Political Essays
2026 marks the second year that Donald Trump has been in office. Within the one and a half months, Maduro of Venezuela has been kidnapped, ICE has begun targeting citizens of the United States, Palestine has entered its third year of genocide, Ukraine is still ethnically cleansing Russians from the Donbass region, Cuba is under seige and the United States government has placed its eyes on Greenland.
Every action the United States takes at this point is done to retain imperial power in the Western Hemisphere. Capitalism barely held on in the 20th century, only managing to keep relevance by election interference, genocide in southeastern Europe, the destabilization of SWANA nations and sanctions upon socialist nations around the world. It should be noted though that the US did not truly win any of these wars. Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq were all 'wars' the US still managed to lose. Its reaction now, which include losing trade wars as former allies move towards China, is found in its history. None of the actions of the Trump administration are particularly unique, including the ICE raids. Its a continuation of its colonial and racist history, with ICE behaving not as the Gestapo, but as cops and slave catchers of the Jim Crow and Slave eras in American History. Comparisons to Nazi Germany do a disservice in claiming this is not what the United States 'is', but rather intends to obfuscate and whitewash the crimes of Liberalism and Liberal Democracy.
Trump's behavior towards Greenland, Cuba and Venezuela are simply products of the Monroe Doctrine, which claimed the United States 'owned' all of North and South America. Theodore Roosevelt continued this with his 'Big Stick' policy. Trump is merely continuing it with his attacks on these three nations. However, it's not working as it should in theory. The United States is all but admitting the 'End of History' or neoliberal capitalism was a farce. Capitalism is unable to grow any further, with the economy banking on an AI bubble and misusing the technology for financial gains, and gambling. The housing crisis continues to rise as for-profit prisons and detention centers are expanded to extract as much wealth as possible. The United States is in free fall, and soon the empire will collapse.
There are two paths USAmericans can take at this point. Either become principled socialists and join a party to begin the formations of a vanguard party, or continue to bleat that 'If it were Kamala, we'd all be at brunch!' and blame others for choosing to side with the global proletariat. Unfortunately, most USAmericans are at least subconsciously aware that if the US falls, they lose imperial superprofits that every single one benefits from. If a revolution is to happen in the US, the marxist-leninists have their work cut out for them.
It's no secret the war in Ukraine was one of a lose-lose scenario: the nation was either going to be sold out by the United States and its allies, or be destroyed by Russia as cannon fodder for the US-NATO alliance. Now, with Zelenskyy's outburst in the White House and subsequent dismissal, the former scenario proved to be true. Trump is a business man, money-focused and worries more of theatrics than the ideological machinations of the US empire, allowing the world to get a clear view of how the US treats its "allies"; if you are not making the Empire money, you are functionally useless.
Despite what western media, especially in Europe and previously the US under Biden, claimed that this war was due to Russia's aggression and invasion of Ukraine, the war did not start there. Its material reality took shape during the Euromaidan coup, which resulted in Viktor Yanukovych being removed from his position as president (due to allying with Russia over the United States and NATO) and Petro Poroshenko, a NATO puppet, in power to begin the process of turning Ukraine further away from its former ally. One must remember that NATO was formed by the United States and placed Nazis in positions of power in the organization, simply because these men were ardent anti-communists.
Poroshenko himself, a liberal, spent his five years in office antagonizing Russia and allowing members of neo-Nazi militias (such as the Azov Battalion, which Zelenskyy later integrated into the Ukrainian military) to bomb and shell the Donbas region that had voted to return to Russia. Due to his deemed disaster as president of Ukraine, he lost the 2019 election to Zelenskyy, a comedian-cum-politician who had higher hopes of Ukraine being a staunch ally of the US and a NATO member.
What Zelenskyy failed, and still fails to realize, is how lethal it is to be an ally of the US. He had grown accustomed to the soft imperial power Biden wielded, ideologically driven by anticommunism and Zionism just as Zelenskyy is (does "We want Ukraine to be the Israel of Europe"? ring a bell?), and expected funding even if the United States wasn't seeing a return on its lending. This all cumulated during the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting; Trump explicitly told him "we aren't going to be aiding you unless we get something of profit in return." 700,000 killed and wounded, only to be denied the two things Zelenskyy was promised; Russia defeated and a spot in NATO, while his national resources are bled dry by the nation that held a knife behind its back with sweet platitudes that it was a staunch ally, willing to fund its proxy war to economically crush its enemy.
The war comes down to this; it was never just a conflict between two former socialist nations vying for resources while crumbling under a shock therapy of neoliberalism. It was a proxy war initiated by a decaying empire looking to make more profit in an indirect way while taking out a perceived enemy. Trump knew this, and seeing a profit loss is what made him and his administration openly turn on Zelenskyy. Had it been Kamala, it would have gone in a similar manner, though I'm sure the "Top Cop" wouldn't have wasted her breath that could've gone to telling transgender people to accept transphobic laws, and instead had the CIA execute him and install another puppet for the US to weaponize.
Where does NATO stand in all of this? NATO nations are decrying the treatment of a Nazi collaborator simply because many of them are no longer economically dependent on Russia since the Nordstream bombing two years ago. Even as people in Britain freeze to death, or as Germany itself begins enabling the Nazis it never truly condemned, European nations are more committed ideologically to being anti-Russia, due to anticommunism. There is still a pervasive belief that, because of US propaganda, communism is and was worse than fascism, despite the latter being the leading ideology for genocides for the last century. The entire narrative against Russia in this war is one born of anticommunism and to a certain extent, racism.
As to where this goes now, I want to point readers to the war in Iraq led by George W. Bush. Saddam Hussein was backed by George H.W. Bush, as his Ba'ath party was against the Soviets. The war in Afghanistan was another proxy war the United States engaged in to weaken its adversary the USSR. Once the Soviets withdrew, and the United States left Saddam in control, he began nationalizing the petro industry in order to make some profit for a nation recovering from war. Instead of a steadfast ally agreeing and supporting this decision, the US began manufacturing consent for an invasion using tactics such as lies of WMDs and beheaded babies, because that last one always plucks at the heartstrings. Once the consent was manufactured, the US invaded to privatize the oil it hadn't been able to profit from due to Saddam nationalizing that industry. Saddam himself was later found hiding in 2004, and summarily executed by US troops after an interrogation. What this administration has in store for Zelenskyy remains to be seen, but if his outburst is any indication, the US may decide to manufacture consent for a regime change in Ukraine if Zelenskyy can't begin churning out a profit by selling his nations' resources to private investors.