The deadly August 26 suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport was yet another gut punch to the stature of the United States, an imperialist world power in steep decline. After the ISIS-K small-time terrorists claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed close to 200 workers and 13 U.S. military personnel, the leader of the world’s largest terrorist gang countered with a drone strike that slaughtered at least 10 civilians, including seven children (New York Times, 9/5). “We will hunt you down and make you pay” (Reuters, 8/27), said U.S. President Joe Biden. But Biden’s bluster fooled no one. The chaotic military withdrawal exposed the weakness of the U.S. ruling class as they move toward fascism and broader war in a more and more volatile world.
Because make no mistake: The end of the latest imperialist disaster in Afghanistan is no move toward peace. In fact, it opens the door for the U.S. bosses to accelerate their fascist build-up to a conflict with China and possibly Russia, their main capitalist rivals. But the U.S. rulers’ disunity, incompetence, and general disarray are only intensifying as they prepare for the inevitable collision.
In a period when the international working class is faced with the worst that capitalism has to offer—a deepening climate crisis, an unchecked pandemic, racist and sexist terror, and mass unemployment—the absolute necessity for workers to fight back is clear. Our only path forward is to build the international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) as our weapon to destroy capitalism and the mass-murdering bosses once and for all.
U.S. bosses struggle to chart a course toward war
At a time when Biden—and the finance capital Big Fascist (see glossary, page 6) bosses he represents—desperately need internal unity to chart a new path, their system lies in turmoil. Killer floods and wildfires, a new wave of Covid-19 deaths, and mounting unemployment are the glaring realities of pandemic-era capitalism.
Biden faces his own crisis of legitimacy. He rebuked his top military brass after they opposed the abrupt pullout. Now his generals are predicting that Afghanistan could soon collapse into civil war (Al Jazeera, 9/5). Biden’s trillion-dollar-plus infrastructure bill, a necessity for the U.S. bosses to compete with their Chinese adversaries, could wind up torpedoed—not just by the isolationist Small Fascists who have hijacked the Republican Party, but also by some of Biden’s assumed allies in Congress (ABC News, 9/5).
The Big Fascists’ long-term plan to use higher tax rates to raise money for war and discipline their own class, a hallmark of fascism, is meeting fierce resistance from companies like the multi-trillion-dollar Apple and finance capital mainstay Exxon Mobil (Business Insider, 9/3).
Most concerning for the U.S. rulers is their inability to win allegiance from a war-weary population to fight the bigger wars to come. Working-class youth—many of them jobless and in crushing debt, and infuriated by racist and sexist police terror—reject the notion of dying for a rotten U.S. empire. Among polled workers under the age of 30, only 38 percent voiced a “great deal of support” for the military, down 15 percentage points from just three years ago (military.com, 3/10).
Chinese, Russian imperialists exploit U.S. debacles
The U.S. debacle in Afghanistan has handed China and Russia an opportunity to present themselves as more reliable partners in Central Asia and other regions. As most nations were forced to evacuate their embassy staff during the upheaval in Kabul, both China and Russia kept their embassies open (Foreign Policy, 9/2).
A Chinese state spokeswoman gladly poured salt in the U.S. bosses’ open wound, describing a teenager’s deadly fall from a jet as “American myth down… More and more people are awakening” (Wall Street Journal, 9/1).
While the U.S. bosses spin their wheels trying to patch their crumbling infrastructure, strengthening ties between the drug cartel known as the Taliban and Chinese imperialism will be a big boost for China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has already tied more than 130 countries to the rising global powerhouse (CFR, 3/24). The more China expands its economic and military influence, the greater the risk of a big-power clash spilling into war.
Perhaps the biggest wild card in this unstable mix remains the Russian bosses, who have joined China in bashing the U.S. According to President Vladimir Putin, the U.S. achieved nothing in Afghanistan “but tragedy and loss of life” (Reuters, 9/1). Analysts believe that Biden’s abandonment of the Afghan government could embolden Russian military forces in their ongoing conflict with U.S. ally Ukraine (Atlantic Council, 8/16).
No honor among thieves—capitalist alliances waver
The so-called “Biden Doctrine,” an open rejection of “nation-building,” could spell the end of U.S. leadership of the old and faltering liberal world order. It’s also a big concern for traditional U.S. allies. The U.S. unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan, said the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles, was “a catastrophe for the Afghan people, for Western values and credibility and for the developing of international relations’’ (NYT, 9/4).
U.S. unreliability has led France, Italy, and Germany, among other nations, to turn to self-preservation and new affiliations. Armin Laschet, the minister-president of Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia, stated that European nations needed to “lessen their dependence on the U.S.” (Washington Post, 8/31).
As the U.S. burns bridges with European leaders, it’s making overtures toward Asian nations that lie within striking distance of China. Around the same time that the suicide blast rocked the airport in Kabul, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris visited Singapore and Vietnam in a brazen move to curry favor (Yahoo News, 8/31). Even more ominously, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command recently laid out a proposal calling for construction of a missile chain among islands in Japan and the Philippines (Nikkei Asia, 4/16).
The international fight for communism will free our class
The imperialist bosses continue to show that they are driven by their need for maximum profits—at any and all costs to the working class. But workers continue to fight back! In Afghanistan today, the most victimized workers—including a number of women—have led fearless actions against the violent Taliban bosses, demanding safety even as they are beaten (CNN, 9/4).
These fighters have bravely displayed their allegiance to the working class despite the retaliation they knew they’d receive. But to end the brutality and oppression of capitalism, they must take the next step and join the international fight for communist revolution. Only by smashing the profit system can we end sexism, racism, and imperialist war. Join the PLP and fight to win!