What is the war in Ukraine about?

Siavash Daneshvar

March 10, 2022

The war in Ukraine is the most significant international crisis since the end of the Cold War. Its subject matter is not limited to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the two countries' territorial disputes, or Ukraine’s NATO non-/membership. These specific matters can explain the tension and flare-up of the crisis but they do not explain the cause of the crisis. The cause of the crisis must be sought in the strategic and geostrategic confrontations as well as the political and economic goals of the capitalist powers. The world currently lacks an undisputed power, a more or less accepted leadership, and corresponding long-term agreements. In other words, the world has no owner, and the war of the capitalist states is supposed to address that. The specific war in Ukraine may temporarily end in some form of equilibrium, but the war of the great powers will inevitably begin elsewhere. The main issue in Ukraine is the war of the capitalist states with imperialist policies and goals. Ukraine is currently the land of a wider conflict.

But in the three decades since the end of the Cold War, great changes have taken place. New economic and military forces and powers came to the fore. Russia's grandiose nationalism, humiliated by the victorious West bloc, has emerged as the world's second-largest military superpower, showing off its sharp teeth and expansionist appetite over the past decade. From the very Munich conference in February 2007, Putin called on Russia to return to global competition and military bullying. "If the United States can violate international norms, why shouldn't Russia be able to do so?" Putin’s remarks provoked strong global reactions. "Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people are increasingly undermining the recognition of the undisputed leadership of the United States in the world while President George W. Bush is recognizing it," Bloomberg wrote in a response to Putin's remarks. "Meanwhile George Bush wants a united world in which leadership is in the hands of the United States." We hear similar statements from Schultz at the beginning of the recent crisis that "Russia wants to revive its empire and change the universally accepted framework." "When the principles of sovereignty and autonomy are violated, you return to a world in which the laws and regulations we have formed over the decades wear out and then disappear," said Secretary of State Blinken.

Yes, the debate over "wear and tear" is about the exact same laws that the United States and NATO themselves signed up with earlier through the bombing of Belgrade, proclaiming a "new world order" by invasion of Iraq and then with the aggressions on Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria via bombings and aerial terrorism where they announced the "return of the lawless world." Today, Putin and the ‘great Russia’, like Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, and Obama, are acting in exactly the same murderous way, with the same reactionary laws, and with the same profit-oriented logic of the heads of capitalist governments; they claim their share. China is emerging as a major economic power with large and strategic projects that pose a major threat to other world powers. China, India, and Russia are powers that the new world order of the bourgeoisie is not possible without a consideration to their role. The forces involved in the current war are the most important capitalist powers, and the issue is the redefinition of economic and political frameworks, spheres of influence, recognition of the place and position of powers, and the redefinition of the new world security and financial system.

The world developments three decades after the end of the Eastern Bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two Germanys, the integration of the ex-Soviet Union and its fragmented, “independent” states into a victorious free market, globalization of capital and domination of the four corners of the globe, did not and does not define the "new world order" and as such failed to consolidate its political and intellectual leadership and hegemony. The fall of the Eastern bloc and its integration into the world market did not translate into a world led by the undisputed leadership of the victorious US and the West. The prospect of a "new world order" by Bush failed, American militarism and bullying could not cover the weakness of its economic decline, the United States failed to impose its undisputed leadership on the capitalist world. In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, despite the vain promises of living in "free market peace and democracy", the world has witnessed hot, bloody wars and crises with massive casualties from Yugoslavia in the heart of Europe to the Middle East and North Africa. Wars under the pretext of having "weapons of mass destruction", "confrontation with dictatorship and the export of democracy", during which the largest and most unprecedented terrorism and weapons of mass destruction from phosphorus to diluted uranium and chemical weapons were used. They imposed the most reactionary dictators and anti-social forces on the people of these countries. New battlefields, from Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria to Sudan and Libya, provided an opportunity for the arms industry to test and propagate their latest deadly weapons. These wars were to rebuild the post-Cold War world order under the leadership of the USand the West. But instead of fulfilling the promise of "the end of dictatorships" and the era of "peace" in the face of free market and democracy, the victorious capitalism today holds outright fascism and the threat of the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons over world’s population.

