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Showing posts with the label Relative Decline

The General Task in the Crisis in the World Order

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Pages 1, 4 and 5 The Trump Doctrine and the Unknowns of Imperialist Europeanism It is said that the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) – the document that formalises the Trump Doctrine in foreign policy – marks a break with 80 years of transatlantic relations following the Second World War. Moreover, in our Marxist analysis, for more than twenty years we have been writing about a new strategic phase ; for almost a decade, about the crisis in the world order ; for a couple of years, about the wars of the crisis in the world order , and since the beginning of Donald Trump’s new term, about an Atlantic crisis . That this crisis is now at a turning point is a fact; the extent and permanence of its strategic consequences in the future remain open questions. Whether Trump’s NSS is conceptually up to the task of American imperialism is debatable. This is where the unknowns lie: in the relative decline ...

Asia and Europe Weigh the Unintended Consequences of American Decline

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 4 “By punishing his longtime allies with tariffs, Donald Trump is encouraging other nations to form trading blocs and networks that exclude the United States”. Whilst the New York Times treats the issue polemically, it constitutes an important strand of reflection in European and Asian assessments. The duties are a “declaration of economic war”, according to Le Monde. A rapid, temporary negotiating truce followed, with tariffs suspended in exchange for tactical concessions from Canada and Mexico. Whilst the “bluff” may have yielded some transitory results, a “permanent instability” is settling at the heart of American affairs. Unpredictability as a weapon is the strategy with which the new presidency intends to tackle, and perhaps even temporarily reverse, American decline. This, though, comes at the cost of compromising the United States” credibility as the guarantor of the old order and the network of alliances which...