Desperate to maintain a slipping grip on world dominance, the U.S. ruling class has pushed the crews and equipment of two aircraft carriers — the USS Gerald Ford in May, and now the USS Abraham Lincoln — past their breaking points. This removal of two aircraft carriers under duress in a span of three months is a signal of disarray and decline for the US imperialist war machine. The war on Iran is shaping up to join Iraq and Afghanistan in a string of major twenty-first century defeats in the US empire's bid to control the oil-rich Middle East. Mere months into the conflict the arch-imperialist Brookings Institution pronounced “The U.S. and Israel fought Iran, and China won.” (Brookings, 6/8).
From trade wars to arms buildup, regional wars and normalization of genocide, 2026 has seen the trend toward World War III gather momentum. But during both World Wars I and II millions of working class soldiers turned their guns on their ruling classes, joining mass movements for communist revolution.Our task is to learn from the errors that reversed their revolutions and finish the job of defeating the capitalists, their exploitation and their wars once and for all. The Progressive Labor Party remains steadfast in an outlook of revolutionary optimism: the working class, with determined leadership from communists, remains up to this task. Join us!
U.S. rulers’ weary weaponry vs emboldened rivals
The USS Gerald Ford was deployed in June 2025 and participated in attacks on both Venezuela and Iran, remaining at sea for 325 days (NPR, 6/26). Its plumbing system failed and may also have been sabotaged by sailors frustrated with the extended duty associated with the Iran war. In March, a 30-hour laundry fire, also of unknown origins, finally forced the entire ship out of the war. The second carrier deployed to the Iran War, the USS Lincoln, was kept an extra two months at sea and left the Persian Gulf this month after two sailors jumped overboard, with more attempted suicides reported (Navy Times, 8/11)
In June 2026 a US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Benfold drifted for four days without power, propulsion or air conditioning in the hotly contested South China Sea following an unknown “engineering error” (ABC, 8/17). Now the USS George Washington, the last U.S. carrier in the Pacific Ocean, steams away from Japan toward Iran to replace the Lincoln and Chinese ships off the U.S.- allied Philippines’ coast ram and skirmish with Filipino sailors to occupy strategic islands for future military bases (Reuters 8/19).
Chinese imperialism’s drive to project naval power is backed by shipbuilding capacity now 200 times that of the U.S. and the world’s largest navy in total warships (CSIS, 6/24). As US naval forces massed in the Caribbean preparing to invade Venezuela, the Chinese ruling class rehearsed blockade formations in the seas between Japan and Taiwan displaying a ‘dual-use’ quality of hundreds of vessels in its fishing fleet in the event of regional war (Asia Times, 2/25).
Desperation mounts for US imperialism in 2026: unable to assist Ukraine and produce victory over Russia, defeated, for now, by Iran, attached to fascist pariah state Israel, impotent in threats to ‘take’ Greenland and weakened in East Asia by shifting forces to the mideast the US ruling class is pivoting increasingly to the Western hemisphere as an imperial fall-back position. The Cuban working class remains in the cross-hairs of US imperialism, Canada is threatened with a massive trade war, fishermen are bombed to bits off the coast of South America and kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro sits in a Brooklyn jail. These developments do not mean peace, rather they signal an increasingly intolerable situation for the US ruling class. Confronting its main rivals Russia and China will force it to introduce, at some point and perhaps in new more ‘progressive’ form, a military draft.
Soldiers, sailors and marines: Smash the imperialist war machine!
To boost fall re-enlistments commanders of the Army’s most decorated Third Infantry Division have resorted to offering troops a four-day holiday in November timed to coincide with the release of a popular video game, Grand Theft Auto VI. "The idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what Soldiers are interested in," Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, a spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Division, said in a statement. So far twenty have signed up to re-enlist to this division that spearheaded the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (CBS News 8/19).
No faction of the U.S. ruling class— represented either by Trump or whoever the Democrats run for president in 2028 —have been able to solve this problem. Trump threatens an economic D-Day for Iran precisely because the ruling class lacks commitment from the ground forces for the real thing. This type of thin commitment to US imperialism explains why the USS Ford and USS Lincoln fell short of the tasks set forth for them by their erratic commander. Communists seek a thick commitment from soldiers, one that wins soldiers not to a simple end to fighting, but to transform their fighting capacity into a tool of a working class waging revolutionary warfare (see article on page 3).
Lessons of the Vietnam Era
In 1972 alone, the Navy high command documented “seventy-four instances of sabotage, none of them attributable to enemy action.” (Guttridge, Mutiny, 1992). By 1972 a mass international anti-imperialist movement of youth and workers was active in the San Francisco and San Diego areas where Vietnam-bound naval vessels were based.
It’s no coincidence the hottest fires of these 1972 rebellions burned with the leadership of Black sailors revolting against racist conditions aboard the USS Kitty Hawk and USS Constellation. As PLP sees Black workers being key to revolution, so Black soldiers remain key in defeating US imperialism and leading soldiers worldwide to turn the guns on the capitalist class in a global communist revolution. Revolutionary anti-racism must smash the bosses war plans in whatever form they present themselves, from the white nationalism of the Trump clique to the feminist-friendly multicultural imperialism that the Democrats and their DSA hangers-on seek to peddle.
The bosses’ worst nightmare is symbolized by sailors in revolt - of the Russian navy, who under communist leadership - turned their ship’s mighty guns of their battleships on the capitalists and turned the meaningless carnage of World War I into a workers’ revolution in October, 1917. From the U.S. to China, let the bosses laying the basis for World War III once again tremble at a communist revolution that will end imperialism once and for all: JOIN US!
