Is capitalism fuelling today’s wars? Varsha Gandikota & Jason Hickel — Reframe

[0:00] What's the role of money, of finance, of our international trade system and especially how [0:05] does it link to what we're seeing in Iran? There is universal demand for US dollars because that's [0:11] the currency in which oil is traded. What this means is that the US can print money and purchase [0:16] real goods from the rest of the world effectively for free. But of course, you know, Iran and any [0:21] other sovereign-seeking movement in West Asia rejects this arrangement. They want to be able [0:26] to sell their oil and other resources in whatever currency they choose. But this is a very serious [0:32] threat to US imperial privilege. With Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu partnering in wars [0:46] across the Middle East, could the root cause of today's conflicts lie in capitalism itself? [0:51] And are these wars, in fact, the continuation of centuries of colonialism and economic policies [0:57] that favor the interests of the richest and most powerful nations? [1:02] I'm Varsha Gandikota and El Lutla. I lead the Progressive International and I also serve as the [1:07] Executive Secretary for The Hague Group, a forum for governments coordinating legal and diplomatic [1:13] action for Palestine. This week on Reframe, I'll be speaking to Jason Hickle, a political economist and [1:19] prominent critic of capitalist imperialism. Author of two books, Less is More and The Divide, he explores [1:28] what it would mean politically and economically to redistribute the world's wealth and save the planet. [1:37] Jason, welcome to Al Jazeera Reframe. Thanks very much. Nice to be with you. [1:41] I want to begin by asking, in the first few months of 2026, the United States government has kidnapped [1:48] Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, blockaded Cuba from receiving a single drop of oil, threatened to [1:54] invade Greenland, proposed luxury towers to be built on the rubble of Gaza, and now begun a catastrophic [2:01] war in Iran. To most people watching, this looks like utter chaos. Some might argue it's a sudden, dramatic [2:08] escalation of imperialist violence. How do you see it? What's actually happening? [2:13] Now, I think that the key thing to understand is that this is not just like random violence. It appears to be chaotic, [2:19] but I think we have to understand the key structural determinants that drive this kind of expression of [2:23] violence. And to me, it's very clear this is an expression of particular dimensions of the capitalist [2:30] world system, right? Now, the thing about capitalism is that it's always been structured as a world [2:35] economy with capital accumulation and growth and consumption in the core states, what we call the [2:41] West or the Global North, relying very heavily on cheap nature, cheap resources and cheap labor from the [2:47] Global South on a really massive scale. I mean, billions of tons of materials and hundreds of [2:53] billions of hours of human labor and trillions of dollars of value net appropriated from the Global [2:57] South each year. And this has been going on for the entire history of capitalism, 500 years. [3:03] But what about West Asia particularly? For me, it plays geographically the role of being the center of [3:08] the world, connecting Europe to Asia, the North to the South. What role does it play in this kind of [3:13] structural explanation of the core being threatened by the periphery, as you say? [3:18] Yeah, so the crucial thing, I think, to understand is the fact that the Imperial [3:22] core has to intervene constantly in the Global South to maintain subordination among Global South [3:28] states. Why is West Asia so important in the world system? It's, as you said, literally, it's the [3:32] center of the world at the hinge of Asia and Africa and Europe, where 25% of, you know, of sea-traded oil [3:40] goes through the Strait of Hormuz and 25% of container shipping goes through the Red Sea. [3:46] I mean, this is a, it's a crucial node in the world system. And if we imagine a scenario where [3:51] West Asia is liberated and has democratic control over their own resources and their own production [3:56] and can sell their own oil outside the US dollar and can determine control over their own trade routes [4:01] and can produce and consume for themselves, right? I mean, imagine that this is fundamentally [4:06] incompatible with the interests of US capital. And so for our entire lives, I mean, since the middle [4:11] of the 20th century, they've made every effort to intervene to shape the political landscape of that [4:16] region to prevent any real sovereign development or any real liberation in West Asia. And that's [4:22] exactly what's happening today with Iran. I want to ask you about something else. I think most of our [4:26] viewers watching this would not be surprised about the people of the Global South being punished for [4:31] liberation attempts. We've certainly seen it throughout history, violence that was meted out to [4:37] anti-colonial uprisings, whether by the French empire in Algeria, the British empire in my country, [4:41] in India, the Spanish empire in Latin America. But I think the key difference is that we see these [4:47] dynamics as things of the past, that we now live in a new post-colonial world order, [4:52] when nation states more or less are left alone, or that their sovereignty is respected. So how new or [4:58] not new is this logic, really? I mean, I think it's new for anyone who hasn't been paying attention. [5:03] But