by Joe Lombardo, published on Facebook, February 18, 2025
Many people are happy to see that Trump is talking to the Russians and seems to be moving in the direction of ending the war in Ukraine. I think he is, but why? Well, for one thing, it is a lost war. Biden’s proclamations that we will destroy Russia with sanctions and that it is a weak country that is really a gas station posing as a country turned out to be wrong. The US orchestrated the Maidan coup, armed, trained, and paid for the Ukraine military as they built it from one of the smallest militaries in Europe to the biggest. They twisted the arms of Ukrainian leaders to get them to not abide by the Minsk accords or to not sign the treaty negotiated in Turkey that could have prevented the war in Ukraine. The US think tanks churned out papers on “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” on causing regime change in Russia and dividing it into 5 separate countries. But their war turned out a failure and, at the horrible expense of hundreds of thousands of lives, the Ukraine war is today virtually lost. The Ukraine military is collapsing, towns and cities in the Eastern part of the country are being liberated by Russia daily and the West and NATO have run out of money and arms to give them. Far from being a gas station posing as a country, the industrial capacity of Russia has proven to be greater than that of the US and Europe combined.
Trump says that it was wrong to go to war in the first place and that if he were president instead of Biden, there would not have been a Ukraine war. Within the US ruling class there have been two schools of thought. Both are pro-war. Both schools of thought have been alarmed by the rise of China. China has the second biggest economy in the world after the US and its economy is growing while Western economies are not. It is clear to all honest analysts that soon China will have the biggest economy in the world which threatens US hegemony. Some in the US ruling class believe that is best to first go after Russia and then China. So, they provoke Russia by moving NATO closer to its borders, putting nuclear capable missiles minutes from Russian cities, sanctioning them to the hilt and then provoking war in Ukraine to try and destroy Russia. With regime change in Russia, China could be further surrounded by Western militaries, and China would lose an important ally. This would put the US and its allies in a better position to defeat China, militarily if necessary. The other school of thought is to go after China directly. Trump has always been in this second school of thought. This was clear from his first term as president where he piled sanctions and tariffs on China. Elon Musk must love this because it ensures that his Tesla cars will not have to compete with the cheaper and better electric cars made in China.
While the Western countries, the main imperialist countries, the G7 countries, have all deindustrialized to a great extent – sending their industry to the Global South for super profits because there they can produce with cheap labor, no unions and little to no environmental or health and safety regulations – China has been building its industry. And it has not been done solely for the sake of profit as the Western Capitalist economies do. It has used its growing wealth to build infrastructure, housing, transportation, and solar energy and most importantly China has moved virtually all of its people out of poverty. This compared with the US, which has 37 million people living below the poverty level.
So, while Trump and his people talk to the Russians, they have made significant changes to US policy on China. Last week, the State Department removed the phrase “we do not support Taiwan independence” from its fact sheet on Taiwan relations. In a recent meeting with officials from Japan and South Korea they stated that they oppose any attempts by China to upend the present status quo in relation to Taiwan. And Trump in his first days in office, imposed new tariffs on China.
In his meeting with Russian officials recently in Saudi Arabia, it was reported that Marco Rubio floated the possibility of Russia becoming part of the G7 making it, once again, the G8. This could be an attempt to drive a wedge between China and Russia. And, it has also been suggested that the US could drop sanctions on Russia. Russian leaders are not fools. They have learned some lessons from the Ukraine war and previous US policies. (Russia has, in fact, rejected this offer)
Thirty years ago, the US promised not to move NATO west of Germany, but it is now in 16 of those countries. The US unilaterally dropped out of the intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and arms agreement with Iran. In fact, it was the first Trump administration that made those moves. But basically, Russia has learned from the Ukraine war that the West really wants to destroy their country. So, I do not believe that Russia will fall for US treachery again.
Instead, Russia and China and many other countries have started putting together their own economic and military alliances without the imperialist countries that have deliberately held back the underdeveloped countries. The BRICS alliance is now wealthier than the G7. Who are the G7 countries and the BRICS countries? The G7 countries are the imperialist countries. They are the ones that colonized the Global South, took their wealth to enrich themselves. They even took their people and made them slaves and massacred millions of them. The BRICS countries were their victims, the colonial countries, and today they are rising to supremacy. They are turning the world upside down. This holds the possibility of a better world for all working people in all countries.
So, we in the antiwar movement must not fall for the Trump ploy of bringing peace to Ukraine. It is simply a way to make room for his real plans for war from Palestine to China.
*Featured Image: “Another Turn of the Wheel” starring two well known actors.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US president Donald Trump. Composite: AP, REX/Shutterstock
Joe Lombardo was cofounder and is Coordinator of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)