Category Archives: NATO

Mission creep Ukraine (2 of 2)

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The views of more honest Western commentators, that the Russian invasion has been provoked, have been roundly denounced as the work of Putin apologists who are excusing the invasion.  However, knowing the invasion was provoked neither excuses it nor requires one to support it.  It was open to the left opponents of the invasion to acknowledge this as well, but many of them didn’t. They came out with the same response as the vast majority of bourgeois propagandists and politicians in the West in denouncing any recognition of this reality as an apology for Putin.

In other words, the pro-war left joined in the whitewashing of their own imperialism’s responsibility for the war.  They didn’t have to, but they did.  For many bourgeois writers, simply setting out known facts and accepted realities, and pointing out the role of the West did not invalidate their support for it because for them NATO is a very good thing.

Such an approach was not open to the left supporters of Ukraine because they can’t claim the same innocent character for NATO.  They therefore couldn’t acknowledge the previous close cooperation of Ukraine with Western imperialism, otherwise the alliance now so obvious during the war would be seen as the flowering of an existing collaboration, robbing Ukraine of its cloak of innocent bystander.   The so-called Marxists were thus left hiding the role of their imperialism much more radically than even the more honest of its bourgeois supporters!

The most that would be admitted was that western imperialism was supporting Ukraine ‘for its own selfish interests’, as if this disposed of the matter; as we have seen, these leftists were claiming that ‘NATO won’t intervene’ and that even though Ukraine had the right to seek help, this was something ‘which it won’t get’.

Others stated that ‘we are without hesitation in favour of the delivery of defensive weapons to the Ukrainian resistance.’  This source further said that ‘we must also oppose the delivery of air fighters to Ukraine that Zelensky has been demanding. Fighters are not strictly defensive weaponry, and their supply to Ukraine would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing.’

Of course, the Bradley’s, Abrams, Leopards, Chieftains, HIMARS, ATACMs, Storm Shadows and F16s etc. have disposed of the ridiculous notion that ‘NATO won’t intervene.’  Has the exposure of their blunder caused them to row back?  Of course not.  Even the supply of F16s that was previously opposed has not signalled the least change, except of course that the supply of increasingly powerful weaponry does represent a change in the real world that the social-imperialist supporters of Ukraine refuse to acknowledge.

By doing so these leftists effectively stake a claim for the same innocent character of NATO intervention that its Western bourgeois allies do, its ‘selfish interests’ notwithstanding.  By virtue of the Ukrainian fight being simply defensive, so therefore (we must assume) is the NATO supply of weapons!  NATO, though it is threatening expansion into Russia’s next door is still presumably a defensive alliance!  All its moves, as that of Ukraine, are simply written off as reflexes to Russian aggression.  As we said in the first post – opposition to imperialism means opposition to Russian imperialism, no more and no less. Russian imperialism has thus performed the amazing feat of rendering Western imperialism non-imperialistic!

The problem for this left is that it left a lot of hostages to fortune; we have already seen the delusion involved in the statements that NATO won’t intervene and won’t supply weapons.  It has supplied so many it has seriously depleted the stocks it says it needs for itself! It now needs massive rearmament to continue its support to Ukraine, which presumably must also be supported by the pro-war left. Once more the ‘selfish interests’ behind this must again presumably be considered entirely secondary, if not irrelevant.

Joe Biden made it very clear before the war that he knew that the invasion would take place but was not the least interested in seeking to stop it: he would not “accept anybody’s red lines.”  Instead, he had “the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he’s going to do.” Except, these weren’t measures to stop an invasion but to hammer Russia after it had done so.

The escalation of weaponry supplied since these “initiatives” is both a sign of the intention of Western imperialism to prosecute a proxy war and a sign that it has been losing.  The first leftist quote in the previous post stated that “Ukrainians have the right to take weapons from wherever they can get them in a fight to the death with the invaders.”  The insouciance to the prospect of ‘fighting to the death’ with the help of weapons from imperialism has otherwise been correctly described as ‘fighting to the last Ukrainian’, and lies behind certain imperialist interests demanding conscription of the youngest cohort to the Ukrainian army.  

Such is the policy of Western imperialism (now with the added twist that Trump wants to make money out of it) and also the policy of the social-imperialists.  Having admitted that the supply of Fighter aircraft “would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing”, this has proved to be the case; yet it has given rise to no re-evaluation of support for Western intervention.  Like the imperialists themselves, the resulting retaliation by Russia suffered by the Ukrainian population is completely secondary to the cause they jointly support.

The firing of long range missiles into Russia with the direct participation of western troops has dramatically escalated Western provocation that increasingly incentivises Russia to escalate in return since the price paid may be less than that of acceptance: with the lack of deterrence of further western escalation if it does not.  This logic is not inevitable, the weapons supplied by the West have not been able to gravely hurt Russia, never mind deliver the victory that Ukraine has until recently claimed it could achieve. I don’t know if its Western left supporters are still under this illusion.

Without a mass antiwar movement seeking to prevent it escalation is made more likely, but in any case out of our hands, and less likely the weaker Western imperialism is.  How far we are from such a movement can be seen in the need for articles like this one attempting to stop much of the left from supporting the war, with all its escalation and potential for further in the future.

The first quotation states that ‘NATO won’t intervene because it doesn’t want a new world war.’  The author obviously saw that such an intervention threatens it.  Well, NATO has intervened – big time – and the author and his fellow social-imperialists are still cheerleading it.   Has the threat disappeared or does it not matter anymore? Or does the sacred character of the Ukrainian capitalist state demand that the risk to the future of all of humanity is a risk worth taking?

Perhaps the author has forgotten his statement; although forgetting that one foresaw the potential for a world war when the circumstance that might bring it about have been amplified would show remarkable detachment.  Alternatively the author might not have really believed the statement, in which case there would still exist a degree of detachment.

In any case, the exposure of the claims of the supporters of the Western imperialist alliance in its war against Russia fully confirms its political bankruptcy.  Its predictions have been disproved and its statements of position have been exposed as false.  Running through them is the thread of social-imperialist politics – socialism in words and pro-imperialism in practice.

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Mission Creep Ukraine (1of 2)

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REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

‘NATO won’t intervene because it doesn’t want a new world war. However, the Ukrainians have the right to take weapons from wherever they can get them in a fight to the death with the invaders.  Let them have anti-aircraft weapons instead of petrol bombs. ‘

‘There’s a difference between calling for that and saying that Ukraine shouldn’t ask for/accept such help. Which it won’t get. Meantime the government is handing out guns and calling on people to make Molotov cocktails to throw on invading Russian troops.’ 

The two comments above were made by two supporters of Ukraine over three years ago in a Facebook discussion just after the Russian invasion in 2022.  Besides the puerile notion that one of the largest armies in Europe would be fighting with Molotov cocktails, the idea that NATO would not be involved was even more ridiculous.  The predictions obviously haven’t aged well, but the point is that they were nonsensical even at the time.

The prediction that there would be no NATO involvement could only be made through ignorance (or rather ignoring) that it was already involved.  This facilitates the equally spurious notion that the war was ‘unprovoked’, the staple claim of the western media and political class.  From the US sponsorship of regime change in 2014 (following years of interference) to the training of it army, military exercises and provision of weapons; to the new Ukrainian regime putting the goal of NATO membership into the constitution. All these were steps towards war when Russia had said repeatedly that NATO membership was unacceptable.

