Of the U.S. aggression in Ukraine

The bloody events in Ukraine represent a part of the " instability strategy" that the U.S. has been implementing for decades in order to preserve its global leadership. The current escalation of international military and political tensions is caused by a change in technological and world economic paradigms, in the course of which a profound structural reorganization of the economy takes place based on conceptually new technologies and new mechanisms for reproduction of capital.

In such periods, as is shown by the half-millenarian experience of the development of capitalism[21], there is a sharp destabilization of the system of international relations, with destruction of the old and formation of a new world order. The possibilities for social and economic development based on the established system of institutions and technologies become exhausted. The previously leading countries face insurmountable difficulties in maintaining their former rates of economic growth. The overaccumulation of capital in aging industrial and technological complexes plunges their economy into depression, and the established system of institutions makes it difficult to form new technological chains. Together with the new industrial engineering institutions, they work their way in other countries straining after economic development leadership.

The former leaders seek to keep their dominance in the world market by strengthening control over their geo-economic periphery, also by resorting to military and political coercion methods. Most commonly, this entails major military conflicts in which the former leader squanders resources without achieving the desired effect. The potential new leader that by this time rides the rally wave is trying to take a wait-and-see approach to preserve its productive forces and attract the intellects, capitals and treasures of the warring countries that are fleeing the war. Increasing its capabilities, the new leader enters the global arena when the warring opponents are weakened enough, to reap the fruits of victory.

The following landmark events of world history may be attributed to the conflicts of this kind, mediating the change of global leaders. The replacement of the world economic paradigm based on the trans-oceanic trade in original goods with the trade and manufactory system based on trade in craft products was mediated by the aggravation of the Spanish-English conflict, which ended in 1588 with deperition of the Invincible Armada. This was used by the Dutch bourgeoisie to get free from Spanish control. Reconstructing its political system in accordance with the needs of the already established capital reproduction institutions, it secured for itself expansion opportunities based on a sharp amplification of business activities. Holland became the world leader in the use of technologies that were advanced for their time, which enabled it to take the lead in construction of a sailing fleet, building of water canals and production of consumer goods.

The Napoleonic wars represented the next crucial event. They exhausted the forces of European continental states and at the same time contributed to the formation of a pan-European economic and legal space. The technologies successfully tested in Holland got widespread use in other European countries. Small Holland could no longer hold the leadership contrasted with the rapidly developing great European powers. Fleeing the military and political threats of the continent, Dutch capital started moving to England, bringing with it the advanced technology and methods of organizing production and trade. England was quickly increasing its fleet, building canals, expanding manufactory production. Under the lee of the monarchy, several English companies were established modeled after the Dutch East India Company – the English East India Company, the Virginia Company, the Plymouth Company became the largest commercial and industrial corporations of the time. Taking advantage of the weakening of its competitors after many years of Napoleonic wars, Britain entered the battleground of Waterloo in 1815, when France no longer posed a serious threat. Relying on technologies and institutions for organizing international trade that were advanced for their time, Britain not only became the " queen of the seas" after completion of colonial conquest, but also secured global leadership in the system of world economic relations. This provided it with possibilities of accomplishing the industrial revolution and mastering the mechanisms of industrial and technological cooperation based on machine manufactories that formed the first technological paradigm of industrial society.

The system of institutes for organizing business, public and political activity formed in Britain ensured the possibility of concentrating capital on any scale. Under the patronage of the Crown, the East and West India Companies turned into giant transoceanic monopolies successfully getting a handle on the colossal resources of India, China and America. The judicial system targeted at objective resolution of economic disputes ensured rapid development of civil law, proceeding from the protection of private entrepreneurship interests. This established favorable conditions for the accumulation of capital that moved to a qualitatively higher level with the appearance of joint-stock companies. The development of private, joint-stock and state capitalism institutions gave free rein to construction of large infrastructural facilities and creation of industrial plants. Destruction of rural communities and peasant dispossession of land provided these construction sites and plants with cheap labor. Thus, conditions were created for the transition to the second technological paradigm based on steam engine, coal industry, iron and steel metallurgy, inorganic chemistry, railway construction.

The domination of private capital was enshrined in the political institutions of party democracy with limited suffrage, which guaranteed to big capital favorable and stable conditions for expanded reproduction. Technological leadership ensured high competitiveness of the English economy, which dominated global economic relations. Driven by development of the British corporations, the United Kingdom expanded its colonial empire, creating the world’s largest market for free circulation of goods, and also forcing free trade relations on other European powers. These latter rushed to catch up with Britain, copying its economic institutions and creating their colonial empires.

