By Jamshid Ahmadi
As we go to print, the forces for peace, democracy, self- determination, and liberation around the world are entering a new period of profound uncertainty, menace, and threat in global politics.
Whether purposefully or as an exercise in blustery rhetoric, Donald J. Trump has begun his second presidency by threatening the peoples of Panama, Greenland, and Canada with land grabs. He has also threatened Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, China, and the EU with crippling tariffs unless they fold to his every whim. Yet he seems either not to have received or read the memo informing him that the era of colonial orders and diktats has long passed!
While Trump may be erratic and a political maverick, he should not be dismissed out of hand as a fool – despite his best impressions. The reality is that Trump’s brand of brinksmanship serves to betray the marked atrophy and decline of US imperialism in the face of the continuing economic, technological, and indeed social progress being made by the People’s Republic of China and many other developing countries of the Global South.
The aforementioned bluster and lofty self-projections emanating from the White House these days ring somewhat hollow, certainly in comparison with times gone by.
Furthermore, the US’ backing to the hilt of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and atrocities in the West Bank has neither succeeded in snuffing-out the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for self-determination nor dampening down worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian people and their righteous cause – in fact, quite the opposite!
However, this does not mean that the dangers of further instability, even catastrophic new conflicts, posed by US imperialist mal-designs have receded. Washington has certainly not given up on its ambitions to manipulate the entire Middle East region, including its old adversary Iran, into its sphere of geo-strategic interest and economic plunder.
In countries like Iran, ruling dictatorships continue to inflict their vicious repression on democratic and progressive working-class organisations at home, while falling over themselves to reach some sort of accommodation with the US – and cynically attempting to fly a false flag of anti-imperialism at the same time!
Around the world, trade unions as well as organisations and currents representing women, youth, and students continue unbowed in their struggles for peace, progress, and social justice and Liberation proudly stands with them.
In Britain, the government has shamelessly supported Israel’s unrestrained aggression and hopes for its own special accommodation with its new counterparts across the water, regardless of what this portends in terms of the country’s subserviency and for cherished institutions here – and by extension the lives of ordinary people – as well as the ultimate fate of the Chagos Islands, which along with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara) remain the last colonies in Africa. And that is why we must re-double in our efforts towards winning an equitable and non-aligned foreign policy that reflects the interests and needs of the democratic majority.
To this end, based on a campaign combining public awareness raising and principled solidarity with progressive organisations internationally, we look to take forward a movement for peace, progress, and respect between peoples – one that firmly shuts the door on imperialist bullying and menace.
Liberation unequivocally rejects the bellicose and dangerous foreign policy stance of the Trump 2.0 administration from its very outset, as well as any wider US machinations for a ‘new world order’… And we stand firm in this resolve!
Editorial, Liberation Journal, February 2025
Photo: Creative Commons / https://www.flickr.com/photos/8113246@N02/50602238753
