By: Mariano Salas
Humanity is currently facing the worst capitalist crisis in 350 years of history. A crisis on all aspects, such as economic, financial, ecological, political, health, food, energy, social, human rights, etc., turning it into a structural or organic crisis as well.
This crisis matches, as cause and effect, the debacle of United States world hegemony, adopted after the collapse of the so—called real socialism between 1989-1991. That hegemony is now threatened by China and Russia, turning the world order from unipolar into a tripolar order; among its causes we find the defeat of NATO in Ukraine.
However, there is a tug of war, because despite Ukraine, US imperialism scored an important victory in Western Asia (the Middle East) with the devastation of Gaza (with complicity of almost all the governments of the world with exceptions, such as Yemen); the probable destruction of the West Bank, the ruin of Syria, the withdrawal of Saudi Arabia as a member of BRICS and Iran in its warmongering “anti-Zionist” moodswings.
However, the dispute may increase – although Trump gives the impression of a temporary postponement — unless the masses, mainly in the potentially belligerent countries, take the initiative and achieve increasingly energetic mobilizations that prevent a probable nuclear holocaust, which is still latent in spite of everything.
Workers and the American people are carrying out a wave of mobilizations and strikes (which media omits as much as possible), which for many are the prelude to social outbursts of great impact in several states and which are predicted to grow due to the increase, as never before, in the cost of living.
In Europe, these mobilizations, although of a smaller scale, have not been interrupted, for example, in solidarity with Palestine and against the increase in the cost of living. In addition, it is not gratuitous that the governments of the largest economies of the continent are very discredited (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain) opening the doors for governments more to the left or right to take power.
In Latin America, the mobilizations in Argentina are increasing, even if at times they seem to be going down. The huge increase in the cost of living has been encouraging broad sectors to mobilize despite the fact that the union bureaucracy refuses to go beyond marches and pronouncements at most, delaying the outbreak of a general strike so that Milei and his economic plan leave.
At the moment, the organic crisis does not seem to manifest itself in the economic or financial spheres, as shown by the macroeconomic indices where no major setbacks are appreciated, but this is only the appearance because worrying announcements appear in Europe because Germany — the locomotive that pulls the rest — has accumulated two years of economic contraction, being 0.3% in 2023 and 0.2% in 2024[1], which brings us closer to a global economic and financial recession[2].
Probably, for now, an economic and financial explosion can be mitigated, but there are two elements that create doubts. First is that the aftermath of the 2008 crisis is still present, mainly the fact that many countries went into huge debts to rescue banks and many other companies. At present the debts are still plundering countries and increasing poverty. Another consequence is that the economy has not managed to recover its growth rate, aggravated by the recession caused by the pandemic.
The second is that, if the masses manage with their struggles to prevent poverty from spreading and deepening (to stop the deterioration of wages, unemployment and the cutting of public spending on medical-care services, education and public works); then the governments and the capitalists will be in serious trouble because those who always pay no longer want to do so. For this reason and because in the perspective a crisis like the one of 2008 – the biggest since the great depression of 1929 and that put an end to the neoliberal[3] period — is not ruled out, so the exacerbation of the class struggle would be inevitable.
The new world order
China and Russia have reached a political agreement, despite their great and historical differences, due to the need to confront the offensive of the United States that at the end of the last century felt the need to dominate the planet in all areas.
China has emerged as a great economy that has entered important markets such as Europe, Latin America and the United States itself[4]. In the previous period, it had just achieved a spectacular process of economic growth that reached in some years up to 12 percent per year with the mass production of goods taking advantage of the “opening” of the same devised by the USA and the United Kingdom in the late 70s. To do this, it used its young and abundant workforce, skilled and above all cheap, to attract productive capital investments from all over the world, mainly from the USA and Europe, achieving that by the second decade of the century it rose as an economic power[5]. Today China has displaced the United States in the production of goods and services and threatens to emerge as the leading economic power by the 2030s.
China also disputes the supremacy of the United States in technological research (artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing) and has increased its military power, managing to have the largest military fleet in the world[6] and the possession of hypersonic missiles that the United States does not yet have.
For its part, Russia was able to reorganize its economy and fundamentally its armed forces, after the USSR disaster, to become today the military power with the largest number of nuclear warheads; with a fleet of fast undetectable nuclear submarines capable of navigating to great depths; hypersonic missiles that move at speeds up to 12 mach[7] undetectable by radars in addition to highly advanced and destructive non-nuclear weapons[8].
