The escalating conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran is often presented as another regional crisis in the long history of Middle Eastern wars. In reality it reflects something far larger: the growing instability of the global order that has been dominated by the United States since the end of the Second World War. According to much of the Western political establishment and mainstream media, the war is unfolding according to plan. Commentators on major U.S. networks frequently present the conflict as a demonstration of overwhelming Western military superiority, while officials in Washington and Tel Aviv insist that the strategic situation remains firmly under their control.
Yet outside this narrow media framework a different assessment is increasingly being voiced. Military analysts, economists, and international observers have pointed out that the conflict has not developed according to the expectations of its architects. The stated objectives of the conflict have shifted repeatedly, from nuclear disarmament to missile containment and, increasingly, to broader goals of regime destabilisation. At times the justification has even been framed in circular terms as a form of pre-emptive defence. This pattern points less to a coherent strategy than to an evolving response shaped by changing conditions on the ground. Instead the Iranian government has proven resilient, its military capabilities remain intact, and the conflict has begun to expose the limits of U.S. and Israeli power in the region.
Rather than a short war culminating in the installation of a compliant government in Tehran, the confrontation now threatens to become a prolonged conflict with far-reaching consequences for the global economy. Rising energy prices, instability in the Persian Gulf, and the possibility of wider regional escalation have introduced new uncertainties into an already fragile international system.
To understand why this war has emerged and why it carries such significance, it is necessary to look beyond the immediate military developments and examine the deeper economic structures that shape U.S. foreign policy. The conflicts of the present moment are not simply the result of diplomatic disputes or the decisions of individual leaders, but expressions of a global system whose economic and military structures channel vast social resources into permanent war. The conflicts examined here are better understood as expressions of structural interests rooted in the organisation of the global capitalist system. These dynamics are also inseparable from the widening inequalities and patterns of dependency that structure the relationship between the Global North and Global South within the modern world economy.
Over the past eighty years the United States has fought wars across multiple continents, overthrown governments, imposed sanctions on dozens of countries, and constructed a global military network without historical precedent. These actions are often presented as responses to individual crises or security threats. Viewed over time, however, they reveal a consistent pattern rooted in the economic and political dynamics of modern capitalism.
The end of the Second World War marked a decisive turning point in the history of global capitalism. The old European colonial empires that had dominated the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emerged from the war weakened and economically exhausted. Britain and France retained formal colonies for a time, but the balance of power had shifted irreversibly. In their place a new centre of capitalist power emerged. The United States possessed the world’s most powerful industrial economy, the dominant financial system, and an unmatched military capacity.
For this reason 1945 represents the beginning of a new phase in the development of imperialism. The United States did not simply inherit the geopolitical space once occupied by the European empires. It constructed a new form of global dominance built upon military alliances, financial institutions, and political intervention. From that point onward the structure of international capitalism became deeply intertwined with the strategic priorities of the United States.
Since then the United States has built the most extensive system of global power in modern history. In this system the state functions not merely as a political authority but as the organiser of the strategic conditions under which capital operates internationally. Military alliances secure trade routes and investment environments, financial institutions regulate global credit, and diplomatic pressure shapes political outcomes favourable to the existing economic order.
Military bases span the planet, alliances shape the political geography of entire regions, and economic sanctions can isolate entire economies from global financial networks. From Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, from coups in Latin America and Africa to sanctions regimes imposed across the world, the same underlying logic becomes visible.
Viewed individually these events appear as separate crises or geopolitical disputes. Viewed historically they form part of a coherent system through which political and economic power are exercised. Understanding this system requires more than recounting its wars. It requires examining the economic structure that produces them.
The permanent war economy of the United States reflects the priorities of capitalism rather than the needs of society as a whole. In the modern era large-scale military power is not simply an instrument of national defence but a structural component of the global system of capitalist accumulation. As Lenin argued in the early twentieth century, the concentration of capital, the dominance of large corporations, and the fusion of financial and state power generate powerful pressures for expansion beyond national borders, embedding military and financial power within the normal functioning of the system itself.
The military sector itself forms one of the largest areas of state-directed expenditure within the U.S. economy, sustaining vast networks of private contractors, research institutions, and industrial supply chains that depend directly on public military budgets.
