US Fears EU-Russia Rapprochement

The biggest fear of US imperialism is a rapprochement of the EU with Russia, primarily via closer ties between Germany and Russia, but also from a natural increase in trade and investment flows. That explains a large part of the aggressive stance taken by US imperialism, its repeated adventures into the regions surrounding the EU, which have destabilised its borders, as well as the latest mobilisations of US military forces into Eastern Europe, threatening Russia's borders, and attempts to drive a wedge between the EU and Russia, most notably in relation to US demands that the EU, and Germany in particular, undermine its own economy, and energy security, by severing supplies of Russian oil and gas – which would, of course, make the EU more reliant on US supplies, or from US companies and client regimes in the Gulf.

I have previously described, the process by which markets develop, and how this development of markets leads to the need to establish a common currency, common set of laws, a common language, and so on, all of which becomes controlled by a nation state, as the basic political unit. Producers of commodities, and merchants, who act as the agents of those producers, trade first, most frequently, and most extensively with their neighbours. That is true from the very beginning of commodity production and exchange going back nearly 10,000 years. It is fairly obvious that that will be the case. Especially, when the cost of travel and transport is high, and when the time taken is prolonged, it is simply not worthwhile trying to exchange your small volumes of production with other producers on the other side of the world. Indeed, when trade begins, all these thousands of years ago, the world that any particular set of peoples knew existed was much, much smaller than we know it is today. Peoples have long traded commodities over big distances, but the commodities that get traded are those that are only available in specific locations, and which are of high value. For example, Europeans sought to buy Eastern spices, silks and so on, traded along the Silk Road, and it was to try to find faster routes to them that Europeans sent out merchant adventurers like Columbus.

But, single markets do not arise on the basis of producers in Lancashire trading with, and developing common rules etc., with producers in Bengal. They arise because producers in Lancashire trade with producers in Yorkshire, Cheshire and so on. Its on this basis that a single British market is created, with a common currency, language, laws etc., and it is all enforced via a British nation state. The reason this single market, and the state that enforces it, covers the whole of Britain is that competition between the commodity producers forces each of them to produce on a larger scale, because it is this scale of production that enables each producer to become more competitive. The larger producers, also become buyers-up from the smaller producers, on the basis of being able to sell in to more distant markets, and so also become merchant capitalists. Beyond a certain point, this scale of production, cannot be achieved simply on the basis of family labour, but requires the employment of wage labour. It necessitates the development of capital. And, capital, itself requires production on a qualitatively larger scale, which needs much larger markets to sell this increased output into. The development of the nation state is more or less synonymous with the development of capitalism, so that the nation state starts life as a bourgeois state, a capitalist state whose function is to enable the development of capital.

Its for this reason that Brexit is a peculiarly ridiculous idea and development. It tries to turn back the hands of time in a way that is impossible to achieve. The reality is that Britain was drawn into the European single market for the reasons set out above. Trade takes place, first, most frequently, and most extensively with your neighbours. That means first within your own nation state, and then with neighbouring nation states. The incessant drive of capital to produce on a larger scale, so as to achieve greater economies of scale, and to justify the employment of ever larger amounts of capital, continues to necessitate ever larger single markets, in which there is a common currency, laws and so on. The US, fought a Civil War in the 19th century to achieve that, Europe went more or less simultaneously from fighting civil wars for national unification, into continental wars to extend that unity on a broader basis, and, across the globe, where attempts to create large multinational states such as Mercosur, ACFTA, and so on, have been made, they are all on the basis of geographically adjacent states.

What makes Brexit so irrational and ludicrous is that material reality continues to draw Britain into the EU single market. The EU is like a large planet, whose gravity continues to suck the tiny British economy into its orbit, Brexit or no Brexit. Even with the additional costs for Britain of trading with the EU, after Brexit, the vast majority of British trade will continue to be with the EU, simply because of its proximity. Yet, even as Britain's economy is sucked into the EU, the need for politicians to pretend that Brexit has brought some kind of independence, forces them to express that by an increased political alignment to the US superpower. Brexit actually means economic subordination to the EU, and political subordination to the US!

