Political Analysis of War
Xiaoming Guo 郭晓明
Two hundred years ago, the Prussian military scientist Clausewitz wrote the famous assertion that “war is the continuation of politics” in his book “On War”, which has aroused the resonance of many thinkers. For example, the American War of Independence was a continuation of taxation politics in the British North American colonies. At that time, the East India Company had the monopoly rights of the Far East trade and many privileges of the suzerain country. The East India Company made a fortune in the opium-tea-silver triangle trade, and seized a large amount of wealth from China as the primitive capital accumulation of British industry. Russell & Co., run by Boston businessmen in the United States, also operates the opium-tea-silver triangle trade, grabbing Chinese wealth as the primitive accumulation of American capital. The tea is Chinese tea, the silver is American silver, the East India Company deals in Indian opium, and Russell & Co. deals in Turkish opium. The United States was a British colony at that time, and in the suzerain-colonial economic structure, the colonies served the suzerain. Therefore, the East India Company has the privilege of exemption from tea tariffs that Russell & Co. does not have. This sparked a fight in Boston to protest the tea tax, which was politics under British colonial rule. As a continuation of the tea tax politics, eventually, the American Revolutionary War broke out. Thus, the American Revolutionary War confirmed Clausewitz’s assertion that wars were a continuation of politics. The United Kingdom is the originator of the modern Western democratic system. The modern Western democratic system originated from the British “Magna Carta”. If the Western democratic system can correct its own mistakes, British politics can solve the taxation politics of the British American colonies without having to explode the Independence War. Today there is an argument that the Western democratic system can correct its own mistakes. This argument is wrong. The American War of Independence was the result of the failure of the British democratic system. The democratic politics of the United Kingdom is the politics in which the suzerain ruled the colonies and did not give the people of the colonies democracy. Today’s Western democratic system is a politics in which the US hegemony rules the world, and it is a politics that does not allow developing countries to have a say in international politics.
(Picture: The Central United States Territory acquired by the Louisiana Purchase)
In 1803, Napoleon sold the Louisiana land to the United States to raise money for the war. In 1845, the United States annexed Mexico’s Texas state. From 1846 to 1848, the United States fought the Mexican War, and the United States occupied a large area of Mexico.
The land of the United States suddenly expanded from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and many new states were established in the West.
At this time, whether the new states in the western United States could allow slavery became the focus of American politics. The politics of whether to allow slavery in the West would not have developed into the Civil War if American democracy had been able to correct its mistakes. But the myth that the Western democratic system can correct its own mistakes was once again shattered. War is the continuation of politics. American politics about whether slavery can be allowed in the West eventually led to the outbreak of the Civil War. The northern states were emerging capitalists, representing the capital accumulated by Boston merchants in the opium trade with China. The southern slave plantations belonged to the colonial economy of the old British capital and supplied cotton to the textile industry in Manchester, England. Britain’s first industrial revolution was the textile revolution. The industry needs a certain scale. Without scale, it is impossible to break through the profit point, and the larger the scale, the higher the profit. At the beginning of the first industrial revolution in Britain, there was a large demand for wool, so there was the Enclosure movement. The Enclosure movement brought huge social contradictions to Britain. Later, the source of raw materials that the British textile industry relied on was slave plantations in the Americas. Therefore, the slave-holding states in the southern United States actually belonged to the old British capital economic sphere. The American Industrial Revolution is the second industrial revolution. The second industrial revolution is beyond the textile industry, including railways and steel, as well as technical inventions such as telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, and light bulbs. Therefore, the emerging capital in the north does not need slave plantations. They needed the West as a source of raw materials for the American Industrial Revolution and a market for industrial products to support the scale demands of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, the politics of whether slavery is allowed in the new Western states is essentially a political game between the emerging American bourgeoisie and the old British bourgeoisie in the United States. Whether the new Western states serve the emerging American bourgeoisie or the old British bourgeoisie was the political game. Slave plantations are a system in which labor is attached to the land. The second industrial revolution in the northern United States needs free labor, and labor must be liberated from land attachment.
War is the continuation of politics, and war can achieve various political purposes.