In a third Facebook contribution, another supporter of Ukraine said that the right to self-determination meant the right to join NATO if that is what a country wanted.  Given the difficulty of arguing that supporting membership of an imperialist alliance was a ‘right’, and therefore something socialists should support, the majority of left supporters of Ukraine decided that it would ignore the logic of its support for Ukrainian self-determination and pretend membership of NATO was not the issue.

Hence all the previous history of NATO enlargement and repeated Russian objections could be ignored, along with all the other western imperialist involvement just mentioned.  Opposition to imperialism now meant opposition to Russian imperialism, no more and no less.

The problem was that it was very hard to claim that NATO membership was irrelevant.  Even in western media there were enough newspaper columns pointing out the Russian attitude to NATO expansion to make it clear that pushing Ukraine to join NATO, either from the inside or from outside, was ‘crossing the brightest of Russian red lines’, as the US ambassador, and later CIA Director, put it around the time of the 2008 NATO summit.

In this summit NATO declared it wanted Ukraine as a member, which was subsequently enshrined into Ukraine’s constitution in 2019.  Supporters of Ukraine are keen to quote Putin in claims that he does not recognise Ukraine as a separate country but ignore statements that make its membership of NATO central to Russian policy.  Equally, statements by leading western figures have demonstrated the importance of NATO membership; NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated in 2023 that Putin “went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders….” 

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, Davyd Arakhamia, at the peace talks just after the Russian invasion, stated that Ukrainian neutrality was the main Russian condition for a peace deal and that the war could have ended in spring of 2022 if Ukraine had agreed to neutrality:“Russia’s goal was to put pressure on us so that we would accept neutrality.  This was the main thing for them: they were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality, like Finland once did. And we would give an obligation that we would not join NATO. This is the main thing…”

But the main thing wasn’t done and the war continued as the US and British promised to provide more support to Ukraine, whereupon once again the left supporters of Ukraine denied the role of these imperialist states in perpetuating the war, and continued supporting it themselves.  Zelenskyy has claimed that he was told by Biden and other NATO leaders before the invasion that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO but that publicly, “the doors will remain open.”

If this is untrue, then it can be assumed that the public position of future Ukrainian membership was a real possibility.  If it is true, and Biden had no intention of permitting NATO membership, perhaps because of the risk of more or less immediate war with Russia, it means that the invasion was provoked without the perceived threat to Russia being an immediate possibility.

It also means that Biden and others were content for the war to happen, not to ensure NATO membership for Ukraine, but with the objective of pursuing the project of crippling Russia through war and sanctions – turning the ‘Ruble into rubble’ .  It also means Zelenskyy was happy to engage in the war because this is what Ukrainian policy already involved – recovery of Crimea and Russian occupied areas of Donbas. There was no attempt to prevent it by signalling agreement to neutrality. Now, however, it is Ukraine and its economy that is being turned into rubble.

In any case, the war was the result of inter-imperialist rivalry that the supporters of Ukraine have determined is of no consequence to its cause or nature, so that the only issue that matters is self-determination for a country and state that is already independent but whose political leadership colluded with western imperialism to subject its people to war.  In effect, the war ensured that Ukraine became an even greater vassal of Western imperialism, although this has not prevented these self-declared ‘anti-imperialists’ supporting its imperialist alliance.

The striking thing is not only the stupidity of pretending that NATO ‘won’t intervene’ and that Ukraine will seek weapons ‘which it won’t get’ but that the vassalage of Ukraine to Western imperialism was not denied right at the start! Ukraine, it was claimed, ‘wishes its vassalization in the belief that it is the only guarantee of its freedom. We must, of course, also oppose its vassalization, but for the time being, the most urgent need must be addressed . . .’

Vassalage is the position of a person granted the use of land, in return for rendering homage, allegiance, and usually military service or its equivalent to a lord or other superior.  A perfect description of Ukraine – a subordinate instrument of Western imperialism that the left supports while claiming it is fighting an anti-imperialist war!

The duty of socialists is not to support the subordination of a working class to the results of vassalage by imperialism, through its bourgeois class and state, on the spurious grounds that ‘it is the only guarantee of its freedom’. Vassalage is not freedom.  The ‘urgent need’ of the Ukrainian working class before the invasion was to prevent its bourgeois leadership from taking it into war on behalf of western imperialism. The urgent need thereafter has been to bring it to an end; against the efforts of Western imperialism and the Ukrainian state to keep it going.

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What does “Don’t betray Ukraine” mean? (2 of 3)

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In a Democracy Now programme, US professor John Mearsheimer told the Ukrainian ‘democratic socialist’ Denys Pilash  that “the best outcome would be to settle this war now” since it will otherwise  be “settled on the battlefield.’  Pilash could only respond that there were still measures such as sanctions that could be taken by the West to pressure Russia into a ceasefire.  This is not a proposal to end the war but to allow Ukraine to regroup and the West to put itself in a better position to support it when it is recommenced.  Ukraine has not tried to disguise this intention and has not modified its maximal objectives.

The British and French have threatened to put their own troops into Ukraine and want the US to protect them under the formula of ‘security guarantees’.  They hope that this would dissuade Russia from taking the offensive again following any ceasefire, at least to the point that Ukraine thinks itself in a position to take the initiative.  It is not a solution but a transparent attempt to achieve the goals of Ukraine and the West later since they cannot be achieved now.  It promises not the end of the war but its resumption.  This is the position of the Ukrainian state, western imperialism and the ‘democratic socialist’ of Sotsialnyi Rukh interviewed by Democracy Now.

Trump has already moved to enact what Pilash proposed by raising tariffs on India for its purchase of Russian oil, although it has failed to do so on China.  This is a sign of weakness while India has signalled that it will continue buying from Russia.  So this proposal hasn’t worked, just as all the previous sanctions and previous financing, weapons, logistics, intelligence, planning and Western ‘volunteers’ haven’t delivered on their hopes.

Thus, the Sotsialnyi Rukh programme has already failed and promises only to prolong the war with its attendant death and destruction.  The objective for socialists should be to end it as quickly as possible while the policy of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and that of Sotsialnyi Rukh is to continue it to victory, apparently regardless of the cost.

Millions of Ukrainians have voted with their feet and have left the country while Trump is trying to send them back, which would only result in the men being conscripted, sent to the front and then killed.  A lot of Ukrainian soldiers have already voted with their feet and deserted, while those seeking to avoid conscription are voting with their feet by running away from recruitment press-gangs or attempting to escape the country.

Sotsialnyi Rukh could give a political voice to this instinctive opposition, born out of healthy suspicion and distrust of many Ukrainians for their state, but this is a road they will not take.  Instead, it champions a war its own state played a major role in creating, and a political and military alliance that subordinates the country to imperialism.  Its view of the war means it can do nothing other than tail-end a corrupt and ethno-nationalist state, its alliance with imperialism and a political regime that is responsible for both.

In Pilash’s fabricated reality Trump is supporting Putin; a view which requires ignoring the sanctions against Russia and the continuation of US military support.  Such a stupid statement so at odds with reality only confirms the reactionary character of the whole Sotsialnyi Rukh programme.

NATO is not the issue, says Pilash, but did he think repeated Russian warnings about Ukrainian membership were so much hot air?  Does its huge role in the war today not tell him something about its centrality to its origin and purpose, and does his enthusiasm for Western ‘security guarantees’ not confirm it?

