We are still only going through the preliminaries but the guidelines have already been drawn up. Before the negotiations on “peace” between Russia and Ukraine began, JD Vance’s words, echoing those of his voluble president, are clear and unequivocal. First, however, we need to explain the framework for everything that is about to happen, both from the point of view of the new imperialist balance of power, and for the climate of war that is worsening while the talk is about peace. This framework is the structural crisis that world capitalism is going through; a crisis that is dragging the economies of the major imperialist powers towards an increasingly oppressive war economy. This involves rearmament, even at the cost of cutting what little remains of social welfare and bringing us closer towards an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, with the devastating risk of a wider conflict. In Munich, with the EU, plus Zelensky as president of the interested party, present only as “listeners”, the American vice president immediately launched into threats and ultimatums, stating that the US will not spend a single dollar more for the defence of Ukraine. If it wants to continue the war against Russia, which is in Europe and not in America, then Europe must think about how to do this and raise taxes for the necessary rearmament (from 2% to 5% of GDP). The era in which the American umbrella of European defence (NATO) was always open is over. Now it is up to the 27 countries of the old continent to dig into their own pockets.

Yet it is abundantly clear that the war in Eastern Europe is not between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia and the US. The US first made the Ukrainian people pay the consequences of the war, then Russia itself: forcing it into a long war of attrition by arming Ukraine. Next, the European countries had to pay in terms of dearer energy and other costs, including restrictions on trade and financial transactions, as the US pursued its dual aim of replacing Russian gas and oil supplies and continuing to make Europe dependent on the dollar by diminishing the role of the euro. Incidentally, a megawatt of gas in America costs $7, in Europe $40, bringing enormous profits for American companies, despite transportation costs. As if to say: “take it or leave it”, otherwise the tariffs threat will not only be a deterrent but a heavy punishment for those who do not comply. Trump finds it convenient to have an economically weak and politically subservient Europe. It will not be invited to the negotiating table since Europe's security is no longer a US priority. If necessary, the threatened tariffs will also hit old allies.

Once Zelensky has been dumped, peace negotiations,will revolve around the principle of guaranteeing Putin the achievement of all those objectives that he has failed to achieve on the ground. The Crimean peninsula is no longer up for discussion, it is Russian territory and will remain so. The Donbass region with its rare earths, as a Russian-speaking territory, will be part of greater Russia. This proposal apparently conflicts with American ambitions to have a pre-emptive right on these deposits but Trump first "shoots" and then watches to see what effect it has. Finally, Ukraine's entry into NATO, which was one of the causes of the outbreak of the war, is no longer on the agenda.

All that is left for Ukraine is the "security" of its borders, a process of physical and economic reconstruction, to which the US has signed up, but on the condition that a significant portion of the investments (by which it means costs) will be paid by the Europeans whilst the speculative profits (from construction) will be American. All this is like adding insult to injury, because in practice it will leave Kyiv with an unsustainable overall debt.

If these guidelines are followed, Trump's policy would clear Russia of its role as "evil aggressor", after having recovered from the trade and financial sanctions (they too will be on the table of "peace" negotiations) and weakened militarily to the right point, so much so that it would no longer represent an imminent threat to American imperialist supremacy. A weak Russia would mean a weakening of the Moscow-Tehran-China axis that gave Biden and all previous administrations, starting with Obama's, many sleepless nights.

In the key area of the Middle East, we have the same pattern: Israel acts as an armed policeman in Palestine and the neighbouring countries (Lebanon, Iraq and Syria), leaving the US free to focus all its efforts on China and its imperialist ambitions. In exchange, Netanyahu has been gifted the abandonment of the "two state solution", with the promise of deporting around 2 million Palestinians to places yet to be determined. A difficult prospect, but Trump is not interested in that, knowing full well that Israel will be able to find its own solution by force.