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln won the election, which is American democracy. After Lincoln won the election, the slave states in the South announced their secession from the United States. The United States of America was originally a Western federal system, that is, the states entered into an agreement to join the United States of America. This is the same Western system as European countries joining the European Union. Since you can join as you wish, you can also withdraw as you wish. This is called freedom in the West. For example, the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020 is the same procedure as the southern slave states’ withdrawal from the United States. The reason why the southern slave states withdrew from the United States was to condemn the northern abolitionist states for passing the fugitive slave act as unconstitutional. Why is the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional? Read the U.S. Constitution, how can there be such an explanation? The U.S. Constitution protects freedom of property. Slaves are the property of the slave owners. The North’s protection of escaped slaves violates the property right of the slave owners in the South. The American Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal”, but they do not treat black Africans as human beings at all. Today the United States also upholds human rights, but the people of all ethnic groups in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are not regarded as human beings by the United States that upholds human rights. In 1861, the 11 southern states that withdrew from the United States of America formed the Confederate States of America, and the Confederate States of America received their domestic ports, including the Port of Charleston in South Carolina. United States forces in Charleston Harbor fall back to Fort Sumter which guards Charleston Harbor. Lincoln was sworn in as President of the United States on March 4, 1861. On April 12, the Confederate States attacked Fort Sumter, and the American Civil War broke out.
The abolition of slavery was not the political purpose of the American Civil War. The Civil War was only about whether slavery was allowed in the new Western states. It was a continuation of the politics of the emerging American bourgeoisie and the old British bourgeoisie in the United States. However, under the dangerous situation of the Northern army losing steadily, President Lincoln issued the “Emancipation Proclamation” on January 1, 1863, liberating the black slaves in the Confederate States, and the blacks in the South joined the United States Army and fought bravely to defeat the Confederate Army. Lincoln launched a political movement to emancipate slaves in the Civil War, which led to the United States winning the Civil War. In this way, the Civil War achieved two political purposes, one was the political purpose of the emerging bourgeoisie in the North of the United States and the old British bourgeoisie to compete for the interests of the Western United States, and the second was the humanitarian political purpose of abolishing slavery. The second political purpose was newly added in the course of the war, adding this humanitarian political purpose to win the war for the North.
After the May 4th Movement in 1919, China entered the stage of the New Democratic Revolution, which was to expel foreign powers and their agents. The new democratic revolution began with the three major policies of Sun Yat-sen: cooperate with Russia, cooperate with the Communist Party of China, and support peasants and workers, and it has a clear anti-imperialist nature. From then until 1949, the war was a continuation of anti-imperialist politics, especially the War of Resistance Against Japan, to save the country and directly oppose Japanese imperialist aggression. At the beginning of the Chinese Civil War (the War of Liberation, as China named it), the PLA had 1.7 million people, while the Kuomintang army had 4.2 million people. The Kuomintang army was more than one and a half times larger than the PLA. At that time, the equipment of the People’s Liberation Army was millet plus rifles, and the Kuomintang had advanced American equipment and mechanized maneuverability, occupying important towns and cities across the country. From a purely military point of view, no matter how you look at it, Chiang Kai-shek is bound to win the civil war. Chiang Kai-shek represented the Anglo-American interest in China, the comprador bourgeois group of Anglo-Americans in China. In the Yalta agreement, China is the sphere of influence of the United States, and the Communist Party cannot be allowed to participate in the coalition government. Therefore, the civil war was actually a continuation of the anti-imperialist politics of the Chinese people. When New China was founded in 1949, it announced that it would not recognize the unequal treaties imposed on China by Western powers. All foreign debts such as Boxer indemnity were not recognized, and the political purpose of anti-imperialism was realized. Faced with the absolute superiority of Chiang Kai-shek’s army in the War of Liberation, what should the Communist army do? In mid-1946, at the beginning of the civil war, the Northeast Bureau of CPC sent 12,000 cadres to the countryside to carry out land reform, supporting the war with land reform political movements. The politics of land reform made the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army fight bravely, and they fought for their own land. Chiang Kai-shek’s army rebelled and turned against him one after another. As a result, the civil war ended in three years and Chiang Kai-shek was driven to the island of Taiwan. The politics of land reform was the political force for victory in the War of Liberation. This is exactly the same as Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” which allowed the United States to defeat the Confederate States. It is all political support for the war. The War of Liberation achieved three political goals and overthrew the three mountains of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism. The overthrow of feudalism and the realization of land to the tiller have been the appeals of peasant uprisings in the past. Li Zicheng Uprising (1606–1645) demanded land to the tiller. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement （1851–1864）demanded land to the tiller. 1911 Xinhai Revolution demanded land to the tiller. During the Agrarian Revolution （1927–1937）, land reform was a political goal. During the Anti-Japanese War, in order to establish a united front in the Anti-Japanese War, the land distribution was compromised to reduce rent and interest, and the agrarian revolution was compromised as a contradiction among the people. After the Anti-Japanese War, Chongqing negotiated and reached the October Tenth Agreement, and there was no political requirement for an agrarian revolution for peaceful construction. However, when Chiang Kai-shek launched a civil war, the Communist Party immediately resumed the agrarian revolution. During the War of Liberation, bureaucratic capitalism used the war to plunder people’s wealth and abused the Chinese Gold Yuan to create hyperinflation. Therefore, there was a democratic political movement against hunger and civil war in the Kuomintang-controlled areas and against the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The War of Liberation thus achieved three political goals.