for people that pay attention to history at all, I think it's very clear this is a continuation [5:07] of a very long-standing pattern. So in the middle of the 20th century, there was an extraordinary [5:13] resurgence of anti-colonial movements in the Global South that succeeded in overthrowing our colonial [5:18] occupiers and went about setting up sovereign states, building economic sovereignty. This is a profound [5:26] threat to capital accumulation in the West. And they went about intervening immediately in the mid-20th [5:33] century to destroy these movements. So we saw, for example, you know, with Patrice Lumumba, who set [5:39] about to nationalize his country's mineral resources for the benefit of the Congolese people. He was [5:44] assassinated in a coup backed by the US and Belgium, his body cut up and burned in a barrel. [5:51] Or take Sukarno, the first independent president of Indonesia, who was deposed in a US-backed coup in 1967, [6:00] replaced with a brutal dictator backed by the US, who went on to murder more than one million people [6:06] who were his political opponents. We saw the same thing with the US invasion of Vietnam and the, you [6:14] know, the obliteration of North Korea in the middle of the 20th century. The invasions and regime change [6:20] operations against, you know, Iraq and Libya and Syria. Every time there's a state that exhibits any [6:24] kind of sovereign seeking potential, seeks to break out of, you know, US-led global supply chains, [6:29] there's this kind of intervention. Yeah, so it's not just punishment for political independence, [6:35] which I think the majority of the world understands, but punishment for economic independence. [6:40] We're seeing that now, in fact, Zambia in this very moment, as a leaked report of the New York Times says, [6:45] the United States is leveraging their HIV AIDS funding to the Zambian health authorities in order [6:51] to ensure that they submit to a deal that gives the United States access to copper. And Zambia is one [6:56] of the largest copper producing nations in the world. And this is a source of great frustration for the [7:01] United States because that market currently is mainly accessed by China. But I want to ask you about [7:07] this logic of punishment. It's not just to global South states, is it? It's really even to their own [7:13] friends if they threaten this logic. Yeah, it's interesting. So, I mean, in terms of the, you [7:18] know, what the US does to other Western states is quite, is quite enlightening, I think. The past [7:23] half century or more is full of examples of the US intervening in elections in European states to [7:29] prevent the rise of socialists or other, or communists or other left-wing parties to power, [7:34] right? This is very clear in the case of Greece, in the case of Italy. I mean, there was even, [7:38] there were plans for a US invasion of Portuguese territory, you know, in the case of a communist [7:43] government coming to power in Portugal. But remember, there was a time when socialism was a [7:47] very popular idea. And there's an extraordinary attempt to prevent that because the US needs [7:52] Western Europe to be aligned with its, with its broader imperial projects, not because it wants [7:58] allies as such, but because it wants to use Western Europe as effectively a bridgehead to West Asia, [8:02] right? And to the rest of Asia. And so the US requires, you know, access to the territories of [8:08] Western Europe in order to establish military bases and project power. And this is effectively actually [8:13] what NATO is about, in fact. You know, we have this idea that NATO is some kind of defensive alliance [8:19] for the West, but it hasn't functioned that way in decades now. So I think we have to understand [8:24] very clearly, you know, what these institutions are actually for. But why is the US able to do this? [8:30] Sorry to sound naive, but we, of course, know that the United States is the largest military power [8:36] in the world. But all of its assaults aren't purely militaristic. All of its assaults aren't purely [8:41] through NATO. So what's the role of money, of finance, of our international trade system? And [8:47] especially how does it link to what we're seeing in Iran at the moment as we're speaking? [8:52] I think one of the key elements is, of course, the petrodollar. And so if you think about the [8:57] the crazy imperial privilege that the US, you know, achieves from the fact that there is universal [9:04] demands for US dollars, because that's the currency in which oil is traded. And everybody needs oil, [9:09] everyone needs energy, right? And so there's perpetual demand for the US dollar. What this means is that [9:13] the US can effectively print money and purchase real goods from the rest of the world effectively [9:19] for free. Basically, the agreement is, you know, you all have to sell your oil in US dollars. And [9:26] we're going to establish US military bases in your territory, which will protect you. Of course, [9:30] this turns out to be a complete lie, as we've been seeing in the current conflagration. But what's [9:36] interesting is that, of course, you know, Iran and any other sovereign seeking movements in West Asia [9:41] rejects this arrangement. They want to be able to sell their oil and other resources in whatever currency [9:47] they choose without being forced to sell in the US dollar. But this is a very serious threat to US [9:54] imperial privilege. I mean, it would dramatically reduce effectively the purchasing power of the [9:59] United States over the rest of the