The new strategic phase

What do we mean by the «new strategic phase»? The United States' decision to intervene in Iraq in 2003 was born as «a war by choice» that was meant to change the regional and global balance of power. This «political war» confirmed the decades-old strategic framework of the «Carter Doctrine» - to impede the hegemony of anysingle power in the region - but it did so with two distinct objectives. The immediate objective was regime change in Iraq. The strategic objective was China. In quasi-explicit terms the «Doctrine» reaffirmed that American control over the Persian Gulf was designed both to condition China and to prevent the spread of Chinese influence in the region. China poses a threat not only because of its increasing industrial power, but because of its growing dependence on oil from the Middle East. We concluded that if the United States had considered it necessary to intervene directly in a war to maintain the balance of power, then international relations had entered a phase of definition - the tensions and contradictions of the global contest had crossed an important threshold. The following year (2004) we used the term new strategic phase for the first time. For the past fifty years, the analytical work on long-term capitalist development (especially capitalism in Asia) has provided the scientific framework for the definition of the role of our revolutionary party, and a guide for the consolidation of our party in such an advanced metropolis. Now that new imperialist powers are rising in the east - namely China - and European imperialism has created the euro federation, the cycle that we had identified has come to an end and a «new strategic phase» has opened. The new characteristic of this cycle is the struggle among continent-size powers: the nation-states and the concept of sovereign power that was born in Europe are no longer sufficient for the new struggle. China and Europe are the crux of the matter in this new phase. As for our party's tasks in this new strategic phase, the recent crises have confirmed the global concentrations of the proletariat and - for the first time - the existence of real potential. A billion people will participate in tumultuous transformations and be directly affected by socia change during the next decade. They represent an objective opportunity for our revolutionary strategy. The transformation of this potential into the subjective forces of internationalist communism is the question we face, and the unprecedented challenge of this new phase. The march of the new units of the global proletariat in China, Brazil, the Middle East and Turkey has just begun. Class energies are present, but their form and direction are unknown. This is also why the consolidation of Bolshevism within European imperialism is of fundamental importance for the internationalist strategy of our worldwide class.