Trump, The Key to the International Situation

Defeating Putin and defeating far-right insurrection in America go hand in hand

In November 1931, while holed up in a suburb of Istanbul, the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote a prophetic pamphlet entitled: Germany, The Key to the International Situation. After surveying the geopolitical projects of the other major powers, he outlined the central problem in the world: unless the German left changed its strategy, Hitler would come to power. He predicted:

“The coming to power of the National Socialists would mean first of all the extermination of the flower of the German proletariat, the destruction of its organizations, the eradication of its belief in itself and in its future.”

And thereafter:

“A victory of fascism in Germany would signify an inevitable war against the USSR.”

Some of the generalisations Trotsky made in 1931 look painful with hindsight. But his main thesis was correct: everything in the mid-20^th century depended on stopping Hitler.

By the same token today; everything in the mid-21^st century depends on stopping Donald Trump.

The world’s two major crises – the war in Ukraine and the slow collapse of American democracy – are linked to the fate of a single, barely-articulate, political showman.

As the Republican primary season looms, Trump’s polling numbers are already casting a shadow over every action of the Biden administration, and indeed over the expectations of the Zelensky administration in Kyiv. We’ve always known that the fight to stop America going fascist, and the fight to stop Russia perpetrating mass murder in Ukraine were part of the same struggle. But now they’re inextricably linked.

A second Trump presidency would simultaneously end American active support for Ukraine, pull the plug on NATO, and trigger a state-by-state disintegration of human rights and democratic norms in the USA. It would be a decisive vote for what it says on the tin: America First isolationism, state-sponsored racism and misogyny and a rubber stamp for Trump’s insurrection attempt in January 2021.

The Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific alliance efforts would be trashed in favour of the open embrace of great power diplomacy. Russia would be handed permanent control of the Donbas, Crimea and Black Sea. The Xi-Putin declaration of 4 February 2022, declaring universalism and the UN charter system dead, would effectively get a virtual third signatory.

Doom scenario

For many in the West – politicians, analysts, progressive voters – this outcome is so unthinkable that they refuse to weigh the consequences. I think, crude as it was, Trotsky’s pamphlet was an attempt to force his audience to confront the implications of a doom scenario and work out a strategy to avoid it.

But that’s exactly what we are not seeing in the present.

There is no Comintern, obviously. European social-democracy looks bereft of a unified strategy. And, as I’ve remarked here before, there is a notable absence of strategic thinking among US Democrats.

Olaf Scholz’ ruling coalition is increasingly nervous about the far-right AfD, now polling consistently above 20%. Sanchez’ PSOE/Sumar coalition clings to power by a thread. The Sunak government in Britain is too busy stirring up its own version of Trumpian anti-wokeness to engage proactively with the Ukraine crisis, at least with the intensity and leadership ambition that the Johnson administration did during the first five months of the war.

All European governments now defer to Biden. And Biden is treading carefully. He does not want Ukraine to lose the war. But time and again we hear noises out of Washington to the effect that he does not want Russia to lose either – for fear of the implosion of the Putin regime. No wonder, then, that the Zelensky administration is said to believe we are probably at the high point of Western support for Ukraine.

One advantage of the Comintern’s old method of analysing “the conjuncture” was its strict separation of the objective and subjective factors: what, in a given situation, lies beyond our control and what factors can we change? Here’s how that looks to me…