The Russia-Ukraine/NATO Conflict in a Nutshell
What I would say if I spoke at an anti-war rally
[As noted above, this piece is written in the form of a speech to an anti-war rally.]
I hear a lot of talk among antiwar folks to the effect that “I’m against the US’s proxy war in Ukraine, we shouldn’t be sending tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine so that they can fight Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian,’ but this war is ‘reactionary on both sides’”; “we have to be against both US imperialism and Russian imperialism, Russia shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine”; or even “you’re ‘pro-war’ if you don’t unreservedly oppose Russia’s invasion and call for its unconditional withdrawal from Ukraine.”
Let me start by saying that no sane person, including the Ukraine war opponents that some on the left are condemning as “pro-war,” is actually pro-war. Roughly 200,000 Ukrainian troops, 20,000 Russian or allied soldiers, and 10,000 civilians have been killed as of the time I’m speaking to you, many more have been seriously injured, and there’s been a vast amount of property destruction as well as worldwide economic fallout. And in reality, this isn’t just a war between Russia and Ukraine; it’s a war between two nuclear powers, because the US is using Ukrainians as cannon fodder to fight a proxy war against Russia. So this is an extremely dangerous situation. If I could wave a magic wand and end this war tomorrow while protecting the future security of all parties involved, I would do so immediately. But achieving peace in Ukraine requires understanding what led up to the current war between Russia and Ukraine/NATO, what has kept it going, and the overall geopolitical context. That requires investing a lot of time and effort, and to be honest, I see few people, even among those who consider themselves anti-war or on the left, who are willing to do that.
The central fact that I hope to get people to understand about the Russia-Ukraine conflict is that the US wanted it to happen, has wanted it to continue for over a year, and has done its utmost to make sure of it, because stoking the conflict to the point where Russia felt compelled to intervene to protect its own security and protect the people of the Donbass was, along with imposing draconian sanctions and sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines, part of its plan to weaken and destabilize Russia. Until recently, the US has been the undisputed global hegemon. It has dominated the world politically, economically, and militarily for several decades through its hundreds of foreign military interventions, its control of international lending institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, its use of economic sanctions (currently imposed on 39 countries) as a tool of war, and the ongoing efforts of US intelligence services as well as NGOs backed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to subvert governments all over the world. The US has interfered in dozens of elections, including in Russia itself as well as in those of Russia’s neighbors, Ukraine and Georgia. It has backed anti-government protests and terrorist groups in dozens more, resulting in the overthrow of numerous governments including Ukraine’s in 2004 and 2014. Even the US’s supposed allies are not protected from its bullying, as its sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, an attempt not just to damage Russia but also to wreak economic havoc on Western Europe, shows.
And although it has bullied countries all over the world, the US has long had a Captain Ahab-like obsession with subverting and attempting to overthrow the government of Russia and, when it existed, the Soviet Union. Within months of the Russian Revolution, the US and several imperialist nations invaded Russia, joining the White Russians’ effort to overthrow the Bolshevik government. (Of course, during World War II, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, causing the deaths of roughly 27 million people, an event that is a very strong historical memory for the Russian people.)
After World War II, the US funded and armed Ukraine’s version of the Nazis, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists led by Stephan Bandera—fresh off participating in some of the largest massacres (of ethnic Russians, Poles, Roma, communists, and Jews) of the Holocaust—to subvert the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was part at the time. And they killed tens of thousands of their countrymen between 1945 and 1953 when the OUN terrorism was finally put down. And then, between a combination of funding the Islamic fundamentalist mujahideen in Afghanistan and massive funding of right-wing/anticommunist political organizations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the Ronald Reagan-founded NED, the US helped bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union—and “downfall” isn’t really the right term; it was basically a coup, engineered by US puppet Boris Yeltsin and his cronies, contrary to the wishes of the Soviet people.
The subsequent free-fall into Wild West neoliberal capitalism—the opening of Russian assets for plunder by foreign and domestic oligarchs engineered by Jeffrey Sachs and other Western economists—caused Russia’s GDP and industrial production to fall by nearly half, resulting in skyrocketing poverty and a nearly 4-year reduction in life expectancy during the first half of the 1990s. Just to try to make sure Russia remained under the US’s thumb, the US rigged Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996 (quite the irony given the debunked “Russiagate” narrative that claimed Russia rigged the 2016 US Presidential election).
Despite a pledge by US Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after German reunification that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward, it has indeed expanded eastward, doubling its membership from 14 countries to 28. And, with the US no longer constrained in what weapons it could deploy given its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile and Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaties, missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads have been located in countries bordering Russia. Particularly problematic for Russia was the threat of expansion to Georgia and Ukraine, both of which have often had governments hostile to Russia in recent years and have long borders with Russia. And just in case you have any doubts about the US’s intentions with respect to Russia, the Rand Corporation, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, among others, have all acknowledged that the US has the objective of weakening if not overthrowing the Russian government.
