The upheaval in alliances is exacerbating the war of each against all

While NATO states on its website: “NATO condemns in the strongest terms Russia's war against Ukraine. The Alliance remains resolute in its commitment to support Ukraine and to help it exercise its fundamental right to self-defence,” Trump humiliates and berates the Ukrainian president in front of the world's media, even blaming him for the barbarism in Ukraine, while renewing ties and entering into negotiations with Putin's Russia. These provocative statements publicly and brutally highlighted the ideological and strategic break between Trump's America and the central axis of NATO policy. Furthermore, Trump cast doubt on the solidarity between NATO countries, the quintessence of the Atlantic Alliance: “If they don't pay, I'm not going to defend them”; “My biggest problem with NATO (...) is that if the United States had a problem and we called France or other countries that I won't name and said ‘We have a problem’, do you think they would come and help us, as they are supposed to do? I'm not so sure...” (France 24, 7.3.25). In a matter of weeks, Donald Trump torpedoed the Atlantic Alliance, politically demolishing the collective defence pact that had united the USA and Europe since 1949. America no longer intended to support its allies in the defence of Ukraine, nor did it even guarantee the unconditional solidarity of the United States in the event of an attack on one of its partners.

The definitive end of the imperialist relations established since 1945

These events have profound historical significance, as they mark the open collapse of the imperialist relations between the major powers that have been in place since 1945. In reality, they are the culmination of a whole process initiated by the collapse of the Eastern bloc at the end of 1989, which also marked the beginning of the period of decomposition. At the time, the ICC pointed out that the collapse of the Soviet bloc would be accompanied by the disintegration of the Western bloc: "The differ­ence, in the coming period, will be that these antagonisms which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs will now come to the fore. The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time "partners" are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries”. [1]

The disintegration has been gradual since then, with ups and downs, culminating today in the explicit manifestation of the transatlantic divorce. In their attempt to defend their status as the sole superpower governing the world, the United States initially exploited NATO to support them in their role as world policeman and enable them to keep their ‘partners’ of the Western bloc under control (1st Iraq War, 1991, Afghanistan, 2001), to integrate the Eastern European countries of the former Soviet bloc into their sphere of influence and, most recently, to support Ukraine against the Russian attack, which allowed Washington to counter the European countries' desire for independence at the same time. However, these ambitions emerged in the early 1990s with the manoeuvring of France, the United Kingdom and Germany during the war in the former Yugoslavia and became more pronounced with the refusal of the main European countries in 2003 to participate in the second Iraq war under Bush Jr. More generally, the empowerment of European countries (particularly Germany) has been expressed through a significant reduction in their military contributions to NATO and their broad energy and trade openness towards Russia and China.

Faced with its irreversible decline in the face of the explosion of ‘every man for himself’ and the emergence of China as a challenger, the world's leading power now intends to use its military, economic and political power to impose the defence of its interests, by brute force if necessary, on all other countries, both adversaries and allies. Behind Washington's abandonment of Ukraine, the questioning of transatlantic solidarity within NATO and the rapprochement with Russia, it is the very structure of the world since 1945 that is being swept away.

The irreversibility of the Transatlantic divorce

NATO Secretary General Rutte, like certain European military and political circles, still hopes that Trump's thunderous statements are essentially intended to raise the stakes in a ‘transactional’ negotiation on NATO funding, and that the drastic increase in military budgets decided by European countries will calm Trump's anti-European aggression. While the concrete form and speed of the divorce between the ‘long-standing allies’ remain difficult to predict, various factors confirm that the process is irreversible.

1. “But Trump has politically disarmed NATO, he has stripped it of what makes a collective defence alliance strong: reliability.”[2]. The absolute guarantee of military intervention in support of NATO and the American nuclear umbrella is no longer to be counted on. It’s quite to the contrary, as indicated in a recent Pentagon memo, the ‘Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,’ based on guidelines from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, which the Washington Post (31 March 2025) was able to consult. It specifies that in the event of aggression, Europe will only be able to count on non-essential troop reinforcements against China. Furthermore, Trump continues to claim Greenland from Denmark, as well as the annexation of Canada, both of which are NATO partners. No wonder Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney concluded that the United States was no longer a reliable partner! Whatever the subsequent reversals, doubts have been sown about the indestructibility of the Transatlantic Alliance and American support for Europe.

2. The irreversibility of the divorce is also highlighted on an ideological level. The conclusion of the Transatlantic Pact and the founding of NATO after 1945 were ideologically justified by the defence of ‘Western democracy’. Trump's questioning of unwavering support for Ukraine in favour of a rapprochement with ‘dictator Putin’, and Vice President Vance’s attack at the Munich Forum on the concept of democracy defended by the European bourgeoisie, while the Trump administration continues to support populist and far-right parties in Europe, completely tear apart this common ideological cover. Trump is removing all ideological glue from the Atlantic Alliance.

3. A crucial ally of the United States against the USSR for more than fifty years, Europe has lost its geostrategic importance with the rise of China, becoming above all an economic competitor and a source of dissident countries, even enemies, in armed conflicts. “We are also here today to state clearly and unambiguously an unavoidable strategic reality: the United States can no longer be primarily focused on the security of Europe. The United States faces direct threats to our own homeland. We must — and are — prioritising the security of our own borders. (…) This will require our European allies to fully engage and take responsibility for their own conventional security on the continent."[3] Europe, and therefore the Transatlantic pact, is no longer a priority, or even a necessity, for American imperialism, and the Trump administration is expressing this without diplomatic embellishment.