The exception was the Russian Empire that was on a par Britain in terms of military power and global political influence. It maintained the traditional institutions of absolute monarchy and official religion, ensuring political stability in the conditions of impetuous industrial development and rapid increase in the educational level and social activity of the population. In the late 19th and early 20^th century, Russia moved from the trajectory of catching-up development to outstripping growth.

The abolition of serfdom and other reforms of Alexander II abrogated a number of feudal institutions that held back the development of market relations, and opened up opportunities for rapid industrial production growth. From 1860 to 1870, the output of textile and cotton-spinning industry sectors increased twofold. From 1860 to 1876, the production of pig iron increased by 30%, of iron – by 40%[22].

From 1875 to 1892, the number of steam engines in Russia doubled, and their power output tripled. Cast iron smelting in the 80s increased by a factor of 2.5. It should be noted that these rates of growth exceeded the rates achieved in Britain during the corresponding period.

The rise of the Russian economy in the late 19^th and early 20^th century took place almost simultaneously with other advanced countries. This indicates the inclusion of Russia in the international rhythm of economic growth. It should be noted, however, that the economic boom in Russia at that time was to a significant extent based on expansion of the production works pertaining to the second technological paradigm, which in the developed countries was already being replaced by the third one. The Russian industrial development also involved these processes. With the active support of the state, there was a rapid development of electrotechnical industry, inorganic chemistry, electric power industry. Production and consumption of coal grew at a high rate. At the same time, machine-building industry still remained underdeveloped. It satisfied the needs of the country’s economy by about 2/3. A third of civil demand in machines, equipment, mechanisms and appliances was met by their importation.

Rapid development of the basic technological aggregations of the third technological paradigm created prerequisites for elimination of the technological gap and inclusion of Russia in the global rhythm among the leading countries. The Russian industry had sectors that possessed competitive advantages relative to the developed countries, the number of national engineering personnel was rapidly increasing, which created good preconditions for an effective integration into the international division of labor. However, the incompleteness of the life cycles of the first and second technological paradigms along with the outdated political system institutions hampered the industrial development of the country.

Outstripping development of the economy based on advanced technologies could propel Russia to world leadership. Without being burdened by overaccumulation of capital in obsolete technologies, the Russian economy was ready to accept massive investments in the production facilities of a new technological paradigm. Russia approached the beginning of the First World War with a good head start in chemical, oil, metallurgy, automotive, aviation, and electrotechnical industries, which became drivers of economic growth in the mid-20^th century.

Simultaneously with Russia, Germany united by Bismarck was also developing rapidly, becoming the world leader in machine building. Relying on their institutional features, these countries were spurting into the lead both on the technical level and by the capital concentration scale. Germany relied on the entrepreneurial activity of rapidly learning urban residents, Russia – on its huge natural, resource and human potential. They successfully adopted the technologies and industrial engineering forms developed in Britain, instilling them with an additional depth of cooperation and scope of production. Britain responded to this challenge from the European periphery by unleashing a world war, skillfully playing the two rising superpowers off against one another.

The Russian-German alliance could have formed the most powerful coalition at the time, capable of becoming the dominant force in world politics and keeping the world from the war, not needed for these countries successfully developing on a new long wave of economic growth. But it was Britain that needed the war to preserve its leadership. It managed to destroy the established Russian-German alliance[23], and by a chain of successive intrigues involving physical elimination of influential war resisters to draw two kindred monarchies into a suicidal war.

The First World War destroyed the main competitors of Britain in the Old World, which allowed it to retain global leadership until the mid-20^th century. By this time, the American colonies of European states freed from colonial oppression had formed the United States, the institutions of which were initially shaped on the basis of the interests of big private capital. Released from the need to pay political rent in favor of monarchy and aristocracy, capital gained unlimited opportunities for expansion. The influx of active population from European countries leading endless colonial wars, strangled by agrarian overpopulation and military expenditure, provided the U.S. capital with cheap and skilled manpower resources. The unrestricted spirit of entrepreneurship and private initiative, the possibilities of unlimited production expansion on the basis of free capital concentration, afforded to engineers and scientists opportunities to create industrial enterprises of any size utilizing the most complex technologies for that time. By the end of the century before last, the U.S. had reached an advanced level of industrial development and, simultaneously with Britain, started formation of the third technological paradigm based on electrotechnical industry.

