There’s something crucial for the resistors of war and empire to understand about U.S./China relations at this stage, which is that the PRC and its partnered countries have become strong enough to greatly limit Washington’s feasible routes for attack. It’s not in the hegemon’s best interests to start a direct war with China. Which means that though the Trumpian wing of the ruling class wants to attack China above all, it’s increasingly constrained in how it can do this.
The U.S. wouldn’t be able to win a war with China, and this has been true for a long time. Which doesn’t just put the global anti-imperialist forces at a greater advantage; it puts anti-imperialists in the core in a better place as well. Because if the MAGA faction of the ruling class can’t realize its foreign policy fantasy, then we can exploit this faction’s efforts at obstructing the Ukraine war effort without contributing towards anti-China warmongering. This is at least true so long as we navigate our situation properly.
The ones in charge of the military grasp the practical reality of Washington’s weaknesses on China. This means that even when the most fanatical anti-China hawks have had the most power, military officials have quietly provided a counter-balance. In 2020, Jamie Seidel of the NZ Herald reported on some of the empirical evidence for Washington being outmatched by China, covering how military strategists viewed the prospect of a conflict with the PRC:
Unnamed US defence sources reportedly told The Times that such a conflict was the scenario of a recent intensive war game session conducted by the Pentagon. The results, they say, were "eye-opening". The scenarios were different and diverse. Some involved clashes in the South and East China Seas. One – the worst-case scenario – was an out-and-out war in 2030. The US reportedly came out second-best every time. And that has serious implications for South-East Asia's security. "The 2020s will see greater risk as China begins to get the capability to challenge the US at sea and in the air (also in space and in cyberspace)," says Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyst Dr Malcolm Davis. "That could tempt it to make moves in the South China Sea and against Taiwan. The US may not be ready to meet that challenge. Every simulation that has been conducted looking at the threat from China by 2030 have all ended up with the defeat of the US," China Power Project director Bonnie Glaser of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think-tank in Washington told The Times.
It’s because of this that for as much as Trump demonized China during his presidency, and intensified the economic war against it, by the end of his term he didn’t bring about the massive confrontation we’d seemed to be headed for. And when Biden further escalated tensions with Russia, leading the Ukraine conflict to the stage it’s now at, the quagmire outcome further confirmed that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to handle a war over Taiwan. Is Trump’s team hoping for such a war? It’s apparent they are. Does this mean the likely next presidential administration will be in a place where it feels comfortable carrying through these plans? After the backfiring of Washington’s Ukraine maneuver, it’s probable that the geo-strategists are more apprehensive about confronting China than ever. In the end, it doesn’t matter what a political actor wants, what matters is whether they can get the thing they wish for.
Many of MAGA’s leaders have been working against Ukraine aid with the motive of making Washington pivot towards war with China. Others have done so with more domestically focused motives, namely a desire to end the harm that the Ukraine conflict’s inflation is bringing upon smaller business enterprises. But within the wing of MAGA that Trump represents, there’s a commitment to advancing both Zionism and anti-China maneuvers, with the war on Russia being viewed as a less preferable thing to focus on.
This is where the great strategic advantage that multipolarity’s rise has given U.S. communists comes in. Because of how much deterrence power China has gained, and how much Ukraine has further weakened the hegemon, these China hawks are engaged in an ever-less realistic endeavor. I’m not saying a war with China is impossible; I’m saying World War III has already begun by the definition of many observers, and this means the empire can’t commit its resources to a war against China unless it wildly changes its strategy.
Even if Trump realizes his plan for pivoting to China, and foists Ukraine funding onto Europe so Washington can better focus on Taiwan, the realities shown by those 2020 war simulations are still going to be present. The U.S. couldn’t beat China even prior to when the Ukraine proxy war escalated, so would abandoning Ukraine truly change this? In practice, what the “war with China but not with Russia” actors are doing is weakening the empire, creating divisions within the U.S. ruling class that revolutionaries could take advantage of. And that’s what we need to do.
We shouldn’t trust Trump, or the people in his circle who simply tail after him, to do anything that advances our goals. Judging from Trump’s first term, he’s likely to follow the wishes of the Russia hawks, and take a passive path amid the deep state’s aggressive behind-the-scenes pressuring. The real risk that the deep state sees within MAGA comes not from Trump, but from the political actors and popular masses within MAGA who genuinely believe in MAGA’s ideals; who want to end the wars, dismantle the intelligence apparatus, and re-industrialize our society. We need to look for these elements within MAGA, and show them they can find principled leadership in communists.
That’s how we can leverage this part of the crises the imperial system is experiencing: by taking on that leadership role during the moments when the controlled opposition forces have exposed their own hypocrisy, and the ones who oppose monopoly capital are looking for genuine allies.
As we work to win over the types of MAGA people who have the potential to become disillusioned with Trump, and with the elements in the government that can’t stand Trump’s pro-imperialist opportunism, all the while we need to be advancing the larger goal: to lead the broader masses towards revolution. The MAGA base is only one part of the people, and we can’t overthrow the state just by making allies with the potential rogue ruling class factions. We can’t depend on either of these things to get us to victory, as important as they are to our overall mission; our work in these areas needs to be done on the foundation of a party-building project. One which brings together all the revolution-compatible elements that exist in the country. And this project can only succeed on the basis of principled internationalism; of acting in solidarity with all the peoples around the globe who are resisting imperialism.
That’s why it’s crucial for us to make clear that we support both Russia and China while we take advantage of the MAGA wing’s obstruction of the Ukraine proxy war. We can’t conceal our support for China to try to win over the most obstinate Sinophobes within this element, because though that would win us some more allies in the short term, in the long term it would render us an appendage for the right. This would be the inverse to the mistake the PSL makes, where it distances itself from Russia to try to win more liberals to its ostensibly pro-China position. Tailing either the Democrats or the Republicans is wrong. The only kind of political force that can win the class war is one which is unapologetic in its communism and its anti-imperialism.
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