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u/Academic-Title-8315 3h ago
I understand the materialist argument, and I’m not saying Russia, China, or North Korea simply “hate America” for some innate reason. I’m specifically asking what happens after the material conditions change.
If the U.S. dismantles its imperial infrastructure and no longer poses an existential threat to those states, then yes, it follows that their perception of the U.S. would change. But my question is whether we’re assuming that removing American imperialism automatically produces a cooperative geopolitical environment.
Russia, China, and North Korea aren’t simply reacting to the United States; they also have their own state interests, ruling institutions, class structures, military objectives, and regional conflicts. So if we’re talking about a genuinely post-imperialist socialist transformation of the U.S., what is the leftist theory of dealing with those contradictions?
I’m not arguing that the U.S. should maintain its empire because Russia or China might be hostile. I’m asking what the defensive and international strategy looks like once that empire is dismantled. If the answer is that fundamentally changing the material conditions fundamentally changes the relationships between states, that’s a legitimate answer I just think that premise needs to be demonstrated rather than assumed.
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u/Qlanth 3h ago
Your conception of what makes these countries the enemies of the USA is extremely limited. Do you think Russia just woke up one day and decided to hate the USA? China too? I am very much reminded of when the US government, in an attempt to obfuscate the USA's criminal history in west Asia, was telling people that Al Qaeda "hated us because of our freedom." These people are motivated by real world, material conditions and not by some innate hatred of America. When those material conditions are drastically altered so is the political atmosphere.
A world where the USA has dismantled it's entire imperial infrastructure is one where those countries you mentioned are no longer under a constant existential threat of annihilation and, therefore, no longer have to consider the USA a threat.
As communists in the imperial core we recognize that the greatest hindrance toward achieving socialism and, eventually, a communist future is imperialism. That is the principle contradiction of our time. Dismantling that empire is the primary task because we are allied to the working class first above all. Other communists in other imperial centers have the same task.