With the announcement of an increase in military spending from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in 2027, Donald Trump is relaunching the United States’ primacy in the rearmament cycle. This Trumpian rearmament will have to be approved by Congress, where so far only the heads of the armed forces committees have expressed their support. Regardless of whether or not these figures will be immediately reflected in the Pentagon’s budgets, they are nevertheless indicative of the strategic scenario that Washington intends to guard against.
On the one hand, with 5% of its GDP, the US would ensure that its spending over the next few years exceeds the combined total of the three runners-up — Europe, China, and Russia — and in this sense, this functions primarily as insurance against the multipolar dynamic. On the other hand, in terms of American political culture, which tends to frame international issues in quantitative terms, an analogy can be drawn between this shift and the suspension of the British Ten-year rule in 1932, when the Manchurian crisis prompted London to consider a great war in the next ten years as plausible. The size of the spending hike points to the accumulation of tensions, both in time and space, against which America intends to protect itself.
Among the various reactions, The Washington Post’s praise is revealing in that it signals a shift away from the doctrines of preventive war prevalent at the beginning of the century, when the unchallenged superiority of the US ruled out the possibility that any potential adversary could seek parity without being deterred in advance. According to the Post, America has so far been able to emphasise its technological and military superiority in a series of operations made possible by its vast global deployment, such as the bombing of Iran in June or the air and naval support for the Caracas blitz. In this context, we note that the increase in spending is a response to the intensifying wars of the crisis in the world order.
The threat of a future prolonged conflict with China
poses a quantitative as well as a qualitative problem: specifically, the crux of the timeframes of rearmament. And this is where, according to the establishment newspaper, the United States must start spending immediately
. Limited wars and a great war are the two possible paths of the crisis in the world order, and for the American bourgeoisie it is a matter of preparing for both at the same time. In order not to be caught off guard in the future, the US must maintain its advantage in the current rearmament race.
The American raid in Venezuela, with the spectacular capture of Nicolás Maduro and the claim of controlling the government from outside, contributes to signalling how power relations have changed, in the nexus between the tiny war represented by the Caribbean special operation and the deterrence of China. An article by Arrigo Cervetto from June 1982, commenting on the Falklands War, allows us to develop the issue.
The premise is the relationship between small wars
and the general character of the contention. Cervetto writes: The technique of the coup de main began in Manchuria in the 1930s, which ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. The 1980s have so far continued in a similar vein, although there is not yet sufficient evidence to predict that they will end in the same way
.
The Anglo-Argentinian war followed two years after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of the new contention of the 1980s. The imperialist struggle for spheres of influence
, continues Cervetto, still had a vast outlet in the expansion of the world market, during which the liberist tendency prevailed: The protectionism that makes generalised military conflict inevitable in an imperialist system is not yet necessary
. In this context, the coup by the Argentinian generals could give rise to a partial war, but not to a general conflict.
Incidentally, we note that during that decade Reaganian rearmament was a response to the emergence of Germany and Japan within the liberist framework. Today, Trumpian rearmament seeks to confront China, Europe, and Japan, using a combination of trade wars, economic nationalism, and armed liberism. Dirigiste tools are being taken up again in the industrial and raw materials contention; nuclear deterrence is being re-evaluated in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. The crisis in the world order is linking together a chain of coups de main and local wars, but we can no longer rule out a generalised return to protectionism and war between the great powers. This ambivalence, we re-emphasise, will for some time remain the general hallmark of the contention.
Cervetto refers to an article by Raymond Aron who, in the May 1982 issue of L’Express, wrote about small wars
— local conflicts
which at that time were revelatory of global disorder, not the approach of general war
. He went on with a consideration that is still very relevant today: What R. Aron calls ‘small wars’ are obviously not a ‘great war’ but, on closer inspection, they form a ‘great war’ in miniature and a perfect series of dress rehearsals: the strategic and tactical deployment of armed forces and logistical organisation, the use and testing of new weapons systems, the mobilisation of internal fronts, the selective use of information for a swiftly sensitised general public, and a widespread deluge of jingoistic ideologies. Anyone with a modicum of historical knowledge is struck by the familiarity of this sequence and by its absolute lack of novelty
.
