS and Pacific buildups, unconditional support for Israel, tariff wars, semiconductor controls, the kidnapping of president Maduro, the suffocation of Cuba, the reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, and now open war on Iran. The US is losing economic and technological primacy but retains overwhelming military power, and the danger is precisely that of a declining empire reaching for military solutions.

• The war on Iran must be understood in this context. It is not about nuclear weapons – nobody believes that. It is not about women’s rights – women’s rights are improving in Iran and deteriorating in the West. It is a criminal attack, carried out by presidential decree without reference to international law or domestic legal process, against a sovereign state that supports Palestinian resistance, maintains public ownership of its energy resources, and is a key node in the multipolar project – a crucial link in the Belt and Road, a member of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and an important energy partner for China. The attack is simultaneously an attempt to seize control of energy flows, to develop strategic chokepoints that could be used against China in a hot war, and to destroy the axis of resistance across West Asia. It is the empire striking back.

• China is supporting Iran to the best of its abilities – diplomatically, economically, and with military cooperation – but does not have the capacity to project military power into the region. Nonetheless, Iran is a fiercely independent country with formidable military capabilities. The US and Israel will not achieve their objectives: they will not install a puppet regime, will not destroy the Palestinian resistance, and will not seize Iran’s strategic position.

• The task for progressive forces in the West is to oppose the war on Iran, oppose the New Cold War on China and the propaganda war that sustains it, and build the broadest possible united front against imperialism, racism and neoliberalism. We are not the vanguard – that role belongs to the socialist countries and the peoples under direct attack. But everyone has a part to play, and we must do what we can to build solidarity and make war untenable for the imperialists.

China chokehold: Long-term goal of the US war on Iran

Why is the United States waging war on Iran? The official justifications shift by the day – nuclear weapons, Israeli security, bringing “democracy” – but CJ Atkins, writing in People’s World, cuts through the noise to identify a deeper strategic logic.

Ironically, it has fallen to the far-right, pro-Trump, Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times to spell it out most clearly. The war on Iran, like the January invasion of Venezuela, is to a considerable degree a move against China. Iran supplied 13.4 percent of China’s seaborne oil imports last year, Venezuela a further 4.5 percent. Combined with Russia, sanctioned suppliers accounted for a third of China’s entire crude import mix in 2024. Neutralising Iran – and with it, threatening Chinese access to the Strait of Hormuz, through which 37.7 percent of China’s crude oil flows – is a bid to put Beijing in an energy chokehold.

Atkins writes: “Iran sits alongside that chokepoint and, as recent days have made abundantly clear, is capable of threatening access to it. It is the one independent actor in the region that can seriously complicate shipping through the whole corridor. That’s a power the U.S. government would prefer to have in its own hands.”

As such, the criminal aggression against Iran and Venezuela forms part of the US-led long-term campaign of containment and encirclement of the People’s Republic of China.

This is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the deeper architecture of US imperialism’s current offensive. It makes clear that the wars on Iran and Venezuela are not separate conflicts but coordinated moves in a single grand strategy: not only a war on Tehran or Caracas, but a war on the multipolar trajectory. Such a strategy must be resolutely opposed.

There’s an angle to the Iran War that the cable news anchors, retired generals-turned-commentators, and corporate-owned newspapers are barely talking about, if at all. They report on the shifting justifications proffered by Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, or Donald Trump, but few in the press are doing anything to illuminate the bigger picture.

The United States isn’t attacking Iran simply because of Tehran’s nuclear program, or out of concern for the welfare of the Iranian people, or even purely for Israel’s security. The Trump administration’s decision to launch its war was motivated by a goal that goes well beyond nuclear non-proliferation. Nor is the war a case of Tel Aviv telling Washington what to do, regardless of what some of Netanyahu’s most intense critics want to believe.

It has fallen to the far-right, anti-communist outlet The Epoch Times—the newspaper associated with the Falun Gong cult—to offer the truth about what the U.S. is up to. “A key strategic dimension of the Iran conflict,” wrote James Gorrie, a regular columnist for the pro-Trump paper in its March 13 issue, “involves Washington’s efforts to control and even restrict Iranian oil flows to China.”

Marco Rubio and Wang Yi offer vastly contrasting visions of international relations

The two articles collected here, by Paweł Wargan and Sevim Dağdelen, approach the same moment in world politics, arriving at a shared conclusion: the international order is entering a period of profound transition, marked by the decline of Western hegemony and an increasingly open struggle over what comes next. Both writers use the recent Munich Security Conference as a lens through which to examine this shift, arguing that the language emerging from parts of the Western establishment reflects not confidence, but profound anxiety about the changing global balance of power.

