US imperialism sets the agenda at the Group of Seven

Once upon a time the Group of Seven (G7) had some purpose – at least for the leaders of the Western world – in providing a platform for the masters of imperialism to present a common economic front to challenge the Soviet Union and the Third World during the Cold War. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 the G7, like the Trilateral Commission and the World Economic Forum that meets in Davos, was used by the Western powers to by-pass the United Nations in their bid to rule the world at the turn of the century. 

That American dream brought death and destruction to the Balkans and the Arab world until finally brought to a halt on the streets of Baghdad and Aleppo. No-one talks about the “New World Order” these days – not even at the G7 which claims to uphold the shared values of what they call pluralism, liberal democracy, and representative government. 

These mythical “values”, which are simply a mask to cover the oppression and exploitation of capitalism at home and abroad, have few takers beyond the heartlands of the Western world that lives off the backs of the Global South it seeks to plunder and exploit.

The G7 now is simply another forum for US imperialism to set out its agenda to the leaders of the other imperialist powers – Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada – that do the bidding of whoever is in the White House at the time.

No Western get-together can be without the presence of Vladimir Zelensky and this year’s G7 in Hiroshima was no exception. Zelensky turned up in person – invited, it is said, at the initiative of the British government – to appeal for more guns and money to keep his war with the Russians going.  Zelensky says that escalation is the key to victory but he’s hardly a military expert. And in any case everybody knows he is merely parroting the wishes of the Biden administration in Washington.

This is Biden’s war. And as retired Italian general Marco Bertolini pointed out the other day, if Western arms supplies to Ukraine had stopped “the war would have ended a year ago and would not have cost hundreds of thousands of lives”. 

Zelensky says he’s a “servant of the people”. That was the name of the TV comedy show he starred in when he was still an actor. It’s now the name of Zelensky’s own political platform. And it’s true, Zelensky is a servant of the “people”. But they are clearly not Ukrainians. 

The people Zelensky serves are the Americans behind Joe Biden – the venal and aggressive war-party of American industrialists, bankers and landowners that still believes in world domination. 

There is, of course, division and opposition to the Ukraine war within the American ruling class. We see it in the dissident voices of investigative journalists, politicians, retired generals and diplomats that even include Nixon’s scheming foreign minister, Henry Kissinger. We also see it amongst the Republican opposition.

The two Republican front-runners set to challenge Biden at the next election are former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Both are opposed to Biden’s proxy war. And they’re not the only ones.

This is why Boris Johnson has gone to Texas. He’s in Dallas trying to sway leading Republican politicians, donors and businessmen away from what the war-lobby see as a deviant line from the Trump camp.

Sadly the dead hand of the bourgeois gurus, the social democrats and the bogus left that also serve imperialism has stifled open debate on the Ukraine conflict in the media and more importantly, within the labour movement itself. 

Communists like us, working with other genuine left anti-war forces, can make the difference, and indeed we must, to build the campaign to halt the British role in the war and build solidarity with the fighting people of the Donbas.