Report of the 15th Central Committee to the 16th Congress on the international situation

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 17 September 2024

Report of the 15th Central Committee to the 16th Congress on the international situation

A report on the international situation must avoid facile and superficial declarations and reflect Mao’s guidance that contradiction exists in all things. Those contradictions must be analysed and understood according to the approach in Mao’s On Contradiction.

The principal contradiction in the world today is between US imperialism and the world’s people. We have been saying for the last 30-40 years that US imperialism is in decline. That is true, and the trend towards further decline continues. However, that process of decline follows the law of uneven development, and within that, US imperialism displays a resilience born of its superior military forces, its imposition of policies and values on willing subordinates, and its continuing exploitation of working people around the globe. 

So long as imperialism exists, the US will not be the last superpower. Even when it is the strongest superpower, as it was following the decline of Soviet social-imperialism, it will be a superpower beset by challenges from emerging imperialisms. It will be a superpower embroiled in contradictions with its own allies among the advanced capitalist countries. So long as imperialism exists there will be bloc politics and unity amongst the imperialists against the world’s anti-imperialist peoples and nations, as well as inter-imperialist rivalries and divisions.

For US imperialism, the most significant of its inter-imperialist rivalries is with China. The declining superpower has to rely on its belligerence and its threats to provoke war, while the growing superpower girds its loins but advances its influence through relatively peaceful economic expansion. The Australian people are aware of and somewhat apprehensive of growing regional tensions caused by the competition between US and Chinese imperialisms. They can be expected to increase their demands for an end to the AUKUS arrangements, to US bases and military forces on Australian soil, and for an independent and peaceful Australia.

US imperialism and Russian imperialism are also in conflict. Now entering its third year, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and US support for its proxies in Kiev, has no immediate end in sight. Although the US can be expected to continue to fight Russia courtesy of the Ukrainian resistance, the economic cost of doing so has seen contradictions emerge at the level of the US Congress and its funding decisions in relation to the war.

There are other international conflicts that at first glance appear to have their own causes and rationales independent of the rivalries between the US, China and Russia.

Netanyahu’s bloodlust and the determination of Zionists to eliminate the Palestinians as a people, and take over all of Gaza and the West Bank, is one such conflict. US imperialism will always back the Zionist Israeli state, and supplies the weapons with which the Zionists carry out their genocide, but it does not have the capacity to impose its will (for a ceasefire, for a “two-state solution”) on the Israeli leadership. 

Although overshadowed by events in Gaza, the Turkish government continues to attack and kill the most successful of the anti-ISIS forces, the predominantly Kurdish People’s Defence Forces (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) of the independent region of Rojava in North-east Syria. In an example of the complexity of Middle Eastern regional politics, Turkish PM Erdogan has fiercely condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while bombing and killing the Kurds in Rojava.

At the time of writing, it is still not entirely clear how Putin plans to reoganise the private Wagner group of mercenaries who have pursued the interests of Russian imperialism in Africa. There have been suggestions that the group, previously owned by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, will be renamed the Africa Corps (an unfortunate choice with WW2 connotations) and run at arm’s length by the Russian Ministry of Defence in order to maintain the fiction that they are not a Russian government armed force. The trend for African countries previously within the US-UK-French sphere of influence to move closer to the Russians continued in January 2024, when Chad’s junta leader, Mahamat Idriss Deby, met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow to “develop bilateral ties”. Chad previously had taken a pro-western policy. 

Elsewhere on the continent, fighting continues in Sudan, and killings in a conflict in the Congo have reached genocidal proportions. Lurking in the background of both conflicts are the imperialists. In the Congo, millions of people are being killed so that the western world can benefit from its natural resources. More than 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves are found in Congo, used in the production of smartphones.

Although the seven-year conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis was brought to a ceasefire in 2022, the Houthis are a very determined fighting force of anti-imperialists and have challenged the right of the imperialists to ship supplies to the Zionists. In the adjacent Horn of Africa region, the long-standing tensions between the Ethiopians, the Eritreans and the Tigrayans continue to simmer, and there continues to be sporadic fighting between the respective armies. Ethiopia is reliant on IMF and World Bank funds, while the Eritrean president visited Russia and China in May-July 2023 to cultivate support from the US’s global rivals.

Closer to home, diplomatic pushing and shoving between the US and Chinese imperialists, with military build-ups by both powers, continues to heighten tensions in our region. The small Pacific Island nations are caught up in this struggle for regional influence, and US imperialism puts greater demands on its closest "partners" like Australia to keep these smaller nations within its sphere of influence. China, meanwhile, approaches these small nations directly mainly with economic "aid" projects. The response of these small nations is not uniform with some siding with the USA while others take a more non-aligned position. Australia unashamedly pushes the US line, surrendering its military forces, defence planning and bases to US imperialism.

Virtually next door to us, the West Papuans continue their struggle for independence from Indonesia. The cause of the West Papuans is just and requires our support, just as support was once given to the Indonesians in their fight against the Dutch.

We support the long-standing anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle of the people of the Philippines led by the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New Peoples Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.   We support the call by the NDFP for resumption of negotiations that were cancelled by Duturte and for ending the abuse of human rights under Marcos Jnr. 

We support for the struggle of the people of Myanmar against the repressive military regime.

We support the struggles of working people in India against the tyrannical Modi - opportunist would-be imperialist and fascist.

If we leave the globe for a moment, the imperialist military reach now extends into Space. In open defiance of the letter and the spirit of the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, the US, Russia and China are spearheading military intrusions into Space, developing satellites for offence and defence in that sphere. US imperialism has gone so far as to create a fourth armed force, the Space Force, to pursue its domination of Space. Russia is said to be developing a nuclear-powered satellite with offensive capability which will only pressure the US to do the same. Although China has declared that it “will not participate in any kind of arms race in outer space”, it successfully tested an anti-satellite missile in 2007, destroying one of its own satellites at an altitude of 865 kilometres, being the first country to do so. The significance for Australia is that our unique launch sites are being gifted to the US and will increase our likelihood of being targeted should China and the US go to war.

In short, contradictions are intensifying and no place on Earth or in outer space is beyond the reach of imperialist power politics. We must closely follow these events as they will impact in one way or another on our own domestic political tasks.

In particular, we applaud the Filipino and Indian peoples and their perseverance in people’s war against their rulers. We applaud the revolutionary transformations being implemented in Rojava.

Finally, we wholeheartedly support the united Palestinian resistance to Israeli Zionist ethnic cleansing and genocide. We support the goal of a single secular Palestinian state, “from the river to the sea”.

Wherever people rise against oppression and exploitation, they will have our proletarian internationalist sympathy and support.

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