A central thread running through both analyses is the contrast between two competing visions of international relations.

On one side, they see a US-led Western bloc seeking to preserve its dominance through military power, sanctions, and coercive diplomacy. The speech by Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempts to provide an ideological framework for this posture by openly promoting white supremacism and colonial nostalgia (“We are part of one civilisation – Western civilisation. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilisation to which we have fallen heir”). Rubio flaunted Washington’s willingness to abandon international law and the basic norms of relations between states in support of reviving and furthering Western hegemony.

On the other side stands a different vision, associated above all with China and the broader Global South. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s speech represents a contrasting emphasis on multilateralism, sovereign equality and cooperation among states. Both Paweł and Sevim’s articles suggest that China’s growing influence – economically, diplomatically and institutionally – has become central to the emerging multipolar order. Rather than viewing China simply as a rival, these articles frame it as a key actor in building alternative institutions and partnerships that challenge imperialism and uphold the principles of the United Nations Charter.

Together, the two texts explore the stakes of this historical turning point. Is the world moving toward renewed confrontation and bloc politics, or toward a more multipolar and democratic international system? The answer, they imply, will depend not only on the decisions of major powers but on the unity and coordinated action of countries throughout the world, and particularly the Global South.

Paweł Wargan is Political Coordinator at the Progressive International. Sevim Dağdelen was a member of the German Bundestag from 2005 to 2025 and is currently a member of the Federal Executive Board of the German party BSW (Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht / The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance).

Adults in the Room

February 20 (Valdai Club) – The 62^nd Munich Security Conference concluded with a funereal mood. For three days, heads of state, diplomats, and military officials gathered between the Hotel Bayerischer Hof and the Rosewood Munich to take stock of a world system that is, by their own admission, fracturing. The conference report, titled Under Destruction, acknowledged what has long been obvious to those watching from the periphery of the imperial system: the post-1945 US-led international order is coming apart at the seams.

In more ways than one, the Conference revealed the contours of the world order that is emerging in its place. It exposed a diminishing and desperate Europe and a revanchist and atavistic US — two parts of a weakening bloc determined to rescue its position on the international stage with force. But it also revealed an alternative: a determination to build a new international order that could finally overcome the inequities of a global system structured by centuries of colonial rule and violent domination.

European leaders rehashed a well-worn liturgy of contradictory claims and feeble appeals. War was at the forefront of their minds. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, spoke of a Russia that was simultaneously “broken” and “no superpower”, and an omnipotent Russia that could “cripple economies through cyberattacks, disrupt satellites, sabotage undersea cables, fracture alliances with disinformation, [and] coerce countries by weaponising oil and gas” — a narrative designed to shore up support for Europe’s re-militarization.

The US is pursuing a global Monroe Doctrine

The following article is based on a presentation given by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez at the Latin America Adelante Conference in London on 7 February 2026. The presentation was part of a session on ‘Latin America, the New Cold War and the Rising Global South’, which was also addressed by Sophie Bold (CND General Secretary), Roger McKenzie (Morning Star International Editor) and Fiona Sim (Co-founder, Black Liberation Alliance). The session was chaired by Carole Regan of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

Carlos’s presentation focused on the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and its implications for Latin America, as well as its connection to the US’s longstanding global strategy of encirclement and containment against China. Carlos concludes:

The ruling class is pushing an agenda that is increasingly unpopular and untenable — an agenda of permanent war, economic decline and ecological destruction. We need to push our own agenda: one of peace, multilateralism, solidarity, and the broadest possible global cooperation to confront the existential threats facing humanity.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released in late November 2025, has been the subject of widespread comment and a diverse array of interpretations. For those of us concerned with questions of peace, sovereignty and international justice, its most striking feature is its explicit reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, shifting the focus of US military strategy towards “defending our hemisphere”, with more troops, bases and military operations in the Americas.

US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere is of course nothing new. Since the Monroe Doctrine was first promulgated in 1823, the United States has treated Latin America and the Caribbean as its backyard, overthrowing governments, installing dictatorships, funding death squads and imposing economic subjugation as a matter of routine. But, at least in the post-WW2 era, previous administrations have at least maintained some pretence of respect for international law and the sovereignty of other nations. The NSS does away with any such niceties, declaring that “the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”

Trump 2.0 is not retreating – it is recalibrating for global confrontation

In the following analysis for the Morning Star, British economist John Ross argues that the second presidency of Donald Trump represents not a retreat from US global ambitions – as has been posited in parts of the left – but a tactical recalibration aimed at preserving US hegemony and furthering the longstanding campaign to contain China and suppress its rise.

