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
26 September 2024
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