Fundamentals of communist policy in the face of imperialist war

Communist politics must distance itself from the pressure of the media and censorship, from the justifications and propaganda of the warring states in order to be able to draw the lines of communist politics based only on the nature and basic aims of the war.

"Confrontation of Democracy and Dictatorship"

It is said that this war is about a "confrontation between democracy and dictatorship". This formulation, perhaps in the Cold War and the promise of democracy against totalitarianism, would temporarily convince people whose thoughts were shaped by television. But today it is completely ridiculous. No moderate-minded person is looking up to Biden, Schultz, Macron, Johnson, Erdogan, Naftali Bennett for liberty and democracy. Moreover, their dark track record does not allow this propaganda to find its place in society. This is not the confrontation between democracy and dictatorship, but the confrontation of capitalist dictators on one side of the equation against the working class on the other. Formal democracy today is the code name for justifying racism and nationalism, religion, bombing defenseless people, and organizing non-/governmental terrorism.

"Violation of the national sovereignty of Ukraine"

They claim the world should not accept "violation of Ukraine's national sovereignty" by the aggressor Russia and should be condemned. The "national sovereignty of Ukraine," that is, the sovereignty of the bourgeoisie and the Ukrainian oligarchs and fascists over the domestic market, has nothing to do with the workers and their interests. The worst policy to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie is to "defend the right of national sovereignty of Ukraine." We, communists, oppose nationalism and fascism and grandeur and militarism, not only the "national sovereignty of Ukraine" and the "territorial integrity of Ukraine" but also other spheres of bourgeois power and influence are worthless to us. We, communists, want the solidarity and peaceful coexistence of the people in the wider geographies. What is important and a priority for us is how prosperous, happy, and entitled all people in a certain geography, big or small, are. The workers and communists do not support the capitalist war, but their policy is based on the solidarity of the various sections of the world working class, especially the workers of the countries caught in a war of two sides of the bourgeoisie.

"Violation of international law"

Russia's attack on Ukraine is said to be a "violation of international law and regulations." We, the communists and the workers, did not write these laws, we did not approve them, and violating them in any way is not a reason for us to support or defend these laws. As communist movement of the working class, we always see ourselves in opposition to these laws. If it was up to us, international law would have a different basis than what it now has. Current international law is the result of wars and agreements between the forces involved. Does anyone accept the results of the Yalta Conference today? The essence of these wars, the essence of the spread of militarism, the military aggression of various governments from the United States, Russia, France, and Britain to anywhere in the world, has left nothing respectful by the masses as international law. Today, the authors of these laws emphasize that they are worn out.

"Condemnation of Russian aggression"

It is said that a country has ultimately committed military aggression and should be condemned. What you are condemning is actually taking a stand on the dimensions of the war and your views on that event. We did not condemn Putin's attack on Ukraine because my and your condemnation goes hand in hand with the condemnation of Biden and his partners and does not have a distinct meaning. We did not condemn Putin's attack on Ukraine, but called it a militaristic, anti-labor, and reactionary policy, and called for an immediate end to the war due to human casualties, destruction, and displacement. What we condemn is the essence of the imperialist war and its reactionary goals with all the partners involved, from the United States and Europe and NATO countries to Russia and China. Attacking defenseless people on all sides of the conflict, taking people hostage and preventing them from entering other countries, ethnic cleansing, the assassination of dissidents, and such acts must be definitely condemned. But condemning Putin's military attack on the fascist Zelensky regime says nothing about the nature of the war.

 "Russia's security concerns"

They say the issue is Russia's security concerns and NATO's eastward expansion that the world security system is completely in question, and the concerns and claims of each side of the dispute today are being resolved in other ways. What is called "indivisible security" is the consideration of buffers between capitalist powers, that is, insensitive and disputed areas, they become civilian areas and the respective governments do not seek membership of any military alliance. Kissinger's previous plan was that Ukraine, like Sweden and Finland, should not be a member of NATO. But this is a minor aspect of the issue. This is however not the world of the Cold War, and thus the literature and formulations of the Cold War in these different conditions do not answer today's questions. Global security must be ensured by restraining belligerent and militaristic governments, by disarmament and the abolition of military alliances, and by forbidding current governments to organize war. Security is created by those who have a stake in it. For capital, once the security of profitability is threatened, every "sacred" law turns out worthless and obsolete.

