Statements by representatives of various bourgeois staffs expressing concern over the escalation of imperialist competition and warning of the irreversible trend toward the generalization of conflicts are becoming increasingly frequent.
Referring to the successive crises of the past fifteen years, the Managing Director of the IMF director said a few days ago that “we have not yet grasped that this is how the world will be from now on”. In a similar vein, the President of the ECB spoke of “a period of successive crises, from the pandemic and the ground warfare to Europe to the energy crisis and widespread tariff increases”.
Last May, the Chair of NATO’s Military Committee declared that “we are already in the eye of the storm” and warned that “NATO countries can no longer take a period of stability and peace for granted”. The Director-General of the World Trade Organization likewise stated that “the world is heading toward a global recession due to multiple overlapping crises”.
Alongside them, the Chief Executive of JP Morgan recently claimed that “The Third World War has already begun”, since “there are already battles on the ground being coordinated by a number of countries”. He further warned that “we cannot be naïve (...) We cannot rely on the possibility that this will resolve itself”.
All of them are cynically describing a new phase in which rivalries among imperialist powers have reached fever pitch, old agreements are no longer capable of sustaining fragile compromises, and weapons are increasingly doing the talking.
For the first time since the Second World War, what is at stake is the struggle for supremacy within the international imperialist system between the USA and China, with a confrontation between the Euro-Atlantic camp and the Eurasian camp currently taking shape.
As noted in the Political Resolution of the 22nd Congress of the KKE, “the struggle to reach the summit of the imperialist pyramid is relentless. It is expressed across an ever-expanding field of confrontation: in strategically important sectors of the economy”, as a consequence of the decline of US economic power and the rise of China. Under these conditions, war is a way of life for the bourgeoisie.
This broader picture of developments and competition bears no relation to the atmosphere of relief and optimism that the bourgeois media and political staffs have been promoting since yesterday in response to the fragile US–Iran agreement.
“Peace is being restored”, “fuel prices will return to normal”, and “the worst has been averted” —these are just some of the headlines that have appeared in the wake of the US failure to achieve its military objectives, despite the barrage of attacks launched by Israel and its Euro-Atlantic “allies”.
In essence, they portray the conflict in the Middle East as a mere “spat” or misunderstanding, which now supposedly being resolved through a “win-win” agreement, after which the world can once again look to the future with a new perspective and without concern over further escalation.
Yet the fragile compromise in the Middle East —if it is ultimately realized— not only fails to negate the general trend toward intensifying rivalries and conflicts; it actually confirms it. War has become the new “norm” within the imperialist system, where conflicts coexist with bargaining over temporary agreements, realignments among imperialist camps, the breakdown of old alliances, and the formation of new ones.
Taken together, these developments steadily intensify existing contradictions, drawing even greater numbers of people into their vortex. Such compromises contain within them the seeds of the next and even more severe escalation of conflicts, as was already demonstrated in the Middle East in the period between the wars of last June and February, following the intervention of the US and Israel in Iran.
This inexorable trend is also reflected in the record number of imperialist conflicts in 2025: 65 active conflicts across 35 countries, the highest figure since the Second World War.
There is therefore no room for complacency. The causes that give rise to imperialist war are not merely present; they are constantly intensifying. Greece’s involvement in these conflicts in pursuit of bourgeois interests is the thread that already binds the people to the fronts of imperialist war.
The more they seek to entrench a “culture of coffins”, the more the people and the youth must prepare and organize their counterattack. By joining forces militantly with the KKE, let the current of opposition to the policy of profit and war grow stronger everywhere, alongside the struggle against the decayed capitalist system —a system whose very existence, with every new development, confirms the necessity of its overthrow.
Published in Rizospastis, Organ of the Central Committee of the KKE