And obviously, the US has also attempted to destabilize and subordinate Ukraine. Victor Yushchenko, longtime tool of the IMF who became head of the National Bank of Ukraine in 1993, presided over implementation of the same neoliberal “shock therapy” that was undertaken in Russia, with similar results—only, unlike in Russia, there was never any turnaround in the Ukrainian economy, and Ukraine ultimately became the poorest country in Europe. In 2004, Yushchenko ran for President and was defeated by Victor Yanukovych. Because Yanukovych, unlike Yushchenko, was not a US puppet, Western governments refused to recognize the outcome and declared electoral fraud. Backed by numerous NED-funded organizations and media, massive protests occurred that resulted in Ukraine’s Supreme Court annulling the results and calling a second election, won by Yuschenko. Yuschenko’s program of austerity and his efforts to suppress the language rights of the Russian minority made him highly unpopular, and in the 2010 election, he lost badly to Yanukovich, only receiving 5% of the vote.
And you probably know what happened in 2013-14: As a result of Yanukovitch rejecting an IMF loan plan that would have called for further neoliberalization of the economy and instead accepting a package with much more favorable terms from
Russia, mass protests ensued, largely led by far-right elements such as Svoboda (a Nazi party), C14 (its youth brigade), and Right Sector (a coalition of fascist organizations), and heavily backed by the NED, the CIA, and the US government generally. Soon, the protests turned violent, and Yanukovitch’s government was overthrown in February 2014.
The protests and coup government had some popular support in the western part of the country, but, given the anti-Russian bent of the coup leaders, ideological descendants and admirers of Stepan Bandera and his gang of genocidal thugs, it’s not surprising that the people in the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking eastern part of the country were not big fans—there were major protests against the coup government in cities in that part of the country such as Odessa, Donetsk, and Sevastopol. In short order, residents of Crimea organized a referendum to leave Ukraine and join Russia; 96% voted “yes,” a decision that later polls (reported in Forbes Magazine!) as well as interviews with independent journalists indicated Crimeans were very happy with.
To fully understand why Crimeans were so eager to separate from Ukraine, we need to look at Crimea’s history. Historically it had always been part of Russia up until 1954, when Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev, who was Ukrainian, “gave” Crimea (at the time part of Russia as well as the Soviet Union) to Ukraine, at the time called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Many of its overwhelmingly ethnically Russian residents weren’t happy with that decision. Shortly before the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, 94% of Crimeans voted for independence from Ukraine and the formation of what they called the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1994, 73% voted for Presidential candidate (President of Crimea, that is) Yuri Meshkov, who advocated Crimea leaving Ukraine and joining Russia, and 78% voted for a referendum that called for autonomous governance of Crimea within Ukraine. In 1995, the Ukrainian government abrogated the Crimean constitution, abolished the post of President, and deported Meshkov to Russia at gunpoint. So, Crimeans had reason to hold a grudge against the Kiev government even before the 2014 coup, and after the coup, with Russian-hating fascists having newfound power, sentiment to leave Ukraine became overwhelming.
Residents of the Donbass, who are also majority Russian-speaking, likewise had had enough of the coup government and its anti-Russian bigotry. In an overwhelming (89% in Donetsk and 96% in Luhansk) vote, the people of the Donbass region backed the formation of the independent Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Immediately afterwards, the coup government sent troops there in an attempt to forcibly retake control of the region from what they called “terrorists.” The upshot has been 8 years of relentless attacks by the Ukrainian military and fascist militias (since integrated into the military) on the Donbass region, often targeted at civilian areas with no military targets present, resulting in over 14,000 deaths. There were attempts to settle the conflict peacefully (Minsk 1 and 2 treaties), but as is now clear, Ukraine never had any intention of honoring the Minsk agreements. In fact, the immediate precursor of the Russian intervention was a major escalation of shelling of the Donbass and intelligence indicating that Ukrainian troops were about to engage in an all-out assault on the Donbass to attempt to forcefully retake it, resulting in appeals to Russia for help by the Donetsk and Luhansk goernments.
Ukraine remains intransigent in its refusal to pursue peace up until this day. In fact, not only has it continued to proclaim its desire to re-take Donetsk and Luhansk (which, along with two other Ukrainian republics, held referendums in which its citizens voted overwhelmingly to join Russia a few months ago), it has also, stretching all the way back to 2014, consistently declared its desire to attack and retake Crimea. And in case you need reminding, since 2014, a dominant role has been played in Ukraine by literal Nazis who hate and want to exterminate ethnic Russians. Though diminished somewhat by recent Russian military success, the missile and artillery attacks on civilian targets in the Donbass have continued until this day, and residents of the region will not be safe until either the Ukrainian military is completely defeated or the Ukrainian government and its Western backers decide they’ve had enough. Russia laid out its terms for peace a year ago: recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, recognition of the eastern separatist regions as independent, and a change in Ukraine’s constitution to guarantee it won’t join NATO. Ukraine was on the verge of agreeing to those terms in peace negotiations mediated by Israel and then Turkey, but that agreement was sabotaged by the US and UK.
Now, almost a year of brutal war later, the terms have changed somewhat since four former Ukrainian republics (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye) have voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, but even Henry Kissinger has recognized that in order for peace to occur, territorial concessions will have to be made by Ukraine. And there will have to be security arrangements agreed to by all parties involved in the conflict, similar to the draft treaties put out by the Russians in December 2021, which made some very reasonable proposals for collective security in Europe. Peace will only be possible when the legitimate security concerns of both Russia and ethnic Russians are met, and when sincere efforts are made to pursue arms control and de-escalation in the region. The whole world is watching and hoping for that to happen.
[I have previously written two much more detailed pieces on Ukraine, The Ukraine Tragedy: Made in America and How Should Anti-War Socialists View The Conflict in Ukraine? Please refer to them for further information.]