The second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to several retrospective summaries of the war and recapitulation of the arguments about its justification. This should have involved an examination of the various claims made about its course over the two years and how they stand up today, but this was studiously avoided. If we take even a cursory look at these claims, we can see how the lies told by the Western media about the war have increasingly been shredded by reality. Instead of winning against a stupid and incompetent Russia the all-powerful NATO might be losing? But let us come to that presently.
The genocide in Gaza has to a great extent eclipsed the war while the bias and lying of the Western media has increasingly been impossible to hide. That the BBC live-streamed the Israeli case at the International Court of Justice but not the South African is just one example. While driving my car this morning Sky News reported that one hundred Palestinians had just ‘died’, which must be taken to refer to the killing by the Israeli army of their desperately starving victims attempting to get food from one of the few aid convoys the Zionists allowed through.
All this should provide grounds for clarifying the nature of the war in Ukraine but instead these have been treated as two entirely separate happenings, including by much of the left, which supports the actions of the United States in one and damns it in the other; excuses its intervention in one and rejects all its excuses in the other. And we are supposed to believe this makes sense.
So, the war in Ukraine is the war in Ukraine; and the genocide in Gaza is but the latest murderous assault on the Palestinian people that must be addressed by a Palestinian solidarity movement. The long adopted method of single issue campaigns, designed supposedly to involve the maximum number of people, is exposed as divorced from reality. Rather than help explain the world, it fragments reality and is an obstacle to understanding it. Without such understanding the fundamental cause of war – capitalism – will forever lurk in the background, smothered by the appearance of this or that conflict, inviting this or that ‘solution’ that often relies on the criminals who caused it.
Much of the Western left has supported the Ukrainian state, and Western intervention, which is now accepted in Washington and Kyiv as the only thing keeping it going, with repeated threats that it will lose very soon if Western weapons do not continue to come. Since money on its own does not kill Russians the reckless sponsorship of the war has been exposed because the Western powers no longer have the ammunition or other war materiel to keep Ukraine fighting.
Zelensky promises a new offensive in 2025 but the integrity of his armed forces might not last that long. Western powers are scrounging ammunition from various parts of the globe, but these simply mean that Ukrainians will keep on fighting and dying a little longer. The alternative is the provision of more advanced weapons such as longer-range missiles and F-16 aircraft but these cross previous red lines, risk Russian retaliatory escalation and will not lead to Ukrainian victory. In turn this risks further Ukrainian attempts to provoke greater Western intervention.
Threats to directly intervene with troops on the ground have only revealed that some have already been there and many of them have been killed. A Russian officer has already stated that “NATO military personnel, under the guise of mercenaries, participate in hostilities. They control air defence systems, tactical missiles and multiple launch rocket systems, and are part of assault detachments.” The loss of over 60 French ‘mercenaries’ has already been reported in Kharkiv. Now the German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz has let slip that the British and French are using their own troops to target and fire their missiles. And someone else has revealed discussions within the German armed forces to attack Russia.
What successes Ukraine have achieved, such as the sinking of Russian warships and scarce and expensive surveillance aircraft, could only have been accomplished with Western systems, intelligence and personnel. The most advanced weapons systems can only be used effectively by forces trained and familiar with them while their servicing and maintenance requires similar support. None of this has prevented increasingly rapid Russian advances on the ground.
Stopping, and reversing, this could not be achieved even by French, German, British or US troops on the ground without creation of a massive intervention force that these countries are currently in no position to construct and employ. This has not excluded repeated announcements of the possibility of Western troops being sent to take part directly in the fighting. This, even if on a limited scale, has the potential to lead to a World War. The piloting of F-16 fighters by NATO pilots, with the green light by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to attack targets in Russia, shows one path to escalation and war.
The prospect of Western infantry in Ukraine raised by Macron and shot down by others reflects awareness of the possibility of defeat, which Biden in particular has cause to fear, if this becomes clear before the November Presidential election. Even If Western escalation were partial, limited to occupation of Western Ukraine, Russia has the capacity to continue to move forward to achieving its aims, which would be expanded to account for a Western incursion.
Left supporters of the Ukrainian state face the defeat of what has, politically, become their own proxy in their imagined progressive struggle alongside Western imperialism. The presumed priority of Russian defeat would require massive Western imperialist intervention, with the risks discussed, and serves to justify the most reactionary nationalism in Eastern Europe (to be covered later).
Given the nature of the parties involved, exemplified in the massive disparity in power of the two forces, it is not Western imperialism that has become a proxy for the Left but the Left that has become a bourgeois proxy within the socialist movement. Such is the position this pro-imperialist Left has put itself by supporting a pro-Western capitalist state in a war and by also supporting the assistance provided to it by Western imperialism.
The split personality of this left can be seen in their support in the case of Ukraine and opposition in the case of Palestine, as if all the Western powers are confused as to what is in their interests. This disorder is as real for those that straight-forwardly support Ukraine and deny the proxy nature of the war as it is for those who directly express their confusion by both supporting the capitalist Ukrainian state while opposing the assistance of the capitalist states supporting it.
Defence of the Palestinian people will not be advanced by upholding in Ukraine the imperialist supporters of the Zionist state that is carrying out genocide, or by claiming that it is capable of playing a progressive role in one but not the other.
Of course, the genocide in Gaza is immediately more obvious and easier to argue, and especially more convenient for the moralistic approach that single-issue campaigns rely upon. But for exactly this reason it is important to show how the two require the same approach and are not two single issues but two expressions of the one oppressive system that must face one combined struggle against it.
Both are wars by proxies of US imperialism in order to defend its hegemonic position in Europe and the Middle East. Both reveal the poverty of its putative capitalist rivals. The Russian invasion is incapable of stirring the sympathy of the workers of the world, and China, as the ultimate target of the US, cannot politically defend the Russian invasion. In the case of Gaza, these putative leaders of the alternative pole of imperialist power have stood aside while the Zionist state commits genocide. Russia and China have not made even a significant symbolic gesture by expelling the Israeli ambassador, while its BRICS associate, Saudi Arabia, has facilitated trade with Israel to nullify the efforts of the Houthis in Yemen to block it. Iran has been as keen as the US to limit its opposition through its allies so that it can avoid war between them.
In both cases the Left, of almost all shades, sees no role for socialism in ending these capitalist wars but puts forward purely formal democratic proposals that do not go beyond capitalist solutions and have no bearing on reality. This includes the demand for ‘self-determination’ for Ukraine when the part of it allied to the West is already utterly reliant and subordinated to it.
In Gaza, the renewed murder and displacement of Palestinians has revived the debate over a two state or one state solution, neither of which are socialist and neither of which address the over-reaching power of the Zionist state, its US sponsors, or the opposition of the autocratic Arab regimes, which oppose the creation of any democratic Palestinian state lest it act as a beacon of inspiration for their own oppressed populations.
The hypocrisy that has been exposed by the two conflicts is a starting point to enlightening working people about the depraved and ruthless nature of the societies they live in, and that the scope and scale of the barbarity exposed is not accidental but is a fundamental feature. This means that only a complete reordering of society will work and that this is what the socialist alternative involves. If capitalist war does not demand and call for a socialist alternative then activists opposed to these wars will never be able to promise that one day they will end.
Forward to part 2