Two weeks ago, Donald Trump’s second term in the White House reached another new low when he and Vice President JD Vance hosted Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. The meeting, which was broadcast on live television, was expected to conclude with Zelenskyy signing a deal, in the making since the Biden administration, that forces Ukraine to share minerals revenue with the US. Instead the scene quickly devolved into chaos, with Trump and Vance obnoxiously berating Zelenskyy over Ukraine’s war with Russia. The tension escalated into a shouting match before the meeting ended early and inconclusively.
United States military aid to Ukraine was suspended a few days later, making Trump’s tacit support for authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin — a longtime source of angst and outrage among liberals — that much more explicit.
This shocking spectacle marked the first time in history that a sitting US president has openly attacked a visiting head of state. It swiftly drew condemnation from most Europeanleaders and from the Democrats. It has also elicited new sympathy for Ukraine’s struggle against the Russian invasion, and more contempt for Trump in the liberal mainstream and on the broad left.
This contempt is well-warranted. Obviously, Trump is a crude, rude, narcissistic bully who thinks the world revolves around him and his inane whims. His ambush of Zelenskyy on national TV could not be a clearer example of his uncontrolled ego and destructiveness.
However, many commentators have drawn some wrong conclusions from this fiasco. These political errors can be boiled down into two main points: first, the idea that the bullying on display was first and foremost an outcome of Trump’s despicable character; and secondly, that Trump’s opponents should demand that the US continue its military involvement in Ukraine — in other words that we should embrace Biden’s foreign policy.
The US’s long history of imperialist bullying
On the first point, it’s important to recognize that Trump, as disgusting as he is, is not the uniquely awful monster portrayed by liberals. An analysis of US history sheds light on Trump’s nature. He may be an especially toxic figure, he may lack the decorum of his predecessors, but recall that the US has long used its economic and military power to bully the entire world — especially since World War II.
In his famous 1968 speech against the Vietnam War, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the US “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Fifty-seven years later, this is truer than ever. The US maintains 800 military bases around the world and fleets of warships in every ocean. It has overthrown dozens of governments, and has engaged in military action, directly or by proxy, nearly continuously for the last 80 years. The US slaughtered millions in its wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. It currently backs and funds the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and the Saudi slaughter of Yemenis. It immiserates people in Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and many more countries with punishing economic sanctions, all of which we oppose.
The US government does all this to enhance the power of the US capitalist ruling class. It claims to enforce a “rules-based international order,” but as the top dog it always feels justified in breaking its own rules. For example, the Biden administration claimed that it is a violation of international law for Russia to invade and attempt to conquer Ukraine, a sovereign nation. This was the pretext for its military support for Ukraine against Russia.
The crucial difference between Biden and Trump, beyond their evident differences in diplomacy, is over exactly how to enforce US dominance.
Yet it’s worth remembering that the US invaded Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Afghanistan in 2001, and before that Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Cambodia, Korea, and many others. It attempted to invade Cuba in 1961, and spent over a decade occupying Vietnam. Looking further back in history, the US invaded Mexico and the nascent Soviet Union in the 1910s, Nicaragua in the 1920s, and too many others to mention.
Despite its proven willingness to shed blood, an even more effective way for the US to enforce its will around the world is through diplomacy and economic power. For this purpose, in the postwar period, the US has relied on international diplomatic and economic institutions including the United Nations, NATO, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. Through its prominent role in these bodies it has claimed to speak for the “international community,” when in reality it is protecting the interests of a small cabal of capitalists in the US and its partner nations.
A combination of US economic and military power has allowed the US dollar to become the world’s reserve currency, which gives tremendous advantages to US capitalism. Despite Trump’s claims that the US has been ripped off by other countries, it is the US that has gained most from this arrangement.
The crucial difference between Biden and Trump, beyond their apparent differences in diplomacy, is over exactly how to enforce US dominance. Trump and the section of the US ruling class that supports him want to take a more unilateral or transactional approach to imperialism going forward. Instead of simply being the dominant figure in the international institutions, Trump and his supporters want to control other nations by directly bullying them one-on-one. One aspect of this is Trump’s reckless attempt to employ tariffs as a trade weapon against Canada, Mexico, and China.
This shift is not due to Trump’s nasty personality, but is backed and legitimized by a section of the US capitalist class. Protectionism and narrow nationalism are rising across the world as the global neoliberal economy attempts to deal with accelerating and overlapping crises.
Should opponents of US imperialism support arms to Ukraine?
Now on to the second point: are US arms to Ukraine a cause the left should be supporting? Many leftists have supported US intervention against the Russian invasion.
For starters it’s important to separate the issue of the invasion from the question of US arms. Anyone who supports democracy and national self-determination — as all Marxists do — should oppose the invasion of Ukraine. Putin and his fellow imperialists in the Russian ruling class want to take over all of Ukraine and snuff out any democracy that exists there. This assault on Ukrainian self-determination and human rights is an outrage. We support Ukraine’s war against its invaders.
However, the US/NATO intervention in Ukraine has transformed the nature of the war. It is no longer just a fight for national liberation, but also an inter-imperialist conflict.
Trump’s bullying is disgusting, but just like Biden’s intervention in Ukraine and funding of genocide in Palestine, it is just another expression of US imperialism.
Neither side wants real democracy or self-determination for Ukraine.. A Russian victory would mean the annexation of large swathes of Ukraine and the anti-democratic subjugation of Ukrainian land and labor. If the US and NATO win, the neoliberal policies already ravaging Ukrainians under Zelenskyy would be further reinforced. Ukraine would be incorporated into the European Union and its people would suffer under Western domination of their economy, concentration of wealth at the top, and a loss of labor rights for workers. Repression is already widespread in Ukraine, with martial law, the outlawing of political parties and the suspension of elections.
There is an even bigger problem with leftists supporting US military intervention in Ukraine. The ramping up of the arms industry in order to ship weapons to Ukraine increases US militarism around the globe and siphons away money from healthcare, education, and housing in the US. Supporting US intervention in Ukraine, even critically, makes it harder to mount a challenge to US imperialism in general — for example in Palestine.
The logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is never valid. Socialists, and working-class and oppressed people in general, must make political assessments independently of the world’s capitalist classes and their states. We should not politically support the ruling classes of China or Iran, as campists do, simply because we hate US imperialism. Likewise, organizing against Trump doesn’t mean we have to support Biden’s approach to Ukraine. Lesser-evilism is not a good guide to elections nor is it a guide to strategy between and beyond electoral politics.
Trump is not pursuing peace in Ukraine despite what he says. He is pursuing US domination as the extractive deal for $500 billion worth of minerals shows. He is allying with Putin in order to better position the US in the escalating cold war with China.
Trump and Putin are negotiating over the heads of the Ukrainian people. No one from the Ukrainian government was even invited to the early negotiations over Ukraine in Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s bullying is disgusting, but like Biden’s intervention in Ukraine and funding of genocide in Palestine, it is just another expression of US imperialism.
We should not automatically support everything Trump opposes. Instead, we should oppose US imperialism whether carried out by Biden or Trump, by Democrats or Republicans. We should also, of course, oppose Russian and Chinese imperialism — a major stumbling block for campists and many others on the broad left. Only by remaining consistent and principled in our opposition to every abuse of imperialists and the capitalist class — by either party, at home or abroad — will we stand a chance of building a revolutionary movement that can overthrow them.