War is a continuation of politics, and war can achieve multiple political goals. Giving war a political purpose of justice supports war, and giving power to war enables war to be won when military power is at a disadvantage. The American Civil War and the Chinese War of Liberation are historical examples of wars won with just political goals.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1992, Russia was completely Westernized. Economically, capitalism was completely implemented, and politically, universal suffrage was implemented according to the Western multi-party system. From the economic base to the superstructure, it was capitalism. Therefore, the Ukrainian War is not much different from World War I and World War II that broke out in Europe. They are all unjust wars in which the great powers compete for interests and spheres of influence. Technically speaking, the Ukrainian war was launched by Putin, but geopolitically speaking, it was a war promoted by the United States. The United States forced Russia to launch a war with NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion. Before the Ukrainian war, Putin and Biden had many talks and talks. Biden insisted that Ukraine could join NATO. He was stonewalling, uncompromising, and insulting. It was a radical method to stimulate Putin to invade Ukraine and use the Ukrainian war to solve the urgent problem of US inflation. The political purpose of the U.S. launching the Ukrainian war is to take away the European energy market from Russia, so that Russia’s share in the European energy market will become the U.S. share in the European energy market. The United States has basically achieved this political goal. It can be said that the United States won the war in Ukraine before the end of the war because the political goal was achieved. The United States will continue this war to consolidate the fruits of victory. If the division of Russia and Europe has not reached a deep hatred, once Russia and Europe reconcile, the European energy market will soon return to Russia. Both Europe and Ukraine are victims of this war, and the Ukraine war is a political game between Russia and the United States. War is the continuation of politics.
From the very beginning, Putin gave the Ukrainian war a just political purpose, that is, the de-Nazification of Ukraine. Since 2014, neo-Nazis in Ukraine have risen and armed harassment of Russian-speaking Ukrainians is an act against human rights and humanity. Putin’s justified political quest to rid Ukraine of neo-Nazis. This is Putin’s second political purpose, and it is also a just political purpose.
Another political purpose of the United States in launching the Ukraine war is to strengthen its control over the NATO military alliance. Since the Ukraine war, NATO countries have increased military expenditures one after another, following the baton of the United States, and even going out of Europe to get involved in the South China Sea. The United States has strengthened the military alliance of NATO and consolidated its hegemony by integrating the military forces of its allies. The U.S. military-industrial complex has made another war fortune, which is also one of the fruits of victory in the U.S.-Ukrainian War. This is the second political purpose of the United States.
Kissinger made an important thesis: Whoever controls oil controls the countries of the world, and whoever controls food controls the people of the world. Several American oligarchs control global food and oil, and the monopoly of food and oil is the cornerstone of American hegemony. However, Russia has quietly become a major net exporter of oil and food outside the control of the United States, which seriously threatens the hegemony of the United States. Therefore, as soon as the Ukrainian war broke out, the United States initiated sanctions against Russia, especially sanctions on oil and gas exports and grain exports, which caused global oil and food prices to skyrocket. This is the third political purpose of the United States, which is to maintain the US monopoly on global oil, gas and food.