War as a continuation of politics by other means

War occurs only when it is necessary for the parties. War becomes necessary when the hitherto "conventional" methods of politics and diplomacy have failed and reached a stalemate. However, a war in capitalism takes a continuous form, and the short periods of peace and ceasefire and armed peace are merely different moments of continuous war. War is specifically and always a snatch for the continuation of previous policies and goals that have not yet been achieved. War is a tool to impose a new balance on rivals and therefore change existing equations. War is the expression of the intensification of the class struggle in society, including the intensification of the intra-class confrontations of the bourgeois camp, in which it is no longer possible to secure the clear economic interests and position of the parties involved without war. War can be started with any excuse and justification, but neither the initiator of the war nor the explanation given by the parties to the war is important. War is the most difficult issue citizens face and they pay a price with the most human casualties.

In the face of war, Marxists don’t possess an exclusive remedy for all seasons. The communists are not against the war in general but against reactionary and imperialist wars. Many wars can take place during revolutions and mass uprisings to consolidate political power, with the aim of ousting the political and economic elites from different classes and governments or against reactionary and fascist powers. These wars are right. In dealing with any particular war, the communists deal with the explanation and analysis of the aims and nature of the war and its contradiction against the aims of the working class and the socialist struggle. "We are against any war in general" is very sentimental. Anyone who on daily basis talks about workers to organize and stand up against bourgeois rule cannot act as Mother Teresa in the face of the war of capitalist governments. The communists do not stand by either side in the war of the bourgeois states but try to change the outcome against them.

One of the US goals is to impose a second-rate position on Russia to weaken it in regional and global equations. According to Brzezinski, if they can conquer Russia and that "black hole", that may be the guarantor of the US sovereignty and its global leadership as the only superpower in the world. The policy of restraining China and Russia, trying to separate the two imperialist powers, creating a rift between Russia and Europe, bringing Europe closer under the US and NATO umbrella, and practicing US leadership in this crisis are among the objectives of the US in the current war. China's so-called "balanced" position stems from conflicting interests on all sides, but it is clearly more inclined to Russia in the current dispute and toward their common goals and interests. This position will face other dilemmas and can be adjusted. Russia's goals are not the same as Putin's immediate goals, ie Ukraine's non-membership in NATO, the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, and the Crimean issue; they are merely a window into more important goals. Russia's main and most important goal is to challenge US policy, to impose its position and to be recognized as an important world power and as a partner in setting up the framing of the political and security structure of the 21st-century world.

Against war, against militarism!

The war in Ukraine was a tingle to the billions of people on the planet that there is no security in the world under capitalism today. Those who thought wars would take place only in the crisis centers of the world and not in the "safe" zones woke up suddenly to the danger of nuclear war and modern barbarism. The war lowered expectations so much that everyone immediately realized it was no longer time to talk about the environment and clean energy and disarmament, that those issues look luxurious. On the contrary, the justification of militarism and the increase of the military budget, the transformation of militancy into common language and literature, the fading of democratic gestures, the normalization of collective humiliation and collective punishment, the emergence of brutal racism in the democratic media, naked censorship and intellectual quarantine of ordinary people were normalized. No one is talking about the restrictions on the Internet in Iran and China anymore, the Democratic West itself has banned and blocked everything from the media to sports and art and animals and vodka and everything with a Russian name and brand. In broad daylight, the world is told that you only have the right to hear from these sources and in our language. The Nazis had not advanced this far before Auschwitz. Fake News replaced truth, racism replaced humanism, peace replaced war, the anti-war movement promoted NATO membership in Ukraine, and the furnace of war was blown into.