Military alliances, financial pressure, and political intervention therefore become mechanisms through which dominant capitalist states protect markets, resources, and strategic influence. Military spending, sanctions regimes, and global interventions function not simply as instruments of foreign policy but as mechanisms through which capital accumulation and geopolitical dominance are sustained. The history of U.S. foreign policy since 1945 therefore cannot be separated from the broader trajectory of capitalism in the modern era.
The conflicts now unfolding across several regions should therefore not be viewed in isolation. The war in Ukraine, the confrontation with Iran in West Asia, the ongoing destruction in Gaza, mounting pressure on Cuba, Venezuela and across Latin America, the instability unfolding across parts of Africa, and the intensifying strategic rivalry with China in the Indo-Pacific are different theatres of a broader geopolitical transition. Together they reflect the growing strain placed upon the system of global dominance constructed by the United States after 1945 and the emergence of new centres of economic and political power, not all of which conform to the traditional structures of the capitalist world system.
The development of the permanent war economy is not uniform but unfolds through distinct historical periods, each shaped by changing material conditions within global capitalism and by the evolving strategies of the United States in response to them.
Period I
Post-War Hegemony, Containment, and Anti-Colonial Revolutions (1945–1971)
The modern international order emerged from the destruction of the Second World War. The United States emerged from the conflict with its industrial base intact while much of Europe and Asia lay devastated. American production accounted for a dominant share of global output and the United States became the central pillar of the capitalist world economy.
To stabilise this position Washington constructed a network of institutions designed to organise global capitalism. The Bretton Woods monetary system placed the dollar at the centre of the international financial order. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank regulated the flow of credit and reconstruction finance. NATO provided the military framework for the Western alliance.
At the same time the United States created the institutional machinery required to exercise influence beyond its borders. The Central Intelligence Agency, established in 1947, became the principal instrument for covert operations and regime change.
The Cold War also reshaped domestic politics inside the United States. Anti-communism became a central organising principle of American political life. Legislation such as the Taft–Hartley Act restricted the power of organised labour while the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the political climate associated with McCarthyism targeted socialist activists, intellectuals, and trade union organisers. These policies weakened radical currents within the labour movement and stabilised the domestic conditions necessary for capitalist accumulation.
Externally the doctrine of containment framed the geopolitical confrontation with the Soviet Union. Yet the deeper historical context was the wave of anti-colonial movements sweeping across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Newly independent states sought to break the economic structures inherited from colonial rule and many of these movements drew inspiration from socialist ideas or received support from the socialist camp.
Washington interpreted these developments as threats to the emerging capitalist order. As a result the United States intervened repeatedly to prevent governments aligned with socialist or radical nationalist programmes from consolidating power.
The record of this period includes the Korean War, which cost an estimated three million lives, the CIA-backed overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the coup in Guatemala in 1954, and the escalating war in Vietnam which caused millions of deaths across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961 symbolised the violent struggle over the political direction of newly independent states.
In the same period the United States also developed a close strategic relationship with Israel, which increasingly functioned as a reliable regional ally within a region central to global energy supplies and Cold War geopolitics. During these decades the capitalist world experienced rapid economic expansion. Beneath the surface, however, the contradictions of the system were already developing.
From a Marxist perspective this trajectory reflected the internal dynamics of capitalism itself. The post-war boom of the 1950s and 1960s produced extraordinary growth across advanced capitalist economies. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the system entered a new phase of instability. The collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, the oil shocks of the 1970s, and the stagflation crisis signalled the exhaustion of the post-war expansion.
Marx located the roots of such crises in what he described as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, a central law of motion within the capitalist system. As capital accumulates and production becomes more technologically intensive, the share of investment devoted to machinery grows relative to labour, which remains the only source of new value. Over time this places downward pressure on profitability, generating recurring crises.
In response, capital seeks to restore profitability by shifting investment toward regions and sectors where higher rates of exploitation can be secured, by expanding into financial speculation, and by restructuring production on a global scale. These processes were central to the neoliberal turn from the 1970s onward, marked by the relocation of industrial production, the expansion of finance, and the growing dominance of service-based economies in the advanced capitalist world. These tendencies have been widely examined in empirical studies of modern capitalism, which consistently identify long-term pressures on profitability across advanced economies.
Such crises are not simply moments of disruption but expressions of deeper structural contradictions. As capital accumulates it becomes increasingly concentrated, while the capacity of markets to absorb expanding production remains limited. Periodically the system produces more than can be profitably realised, leading to stagnation, crisis, and the search for new fields of investment, often beyond national borders.
