> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.marxistunity.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Imperial Decline & Rising Militarism - URL: https://www.marxistunity.com/imperial-decline-rising-militarism/ - Published: 2026-11-06T18:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-06T17:59:59.000Z - Description: As its economic and military power continues to weaken, the US lashes out with increasing violence. Socialists must unite the working class to end the drive toward war. - Author: Jean A. - Tags: International, U.S. Politics A proper analysis of the current international situation must take into account the US world system of geopolitics and geoeconomics. In Marxist Unity Group’s (MUG) latest [Tasks and Perspectives](https://www.marxistunity.com/2026-tasks-perspectives/), we explained that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the world was reordered under a "unipolar Washington Consensus system," with US and European capital administering the flows of trade in such a way that industrial production was largely done by the Global South, particularly China. A global division of labor followed, with NATO states transitioning to high-end manufacturing and services while the Global South increasingly proletarianized. The rise of the US world system of capitalist imperialism has been characterized by the fall of alternative models for the organization of capital seen in the USSR and its state-capitalist bloc. This contrasts with earlier hegemonic shifts between great powers, such as between Spain and Great Britain in the 17th century or Great Britain and Germany in the 19th, in which the organization of capital was less central to the conflict than imperial partition. The end of the Cold War brought imperial repartition, and a change in the way countries subject to that division organized their capital. As the USSR’s influence waned and countries became integrated into the US global order, the way capital was organized changed fundamentally, shifting from centrally planned to market economies. The US bourgeoisie's dominance was both economic (exercised through the internationally facilitated export of US financial capital) and ideological. As often happens during bourgeois power struggles, this marked an ideological and political shift across global institutions. The beginning of this US-centric system in the 1990s and early 2000s prompted the creation of new international organizations (such as the World Trade Organization) and the use of existing ones (such as the International Monetary Fund) to reinforce the dollar as the international reserve currency and secure US financial supremacy. For states across the world, new standards governing membership in, access to loans from, and assistance provided by international financial institutions drove the implementation of austerity measures, privatization policies, and the concession of domestic resources to US and other capital from the developed world. Under the Global War on Terror, these relationships have been subject to greater militarization. The expansion of security and surveillance coordination has strengthened the capacity of the US military and Atlanticist currents in the ruling classes of US-aligned countries. This new international order creates contradictions. Offshoring has developed parts of East Asia, including China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Yet, it has simultaneously created profound global divisions. Ironically, many of these contradictions have appeared in the developed countries that prompted offshoring, such as the US, where the decline of automotive, coal, and steel sectors has led to paralyzing job loss and inequality in many regions. The continued exploitation of resources and populations abroad has not stopped either. Instead, covert and overt missions by imperialist powers have kept developing countries in poverty. Meanwhile, the domestic bourgeoisie is forced to either collaborate or compete with foreign capital. Driven by its supporters' pseudo-religious devotion to neoliberalism and a reliance on war and exploitation for profit, this global economic system has proven damaging and unsustainable. This unsustainability has led to widespread questioning of the US global order and the current organization of capital. In some parts of the world, the system has begun to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. ### Crises of the U.S. World System The weakening of the US economy's gravitational pull has coincided with a generational crisis in the US military. As the collapse of the Soviet Union removed any competitors to the Air Force and Navy, the “peace dividend” (a term for the lower necessity of defense spending) degraded US industrial capacity and fed fantastical dreams of railguns and laser-armed battleships, leading to a class of cruisers costing more [than one billion dollars per ship](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/uss-zumwalt/?ref=marxistunity.com). Overall, the US military has been reshaped by the demands of the War on Terror, making it a poor tool for Trump’s purposes of direct interstate confrontation. The need to insulate it from popular dissent has also led to a force composed mostly of mercenaries and allied forces, with an organizational focus on leading from behind with force multipliers like military satellites. The demands of anti-insurgency operations have weakened the elements most necessary for peer-to-peer battle, such as artillery and a strong navy and air force. As a result, the military cannot meaningfully assert national hegemony without other