 Felly mae'n ddy brit rydym ni i gwneud allwAmericanid eu rhain rydym ni. Fe Lennon yn eistedd daring o'r cy Musell Ymysgolol pan wybodaethabiol yma does yn thymesu thri. Fe'r cyf lyc yn eu connrif minus eich dynnu i fath amいくol. Mae'r cysylltu y gallarion a yn bwrdd ym snubwchol phackedig, mae amgylcheddyn nhw ythafOLD yn fwrdd y cerddysgol, gyd yn gysylltu'n bwyntau. Mae gennym gyd gyd yn fawr ddiwrnod o ar safydd. Yn gallwch ar Marxys, dyma'r rwyf wedi'u cyfwledig y cerddysgol, y mae'r rôl y mae'r gweithas ffordd yn yr ardal iawn, felly rwy'n gwneud datblygu yn anoddol, Ond y tro, mae'r rolaeth y gwaith, y rolaeth y gwaith o'r rolaeth o'r stag o'r hreidiau hynny yn ymgyrch. Felly, rydyn ni i ddim yn y cwntech o'r ddysgu'r ddysgu. Os y cwestiynau o'r ddysgu'r ddysgu, mae'n ddod i'r ddechreuio cyffredineth mewn i'r ddysgu'r ddod? Mae'r ddysgu'r ddod yn gallu'r ddod i'r ddod i'r ddod i'r cyfasol byddai'r cyffredineth eich ddod i'r ddod i'r ddod i dechreuio i'r ddod, eich gweithio ar gyfer gweithio'r dynysgol i'r press i'w krith, ac i wneud. Dyma ar gweithio'n trwm ar gyfer dda hiposig hefyd, dwi cyfleu arna'r mor drws. Dysgu'r Bryn Frydan yn gallu gweithio arw'ch rôl. Diolch i'r lleidio ar hynny i'w gaethu fenol. Ryn nhw wedi gofyn arna, meddwl i'w ddim yn gwneud o gution on the fire if you like of the situation in that region but at the same time of course he's sent this very powerful armada to the Korean Peninsula and he's been threatening that if the Chinese don't do something about North Korea then we're going to do something effectively implying that the US would strike North Korea first, a pre-emptive strike and in the same interview actually in which he was talking about how much of a smart cookie Kim Jong Un is he also said that but at the same time of course the outcome of this could be nuclear war and millions of people would die so he's not giving a very clear consistent message it doesn't seem like he's particularly in control of the situation but of course this is what Trump is like this attitude is not confined to this particular question he generally gives that impression and in fact on the question of war in particular we know to expect that from politicians right blustering rhetoric Tory ministers or ex Tory ministers saying that Britain might go to war with Spain it's nonsense that they talk and the media of course tries to sensationalise these things for the sake of getting hits on their websites or newspaper sales and of course we understand, little Marxists understand like we do with everything else that war or anything like this isn't about individuals individuals play a role, personalities of course play a role, individuals do make history to a certain extent and within certain limits that's the point so we have to approach the question of will there be another world war or any potential conflict within the confines of historical materialism of the actual general historical processes that are taking place and especially the political processes that are taking place and politics is of course driven by much broader questions and war is a question of politics it's not something separate to politics I'm sure many of you have heard of a military theorist called Klauswitz who said that war is just the continuation of politics by other means so to really understand what's going on in the world, the international world relations so we really need to understand the general political context in which all of this is taking place and for us then we need to look at in general world relations but also the history of the world wars for example of the past to be able to answer this question of do we think there will be a third world war so on that point what was it that caused the first world war and the second world war well I think that is a subject in itself of course that we could spend an hour or so talking about but we don't have that kind of time so I'll be necessarily brief but I think you can say that the first world war was called there was a development of capitalism from the industrial revolution up until 1914 capitalism was advancing by leaps and bounds and new capitalist powers were coming onto the stage of history in particular of course Germany, Japan, these kind of countries down the United States and capitalism developed to such and capitalism was developing spreading its tentacles all over the world in the way that Marx and Engels predicted in the communist manifesto, globalisation and so on and imperialism and the result was that come 1914 with the new capitalist powers on the stage of history there was a need for a re-division of the world amongst the powerful imperialist nations and that's really what the first world war was about, it was a conflict for the re-division of the world amongst these powers and crucially it was a direct clash between those powers, it wasn't done by proxies or anything else it was a direct clash between the most powerful nations and you can say that World War II under the impact of the crash of 1929 this was a continuation really of the attempt at re-division, the battle for control over markets that was started in the first world war okay so on that basis why haven't we had a third world war already it's not as if international conflict has disappeared, it's not as if the question of imperialist control over certain markets has vanished why hasn't there been a third world war before now I think there's a number of points that are important to consider with this obviously since the end of the second world war, since 1945 you had the domination or you had the domination for a whole period of the United States and the USSR and these two blocks, these two powers really dominated the whole world and of course there was rivalry, there was competition yes but not in the same way that there was rivalry and competition between the powers just before the first world war just before the first world war these powers were rapidly developing capitalism was driving everything forwards and they were all in a relatively powerful situation and so they had to battle out for domination, for control over world markets what you had at the end of the second world war, it's a very different period it's the period after which that fight has taken