The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system reflected the growing contradiction between the global role of the U.S. dollar and the material limits of American economic dominance. As profitability declined and fiscal pressures mounted, the United States could no longer sustain a monetary system anchored in gold convertibility.
The oil shocks of the 1970s intensified these pressures, but they also revealed a strategic opportunity. Control over global energy markets, and particularly over the pricing of oil, became central to the reconstruction of U.S. monetary power. In this context, the deepening political and military engagement of the United States in West Asia was not only a matter of regional geopolitics but part of a broader effort to stabilise the dollar’s position within the global economy. Imperial strategy, in this sense, cannot be understood simply in terms of territorial control. It must also be understood as an effort to stabilise the conditions of capital accumulation at a global level.
Period II
Crisis, Neoliberal Restructuring, and Proxy Wars (1971–1991)
The collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971 marked the beginning of a profound restructuring of global capitalism. Once the dollar was no longer tied to gold the international financial system entered a new era characterised by floating currencies, expanding credit markets, and increasingly speculative financial activity. With the end of gold convertibility the dollar’s position increasingly rested on the structure of global trade and finance, particularly the pricing of oil in U.S. currency.
The dollar became the central currency of international trade, particularly in global energy markets. Oil transactions were overwhelmingly priced in dollars which created the foundations of what became known as the petrodollar system. Agreements reached in the 1970s between the United States and major Gulf oil producers ensured that the world’s most important energy commodity would be traded primarily in U.S. currency. The revenues generated from these sales were then recycled through U.S. financial markets, particularly through the purchase of Treasury bonds and other financial assets.
This arrangement created a continuous global demand for dollars and allowed the United States to sustain levels of public debt and financial expansion that would otherwise have been impossible. International banking networks and payment systems such as SWIFT reinforced this structure. Access to dollar-denominated financial markets became essential for international trade and credit, giving Washington extraordinary leverage over global trade, credit, and financial stability where U.S. geopolitical priorities could be disciplined through financial isolation. Countries could be excluded from banking networks, cut off from credit markets, or subjected to secondary sanctions against companies trading with them
During the same period ruling classes across the capitalist world launched a programme of economic restructuring that became known as neoliberalism. Deregulation, privatisation, attacks on organised labour, and the liberalisation of global capital flows were presented as necessary measures to restore profitability after the crisis of the 1970s. These policies weakened labour movements, expanded the power of financial institutions, and opened new regions of the world economy to investment and resource extraction.
These transformations were accompanied by a sharp increase in inequality both within and between countries. While advanced capitalist economies experienced rising concentrations of wealth and the expansion of financial power, many countries in the Global South were integrated into the global economy on increasingly unequal terms. Structural adjustment programmes, debt dependency, and trade liberalisation often constrained domestic development, reinforcing patterns of uneven development that have persisted into the present.
Geopolitical competition intensified as well. The United States relied increasingly on covert operations, proxy wars, and support for authoritarian regimes in order to prevent the spread of socialist or nationalist governments across the Global South.
Latin America became a central theatre of this struggle. The coup in Chile in 1973 overthrew the elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. Central America soon became engulfed in proxy wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Africa also became an arena of Cold War competition. Liberation movements across the continent sought to break the economic structures inherited from colonial rule. Southern Africa became one of the most intense battlegrounds of the era. Conflicts in Angola and Mozambique involved competing interventions by global and regional powers. The apartheid regime in South Africa maintained close economic relationships with Western states despite its system of racial domination. The assassination of Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara in 1987 reflected the violent contest over the political direction of post-colonial Africa.
The long-standing blockade of Cuba demonstrates how this system operates. Financial institutions and corporations that engage in trade with Cuba risk losing access to the U.S. market and the wider dollar-based financial system.
In recent years these mechanisms have not been relaxed but intensified. Sanctions have increasingly targeted the energy and financial sectors of sanctioned states in order to restrict access to fuel, credit, and international trade. In the case of Cuba, restrictions on shipping, energy supplies, and financial transactions have tightened significantly, limiting the island’s ability to import oil and other essential resources. These measures carry severe humanitarian consequences.