Pilash thinks that Putin himself is the cause of the expansion of NATO – to Finland and Sweden – and look Russia hasn’t invaded them!  The problem, of course, is that he must assume the importance of NATO expansion for the argument to matter, while pretending that Russian warnings about Ukrainian membership are empty, even while his country is in the process of being devastated because of it.

His support for ‘security guarantees’, which means willingness to go to war against Russia, shows that the purported irrelevance of NATO is absurd, and his attempt to cover his ass by calling on the ‘global south’ to join western powers as guarantors is political camouflage.

Not even all the European NATO powers are prepared to put their troops into Ukraine, or at least to admit to it, including those in Eastern Europe; why would the ‘global south’?  And what, anyway, is the ‘global south’?  Does he want China, India, Brazil or South Africa to put troops into Ukraine?  Would they do it without Russian agreement, and would they want to be made hostage to the good intentions and behaviour of a Ukraine determined to get all its 1991 territory back?

The proposal for a ceasefire is thus not a promise to end the war, and not a resolution to it, but to put into Ukraine the exact forces that Russia invaded to keep out.  It is an incentive to Russia to continue hostilities in order to prevent it happening, and is a statement by the West that any end or even pause to the war will, absent an overall agreement, entail a NATO win. The cries for a ceasefire and peace are thus the habitual imperialist lies now trumpeted by some on the ‘left’.

Pilash states that Washington is about dividing the world into spheres of influence, as if this is something invented by Trump, and will not be the case in the form of the ‘security guarantees’ that he seeks.  Occupation of Ukraine by Western troops would be a fitting end to the claim to be fighting imperialism, colonialism and for independence.  And that’s if WWIII is avoided in the process.

He claims that there is a new axis of authoritarian regimes being created that includes Russia and calls for all the oppressed to unite against all the oppressors, mentioning Palestine as an example.  Who does he think was sitting in the White House with Trump while they discussed the possibility of guarantees; the prime candidates for providing and enforcing them?

Ursula Von der Leyen, who gave Israel a blank cheque to do what it wanted after October 7.  Keir Stamer, who announced on radio that Israel had the right to commit war crimes?  And Donald Trump the main provider of weapons and financing for the genocide.  Where does that leave his notion of uniting the ‘democratic’ countries against the authoritarian regimes in a fight against oppression?

The US, British and French states have a blood-soaked history of imperialist war and the German variety an unrivalled reputation for barbarity.  Their foreign expeditions have never stopped.   Today these states parade their democratic credentials while their foreign policy reverberates at home with threats of an approaching war with Russia and repression of domestic dissent.  

The christening of Ukraine as a beacon of democracy while its regime enforces martial law, refuses new elections, celebrates its fascist history and closes opposition media and political parties is testament to what Western states consider is democratic. 

The pro-war left always advises opponents of the war to follow the lead of the Ukrainian ‘socialists’ but these ‘socialists’ approve and flatter the actions of the imperialist states and encourage their aggression.  In following their lead their Western friends encourage the bellicosity of their own states and their movement to a war against Russia. It leads to them holding up as a beacon of democracy a state renowned as one of the most corrupt in Europe that the Ukrainian people themselves have made repeated attempts to change. 

The policy of supporting their own imperialism through its de facto military alliance with Ukraine is summed up in a few words – “Don’t Betray Ukraine”.

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Forward to part 3

Solidarity with the Palestinian people (1 of 3) – the Irish State

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Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach “is that where we’re headed” when he recounted the arrest of fourteen women from Mothers Against Genocide during their peaceful protest outside the Dáil on Mothers’ Day.

The right answer is yes and no.  Yes, we are heading towards a more repressive state and no, because we have been heading along this road for some time.  What has changed is the decision of the Irish state that it needs to abandon its appearance of some sort of neutrality, and defender of at least the appearance of international legality, and sign up to membership of NATO.

It’s difficult to sell the legitimacy of the state on current grounds when it has steadfastly refused to do anything meaningful to oppose genocide in Gaza.  It becomes impossible when it explicitly permits the use of Irish air space to transfer the weapons by which genocide is carried out, from the US to Israel.  Up until now it had appeared that the state had simply turned a blind eye to such flights while The Irish Times has now revealed that it has explicitly approved them.

The idea that the state is a leading defender of Palestinian rights is consequently as dead as a Dodo and the foot dragging on implementing the Occupied Territories Bill has become the least of the proof.  The decision of the new government to endorse the IHRA definition of antisemitism only makes sense in order to defend the Zionist state and to develop cover to those who defend and support its mass murder. The Irish state has already gone beyond both of these and is now revealed to be up to its neck in complicity with it.

Irish neutrality is a myth, as we have argued before (here, here and here), but it has involved constraints on its collaboration with NATO.  Now the state has decided that the drive towards war by the US and rest of Europe leaves it exposed just when it already faces severe threats to its economic role as a tax haven and general platform for US multinationals.  Pissing off Trump and the rest of the supporters of Zionism in the US is not going to help any special pleading it might want to make nor engender sympathy with the rest of the EU that backs genocide to the hilt.

Within this context, the attack on Palestine solidarity protests and signing up to defend the Zionist state makes perfect sense.  What doesn’t make any sense is to base a solidarity campaign on persuading this state to defend Palestinian rights, which is what the present campaign has been doing.  Repeated calls for the state to do this or that, pass the Occupied Territories Bill or new Air Navigation and Transport (Arms Embargo) Bill, has to ignore the determination of the state not to do anything like this.  

Instead, official Ireland has sought to protect itself by recognising the Palestinian state, which most countries have done to no effect, and intervene in the International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa, which also has little effect.  Of course, this has still upset the rabid Israeli regime despite secret calls from the Irish government that nothing is meant by such actions.  Meanwhile the Irish Central Bank helps Israel finance its genocide.

A solidarity campaign based on moral appeals to the amoral or to International law that Western imperialist powers decide to accept or reject as it suits, is to already accept hypocrisy as sincerity, imperialist actions as simply mistakes, and imperialism itself as capable of taking a progressive course.  It is fine to point out the hypocrisy, the real policy, and the nature of Irish state collaboration with imperialism, but it is simply foolish and futile to expect that anything meaningful will be achieved by this alone.

The picket at the trade union conference in Belfast, picked up by this Zionist news outlet, shows the beginnings of awareness that it is not enough for trade union figures to make fine speeches at demonstrations and demand that others, especially the government, take action, but that the trade unions themselves should take action and the campaign should focus on them and speak directly to workers.

It might appear that the widespread sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people is a strong basis on which to force effective solidarity but the ability of the new government to ignore international law, stymie its own minimalist legislation, and go on the offensive to protect Zionism is all evidence of the limits of such popular opinion.

The general lack of understanding of the reasons for the genocide and the ability of the Zionist state to act with impunity is a result of the failure to appreciate the nature and current role of imperialism.  This can be seen in the acceptance of Irish sanctions against Russia and support for the US, EU and Britain in provoking and continuing the war in Ukraine.  In a world in which imperialism can ‘do the right thing’ in Ukraine, the possibility of persuading it to do the same in Gaza can appear as a reasonable possibility.

Only by rejecting the war in Ukraine as the product of inter-imperialist rivalry, as the result partly of deliberate US provocation, and acceptance of it as essentially an imperialist proxy war, with the Ukrainian state as the willing proxy, is it possible to see the perfect consistency of US, EU and British actions in both Palestine and Ukraine.  Unfortunately, much of the Irish left, just like the British, has capitulated and supported Western imperialism through its Ukrainian proxy.

