David Finkel
Posted June 28, 2023
There’s a wealth of informed comment and analysis regarding the Prigozhin coup, or whatever it was, in Russia this past weekend. However the events of that abortive march toward Moscow may shake out, it’s completely clear that they reflect the ruinous condition of Russian politics and society in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s criminal imperialist invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps they’ll hasten Ukraine’s success in the war — we should all hope so, although nothing is certain.
What we can recall from the U.S. experience is that blowback from imperialist adventure is not unique to Putin’s Russia. The United States’ criminal war in Vietnam produced atrocities and massacres of civilians that match Russia’s massacres in Ukraine — to say nothing of the parallels between Russia’s ecocidal destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam and the U.S. use of Agent Orange defoliant and bombing of North Vietnamese dikes.
By 1969-70, the U.S. army in Vietnam was in an incipient state of disintegration. The troops’ demoralization, and their rage over being lied to about imminent “victory” and how they’d be welcomed as “liberators,” generated multiple responses. On the one hand, a GI antiwar movement arose that hooked up with the mass protests in the United States. On the other, as Kathleen Belew shows in her book Bring the War Home. The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, the seeds were also sewn for the far-right white-supremacist militia forces that are poisoning politics and life today.
Profiling a combat veteran who became a leader of a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, Belew observes:
Louis Beam spent eighteen months in Vietnam…He brought many things home with him: his uniforms, virulent anticommnism, and hatred of the Viet Cong. He brought home the memory of death and mutilation sealed in heavy-duty body bags. He brought home racism, mllitary training, weapons proficiency, and a readiness to continue fighting. His was a story about government betrayal, soldiers lef behind…Indeed, he brought home the war as he fought it, and dedicated his life to urging others to ‘bring it on home.’” (pp.19-20)
That example can be multiplied many thousandfold.
A more recent example, from the catastrophic U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that destroyed those countries, is detailed by Spencer Ackerman’s Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (2021). The “burn pits” of toxic waste that sickened thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis; the destruction of Fallujah and Mosul, the outbreak of sectarian civil war and the rise of ISIS; the four-decade bipartisan debacle in Afghanistan that ultimately brought the Taliban back to power, women to enslavement and near-starvation to the population — all this, and more, vividly illustrates the horrific realities of what our own rulers call “defense of the rules-based international order.”
One can add to this, the ongoing U.S. complicity in what’s becoming a full-scale Israeli military and settler assault on Palestinian society, which could become literally genocidal under conditions of a regional or global crisis. Even short of that ultimate outcome, the degenerative spiral in Israel-Palestine is nowhere near reaching the bottom.
These points can all be discussed at length, but what stands out right now is that as hard as it may be to keep multiple ideas in our heads, it’s essential to build a genuine anti-imperialist movement capable of defending Ukraine on the one hand and on the other vigorously challenging US militarism in all its ugly forms—obscene spending on military weapons, support for hideous, autocratic regimes, imposition of austerity and debt peonage on the global south, and so on. First, Ukraine’s war of defense and national independence is legitimate, democratic and deserving of the right to gain support from anywhere it can. At the same time, the capitalist-imperialist system in its entirety — in which “our own” U.S. power is the largest though not the only destructive force — endangers the entire world and the future of humanity.
For further reading, see The Poisons of Denialism, and the Mission Statement of the Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.).
Comments
25 responses to “A Brief Comment: Imperial Blowback Then and Now”
This is a fairly vigorous survey conducted among Ukrainians by VoxUkraine in the interval of May 26 – June 7, 2023.: https://voxukraine.org/en/the-ability-of-ukrainians-to-distinguish-messages-of-russian-propaganda-results-of-public-opinion-research
The attitudes are different than those reported by some in the comments to this article and include the following:
43% of respondents in Ukraine and 36% abroad disagreed with the statement “Nazi and/or neo-Nazi ideology is not widespread in Ukraine”;
29% of respondents in Ukraine and 35% abroad disagreed with the statement “The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2013-2014 was NOT a coup”;
26% of respondents in Ukraine and 29% abroad agreed with the statement “Russia is fighting against the West/NATO in Ukraine”;
25% of respondents in Ukraine and 29% abroad agreed with the statement “The West is using Ukraine for its own purposes in the war against Russia”;
32% of respondents abroad agreed with the statement “Russian speakers are oppressed in Ukraine”.