Citing the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defence Strategy, the article observes that both documents explicitly prioritise countering China militarily, especially in the Indo-Pacific and around Taiwan. Washington’s current tactical approach, however, is to target what it perceives as lesser enemies – including Cuba, Venezuela and Iran – in order to weaken the broader international alignment against imperialism and hegemony.

John concludes that the notion of US retreat is “dangerous wishful thinking.” Far from accepting multipolarity, the US is intensifying military spending, expanding missile defence systems and sustaining global interventions.

“Global South countries at present under direct attack by the US, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, are today in the front line of fighting the US attack on all independent, progressive and socialist forces in the world. These countries therefore must receive the maximum support both for reasons of moral solidarity, and the interests of these countries, but because if they were to be defeated the US will be strengthened in its attack on every other country and progressive movement.

“The evidence, both in words and actions, is that if the US were allowed to succeed in its attacks in the western hemisphere, against Cuba and Venezuela, it would not stop at that and accept a division of the rest of the world. It would simply follow up its attacks on Cuba and Venezuela, in a somewhat strengthened position, by attacks on other countries.

“In short, the idea that the US is retreating simply into the western hemisphere is entirely wrong and extremely dangerous.”

An analysis of the escalating US threats toward China

In the following article, Mick Kelly, the Political Secretary of the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation (FRSO) in the United States, argues that the US is on a collision course with socialist China. Scholarly international relations journals, such as Foreign Affairs, regularly carry articles about a coming war between the two countries.

Mick notes that in a rapidly changing world China is ascending while the United States is being left behind, with China’s rapid development standing in great contrast to the deteriorating economic position of the US. The bellicose war threats from Washington are a sign of weakness, not strength.

Giving a historical context, he points out that from the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 until the early 1970s, US foreign policy towards China was characterized by extremely hostility. Then came “ping pong diplomacy,” and in 1972 both countries signed the Shanghai Communiqué agreeing that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” This One China principle was reaffirmed when Beijing and Washington established formal diplomatic relations at the end of 1979

In the following decades, the US followed a strategy of “peaceful evolution,” which held that by using political, economic and cultural ties, it would be possible to foster forces in China antithetical to socialism, capitalism would prevail, and a Western-style government would ultimately be established. The application of this strategy was played out in the late 1980s when the US did everything it could to encourage turmoil in China and the other socialist countries. In China, however, socialism continued to not only survive but to thrive, creating incredible social achievements such as the elimination of extreme poverty.

Mick concludes that: “Socialist China is a beacon of progress. Its existence demonstrates that socialism brings peace and prosperity, while the United States controls a declining empire that is continuously at war. The difference between the two roads these respective countries offer could not be starker. When US warmongers talk about ‘modernising’ nuclear weapons, in the next breath they mention China. Progressives and revolutionaries in the United States must do everything in our power to stop them and join with people around the world who want to do the same.”

The article originally appeared in the book, China Changes Everything. It is republished here from Workers World.

Greenland in the New Cold War

The following article from Beijing Review, written by Carlos Martinez, situates Donald Trump’s renewed threats to seize Greenland within the broader context of Washington’s escalating strategic confrontation with China. While framed publicly as a matter of “national and world security,” the push to bring Greenland under direct US control reflects a desire to lock in long-term dominance over Arctic territory, resources and shipping routes that are becoming increasingly important as climate change reshapes global logistics.

In 2017, Beijing proposed incorporating Arctic sea lanes into the Belt and Road Initiative, developing a “Polar Silk Road” in cooperation with Russia. These routes could reduce shipping times between China and northern Europe by 30 percent, and furthermore offer an alternative to US-controlled maritime chokepoints. From Washington’s perspective, Greenland sits at a critical junction in the North Atlantic–Arctic corridor and offers leverage to disrupt or control these emerging routes in any future conflict.

The island’s vast reserves of critical minerals, including rare earth elements, add to its strategic significance. China currently dominates global rare earth mining and processing, giving it a major advantage in high-tech manufacturing and a potential counterweight to US sanctions and trade pressure. Securing Greenland’s resources is therefore seen as part of a wider effort to weaken China’s industrial and technological position.

