As I wrote at the start of the year, Europe will move away from the US, and that is already happening, hastened by Trump's trade war that seems ideologically driven by petty-bourgeois nationalism, heading towards a kind of autarky. The revelations about the ideological influence of Peter Navarro, and his use of the writing of Ron Vara – an anagram of Navarro – strengthen that view that the tariffs are not some kind of bargaining ploy, but part of this ideology of autarky, of fortress America. Musk is not wrong in describing Navarro as dumber than a sack of bricks.
Trade wars are often used by imperialist powers as a prelude to shooting wars, and that is certainly the way Trump's actions have been interpreted. US imperialism certainly has found itself, increasingly, in competition with the rising imperialist power of the 21st century – China. But, as I have set out before, the real, current, imperialist threat to US imperialism is the EU. The fact that EU imperialism has been aligned with, and subordinated to US imperialism, for the last 80 years, does not change that.
At the start of the 20th century, the rising imperialist powers, then based on the nation state, were the US, Germany and Japan, whilst the hegemony of British imperialism was on the decline. WWI weakened, temporarily, German imperialism, and more permanently weakened British imperialism. Its notable that the US opposed the position of both the UK and France in the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles. It strengthened Japanese imperialism, in the Pacific, but, the main beneficiary was US imperialism which had waited until the war was nearly over, at a time when Germany was winning, and the Russian Revolution, meant that large numbers of German troops could be released from the Eastern Front, for a large, and rapid offensive on the Western Front. Had US imperialism remained on the side lines, German imperialism, would have won the war, and, as Trotsky set out, in The Program of Peace, would have consolidated a European state under its domination. That would have posed a threat to a still young, and weak US imperialism, more than did the declining British imperialism.
In the 1920's, Trotsky noted that the growing imperialist competition was between US imperialism and British imperialism, and, indeed, most commentary, at the time, was around this growing competition, as the US rapidly expanded its navy to challenge Britain's domination of the seas and trade routes. 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.
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