These are not simple pro-Putin assertions. A significant section of the population of Ukraine disagrees with the positions that many of the (non-Ukrainian) people commenting here have expressed (so “authoritatively”) about what Ukrainians… believe. And that’s a fact – not an opinion or “horseshit” as one commenter claimed.
I have to thank Katie Halper, Aaron Mate, and the Ukrainian journalist, Lev Golinkin for bringing this to my attention via the weekly show, Useful Idiots. You can find that at https://usefulidiots.locals.com/post/4318784/ukrainian-journalist-shocked-by-new-poll.
Hmmm… I just heard no less an authority than Chuck Todd of Meet the Press assert that Biden was rallying NATO “allies” in Vilnius for a sustained “proxy war” with Russia in which he touted the added plus that there were no American boots on the ground and no loss of American lives in this setup. As Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal have crowed – the US is ready to fight to last… Ukrainian. The last Ukrainian? I guess that leaves me out. What happened to the national liberation struggle and the proud defense of Ukrainian culture against their Russian oppressors? What happened to our fond beliefs in American Exceptionalism? Proxy war? Is there really something else going on? My last comment didn’t seem to make the grade. Maybe this one will. I gave up trying to make comments on the WSWS site. Their policy is simple. Keep it positive. Say good things.
Thanks. At least you had the guts to post my comment(s). I know all about the crimes of Stalin and the bureaucracy and his former KGB/now bourgeois heir, Vladimir Putin. I also know all about the crimes of Chairman Mao and the CCP. But in the world historic scheme of things the true mantle of imperialist degeneracy passed in 1945 directly to the American capitalist class and remains there. They’re spending almost a trillion dollars a year to keep it there. As the revelations of Daniel Ellsberg and others have made abundantly clear, there is nothing progressive associated with any of the maneuvers and machinations of that despicable government operating in the death agony of the system it was created to extend and defend. Nothing. There’s an eerie parallel to Barbarossa being initially touted by Stepan Bandera as a step in freeing the Ukrainian people from the yoke of Bolshevism as America’s NATO primes the current slaughter and stokes the Russo-phobia. Only this time the Banderaites aren’t stuffing the ravine of Babi Yar with murdered Jews – they’re using one, Zelensky, as a front man. And even for that, as a native Russian speaker he needed to take lessons in Ukrainian. Democracy? That’s a joke. And for anyone failing to see that you have my sincere condolences. You’ve been played.
There have been several replies today to David’s posts that simply say that the USA is a horrible imperialist power–which I think we all agree with.
But these posts also seem not to understand Ukraine at all. They believe the lies that the Russian propagandists create about the Ukrainians being in thrall to Nazis. As someone in almost daily contact with Ukrainians of various political positions, but by no means fascist or near-fascists by any stretch of the imagination, this is simply mistaken. There is far less fascist influence in Ukraine than in Russia or in the USA.
Also missing from these posts is any understanding that the successive Russian attacks on Ukraine starting in 2014, together with the authoritarian regimes in the Donbas thereafter and the Russian atrocities since Feb 2022, have generated a real people’s war in resistance on the part of Ukrainians. Now, it may be that Robert and others do not know this, or consider Ukrainian ideas and actions to be irrelevant. If it is lack of knowledge, please read my article in the Summer New Politics, or any of a number of other people’s article. On the other hand, if you truly dismiss what Ukrainians want and do, then I suggest that your thoughts and views are a form of great power chauvinism that is a reactionary break from the past you claim to have.
