A Recipe to Hasten the Breakdown… War and Then?

Introduction

In under two months, the President of the United States and his team have unleashed a new phase of war mongering, threats, the weaponization of trade, and economic instability, with devastating consequences for the planet and human beings. In this commentary, I seek to draw out the most pertinent lessons of Military Keynesianism in this latest phase of the intense class struggles in the United States and the implications for violence, insecurity, and resistance with the call for clarity with respect to mobilization and organization.

The Context

In less than two months, the combination of financial meltdown, trade wars, regressive taxes, high tariffs, closed government departments, laid-off federal employees, inflation, gutting environmental standards, inviting health pandemics such as measles and high egg prices can have unleashed significant and multifaceted impacts on the economy and society. Since assuming the Presidency on January 20, 2025, President Trump has repeated threats to seize territory from Panama to Gaza, to Greenland to Canada and the administration has refused to rule out the use of military force for territorial expansion.

On March 4, 2025, President Trump delivered a State of the Union address to the Joint Houses of Congress. In a bellicose speech, the 37th President told the citizens of the United States that ‘there will be a little pain’.  The billionaire class in the United States is already salivating over the spate of Executive Orders deregulating the economy, but the struggles within that class ensure that the process cannot be neat and tidy. The example of the on and off Tariffs on motor vehicles from Canada and Mexico is a case in point of the internal struggles among different sections of the capitalist classes in North America. In a state such as Tennessee where there are assembly plants for cars, the Governor quoted from a study that showed that the Tariffs would cost the citizens of Tennessee at least an extra million dollars per day.

Out of control trade wars

That The MAGA forces have backed down on car parts for the Big three does not mitigate the debacle unleashed by this new trade war that has short circuited the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The new USMCA agreement, the successor to the hated North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), had been a failed effort to cement the integration of the North American Market. Canada and Mexico are the United States’ two largest trading partners. NAFTA and the USMCA favored the freedom of movement of capital between the three countries but not the freedom of labor, especially between the United States and Mexico. 

The United States has a $36 trillion debt. There is also a US $1.2 trillion-dollar deficit for the year 2024. According to the U.S. Census Bureau data, the goods and services deficit for 2025 was reported to be $918.4 billion. Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on the leading trading partners of the USA will not shrink the trade deficit. The stated objective of the Trump Administration is to impose tariffs of never-before-witnessed weight, mostly at 25%, on most if not virtually all imports from the four largest trading partners of the United States: China, the EU, Mexico, and Canada. By early March 2025, the Trump White House doubled import duties on China from 10 to 20 percent and hit a broad range of products from Canada and Mexico with 25 percent tariffs. At the same time, Donald Trump partially retreated by granting a one-month reprieve on one-third of exports from Canada and one-half from Mexico covered by the USMCA free trade agreement that Trump himself had negotiated in late 2018. A call to the Oval Office placed by CEOs of the Big Three automakers won them a comparable 30-day reprieve for cars and parts from Canada and Mexico. The United States is now targeting global steel and aluminum, EU textiles, apparel, and agricultural products, and sundry other categories for future tariffs.

Tensions have mounted between the United States and Canada with a war of words, threats and counter threats as different sections of US capital seek to carve out exceptions instead of standing up to the weaponization of trade. The robust responses from the leadership in Canada and Mexico have increased the retaliatory measures to the point where the militarist discourse about Canada becoming the 51^st State of the USA is no longer treated as a joke.

Threats against European capitalists intensified, but it is the leadership in China that responded clearly to this trade war. China has warned the US it is ready to fight ‘any type’ of war. 

China quickly retaliated, imposing 10-15 per cent tariffs on US farm products. The Chinese leadership stated: ‘If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end.’ The United States is now backed into a corner with the recursive tit for tat tariffs escalating insecurity for capital and capital markets.

Hastening breakdown of the liberal order

The weaponization of trade, in the form of the increased tariffs on Mexican auto parts, Canadian oil, or raw materials like steel and aluminum is already driving up production costs in industries like US automotive or construction. In the short run, this weaponization will have the opposite effect of strengthening the US economy. Trade wars are already reducing US competitiveness vis-à-vis the European Union or China. Higher production expenses for US capital have already resulted in job losses, particularly in manufacturing. Imposing tariffs on USMCA partners is shaking up the old manufacturing sector of US capital that had outsourced manufacturing jobs to Mexico to undermine the bargaining rights of workers in the United States. During the recent Joseph Biden Administration, the old manufacturing capitalists found an ally who was willing to inject billions of dollars in an effort to kick start the revival of the US manufacturing sector, especially the semiconductor technology sector. Forty years previously, the US had been the leading manufacturer in the semiconductor industry but had been overtaken by Taiwan, South Korea and China. Under the Biden administration, the US government passed the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022 which included several key subsidies and incentives to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry. In the State of the Union address, Trump called on Congress to repeal the Chips and Science Act.