In reality, this has just raised to a higher level a contradiction that has underlay Britain's place in the world since 1945, when its old supremacy was finally laid to rest, and the supremacy of the US took its place. Britain, as the old hegemonic power, acted to try to prevent the development of a European state, which would quickly have overwhelmed it. Its why Britain opposed Napoleon, when France was the dominant power on the European mainland, and sought to unify Europe, under its domination, and why, later, when Germany occupied that role, Britain opposed Germany in two European wars (1914-1918, 1939-45), which were, in reality one continuous war, separated by a hiatus.

When Britain fought the Napoleonic Wars, the US was still a developing economy, as Marx describes, mostly, in fact, a colonial economy, characterised by its continued trade with Britain. But, by 1914, Britain was already in relative terminal decline, its economy being overtaken by Germany, the US, and Japan. The US, now had its own reasons for not wanting to see either Britain or a German dominated European super state having global hegemony. Its why the US did not enter WWI until 1917, more or less when it was over, and at that point when the Russian Revolution created conditions in which Germany was best placed to come out on top. The US entered the war tilting the balance firmly against Germany, and the possibility of it creating a large unified European state, whilst having seen Britain, France and Germany economically decimated by it, a process that the US intensified, by lending money to Britain, from which it continued to be paid large amounts of interest for decades to come.

The result was that Britain's hegemony was ended, German/European hegemony was prevented, and the US was able to step in to fill that place in history. In the early 1920's, Trotsky in his writings on Britain, described this change in position, and the subordination of Britain to the US. In a speech, “Europe and America”, he described the way the rise of the US would be primarily at the expense of Britain, and what appeared as cooperation, between the two, would inevitably turn into opposition and war, between them. In the Preface to the US edition of “Where Is Britain Going?”, Trotsky, wrote,

“The United States cannot help striving towards expansion on the world market, otherwise excess will threaten its own industry with a ’stroke”. The United States can only expand at the expense of Britain...

To a considerable degree the United States is carrying out its work, in Europe and throughout the world, with Britain’s collaboration and through her agency. But for Britain this “collaboration” is only the form of a growing dependence. Britain is, as it were, ushering the United States in only for her to take possession. While surrendering their world domination British diplomats and businessmen introduce the new ruler of the world to their former clients. The co-operation between America and Britain masks the deepest world-wide antagonism between the two powers and is preparing for fearful conflicts, perhaps in the none-too-distant future.”

And, he spells this out more clearly in his article, “England's Decline”.

“This “co-operation” may at this or that moment be directed against a third power; nonetheless, the fundamental antagonism in the world is that between Britain and America, and all the other antagonisms which seem more acute and more immediately threatening at a given moment can be understood and assessed only on the basis of this conflict of Britain with America.

Anglo-American co-operation is preparing the way for a war just as a period of reforms prepares a revolution. The very fact that, by taking the path of “reforms” (i.e., compulsory “deals” with America) Britain will abandon one position after another, must force her in the end to resist” Great Britain’s productive forces, and most of all her living productive forces, the proletariat, no longer correspond to her place in the world market. Hence the chronic unemployment. The commercial and industrial (and the military and naval) pre-eminence of Britain has, in the past, almost safeguarded the links between the parts of the empire” As early as the end of the last century Reeves, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, wrote: “Two things maintain the present relations between the colonies and Britain: 1) their belief that Britain’s policy is in the main a policy of peace, and 2) their belief that Britain rules the waves.” The second condition was, of course, the main one. This loss of the “rule of the waves” goes hand-in-hand with the build-up of centrifugal forces within the empire. Imperial unity is increasingly threatened by the diverging interests of the dominions and the struggles of the colonies.”

And, throughout the 1920's, this competition between Britain as the old hegemonic power and the US, as the new hegemonic power continued, and it was manifest in a growing competition between them in relation to naval power. In this article Trotsky notes that the US, as a huge country, and surrounded by oceans, was largely protected against military attack, but the tiny British island was open to rapid destruction, in an era of aerial warfare, whether the attack came from the US or from mainland Europe, not to mention that what, in the past, had been a benefit, now turned into its greatest weakness, because it could be quickly isolated and starved into submission. Writing nearly 20 years before the Blitz, and the blockade of Britain by German U-Boats, it was a most prescient account.