You say that my “thoughts and views are a form of great power chauvinism that is a reactionary break from the past you (I) claim to have”? Nonsense. This is a form of fifth-rate, juvenile name calling. Making a simple emphatic assertion isn’t the same thing as stating the truth. There are great powers and there are minor powers. In the present world scheme of things Russia is a not a major power threatening to invade and dominate Europe. The Soviet Union wasn’t that in 1945 nor at any time leading up to its dissolution in 1991. This is Cold War derived nonsense. The Soviet Union was a degenerated workers state ruled by a privileged bureaucracy that ruthlessly crushed revolution and ultimately morphed into a bourgeois class with the ultimate restoration of private property in major sectors of the economy. Stalin entered into a percentages agreement with Churchill during the Fourth Moscow Conference in October 1944. The Stalinists opposed revolution in Greece, Italy, and France following WWII. The major imperative in the Russian “special military military action” of February 2022 was countering the aggressive, sustained expansion of NATO which the Russian ruling class correctly perceived as a threat engineered in Washington. I do not support Putin. But it’s clear that this war is an American provocation. Where does your failure to acknowledge that and your enthusiasm for fighting to the last Ukrainian place you? Anecdotal interviews with Ukrainians prove nothing. That methodology is absurd. The point is that Zelensky was elected as a peace candidate and, under pressure from the nationalists, he has turned his back on the Minsk Accords that Merkel revealed last Fall was no more than a ruse and a delaying tactic anyway. Should we be trading street corner conversations or making a scientific, historical analysis? Even the author of the 1946 Long Telegram that inaugurated the Cold War, George Kennan, later came to regret its tragic consequences. Kennan also advised strongly against the eastward expansion of NATO anticipating the high potential for lethal conflict. If you are unaware of this history do some reading. I suggest that you begin with the works of Leon Trotsky. Failing that effort on your part, I will not waste the time in replying to further ignorant, name calling attacks.
I’m shocked and disappointed by the support shown for the American pursuit of lebensraum in the east. Anybody who thinks that this has something to with the democratic defense of Ukrainian interests is mirroring the aspiration of Lindsey Graham to fight this battle to the last Ukrainian. Richard Blumenthal even praises the economics of Ukrainians dying for an American proxy war with Russia. I’ll avoid the adjectives that I would normally use to characterize such a position. I’m also not unaware of the crimes committed by KGB-Putin and the oligarchs he represents. But I also know something about the history of this conflict and this catastrophe is a straight-out, Neocon engineered provocation by the unflinching, Uni-party disciples of American Exceptionalism and, yes, the supporters of Stepan Bandera are Nazi thugs. You should be calling for an immediate, negotiated end to the war. That was in the works a year ago last April and NATO scuttled it. Who knows how many have died in the interim? Shameful is not the word.
You wrote, “You should be calling for an immediate, negotiated end to the war.” I submit that the US has no right to negotiate anything in Ukraine. The correct, more powerful stance is to unconditionally demand, US, NATO Out of Ukraine Now! Not One Dollar, Not One Bomb, Not One Bullet for the Ukraine Proxy War! Money for Healthcare, Not War!
See https://brucelesnick.substack.com/p/the-us-has-no-right-to-negotiate
Who said anything about the United States negotiating an end to the war? Negotiations would presumably be between the two direct antagonists – Ukraine and Russia. Right? The United States and NATO should bug off. Right? The war should end now. Right?
The instant the US pulls out is the instant the war is over.
As you’re probably aware, Ukraine DID try to negotiate bilaterally with Russia but those attempts were crushed by US and UK envoys. (Example: Boris Johnson vetoing a draft agreement between Ukraine and Russia in April 2022.)
This is a war between US/NATO on one side and Russia on the other, with Ukraine, sadly, used as a cannon fodder in the middle.
The sheer amount of campist nonsense being spouted here is deafening (and those of you parroting have obviously no clue what the Ukrainiain working class, including most Ukrainian socialists and anarchists thinks about this–though I can tell you with certainty that they don’t share your interpretations of these events), and my time is limited, but I believe counterweight is essential, so I am just going to leave this here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1np6tdBFDSxwe0k7QvgHzqN6e__yIYIcp/view?usp=sharing
The point remains. Why the juvenile, pseudo-ultraleft, one-upmanship? That’s the sort of nonsense the Maoists used to engage in. It doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot to burnish your credentials. Sam Friedman told me that my “thoughts and views are a form of great power chauvinism that is a reactionary break from the past you (I) claim to have”. Whew! I hope you guys are having a lot of fun with this. I’m not and neither are most people. How about some apologies?