The Falklands had been a success for the French Exocet missiles, used by Argentina against British destroyers. Ukraine and Gaza are testing grounds for drones and artificial intelligence, but also for the tools of war propaganda and religious indoctrination. It is no coincidence that the Church is again reflecting on its own experience, which spans centuries and continents, as chaplains for the bourgeoisie. As for Venezuela, commentators have variously interpreted it as both a sign of American decline and of its counter-offensive.
It is therefore possible to identify two further elements in the international debate. The first concerns American security doctrine and the question of the presidency’s impulsive moves. For Dominique Moïsi, who was Aron’s student, the coup in Venezuela is a sign of American decline and a defensive move. The claim of a Trump corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine invokes the methods of American imperialism in its early days, but there is a substantial difference between the era of Theodore Roosevelt and that of Donald Trump
; At the beginning of the 20th century, America was an emerging power, and on its way to becoming a hegemonic power. Today, despite its military successes, it is a declining power that must contend with the rise of a country that could well become the hegemonic power of tomorrow: China
. According to Moïsi, by multiplying military interventions on various fronts, Washington risks accelerating its decline rather than slowing it down.
Zhao Minghao, deputy director of the American Studies Centre at Fudan University in Shanghai, thinks that the US National Security Strategy (NSS) is a contradictory document because it reflects the enormous tensions in the United States between the search for a ‘post-hegemonic order’ and the maintenance of its global dominance
. According to Zhao, the Trump administration wants a ‘strategic contraction’, but also an expansion in the meantime
, where American interests would clash with China’s influence. A wounded superpower
, the US is taking time to consolidate its control of the Western Hemisphere
and reorganise its alliances. This is a strategic retreat in order to advance in the long term
.
Although the NSS does not define China as a threat, this can be clearly read between the lines
. Washington will not accept an egalitarian multipolar world; it will expand its military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region; it will counter hostile foreign influence
in Latin America. The acquisition of key minerals and control over strategic resources are considered essential for competing with China. Zhao is not surprised that the military operation in Venezuela aims to seize
oil.
The second element of reflection therefore concerns the control of Caracas’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, and, once again, the strategic game with the Chinese Dragon. Here too, as in chess, castling
can be an offensive move as well as a defensive one. The coup de main in America’s backyard
reminds adversaries and allies alike of the unrivalled military capabilities of the declining superpower, but it also confirms the United States’ status as an energy superpower.
Gas and oil extraction is not so much a question of proven reserves as of capital investment. By integrating Venezuelan resources into the American supply chain in the medium term, it is argued, Washington would move on the familiar terrain of hydrocarbons in order to hinder Chinese penetration in Latin America and exert a strong influence on the global energy market.
Claude Leblanc, writing for L’Opinion, takes issue with reductive interpretations that argue that influence over China comes only from direct control over oil supplies — supplies which Trump has pledged not to interrupt. These views neglect, firstly, that Beijing’s diversification strategy in recent years has already reduced this possibility of leverage. Secondly, American control of Venezuela would allow it to exert broader influence on global price dynamics. The long struggle among powers waged through the oil weapon is preparing a new battleground in the oil fields of South America. It is there that the US would seek to negotiate the terms of its own decline and condition China’s rise
. For Nikkei, the Caracas raid provides the US with a bargaining chip to counter China’s rare earths
. According to The Hindu, the stakes are not only oil, but the very financial architecture of the petrodollar
, which has been eroded by the Chinese yuan and the electric car.
Compared to 2003, when the preventive war in Iraq sought to pre-empt Europe and China by seizing the artery of the Persian Gulf, the primacy of using black gold strategically, over merely possessing it, has been confirmed. However, the rearmament cycle of the crisis in the world order returns to accentuate the military dimension of control over resources too. Beijing, as we have also documented, is reducing its dependencies in case of war
and studying the periodic table; Washington considers the hemispheric dimension to be a matter of national security and is ensuring itself in the energy field.
This is also in keeping with American attempts to reindustrialise, conceived by the administration in light of the Chinese military challenge. As stated in the editorials of The New York Times collected under the emphatic title “Overmatched?”: The country that can manufacture the most — steel, planes, missiles, computer chips — will win a long war. America was once the world’s industrial superpower. Now it accounts for just 17% of global manufacturing. China controls 28%, and its lead is growing
.
It was inevitable that oil, an old weapon in the contention, would also be enlisted.
Lotta Comunista, January 2026