The end of globalisation and a new protectionist era is emerging. For socialists the main enemy is, as always, at home, argues John Rees

We are entering a new historic era. We are leaving behind the era of globalisation and what the liberal political centre like to think of as the ‘rules-based international order’. This transition is as important as the transition from the welfare-state consensus of the post Second World War era to the neoliberal era that began with Reagan and Thatcher.

Economically, it marks the end of the globalisation era. Protectionism is not just a Trump phenomenon. Brexit is obviously a protectionist measure. The European Union is a protectionist bloc. China imposes tariffs on every American import. Europe imposes a 34% tariff on Chinese imports. It is a global phenomenon.

In the last six years, the United States has implemented the highest number of protectionist measures, with over 11,000 policies. China implemented the second highest, with 8,100 such policies. And Brazil is third with 7,700 protectionist measures. And protectionism, although it may not always directly lead to hot war, always leads to trade war.

In 2019, an analysis for the European Central Bank wrote, ‘The risk of a trade war came sharply into focus in 2018, as protectionist threats by the US Administration and its trading partners were followed by concrete actions.’ In 2023, the World Bank said: ‘Growing protectionism, trade tensions, and geopolitical challenges are raising concerns about the future of globalization.’ Last year, the OECD warned: ‘Rising trade tensions and further moves towards protectionism might disrupt supply chains, raise consumer prices, and negatively impact growth’.

This is the economic underpinning of an emerging multipolar world, a world in which America remains the most powerful state but no longer seeks to control the world order unilaterally as it did in the post Cold War period.

Politics is now catching up with economics. We can see what this is going to look like. Donald Trump has torn up the existing Middle East order dating from the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords and the supposed search for a two-state solution to the Palestinian question. And at the same time, he has torn up the post Second World War order in Europe in which America underwrote European security.

Trump’s aims are as brutal as they are simplistic. He wants to force his allies to pick up the bill for retooling the American economy and for financing the American military, at least in part. Protectionism implies relatively autarkic economic development and this has always gone with an expanded military-industrial sector.

The aim of the Ukrainian peace deal is to drive a wedge between Russia and China by pulling Russia back into a more cooperative relationship with the United States. It is in fact a reversal of the Nixon-Kissinger exploitation of the Sino-Soviet rift during the Cold War, but this time with Russia as the junior partner that might be detached from the alliance with China.

It is not an exaggeration to say that these are world historic shifts in the structure of international relations the consequences of which will unfold over many years if not decades. One consequence can be easily predicted: protectionism and trade wars will damage world trade and depress economic development. This is exactly what happened in the 1920s and contributed towards the crash of 1929 and the consequent great depression.

An even easier prediction is that increased defence expenditure will damage the already weakened welfare state in the advanced capitalist countries. The liberal and social-democratic centre, already failing and feeding the rise of the far right, will be further enfeebled.

Socialist response

The attitude of socialists is, at least in general terms, clear. The multipolar world is a world of competing capitalist states. All modern capital states combine a degree of state ownership with the private market. There is nothing qualitatively to choose between them. China may have a higher degree of state ownership but the majority of its economy is still in private hands and the most dynamic part is owned by foreign capital. It is fully integrated into the competitive mechanisms of the world economy.

In such a world we are, in general terms, opposed to the system as a whole and to all the states within it who exploit and oppress their own populations and which act to extend their own power in international relations. Our enemies’ enemy is not our friend.

But we are nevertheless citizens of particular states. We are not looking down on the world as if we were Zeus looking down on the world from Mount Olympus, dispensing moral judgements as we see fit. Our main enemy must be our own government; it is this government for which we are responsible and over which we have the most influence. And in Britain, it has a colonial past and an impure present as bloody as any nation in the world. The main enemy is at home for strategic and tactical reasons, not because social-economic characteristics of other states are different to our own.

Lack of adherence to these very simple precepts has caused enormous problems in some sections of the left during the Ukraine conflict. Some have taken opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to such lengths as to side with their own ruling classes, refusing to see the role of the Western powers in using Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia. That position has now humiliatingly been exposed as Trump sells Zelensky to Russia in order to advance his own interests, economically strip Ukraine, and blackmail the European ruling class into taking on the full cost of military expenditure on the continent.

The overwhelmingly clear lesson of the Ukraine war is that there is nothing to be gained for those who support national self-determination by relying on the imperialist powers. The United States bought and sold Zelensky. The masses of Ukrainians are now the victims of Russian occupation of 18% more territory taken during the war and of the asset stripping of their entire economy intended by Trump to be an outcome of the peace deal. Those in the anti-war movement who condemned the Russian invasion but saw American policy as a proxy war have been proved dramatically, if tragically, correct.

This is not a matter of point scoring about the past. This is a lesson which is going to be central to internationalist politics in the new world order.