Bruce and John, you both couldn’t be more mistaken. Here is a whole mountain of evidence against your claims: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZOp5GtHEaMPdkx2ENk6ItEVA8V9C9j9Z/view?usp=sharing
There was no facility for replying to your July 17 comment so I’m taking this one. Sorry, but I’m unfamiliar with the term “campist”. What is that? I did go to your google link and I found it pretty disgusting. Sorry, again, but this is the first time that I’ve looked at Solidarity in several years now. When I visited the location on Michigan Avenue I thought that Dave Finkel was a decent, well-intentioned person but this stuff is insane. What does this have to do with historical materialism or the international emancipation of the working class? Backing the American NATO provocation in Ukraine? Wow! You say that you’re busy? Well, at least that seems to be a true statement. You won’t see me around here again. It’s sort of like finding out that your next door neighbor is actually a serial killer who believes in Jesus Christ, reincarnation, and that Joseph Smith really did get some golden tablets from the Angel Moroni in an upstate New York corn field. Good luck (and goodbye), guys!
Honestly, I suspect you find it “disgusting”, because it pushes you out of your ideologically pure comfort zone, and it presents a lot of facts which undermines your arguments.
The fact that you insist that this conflict “was provoked by NATO” (a claim which is utter horseshit, frankly), in spite of the mountains of evidence the compendium I made and linked just shows how unwilling you and most others here are to face the cold, hard truth.
The fact is that neither the US nor NATO have a monopoly on imperialism.
And the sheer irony in your preaching “internationalism” when the Ukrainian working class overwhelmingly rejects the “NATO did it” framing just shows that you’re just talking the talk, but not walking the walk.
Have you considered therapy? I think that you might have some issues that could benefit from professional assistance. Depending on the part of the country you’re in there might even be some free or low cost alternatives. Give it a shot. It’s not like getting surgery for a bullet wound (I’ve been there, done that). And it’s not even like being fitted for a prosthetic limb if you’ve had one blown off in a conflict provoked by American imperialism. It’s just a nice talk in a comfortable setting with someone willing to listen to your thoughts and potentially offer you some help and even anger management assistance. Just imagine it. A better you. Now that’s a nice picture. Right?
Wow, Bob, you just can’t help yourself, can you? You have a pathological need, like any Christian fundamentalist does, to quote from the holy gospel in which facts are countered with rhetoric.
The facts are these:
The gunshot wounds and civilian casualties being created in this war are from RUSSIAN guns, full stop.
Final observation (really) – You are aware of the fact that Bill Bill Haywood (founder of the IWW) was given a 20 year sentence for opposing Woodrow Wilson’s (a Democratic Party president just like Biden) entry into WWI? Right? Maybe not. Has the IWW degenerated so far that its membership now enthusiastically supports the imperialist intrigues and proxy wars of current American presidents, their Neocon ideologues, and their European stooges? Wilson styled himself like Biden as “fighting for democracy”. Come to think of it wasn’t that Bush’s excuse in Iraq or Johnson’s and Nixon’s in Vietnam? Haywood took a stand (along with Eugene Debs and others) and wound up fleeing to the Soviet Union where he died in 1928. And those are facts not rhetoric. And by the way, I’ve been a militant atheist longer than you’ve been alive.
I often wonder whether people like John Borgerson or Bruce Lesnick have ever actually traveled to Ukraine to hunt for all those fascists they say infest the country or whether they have ever talked with Ukrainians who (at least before Russia began to invade the country in 2014) were engaged in useful pursuits like public health or growing food. (Medea Benjamin seems to have these lacks as well.)