At the same time political rhetoric in Washington has increasingly framed such pressure as part of a broader strategy aimed at forcing political change. Senior U.S. officials have openly discussed the possibility of further escalation should economic pressure fail to achieve its objectives. In this sense the Cuban case illustrates the wider logic of financial warfare within the contemporary international system, where sanctions function not merely as diplomatic tools but as instruments capable of destabilising entire economies.
Similar mechanisms have been applied against countries such as Venezuela and Iran, where sanctions targeting energy exports and financial transactions have been used in an attempt to reshape domestic political outcomes.
Period III
The Unipolar Order and the War on Terror (1991–2021)
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to confirm the triumph of Western capitalism. For the first time in modern history a single state stood largely unchallenged at the apex of the international system.
The Gulf War of 1991 demonstrated the overwhelming technological superiority of the U.S. military. NATO expansion reshaped the security architecture of Europe while global financial institutions deepened their influence across the developing world. The attacks of September 11 accelerated this unipolar order. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were followed by military interventions in Libya, Syria, and across parts of Africa and the Middle East.
These conflicts also occurred in regions central to the global energy system. Since the 1970s the stability of the international financial order has been closely linked to the pricing of oil in U.S. dollars. Control over key energy-producing regions therefore carries financial as well as strategic importance. Attempts by some states to explore alternative currency arrangements in energy trade have periodically heightened tensions with Washington, reinforcing the strategic significance of the West Asia within the wider architecture of U.S. global power.
These wars also demonstrated a recurring paradox of imperial intervention. Military intervention often functions as a mechanism through which dominant powers attempt to reorganise regions of strategic importance when existing political arrangements no longer align with the interests of the prevailing economic order. Armed groups that were initially supported as strategic allies often evolved into long-term adversaries once the political landscape shifted. The very forces cultivated to defeat one opponent frequently became the justification for the next cycle of military intervention.
According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, these conflicts have cost more than eight trillion dollars and displaced millions of people across multiple regions. Economic sanctions also expanded dramatically during this period. Research published in The Lancet Global Health has estimated that unilateral sanctions between 1971 and 2021 may have been associated with tens of millions of excess deaths worldwide. Military activity also carries immense environmental consequences. Research from the Costs of War project estimates that U.S. military operations since 2001 have produced over 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, a level comparable to the annual emissions of major industrialised countries. Together these figures point to the scale at which the permanent war economy reshapes both human life and the natural environment.
Despite the enormous costs of these interventions, they did not produce stable political systems in the countries targeted by the United States. The scale of the War on Terror demonstrated the extent of American military dominance during the early twenty-first century, but it also revealed its limits as a means of organising the global system.
Stability, however, has not always been the primary objective of these interventions. In many cases the destruction of existing state structures, the fragmentation of national economies, and the creation of long-term dependency on external finance and security assistance have aligned more closely with the strategic interests of dominant powers. The reconstruction of war-torn societies frequently binds them to international financial institutions, debt structures, and external political influence, embedding them more deeply within the existing global order.
While the United States was engaged in these prolonged wars, structural transformations within the world economy were already taking shape. New centres of production and accumulation were emerging, and alternative forms of economic cooperation were beginning to take shape beyond the traditional Western-led framework.
By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it had become increasingly clear that the unipolar moment was no longer secure. The prolonged wars of this period had absorbed vast resources, even as the underlying structure of the global economy was shifting in ways that would increasingly challenge the foundations of American predominance.
Period IV
The Transition to Multipolarity and the Crisis of U.S. Hegemony (2021–Present)
The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021 marked more than the end of a twenty-year war. It symbolised the transition into a new phase in which the limits of American power, long visible in the preceding decades, became increasingly difficult to manage or contain. The collapse of the Afghan government within days of the U.S. departure demonstrated that prolonged military intervention could no longer reliably produce stable political outcomes aligned with U.S. strategic objectives.
At the same time, the structural shifts that had been developing within the global economy were now clearly taking form. China had consolidated its position as the world’s leading manufacturing power and a major technological competitor, Russia had reasserted itself as a strategic actor, and many states across the Global South were actively pursuing alternatives to the financial and political institutions that had defined the Western-led order since the end of the Cold War.