place after which the powerful nations, the previously powerful nations have been slogging out for years, for decades and have exhausted each other militarily and economically and everything else domination under those circumstances is very different to domination in the previous period and it makes it easier to dominate basically the world on that basis it gives a certain stability to the world and that's what you had, whilst you had this rivalry you did have a certain stability in knowing that there were two powers which were able to sit astride the ruins of the first and second world war the ruins of the old empires and then coupled with that you also had relative economic stability in this period there was no need to conquer new markets to carve out new spheres of influence there was obviously a battle over these things but again it was not the same as the conditions before the first world war and there was another factor as well to take into account was the ruling class, they learnt from the experience of these wars particularly they learnt how these wars ended or what the outcome, what the product of these wars was in the political sphere and the social sphere particularly the impact on the working class how did the first world war end? it ended first of all on the basis of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and secondly on the basis of revolution in Germany in 1918, 1923 repeated attempts of the working class taking power in that country which failed obviously but that's really what brought the first world war to an end and again at the end of the second world war what happened you saw a whole wave all around the world of colonial revolutions revolutions in the ex-colonial countries trying to shake off the power of their imperial masters and Lenin points out he said war is the midwife to revolution and the ruling class know this, they've learnt this this has been the case, this was the case with those world wars but it's been the case with smaller wars as well and they're wary of this fact they don't enter into wars on that basis very lightly I think also another reason why we haven't yet seen a third world war is the proliferation of nuclear weapons it's almost a contradictory, a dialectical sort of contradiction where you think actually the capacity to destroy people to beat other people in wars has developed so far and it's now possessed of course by multiple countries that actually it pushes world war off the table, off the cards because on the basis of nuclear war it becomes extremely expensive not least politically they would be very hard for a politician in Russia or the United States or Britain or any other nuclear nation to justify a conflict with another major nuclear power because of the inevitability of retaliation you would effectively be asking for a mandate from people to wipe out one of your own cities because that would be the result of Britain launched a nuclear weapon against another nuclear power, another major power there would be a retaliatory strike well no one is going to back that kind of politics no one's going to support that kind of politics they will do anything they can to stop that happening if war is the midwifer of revolution then nuclear war is even more so if conventional war is the midwifer of nuclear war even more so people will not stand for politicians who of course will be safe in their bunkers and everything else they will not stand for that kind of politics so politically it's impossible really for the ruling class to be a clash between two dominant nuclear powers for example for there to be world war in the way that we understand the first world war and the second world war but of course economically it's very expensive as well you're talking about sustaining massive economic businesses will be wiped out, workers will be wiped out there will be enormous economic losses to be borne and again that's not in the interest of the ruling class that's the kind of crisis that they will not be able to survive and so of course what you saw in the aftermath of the second world war is therefore the war becoming cold it wasn't a conflict between major powers it was fought through proxies, through side shows which actually involved the major powers but not in direct conflict with one another, Vietnam, Cuba this kind of thing is what you saw in this period and then of course you had the collapse of the USSR and the idea, the thought of the third world war was pushed even further down the agenda because the collapse of the USSR obviously it was a shot in the arm for capitalism both economically, there was a whole market that previously had not been open to capital investment foreign direct investment that then was open to that kind of investment well that's a shot in the arm economically also of course ideologically this was the end of history, the end of communism socialism and all the rest of capitalism free market capitalism had triumphed and so that gave a bit of impetus to capitalism in general and particularly the power of the United States US imperialism which was able to consolidate its position begin expanding NATO for example further and further encroaching into Eastern Europe and the spheres of influence that Russia had previously held obviously all of this pushed world like the United States was completely dominant and World War 3 was very much off the cards on that basis now that, on that last point that is no longer the case well it is the case it is true to say that the United States is by far the most militarily powerful United States imperialism is the most powerful force on the planet militarily, of course economically as well there's no question about this US imperialism is the most powerful force around but what has changed or rather what is becoming increasingly clear the change that is becoming increasingly clear is the relative decline of US imperialism compared to what it once was and in my opinion this is really epoch defining for us we are living through the period of the decline of US imperialism and this is having an enormous impact I think on world relations this is the prism through which we have to understand world relations now this isn't a brand new phenomenon obviously the limits of US imperialism were