Although based in the US, I have traveled to both Russia and Ukraine, and been deeply involved in efforts against HIV/AIDS in both countries, though more deeply so in Ukraine. My experience is that the Maidan movement in Ukraine in 2013-14 was a serious and deep political and social movement, and by no stretch of the imagination a “US coup.” Also, in spite of working with some wonderful people in both countries, it was clear that Russia was a place with deep hatred (in the bureaucracies and elites) for gays and people who use drugs, whereas this was far less true in Ukraine.
In 2014, I conducted interviews with friends of mine about the Maidan movement and associated events. I wrote a paper on that, which (with minor corrections) has appeared again in New Politics as What Happened in Ukraine in 2013– 2014? – New Politics
I recommend it to all readers who have doubts about what happened.
You are aligned with US imperialism on the wrong side of the barricades. See https://brucelesnick.substack.com/p/ukraine-through-the-looking-glass
and https://brucelesnick.substack.com/p/the-us-has-no-right-to-negotiate
Solidarity’s “side of the barricades” is standing with Ukraine and its people’s struggle for the independence and survival of their country. Bruce Lesnick’s contribution is an unusually clear and naked exposition of the view that Ukraine should be subjugated to Russian control — in essence, national serfdom — without the apologetics that we hear from some advocates of peace-at-any-price. As such, his pieces are worth reading. There’s no need here to repeat what we’ve said in other comments and Solidarity statements.
David: which “Ukraine and its people” are you “standing with”? The Banderites of the western part of the country? Or the people of the Donbass region and Crimea? The candidate they supported (however corrupt he may have been, always a relative term in Ukraine) was overthrown in the US-backed coup. (What, you thought Victoria “Cookies” Nuland, openly selecting the post-coup regime, after admitting the US spent $5 Billion on the project, was on a humanitarian mission?) At that point, any claim you make about the legitimacy of the Ukraine government belongs in the dustbin of history. This war could have been avoided had the Ukraine regime and its US, UK, French and German backers, adhered to the Minsk Accords. Poroshenko, Hollande, Merkel have all openly admitted they had no intention of implementing the agreements they signed, instead seeking to use the time available to build up the military force needed to destroy the significant portion of the population that aligned with Russia. We have ample evidence that US/NATO had made post-coup Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, yet another in the long line of US betrayals of commitments to not move NATO “one inch to the east” after Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of Germany. The Russians are absolutely correct in their assessment that the US is “not agreement capable.” At what point does Russia have the right to say “enough”? Or are you so blinded by hatred of Putin’s government that this thought cannot even cross your mind? German tanks are today once again burning in the fields of Ukraine, sent there with the same intent as 80 years ago. I hope they meet the same fate as they did then. You seem to have the opposite desire.
It’s quite astonishing to see former comrades so openly lining up with a bloody obvious US imperialist war, aimed this time at smashing Russia, and looting the resources of Ukraine and as much of Russia as possible. We’ve already seen Russia decimated during the Yeltsin years when the US got its way. You want a repeat of this, with Ukraine stripped bare to boot? Because that is the future planned by Nuland, Blinken, Kristol, Abrams and the rest of the kind-hearted bipartisan cabal who did such wonderful, humane work in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Central America. US “victory” in Ukraine ensures the sell off of Ukraine’s land to Blackrock, Monsanto, etc, and what remains of its Soviet-legacy industrial base to US and European monopolies. In 30 years of post-Soviet independence, what had been among the most developed parts of the Soviet Union deteriorated into the poorest country in Europe. What the hell do you think the US has in mind for the future? It’s this: an impoverished resource colony, but armed to the teeth like another Israel, equipped to launch nuclear missiles with five minutes flying time to major Russian cities.
We spent our entire lives working toward the end of US imperialism. Now the Empire is tottering, facing an existential defeat, and somehow you’ve lost your bearings completely. The journalist Patrick Lawrence got this right, when he described the start of the Russian military campaign as “regrettable, but necessary.” Quite depressing to see an organization with roots in our common political heritage getting this so wrong.