world's products, you know, slowing down growth and capital [10:03] accumulation in the US. There's, of course, also the SWIFT system, which is the international banking [10:08] system that governs almost all transactions in international trade. The US has a tremendous amount of [10:14] power over the SWIFT system. And any country that the US, you know, wants to harm or crush or punish [10:21] for any reason whatsoever, it can effectively sanction them and remove them from SWIFT, making it very [10:26] difficult for them to conduct transactions. And this is exactly what they've done to Iran. It's what [10:30] they've also done to Russia. I think this highlights the urgent need that we have for Global South countries [10:36] to begin developing their own alternatives. We need more democratic payment system run by and for Global [10:43] South states. We need oil and other commodities to be able to be traded outside of the US and other [10:49] core currencies. This is crucial for the sovereignty of Global South countries. I don't know if you [10:54] believe that there are any exceptions to this. If the US ever steps back, my experience of dealing [10:59] with this is through the COVID-19 pandemic, where, of course, countries like Cuba couldn't access [11:04] materials like syringes to give out vaccines and doses for their own population. Countries like Venezuela [11:10] and Iran were requesting a temporary waiver on sanctions, not even for them to be rolled back, [11:15] but just for the moment of the duration of the pandemic, so they could buy medicines in the market, [11:19] which the World Health Organization also referred to as adding to an already strained system. And yet, [11:27] the United States refused. So how bloodless are these non-militaristic wars really for the people [11:33] in these sanctioned countries? The way that the US tries to portray it is that sanctions are some [11:38] kind of alternative to war, like some kind of soft power, right? Like, we're not going to invade you, [11:42] we're not going to destroy you, but we're going to punish you lightly with economic sanctions. [11:47] This couldn't be further from the truth. There was a study published recently in The Lancet's Global Health [11:52] that found that since 1971, unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union [11:59] on the Global South countries have killed 38 million people in the Global South. That's over [12:05] half a million people every year. This is the defining element of warfare in the modern world economy, [12:12] because this is absolutely crucial to the success of Western capitalism. And when you begin to consider [12:19] the scale of the violence and damage that is inflicted as a result of this system, [12:23] then it becomes clear that it's not something that we can continue to accept. [12:27] Well, let's talk about what's happening in the US itself. All of this is unfolding against the [12:32] revelations of the Epstein files. Even as we, you know, struggle to reckon with the incredible harm [12:39] that's been meted out to the survivors of sexual assault, another darker picture comes into view, [12:43] that of a small group of global elites seemingly operating with complete impunity. What does that tell [12:51] you about how power really operates in the system? I mean, I think that the revelations in the Epstein [12:58] files happening at exactly the same time as the genocide against Palestine, I think is very, very [13:02] telling because this is the effectively the transatlantic ruling class who are willing to inflict [13:08] absolutely extraordinary violence against children, right, who they've basically trafficked for sex [13:17] in elite circles. The very same people are the ones who inflicted extraordinary genocidal violence [13:23] against the people of Palestine. They're the same people who have been carpet bombing Iran. And so I [13:26] think it's quite striking to realize like the depravity of the transatlantic ruling classes. But the other [13:34] key element of the Epstein file revelations is simply that it does, it gives us a picture of [13:39] this elite that makes decisions in completely unaccountable ways. Like there's no democratic [13:43] transparency or accountability to the decisions they're making. They make them entirely in their [13:47] own interests. They don't care about the working class whatsoever. I mean, they demonstrate their [13:51] willingness to absolutely abuse people. This should be a wake-up call to realize that, you know, we say [13:57] we live in these political democratic systems, but fundamentally they're deeply corrupt. And what we need is a [14:02] real democratic system that can actually use democracy to subordinate the interests of the [14:07] current ruling class, because they're destructive to us and to our societies. And something fundamentally [14:13] different is required. Yes. Incredible to watch Joe Kent, who is the former head of the counter-terrorism [14:19] intelligence unit of the United States, quit his job announcing just this, that in fact Iran did not [14:25] pose any credible military threat to the United States, but that it was Israel that made the case for the [14:31] strikes to begin. I mean, anyone who thinks that Iran posed a legitimate threat, like wanted to attack [14:37] the USA, the territory of the United States or Europe, this is absolutely crazy. Why would Iran want to do [14:43] that? And the idea that Iran or other Global South countries pose some kind of military threats to [14:50] the West, I mean, this is complete propaganda. Take Iran's military budget. It is 0.5% that