revealed by the mess of the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war this sort of thing the inability of the United States to project its kind of image of liberal utopia, liberal capitalism on to these countries and the general failures of those invasions but I would also say that it's not by chance that this relative decline of US imperialism is coming to the fore and is particularly acute in a period of economic crisis because post World War II the United States accounted for 50% of world GDP that's now halved to 25% that's a massive decline in that period of time it used to be in that period with the Marshall Plan and everything else the United States was the world's biggest creditor lent out the most money and today it's the world's biggest debtor it's the country in the world that owes the most money to other countries this is a massive reversal of its economic position and Lenin said that politics is concentrated economics and so understanding the economic change or the change in the economic power or the economic position of the United States is important to understanding its political position and the strength of its imperial power perhaps the most significant change in US politics is the fact that there isn't really the political will for the foreign adventures I mean there is and this again is tied up entirely with the question of the crisis of capitalism the economic crisis of capitalism this questioning of the establishment this mistrust of politicians and the state in general of course the army and the military is a big part of the state this is what Trump and Sanders represents and you're seeing the same thing everywhere else there is this general mistrust of the state coupled with the hatred, the anger over the Iraq and Afghan wars and the lies that were told in order to convince people to support those wars this has all now been exposed to Britain as well as the United States of course you have the obvious juxtaposition of crashing living standards declining living standards people out of work and everything else and the enormous amount that it costs to send troops to go to war and the production of jets and aircraft carriers and so on and all this was then reflected of course with Obama's failed attempt to get a vote through congress to bomb Syria and all this anger was then reflected in that once upon a time the United States could march into whatever country even Iraq and Afghanistan just sort of wandered in with little opposition at home but now Obama wasn't even asking to send troops he was just asking to drop some bombs and he didn't even feel confident enough getting a vote through congress on that basis and that actually I'll come back to this more it shows the potential for the working class to assert itself against the imperialist adventures and to assert itself against war and conflict on any scale even in the major imperialist countries so this question of the decline of US imperialism we should ask then what does this mean for world relations is this situation with North Korea an indication of a crisis which is going to open up a battle to re-divide world markets is that what Syria represents is that what the Ukraine situation in 2014 represents does that mean can we look at this and say this is a crisis an attempt by the ruling class to re-divide the markets among themselves does this mean therefore that there will be a world war three well I'd say I'd say that the answer to the first part of that decline of US imperialism re-division of markets I'd say the answer is probably yes to the first part of that I'd say the answer to the second part does this mean that there will be a third world war because that's what causes the second world war the first world war or anything else I'd say the answer to that is probably no so I'll explain those things first of all on this first question this decline of US imperialism as US imperialism is cracking up or as it's disintegrating these cracks are opening up into which other powers which are developing economically are able to step I'm specifically talking of course almost obviously this is Russia and China so Russia in 2008 if you remember invaded Georgia or sent tanks into Georgia drew a line in the sand basically because NATO had been continually expanding into Russian spheres of influence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia could do nothing about it it was being humiliated at every turn basically as NATO continually expanded eastwards until actually it was ending up with NATO bases on its border and this sort of thing the Baltic states all joined NATO and so on and there was a move to get Georgia into this as well and Russia in 2008 it really drew the line it said enough is enough you're not coming any further you're not having Georgia in your alliance and Russia was able to get NATO to back off on that basis to get the west to back off Russia actually won that fight over the question of Georgia and you saw exactly the same thing with Ukraine in 2014 a country which Russia has traditionally considered its sphere of influence it was going to sign Yanukovych was going to sign a pact with the EU if you remember and there were these or rather he was going to sign he was going to sign a pact with the EU then he said he was going to sign a pact with Russia and then there were these there was effectively the civil war broke out and Russia annexed the Crimea and this sort of thing and it has prevented again Russia has humiliated the west on the question of Ukraine it's flexed, it's musted, it's asserted itself it's been able basically to point out or to bring to the surface to exploit the fact that the United States has overstretched itself it's not able to bring these countries into its sphere of influence it's not able to commit troops on the ground or even the kind of political resources necessary to bring these countries in and Russia has correctly identified that this crack is opening up and it is opportunistically Putin is opportunistically moved in and reasserted Russian influence in these places and this is a real blow to Western imperialism to NATO of course NATO is just the play thing effectively or was dominated by the United States and NATO's response obviously to all