These developments reflect the uneven development characteristic of capitalism itself. The rise of China does not represent a simple repetition of earlier periods of inter-imperialist rivalry between colonial powers competing to divide the world. Instead, it reflects the emergence of a major economic power whose development follows a distinct trajectory, often described as socialism with Chinese characteristics, combining long-term state planning, strategic control over key sectors, and integration into the global economy on terms not reducible to traditional capitalist accumulation. The tensions now unfolding therefore arise less from symmetrical imperial competition than from the strain placed upon an international order whose central pillar is gradually losing its uncontested position.
In Chinese policy discourse these changes have increasingly been described as the emergence of a multipolar world. While the concept had appeared earlier in diplomatic language, it became more prominent in Chinese foreign policy discourse during the early 2020s as Beijing began to frame global politics as moving toward multiple centres of power rather than a single dominant state.
One institutional expression of this shift has been the evolution of the BRICS grouping. Originally formed as an economic coordination forum between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the organisation has gradually expanded its role within global economic diplomacy. The expansion of the grouping to include additional states, among them Iran and several major energy-producing countries, reflects a growing effort among emerging economies to build alternative structures for trade, development finance, and political cooperation outside the traditional Western-dominated institutions.
For many countries across the Global South the attraction of such arrangements is clear. The weaponisation of financial institutions through sanctions regimes and restrictions on access to global credit markets has demonstrated the extent to which the existing financial architecture can be used as an instrument of geopolitical pressure. Developing alternative mechanisms for trade and investment therefore represents not simply an economic policy choice but a strategy for preserving national sovereignty.
Another major conflict shaping the present phase is the war in Ukraine. In Western political discourse the war is frequently presented primarily as a case of Russian aggression. Yet the origins of the conflict lie in a longer history of geopolitical competition that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 1990s and 2000s NATO expanded steadily eastward despite earlier assurances given to Soviet and Russian leaders that the alliance would not move toward Russia’s borders. From Moscow’s perspective this expansion represented a direct strategic threat.
The political rupture in Ukraine in 2014 marked a decisive turning point in this confrontation. The removal of the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych from office followed months of protest and escalating political conflict in Kyiv. Western governments openly supported opposition forces during this period, while leaked diplomatic communications revealed the extent of U.S. involvement in shaping the composition of the post-Yanukovych government. Armed nationalist militias, including several far-right paramilitary formations, also played a visible role in the street confrontations that culminated in the collapse of the existing government.
The subsequent reorientation of Ukrainian foreign policy toward closer integration with NATO and the European Union transformed the country into a central arena of geopolitical rivalry between Russia and the Western alliance. The conflict that followed in eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2022 resulted in thousands of deaths and deepened the division between Russia and the Western powers.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 must therefore be understood within this escalating confrontation. The decision to launch a full-scale invasion was taken by the Russian state and represents a decisive escalation for which it bears responsibility. However, the conditions under which this conflict emerged, and the subsequent failure to secure a negotiated settlement, are deeply rooted in the long-term strategic policies pursued by the United States and its European allies. The steady eastward expansion of NATO, the integration of Ukraine into Western political and military structures, and the rejection of alternative security arrangements contributed significantly to the escalation of tensions that preceded the war.
For Washington and Brussels, the conflict has also served broader strategic purposes. Weakening Russia economically and militarily has long been viewed by many U.S. strategists as a means of reshaping the geopolitical balance across Eurasia.
Yet the war has produced mixed results. Russia has adapted its economy to sanctions, deepened economic cooperation with China and other non-Western states, and continued to export energy resources that remain essential to global markets. Rather than isolating Russia completely, the conflict has accelerated the formation of alternative economic and political partnerships outside the Western alliance system. The conflict has further revealed the extent to which the international financial system functions as an instrument of geopolitical power.
Consequently, the financial architecture that has underpinned U.S. global dominance for decades is increasingly coming under pressure. The central position of the dollar within international trade, particularly within global energy markets, remains one of the most important pillars of American economic power. Since the 1970s the petrodollar system has tied global energy markets to U.S. financial power. This arrangement has generated continuous global demand for dollars and allowed the United States to sustain levels of public debt and financial expansion that would otherwise be difficult to maintain.
If major producers and consumers of energy were to shift toward alternative currencies or payment systems, the implications for the U.S. financial system could be far-reaching. The stability of the dollar-centred financial order therefore remains deeply connected to the political stability of key energy-producing regions.