Jim Levitt has concisely summed up pretty much the whole Kremlin narrative about this war, including its core proposition that Ukraine’s people have no capacity to shape their own future — or even the right to do so. This space isn’t the place to refute this account — numerous leftwing Ukrainian and Russian historians and analysts have done so in detail.
I’m not sure what Levitt means by “former comrades,” but if he identifies with the socialism-from-below or Left Opposition traditions with which Solidarity broadly identifies, he may have forgotten that we never reduced our anti-imperialist analysis and struggle to the fight against U.S. or western imperialism alone. We have supported democratic popular and labor movements and self-determination struggles that arose in ostensibly “socialist” states — to say nothing of what the mafia-capitalist, Christian-nationalist Putin regime with its hegemonist ambitions represents today.
Two things puzzle me. One is why leftists would find something anti-imperialist or “regrettable, but necessary” in the Russian regime’s drive to subjugate and “de-nazify” Ukraine — coded language for the intention to conduct mass purges and murder bordering on genocide. Still more confusing is why Levitt and others see U.S. imperialism “tottering” and “facing an existential defeat” at a moment when Putin has revived NATO, restored U.S. “leadership” and tragically brought the Eastern European states even closer to Washington and Brussels. Truly, some comrades seem to be inhabiting an ideological parallel universe.
“Former comrades,” as many Solidarity supporters, though not David, belonged to the SWP 40-50 years ago. Back then we could have heated debates without McCarthyite accusations of following the “Kremlin narrative.”
You write:
“These points can all be discussed at length, but what stands out right now is that as hard as it may be to keep multiple ideas in our heads, it’s essential to build a genuine anti-imperialist movement capable of defending Ukraine on the one hand and on the other vigorously challenging US militarism in all its ugly forms—obscene spending on military weapons, support for hideous, autocratic regimes, imposition of austerity and debt peonage on the global south, and so on. First, Ukraine’s war of defense and national independence is legitimate, democratic and deserving of the right to gain support from anywhere it can. At the same time, the capitalist-imperialist system in its entirety — in which “our own” U.S. power is the largest though not the only destructive force — endangers the entire world and the future of humanity.”
Without US/NATO arms and command – it is NATO personnel who provide the targeting coordinates for US supplied HIMARS missiles and other weapons systems – Ukraine would collapse in less than a week. So how, exactly, do you propose “to build a genuine anti-imperialist movement capable of defending Ukraine on the one hand and on the other vigorously challenging US militarism in all its ugly forms”? (Note the cute use of “genuine.” I suppose those of us who are opposed to the US war against Russia aren’t “genuine.”) The Biden regime has just decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, of the sort still killing and maiming in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. How does that fit into your thoughts? For all your on the one hand, on the other hand-waving, it will be many civilians, including children, whose hands will be blown off, given how the US-directed Ukrainian forces fire petal mines, etc, into purely civilian areas of Donetsk and elsewhere.
Next questions: is Russia entitled to national defense, and national independence? US warmongers and think-tankers openly discuss, complete with fantasyland maps, plans to dismember Russia into many small, defenseless countries, ripe for looting once again. Is Zelensky’s corrupt government – which has banned opposition parties, imprisoned and murdered opponents, and now cancelled elections, (all part of being “democratic,” one supposes) – not one of those “hideous, autocratic regimes”, openly embracing “the imposition of austerity and debt peonage” on Ukraine?
The mass purges and murder were already underway in Ukraine, since at least 2014, conducted by the hardcore fascists who drove the course of events there. Zelensky won 75% of the vote campaigning for peace with the peoples of Donbass – and then promptly was threatened with death by the forces supposedly under his control if he made any moves to follow through on his campaign platform. In the early days of the war, Zelensky’s government sent a team to negotiate with the Russians. Upon returning to Kiev, one of those Ukrainian negotiators was promptly murdered by the Ukraine “security forces.” Ukraine-Russia negotiations in Istanbul in the first months of the war were making progress toward a ceasefire, until Boris Johnson parachuted in to tell Zelensky he wasn’t permitted (by his masters in Washington and London) to follow through. In late 2021, Russia handed the US and NATO draft treaties to remake the security architecture of Europe on the basis of universal security, rolling back the post-1991 NATO expansion, explicitly requiring the removal of US missile platforms in Poland and Romania, and keeping Ukraine and any other former Soviet states out of NATO. The US dismissed the chance to dial down the risk of war, instead putting pedal to the metal in the other direction. You have things backwards, David. It is the US, delusional regarding its own omnipotence, and equally misguided as to the actual strength of Russia, that is responsible for this war.