The latest revelations of the major role of the US in the war, published by the New York Times, should leave no one able to claim the innocence – never mind progressiveness – of its role, or the claim that this is something other than an imperialist war.  To continue to do so is to wilfully ignore the evidence or make an unconscious claim to stupidity.  Absent both, the real condemnation is of the rotten politics of most of the Irish and British left.

For those in Ireland, the relationship between imperialism in Palestine and imperialism in Ukraine is bound up with the attempt by the state to dissolve the pretence of neutrality – as a stepping stone to open NATO membership as a junior component of the Western imperialist alliance.  It is the responsibility of socialists to explain this and to point the campaign towards the action of the working class as the mechanism to enforce effective solidarity.

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Ukraine and imperialism after three years of war (2 of 2)

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Credit: Julian Simmonds for The Telegraph

Western imperialism can keep providing war materiel for years, at greater or lesser amounts as it rebuilds its stocks and rearms, while continuing to encourage the Ukrainian state to hold out for maximalist demands it calls ‘justice’ but which promises only continued war.  This is called ‘fighting to the last Ukrainian’.  However, the problem with this is obvious – you eventually get to the last Ukrainian.

This is obviously not in the interests of the Ukrainian state, so if Western imperialism risks uncontrollable war if it further escalates its intervention, Ukraine risks complete devastation if it continues on its present course. Equally obviously, the war will not reach this stage because there will be too many Ukrainians who will have no intention of joining the queue to be the last one to die.  We already see this in the numbers of especially young men getting out of the country; in the number avoiding military recruitment and coming into conflict with the military recruiters, and the massively increased desertions from the army.

More and more Western politicians are calling for the age of mobilisation of men to be reduced from 25 to 18, which has been resisted by the Zelensky regime.  He claims that he needs more weapons for any mobilisation while the warmongers in the West say that more troops are necessary to wield them. Zelensky is acutely aware of the unpopularity of sending Ukraine’s youngest generation to their death: the previous mobilisation was not completely successful while the very need for another is proof of the massive number already killed.

The underlying problem is that Ukraine has relatively few under-25s due to the sharp decrease in birthrates in the 1990s, a consequence of the shock of the collapse of the Soviet Union and introduction of capitalism.  If all the other cohorts of men have been exhausted, the mobilisation of the youngest does not promise victory but future demographic collapse, caused by death and absence of the most fertile cohorts of the population.  Volodymyr Ishchenko, quoted in the previous post states that ‘according to the latest UN forecast, by the end of the century, the Ukrainian population is going to decrease to 15 million from the 52 million that Ukraine had in 1992 after the disintegration of USSR. This is not even the most pessimistic scenario.’  Demographic forecasts are uncertain but the probability of a greater number of war casualties than that admitted by the Ukrainian state makes it more likely the most pessimistic forecasts are the more accurate.

So what are we to make then of the repeated calls of the pro-war left that we should recognise Ukrainian ‘agency’?  What agency?  That of the Zelensky regime?  Does this left support his current refusal to draft the youngest or will it support his change of mind, or will it support whatever the regime decides to do, whatever that is?  In the latter case the demand for support for Ukrainian agency is actually a demand to deny one’s own; in the case of another mobilisation, to surrender it to the demands of Western imperialism.

In defending Ukrainian agency, this left in reality denies the agency of Western imperialism – of its own ruling class and its state. In this, the supporters of Ukraine and its Western sponsors make the same error (if you can call it that) as the supporters of Russia – they identify the interests of the working class with that of their state.  One or other of these states become the defender of the working class on the world stage, which condemns the working class of their particular saviour to complete subordination.

The consequence is that the working class is no longer a world class and socialism is no longer international, having in effect been subordinated to one or other nationalism.  Hence the prominence of ‘self-determination’ in the discourse of each – a nationalist demand unrelated to the policy of Lenin but a declaration of support to already independent capitalist states in an inter-imperialist war.

Volodymyr Ishchenko has interesting things to say about the power of this nationalism in Ukraine. He.states that ’There are multiple indications that the enthusiasm of 2022 was pretty fragile, and it is not the first time that we see this kind of dynamic. After the 2004 Orange revolution and the EuroMaidan revolution of 2014, people have had high expectations that quickly gave way to disappointment. A similar dynamic happened after the election of Zelensky in 2019 and then in 2022. One of the lines of interpretation is that those events were the manifestation of the rise of the Ukrainian Nation, according to a very linear teleological dynamic, as an ultimate culmination of the national liberation struggle.’  

He goes on to say – ‘the actual desire to sacrifice oneself for the state is very low’, introducing the key missing element by noting that ‘the class issue is very important because conscripts will come primarily from the lower classes, from the villages. Mainly, from among the poor people who could not bribe the recruitment officers . . . It is really difficult to argue that the war is still a kind of “people’s war” if the majority of Ukrainian men actually do not want to fight.’ 

Of the role of the working class, which is the agency that should concern socialists, he is much more honest than the pro-war left that avoids it – by substituting the agency of the state for it – ‘The working class cannot play a role in the current situation. The labor movement in Ukraine was weak well before the war. The last really massive political strike was by Donbas miners in 1993. They demanded the autonomy of Donbas and closer relations with Russia, ironically.’  So much for a Ukrainian take on Ukrainian agency.

In the previous episodes in 2004 and 2014 the Ukrainian people were lied to by all factions of the oligarchy and their foreign backers with the result that the drive towards NATO precipitated the current invasion.  Ukraine is losing and the longer the war continues the greater the loss – this is reality and not the bellicose propaganda of the British, whether from Starmer on his visit to Kyiv or from that county’s pro-war leftists.  Just as it was Boris Johnson who helped torpedo the early Istanbul negotiations that might had ended the war, so has Starmer turned up to make nonsensical promises of a 100 year partnership and £3bn a year in military aid “for as long as it takes.”  As a practised purveyor of untruth, we can be confident that this is another lie.

Russia too has good reason to seek an end to the conflict but too little reason to permit it to involve Western troops in unoccupied Ukraine, which would be both a permanent threat to it and incentive to whatever reactionary regime surfaces in Ukraine to provoke another war.  In such a case Western troops would immediately be involved, triggering a European-wide war that would quickly involve the US in defence of its European imperialist vassals.

Russia is also suffering from sanctions and the freezing of its assets, including $300bn in the EU, even if it has surprised the West by not collapsing and continuing to grow its economy.  However it is suffering from high inflation and high interest rates, which will hamper further growth.  It has survived as well as it has by measures it took following the first Western sanctions in 2014, which have involved increased state direction of the economy and diversification of markets, especially for its energy exports, some of which still go to the West through third parties such as India..

The change in the distribution of available productive resources through increased arms production creates its own disproportions. The part of constant capital – machinery, materials etc and labour power used to produce commodities the use value of which does not make possible either the reconstitution of this constant capital or the reconstitution of labour-power can slow down or even lead to the contraction of the economy’s reproduction if it leads to a reduced amount of this constant capital and labour-power.

It is thus not in the interests of any of the parties that the war continue indefinitely.  Its continuation promises a military defeat for Ukraine and thus for its Western imperialist sponsors that only unacceptable escalation could avoid at unpredictable cost for all involved.  Russia has interests to defend that the war damages, including its economy, and it is undoubtedly suffering significant losses, whatever its supporters on social media in the West like to pretend.