All of the above does not mean that the United States is crushed because although it began its decline, it still has the dollar, which is still the main reserve currency and commercial exchange worldwide, which is no small thing, difficult to displace by other powers; it also still maintains a certain lead in the field of quantum computing[9] and controls the media and propaganda[10], virtual and non-virtual, globally. In the military field, it has approximately 850 military bases distributed around the world and one million 400 thousand active personnel elements.
Trump and Putin
The relationship between Putin and Trump is not new and certainly increased immediately after the electoral triumph of the latter in November last year, so it is very likely that they are negotiating the conditions of the new tripolar world order, including China, going beyond Ukraine – already resolved on the battlefield — so there are extremely important issues such as the so-called Middle East and beyond, issues surely dealt with initially in the much-carried and brought telephone communication between Putin and Trump on March 18 of this year[11].
Meanwhile Europe is being left out being the first time in 500 years of history that they are not hegemonic pole. Remaining on the sidelines of the negotiations between Russia and the US has exalted the mood mainly of Emmanuel Macron, President of France and former employee of the Rothschild bank; of the prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Rodney Starmer and of Friedrich Merz, new German chancellor, former employee of BlackRock. However, it remains to be seen what policy they will adopt to be taken into account and anything can happen. For the time being, they are threatening with external budgets to rearm themselves, even though it remains to be seen where they will get them from and if their population will allow it, because it will imply cuts in health, education, pensions and infrastructure works.
[1] Business Insider (The German economy will contract by 0.2% in 2024, and will accumulate two consecutive years of declines).
[2] That would seriously impact the markets generating a climate of instability, collapse of the share prices of thousands of companies, shortages of liquid money and an atmosphere of widespread panic.
[3] Defined as a system that tends to minimize state intervention in the economy, supports the free market, promotes economic globalization and enemy of state ownership.
[4] To date, China is the most important trading partner of more than 150 countries and regions and has signed free trade agreements with 30 countries and regions on five continents. The Government’s Work Report of the Two Sessions set the GDP growth target of 5 percent by 2025…” (Zhu Jian chargé d’affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Mexico. The Day March 19, 2025).
[5] According to the World Bank, between 1980 and 2000, the Chinese economy multiplied 6.2 times and between 2000 and 2023 it increased 6.14 times. In the same periods, the US economy rose by 1.9 and 1.6 times. In 2023, China was the second largest economy in the world: the nominal GDP of the United States was equivalent to 1.52 times the GDP of China. In the same year China was the first economy in the world: its GDP PPP (by exchange parity) was equivalent to 1.19 times the GDP of the USA. China is the leading manufacturing power with 31.6 percent of the world’s total, according to the EU SafeGuard Global portal; it is followed by the US, with 15.9 percent.
[6] Global Firepower Index. (first naval power 2025 – Search)
[7] Experimentally, it is said that Russia is testing missiles capable of reaching mach 27, apart from being in a position to start placing nuclear charges in the stratosphere.
[8] An example: the RS-28 Sarmat missile (called by NATO as SS-X-30 Satan-2) is a Russian fifth-generation strategic missile system capable of carrying a payload of several nuclear warheads and at hypersonic speeds, capable of eluding the missile defenses of the United States and Europe. On the other hand, it is estimated that Russia has almost 200 undetectable nuclear submarines, capable of carrying nuclear payloads anywhere in the world.
[9] Although after what was seen with the DeepSeek, China can come out to dispute the hegemony of the United States in this area as well.
[10] At the inauguration of Trump were present as the most important guests the media moguls highlighting Elon Musk who owns six thousand communication satellites.
[11] “Sputnik Mundo broadcasts some details of the phone call: 1) Mutual interest in normalizing relations between the two countries; 2) the peace agreement should be comprehensive (sic!), sustainable and long-term; 3) the joint efforts of Russia and the US to stabilize(sic) the world situation will contribute to improving the climate of relations between the two countries; 4) Kiev has repeatedly sabotaged and violated the agreements reached; 5) groups of Russian and American experts are being created to work on the achievement of a Ukrainian agreement (which, in my opinion, took a back seat to the pressing hierarchy of global peace, especially in the volcanic Middle East) and 6) mutually beneficial cooperation in the economy and energy sectors (https://bit.ly/4kWwt7Y ). (jornada.com.mx/2025/03/19/opinion/012o1pol ). The British portal Daily Mail asserts that the main details of the talk (note: between Trump and Putin) invoke a New World Order (https://bit.ly/4c19THj ).