this has been pretty pathetic they've posted 4,000 troops to Eastern Europe even when the most conservative estimates say that you'd need about 40,000 troops to stop any kind of Russian invasion if that were to actually happen and on top of that the alliance is split it's an important point about the power of Western imperialism power of NATO the NATO alliance is not as powerful as it once was Germany, France, Italy in the last few years all have suggested that they want slightly closer ties with Russia even despite NATO's apparent opposition deployment of troops and so on to growing Russian influence Britain meanwhile has at the last meeting of the G7 Boris Johnson was pushing for harsher sanctions on Russia and was completely ignored humiliatingly so the French Foreign Minister after that meeting was asked well wasn't the question of more sanctions on Russia raised and he said yeah well only Johnson was talking about that and nobody else so it's definitely not going to happen it was completely dismissed but there is this kind of split in the NATO alliance there as well and how could it be otherwise the basis, the conditions in which NATO was formed were conditions of cold war and of economic prosperity and now that is not the situation anymore increasingly Germany for example is reliant on Russian gas increasingly and the different states are trying to deal with the economic crisis in different ways protecting their own countries their own national bourgeoisies and this means that they will have different strategies and how could the NATO alliance really last in any meaningful way under these circumstances I think this question of splits and crisis within the NATO alliance is only going to continue in the future the biggest crack in NATO though is Turkey Turkey is a NATO member and it's cracking really in the face of again this decline of US imperialism but also the strength the relative strength of Russia is not even close to being as strong as the United States militarily certainly not economically it faces the economic crisis of its own it faces sanctions and everything else we shouldn't get carried away with this but nevertheless it is able to assert itself more than it was once able to in the face of the decline of the United States and if you remember in 2015 maybe it was last year Russia sorry Turkey shot down that Russian jet and this was all part of the conflict in Syria but it did that Turkey didn't like the fact that Russia was going into Syria because it disrupted Erdogan's plans for the region so they downed this Russian jet in the hope that that would provoke Russia into attacking Turkey and Turkey as a NATO member could call on all the other NATO members to go to war against Russia but of course Putin was far too clever for that and he didn't ignore it he imposed extremely harsh economic sanctions on Turkey and wiped out some of his proxies in Syria and NATO did nothing NATO refused to act at all in the way that Turkey wanted it to and this has pushed Erdogan away from the alliance a little bit it's still a member of course but what you saw is that Turkey actually then did almost a 180 degree turn and has actually been part of the negotiations the deals over Syria with Russia and that's a major blow against the NATO alliance that's a major, a really important military power Turkey spends a lot on its military really important military power leaning, it hasn't switched sides it's not on either side really it's balancing between the two sides but he's moving, he's leaning more towards Russia than he had done in the past now the reason for that is that Russia calls the shots in Syria that's what Erdogan's interested in he's interested in defeating the Kurds in Rajava and the YPG and so on and he recognises that this is a recognition of the fact that the United States does not call the shots in Syria Russia calls the shots there and actually there was a peace conference a round table discussion to try and sort out the conflict in Syria and it was the first such conference involving countries in the Middle East to which the United States was explicitly not invited involved Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran these kind of countries the United States was not invited because it does not control the situation at all in Syria none of the people that it backs have any chance of getting anywhere of holding any power and this is a major turning point really that conference is a major defeat, humiliation for US imperialism and a major victory really for Russia and this question of Turkey leaning towards that side is a symptom of that because the point now obviously the major conflict when it comes to Syria between the United States and Russia is the question does the Assad family remain in power Russia says yes and the United States says no but at the moment now after the fall of Aleppo in the beginning of this year I think there is no way that Assad can be beaten by the rebel forces that are in Syria at the moment his forces now have controlled about 70% of the country and it's thanks to the backing of Russia largely and other countries in the region but this also the continued regime of Assad in Syria is an insult it's a humiliation for the US ruling class it's also worth pointing out that actually not only can the United States not effectively intervene in the situation in Syria but every attempt that it does make to intervene in the situation actually damages it has damaged its own interests it's actually set itself back repeatedly in its efforts because what it's found is that it has basically had to make alliances with various different groups because the groups that it backs keep failing or being defeated or pushed back by other forces it's ended up fighting with blocks which are in three different alliances it's ended up backing people who are opposed to Saudi Arabia to be a United States ally it's ended up backing people backing the Kurds for example and this is obviously alienating Turkey but it needs Turkey on side to fight effectively against the Russians and this kind of thing and so everything they've done in Syria has burnt bridges with their traditional allies in the region and it's left itself very vulnerable no wonder then Donald Trump in