Carlos argues that US ambitions in Greenland are less about immediate access – already largely guaranteed through existing agreements with Denmark – and more about preventing any future scenario in which Greenlandic self-determination could constrain US power. In this sense, Greenland becomes a central piece in Washington’s emerging New Cold War strategy of containing China’s rise.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed threats to bring Greenland under American control—”the easy way” if possible, “the hard way” if necessary—have sent shockwaves through Europe and put NATO’s future in question, at a moment when the Atlantic alliance is already under considerable strain.

Clearly intent on starting the year off “with a bang”—having abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and threatened a renewed bombing campaign against Iran—Trump has reiterated his long-standing interest in “acquiring” Greenland from Denmark, employing a combination of economic and military threats. What followed has been nothing short of a geopolitical rollercoaster ride.

On January 17, Trump announced he would impose a 10-percent import tariff on eight European allies that have opposed his bid to purchase the island: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. In an NBC News interview just two days later, he pointedly refused to rule out seizing Greenland by force, declaring on social media that the island is “imperative for National and World Security” and that “there can be no going back.”

On January 21, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump reversed course, claiming he had no intention of a forcible takeover. Instead, he framed the pursuit as a strategic necessity, citing the territory’s position between the U.S., Russia and China, and recasting history to suit his pitch. While accurately noting the U.S. had defended Greenland during World War II, he falsely claimed America “gave Greenland back” to Denmark after the war, asserting, “All the U.S. is asking for is a place called Greenland, where we already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago.”

This rewriting obscures the fact that Greenland was never America’s to give—it has long been a self-governing part of Denmark.

Hours after his Davos speech, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he had agreed to a “framework” with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for a “future deal with respect to Greenland” and “the entire Arctic region.” As part of this arrangement, he stated he would suspend the threatened tariffs on European allies next month.

Trump’s National Security Strategy lays bare the imperialist ambitions of the US ruling class

The following article by Carlos Martinez argues that the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) marks a sharper and less diplomatic phase of US imperial policy. Its most notable feature is the explicit reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, pledging to block “non-Hemispheric competitors” from controlling strategic assets or positioning forces in the Americas. The article interprets this as a signal of escalating hybrid war against Latin American and Caribbean states that resist US dominance and maintain strong ties with China, Russia, Iran and other countries that resist imperialist hegemony.

A parallel theme is Europe’s changing role in US strategy. While previous Cold War alliances treated Western Europe as Washington’s primary partner against the Soviet Union, the NSS portrays Europe as economically weakened, politically fragmented, and strategically unreliable. The US instead expects Europe to accept a more clearly subordinate relationship, to spend its taxpayers’ money on the US military-industrial complex, to align fully with US sanctions and technology controls, and to absorb higher tariffs or punishment if it deviates. The document’s rhetoric on migration, “demographic collapse” and low birthrates is fuel for rising far-right nationalist politics that Washington may leverage.

Despite limited direct mentions of China, the NSS outlines a long-term confrontation strategy focused on the Indo-Pacific, strengthening US military presence in the Western Pacific, reinforcing the First Island Chain, boosting allies’ military budgets, and deepening support for Taiwan as a geopolitical flashpoint. The article concludes that the NSS prioritises maintaining US hegemony, disrupting China’s global influence, and suppressing multipolar alternatives, framing the strategy as a continuation and escalation of the US’s longstanding campaign of containment and encirclement of China.

A shorter version of this article first appeared in Beijing Review.

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), released in late November, has inspired widespread comment and a diverse array of interpretations.

The most striking feature of the document is its explicit re-assertion of the Monroe Doctrine, shifting the focus of US military strategy towards “defending our hemisphere”, with “more troops, bases and military operations” in the Americas. Hegemony over the Western Hemisphere is of course a constant of US foreign policy, but previous administrations have at least made some pretence at multilateralism and respect for international law. The NSS does away with any such niceties:

How the US lost its chip war on China

The following article by Gary Wilson, originally published in Struggle La Lucha, argues that the United States has effectively lost its attempt to contain China’s rise and preserve US monopoly control over advanced technology through semiconductor export controls. The Trump administration’s recent decision to allow renewed exports of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China, albeit with restrictions and fees, is a tacit admission that the chip war has failed. “The chip war did not revive US industry. It exposed its fragility.”

Tracing the origins of the chip war to the Obama-era Pivot to Asia, the article situates semiconductor restrictions within a broader strategy of military, economic, and technological containment. Under Trump and Biden, this evolved into an aggressive weaponisation of global supply chains, using export controls, sanctions and alliance pressure to block China’s access to advanced chips, manufacturing tools and software ecosystems.

