The capitalists are revolting over China

Western hawks face an unlikely resistance

The Biden administration, after successfully convincing Europe, against the latter’s own interests, to join America’s proxy war against Russia, is now hard at work to bring the EU on board with Washington’s increasingly aggressive anti-China policy — which involves not only economic decoupling (or “de-risking”, as it’s now called), by restricting trade and investment flows and technological transfers between China and the West, but also increasing NATO’s presence in the Indo-Pacific. The consequences for Europe could be even more significant than the economic shock of the past year. Yet, despite a few grumbles from Macron and others, European leaders are largely playing along. However, Western corporations — on both sides of the Atlantic — are refusing to along with the the US-Western strategy of decoupling from China, and the militarisation of great-power relations more in general. Prominent CEOs are travelling to China and vowing to continue investing in the country. Such open defiance of Washington’s militaristic foreign policy by Western big business represents a striking development. Critics of US-Western foreign policy and military interventionism have traditionally (and correctly, in my view) seen the latter as being essentially aimed at enforcing the Western-led global capitalist order — in other words, as being in the service of big business. However, in light of the growing rifts between America’s economic and political elites, does this analytical framework still hold? Or have the interests of the military-industrial complex decoupled from those of the “general interests” of the capitalist class? Read my latest article here.

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Thomas Fazi

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