his campaigning really expressed the feeling of some elements of the U.S. ruling class this kind of knee-jerk reaction if we don't want to get involved just leave into it, I want nothing to do with that because everything they do in that region is wrong and that is a classic symptom of a imperialism in crisis if you like yes United States imperialism is the most powerful on the planet but it doesn't mean it's the most powerful in every region on earth and in Syria in particular Russia has been able to assert itself much more than the United States but of course when it comes to the Middle East the United States has actually slipped slightly in terms of its strategic importance the United States itself is now the second largest producer of oil in the world thanks to their fracking right and so the strategic importance of the Middle East has slipped down slightly for them we shouldn't over exaggerate that as well it's still important but nevertheless in comparison to that or rather the question of China in comparison to the question of Russia and the Middle East is much more important Russia and the Middle East really and the problems that they represent militarily economically and the question in diplomatic and world relations the problem that they represent really is nothing compared to China China obviously has been developing economically and it's now a very powerful economic state its power is very strong in particular in the region around the south China sea as you would expect and it's really asserting this dominance now politically and militarily this economic dominance politically and militarily for example by building by its program of island building in the south China sea it's effectively building islands in bits of water that are not necessarily definitely theirs under international law and it's just claiming it as their well that's our island therefore all the water around it as well and they're basically trying to take over the south China sea on that basis but more than that they're also pursuing this policy now of trying to win traditional US allies in the region to their side so for example the president of the Philippines relatively newly elected Duterte he is a real piece of work he's a real gangster much more of a gangster than Donald Trump this is a guy who admits to having been involved in drive by shootings and this sort of thing and like the murder of drug addicts and stuff in the Philippines in the town where he was where he was mayor I think but this guy is he is trump like but he's also extremely hostile to the United States now the reason for that I mean there is his character he's just generally a belligerent character he's a China after he became president he basically said it's the Philippines, Russia and China against the United States I want nothing more to do with the United States he also called it in another point because Obama was criticising him for this war he was carrying out on drug dealers and all sorts of human rights abuses and this sort of thing so his response was to call Obama a son of a whore literally those were the words that he used this guy is completely over the top but obviously he represents a certain layer a powerful layer within the ruling class of the Philippines who have recognised that China is in their economic interests to ally themselves with China United States is not their main trading partner Philippines is an ally of the United States for historical reasons on the base of historical military victories in that region but now China is the dominant economic power and is more in their interests to ally themselves with China and sure enough on this visit that Diote made to China they signed loads of economic agreements rights were opened up to the disputed islands allowing Filipino fishing boats to go and fish there and this sort of thing basically the message that China was sending was if you ditch the United States and come and be friends with us then we will invest loads of money in your country and you can have access to all these islands in the sea that we've been building or that we've been annexing or claiming or whatever this was the clear message that China was sending and the Philippines is not the only example of this in Thailand a few years ago 2014 maybe somebody else knows better than that maybe 2013 there was a coup in Thailand and basically the coup was for kind of internally it wasn't US and China it wasn't moving internally to house this particular person but the effect of the coup was that the US proxy if you like the US ally was ousted and the military came into power and the United States angry that their ally had been ousted from power began to criticize the coup not too harshly but criticized nevertheless well that obviously pushed the Thai coup leaders the generals and so on away from the United States and China seeing its opportunity pounced and welcomed the new government in Thailand and this is what has basically been this is the MO of the Chinese ruling class basically they're not openly invading countries or aggressively using aggressive diplomacy necessarily but what they're doing even with countries like Vietnam Cambodia South Korea these are all historically staunch US allies but basically what they're doing is giving them their economic power they're also asserting their military power last year the Japanese had to scramble more jets to head off incursions into their airspace by Chinese jets than at any point ever in history it's gone up dramatically hundreds more incursions hundreds more jets were scrambled than in any previous year it's asserting itself militarily and economically and then politically it's basically it's pointing to the inability of the United States to intervene in Syria to protect its allies the inability of the United States to intervene in Ukraine to protect its allies and it's basically saying look they're just giving them a nudge and a wink every time that happens and just saying look the United States aren't what they used to be they're not all they're cracked up to be we are the ones who can actually protect you and your interests to join us and this is causing splits in the ruling classes of these countries and inevitably you're seeing a pro-Chinese faction