institutions the US built around itself. This contradiction—an anti-insurgency military attempting to wage traditional interstate battles—is one of the reasons for the sluggish nature of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran compared to the successful covert blitz in Venezuela just a few months earlier. Moreover, the 2008 and 2020 economic crises have greatly decreased confidence in the ability of US capital to maintain its hegemony. The rise of alternatives such as China’s One Belt One Road Initiative and anti-dollar organizations like the BRICS has removed any illusion that US hegemony is permanent. The US bourgeoisie and its political castes know this. In response, more extreme measures are being used to counter emerging powers. [Marxist Unity Group predicted](https://www.marxistunity.com/2026-tasks-perspectives/) that come 2026, the second Trump administration would resort to extreme military force. We understood that despite Trump's nominally “pacifist” electoral campaign, his administration would need to maintain US imperialist interests. This analysis was proven correct after the US brutally abducted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in order to reassert regional control and force out Chinese capital under the guise of fighting drug smuggling. Some months later, misleading reassurances from Israeli intelligence led the administration to launch a full-scale war against Iran, rattling the death knells of Trumpian "pacifism." Coupled with the two-faced human rights militarism of the Democrats, Maduro's abduction and the Iran War prove that the bourgeoisie cannot find a peaceful way to manage the global capitalist system. However, the downfall of US hegemony will not be an unqualified good. Already, European powers are working to replace increasingly unreliable American support systems, as seen in France's [development of military satellites](https://www.satellitetoday.com/connectivity/2026/06/16/eutelsat-secures-first-order-under-french-defense-agreement/?ref=marxistunity.com). Arms races are[ multiplying](https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/2-north-african-military-powers-spend-dollar317-billion-into-an-escalating-arms-race/5861t30?ref=marxistunity.com) while the international community's ability to negotiate solutions is declining. As US hegemony decays, no power seems interested in replacing it. With chaos creeping in through the seams of the old order’s decline, we desperately need an international organization capable of protecting the global working class against militarism. ### Our Chief Task as Socialists in the US Despite its decline over the last two decades, the US is still the leading power on the global stage. For this reason, the opposition of internationalists inside the US is particularly important for building working-class power. As an organized tendency within the Democratic Socialists of America, MUG sees itself as a faction and not a party. This distinction is important, as change is driven by the political power wielded to enact it. The capacity to advance internationalist objectives therefore depends on how we mobilize DSA's organizational resources. It's important to recognize that DSA is not (yet) a revolutionary party. Neither is it a truly bourgeois party. Instead, due to our fiscal independence, we have become an aggregator of deviant politics from across the national political spectrum, uniting all those who are dissatisfied with the bourgeois establishment. This has allowed DSA to achieve historic growth, exceeding 120,000 members in 2026 and becoming one of the largest socialist organizations in US history. Through DSA, MUG aims to unite the socialist movement with the labor movement, with the hope of eventually expelling militarism’s material influence from the latter. As Marxists, we understand that the interests of the entire working class are often pitted against those of a subset of the class. This conflict frustrates the development of a socialist party and the growth of the whole working class into an actor that can fight for its own interests—a vital part of the internationalist struggle against militarism and the chaos arising out of imperial decline. Recently, DSA took an important step toward this unity by creating the [Labor for an Arms Embargo](https://labor.dsausa.org/campaigns/labor-for-an-arms-embargo/?ref=marxistunity.com) campaign within the National Labor Commission. Here, DSA trade unionists and labor activists are organizing to build an anti-war and anti-militarist sentiment among logistics workers to stop arms shipments to and from the US and fight the empire from inside the belly of the beast. MUG has long advocated for such a campaign. Just like our 20th-century forerunners, we must adopt a strategy of revolutionary defeatism, or opposition to our country’s imperial ambitions. Such a strategy is the most powerful weapon the working class can wield against empire. We can use it to break the machine of global imperialism and fight the folly of remilitarization during imperial decline. As socialists, we believe in the working class’s struggle for a democratic and socialist system. The US imperial order is collapsing into militarism while global warming accelerates. To oppose our country's imperial project, we must develop an international struggle against militarism as a whole. We fight for democratic socialism and an end to imperialism, knowing that the only alternative is barbarism. Working people of all countries, unite! Light & Air / Marxist Unity Group Liked what you read? Subscribe to stay plugged in. [Subscribe ](#/portal/signup)