In all this the party with most interest in ending the war is the working class, particularly the sons and daughters of the working class dying and suffering as a result of it.  A working class organised to demand and compel an end to it should be the object of the socialist movement across the world.  Unfortunately too many on the left are tied to supporting either Ukraine and its imperialist allies or Russia, and are therefore also tied to whatever deal eventuates from their eventual negotiations, the terms of which will be determined by the interests of the respective capitalist states.

Back to part 1

Who will follow the road to World War III?

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It is reported that the US has approved the use of long range missiles against Russia and that the first missiles have been fired.  This requires that US personnel participate directly in identifying the targets and programming the attacks, authorised by a President who is mentally decrepit.

It’s something like a nightmare scenario that the United States is going to attack Russia with its missiles using willing proxies.  Who can possibly think that this is a good idea?

Over two years ago the left supporters of Ukraine vehemently denied that the war was an inter-imperialist one, on the basis that ‘to describe the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, in which the latter country has no ambition, let alone intention, of seizing Russian territory . . . to call this conflict inter-imperialist, rather than an imperialist war of invasion, is an extreme distortion of reality.’  Now we are apparently told that the US will provide its missiles, programme them, and employ its ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) in support only of the Ukrainian invasion of Russia in Kursk.  Does this make the idea any better?

Two years ago the left supporters of NATO intervention were claiming that ‘we must also oppose the delivery of air fighters to Ukraine that Zelensky has been demanding. Fighters are not strictly defensive weaponry, and their supply to Ukraine would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing.’  These fighters have been provided and are in operation.

A year later the same supporters were stating that ‘NATO is not waging an all-out proxy war against Russia proper’, citing as evidence of this ‘Washington’s refusal to green-light Ukraine’s bombing of Russia’s territory or even Crimea, and to provide Kyiv with adequate means for that purpose. Joe Biden’s refusal to deliver the F-16 fighter jets that the Ukrainian government is requesting is a case in point.’

This month the same pro-imperialist left is stating that ‘the supply of arms to Ukraine has been insufficient and slow’ and ‘Governments, including NATO countries, should provide the weapons necessary for Ukraine to win.’  Since it is widely accepted by imperialist experts and commentators that even the long-range missiles now approved will not allow Ukraine to win, this pro-imperialist left is not just trailing behind US imperialism but is now in advance of it – in supporting provision of whatever weapons that ‘are necessary for Ukraine to win.’

They have written a blank cheque for imperialist intervention, one year after their previous article was entitled ‘Supporting Ukraine—without writing a blank check’!   Have they even noticed the shift, or does the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause lead them to ignore or dismiss or otherwise justify the risk of World War III?

In this article it is admitted that the aim of retaking Crimea is ‘an escalation by NATO . . . [that] would be reckless and should be opposed.’  It states that ‘the recovery of those parts of Eastern Ukraine identified by the 2015 Minsk II agreement or of the Crimean Peninsula cannot for that matter be regarded as Ukrainian war goals that should be supported.’  It says that ‘the only acceptable solution of such quarrels is by letting the original populations of the disputed territories vote freely and democratically for their self-determination.’  Presumably the forced reintegration of these by Ukraine would therefore be unacceptable?  Why then are they supporting a war which has precisely this aim?

There are now no limits set to supporting Ukrainian and Western imperialist war aims.  The previous claims about their objectives have been exposed as nonsense, having previously stated that imperialism ‘has not even agreed to help Ukraine recover all the territory that it lost since 2014, which includes parts of Donetsk and Luhansk as well as the whole of Crimea. There is no serious indication until now that this has been or has become Washington’s goal, while there are plenty of indications to the contrary. . .’  The much heralded Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023, prepared and planned with NATO, had precisely these objectives. Did the pro-war left not notice?

On the other hand, it is still claimed that the war is ‘a struggle for national liberation and self-determination’ and ‘for independence’, even though it is admitted that Ukraine was and is already an ‘independent country’ and that the self-determination on offer from the West is a cynical pretence.

Their latest statement says that ‘NATO countries, should provide the weapons necessary for Ukraine to win. It should not entail an increase in their military expenditure, the promotion of militarism or the expansion NATO and other military blocs – which should be disbanded . . .’

Yet its previous statement argued that ‘short of benefiting from NATO’s Article 5, Ukraine has become a NATO member in all other respects and for all intents and purposes . . . NATO will certainly further build up Ukraine’s military capabilities after the ongoing war, so that Ukraine’s future deterrence of potential Russian aggression will be considerably enhanced. The country will hence become a precious de facto auxiliary to NATO in confronting Russia.’  The statement further admits that Zelenskyy ‘is inviting private venture capitalists such as Blackrock to invest and buy up Ukraine’s assets. For his government, the message is clear: Ukraine is for sale.’

How subordination within NATO and selling its productive assets is ‘national liberation’, ‘self-determination’ and ‘independence’ is anyone’s guess.  The invasion of the ‘territorial and (neo)colonial domain of another country’ that this pro-war left first denounced is now evident not just in the invasion by Russia, but also through the actions of the Ukrainian capitalist state and its alliance with Western imperialism, primarily the US, on which Ukraine is now utterly dependent.

Again and again the actions that are claimed would confirm the war as an inter-imperialist one have come to pass, to the point that the United States is employing Ukraine to attack Russia with its missiles.  Yet still it is denied. The cognitive confusion and degeneration of the titular leader of Western imperialism has its analogue in the confusion and political degeneration of large swathes of the Western left that criticises him for not being aggressive and bellicose enough.

Is it possible that it will find a reverse gear and admit that it has got it all wrong?

That might be true if all we had was confusion, but this confusion is a result of political degeneration.  The confirmation that Russian nuclear doctrine now entails the possible use of nuclear weapons upon attack by a non-nuclear power that is supported by a nuclear one makes clear the stakes involved in the recent US escalation. That Trump is now the promise of an end to the war, while most of the left supports its continuation, even while saying that it believes that “Ukraine cannot win the war’, is a criminal betrayal of both the working class, including the Ukrainian working class, and of socialism.

This left stupidly compares its support for war to support for a workers’ strike that is judged unwinnable.  Besides the fact that socialists, in certain circumstances, may seek to draw to a close a strike that will result in a greater defeat if it continues, the comparison of a workers’ struggle with that of a rotten and corrupt capitalist state, in alliance with western imperialism, shows a complete inability to understand class politics.  The repeated conflation of the Ukrainian working class, its separate interests and the need to oppose the NATO imperialist alliance on the one hand, with ‘Ukraine’, the capitalist Ukrainian state and its imperialist war, on the other, demonstrates that it has no way out of its capitulation.

A left that cannot oppose the drift to world war, in fact supporting the dynamic towards it, while surrendering the claim to prevent it to the reactionary right, is one utterly lost.  The ‘lesser evil’ Democratic Party has just demonstrated the poverty of this sort of politics.  Only among the most rabid imperialist neocons is support for intensified and unlimited war popular; them and the pro-war left.  The struggle against the war is a struggle against both.

Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (2 of 2)

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As I noted at the start of the previous post, various leftists in the West have said that we should listen to the voices of Ukrainian socialists and follow their lead, except, as we have seen, they are following the lead of the Zelenskyy regime.  His ‘victory plan’, the part that is not a secret to the Ukrainian people and known only in Western imperialist capitals, is that Ukrainian resources should be made available to the corporations of these imperialist states; that Ukraine should be able to join their military alliance NATO, and that it fulfil this role by its troops being stationed in other European countries. No doubt these Ukrainian troops would include its far right and fascist units, which would allow the concentration of existing NATO troops against other targets.