Again, when the material conditions that had provoked WWI – the need to create a large European single market compatible with the new mammoth forces of production that industrial capitalism had created – resulted in WWII, the US again, procrastinated, as it watched Britain's final demise. By 1940, Britain was defeated. Everywhere it had confronted Germany, militarily, it had been severely defeated. Even where it confronted the new industrial power, Japan, in Singapore and other parts of Asia, it was badly defeated. Churchill, himself described the defeat in Singapore as the worst military humiliation of Britain in its history, but it was just one of many, including the pathetic and frantic escape from Dunkirk. Britain was forced to hide away in its island bunker, whilst bombs rained down on London, and it waited to be starved into submission, as German U-boats, cut off its vital supplies.

There were two factors that brought the US again into the European War. The first was the fact that by 1940, Germany had rolled over most of Western Europe, and, in practice, already defeated Britain. It was now in a position to begin creating a European super state, which could challenge US imperialism on the global stage. This was a completely different scenario to what had happened in WWI, in which Britain and France on one side, and Germany on the other, had been bogged down for years in trench warfare, and during which the economies of both sides had been decimated. In WWII, Germany had achieved all this with little damage to its own economic and industrial power, within a matter of a few months. Without that, the US would probably have concentrated its efforts on the other theatre of war, its attempts to dominate the Pacific.

The second factor was that, in December 1941, Hitler, having conquered Western Europe, and defeated Britain, turned his attention to the USSR. It was an act of hubris. Who knows what was actually in his head at the time, just as today, its impossible to know what is in the head of an autocrat like Putin. But, in large part, these decisions are not made simply out of the blue, or without reason. Hitler's behind the scenes talks with British politicians like Halifax, and the fact that Britain was defeated, and being slowly starved, might have given him reason to believe that an alliance, or at least a rapprochement with Britain, would free his hands to take on a USSR, which was growing more powerful by the day, and which would, at some point, potentially, pose a threat to him from the East. He had reason to believe that Japan would attack the USSR from the East, as it had done in 1905, and in 1939, a hope that was dashed, when Japan having lost badly at Khalkin Gol, decided instead to focus on the US, as an easier target.

Whatever the reason, Operation Barbarossa was a fatal mistake, because, although Hitler's Blitzkreig tactics, again, enabled Germany to quickly seize around 25% of the USSR, including its most fertile lands, and industrial areas, the vast expanse of Russia, and its severe weather again came to its rescue. On top of that, unlike in WWI, the soviet workers, even under the regime of Stalin, now saw this state as their state. The centrally planned economy meant that entire factories could be dismantled and transported by rail thousands of miles away out of Germany's reach. And, the same planned economy was very good at focusing resources on specific forms of production, particularly large-scale heavy industry, such as that required to produce steel, coal, tanks and planes.

With Japan not attacking the USSR from the East, Stalin was able to move millions of troops from Siberia, Winter ready, to defend Moscow. And, when the USSR turned back Germany in December 1941, it was effectively the defeat of Hitler. From that point on, the USSR more or less continuously pushed back the German armies, and the writing was on the wall for Hitler's regime. When Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbour, and Hitler supported his Japanese allies, by also declaring war on the US, that simply put the final nail in his coffin. But, it was not this piece of paper that was decisive in bringing the US into the European War against Hitler, still less any consideration of a need to defend democracy against fascism. On the contrary, for a long time, the US considered entering the war, alongside Germany, as the various parties jockeyed for position in the 1930's, and the US, after war had started, continued to operate the German factories of Ford, General Motors and so on, that now pumped out German military equipment.

The real factor was that, had Germany gone on to defeat the USSR, it would have made a European state, under German domination more or less invincible. But, similarly, if the USSR went on to defeat Germany, it would not have stopped at Germany's borders, but would have swallowed up the rest of Western Europe, again creating a European super state, but one now dominated by the USSR, which would have been equally invincible, and able to confront US imperialism. A similar condition arose at the end of the war in the Pacific. It is often portrayed that Japan surrendered as a result of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, the Japanese believed the US had no more such bombs available to use. What, however, they could see was that the Red Army was within weeks of sweeping into Japan itself. They preferred, in the interest of Japanese capital, to surrender to US imperialism than to the USSR.