All these concessions to Moscow are not “nonsense” or a contradiction with the US previous political line. In Trump’s strategy there is probably room for the attempt to detach and/or weaken Russia’s relationship with China. It is unlikely that the US could completely sever the bond that ties Russian and Chinese imperialism, but the concessions granted to Moscow could act as a light narcotic, if only in the short term, to allow Trump to focus on his most dangerous enemy: Beijing. In a recent statement, Trump clearly expressed his disinterest in the expensive support for Zelensky, that is, abandoning him to his fate. As for Europe, the US needs to concentrate economic and financial resources on military development in the area of ​​greatest strategic interest and that is the Indo-Pacific. But for this to happen, a weak and vassal Europe is needed, as well as a trusted ally in the Middle East, a Russia that is an adversary, but a weakened one, and indebted to the US for the advantages ceded. Only then can the US be free to focus on the real issue of Taiwan and everything connected to it.

These connections not only involve Taiwan, which produces 60% of the world's microchips. They are also related to the fact that Beijing plans to become the world's leading power in terms of trade, high-tech production, and artificial intelligence for civil and, above all, military purposes by 2035, which is already serious enough to alarm American imperialism. Added to that is China’s attempt to create the Silk Road as the structural backbone of its much vaunted economic-productive superiority with an equally precise deadline of 2035, (i.e. in just ten years time). Above all, squaring the circle of the opposing imperialist projects of the world’s two greatest powers, is the domination of the currency market. In other words, at the top of China’s ambitious list of imperialist projects is the fight against the almost absolute supremacy of the dollar. This domination allows the US, despite its production crisis, despite its enormous balance of payments deficit, and with a public debt that exceeds $35 trillion, to siphon an immense amount of capital into the federal coffers from all over the world. The system is simple. After 1971, when the Nixon government declared the inconvertibility of the dollar into gold, the greenback continued to be the universal exchange coefficient between goods on all world markets, officially creating a "dollar standard", though no longer based on a fixed amount of gold. Any country wanting to trade had to do so in dollars. If they wanted to buy technology, gas or oil, they first had to buy dollars that the Federal Bank had no difficulty in printing as if they were business cards. In addition, this superiority also benefited American government bonds that acted as a further element of draining international capital. The primacy of the dollar largely allowed (and allows) the various American Administrations to survive, despite debts and deficits. To give one example, today 23 states of the Union would not even be able to pay public employees, if there were no financial intervention by the Federal State. The music, in fact, has not changed and the American fear is that it could progressively change with Chinese interference supported by the BRICS countries, to which Iran has recently been added.

Thus Trump, or rather the US, is obsessively concerned about China. Here, the new president’s statements are kept to a minimum while military mobilisation is at maximum. China is not Mexico or Canada, much less Greenland, which Trump has proposed buying with a fistful of dollars. China cannot be blackmailed by threatening sanctions. To counter Beijing’s objectives you need to arm yourself to the teeth.

Meanwhile, Trump has put pressure on the government of Panama by threatening to occupy the Canal, forcing it to pull out of the Belt and Road Initiative and promising to review contracts with Chinese firms running the canal ports. And confrontation between the two imperialisms continues in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, where the military fleets of the two imperialisms confront each other daily with “exercises” for a clash that could be imminent or postponed, depending on the warlike propensities of the two powers. This is their posture. The first US mission under President Trump took place between 10-12 February when US Navy ships, the destroyer Ralph Johnson and the reconnaissance ship Bowditch, sailed in the disputed area of the Taiwan Strait. A few days later China responded with patrols in the same area, showing that it was ready and prepared for any eventuality, at any location, in the disputed South China Sea. Beijing's military command also officially announced that its naval and air forces carried out preventive patrol operations. This patrol was related to a Western show of force whereby, for the first time, a French aircraft carrier sailed in the Indo-Pacific as part of an "exercise" with the US and Japan. The patrol was China's immediate response. Moreover, according to a report by the Hainan Maritime Safety Administration, some exercises were also held by the Beijing navy with Pakistani warships in the South China Sea.

Thus, for the new American Administration, it is incumbent on Ukraine to accept the American diktats and for Russia to find a favourable peace solution, even if this puts it in debt to the White House for the "gifts" received. Europe must manage on its own, because the US has to play its own game with China and this involves cutting, and/or completely terminating, spending in support of anyone else to concentrate all its economic and financial resources on the primary military objective: the "threat from the East".

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