These Ukrainian socialists excuse this policy of integration into Western imperialism as the appearance of a “sober approach”, regretting that it feels “humiliating” for it to be “turned down almost immediately”.  They presumably deny that the moves towards NATO membership were crucial to precipitating the Russian invasion and entertain the idea that the cause of the war can be its solution.

This position stems partly from material weakness – “there is no left-wing political force in Ukraine that would voice the issues inherent to working people” – but this can only begin to be rectified by developing an independent political programme that stands upon the interests of working people.  Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) is a social movement because it is not a socialist one.  It floats in Ukrainian society and reflects, through its liberal conscience, the reactionary nationalism of Ukrainian society and its state. It cannot therefore articulate a position separate from the ruling regime.

It notes that the regime is “singling out new internal enemies: Russian speakers, “victims of colonial thinking”, followers of Moscow priests, collaborators, Kremlin agents”; with “manifestations of linguistic chauvinism, justification of hostility towards national minorities . . . and fostering ideological uniformity”; but it doesn’t decisively break from the ideological dominance of Ukrainian nationalism and makes the same ultimatist demands in relation to the pro-Russian East as the most rabid fascist – “recognition of the annexation of occupied territories is obviously out of the question”.  Yet where is the attempt to reconcile this demand with claimed opposition to the view that the people of these regions are “internal enemies”?  It can only dribble that this “will complicate the reintegration of occupied territories.”

Calls for “uniting as many people as possible around ideas of justice, freedom, and solidarity” are only so much sanctimonious sermons without a relevant political programme, and without outright opposition to those opposed to anything meaningful these words might entail, which includes the Ukrainian state and its imperialist sponsors, on whom it is now totally reliant.  Where on earth is Western imperialism a force for “justice, freedom, and solidarity”?  This Social Movement declares its “support for victims of far-right violence” but has nothing to say about this far-right being an integral and leading component of the Ukrainian armed forces that it supports.

Sotsialnyi Rukh states that “people should have a stake in the country’s future and respect for human dignity must be at the core of a society that asks its members to risk their lives for it” – a disregarded acknowledgement that this is precisely what does not exist, and which renders its whole approach inadmissible.  The correct response, enunciated by Marx in similar circumstances in which it was claimed that a reactionary state can be of assistance – and promoted now as resulting from “a sincere dialogue from the government” – is to state that “the working class is revolutionary, or it is nothing.”  What does this mean for Ukrainian workers today?

It starts by discarding illusions in the Ukrainian state and that the purpose of “a political movement” is that it “ensures the voice of the people is heard in the corridors of power.”  The corridors of power are staffed by reactionaries beholden to Western imperialism, seeking a new mobilisation of Ukrainian workers for the cause of membership of its imperialist alliance – a blood sacrifice on behalf of those whose plan to is enrich themselves on Ukraine after the war.

Opposition to the Russian invasion does not require support for NATO or membership of it, and the Sotsialnyi Rukh view that without “security guarantees” from the West Ukraine faces “an open invitation for renewed aggression” ignores that Ukraine thereby becomes hostage to Western imperialism’s aggression and any Russian response.  “Security guarantees” will require assurances of “predatory exploitation” by “foreign investors” with all the “inequality, alienation and disenfranchisement” that will result.  The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

The unity of the workers of Ukraine and with their opposite number in Russia requires opposition to national chauvinism, with its hostility to national minorities, and only on this basis can a peaceful reconciliation of any kind be proposed as an earnest and sincere promise of unity without oppression.  Sotsialnyi Rukh cannot promise this by condemning such things as the Israeli oppression of Palestinians while seeking support and alliance with the same US imperialism that is the sponsor and accomplice of this oppression.  It is not possible to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds’ as the old saying goes.

Sotsialnyi Rukh demands “the restoration of electoral rights, the right to peaceful assembly and workers’ strikes, and the abolition of all restrictions on labor and social rights” but proposes that a “sincere dialogue” with the government that took them away is the way to achieve them.  Only by relying on the strength of the working class movement itself can the prerogatives of the working class be defended and advanced.  If it is too weak to assert them itself, it will never gain the strength to do so by relying on those who took them away.

Spontaneous resistance has arisen in opposition to the street kidnapping of workers so that they can be sent to their deaths at the front.  This resistance should be organised with the demand that summary arrest be ended; corruption in mobilisation exposed; that all conscripts receive proper training; that they have the right to organise trade unions and the right to protect themselves, including from suicidal orders from the rear. None of this is possible through “demand(ing) full state control over the protection of lives and the well-being of workers.”

The Ukrainian state has declared, even in the words of Sotsialnyi Rukh, that it “owes nothing to its citizens” and that its appeals are “hollow”.  By refusing to break from it, Sotsialnyi Rukh demonstrates the same for itself.

The Ukrainian state has no theory of victory that does not involve massive escalation of direct NATO intervention; to endorse it or give it a left gloss does not alter this in any way.  For workers in the West, it would mean following a road to escalation with all the risks of a world war that this involves.  To do so would see them dragged towards the same subordination to their own state and ruling class – where its left pro-war supporters have already gone – and politically unarmed to prevent world war.

The last thing workers in the West should do is take their lead from such a ‘social movement’.  For both, the slogan ‘the main enemy is at home’ remains the road to victory.

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Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (1 of 2)

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At the start of the war in Ukraine various leftists in the West said that we should listen to the voices of Ukrainian socialists, which might have made some sense were these people socialist. Except they are not.  Two recent statements by them confirm their reactionary character and have value only to illuminate their political bankruptcy and, by extension, those in the West who follow them and have called for others to do so.

The statements address what is necessary for Ukrainian victory and the tasks of the left in achieving it.  It is supposed to be a left alternative to Zelenskyy’s much trumpeted ‘victory plan’– touted round the various capitals of western imperialism – but reveals itself to be a plea for succour to the regime that has sought it itself from imperialism and failed.

It is not an alternative to it but a pathetic reflection of it.  It is useless even for its own purposes and worse than worthless as a guide for a working class alternative course out of the war.  It can be summed up by one sentence within it that shows that it pretends to no alternative to the current state, and therefore no possibility of an alternative way out of the catastrophe inflicted on the country.  It states that “We will demand full state control over the protection of lives and the well-being of workers . . .”  The same state that colluded in precipitating the disaster – that has delivered its people into a needless war that has wrought such death and destruction – is to be the protector of the lives of its workers.  This is both absurd and treacherous.

The statements themselves can’t help but note the current misdeeds of this state, its “corruption, censorship, and other abuses by officials”, and the reaction of Ukrainian workers – “civilians no longer queue at draft stations but actively evade mobilisation. Reported cases of draft dodging have tripled since 2023, and polls consistently show that nearly half of respondents view this as reasonable.”  They note “nearly 30,000 cases of AWOL have been registered in the first six months of 2024” and “the brutality and impunity of draft officers, who press-gang men off the streets . . . In the meantime, reports from the battlefield describe how unmotivated, untrained, and even unfit recruits endanger the rest, making the result of increasing coercion questionable.”   Questionable?, is that all it is?  Medically unfit men kidnapped off the street and sent to the front  – poorly trained and armed – to die in a war against a much more powerful enemy?