As a result of the First World War arranged by the British diplomacy, the U.S. was the one country to win the most. Like Britain in the era of Napoleonic wars, entering the war at the final stage, the U.S. reaped the main fruits of victory. It not only took part in a new division of the world, but also granted admission to intellects, capitals and treasures that were fleeing the horrors of the world war, subsequent revolutions and civil wars in Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary. The engineers and scientists who moved to the U.S. provided the American capital with the latest technology for the time. The U.S. became the leader of global technical and economic development. It launched a large-scale construction of energy, engineering and transport infrastructure that would meet the requirements of the third technological paradigm based on chemical and metallurgical industry, electrification and electrical engineering, and further development of railways and shipbuilding.

The institutional structure, focused on capital concentration and large-scale industrial production development, offered to the U.S. capital various advantages over European colonial empires. The cross-flow of capital from them to the U.S. continued. This contributed to the outstripping development of the U.S. economy. But simultaneously with the U.S., Germany and Russia, reborn from revolutionary ashes, again climbed a new wave of economic growth. After radical reorganization of their institutional systems, these countries gained new advantages. Germany, deprived of territorial expansion opportunities, was forced to concentrate resources on its industrial and technological development. The USSR, created on the ruins of the Russian Empire, established institutions of centralized planning and industrial engineering, which allowed to concentrate resources on a scale unprecedented before then. During the Great Depression, the institutions of centralized planning and industrial engineering proved to be effective in comparison with the U.S and Western European corporations stifled by lack of demand and overaccumulation of capital. Both countries once again made a technological breakthrough, catching up with the U.S. and Britain that had drawn out. To stop them, the Anglo-Saxons once again resorted to the proven trick of playing the leaders rising from the periphery against each other.

With the help of the U.S. corporations and the British aristocracy, Hitlerite Germany was prepared for war. Having sacrificed its allies, Poland and France, Britain gave fascist Germany a push against the USSR. Just as in the First World War, the U.S. repeated its success by joining the battle in the final phase and appropriating the fruits of victory in Western Europe and the Pacific. The colonial empires of European countries collapsed, and domination in the capitalist world passed to the U.S. corporations. At the same time, the socialist world emerged that was demonstrating high rates of development and rapidly catching up with the U.S. The confrontation between the two systems, created by the Anglo-Saxon diplomacy, contributed to the concentration of capital in the U.S. It took the technological lead during formation of the fourth technological paradigm based on internal combustion engine, organic chemistry and road construction. This leadership was consolidated in the course of formation of the next information and telecommunication technological paradigm based on microelectronics and software. It gave the U.S. the upper hand in the course of the arms race that undermined the technologically heterogeneous USSR economy.

Thus, the domination of Britain finally came to an end as a result of two world wars in the last century, that led to disintegration of the European colonial empires and transfer of leadership in the capitalist world to the U.S. After the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR, with the collapse of the latter the U.S. took the global lead due to its superiority in the development of the information and communication technological paradigm and establishment of a monopoly on the issue of world money. The U.S. transnational corporations with links to the global " printing press" became the basis for the formation of a new world economic paradigm, the institutional basis of which was represented by liberal globalization.

Currently, the world is on the threshold of a new centennial accumulation cycle. Following the Spanish, Dutch, English and American centennial cycles of capital accumulation[24] the global economic development center is shifting to Asia, where the basic institutions of a new world economic paradigm are being formed. China is spurting into the lead in the wake of upgrowth of the new technological paradigm, and the accumulation of capital in Japan creates opportunities for moving the center of world capital reproduction to East and South Asia.

The above brief outline of the change of long cycles and the corresponding world economic paradigms with their leading countries during three centuries of global economic development, the laws of which are analyzed in detail in the next chapter, is intended to illustrate the objective causes of the periodically arising world wars for leadership in the formation of the world economic relations system. At the present time, as in previous periods of change of the centennial cycles, the leader on the down-grade is also resorting to compulsory ways of maintaining its dominance. Facing the overaccumulation of capital in financial pyramids and outdated production facilities, as well as the loss of selling markets for its products and the subsidence of dollar share in international transactions, the U.S. is trying to retain leadership by unleashing a world war in order to weaken both competitors and partners. The establishment of control over Russia, combined with dominance in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, gives the U.S. a strategic advantage over rising China in controlling the main sources of hydrocarbons and other critical natural resources. Control over Europe, Russia, Japan and Korea also ensures dominance in creating new knowledge and developing advanced technologies.

