Socialist Worker denounces “War of conquest” – by Ukraine!

 

Above: civilians in the city of Severodonetsk as Russia closes in on one of the major cities in Donbas GETTY IMAGES

By Sacha Ismail

“Three months since Russia invaded Ukraine”, claims Socialist Worker of 18 May, “the war has entered a new and even more ­dangerous phase”. Specifically: “there can be no more doubt this is now an inter-imperialist war”.

In fact, this was also SW’s previous line; but they are doubling down on it, but with some new twists.

They now claim, without any substantial justification, that “today any element of a war of liberation against Russian imperialism is wholly subsumed by, and subordinated to, Nato’s war on Russia.”

Note — despite the talk of “inter-imperialist war”, SW says not even “war with Russia” but “war on Russia”. So it seems Ukraine is in some respects at least the aggressor. And in fact SW goes even further, accusing of Ukraine of engaging in a “war of conquest” (see below).

“Gone are hopes of swift victory on either side. Instead both prepare for further carnage… Now the war has settled into a horrific drawn-out confrontation, with generals and politicians anticipating this will be a long conflict.”

As if anyone serious predicted swift victory for Ukraine! Or thought that a quick end to the war was likely except through Russian victory… In fact, though the war may indeed continue for a long time, the Ukrainians have done better than widely expected. In other cases of such “resistance”, the SWP would hail it. But because of support from NATO, the Ukrainians have disqualified themselves as anti-imperialists.

“The West… imagined there could be a regime change in Moscow… Instead, for now at least, sanctions have rallied large sections of the population behind Putin, and the regime is trading at record levels with countries outside the immediate influence of the US and NATO.” SW’s claim to have a good picture of Russian public opinion is highly dubious. The fact that many governments are supportive of, or not willing to jeopardise their relationship with, Russia has no possible bearing on the justice of Ukraine’s cause.

Again, SW is outraged by Western governments providing Ukraine with weapons. It’s not totally clear if the SWP objects specifically to getting weapons from NATO governments, or to it fighting with weapons at all. Elsewhere what it has counterposed to armed struggle is unarmed demonstrations against the Russian occupation — an argument it has unsurprisingly not repeated too much.

Pointing out that a new package of US military aid to Ukraine is more than various aspects of US spending on public services, attempting to counterpose the two, is a cheap, populist, almost US nationalist argument. There is vast wealth in US society — and much larger amounts of it are sent overseas for military purposes which, unlike Ukrainian self-defence, are highly objectionable.

“The people of Ukraine, and the Russian conscripts”, says Socialist Worker, “will be the cannon fodder in this contest.” True, of course, as in most wars. But does that make the two sides symmetrical or determine socialists’ attitude to the war? Isn’t there a crucially important difference in what the two sides are fighting for, and how this connects to the working people of the two countries?

Radical left

SW never considers, as far as I can see, why the radical left in Ukraine supports Ukraine’s military struggle while the radical left in Russia supports Ukraine. Of course, comrades can be wrong. But it seems to us this fact is highly telling about the nature of the war.

Because NATO governments provide weapons and intelligence, SW says that “the Ukrainian military as an extension of the US and NATO”. This is a ridiculous leap. Was the Vietnamese resistance to US conquest “an extension of the USSR” (and so on — you could cite many other cases)? “With every day the war goes on, Ukraine becomes more a vassal of the West and less independent”.

This is a wildly exaggerated claim; and it makes no sense to suggest that the provision of weapons during this war is the fundamental thing tying Ukraine to Western governments. But in any case, this ignores the much greater immediate threat of enslavement by Russia.

Serfdom

As Gilbert Achcar puts it:

“If Ukraine were to succeed in rejecting the Russian yoke, it is more than likely that it would be vassalised to Western powers. But the point is that, if it fails to do so, it will be enserfed to Russia. And you don’t have to be a qualified medievalist to know that the condition of a vassal is incomparably preferable to that of a serf!”

As noted above, however, SW has a more radical argument — it actually accuses Ukraine of being the aggressor:

“Now, emboldened by Western arms [it is considering] an offensive to take back the whole of the Donbas and possibly Crimea. Either would require a murderous war against Russia on what it regards as its own territory.”

Ukraine taking military control of Crimea seems very unlikely. The idea that it doesn’t have every right to take back Donbas is wrong itself. But the description of such a drive as a “murderous war against Russia” is worse — and the citing of the fact that Russia “regard [Donbas] as its own territory” worse still. This criterion would rule out supporting a huge swathe of the wars of national liberation that have taken place in the last hundred years, since imperialist powers have frequently regarded colonised territory as their legitimate possessions.

SW is suddenly very upset about the expansion of NATO influence and membership in Europe, most of which actually took place around 20 years ago. We oppose NATO.

But SW presents the NATO expansion almost exclusively as a matter of the USA and others seeking military territory — downplaying the rather central fact what has driven the expansion of NATO is East European nations’ experience of the Stalinist, and sometimes Tsarist empires, and their observation of Putin’s wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine.

At length, SW tries to once again equate the conflict in Ukraine to the actual inter-imperialist conflict of the First World War. It’s certainly imaginable that such a development could unfold. But it is very clearly not unfolding at present, and SW doesn’t really even try to justify the equivalence.

• This article also appears in the current issue of Solidarity.