As to imperialism “tottering”: yes, the hold of the US is getting shakier by the month. Sanctions on Russia have actually done most damage to the US vassals in Europe, Germany most especially. European prosperity has been built on cheap, reliable energy imported from Russia. The US deliberately destroyed that when it blew up the Nordstream pipelines, an act of war against its own supposed allies. The “tilt” expressed by the development of BRICS, etc, is all toward China and Russia, not toward the US. Increased bilateral trade conducted in yuan, ruble, rupee and other non-dollar currencies, and moves to build a bank clearing system independent of the US-controlled SWIFT all point to a weakening of the US ability to crush countries that dare step out of line. NATO has been “revived”? Because Sweden and Finland signed on? Bringing exactly what to the table other than increased military spending extracted from their populations? European industry shuts down or moves, all while billions are funneled to the war project. The NATO vassals have sent all the weaponry in their arsenals to Ukraine, and have next to nothing left. More importantly, they lack the industrial capacity to produce any more. The US, for all its bluster, is in almost the same boat. Even the stenographers of the NY Times and WaPo admit Biden (or whoever is animating the character named Joe Biden) decided to send cluster munitions now because they are out of “regular” shells. China is the largest economy in the world, far and away the manufacturing powerhouse of the planet. Russia is, in real terms (not phony, financialized GDP numbers) at least in the top five, and is about as close to an autarky as there is. With half the population, Russia now produces twice as many STEM graduates as does the US. Which countries are on the rise, which are falling apart, and why? Go read Michael Hudson.
The US war on Russia, fought to the last Ukrainian, is not legitimate, democratic, or worthy of support. The longer the US pushes Ukrainians into the maw of war, the more Ukrainians will die, and the smaller Ukraine will be when the bombs cease exploding. If, that is, we aren’t all obliterated in a nuclear holocaust. The US losing this war will also mean the long-overdue end of NATO.
You are correct in one respect: we do seem to inhabit parallel ideological universes. The piece you posted here is marked by incoherence and magical thinking. Just as ISIS headchoppers raising the black flag over Aleppo and Damascus would have marked a huge defeat for working people and humanity in general, so would a US/NATO victory over Russia in this war. The US still occupies a third of Syria, not out of some humanitarian concern for the Syrian people, or because Assad is “evil.” The US is waging war on Russia, not out of some tender-hearted concern for the peoples of Russia, or because Vladimir Putin is “autocratic.” This is US imperialism in action, same as it ever was. Same as it was when we were fifty years younger, when the US wrecked countries with far less capacity to resist. That’s no longer the case. Both militarily and economically, the weaknesses of the US and its poodles are being laid bare in Ukraine.
U. S. imperialism created the war in Ukraine!! You should inform yourself concerning the history of it.
We have discussed the role of the United States and NATO more than once: See for example https://solidarity-us.org/russia-out-of-ukraine-solidarity-with-ukraines-people-no-to-nato-now-or-ever/. That doesn’t change the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, and that Ukraine is fighting for its national survival. NATO and U.S. imperialism are enormously benefiting and profiting from the war in Ukraine, but didn’t “create” it. For a serious discussion on the history and background, see Yuliya Yurchenko’s study UKRAINE AND THE EMPIRE OF CAPITAL. FROM MARKETISATION TO ARMED CONFLICT. See also many articles by Russian Marxists Boris Kagarlitsky, Ilya Budraitskis, Ilya Matveev and others about root causes of the war, including the problems of Putin’s regime.