The next U.S. president will inherit the task of maintaining U.S. imperialism’s blood-soaked world leadership. The long-term trends of U.S. imperialist decline and Chinese imperialist ascendancy makes for an ever-more volatile world situation.
The working class is faced with choosing between following one set of bosses or another as they spend our class’ lives killing each other in war for their power and benefit, or the best option building a revolutionary communist movement to smash capitalism once and for all with revolution.
Sooner or later regional war will explode into major war requiring a military draft. The task the bosses will demand of the next U.S. president will be to win over U.S. workers to sacrifice, for U.S. youth to die and to build a mass fascist movement to force the smaller fascist U.S. bosses to fund wider war.
While not the bosses’ first choice, it may turn out that Bernie Sanders ends up as the person the U.S. rulers rely on to do the job. In his most recent foray into foreign policy he sold himself by pointing to Trump’s abrupt pullout from Syria: that Trump’s impulsive unilateral action “left our international partners blindsided and questioning U.S. leadership” (sanders.senate.gov, Jan 2019).    
    For Sanders, as well as for the most established wing of the U.S. ruling class, preserving the U.S. bosses position in the world is key–everything else comes after that. Sanders’ democratic socialism will spawn a more dangerous imperialism because his strategy of binding the youth more closely to a reformed capitalism is the glue U.S. rulers hope will hold society together in the event of a draft.
 Current congressional efforts to discipline Trump over the Saudi war in Yemen have given Bernie the platform to make the case that war ought to be waged with the broad support of the U.S. populace of which congressional approval is symbolic.
Sanders’record: reliable war strategist
Over the years Bernie’s role as the voice for winning workers and students to support war becomes clear– since the 1990s his votes against war have been interspersed with votes to fund war (votesmart.org). He voted to support Clinton’s regime change and sanctions targeted at Iraq in 1998, for the 2001 Authorization of Force resolution that opened the War on Terror and in 2009 voted to keep Guantanamo Bay open. In 2016 Sanders supported Obama’s escalation of U.S. ground forces in Syria (thehill.com 4/26/16).
Sander’s role: winning youth to nationalism and capitalism
The average age of a Sander’s donor is 30 (NYT Feb. 25), a segment of the population who were still kids on September 11, 2001, who have lived with war their entire lives. These youth saw their loved ones thrown out of work after the 2008 financial crisis while war spending expanded and they are disillusioned with U.S. imperialism. U.S. workers over 30 are far more likely to say that the “U.S. stands above all other countries in the world” than to say “[t]here are other countries that are better than the U.S.” but among those under 30, the latter view predominates two to one (Atlantic Magazine, 2/21/19). A military draft cannot be imposed on young people with such a view of the world, but a draft is precisely what will be needed in any war with great-power rivals.
The dean of Harvard’s business school Nitin Noriha put the problem for U.S. rulers bluntly: “We–as a school that has often been associated with business, which is closely associated with capitalism–need to ask ‘what can we do to make sure that society’s trust in capitalism remains strong and can be rebuilt?’”  Less than half of people aged 18-29 had a positive view of capitalism in 2018, a 12 percentage point decline in the past two years, and Nohria says that “the school’s largest area of concern remains addressing underlying distrust in the United States’ economic framework.”  (Harvard Crimson, 4/3).
Sander’s position is to offer a way for the bosses to win the support of the working class to fascism and war, but it will be expensive for U.S. bosses to live up to the packet of reforms Bernie has put forward. A massive reform program will also require mobilizing millions of workers to fight for it.The possibility of losing control of that kind of movement scares the ruling class and tempers their support for a Sanders victory.
Sanders’ programs are also the basis for mobilizing the working class around the main wing positions of disciplining the ruling class and raising taxes on the capitalists to fund their war. The bosses recognize that a civil war or at least a civil reckoning with the more domestically oriented smaller fascists needs mass support in order for the big main wing fascists to win. The big rulers are hoping Sanders’ programs can suck workers into fighting for the big fascists.
Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden are putting forward discounted, less risky versions of the Sanders program. Kamala Harris and other female candidates embody a strategy of ‘representation’ where identity politics would serve as the glue that binds the nation together in the event of a draft. All agree U.S. bosses leadership in the world is key.
Sander’s foreign policy: mass support for U.S. imperialism
Instead of international terrorism Sanders sees an ‘authoritarian axis’ as the new threat–with Russia’s Vladimir Putin figuring prominently in it (Bernie Sanders, speech at Johns Hopkins University, October 2018). Sanders says if war with Russia ‘becomes necessary’ he is ‘not afraid’ (feelthebern.org). In supporting a tighter arms embargo on China in 2005 and repeatedly railing today against China as the source of U.S workers’ worsening standards of living. Sanders hitches his supporters to a program of U.S. nationalism that serves the interests of U.S. rulers keen on coming out ahead in rivalry with their main foes.
Venezuela reveals the Sanders gambit–pose as anti-war now while building a base for wider war in the future. In tune with mass resentment of U.S. imperialism Bernie has spoken out clearly against military intervention at this time, calling it a mistake. He has called for new elections as the best way to dump Maduro. Sanders is willing to go so far as to remind his listeners of the long list of U.S. interventions in Latin America that have built hostility to U.S. capitalism over generations. Reducing this hostility to U.S. capitalism –not challenging capitalism itself–is what Sanders seeks to achieve. Bernie is in effect saying that recognition of the past misdeeds of the U.S. ruling class is essential to building confidence in this same ruling class’capacity to lead society in the future.The choices confronting our class are following the bosses onto the killing fields around the world or fighting for a worker’s led communist society. Progressive Labor Party’s May Day marches and more represent the ongoing communist confidence that the working class can and must seize power and lead society. Let’s build on the successes of May Day 2019 and make May Day 2020 the best political choice workers can make!