The current international situation - emerging over the past decade or so - has been characterised by two major developments which increasingly set the framework for future events.
THE FIRST is the dramatic shift in the balance of class forces against US Imperialism revealed by its historic defeat in Vietnam. This shift demonstrated the new limits imposed on US military might as it finds itself increasingly 'hobbled' not only by the nuclear power of the USSR but by the absence of semi-colonial allies with popular support, the drain on its resources entailed in propping up dictatorial regimes, and growing political opposition at home.
The new weakness of Imperialism revealed in Vietnam has set the limited role it has been forced to play in later developments such as those in, for example, Angola or Southern Africa.
The policy of 'detentel was born out of this relative weakening of US Imperialism as it sought, through economic aid, to buy the support of the Soviet bureaucracy in helping it uphold the status quo around the world. Detente holds self-evident dangers, particularly in Western Europe where the Communist Parties are cynically attempting to head off social unrest by participation in popular front governments.
Such a development, while capable of leading to major defeats in the absence of an alternative revolutionary leadership, finds it ever more difficult however to hold back the rise of worid revolution as it breaks forth in a series of explosions from the Middle East through Angola to Spain or THE SECOND is the slowing down and ending of the post - war expansionist boom as many of the motor forces of that boom- reconstruction of Japanese & West European industry, mechanisation, automation and computerisation of whole branches of industry - have begun to exhaust themselves.
The spate of recessions in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies (West Germany 1966-7; Italy and Japan 1971-2) have gradually merged into a synchronised recession in which there has been a major slowdown in growth in all capitalist countries. Moreover, the attempts to reduce the crisis of over-production by inflation-led booms are no only inadequate but result merely in 'stagflation': i.e. inflation running concurrently with economic stagnation.
This general slowdown in growth means that not only does Imperialism face the decades ahead substantially weaker (after Vietnam) but with growing internal friction as rival powers jockey one with another for a more favourable position in the trade war opening up. This can be seen most clearly in the tendency toward a) the increasing use of floating exchange rates to make goods more competitive - thus precipitating an international monetary crisis; and b) the growing use of protectionist measAn important aspect of increased competition is that it is not limited to 'antagonism between US Imperialism and its rivals in Western Europe but opens up deep friction among the European powers putting pay, once and for all, to the illusion that the EEC could establish a state structure as a counterweight to US Imperialism & an effective challenge to its hegemony. This has been shown not only in the EEC's inability to create a common monetary policy but in the trend for the 'weaker! members - such as Britain and Italy - to resort to protectionișt measures.
These two factors have created disarray and a loss of confidence in world capitalist circles as they face the decades ahead with no clear - cut strategy and growing friction among themselves. The confident expectations of 'rolling back Communism' of the cold-war era have disappeared. They now see the world as careering towards a culate the possibility that 'democracy! cannot be maintained much longer if inflation and social unrest continue.