U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio admits the end of U.S. hegemony and the beginning of the multipolar world order

 

By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 3 February 2025, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

At the beginning of his term the new U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has given an interview in which he made revealing remarks about the changes in the global position of American imperialism. He said, among other:

 

“And I think that was lost at the end of the Cold War, because we were the only power in the world, and so we assumed this responsibility of sort of becoming the global government in many cases, trying to solve every problem. And there are terrible things happening in the world. There are. And then there are things that are terrible that impact our national interest directly, and we need to prioritize those again. So it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was not – that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with.” [1]

 

Rubio is an ultra-conservative reactionary, but he is not a fool – a compliment which can hardly be extended to all members of the Trump Administration! It is true that the absolute hegemony of the U.S. – first within the imperialist camp after WWII and then globally after the collapse of Stalinism in 1991 until the Great Recession in 2008 – was unique if we look at the historical epoch of capitalism as a whole. The Napoleonic Wars 1803-15, the Crimea War 1853-56, the Franco-German War 1870-71, World War I and II in the first half of the 20^th century – these are just a few examples of military conflicts resulting from the Great Power rivalry. Hence, what we see now is a “return” to the rivalry between Great Powers which is “natural” for capitalism – a global system based on profit and national states. However, as the current rivalry between the Great Powers takes place in the age of nuclear weapons, the devastating consequences for humanity are much worse!

 

One of the main arguments which has been raised by critics of our analysis of imperialism in the 21^st century is that we would overestimate the decline of U.S. imperialism and overestimate the rise of new Great Powers like China and Russia. We did discuss this issue on various occasions, for example in a recent debate with Claudio Katz, a renown progressive economist in Latin America. [2] There are also various other Marxists who believe that there still exists a U.S.-led world order. [3]

 

All these critics ignore or underestimate the dramatic changes which have taken place in the capitalist world in the last two decades. As we have shown in a number of works, there has been a massive shift of capitalist value production from the old imperialist powers in the West away which resulted, on one hand, in increasing super-exploitation of semi-colonial countries in the Global South and, on the other hand, in the emergence of new imperialist powers – most importantly China. In the three tables in the appendix, one can see this rise of China very clearly in economic output as well as the top global corporations. [4]

 

Rubio’s statement is another confirmation of the Marxist analysis which is all the more remarkable as it comes from the official voice of U.S. imperialism!

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix

 

 

 

Table 1. Top Six Countries in Global Manufacturing, 2000 and 2023 ^[5]

 

Rank      Country                            Share 2000          Share 2023

 

1.           China                                9.8%                    31.8%

 

2.           U.S.                                   23.7%                  15.0%

 

3.           Japan                                10.2%                  6.6%

 

4.           Germany                          6.4%                    4.6%

 

5.           India                                 1.4%                    3.2%

 

6.           South Korea                    2.5%                    3.0%

 

 

 

Table 2. Share of G7 and BRICS (original 5 States) in Global GDP, 1992-2022 (PPP-adjusted) ^[6]

 

                            1992                    2002                    2012                    2022

 

BRICS                 16.45%                19.34%                28.28%                31.67%

 

G7                       45.80%                42.34%                32.82%                30.31%

 

 

 

Table 3. Top 10 Countries with the Ranking of Fortune Global 500 Companies, 2005, 2012 and 2023 ^[7]

 

Rank     Country                                                        Companies (Share in%)

 

                                                                         2005                    2012                    2023

 

1            United States                                 175 (35.0%)        132 (26.4%)        136 (27.2%)

 

2            China (excl. Taiwan)                        16 (3.2%)            73 (14.6%)          135 (27.0%)

 

3            Japan                                                  81 (16.2%)          68 (13.6%)          41 (8.2%)

 

4            Germany                                           37 (7.4%)            32 (6.4%)            30 (6.0%)

 

5            France                                                39 (7.8%)            32 (6.4%)            23 (4.6%)

 

6            South Korea                                     11 (2.2%)            13 (2.6%)            18 (3.6%)

 

7            United Kingdom                             35 (7.0%)            26 (5.2%)            15 (3.0%)

 

8            Canada                                             13 (2.6%)            11 (2.2%)            14 (2.8%)

 

9            Switzerland                                      11 (2.2%)            15 (3.0%)            11 (2.2%)

 

10          Netherlands                                    14 (2.8%)            12 (2.4%)            10 (2.0%)