developing all of these but even these strong U.S. countries strongly pro U.S. allies we shouldn't again we shouldn't get carried away all the travel is not in one direction in Myanmar for example the opposite thing has happened the border is China traditionally it's always been pro-Chinese the U.S. are in the process now trying to win it back over it's not all in one direction but it is having an effect there's recently a regional meeting of all these countries in this region traditionally these meetings have always condemned in one form or another the Chinese practice of building islands in the South China Sea and in this meeting that happened this month like last few weeks I can't remember exactly when they didn't condemn it almost no mention was made of it which is demonstrative again of the fact that Chinese interests are being considered more and more important and not upsetting the Chinese is becoming more and more important for all of these countries now this then is the political context in which we have to look at what's happening in North Korea and we can try and make sense of that situation obviously Trump himself he's really been the guy provoking this situation provoking the rising tensions in the country in the region he faces a dual pressure of economic discontent of domestic discontent rather and growing Chinese power and he already identified the growing power of China in his campaign as something that he didn't like reflecting a certain feeling amongst the U.S. rule and class now he obviously needs to distract to a certain extent from his failure to deliver much of what he promised in his campaign he's done a lot of pressure domestically about his associates dealings with Russia and all this sort of thing he needs to distract from all that North Korea is an obvious target, a clear enemy that's obviously true but more interesting from the point of view of world relations is the fact that he inevitably sees this and clearly sees this as an opportunity to leverage China to have a bit of a go at China this is actually not a million miles from Obama's policy this is an important point to note Obama had this policy of pivot to Asia his policy of the Trans the TTP the everyone but China trade deal exclude China, attack China, pressure China into backing off on its or trying to defeat it economically well this is Trump trying to do a similar thing in a Trump sort of style much more belligerant much more angry much more noise and fury but it's actually a similar policy which again points this back that world relations and war and conflict it's not about one individual's approach to this whole thing there are strategic economic political class interests at work which pushed individuals in particular directions really I think Trump sees this North Korea as an opportunity to flex US muscles in the region actually perhaps this is giving him too much credit perhaps him and his advisers haven't thought this through or suspect they're cleverer than many people give them credit for but you could even see this as the United States trying to employ the same strategy that China uses on US allies in the region the United States is being belligerant towards North Korea and is putting pressure on China to put pressure on North Korea to slow down or stop its nuclear program implement sanctions against North Korea this sort of thing so that the United States can then say look North Korea they're an ally of China but as soon as the US starts flexing its muscles they buckle to what we want because we're the most powerful people in the region on that basis is trying to shore up its allies against the Chinese he's winking and nudging over what's happening in Ukraine Syria and everything else I think there's probably an element of that strategy there but you can really see the strategy of Trump and you can really see his gangsterism as well with this the fact that he launched those 59 missiles into Syria whilst he was having dinner with the Chinese president now that's not by coincidence and even actually I think the fact that he could remember the details of the dinner but couldn't remember the country he was launching the missiles into I think that actually speaks but you can put it down to him being an idiot and clearly that is a symptom of that but I think there's actually even more to it than that he remembers the details of the dinner with the president because that was the important thing it doesn't matter where they launched the missiles the point is it's a message that the United States is going to launch missiles at people that's what we do, we will assert our power it doesn't matter where they couldn't do it on North Korea you launch missiles at North Korea you'll get a nuclear weapon back you do it to Syria, they can't do anything they're completely defenseless it was sending a message you can see that kind of gangsterism you're enjoying your chocolate cake there Mr President let me tell you something we've just launched 59 missiles into Syria got anything to say about that it's real gangsterism I think this is the game that he's playing and then of course he's using the fact that there are these raised tensions in the region to ring round all the he's had phone calls with South Korea, with Thailand he's even invited to deter the Filipino president to the United States now in the context of all of this, he's using the instability to try and reassert a bit of US control and his big armada has been flying joint training exercises with Japanese and South Korean jets he's really flexing US missiles in the region basically in response to this ongoing policy of China to try and win people over to their side of the fence of course he's going about it like a bull in a china shop he's claiming that South Korea are going to have to pay for the missile defence shield that they're setting up to protect against North Korea and he throws in the odd random comment about meeting Kim Jong-un and this sort of thing which only conserves to confuse the whole situation but I think overall none of this should surprise this strategy of the United States of Trump shouldn't really surprise us because really as its power is declining relatively speaking it is being backed into a corner by China you're seeing the