In my county, (Onondaga County in upstate New York) the Onondaga County executive has told the Public not to hit the panic button because of the call for the repeal of the CHIPS and Science Act.^[1] Will the $100 billion project already allocated for Micron in Central New York see the light of day? With much fanfare in October 2022 Micron Announced Historic Investment of up to $100 Billion to Build Megafab in Central New York.

Since that announcement in 2023, Micron has built two big plants in Malaysia since they broke ground in upstate New York. Our university administrators went gung-ho over the planned Micron investments and sought to change the entire curriculum of the University to accommodate the capitalists. The University planners are now as destabilized as the County executive.

Our County borders Canada and is bound to be negatively affected by the disrupted supply chain of the Trade war. Disrupted Supply Chains not only lead to delays and shortages of goods but of trained personnel. Our Universities in New York State are inordinately dependent on immigrant labor, especially skilled engineering postgraduate students from India.

Disruptions are cumulative. They have a recursive effect on the global economy. I have found that economists are trapped in the narrow understanding of the so-called strongest economy in the world. Capitalism means competition. The more deadly the competition the more there is the reflex for war. The reflex towards militarized solutions emanates from the logic of the military management of the international system which had guaranteed the Exorbitant Privilege of the Dollar. In all parts of the world, whether in the BRICS, ASEAN, European, Latin American, or African regions, peoples and states are looking for alternatives to the dollar as the dominant currency of international trade.  The more states and governments seek alternatives, the more the US must go to war to maintain its economic standing. Humans saw this mode of war capitalism in Germany during the last capitalist depression. This form of war capitalism is called Military Keynesianism. John Maynard Keynes was a British economist who after the First World War recommended government spending to manage economic cycles and boost demand during downturns. The United States had embarked on Military Keynesianism for the past fifty years to maintain a lopsided and monopsonistic economic system. 

Dead End of Military Keynesianism and Monopsony in the United States

In Germany during the last capitalist depression, military Keynesianism was the answer of capital to crush the German working classes under Adolf Hitler. Fascism, war, and expansion went hand in glove. Fascist regimes such as those led by Benito Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, pursued aggressive expansionist policies and engaged in wars to achieve their goals. Fascism naturally led to war and territorial expansion as part of its ideology and practice. The connection of these three elements - fascism, aggressive expansionist policies, and wars - has been accurately documented by Ernest Mandel in the book, The Meaning of the Second World War.

But German Imperialism did not have half the reach of US imperialism at the start of the twenty first century. US imperialism is far more developed than Germany was in 1940. Moreover, the U.S. maintains the largest and most technologically advanced military force, which is totally integrated within the accumulation process which requires bases in all parts of the world. Just as the German industrialists had profited from fascism, several of the old industrial companies in the USA such as General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing have a long history of producing military equipment. However, in the era of Artificial Intelligence, the massive companies are looking to a future like that which happened to Vickers in the United Kingdom. After World War II, Vickers had been the leading industrial conglomerate in Britain producing military hardware, shipbuilding, and aircraft manufacturing. This manufacturing company collapsed by 2004 until parts of it were taken over by BAE Systems Platform and Services.

The evolving organic composition of capital rendered the British capitalist class unable to compete in the restructured capitalist order of the late twentieth century. Similarly, a new process of technological transformation is underway in the United States undermining the old manufacturing capitalists that cannot compete in the era of Artificial Intelligence. Anduril and Palantir have shown that increased investment in the military does not add up to the old industrial expansion. Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego has recently won the contract to build prototype versions of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a future unmanned plane intended to accompany piloted aircraft on high-risk combat missions. Anduril has upended the old high-cost industrial model of the top contractors of the US military industrial complex such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. With cheaper parts, new technologies, and leveraging commercially derived components to maximize supply of components supply, Anduril was unleashing a new phase of AI powered military technology. In their public relations barrage, Anduril noted that their Barracuda family of Autonomous Air Vehicles (AAVs), including the Barracuda-100, Barracuda-250 and Barracuda-500 – all of which are designed for affordable, hyper-scale production also supported various mission sets and can be deployed from multiple platforms, including fifth-generation fighter aircraft and surface vessels. With Barracuda, Anduril says it is rebuilding the US arsenal with these intelligent, flexible, and mass-producible weapons, combining modern software with cutting-edge hardware to enhance air dominance and strike capabilities.^[2]

As Michael Klare succinctly noted with respect to the declared goal of incorporating artificial intelligence into novel weapons systems.