Gary observes that China’s response was decisive and systematic. Through long-term state planning, and integration of AI into production and infrastructure, Chinese firms – Huawei in particular – have made rapid advances in domestic hardware and systems design. By compensating for individual chip inferiority with massive, coordinated clusters, China narrowed performance gaps and accelerated technological self-reliance. Export controls, instead of halting progress, intensified China’s drive toward technological sovereignty.

The fallout has been global. US reshoring efforts have yielded little fruit thus far; the US’s allies have been forced to absorb substantial losses, and trust in US-controlled supply chains has reached an all-time low. Allowing Nvidia exports is therefore essentially a retreat aimed at preserving residual influence through software dependence. The article concludes that monopoly enforcement has reached its limits: coercion cannot replace production, and the era of US-dictated technological dominance is ending.

Imperialist monopoly capitalism cannot outplan a system organized for long-term development. Coercion cannot substitute for production. Sanctions cannot replace planning… What comes next will not be decided by chips alone. It will be decided by which social system can organise production, labor, and technology to meet real needs over time. On that terrain, the chip war has already delivered its verdict.

When the White House quietly approved renewed exports of Nvidia’s H200 AI accelerators to China — with a 25% fee attached — it marked more than a policy adjustment. It marked the effective collapse of Washington’s semiconductor containment strategy.

After years of escalating export controls, sanctions, and alliance pressure, the United States is now conceding what the chip war made clear: China cannot be technologically frozen, and U.S. monopoly control over advanced technology is no longer enforceable.

Japan and the US move toward open military confrontation over Taiwan

In the following article, which was originally published by Struggle/La Lucha, Sharon Black analyses the joint moves of Japan and the United States to instigate war against socialist China.

Regarding new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s statement that any Chinese move to reunify Taiwan with the mainland would threaten Japan’s very survival – and that Tokyo would be ready to join military action to stop it she writes:

“For Beijing, the message was clear: Japan was abandoning its long-standing stance of avoiding any commitment to take sides in a conflict over Taiwan and was now declaring that it would join the United States in a military response.”

Noting reports claiming that Donald Trump had privately urged Takaichi to tone down her public threats, Sharon observes:

“The move fits a familiar Trump pattern: loud public belligerence paired with quiet tactical repositioning when trade negotiations or economic pressure campaigns stall… But far from signaling a real shift, this is political maneuvering. Even as the administration adjusts its tone for trade talks with China, US war planning continues without pause, and Washington is pouring new investments into Japan’s military.

“At the same time that Japan was escalating its rhetoric, the United States approved a new $330 million arms package for Taiwan on November 13 – the first such sale under Trump’s return to office.”

Japan, she notes, remains the centrepiece of Washington’s military strategy in the western Pacific. The United States operates more than 120 military installations across the country, including 15 major bases, and stations over 54,000 troops there – the largest concentration of US forces anywhere outside the continental United States. Okinawa carries the heaviest burden of this occupation, with bases crowding the island and dominating local life.

Sharon also reminds readers that China’s response to Japan’s renewed new militarism cannot be understood without remembering the past. In the first half of the 20th century, the Japanese Empire invaded, occupied, and devastated large parts of China. The War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression brought mass displacement, famine, and systematic atrocities. The most infamous was the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, when Japanese troops killed an estimated 200,000 civilians and carried out widespread rape and torture. In the course of the eight-year war, more than 20 million Chinese people were killed.

She further explains that Taiwan’s modern history is inseparable from the Chinese revolution. As the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defeated the reactionary Kuomintang on the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek evacuated roughly 1.5 to 2 million soldiers, officials, and supporters to Taiwan.

Once ensconced on the island, the KMT imposed martial law and unleashed the “White Terror,” a brutal campaign of repression against workers, students, leftists, and anyone suspected of sympathising with the Chinese revolution. Tens of thousands were imprisoned, thousands were executed, and many simply disappeared into military prisons. The terror lasted for decades, well into the 1980s.

Meanwhile, in June 1950, US President Harry Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, blocking the PLA from liberating Taiwan. For two decades Washington insisted that the Kuomintang remnants represented “Free China” and maneuvered to keep the People’s Republic out of the United Nations.

“This had nothing to do with ‘defending democracy.’ It was part of a broader US effort to contain the Chinese revolution and suppress anti-colonial movements rising across Asia.”

However: “Today, the world situation has changed dramatically. Both the United States and Japan are facing deep capitalist stagnation – marked by slowing growth, rising prices, and long-term economic decline. These crises are pushing the ruling classes in both countries toward greater militarism abroad. At the same time, socialist China has emerged as one of the central engines of the global economy.