US-Russia War in Ukraine: Only Communism Can Stop Imperialism’s Mass Destruction
“The US aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here.” So declared leading US Democrat Adam Schiff during the first Trump impeachment trial in 2020. That was two years before Russian troops invaded Ukraine!
“We are no longer in an indirect war with Russia,” wrote Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, “but rather edging toward a direct war.” (5/9/22)
So much for the imperialist lie that the war is about “plucky little Ukraine defending itself from the bloodthirsty Russian bear.” As Red Flag has said all along, the war is fundamentally between US imperialism and expansionist Russian capitalism.
It is an imperialist war over control of energy resources and the geopolitical leverage such control brings. Over the redivision of Europe between larger global powers (Russia and the US) while Chinese imperialism positions itself to reap the greatest economic benefits.
As the retired veteran US diplomat Chas Freeman put it, the West has been cynically saying, “We will fight to the last Ukrainian for Ukrainian independence.” Except that it’s not for Ukrainian independence. It’s for US imperialist domination.
Now the US media are letting out a little bit of the truth. “The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia,” former State Department official Eliot Cohen told The Atlantic.
CNBC reassured its audience that “it’s outside the realm of possibility right now that there’s going to be a nuclear war or World War III that really spills over that far beyond Ukraine’s borders.” Right now? What about tomorrow?
Warren Buffett, a leading US capitalist, warned his investors that “The world is flipping a coin every day as to whether people who can literally destroy the planet as we know it will do it. And, unfortunately, the major problem is with people who have large stocks of nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
“We have no solution for it,” Buffett continued, “and there isn’t any solution.”
Capitalists cannot stop the massive destruction imperialism is already inflicting through its deadly wars and its profit-fueled climate catastrophe. But there IS a solution. It’s in our hands – the hands of the international working class.
We can’t afford to wait and see whether full-scale World War III explodes now in Ukraine or later in the Pacific or somewhere else. We need to mobilize now for communist revolution as soon as possible.
Things Are Changing Fast
Workers can’t live in the old way. As bad as it used to be, things keep getting worse.
Capitalists can’t rule in the old way. Their crises, spiraling out of control, expose the viciously racist, sexist, anti-working-class dictatorship of the rich over the masses.
And when they mobilize masses for war, they risk losing control over those they send to kill and die for their profits.
This may be happening now with Russian troops in Ukraine. It’s certainly what Ukrainian president Zelenskyy is trying to instigate by telling them, in Russian, to stop fighting and save their own lives.
The US propaganda magazine Newsweek reports Security Service of Ukraine claims to have intercepted phone calls revealing Russian troops rebelling against the generals, refusing to fight, or sabotaging their own tanks.
We can’t confirm this, but it certainly happened a lot among US troops in Vietnam. And among Russian troops in 1917, who were key to overthrowing the Tsar and the capitalist democracy that came next.
“There’s clearly a lot of dissent in Russia,” says Freeman, “although I’m sure it’s being exaggerated by our media. The war is a fog of lies on all sides. It is virtually impossible to tell what is actually happening because every side is staging the show.”
Rebellion and resistance show the potential for revolution but are not in themselves revolutionary. We need to fight FOR the communist world we really need. A world without borders or nations to go to war. Without money or profits to fight over. Without a wage system that enslaves the masses.
Our war is the class war: our fight is for communist workers’ power.
If Red Flag readers are in contact with friends or family in Ukraine or Russia, please share information with us about what’s going on there. And share Red Flag’s communist vision with them.
Read our pamphlet: “Soldiers, Sailors, Marines Key to Communist Revolution” here
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