Putin claims its target is the "denazification" of Ukraine while the West has tried to depict Putin as the "Hitler nr II." And this is indeed interesting in its own right to advertise deception. Anti-fascism position is generally accepted in public opinion and embellishes the militaristic face. This whole camp relies on nationalism, and nationalism is the fundamental basis of fascism. There is no doubt that the government of Ukraine was formed mainly by the fascists, and the Maidan coup d'état took place in 2014 with the leadership and money of the US and the conscious organizing of the fascists. The fascists of the Azov battalion and similar groups are the repressive force of the Ukrainian oligarchs, who are dirtier and more violent than ISIS. But so is Russian grandiose nationalism. Biden, Johnson, and Macron of the democrat front are of the same kind. In the last two weeks, the world has seen with its astonishing eyes how much mud has nestled beneath the thin shell of democracy. The gasoline of the war machine is nationalism. Beating on the national drum and fake history along with the ethnic and linguistic threats would heat up nationalism which outcome is fascism and ethnic cleansing. Nationalism and fascism are the ideologies of war on both sides of the conflict. The culprit cannot be sought in this war. All the basic elements involved in the war on both sides of the conflict are to blame and responsibility for the current situation.

"Mass Resistance Movement in Ukraine"

Western governments speak of a "mass resistance movement in Ukraine." The mass resistance movement has no external existence. What is there is the government and the army of Zelensky and the fascist groups in the government, integrated into the army for whom the whole world of democracy applauds where a clown is made a "hero”. This "resistance movement" is a continuation of the NATO forces in Ukraine, something like the Kosovo Liberation Army in the former Yugoslavia or ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Zelensky's government has held the Ukrainian men 18 to 60 hostage, forcing them into taking part in the war and becoming its cannon fodder. Undoubtedly, some of them voluntarily took up arms with a nationalist spirit and under the influence of the government propaganda. But that does not diminish the resilient nature of the move. For Marxists, the resistance movement is not self-sustaining. We have all kinds of reactionary resistance and proxy forces, which are the continuation of the spy and military organizations and the professional army forces. Black water and military contractors, Islamic groups, and their factions that are soon to be drawn from another front, possibly Afghanistan, from under Putin's nose, will enter the war. Mass resistance against both fascism and political Islam under a revolutionary, state-independent leadership is a defensible movement, but whatever one might call "resistance movement" is not defensible in and by itself.

What we can do today?

The policy of the communists and the working class towards the imperialist war can only be a Leninist policy. The workers and communists do not participate in the propaganda of the various capitalists and belligerents but intervene against the war from a position of class and internationalist interest. Therefore, our call to the working class in Russia and Ukraine is clearly not to become a reactionary imperialist war force, not to join the forces of the "native" governments of Putin and Zelensky and their allies. We call workers to pay attention to their immediate as well as future class interests. We say this is not a workers' war, it is a capitalist war. Our interest is to fight for an immediate end to the war, to strike and protest against the war, and to return the barrel of guns and protest against the warmongers and "native" governments.  In Europe and the US, a workers' policy include organizing labor strike to end the war, barring arms and logistics from shipping weapons to Ukraine, confronting racism in mass media against "non-European" Russians and asylum seekers, confronting trade and economic sanctions whose immediate victims are workers and the deprived of Russia, strengthening a working-class internationalist line that speaks distinctly to the whole imperialist war.

Now, two weeks after the war, as we expected and rightly emphasized, the world is witnessing great setbacks. We are all the living observers of the march of church and the religious and fascist fanatics; the millions who have been displaced before our eyes and their homes have been destroyed; and the rising prices in the heart of Europe. The insecurity can be seen on everyone's face. The war is now threatening to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. This war must be stopped because it brings nothing but backwardness, ignorance, poverty and destruction.

War also creates new conditions and opportunities. The Paris Commune and the October Revolution and the European revolutions took place in the context of the war. Today the situation in the world and the international workers' communist movement are different, but it is quite expected that in the same Western countries, the anti-capitalist movement against the current war and order will be clearer and more powerful this time. The transfer of power in times of war is rare but possible. Workers and communists must follow the situation with an open eye and confront the reactionary goals of the capitalist war with their revolutionary vision. What makes today the cornerstone for a possible forward-looking movement is our attempt to form a class-independent, internationalist line against the bourgeois states' reactionary war and anti-workers goals. More than ever it is necessary to establish the communist policy towards the active war; the workers can present their class alternative and socialist resolution via the slogans "No to capitalist war", "Immediate cessation of war", "War criminals must be tried".

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