The Western states were aware of the military capabilities of Russia and Ukraine from day one. For instance, they waited until after the destruction of Ukrainian cities to send them modern anti-aircraft systems. Is their hesitation due to fear of Putin? For sure not.
Over a thousand international companies are still operating in Russia. Hundreds of Western companies have merely suspended their activities. Are they hoping to return to the promising Russian market? For sure.
The stance of the right-wing is clear: let Russia end the war by swallowing Ukraine. But has the global left offered us a different alternative? The most radical position said that Moscow and Washington should negotiate for peace! They too were against sending military aid to Ukraine from the start. Now, imagine realistically for a moment if the left had been successful in this request. Yes, perhaps the war would have ended sooner. But at what cost?
Just this past week, Medvedev once again reiterated Russia’s original objectives: “Essentially, Ukraine is a fake country. Not just Eastern Ukraine, but Odessa and Kiev are inseparable parts of Russia.”
The goals of Russian imperialism are clear. Helping to grow and strengthen the global right-wing tendency to crush US imperialism. The matter is quite clear. So, has the so-called global left closed its eyes to reality? No! They are allies with Russian imperialist expansionism. The best gift to Putin. The best war investment. Where the left gives no alternative but to support Putin, and the western right-wing tendency is to pursue more nationalism and preserve the interests that expand the Russian-Chinese economic territory. The European left is greatly weakened and become nihilist that has lost the battlefield to the right-wing in the local arena.
Russia’s fascist connected Putin is creating great confusion within the left, including the socialist left. He and his agents and assets (both conscious and otherwise) are drawing significant numbers of lefts, including tens of thousands of internationalist-minded youth, into what is really a vast, far right web led by Putin. A major advance in this drive to lure the left into the far right web was the confusion Putin’s assets and agents sowed around the Syrian revolution and counter-revolution. Since then, he and his agents have sowed even more confusion around the left’s understanding of and response to Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. In order to successfully oppose this counter-revolutionary process, we must understand it and its historical precedents.
The global left generally closed its eyes to this reality and the struggle of socialists in the global south.
Let’s give an example. Look at the issue of migration and asylum. You see, a young person from Nigeria, Afghanistan, or Iran who enters European countries, comes from a place that has historically been rich in agriculture and cultural development. You won’t find a young person who tells you they want to go somewhere where they won’t see the sun for three months of the year or more. All these realities, war, sanctions, colonialism, and so on, are ignored so that this Euro-centric mindset, which is so self-superior, can say that Europe is so good that everyone wants to come here!
This political trend is faced with an intellectual poverty that suddenly forgets the political-historical achievements of left in Europe while also forgetting how much Europe needs cheap labor. Cheap labor that can no longer be found within Europe itself. Yes, certainly, one can also address the weaknesses of the summer of 1968 and the intellectual changes in Marxism and its transformation into a liberal trend. A highly consumerist society that is step by step losing everything and a left that is not willing to align itself with progressive political and social movements in the East or the South of the world. This is not an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist left.
The billion investments of Russia and China in the construction of the Arctic trade route were generally ignored in the analysis. The expansion of Russian influence in Central Asia and towards the south, as well as the expansion of Chinese influence in Africa and their financial investment in the expansion of new trade routes are all missing in the analysis. This is the left that failed to analyze the political economy of war.
For this left, the problem is not autocracy and oppression within Russia, nor is it a battle with global capitalism. For them, the issue is only opposing USA and not imperialism. This is the tendency that aligns itself with eastern fascism. They have become their own gravediggers.
What you think?