The Ukraine war has demonstrated the increased willingness of the United States to use military force against another nuclear-armed state. To secure global hegemony, the United States is committed to waging a new Cold War against both Russia and China, even at the risk of global nuclear annihilation.

On 23 May, at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger struck a nerve with his remarks about war in Ukraine. Rather than be caught up “in the mood of the moment,” Kissinger called on the West — led by the United States — to pursue a peace agreement that satisfied Russia’s interests. “Pursuing the war beyond [this] point,” Kissinger said, “would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.”

Kissinger, by no means a peacenik, warned that this conflict threatens to escalate, and not only establish a new iron curtain around Eastern Europe and Asia, but perhaps erupt into open and lethal warfare between the West and Russia as well as China. By and large, the Western foreign policy establishment rolled its eyes at and dismissed Kissinger’s comments.

We are seeing a dangerous military, economic and political escalation by the United States and its Western allies against Russia and China. The United States seeks to prevent a historical process that seems inevitable, the process of Eurasian integration. which threatens the primacy of the Euro-Atlantic elites. It is this threat that drives the dangerous attempt by the United States to pursue global nuclear supremacy and use any means to “weaken” both Russia and China, even at the risk of destroying the planet

Monthly Review has published three essays that closely and rationally analyze the longer-term trends that have manifested in the war in Ukraine and what they mean for the future of global politics. Due to the significant importance of the urgent concerns raised with regard to the current geopolitical conjuncture, Monthly Review in collaboration with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will publish a booklet, The United States Is Waging a New Cold War (September 2022), containing all three essays and an introduction by Vijay Prashad (Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research). The booklet will be available on thetricontinental.org.

In order to garner greater awareness for these important issues and invite wide participation in campaigns for peace, we will host an online discussion with the authors:

John Bellamy Foster, the editor of Monthly Review, has catalogued the “escalation domination” theory of the U.S. establishment, which has been willing to risk nuclear winter — which means annihilation — to hold onto primacy.

Deborah Veneziale, a journalist based in Italy, investigated the social world of militarism in the United States, looking at how the various factions of the U.S. political elite have come together to support this strategy of confrontation against Russia and China.

John Ross, a member of the No Cold War collective, wrote that, threatened with defeat in peaceful economic competition, with the conflict in Ukraine the United States has qualitatively escalated its military assault on the planet.