4. Among European countries, differences are still emerging as to whether Transatlantic ties should be maintained: some, such as Italy's Meloni and Poland's Tusk, hope that substantial arms spending by European countries will preserve the essence of the alliance and calm the Trump administration's anti-European aggression; others, however, see the final breakdown of the Transatlantic link and are pushing for the development of an alternative policy to that of the United States. The latter will undoubtedly exploit the situation by increasing pressure to break up the ‘European pole’. Trump will therefore tend to develop a ‘transactional’ policy that is more favourable to certain countries, such as Poland, and less favourable to others, such as Germany.

5. “Listen, let's be honest, the European Union was designed to screw the United States” (statement by Trump, 26 February 2025). The proliferation of tariffs imposed by the United States on imports from European ‘allies’, accused by Trump of treating the United States much worse than certain ‘enemies’, as well as European ‘retaliation’, will only exacerbate tensions between the two sides of the Atlantic and constitute the economic aspect of the divorce. This trade war clearly illustrates how the European ‘partners’ of yesteryear are now seen as rivals to ‘America First’. The imposition of huge military investment on European countries due to the end of the American military umbrella is aimed in particular at forcing all EU countries to ‘waste’ part of their economic reserves on developing their military capabilities so that they lose their competitive edge vis-à-vis the United States. In addition, changes in customs tariffs are also a potential means of sowing discord between European countries.

The United States at the head of a war of all against all

The questioning of imperialist relations between major powers not only has significant historical significance, but will above all lead to a tremendous acceleration of every man for himself, irrationality and chaos at the global level.

The Trump administration's priority objective, in line with Biden's policy, is to use all economic and military means to prevent China from threatening the declining supremacy of the United States. To this end, Trump is seeking to detach Russia from China and, to do so, he is prepared to sacrifice Ukraine and the stability of Europe, and even the cohesion of the EU. However, while Russia can only welcome the rapprochement initiated by the United States, given its mistrust of China's growing economic stranglehold on Siberia, at the same time, it is wary of the fluctuating nature of Trump's decisions, hence the reluctance of the Putin faction to commit to ending the fighting on the basis of the ‘deal’ proposed by Washington. In fact, Trump is taking a gamble, without being certain of success and without concern for the consequences. In this sense, Trump is a caricature of how the bourgeoisie in decomposition develops its imperialist policy: ‘taking a gamble’ with a short-term vision, without worrying about the longer-term consequences.

One major consequence of the Transatlantic divorce is undoubtedly the widespread explosion of arms spending and, more generally, militarism in Europe. Meetings between major European countries are multiplying to increase military production and ensure support for Ukraine. Across Europe, increases in military budgets for the coming years are being announced: this is the case in Britain, France[4], Germany[5], and the EU is announcing support of 800 billion euros for the next 10 years. Germany has voted to reform its constitution to remove a clause that prohibits it from running public deficits so that it can borrow to increase military spending. However, differences are already emerging between states: there are nuances between France and Great Britain on the one hand and Italy and Poland on the other, for example, on what to do about Ukraine; similarly, what will be the attitude of the other European powers towards Germany, the EU's leading economic force, which also wants to become the EU's main power? In the Netherlands, the prime minister has been outvoted within his own majority on commitments to Ukraine, with populists arguing that money should first be spent on the Dutch people. If strategic rapprochement emerges with the United States and within the EU, the trend is towards the end of stable military alliances, a dynamic that exacerbates the ‘every man for himself’ mentality in the phase of decomposition and is already widely evident in various conflicts around the world.

By abandoning Ukraine, torpedoing the Transatlantic Pact, turning towards Russia, in short, by destroying the last foundations of the international order that had survived the fall of the USSR, the United States will face an imperialist world that will be even more hostile and less controllable, because nothing stable will come out of this ‘upheaval of alliances’ that can never produce lasting ones. In fact, Trump has told the world: the word of the US government is worthless, you cannot trust us. Clearly, he and his clique are not seeking to establish solid international alliances, but rather bilateral ‘deals’ that are valid ‘right now’. Thus, after the successive failures of the American bourgeoisie to impose its order and limit the every man for himself mentality, Trump has acknowledged the impossibility of halting this dynamic, but instead has placed himself at its head by declaring open war of each against all. This is the real vandalistic ‘strategy’ of the new American administration: “The world order has become a weapon used against us. It is once again up to us to create a free world out of chaos. This will require an America (...) that puts its own interests above all else.”[6] From now on, there will be no real turning back.

For the working class, the Transatlantic divorce and the ‘upheaval of alliances’ fundamentally herald two things: a significant intensification of attacks on its living conditions, caused by the exacerbation of militarism, and the multiplication of horrific war confrontations, such as those that massacre thousands of people every month in Ukraine or Palestine. Faced with campaigns aimed at mobilising them in defence of the democratic state, faced with the war of each against all’ workers must instead maintain their unity on their class terrain in order to fight against the attacks of the various bourgeoisies.

R. Havanais / 20.4.2025

 

 

[1] After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, destabilization and chaos, International Review 61

[2] Column by Alain Frachon, Le Monde, 6.3.2025.

[3] Speech by P. Hegseth on 12.02.25 at the meeting of the NATO Contact Group for Ukraine

[4] The appropriations voted in the 2024-2030 military programming law amount to 413 billion euros.

[5] A massive fund of €500 billion is planned to position Germany as the leader of European defence

[6] Secretary of State Rubio, Senate Committee, 15.01.25, in “Atlantic Alliance or Western Schism?” Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2025.