It is within this context that the conflict with Iran must be understood. Iran occupies a strategic position within the global energy system and within the emerging network of economic relations linking China, Russia, and several major energy producers outside the Western alliance system. In recent years energy trade between countries such as Iran, Venezuela, and China has increasingly taken place in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. From the perspective of the U.S. strategic establishment, these shifts represent a direct challenge to the financial foundations of American power.
The United States has responded with a strategy aimed at containing the rise of China and preserving its dominant position within the global system. Military alliances across the Indo-Pacific, economic restrictions targeting Chinese technological development, and renewed confrontation in regions such as West Asia and Eastern Europe form part of this broader effort.
Yet escalating conflict may also accelerate the very trends Washington seeks to prevent. Rising oil prices, disruptions to global energy markets, and intensified geopolitical rivalry encourage closer cooperation between states seeking alternatives to the dollar-dominated financial system. The political and military alliances through which the United States has historically maintained influence in West Asia must be understood within this broader strategic framework.
In much contemporary commentary the relationship between the United States and Israel is often explained in highly personalised or conspiratorial terms, as though American foreign policy were being dictated by Israeli leaders or domestic lobbying networks. Such explanations obscure the structural foundations of the alliance by replacing the analysis of state power and economic interests with personalised or conspiratorial accounts.
From a historical materialist standpoint, explanations that attribute global power to particular ethnic or religious groups misunderstand the nature of the capitalist system itself. The ruling classes of capitalist societies have never been confined to a single nationality, religion, or cultural identity. They are defined not by ethnicity but by their relationship to capital: ownership of productive assets, control over financial institutions, and influence within the political structures that defend these interests.
The leading centres of global capital illustrate this clearly. Major American corporations such as ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and Lockheed Martin operate alongside European firms such as Shell and Volkswagen and Asian corporations such as Toyota and Samsung. These institutions represent different national capitals within a global economic system, not the interests of any particular ethnic community. The capitalist class therefore operates as a transnational structure rooted in ownership and economic power rather than identity. For this reason, Marxist analysis focuses on class relations and material interests rather than cultural or conspiratorial explanations of political power.
The relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv has been shaped primarily by converging strategic interests rather than by the influence of individual actors. Since the Cold War Israel has functioned as a key regional ally for Western powers in West Asia, providing military, intelligence, and strategic support within a region central to the global energy system. The willingness of the United States and its allies to arm, finance, and politically protect Israel therefore reflects the broader logic of imperial strategy rather than the personal decisions of particular political leaders.
The long-term consequences of the current regional confrontation remain uncertain. Israel has historically functioned as the principal Western ally in West Asia, but the scale of the present conflict and the political repercussions it has generated across the region may reshape the strategic landscape in ways that are not yet fully clear.
Palestine has become one of the defining political issues of the present phase. The destruction of Gaza and the scale of civilian suffering have profoundly shaped global perceptions of the Western-led order, particularly across the Global South where memories of colonial domination remain close to the surface. For many observers the willingness of Western governments to provide political and military support for Israel while invoking the language of international law and human rights elsewhere has exposed a deep contradiction within the moral framework that has long accompanied Western foreign policy. In this sense the war in Gaza has not only intensified a regional conflict but has also accelerated the erosion of the political legitimacy that once accompanied Western leadership of the international system.
Across Latin America pressure on Venezuela reflects the continuing struggle over control of energy resources and economic sovereignty. In Africa the political upheavals across the Sahel reveal growing resistance to the structures of neo-colonial economic control. Cuba continues to face decades of economic blockade, illustrating the persistent use of financial warfare as an instrument of geopolitical pressure.
Taken together, these developments reflect more than a shift in geopolitical alignments. From a Marxist perspective they illustrate the deeper contradictions of the capitalist system itself. The global order constructed after 1945 depended on the ability of the United States to maintain both economic dominance and political authority within the capitalist world. As long as that dominance remained largely uncontested the system appeared stable.
Yet capitalism cannot eliminate its internal contradictions. Economic competition, uneven development, and the concentration of wealth and productive capacity continually generate new centres of accumulation and new geopolitical tensions. The very processes that once strengthened U.S. dominance — the global expansion of markets, production, and technology — have gradually produced competitors capable of challenging it.
China’s development illustrates a different strategic orientation within the global system. Rather than relying primarily on military alliances and coercive pressure, Chinese policy has emphasised trade, infrastructure development, and long-term economic cooperation through initiatives such as the Belt and Road programme. Whether this model ultimately produces a more stable international order remains an open question, but it reflects a strategic orientation that contrasts sharply with the militarised approach that has characterised much of U.S. foreign policy in recent decades.
