Omair Ahmad 
As somebody who has been deeply sceptical of Marxism throughout my life, I find myself chagrined to find that no other theory explains the current moment in geopolitics.
To be fair, there are other theories that explain this system partly. For example, the neo-realist school of international theory, best articulated by Kenneth Waltz in his 1979 book Theory of International Relations, offers key insights. According to neo-realism, every state seeks to pursue its interest and is only constrained by its own relative power versus other states.
Using this theory, the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the fear this has engendered in European states and the differences between the US and European states – now starkly highlighted by US President Donald Trump declaring he would end the war without much consultation with Ukraine or the EU – were all logical and foreseeable.
Also read: Is the US Really an Indispensable Nation?
According to neo-realism, a state like Russia would perceive a potentially hostile Ukraine – for Ukraine as a member of NATO – as a strategic threat. It is worth remembering that in World War II, the Nazis invaded the USSR through Ukraine, with the help of Ukrainians. So, there is historical memory causing this threat. Thus, any NATO expansion into what used to be the Russian “sphere of influence”, and particularly NATO activity in Ukraine, was likely to result in an extreme response by Russia – something that John Mearsheimer, a proponent of Offensive Realism, argued in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea.
Russian actions also inflamed fears in Europe, which also has historical memories of being invaded – by Russians. Additionally, for the United States, that Russia could credibly threaten NATO allies or coerce the EU, was a threat to its own power. Thus, the scene was set for a war in Ukraine and Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Critically, there was a gap between European interests and US interests. For the US, limiting and punishing Russia in Ukraine was enough. For the Europeans, particularly for Ukraine, Russia needed to be defeated.
In reality, the only people fighting were Russians and Ukrainians, with the US and Europeans as the major and secondary actors.
The US’s strategic interests, according to neo-realist theory, were achieved in the very first year of the renewed fighting. After that, the interests have only widened and there was always going to come a time when the US would decide that it had expended enough capital and was not getting much more from the war – this point was always going to disappoint Ukraine and much of Europe.
Also read: Trump Calls Ukraine President Zelenskyy a ‘Dictator Without Elections’
For South Asians, the best example is the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. For the US, the strategic threat was Al Qaeda, and the Taliban was only a problem because it had harboured Al Qaeda.
The Taliban was not a direct security threat to the US but a US-supported Afghan government that was potentially hostile to Pakistani interests was a threat to Pakistan. Once Al Qaeda was eliminated and Osama bin Laden killed in 2011, US’s presence in Afghanistan persisted more because of inertia rather than any strategic need, and it was always going to pull out. Essentially, the second Trump administration is seeking the same strategic logic with Russia over Ukraine as it did in case of the deal with the Taliban during the first Trump administration in 2020.
Neo-realist theory, therefore, offers a clear, concise and powerful explanation for specific decisions in Ukraine but it still fails in explaining the broader issues. For example, why was the speech of US Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference so combative?
A deal over Ukraine is explicable, but a rupture of the transatlantic alliance which may lead to Europe seeking a separate political and strategic trajectory from the US is a direct threat to US power and interests, especially if the greater threat to US power comes from a rising China, in which case such actions by Vance and the Trump administration offer a path to influence to China.
This is the polar opposite of what the neo-realist school would predict.
On the other hand, the Marxist theory offers a compelling answer. Having witnessed a rise during the Industrial Revolution, Marxism argued that the changes in the mode of production were changing all forms of previous relations into two simple groups – those with capital and those who worked for those with capital.
The Communist Manifesto argued that as those with capital tried to expand their wealth, they would pay workers as little as possible for their labour, just enough so that they could produce the goods required by the owners who could then sell them at the highest price possible.
While communist states and communist parties largely failed to convince the world that they had a workable alternative – the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was inevitably heavy on dictatorship and light on the proletariat – the resistance engendered by Marxist and socialist thought forced compromises on oligarchs and robber barons in societies driven by market mechanisms.
Unionisation, protests, the work of people like John Dewey in the United States and the Fabian Socialists in the UK, as well as a larger body of social democratic parties in Europe led to fundamental progressive changes that allowed governments to create social welfare states with labour regulations that tried to offset the most exploitative aspects of capitalism.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it, the end of the Cold War, removed this brake on capital accumulation at any costs, and over the last few decades has led to rising inequality and the slow dismantling of social welfare schemes (accompanied by tax cuts for the rich) across much of the world.
The Trump administration is largely staffed by billionaires and is aggressively dismantling any oversight of the oligarch class. From the class lens, the enemies of the plutocratic class in the US are the social welfare systems in Europe. It is worth noting that in terms of inequality, as in how much wealth the top 1% own, the US and Russia were strikingly similar at 35.5% and 35% respectively in 2022.
Most European states were in the 20s, with the most unequal being Hungary, where 33% of the country’s wealth was held by the top 1%. Hungary’s Orban is a long-time supporter of both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
From a Marxist point of view, the US ending support to Ukraine, while also undermining any political parties potentially offering resistance to exploitative capital accumulation makes perfect sense. In fact, Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was already foreshadowed by his first major speech days before, at the Paris AI summit, where he deplored the “over-regulation” of American tech and particularly artificial intelligence. (Vance’s most prominent backer has been Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire with significant interest in AI.)
This is reminiscent of industrialists suggesting that social welfare regulations such as minimum wage, specific work hours, abolishment of child labour, as well as safety requirements made them “uncompetitive”. If the only goal is the maximal extraction of wealth, then any regulation is anathema. A fragmented and scared Europe is thus far more preferable than a confident and secure one.
While neo-realist theory offers a partial answer to current US actions, Marxism offers a more complete picture of what is happening and why. In fact, the interest of capital accumulation by the very rich, as well as the neo-realist explanation that the primary motivation of states is to maximise power against others, also explains one of the great international issues of our time – why, when we know we are cooking ourselves to death, have we taken such limited action on the issue of climate change?
Both these theories do a far better job at explaining what is happening in the world rather than theories like a “clash of civilisations” or “the end of history” – neither of which were very good in the first place and now sound more than faintly ridiculous.
While I retain my scepticism of the solutions that Marxism offers – and neo-realism is not designed to offer any solutions – especially because the theory emerged out of radically different socio-political circumstances that currently exist, it offers credible, concise and robust explanations of what is happening and why.
As such, its insights are important in confronting the multiple crises the world currently faces. Alternatively, of course, we could just say, “Crazy people are doing crazy stuff,” and disconnect as the world burns.
Omair Ahmad is an author. His last novel, Jimmy the Terrorist, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and won the Crossword Award.