Anduril’ s Barracuda AAVs could offer a solution to many of America’s production and supply chain issues, providing scalable, affordable and adaptable PGMs at a time when the US defense industrial base struggles to meet demand. The lack of coverage was surprising, given that the Air Force expects to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs over the coming decade at around $30 million each, making this one of the Pentagon’s costliest new projects. But consider that the least of what the media failed to note. In winning the CCA contract, Anduril and General Atomics beat out three of the country’s largest and most powerful defense contractors —— posing a severe threat to the continued dominance of the existing military-industrial complex, or MIC.^[4]

It is important for the progressive forces to penetrate the Executive Orders of Trump to grasp the content of the intense struggles between the old managers of the military-industrial complex in alliance with Wall Street and the Big Tech billionaires who have now coalesced around the Trump administration. Taken together, with the rapid increase in the production of electric vehicles globally, the deployment of new industries powered by artificial intelligence will render the old industrial towns in the USA as outmoded as when the society moved from horse and buggy to the internal combustion engine or from typewriters to computers. Whole regions and states will have to completely reorganize production as the meaning of work in the era of artificial intelligence will be fundamentally altered. Now more than ever the demand for dismantling the military-industrial complex and the road to conversion should be at the top of the agenda. Progressives, peace and social justice activists of all stripes must now grasp the conjuncture that is before us so that we can consider the social forces capable of offering alternatives.

Hastening Breakdown, Resistance, and the Military

The big push by the neo-conservatives has been orchestrated by the cost cutting measures of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) spearheaded by Elon Musk. In less than three months of this administration, there is growing resistance in all parts of society to the authoritarian measures of the administration. The Democratic Party has been unable to mount an effective opposition to the drastic cuts and the Executive Orders. There are those sections of society who believe that the US Constitution will be a basis for opposing the unlawful acts of this administration. In the same legal circles, there is already talk of a Constitutional crisis in the United States. However, there are significant sections of the population who are already calling for non-parliamentary forms of opposition and are calling on the people to resist fascism at home and war abroad. The bellicose language and weaponization of everything have been accompanied by a celebration of white supremacy. Elements around this administration celebrate the policies of apartheid and regret the end of minority white rule in South Africa. The government has opposed anti racist discourse as ‘woke’ and has moved to purge the military apparatus of those officers who had opposed the first Trump administration that had called for the deployment of US Troops on the streets of the United States. The administration of President Trump has installed officials in the military intelligence and police branches to elevate elements who will approve of collaboration with the Moms for Liberty, Patriotic Front, Proud Boys, Oath keepers, and other extremists. We need to examine the cumulative effects of Pentagon report warns of threat from white supremacists inside the military.

In the book, War, by Bob Woodward, he named generals of the US military apparatus who are now at the top of the officers linked to white supremacy. Their return has divided those who Seymour Hersh had called the Crusaders a decade ago.  By going after General Mark Milley (former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff) there is now a guarantee that the firing of C. Q. Brown and the threats against Milley will have an impact on the General Staff.

That General staff is now completely confused 

This confusion in military planning has been compounded by the new bromance between the United States and Russia. After the US military and intelligence provoked the military conflagration in Ukraine and supported Ukraine militarily since 2022, in February the United States voted alongside Russia against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia's aggression in Ukraine. This marked a significant shift in U.S. policy, as previous administrations had consistently supported Ukraine in similar votes.

Those who were planning for war against Russia will now have to go back to the drawing board.

The more farsighted who understand the alliance with Russia as the ultimate alliance of white supremacists to fight China will take time to take over the General Staff.

The pace of the class, gendered and racial struggles will not go according to any neat timetable. Our friends and allies will have to grasp the conjuncture so that they do not follow the parliamentary form and judicial road. The Democratic Party in the USA does not have an answer to the weaponization of everything and the preparations for war now manifest in call for plans for military action in Panama.

Military Keynesianism has taken us down one road and only disarmament and conversion can change course. To change course will require a deeper level of analysis than that which is coming out of the traditional political parties, Thinktanks, and the university.

Youths are not with the political and financial leadership. They are watching and will break out sooner than they did in the last administration. The contradictions are sharper now. Vigilance and clarity are now urgent. It is only eight weeks, and a combination of recklessness, ignorance, and white supremacy has destabilized the international economy. Clarity and proper alternatives are now needed. Let us keep thinking through the realities and grasp how John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman responded to the last crisis in the General Staff.

^ENDNOTES

[1] Holland and Knight, ‘Trump's 2025 Executive Orders’. Available online:

https://www.hklaw.com/en/general-pages/trumps-2025-executive-orders-cha…

^[2] The CHIPS and Science Act is a U.S. federal statute enacted by the 117th United States Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on August 9, 2022. The act authorizes roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States, for which it appropriates $52.7 billion.

^[3] See Gabriel Honrada, ‘Anduril poised to fill America’s missile supply gap’,” Asia Times, 16 September 2024. Available online:   https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/anduril-poised-to-fill-americas-missile-supply-gap/

[4} Michael Klare, ‘A New Military Industrial Complex Arises’, Counterpunch, February 11, 2025. Available online: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/11/a-new-military-industrial-complex-arises/

Mwalimu Horace Campbell is a peace and social Justice activist. He is also a Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University and Chairperson of the Global Pan African Movement, North American Chapter.  He authored Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya, Monthly Review Press, 2013.