The U.S. economic sanctions against Russia are mainly implemented through the monopoly of the U.S. dollar as the currency for global trade settlement. In the face of US sanctions, Russia has no other way but to adopt ruble settlement measures. This is a heavy blow to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Even India, the Indo-Pacific ally of the United States, is also vigorously de-dollarizing trade. This may have been beyond Putin’s expectations. In any case, the war in Ukraine already has a political meaning of resisting the hegemony of the US dollar. This is Russia’s third political purpose, which is to oppose the US financial hegemony. On the financial battlefield of the war in Ukraine, the United States has been hit hard. The sanctions imposed by the United States to kick Russia out of the international settlement system are self-defeating.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the world structure is a north-south structure, and the developed countries in the north rely on their financial technology monopoly to exploit the developing countries in the south. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia’s economy has been continuously eroded by the West. NATO’s eastward expansion is to push Russia into the status of a developing country in the South and into the “middle-income trap” of Latin America. Facing the Western sanctions against Russia led by the United States, the southern countries unanimously stood by and refused to sanction Russia. Under the situation that the southern countries refuse to sanction Russia, Putin’s Ukraine war represents the resistance of the southern countries to the developed countries in the north and the resistance to the hegemony of the United States. Thus, Russia’s war in Ukraine has a political purpose against US hegemony. Even India, the strategic ally of the US Indo-Pacific, has openly supported Russia, especially in cooperation with Russia’s de-dollarization of trade, using rubles and rupees to settle trade. India and Russia have joined forces to oppose the hegemony of the US dollar. Therefore, the Ukrainian war has the just political purpose of the developing countries in the south to resist the bullying of the developed countries in the north, and it has also become a righteous geopolitics to support Russia. It is the fourth political purpose of Russia.
The history of the world over the past 500 years is the history of sea power countries dominating the world. The usual tactic used by sea power countries to rule tellurocracy countries is divide-and-conquer. The political purpose of sea power countries supporting the Ukraine war is to split Europe and Russia so that they can divide and rule and defeat each other. Before the Ukrainian war, Europe and Russia had peaceful trade and close economic ties. If Europe and Russia were economically integrated, if Russia was included in the European Union and the Eurozone, then the economies of Europe and Russia would be larger than the U.S. economy and have the ability to compete with the U.S. Nuclear strike forces, the United States will lose its ability to control Europe, and it will lose its sea power domination. After the Ukrainian war split Russia and Europe, the United States publicly blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline, and Europe was unable to resist. The U.S. push for the Ukrainian war is disguised as uniting Europe against Russia, but essentially to completely control Europe under U.S. hegemony. As a geopolitical tool, NATO is a tool led by the United States to maintain American hegemony. The Ukraine war strengthened NATO, which in fact strengthened the United States’ ability to control Europe. The Ukrainian War is politics in which sea power suppresses tellurocracy countries, and it is the fourth political goal of the United States. It is unjust for sea power countries to instigate conflicts and wars in Eurasia for the benefit of the fisherman.
To sum up, the war in Ukraine has four political purposes for Russia: European interests, against neo-Nazis, against American hegemony, and the world of the South against the world of the North. The Ukrainian war also has four political goals for the United States: occupation of the European energy market, military-industrial complexes making war fortunes, maintaining the US monopoly on global energy and food, and maintaining the suppression of sea power over tellurocracy countries. All political purposes in the United States are unjust. Russia has three just political purposes. If Russia wants to win the Ukraine war, it must publicize its just political goals in order to gain the support of tellurocracy countries and southern countries. Among Russia’s several political goals, only the political goal of opposing the hegemony of the US dollar has achieved serious damage to the United States, especially the ruble trade with India has made the United States swallow the bitter fruit and cannot speak out. Russia demanded the ruble to settle oil exports, cracking U.S. financial sanctions within a week, causing the ruble to appreciate. The ruble settlement fired the first shot against the hegemony of the dollar. Russia should expand its achievements against the hegemony of the US dollar and promote the process of de-dollarization around the world.
The justice of the political purpose of war can increase the chance of victory in war. Therefore, the United States disguised its unjust imperialist political goals as just democracy and freedom, and slandered Russia as a dictatorship. The international propaganda war is to compete for the right to speak on who is the just side of the war. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the political and economic transformation was carried out in full accordance with Western plans. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, successive Russian presidents, from Yeltsin to Putin, actively requested to join NATO and join the European Union, but they have been rejected by the European Union. A peaceful Europe including Russia is the nightmare of the United States, and it is absolutely not allowed by the United States. To win the war in Ukraine, Russia must first win the war of propaganda to promote justice.
