The Trump Doctrine and the New M.A.G.A. Imperialism

The dramatic shift in the Trump led U.S. foreign policies, as seen recently in the bombing in Iran, has created enormous confusion and consternation within establishment centers of power. These changes are manifested in the abandonment of both the liberal international order constructed under U.S. hegemony after the Second World War and the long-term strategy of NATO enlargement and proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Imposition of high tariffs and shifting military priorities have put the United States in conflict with even its long-term allies, while the New Cold War on China and the Global South is accelerating.

Guest Speaker: John Bellamy Foster is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the Monthly Review. He writes about political economy of capitalism and economic crisis, ecology and ecological crisis, and Marxist theory.  Among his published works: The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment; Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature.[8][9] His reinterpretation of Marx on ecology introduced the concept of “metabolic rift” and was widely influential; another is Ecology Against Capitalism, which focused on the critique of capitalist economics from the standpoint of the environment. His 2006 book Naked Imperialism, along with frequent editorials in the pages of Monthly Review, attempted to account for the growing U.S. military role in the world and the shift toward a more visible, aggressive global projection.

Critique of Intelligent Design, Foster’s book co-authored with Brett Clark and Richard York, is a continuation of his research on materialist philosophy and the relationship between ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and Karl Marx. Drawing on his ecological work, particularly Marx’s Ecology, Foster defends historical materialism as fundamental to a rational, scientific worldview, against proponents of intelligent design and other non-materialist ideologies. Also in his 2020 book The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology (2020), John showed how socialist analysts and materialist scientists in Britain, the United States, from William Morris and Friedrich Engels to Joseph Needham, Rachel Carson, and Stephen Jay Gould, sought to develop a dialectical naturalism, rooted in a critique of capitalism.

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