2026 kicks off to the sound of imperialist war drums and class struggle

marxist.com · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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This February, the leadership of the Revolutionary Communist International met in Italy to assess the world situation and how the forces of communism are being gathered and trained around the globe, and to plan ahead. Below we publish a transcript of a talk on the world situation by Jorge Martín of the International Secretariat of the RCI, assessing where the world is going in these turbulent first months of 2026.The beginning of the year has certainly been full of events on the world arena. On Saturday night, President Trump was speaking at a meeting of CEOs in Atlanta. In his inimitable style, he attempted to crack a few jokes, which I think did not go down very well with the audience. He said, “maybe I'll have to cut my speech short because I have to go and watch the invasion of Greenland”. Then he said, “no, no, no, this is just a joke”.And finally he said, “we're not going to invade Greenland. We're going to buy it. And it's never been my intention to make Greenland the 51st state. I want to make Canada the 51st. Greenland the 52nd. And Venezuela can be the 53rd. And I'm thinking maybe Cuba the 54th.”So this is the world we're living in, isn't it? Now, if you look back, these have been the developments at the beginning of the year: 3rd January, the attack on Venezuela. A week later, he started banging the drum about Greenland again. He offended all his friends and allies in Europe and went to Davos to launch a big speech against all of them.Trump arrived in Davos and gave a speech in which he insulted all his European supposed 'allies' / Image: The White HouseHe's obviously threatened Iran. He has moved military assets to the region. In the middle of all this, there's this massive insurrection or uprising in Minneapolis against the very provocative tactics of ICE immigration raids. Obviously, it will be easy to put all of this down to Trump's madness or his own style.Of course, as Marxists, we do not deny the role of the individual in history. It is clear that Trump's style and his character play a big role in events. His provocative manner, his way of thinking, aggravates the conflicts, creates bigger instability than otherwise would be the case. But at the end of the day, we have to say two things. One, Trump is the product of the crisis of capitalism in the United States.Yes, he certainly gives it peculiar features and aggravates it and makes it more turbulent. But he is also the product of a particular time in US history. The second thing to understand is that, there is an element of madness in all of this, but this madness has a certain logic to it.The Crisis of US ImperialismOne year ago, we discussed the implications of Trump’s election and the implications for world relations. We explained that we are witnessing shifts in the tectonic plates of world relations.If you look back at what's happened over the last one year, we have been proven right in our analysis. At the bottom of all of these changes in world relations, instability and so on, is the crisis, the relative decline of US imperialism, the recognition by Trump that the United States can no longer be the dominant power everywhere in the world, as it's being challenged by the rise of China and the rise of Russia.Therefore the policy or the strategy that they have decided upon, we said this one year ago, is to attempt to disentangle the United States from places in the world that they do not consider to be of national security importance for the United States.Trump joked that he did not intend to make Greenland the 51st state. Canada would be the 51st, Greenland would be the 52nd... the joke did not go down well / Image: RKPThey are attempting to re-establish their power in their own backyard in the Western Hemisphere, in the American continent, in order to then be able to deal with the main rival, which is China, which is located in the Pacific, not in the Atlantic, not in Europe.This obviously has many consequences for everyone. It has many very important consequences for Europe and the relationship between the United States and Europe, which I'll deal with a bit later on. But it doesn't lead to a world of peaceful relations between the big powers. This is what we've seen over the last one year.It leads clearly to conflict and war and instability in world relations. Now, it's been one year since we discussed all of this, since Trump came to power. I think that we have been proven right in our analysis of what the Trump presidency meant, both in terms of world relations and also of internal politics in the United States. But we have to say, one thing is Trump's intentions and another thing is what he can actually carry out. But in the real world, what he intended to do has proven not so easy to achieve.The war in Ukraine is still going on. And yes, allegedly there is a ceasefire in Gaza since October. But first of all, the ceasefire is no such ceasefire. And nothing really has been resolved in the Middle East. So it's one thing for the United States to want to do certain things. It's another thing for them to be able to carry this out.The National Security StrategyNow, in November, the United States issued a little document called the National Security Strategy. It's all in here. It's a short document. It's 29 pages. I really recommend reading it. It's full of very, very interesting stuff. The first thing that it says is what we said one year ago. The United States can no longer be the global hegemon. The first step in dealing with this new situation is recovering control over the Western Hemisphere.There you have it. This explains what's happened at the beginning of this year. A very serious military intervention in Venezuela. And the renewal of the pressure over the question of Greenland. Yes, it is true that one of the reasons for these two interventions is also the fact that Trump was looking a bit weak prior to these events. He was coming unstuck in his foreign policy. But above all, his opinion poll ratings were going down in the United States. Because he had not solved the main problem that he promised to resolve and that he got many votes for.That is the question of the economy. So therefore, an element of this attack on Venezuela was precisely the attempt to project strength, decisiveness, and to have, in his view, a quick and sharp, painful military operation that restores the image of power of Trump and the United States. But there are other reasons. This is one contributing factor. People say, “well, what is this intervention about? It's because the United States wants Venezuela's oil.” This is one reason, yes. But I will say that you need to listen to what Marco Rubio said.Marco Rubio said, “no, we have plenty of oil. We don't need Venezuela's oil.” He said, “what we cannot have is that in our hemisphere, adversaries of the United States have control over these large oil reserves.” This is the key question. US imperialism does not want what they call ‘non-hemispheric actors’ to have control over critical resources and infrastructures in the American continent.The western hemisphereSo regardless of Trump's madness, his narcissism, his personal ego, and so on, there are deeper reasons for this intervention. This intervention is also meant to say, “look, when we tell you to do something, you have to do it or else”. The logic of imperialist bullying doesn't work if you threaten someone and then you don't carry out your threats. It's also clearly a warning to others.And immediately after 3 January, at the press conference where they were announcing these things in the afternoon, they already said that this is a warning for Colombia, for Mexico, and for Cuba. It doesn't mean that they are going to militarily attack all these countries, but the threat is there.They like to make a deal with these countries, a deal which is favourable to the United States' interests. But this is the logic of the mafia. US imperialism is revealing itself very openly as a protection racket. ‘You are with us, you pay us protection money, and everything will be nice for everyone. But if you don't, there will be consequences.’Now, there's been a lot of speculation about the details of the Venezuelan attack, but I think that that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is the end result. And the end result is that in Venezuela today, there is a government that's compliant with US imperialism.Trump has said it himself, he's very happy with Delcy Rodríguez. “She is doing whatever we tell her.” And so she is. Basically, this is a semi-colonial arrangement. The United States controls the sale of Venezuelan oil. The money goes into a bank account that's controlled by the US government.The Venezuelan government presents a budget every month that Marco Rubio approves or not. Then the money is sent over. The degree of the bankruptcy of the Venezuelan leadership is now being shown for everyone to see. But it shouldn't really be a surprise to us. We had said this some time ago.We said, in Venezuela, there's no revolution, there is a Bonapartist regime that's based on the looting of the country's resources. When Delcy Rodríguez says, “no, no, we're not following Marco Rubio's instructions. This is our own sovereign decision”, in fact, she says, “this is the policy we were already implementing before January 3rd.”She's not wrong. There is a qualitative difference, obviously. But she's not completely wrong, because this policy of opening up the oil industry, privatisation, and so on, was already being implemented since 2018. And in fact, when the United States calculated that Delcy Rodríguez would be compliant with such a policy, they based themselves on her previous track record. This is the situation in Venezuela. It's a semi-colonial arrangement.I will say that in the short term, this is already having a beneficial impact on the Venezuelan economy and living standards in Venezuela. Even if it's just from the point of view that previously they couldn't