The international situation has changed compared to expectations in the first five months of 2025. The Liaison Committee for the Fourth International has some impressions to share about this period:
Trump is not a centripetal force, but a centrifugal one. He is not regaining the ground lost to China in the world market, he is not unifying the imperialist system, nor is he containing its decline. The White House is currently acting as a divisive force within the imperialist system itself, demolishing the mechanisms of domination of the US imperialist state itself, but intensifying internal political repression against the left and oppressed sectors of the US population, such as immigrant workers. In addition, he is causing damage to the accumulation of capital for Big Tech and other multinational conglomerates.
While Washington deepens the crisis of domination in the geopolitical field and in the world market, Tel Aviv is trying to accelerate its expansionist plans, as the vanguard of imperialism and Islamophobia in West Asia. Israel has broken the truce and is moving to try to crush the resistance throughout occupied Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. This is terrible. This current and pure form of fascism, expansionist and resorting to all means of annihilation of the enemy, such as genocide through starvation, is proving more effective than the tariff war. Therefore, we must still prepare for the worst. Trump may be overcome by a more Zionist MAGA right wing, as Bannon predicted.
The US has had to back down on its plans regarding Yemen and Iran. Yemen managed to establish a truce with the US, but not with Israel. The truce seems to have been Trump’s initiative. The US has had problems with losses in the Red Sea. In addition, the Houthis have threatened to retaliate against the US for the attacks they suffered, attacking Saudi oil production infrastructure. This seems to be why Trump proposed the truce with Yemen. This is another reason why Trump seems to be less interested in engaging in West Asia, he needs to concentrate resources in East Asia, but he is not making progress.
In South Korea, the coup was defeated by a series of popular protests. South Korea, like Japan, has recently been pushed to strengthen its ties with China by Trump’s tariff war. Trump also tried to get more involved in Hindustan, provoking the war between Pakistan and India, but the imperialist system has shown itself to be even more fragile to promote a third world war. In the first skirmishes of the war, Chinese weapons, used by Pakistan, defeated the best French weapons, used by India. And this first military rehearsal by Trump against China, through India, was a complete failure and Washington immediately redirected India to the truce.
In the military and technological sphere, North Korea and Iran have become essential states for the resistance, through Iranian drones and North Korean soldiers, in Russia, Yemen and central Africa. After helping Russia defeat NATO mercenaries in Kursk, North Korea has deployed 700 soldiers to Burkina Faso. In this brave African country, Traoré has just imposed an agrarian reform by presidential decree. This means that the BRICS periphery is assuming a greater anti-imperialist role.
Global resistance is advancing, taking advantage of the weaknesses and contradictions of the United States, which have been deepened by Trump. It is this geopolitical situation that communists must take advantage of in the fight to defend oppressed peoples, workers’ states and for socialism.