of the United States, [14:57] 0.5%. And that's the only the U.S. Forget its NATO allies. Or look at China. And China is one that [15:05] they're always talking about major, you know, military threat to the USA. Again, China's military [15:10] spending per capita is below the global average. So, I mean, the real threats to peace and stability in the [15:17] world are the imperial powers who have massive overdeveloped military capacity, with the capacity to [15:24] inflict their will anywhere on the planet. These are the people that are responsible for chaos and [15:30] instability in our world. At the beginning of March, Pete Hexit, the U.S. Defense Secretary, criticized Iran [15:36] for their military spending. He came out to say the Iranian people are upset with their government for [15:41] spending all their money on missiles and launchers, as opposed to spending it on healthcare and education. [15:47] And I find this incredible for, because there are two ironies in there. One, of course, as you say, the United States is the [15:53] largest defense spender in the world. But in addition, exactly as you're saying, it's the Global South [15:59] countries that are constantly under threat and being pushed into more and more of a security state logic, [16:06] forcing, being forced to arm and defend themselves with greater and greater military budgets. But let's [16:12] bring it back to the Global North. Based on what you're telling us today, it seems that some of the most advanced [16:18] economies of the world are in fact the greatest autocracies, not necessarily in the political [16:23] sphere where we get to vote, but in the economic sphere where we don't. What does this mean for [16:28] the quality of life for the people living in these countries in the Global North? [16:32] Yeah, I think this is an important one. So when people think of capitalism, they often think of things [16:37] like markets and businesses and trade, right? But this is not what capitalism is. These things existed for [16:42] thousands of years before capitalism and they've taken many different forms. So what is capitalism? It's when [16:46] production in the economy is controlled by a small faction of the society. So the richest one percent, [16:53] the large commercial banks, the large corporations, et cetera, who get to determine, this is capital, [16:58] right? Get to determine the direction of production, what gets produced and so on. And the result is that [17:02] we get really perverse forms of production. We get massive investments of production in production of [17:06] things like SUVs and fast fashion and cruise ships and the military industrial complex, which are highly [17:14] profitable to capital. But we get chronic underproduction of obviously necessary things like affordable housing, [17:21] renewable energy, agroecological food production, et cetera, et cetera. Things that we obviously need for our [17:28] well-being are actually underproduced. And so the result is that we have this crazy system where we have [17:32] overproduction to the point of blowing past planetary boundaries, causing ecological crisis on a world scale, and yet we have mass human [17:40] deprivation at the same time. Even in the core states, in the US and Europe, there's actually substantial human [17:46] deprivation. I was just reading recently that over 100 million people in the imperial core are food insecure. [17:53] They cannot access something as basic as stable, secure access to food. Think about this. Can we really [17:59] say we live in a democracy when we will go to the streets to denounce these wars that are being conducted by our [18:05] ruling classes? And they just don't care. They just keep doing it. There's no accountability. I think [18:11] this really has to be like a reckoning for people. If the opposite of capitalism is, for you, [18:18] genuine economic democracy, is there anywhere in the world that you see this happening where people [18:23] actually determine what the government spends their money on? That capital is being redirected towards [18:29] social good, not towards profit, but for what people actually need. Like you say, food and healthcare. [18:35] I think there's lots of interesting examples of this. So if we talk about economic democracy, this is [18:39] when production is organized around meeting human needs. For example, in China, China has very robust [18:47] industrial policy, including a very robust public finance system. And this means that China can organize [18:52] investment and production around achieving the kinds of development that are necessary for the national [18:57] development plans. They're the leading producer of renewable technologies and also installer of [19:02] renewable capacity. They also undertook a targeted poverty alleviation campaign, which lifted hundreds [19:10] of millions of people out of out of poverty in a fairly short period of time as a result of targeted policy [19:16] around this around this objective. China is a bit of an exception in the current day system, isn't it? The scale [19:22] and the size of the country, which does give it much more autonomy than some of the smaller [19:27] countries that we're talking about, which do find themselves subordinated in the global South system. [19:32] Do we still have any way out? Well, another interesting example is Cuba, I think, which is [19:38] which is worth talking about now. I think that we have to recognize the gains that Cuba has been able to [19:41] achieve by being able to direct what resources it does have towards social objectives. With efforts to [19:49] organize