old world refuse to give way to the new world and inevitably under those circumstances the old world feeling its power slipping from its grasp it will lash out in quite unpredictable and quite dangerous ways and that really I think is what this ratcheting up of tensions with North Korea represents it's the United States ruling class expressing itself in Trump's own inimitable style lashing out against the fact that it can feel its power slipping from its grasp but can't really do anything about it and of course this just means that that there will the future does hold massive instability for that region in particular but world relations in general of course you can't rule out conflict of some kind these things that is potentially going to happen and of course conflicts like that and particularly whipping up nationalist movements and this sort of thing in certain countries like the United States vibe a position in these various different countries in Southeast Asia they will back different proxies and they will be based as these things always are on certain religious sectarian lines or nationalistic lines or whatever it is there are always things like that in every country that you can use to base yourself on but they can develop a life of their own and especially when the working class is involved these things can spiral out of the control of the ruling class and you can on that basis see massive instability the question is there is obviously a question about China's position on North Korea, I don't have time to go into it but China is in favour basically of North Korea remaining as it is it can use a slightly unstable slightly mad dictator in the region not least as a buffer between it and the United States forces and bases that are stationed in South Korea the question is out of all this instability which is inevitable in the future will there be a third world war I think the answer to that as I mentioned earlier is no because the first world war broke out the first world war broke out at a time when capitalism had been going through a period of boom the powerful capitalist nations were extremely powerful they were at their peak if you like whereas today the most powerful capitalist nation the most powerful imperialist nation is in massive amounts of debt a crippling debt to the second most powerful economically speaking anyway the second most powerful nation that is the United States being in debt to China that's not a picture of enormous strength you're not going to see a conflict between a creditor nation and a debtor nation in that way it's not in the interest necessarily of either of them China obviously in turn of course has a massive economic crisis looming it's got massive overproduction enormous debts at every level of the state and in private companies as well so they're not likely to want to go to a war on a large scale and the crisis is likely to pre-empt any attempt to do that anyway because that would be very expensive at a time when the Chinese economy is facing enormous crisis above all though I think the most important point is the fact that the working class is particularly strong today certainly numerically stronger than it's ever been at any point in history like China for example where you've seen this enormous over a long period of time this enormous movement of people from the countryside into the cities the development then of a proletarian a working class and we've seen before the capacity of the working class the ability of the working class to oppose war to fight against war the first world war broke out at a time when capitalism had been in a boom the leadership of the working class had been bought off convinced of how great capitalism was, how you could win reforms and this sort of thing it was coming out of a period of capitalist development fast capitalism now today we're not in that period very few people have many illusions anymore very few people would agree that capitalism is the best system that we could possibly have that there's no problem with capitalism that we must fight to defend capitalism we must fight to defend our national capitalism no, not only have we had enormous crisis massive economic global crisis since 2008 since the 1980s for example in this country many other major developed capitalist countries there's been privatisations and outsourcing and slashing of wages and conditions and everything else there wouldn't be that desire for a defence of the capitalist system anymore and of course at the end of the first world war you saw the working class ending those wars as I mentioned earlier with Russia and Germany much more recently you saw enormous protests against the Iraq war and you saw enormous protests against the bombing of Syria and that latter one of course was successful and these were mass mobilisations of ordinary people ordinary people can intervene on the stage of history and prevent this sort of thing happening and I'd say that to date the more global and the more deadly the war the more likely it would be to provoke massive political opposition and so as I mentioned earlier if you're talking about a nuclear war which is what a clash between a world war as in a clash a direct clash between major and periodist powers that would be a nuclear war and if you saw that kind of thing I think there would be opposition to life of which we haven't seen before even like it wouldn't the opposition to the Iraq war would pale in comparison not only would there be sympathy for the ordinary people who would be killed by the nuclear bombs that are being dropped but obviously people would be furious at the thought that this is obviously going to provoke a retaliation and people wouldn't stand for that of course there's also now in the question of the United States the other factor that's thrown into the mix is Donald Trump himself who actually stood on a platform of not getting involved in these kind of wars of the United States becoming a bit more isolationist so any move at all towards any kind of warfare for him is going to undermine his support half the country hates him already he betrays the platform this is going to undermine him even more so he will face even more political opposition at home I think you can see the impotence