Fanning the Flames of War: Further reflections on Ukraine.

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Two and a half years on, the war rages on unabated. Instead of focusing on negotiating a ceasefire and ultimately peace agreement, Ukraine requests permission to use Western long-range missiles to attack locations on Russian territory, supposedly as a way of bringing about an end to the war. The USA and UK have not given their permission yet (BBC, 14 September 2024), but a further round of escalation is clearly on the horizon. The left in Europe has struggled to find a coherent position on the war and the divisions between different positions are deepening. In this blog post, I will further reflect on what is at stake in the Ukraine war from a left perspective.

 

There is a familiar ring to Ukraine’s request for permission to fire long-range missiles into Russia. In early 2023, there was the demand for Western tanks, which would bring victory on the battlefield (BBC, 20 January 2023). The tanks were eventually delivered, but Ukraine’s summer offensive in 2023 was unsuccessful nonetheless (Reuters, 21 December 2023). In Spring 2024, Ukraine requested long-range Taurus missiles from Germany. While Germany refused, the US and UK complied delivering long-range cruise missiles (Politico, 25 April 2024). The direction of travel is clear. The stalemate on the battlefield is supposed to be broken by ever more powerful weapons.

 

However, is it really feasible that Russia can be defeated on the battlefield? More weapons will only prolong the war with the clear danger of expanding it further. What if war expansion resulted in an exchange of nuclear weapons with more and more military ‘experts’ touting the idea of a feasible use of smaller, tactical nuclear weapons? If we crossed that threshold, the whole of Europe would suffer. It is, however, Ukraine and Russia which would suffer most with large stretches of land becoming completely uninhabitable.

 

Who is actually benefitting from delivering more weapons to Ukraine? In what amounts to a permanent war economy, it is of course arms manufacturing companies such as Lockheed Martin, which are key beneficiaries (Reuters, 23 April 2024). US military support for countries around the world is a direct subsidy to its arms industry.

 

Casualties are mounting on both sides. Reports earlier in the year noted that young Ukrainian men are increasingly worried about being drafted for active service (The Guardian, 3 April 2024). The picture on the Russian side is unlikely to be different. While politicians on both sides spout martial rhetoric, the enthusiasm for slaughter is waning on the ground.

 

And yet, the left is divided over the appropriate response to the war. Yuliya Yurchenko writes in a contribution to the magazine Red Pepper that ‘the world needs Ukraine to win. However imperfect the global liberal order is, Putin’s fascism is immeasurably worse’ (Red Pepper, Autumn 2024). Well, tell this to the Palestinian people who are facing Israel’s genocidal onslaught facilitated by US, British and German arms deliveries.

 

Some commentators on the left raise the spectre of ‘decolonisation’ as a justification for delivering further weapons to Ukraine. Rarely has a progressive concept been so misused. The Western support of Ukraine, while there is no support forthcoming for the Palestinians in Gaza, indicates the Eurocentric underpinning of these policies. The bill in the US House of Representatives in April 2024 was equally a reflection of Eurocentric foreign policy ambitions. It did not only include $61 billion in military aid for Ukraine, but part of the approved measures were also $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion for allies in the Indo-Pacific region and here especially Taiwan (The Guardian, 20 April 2024). Military aid to Ukraine is clearly part of an overall global, imperialist strategy (Callinicos, 23 April 2024).

 

In our recent paper ‘Reframing the Geopolitics of Global Capitalism’ in the Socialist Register 2024, Adam D. Morton and I argue, together with others, that we need to understand the Ukraine war as a war of inter-imperialist rivalry between the West around the USA and Russia, characterised by relentless Eastward expansion of NATO since the late 1990s and Russia’s multiple wars in its own neighbourhood (see also Capitalist expansion, the war in Ukraine and three decades of missed opportunities in Europe).

 

In inter-imperialist wars, however, working class people are always losing out on all sides. Like in World War I, it is working people who provide the cannon fodder for imperialist ambitions. Hence, from a left perspective the focus has to be on how to end the war as fast as possible.  

 

Moving towards a ceasefire and ultimately peace, and be it in exchange for land in Eastern Ukraine, does at least hold the prospect of ending the slaughter and avoiding nuclear catastrophe. Such a settlement would not justify Russia, nor would it legitimise its aggression. But it would acknowledge that there can be no peace in Europe without Russia and that there can be no peace negotiations as long as weapons are delivered and the war rages on. Instead of fuelling the war with further weapons, the focus should be on trust-forming measures similar to the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe process during the 1970s.

 

In inter-imperialist wars, the left must focus on obtaining peace, not on military victory or the integrity of national borders. Anything else is leading further into the abyss!

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

26 September 2024