If these trends continue, the conflict with Iran may come to be seen not simply as another regional confrontation but as a moment when the material limits of U.S. global power became increasingly visible.
Conclusion
The trajectory of the past eight decades, unfolding through distinct historical periods shaped by changing material conditions, reveals a consistent pattern. Military intervention, covert destabilisation, sanctions regimes, and financial pressure have formed part of a broader system through which the United States has attempted to maintain its dominant position within global capitalism.
The human cost of this system has been immense. Wars, sanctions, and political destabilisation have produced enormous suffering across multiple regions. Economic sanctions alone have been associated with tens of millions of deaths, while major military conflicts have devastated entire societies and displaced millions of people. The environmental consequences are equally significant. Military production and global military operations consume vast quantities of fossil fuels and generate substantial greenhouse gas emissions, making the war economy a significant contributor to the accelerating climate crisis.
Yet the tragedy of this system lies not only in the destruction it produces but also in the possibilities it prevents. The trillions of dollars devoted to war since 1945 could have financed universal healthcare, public transport systems, housing programmes, and education across much of the world. Instead those resources have been channelled into a system that continually reproduces instability and conflict and destruction.
Violence and repression rarely produce the stability they promise. More often they generate the conditions for further conflict. Societies subjected to invasion, sanctions, or political destabilisation are pushed toward defensive forms of organisation that frequently harden into militant or extremist movements. The history of U.S. intervention illustrates this dynamic repeatedly.
The pattern is familiar. Saddam Hussein was supported during the Iran–Iraq war before becoming the target of U.S. invasion. Armed Islamist groups were encouraged during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union before evolving into movements such as the Taliban and later the networks associated with ISIS. Across Latin America right-wing militias and dictatorships were supported to destroy progressive governments, from the Contras in Nicaragua to the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile. In Cuba the Batista regime was backed until its collapse provoked a revolutionary transformation that reshaped the island’s political future.
In each case imperial intervention dismantles existing political orders but rarely produces stable or sovereign replacements. Instead it generates cycles of conflict, restructuring, and dependency that bind affected societies more deeply into systems of external control.
These patterns of dependency are sustained not only through military and financial power but also through uneven development within the global economy. Advanced capitalist states retain control over key sectors such as high technology, finance, and energy systems, enabling the continued transfer of value from the Global South to the Global North. Efforts by developing countries to pursue independent paths of economic development have often been met with external pressure, including sanctions, political destabilisation, and, in some cases, direct or indirect military intervention.
The destruction of infrastructure and productive capacity in war-torn regions frequently sets back development for decades, reinforcing patterns of dependency that bind affected economies to external sources of finance, technology, and political support. In this way, conflict and reconstruction become part of a broader process through which global inequalities are reproduced.
The productive capacity required to address humanity’s most pressing challenges already exists. What prevents its full realisation is not technological limitation or lack of resources, but the organisation of the global economy itself. As the contradictions of that system intensify, the global balance of power is entering a period of profound transformation.
The order that emerged after 1945 is increasingly unstable. Whether the coming period leads to deeper conflict or opens the possibility of a more cooperative and socially just international system will depend on the political forces capable of shaping the future. The trajectory of the past does not determine the limits of what can be built in the present. The structures that sustain the permanent war economy are historical, not inevitable, and the struggle over the future of the international system is inseparable from the struggle over class power itself.
In the end the question is not simply geopolitical but social. The permanent war economy is rooted in the interests of the capitalist class and in the organisation of economic life around profit, competition, and accumulation. As long as those interests dominate political power, the pressures that produce militarisation, intervention, and economic coercion will continue to shape the international system. A fundamentally different global order therefore requires more than shifts in the balance of power between states. It requires a transformation in the organisation of economic and political power itself.
This points beyond capitalism. A socialist reorganisation of economic life, grounded in democratic control over production, the prioritisation of human need, and the planned use of resources, offers a viable alternative to a system increasingly defined by crisis, conflict, and ecological breakdown. Such a transformation will not occur uniformly or simultaneously across the world, but will develop unevenly through struggles within and between societies, reshaping the global economy over time. Without such a transformation, the cycles of war and instability that have defined the modern era are unlikely to recede, but to deepen.