The result is that “after 970 days of war, 10,000s dead, 100,000s wounded, and millions displaced, the toll is immense. Few families remain untouched by this devastation.”  Yet it refuses to denounce the ridiculous tally of dead and injured quoted in the Western media, fed to them by the Ukrainian state and the Zelenskyy regime. Its statement is unwilling to challenge these lies about the devastating consequences of the war, while saying that they have “taken our people for granted”, yet refusing to acknowledge the human cost that repeats this.

“Under the realities of oligarchic capitalism, restrictions on freedoms often serve the interests of the elites”, one statement declares, in admission of the rotten nature of the society and state that commits these crimes.  It notes the statement of the minister of social policy Oksana Zholnovich, that  “we need to break everything that is social today and simply reformat from scratch the new social contract about social policy in our state.”

It sums up the hypocrisy and real policy of the state by saying that “appeals to civic duty ring hollow when the state openly declares that it owes nothing to its citizens”, yet its proposals are that “the government should start a dialogue with the people about the achievable goals of the war.”  It simply wants “to cooperate with other forces to build a political movement that ensures the voice of the people is heard in the corridors of power.  “Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) demands a sincere dialogue from the government with society on how we arrived here and what we can realistically expect.” A “sincere dialogue” with a regime that promised peace and an end to corruption that has instead walked its people into war with new opportunities for massively increased graft through it.

It would be possible to feel a little sorry for this movement were it not for its own hypocrisy and war policy.  It accuses the Zelenskyy regime of presiding over “a caricature of a war economy” that “makes it possible to prolong the war at the cost of significant human losses and constant mobilization.”  Yet its own policy is simply an extension of this through a state “subordinated to the priorities of defense . . . mobilising all resources for defence”, while simultaneously promising that it “defends the rights of conscripts and servicemen to dignified treatment” when many of these workers do not want to be conscripts at all.

Zelenskyy’s plan is criticised for “its disproportionate reliance on the West’, while acknowledging that “to fight against Russian aggression . . ., we need support from the global community, including humanitarian and military assistance.” It laments this reliance but then states that “this might appear to be a sober approach”, with the further complaint that it feels “more humiliating” to be “turned down almost immediately”.

It canvasses what would be an acceptable peace but includes proposals that shows it has no idea “how we arrived here”, i.e. why the war began, never mind how realistically it might end: “The only deal with a chance of being supported, by a slight margin, includes de-occupation of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, combined with NATO and EU memberships. . . . Therefore, the greatest mistake would be to pit diplomatic efforts against military support. Without meaningful solidarity, Ukraine and its people will fall — if not now, then later.”

It complains of “a quite remarkable shift from the earlier emotional appeals for solidarity to luring support with access to natural resources and promises of outsourcing Ukrainian troops for the European Union’s security”, but its own dependence on what it euphemistically calls “the global community”, and peace involving NATO membership, shows that its alternative to Zelenskyy is no alternative at all. It doesn’t even ask the question: why it is only now – after over two and a half years – that a purported plan for victory has been drafted? Or did all the others fail too?

Forward to part 2

A World going to War and the resistance (3 of 3) – a multipolar alternative?

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In the previous post I said that the results of the war in Ukraine would include the deaths of hundreds of thousands; massive physical destruction; a Ukrainian state more corrupt and more subject to imperialist predation; increased division within the working class; and both NATO and the reactionary Russian belligerents remaining in place.

Yet the pro-war Western left defends NATO because without it Ukrainian victory would be inconceivable and it is this victory that they prioritise above all else.  This is an inescapable consequence of their position.

Alternatively, some other leftists, in mirror image, support the victory of Russia but in doing so also bear responsibility for supporting the consequences of the war. They take this position on the grounds of opposition to US imperialist hegemony and for some, that a more multipolar or ‘pluripolar’ world is the pivotal objective.  They do not seem to appreciate that the wars in Ukraine and Middle East are the results of the developing of this multipolar world, which is another name for imperialist rivalry and conflict.  Only the historically ignorant could believe that the development of a multipolar capitalist world would not lead to imperialist conflict and war.

The idea that a more multipolar world will lead to equality of nations makes no sense to anyone who believes that capitalist states are political formations that compete with each other in an analogous way that capital itself competes – by destroying or expropriating rivals.  Socialists believe that workers should not side with their own capitalist state and should fight it, just as we call on workers to oppose their own capitalist exploiter; supporting your own capitalist state is analogous to supporting you own exploiter.

That many have come to this sorry end means that they have also ended any real connection with socialism, regardless of any subjective beliefs.  It’s not that they are stupid; it takes some intelligence to construct the respective arguments but the results above are the same whatever the rationale advanced.

It matters not if you think China is socialist and therefore you should support its ally Russia, because this means you desert the Chinese working class and Russian.  It matters not that you do so to defend colonial or semi-colonial countries, because the point about multipolarity is that many of these countries have advanced and developed so that they exploit the rivalry within the multipolar system to defend their own state and class interests.  The language of anti-imperialism, or anti-colonialism, is often employed by them to denounce other capitalists’ interests and power.

By coincidence, a friend sent me a link to an article that illustrates one consequence of the development of the multipolar world – the ability of some states to balance between US & Western imperialism on the one hand and China & Russia on the other.  The article points to this in terms of economic collaboration between many BRICS countries and the Zionist state of Israel, exploding the idea that there is emerging some state alignment of the good guys against the bad.  Not only are there no good guys but even pretence that there is a unified group doesn’t survive the obvious divisions within them, as the article illustrates.

One rationale for support for Russia was made on Facebook, which read: ‘In truth what will bring about a new revitalised working class movement is the fall of US imperialism. The world policeman will no longer be able to intervene throughout the world to suppress movements fighting for social equality. A big step forward for humanity.  For instance, if there was no US imperialism there would be no genocide of the Palestinians and Israeli would cease to exist as a settler and apartheid state.’

The article referenced above makes clear that, while the US is currently decisive in defending the Zionist state, there are no principled reasons why other imperialist and capitalist powers would not do so also, just as they currently hypocritically collaborate with it.  The principal reason that they do not, or cannot do so now, is because US imperialism is already doing it.   Israel would not be averse to being someone else’s imperialist enforcer if it had to; its history shows previous reliance on the British, German and French imperialism, not to mention the early approval of the Soviet Union.

None of the capitalist states that are rivals of the US have demonstrated that they would not carry out the same policy as the US, were they in the same hegemonic position.  Belief in a multipolar world seems to be under the illusion that such a world would involve the removal or amelioration of inter-imperialist rivalry and conflict, as opposed to the reality of its intensification, demonstrated in the current wars in Europe and Middle East.  In such a situation, support for one or other imperialist alliance is not a temporary tactical or strategic approach but a fundamental capitulation to never-ending support for imperialism, whatever its particular variety might be.

There are two ways in which ‘the fall of US imperialism’ could occur and ‘the world policeman . . .no longer be able to intervene throughout the world’.  The first is if a rival imperialist bloc defeated it, in which case there would be a new imperialist hegemon ‘able to intervene throughout the world’.  What reason, let’s call it success, would lead this hegemon to behave differently?  Would its current left supporters then withdraw their support or stick with it?

The second is if the US hegemon was overthrown by the working class.  Let’s say through a combination of military defeat and internal revolt.  The task of the working class in these circumstances, assuming for the sake of argument that only US imperialism ‘fell’, would be to defend itself against the rival hegemonic imperialist alliance.  This would be because this new hegemon would recognise what its current left supporters do not, that its real enemies are the working class.  In this case it is more likely that the rival imperialist alliance would seek to defend the newly subordinated US imperialism from overthrow by the working class and seek to crush it themselves.