The US kept Britain on a drip feed of supplies across the Atlantic, whilst the US and Britain, left the USSR alone to fight in Europe, soaking up Russian and German resources. The US, enabled Britain to retake its positions in North Africa, important for the supply of oil, including control of the Suez Canal. Only then, and after a prolonged period, did they open the second front against Germany, and, in doing so, prevented the USSR from simply continuing to march through Germany into the rest of Western Europe. It prevented the creation of a European super state, and at the same time created the conditions under which Britain remained politically subordinated to US imperialism, and now continued its old role as opponent of European unification, but now doing so as an agent of US imperialism.

At the close of WWII, US imperialism came to a modus vivendi with Stalin, based upon spheres of influence, and “peaceful coexistence”. But, it was a charade, as, in 1949, under US tutelage, the western imperialist powers created the NATO military alliance. More or less immediately, it began aggressive military interventions, as it invaded Korea to try to prevent it being lost for capital. In many ways, similar conditions arose as after WWI, except, rather than it now being cooperation between the US and Britain that disguised the underlying real conflict between them, it was now cooperation between the US, and the European states that were gradually coalescing into the EEC/EU on the basis of opposition to the USSR.

When Germany was reunited, it was European capital that swept in, and a similar transformation happened across Central and Eastern Europe. German capital, was quick to expand, for example, VW took over Skoda, and other car makers, and investment in new factories across the former soviet block was carried on apace. With the process of deindustrialisation in full flow in Britain, Central and Eastern Europe became an obvious alternative to Asia, for footloose industrial capital hungry for new supplies of cheap labour-power to exploit. Again, it illustrated the point that capital and trade moves first, most frequently and most extensively into neighbouring territories.

But, the methods of the EU were also completely different to that of the US. When Germany was reunited, huge amounts of resources were transferred to the East whose economy was devastated after years of Stalinist bureaucracy and mismanagement. Similarly, as the former Stalinist states of Central and Eastern Europe were drawn into the orbit of the EU, they were provided with large amounts of fixed capital spending to modernise their infrastructure and so on. This was not altruism, but a recognition of the fact that, modern industrial economies, to be efficient, also need modern infrastructure.

That contrasted, however, with the experience in Russia. When the USSR fell, it was the US, in large part, that stepped in. It did so not as a nearby trading partner, but as an asset stripper. Not only was the drunkard Yeltsin installed as President, and stooge of US imperialism, but all of those that flooded into Russia like vultures acted like drunken vandals, looting and pillaging the soviet economy simply to make themselves as rich as possible in the shortest possible time. In place of the more or less Keynesian approach that the EU adopted in incorporating and modernising the economies of Central and Eastern Europe, the US, introduced hard-line Friedmanite Monetarism in Russia, that decimated what was left of its economy, in a similar manner to what the armies of the Entente had done to Germany with the Treaty of Versailles.

But, the underlying opposition between US capital and EU capital persists, and Britain's contradictory position within it has been further heightened. Of course, China's economy has expanded massively since 1982, and its often this that is seen as the main arena of contention, just as it turned out, in 1941, that it was not a US-UK war, but a US-Germany war. Of course, in 1941, it was not just a US-Germany war, but also a US-Japan war. Today, despite the growth of the Chinese economy, it is still not China that is the main threat to US capital, but the EU. In terms of GDP, the Chinese economy is big, but, in terms of GDP per head it is still small, and reflects its continued backwardness. China's per capita GDP is $10,431, whereas EU per capita GDP is $34,423, and in the US, it is $58,510. The EU remains the largest single market on the planet.

