interlude, bound up with the political aftershocks of the Russian Revolution, which produced a powerful wave of anti-imperialist struggles. The post-Soviet period has seen a wave of imperialist wars—from Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and the Balkans in the 1990s and 2000s to the explosion of wars following the working class overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 in the so-called “Arab Spring.”

As the International Committee of the Fourth International foresaw in 1991, against the backdrop of the collapse of the USSR, “The ongoing and de facto partition of Iraq signals the start of a new division of the world by the imperialists. The colonies of yesterday are again to be subjugated. The conquests and annexations which, according to the opportunist apologists of imperialism belonged to a bygone era,are once again on the order of the day.”

Now, in the approach to the 100th anniversary of World War I, the world is witnessing a new eruption of French and world imperialism. However, Paris’ ultimate ambition—a return to its heyday in the early twentieth century, when it reigned over 100 million colonial slaves, stretching from West Africa to the Middle East and East Asia—is a reactionary illusion.

Paris’ support for the unpopular Malian regime, whose army is dissolving in the field against the Islamists, and its broader offensive to restore French influence throughout North and West Africa will only sink it deeper into the quagmire.

French imperialism cannot re-impose colonial shackles on the workers and oppressed masses of Africa, nor can it tie the working class in Europe to a