production around human needs, they've been able to achieve really astonishing social outcomes, [19:53] even so. But look, I think that's that ultimately liberation for the South is going to have to be [19:58] more than just, you know, individual countries doing what they can in terms of domestic policy. I think [20:03] that is going to require coordination and collaboration across global South states. [20:07] Let's talk about that. I mean, you've talked earlier about essentially the labor of the global South, [20:12] the labor of the developing countries of the world being the engine that produces everything in the [20:17] world today. Let's flip that on its head. What would it take for the people of the global South to [20:22] actually coordinate collectively and really halt this machine? [20:27] Ninety percent of the labor that powers the world economy and international trade is performed in [20:31] the global South. Ninety percent of the world's resources are in the territories of the global South. [20:38] The world economy depends fundamentally on the lands and labor of of the global South. And so, [20:43] you know, with a realization of the potential political power that lies in South-South cooperation [20:52] and integration, there's extraordinary things that can be achieved. This was attempted with the formation [20:58] of the new international economic order, which was passed in the halls of the UN General Assembly in the [21:03] early 1970s, which was an attempt by global South states to say, look, we have a right to economic [21:08] sovereignty and to cooperate in our own interests. And we will do so. This was, of course, deeply [21:14] threatening to the interest of capital in the core states. And they sought to and succeeded in [21:19] effectively crushing the principles of the NIO. Today, there's actually an effort by many in the [21:25] global South to kind of revive the principles of the NIO through South-South collaboration. And we see [21:31] this also, I think, to some extent in the form of the Hague Group as well. And I know you've been involved [21:36] with both the new NIO and the Hague Group. And I'd be interested in hearing your reflections on this. [21:40] I think it's really interesting that you bring up the new international economic order, because the [21:45] general myth around which of course has died, it no longer exists. And like you say, there are now new [21:50] attempts to revive it. But the often repeated refrain is that it was bound to die, not that it died due to [21:57] specific historical reasons. As you say, it was killed, in fact, with many of its leaders assassinated [22:04] at that time, precisely to prevent this from coming about. And that often slides into perhaps racist [22:11] phenomenon, which is essentially to say, oh, these African-Asian countries, they could never [22:15] possibly get along and actually work together. And as for the Hague Group, I think there's something [22:20] even more powerful at the core of it. The Hague Group is a coalition of countries that work together to [22:26] essentially perform state action, legal and diplomatic, to uphold international law. But they're saying [22:33] something else, which is we will not use our land and our labor. We will not allow our arms to go [22:38] through ports. We will not allow our factories to produce, you know, these weapons that then kill [22:43] Palestinians. You talked about the Strait of Hormuz and the petrodollar and West Asia being the central [22:50] node of the world. Something extraordinary has happened in March of this year, which is Iran, like you said, [22:57] announcing to the world that it will allow safe passage, but only if countries buy its oil in Chinese [23:03] one in the renminbi as opposed to the United States dollar. Do you see this as a kind of circuit [23:09] breaking moment? Will it mark a before and after in its wake? I think this is a major historical [23:15] development. I think Iran has effectively announced to the world that we understand, you know, how this [23:22] current world economy works. We understand the key choke points and we want something different. There's that. [23:27] But also furthermore, the very fact that one of Iran's objectives and their demands is the removal [23:33] of U.S. military bases from West Asia. Because, I mean, right now there are over 800 U.S. military bases [23:39] around the world that the U.S. uses to police any country that seeks any kind of departure from U.S. [23:46] economic interests or geopolitical interests. Is there any other country that comes close to that number [23:51] of military bases around the world? Not even close. I think that China, you know, China is an enormous [23:57] country, 1.4 billion people. It has one foreign military base. I mean, it's just, it's, I mean, [24:04] this is imperial power. And I think that's, you know, for every person that watched the genocide [24:09] live stream to their phones, this is a realization they've had in their hearts that this cannot go on. [24:15] It's fundamentally against humanity. There is no humanity and we must build it. We must build a [24:21] reality where all are treated equally, where all have equal rights under international law. [24:25] And that reality does not exist right now. And it will not exist as long as we have this [24:29] arrangement of geopolitical power in the world. And it's precisely that that must be overcome [24:34] before we can realize our potential as humanity. Jason Hickle, thank you so much for joining us [24:39] today. And it's been a pleasure having you on Al Jazeera Reframe. Thank you.