Not fully aware of the objective mechanisms of cyclical development that doom the U.S. to lose its global dominance, the American ruling elite fears expansion of composition of the countries beyond its control, as well as formation of the global expanded reproduction circuits that are independent of it. Such a threat lies in the deepening integration of countries of BRICS, South America, Central Asia and the Far East. The ability of Russia to arrange building-up of such a coalition, announced by the successful creation of the Eurasian Economic Union, predetermines the anti-Russian vector of the U.S. aggression. One cannot but agree with Alexander Dugin that after reunification with the Crimea, Washington regards Russia as a resurgent " barbarian" empire threatening the global hegemony of the U.S. and thus having no right to exist[25]. Whereas the Eurasian strategy of V.V. Putin, which was implemented according to WTO rules, was irritating to the U.S., his decisions on Crimea were perceived as an infringement upon foundations of the American world order and a challenge which they are bound to take on.

The anti-Russian strategy of Washington is being implemented under the flag of demonizing the President of Russia, whom the U.S. regards as the main culprit of its loss of control over Russia and Central Asia, and the Kremlin’s current independent foreign policy is perceived as a key threat to the U.S. global domination. Putin’s successful actions in restoring the Russian national sovereignty and international influence, initiatives to create a Eurasian zone of cooperation and development " from Lisbon to Vladivostok, " establishment of a strategic partnership with China, and rapprochement with Korea are perceived by Washington as a direct threat to its vital interests. Therefore, the isolation and weakening of Russia in order to pull off another revolution in our country and subsequently dismember it were chosen as the direction of the main effort of the new world war being launched by Washington. With accomplishment of the coup d’é tat in Kiev with formation in Ukraine of an anti-Russian Nazi regime controlled by Washington, this war passed from latent to open phase.

The world war that Washington tries to unleash differs from the previous one by the absence of direct engagement of warring armies. It is fought using modern information and cognitive technologies based on the " soft power" of persuasion to surrender voluntarily, and on limited use of military force against the disobedient. Emphasis is placed on defeating the enemy’s social consciousness, destabilizing its internal condition, bribing the productive elite, destroying the state power institutions, and overthrowing the legitimate leadership with subsequent transfer of power to a puppet government, the functions of which are reduced to servicing the interests of the U.S. capital. Therefore, such wars are chaotic in terms of their external perception and hybrid in chosen methods of influencing the aggression object: until the last moment, the victim does not sense a threat from the enemy, its political will is constrained by endless negotiations and consultations, immunity is suppressed by demagogic propaganda, while the enemy is actively working to destroy its internal and external security structures. At a decisive moment, they are subverted with military suppression of emerging resistance hotspots. This was how the U.S. seized control over North Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Georgia, and now over Ukraine.

Having organized the coup d’é tat and established full control over the Ukrainian state power structures, Washington made a bid on turning this part of the Russian World into a springboard for military, information, humanitarian and political intervention against Russia with the aim of destabilizing the political situation in our country, transferring a chaotic war to its territory, arranging a revolution and performing subsequent dismemberment. The expectation is that the Russian public conscience lacks immunity against penetration of influence agents from Ukraine that forms an integral part of the Russian spiritual and cultural root system. Another expectation is that Russia will not dare to use mass destruction weapons against the fraternal people.

Unleashing the Ukrainian-Russian war, the U.S. try its best to involved in it NATO countries as well, seeking to weaken the EU through anti-Russian economic sanctions and strengthening its control over Brussels. Whereas participation in anti-Russian sanctions will cost the EU countries, in expert opinion, a trillion euros in losses, the occupation of Ukraine does not involve great expenses for the U.S. and has almost paid itself off by seizing cultural valuables, gold reserves, shale gas deposits, and the oil and gas transportation system. In the long term, the U.S. expects a considerable profit from seizure of the Ukrainian markets of nuclear fuel elements, military machinery, equipment. They plan damage for Russia with profit for themselves. Control establishment over Ukrainian defense contracting enterprises will give them access to the Soviet secret technologies used in Russia, and will also help destroy cooperation between Russia and Ukraine in the defense industry sector.

Putting this another way, the choice of Ukraine as the key target of the U.S. aggression against Russia is by no means accidental. For two decades, the U.S. secret services were engaged in seeding the Ukrainian political space with mines in order to conduct a directed anti-Russian explosion at the required time. These mines detonated earlier than planned, because of an unexpected spinning of Yanukovych out of control and his refusal to transfer national sovereignty to Brussels in the form of a Ukrainian association with the EU. To prevent Ukraine from returning to the Eurasian integration process, Washington discarded all rules of international law and opted for direct aggression, resorting to brutal meddling in Ukraine’s domestic affairs by arranging a coup d’é tat and establishing the power of its agents. The civil war organized by Washington in Ukraine is transforming into a vortex of expanding chaos, which sucks Russia and Europe into a new world war.

The following chapters of this part expose the combination of objective and subjective factors of the new world war that the U. S. is launching. The above picture of the long cycles of global economic development is revealed through description of their underlying laws.

 

 

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