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.

Back to part 1

Forward to part 3