What sense does it make to support this potential alternative imperialist hegemon unless one swallows the nonsense that China is either socialist, or is some sort of peaceful version of capitalism, which in either case would require ditching everything taught by Karl Marx about what capitalism is and what is involved in rule by the working class?  Or even if one doesn’t consider oneself a Marxist, how is such a view given any confirmation by the history of the world over the last 150 years?

Whatever the steps necessary to establish an independent working class force in the world, they will not be taken through supporting either Western imperialism or the China-Russia Axis, not least because each makes their working class a prisoner of its own state and thereby prevents their unity across their division.

Back to part 2

A World going to War and the resistance (2 of 3) – Two proxy wars

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Western imperialist support for the Zionist state and its genocide in Gaza has exposed its hypocrisy to millions across the world but the developing war against Iran exposes what lies behind this support.

The repeated provocations against Iran, involving assassination of leading figures and terrorist attacks in Lebanon have in each case been designed to provoke an Iranian response that would justify further Israeli attacks and increased intervention by the US.  The US has been saying two things during this Israeli escalation: promoting a ceasefire that will release Israeli hostages but that will permit continued Zionist aggression thereafter, and repeated declarations of support for the Zionist state, backed up with more and more weapons plus financing for a deficit that is forecast to be almost three times that expected before the war but will turn out to be even greater. 

The Western media repeats ad nauseum that the US has been struggling to prevent regional war and that it has also struggled to rein in Zionist bellicosity.  What it also occasionally reports is that a new ‘reformist’ President in Iran is seeking to improve relations with Western imperialism in order to reduce sanctions against his country, and that this is why Iran is deliberately seeking to prevent escalation in its responses to provocation.

If the US wanted to rein in Israeli aggression, it would not supply the weapons that allows the Zionist state to carry out genocide, invade Lebanon and attack Iran.  It would not supply the finance that allows the Zionist state to finance “the longest and most expensive war’ in its history, according to its finance minister.  In other words the US is lying and the Western media parrots its lies, which are reported as news and then recycled by its talking heads and columnists as the truth.

Since the real enemy of the Zionist state and threat to its regional hegemony is Iran, the target of escalation in the war – through the invasion of Lebanon with the purpose of smashing Hizbollah – is the organisation’s patron.  Since the Zionist state is the projection of US/Western imperialist power in the region the main enemy of the US is Iran, because behind it is Russia. And behind it – China.

The invasion of Lebanon and attacks on Iran are not something the US opposes but is its proxy war against Iran and Russia.  Israel is thus playing the same role as Ukraine is playing in the war against Russia, which is why the US has supplied weapons and financing for both and why the Western media displays its bias in favour of both. 

However, even the Western media is increasingly reporting that Ukraine is losing the war while trying to determine what can retrieved from the defeat.  Anyone relying on this media would be surprised by this turn of events having been fed a diet of Russian failure and Ukrainian valour and success.  The story now is very different.

In the Financial Times its reporters quotes the head of the Washington office of the European Council on Foreign Relations thar “we are losing the war” while the rabidly pro-imperialist Economist editorialises that ‘If Ukraine and its Western backers are to win, they must first have the courage to admit that they are losing’; rich coming from that publication – given the lateness to recognise it themselves.  Even now it ventures a cunning plan for victory, of sorts, through yet more money to build up a Ukrainian arms industry, which is admission that Western imperialism can no longer supply Ukraine with their own weapons, not least because they are needed to kill Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranians.  

Having advocated and heralded previous escalation by imperialism, The Economist sees no need to explain its own failure but simply supports yet more escalation and a plan even less credible than the one concocted by Zelensky.  

Both publications provide ample evidence that Ukraine is failing and that the views of Ukrainians themselves are changing, making them less willing to fight the proxy war, never mind ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’.

“Most players want de-escalation here’ says a senior Ukrainian official, while one Ukrainian commander states his fear of a “forever war”, and another officer notes that “if the US turns off the spigot, we’re finished.”  In The Economist yet another drone commander states that “the West and the United States in particular have an unequivocal responsibility for the deaths of Ukrainians.”

Both publications note the increasing corruption of the Ukrainian state: the forced mobilisation “is perceived as abusive, worse than if you are a criminal” according to the director of the Kyiv Centre for Economic Strategy.  “It tears people apart.  The real enemy is Russia, but at the same time they fear a corrupt, abusive enrolment office doing the wrong thing.”  The effect on the front reported by The Economist is that ‘many of those drafted into service are ill-suited to fighting: too old, too ill, too drunk.’  It notes that there is no clear path out of the army, making ‘being mobilised seem like a one-way ticket to the morgue’.  It states that 5-10% are absent without leave despite prosecutions and that ‘fewer than 30% of Ukrainians consider draft-dodging shameful.’

The Economist also notes that ‘corruption and nationalism are on the rise’ while the Financial Times reports a governing party MP that ‘the biggest domestic problem for Zelenskyy might come from a nationalist minority opposed to any compromise, some of whom are now armed and trained to fight . . . The far right in Ukraine is growing.  The right wing is a danger to democracy.”

Thus, many Ukrainians understand the important role of Western imperialist intervention, even if the pro-war Western left professes not to.  They understand the rampant corruption of the state, the life and death consequences for themselves, and seek to avoid them, while this left champions the defence of the state and supports the supply of weapons to Ukrainian conscripts who simply do not want to die.  The importance and threat of the far right is recognised while this left, never slow to denounce the fascist threat everywhere else, has minimised, glossed over and treated it as inconsequential.  All these failures flowing from the initial failure to understand the war as an imperialist one in which socialists should support neither side.

Both publications proffer incomplete and confused plans for ending the war, both of which appear to treat the Russian view of how it should end as secondary to their own.

What they both do, is treat the question of NATO membership as central, yet another vital element the pro-imperialist warmongers have treated as some sort of Russian excuse.  “Land for [Nato] membership is the only game in town, everyone knows it”, says one senior western official quoted by the FT.  “Nobody will say it out loud . . . but it’s the only strategy on the table.”  On the other hand the FT quotes a senior Ukrainian official as stating that “I don’t think Russia would agree to our participation in Nato.”

The gung-ho Economist supports Ukrainian NATO membership but simply glosses over the acknowledged risk – ‘If Russia struck Ukraine again, America could face a terrible dilemma: to back Ukraine and risk war with a nuclear foe; or refuse and weaken its alliance around the world.”  It fails to notice that the US has made a choice on NATO membership already (refusing immediate admission) and simply elides the risk by claiming that a choice of not giving membership would entail Ukraine’s defeat, which ‘would be much worse.’  What could be worse than a world war between two states armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons is not explained, but this, apparently, is the future promised by the prominent publication of Western imperialism.

For the moment, The Economist and Financial Times still support the war, with the former seeking to redefine victory as less than before.  However it ends, the war will have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands with many more wounded; much of Ukraine will have been destroyed; the Ukrainian rump state will be weaker, more corrupt and more subject to imperialist predation than before; the political division within the former Ukrainian working class will have been immeasurably strengthened; and both NATO and the reactionary Russian regime will remain.

These are the already known inevitable results of the war that those leftists who think victory for one band of capitalist robbers is better than the other have to justify. Socialists will remain implacably opposed to both and will not entertain the claims of these leftist pretenders that after the fighting is over they will go back to opposing NATO or Putin.

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