of imperialism in the face of massive working class massive demonstrations and protests and so on you can actually see that in 2011 in the revolutions in the Arab world in North Africa and the Middle East and so on because what you saw there is in Egypt a mass movement toppling Mubarak a key ally of the United States and in Libya you saw a mass movement which actually forced the western powers to intervene against Gaddafi who again was an ally of theirs so you can actually see that it's not just a rival imperialism, it's not just Chinese imperialism you can pick off key US allies it's actually a mass movement of the working class which can also do the same thing but of course you also see in Syria in particular the consequences of what happens when the old regime collapses if there isn't a working class party a working class organisation ready to take power and implement its own government, its own system sees power for itself you see other regional powers trying to step in Iran, Turkey Saudi Arabia, Russia of course all trying to step in and actually you see that whilst the working class might be capable just on the base of a spontaneous mass movement might be capable of destroying the old order reducing it to ruins literally reducing it to rubble what you can't or what doesn't happen automatically on the base of a spontaneous mass movement unless it has a kind of a working class party an organisation then you actually see that it's unable to replace that with anything and reaction scoops in actually the ruins that were created by the first situation is what remains and this is kind of what you have in Syria anyway to fight against that of course is with a revolutionary Marxist organisation fighting for socialism and the tradition of that does exist in the region there are elements of that in for example Nazarism, Pan-Arabism not all of those traditions but some of them the best traditions of those movements there is a history of that the history of the region of the Middle East is not one of as the bourgeois often paint it action and lack of democracy in anything else, no there is a tradition of left-wing ideas and so on and that is what really needs to be revived and that's what's lacking in these places at the moment so finally then just to sum up the process of the decline of US imperialism it is slow it's not going to happen overnight it's not going to happen the next year or even 5 years or 10 years or anything else it will take some time it's still the strongest imperialist power China you can see it's picking off people slowly gradually it's not going all out all at once all that Russia can do is maintain a sort of frozen conflict in Syria in Ukraine it hasn't invaded these countries it hasn't taken them over and drawn them wholesale into its sphere of influence it's just freezing the conflict in these places that's as much as it can manage at this stage but I would say that the weakness of capitalism and the looming crisis the looming global crisis of capitalism you stage very soon in my opinion and the potential strength of the working class really puts world war off the table certainly in the foreseeable future probably in the long term but that doesn't mean that you won't see enormous instability you won't see enormous splits in the ruling class and a very erratic behaviour on the part of people like Trump like Kim Jong-un which of course can result in barbarism but in war yes on a small scale on a local scale you could see that kind you will definitely actually in my opinion see that kind of thing we've already seen it in Syria in Ukraine localised wars proxy wars this sort of thing they will become much more regular perhaps you could call that a world war in the sense that it is the major imperialist powers through proxies fighting it out it's not a world war in the sense that the major imperialist powers are coming into direct conflict and of course it's also not going to be like the proxy wars of the Cold War because at that time there were just two major imperialist powers fighting it out today that's not the case you have US imperialism which is the most powerful but it's on the decline and everywhere you're seeing regional powers come to the fore and assert themselves it's not on a global scale necessarily apart from possibly China but even China is at the moment limiting itself to its region Russia as well in Eastern Europe Turkey is trying to assert itself all this kind of country so there won't be proxy wars of the kind that you saw in the Cold War these will be much more complicated types of war and of course for Marxists then we have to be very careful there's a temptation when you see wars of this kind to pick a side there's a temptation to always have to pick a side but actually in for example Syria at the moment neither side is a side that revolution that people basing themselves on the interests of the working class could align themselves with we have to talk about the need to build a proper working an independent working class organisation not one that is siding with US imperialism Russian imperialism, Chinese imperialism or anything else I think finally then that the barbarism that the ruling class is willing to drag us into in the next period in this period of instability small wars, revolution, counter revolution because of course all this will lead to revolutionary movements war is the midwife of revolution inevitably the working class will start to assert itself in various different countries and to various different extents but the barbarism that they're willing to take us to will be exposed for lots of people to see and actually they will start to draw certain conclusions from that specifically and most importantly that all this barbarism all these wars there is a direct consequence of this vying for power and influence and markets and ultimately profit this is what is motivating all of these all of this situation and so the most important conclusion that we should draw from this and then we should try to explain to people as we see these things developing around the world is that capitalism has hit a dead end this is the best that capitalism can offer us today and therefore we have to organise ourselves to overthrow it and to fight for society