That may change, but any change is likely to be one that is to the disadvantage of the US. There is a growing symbiosis between China and Russia, with the development of a Eurasian economic area, But Russia and China have an economic and strategic interest in Central Asia, which is rich in resources. But, it is also why the US has a strategic interest in that area. China, as the workshop of the world, has an unquenchable thirst for primary products, and Russia's huge area means that it is the obvious source for those resources, being adjacent to China, and so, for the reasons described above, the locus for trade and capital flows. But, similarly, Russia, as well as being an Asian country, is also a European country. The same drivers mean that Russia is inevitably drawn into the orbit of the EU, just as the EU is drawn into the orbit of Russia, and the most obvious manifestation of that is the flow of Russian oil and gas into Germany and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

Although it was the US that obtained first mover advantage in moving into Russia, following the fall of the USSR, and despite the fact that they are both Pacific nations, there is thousands of miles of ocean separating them, and despite their polar proximity, this is not a viable route for large scale trade between them. The obvious trading and economic relation is between Russia and the EU, and it is already manifest in the connections between Germany and Russia, connections which, in fact, can be traced back centuries. And, those trade relations, as has been described earlier, inevitably result in a dynamic that draws those involved into closer alignment, in terms of their shared interests and strategic goals. Its not a surprise that former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, for example, sits on the Board of Gazprom.

Its not likely that Russia would become a member of the EU, as other Eastern European states did, but it is inevitable that economic ties between the two will grow, and that means that the interests of the EU will increasingly be coloured by that. The EU is not the US, and US imperialism, though it dominates NATO, does not dominate the EU, in the way it did after WWII. On the contrary, the interests of the two increasingly diverge, and it has been seen frequently, for example, in the divergent positions taken in relation to the Iraq War, in 2003. Behind the façade of cooperation between the US and EU, there is the reality of growing competition, just as was the case in relation to the US and Britain after WWI.

One of the greatest fears of the US is that this inevitable trade between the EU and Russia will lead to a rapprochement between them, which will open the door to shared global interests taking the EU increasingly out of the sphere of the US, and leaving the latter increasingly isolated on the world stage, with only its tiny British lap dog for company. Moral socialists will no doubt frown on any such possibility, as they point to the convergence of interests of “democratic imperialism” in the US, and in the EU. But, that kind of romanticism has no place in a Marxist and materialist analysis of the world, and the relations within it. For capital, as Trotsky pointed out, democracy and fascism are nothing more than masks to be picked up and discarded depending on which it finds most suitable at the time.

Bourgeois apologists like to identify capitalism with democracy, but there is no such identity. Capitalism developed inside feudalism, and absolute monarchy. Even when capitalism became dominant, and replaced feudalism, it did so in the context of liberal regimes that were far from democratic. In Britain, it was under a constitutional monarchy put in place by a parliament whose members were “elected” by less than 2% of the population, and who were as likely to have simply bought their seats in parliament, as a means of further promoting their own wealth and affluence. Only when capitalism was well established, and social-democracy could ensure a docile and incorporated working class, did capital in Britain give the vote even to male workers, towards the end of the 19th century. In France, also, it was the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, followed by the restoration Monarchy of Louise Philippe, and then the dictatorship of Louis Bonaparte that ushered in the dominance of capital, whilst in Germany, it was the dictatorship of Bismark.

Even in the US, capitalism developed under the tutelage of a Republic not a democracy, and although the US rejected the idea of making Washington king, the presidential system, simply instituted an elected monarchy instead. In the 1920's and 30's, capital got along just fine under the fascist dictatorships in Italy, Germany and Spain, and when Germany rolled into France, the French capitalists quickly adapted to these new political arrangements, as they continued to make profits regardless. Nor does the existence of dictatorships or worse, prevent capitalist states doing business, as was seen by the long harmonious relationship that “democratic imperialism” had with the apartheid regime in South Africa, its relationship to the slave owning Confederate States in America, or its trade with the feudal Gulf Monarchies. Indeed, when the US Civil War was underway, and Southern ports were blockaded, British capital wanted the British Navy to break the blockade, in order that they could obtain the cotton they required, and opposition to slavery could go hang.

So, no such moralistic and sentimental notions are an inhibition to capital when it comes to determining its economic interests, and overriding need to produce profits. A growing economic alignment between the EU and Russia is inevitable, and the political consequences of that will follow as they have in every such case throughout history. Its that, particularly when combined with the other economic relationship developing between Russia and China, and so proximately Europe and China, that gives Washington nightmares, and determines its global strategy, a strategy that requires it, at every opportunity to try to drive a wedge between these relations.