Ukraine: US promotes military escalation in Europe

Ukraine

US promotes military escalation in Europe

Masses 663 – Editorial – May 1^st, 2022

The US Congress had approved $13.6 billion intended to fuel the war in Ukraine. Now, Biden has submitted the $33 billion request. This huge amount is in line with the position of US imperialism, of taking the NATO siege of Russia to its ultimate consequences, using the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder.

The Pentagon’s assessment is that the time has come to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with state-of-the-art weapons. The retreat of Russian troops from the vicinity of Kiev and their concentration in the Donbass region would indicate a weakness, which would allow the Zelensky government to move from the defensive to the offensive.

US officials say that the conditions for a Russian defeat are in place. They are based not only on the tactical retreat from the original position of occupying Kiev, but also on the consequences of economic sanctions and accounting for material losses and soldiers’ lives. The sinking of the mighty battleship Moskva would be further evidence of the great setbacks of Russian military forces.

Evidently, the United States is fighting an information war to justify its military escalation in Europe. The point is that the war is prolonged, Ukraine is in ruins, the displacement of families grows, the flow of refugees increases, and the deaths continue to occur daily. And why it that? Because the armed wing of the United States on the European continent, NATO, advanced the siege of Russia; and the pro-European Union government and the Ukrainian oligarchy positioned themselves as servants of imperialism. Russia, on the other hand, cannot live with the former Soviet republics without subordinating them and without violating the right to self-determination. This background contradiction, which is at the base of the war, indicates that the interests that prevail in the military confrontation are of a capitalist order.

The war in Ukraine, therefore, in no way expresses the struggle of the working class and other exploited people for their emancipation from rotten capitalism. And, also, it does not express the interests of an oppressed nation in the face of imperialism. Ukraine’s place in the clash of the United States and its allies with Russia is that of an oppressed nation. Therefore, it serves as a cannon fodder for the interests of imperialism, and a shield for the interests of the Russian bureaucracy and bourgeois oligarchy, which, supported by the liquidation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), are carrying out the capitalist restoration. This implies intensifying national oppression over the former Soviet republics, and using them as instruments of national defense against the onslaught of imperialism, which cannot coexist with an independent Russia.

It is more than clear that the trade war armed by the United States, since the world crisis of 2008, potentiated the warlike tendencies, which now appear in the confrontation with restorationist Russia, and tomorrow with China, also restorationist. The historical background of the war in Ukraine cannot be ignored or omitted. The United States could not allow a deal between Zelensky and Putin on Ukraine’s accession to NATO. Russia must bow to imperialism. Its economy is weak in relation to the great powers, and thus it is incompatible with the interests of international capital, as it controls vast oil and mineral wealth.

At the agonizing end of the USSR and after its collapse, the United States sought to disarm Russia. It was not and is not admissible for a country with a relatively backward economy to maintain itself as a military power. The mask of the end of the “Cold War” was torn, as the United States and European allies were recovering the lost ground in Eastern Europe for the USSR, as a result of the new partition of the world, in 1945. The strategic content  to overthrow the USSR was changed, since this objective had been accomplished by the internal restorationist forces themselves, but not to turn the former Soviet republics, including Russia, into semi-colonies.

The post-war North American hegemony was consolidated with the interruption of the transition from capitalism to socialism, which began with the October Revolution of 1917. The almost unlimited domination of the United States was imposed, through wars and counter-revolutions. The advance of the world revolution was the condition for weakening imperialism and confronting decaying capitalism. Pacifism served as a cover for military interventionism on all continents. The military bases of the Northern power were spreading far and wide. It is within this framework that the conflict in Ukraine and the outbreak of war took place.

The partition of the world, agreed at the end of the Second War, is exhausted. The reconstructed productive forces were strengthened and found themselves in conflict with the capitalist relations of production. Either Russia would give way to finance capital throughout the region, previously controlled by the USSR, or it would clash with the United States and other powers. Either China breaks its centralization and independence, or it will face the united forces of imperialism. These contradictions of the post-war world order dictate the US military escalation in Europe, and its military objective of preventing a Russian victory over Ukraine. The threat of war to spread to Europe has concrete foundations. The idea of a third world war no longer sounds absurd.

In this whole process of acute economic and military shock, the essential factor, which is the class struggle, remains hidden. The world proletariat was disarmed ideologically, politically and organizationally by Stalinism, responsible for the decomposition of the USSR and its final collapse. But it retains the experience, the program and its revolutionary theory, which are based on Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism. It is about fighting within the working class and within its organizations for the internationalist banners of the Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International*. End of the war in Ukraine; dismantling of NATO and US military bases; revocation of economic-financial sanctions against Russia; self-determination, territorial integrity, and withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

*English translation for “Comitê de Enlace pela Reconstrução da IV Internacional” – CERQUI