WHEN THE LEADERS SPEAK OF PEACE
The common folk know
That war is coming.
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.
—Bertolt Brecht, From a German War Primer, 1937
August 26— Current Ukraine “peace negotiations” revolve around “security guarantees.” That means well-armed troops. Probably European troops. Not NATO troops, which Trump would likely veto. Trump won’t send US troops but might sell more arms. Putin wants Russian troops included in “security guarantees.” That means he wants international approval of continued Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine.
Wider war is coming.
At the Putin-Trump summit in Alaska, Putin convinced Trump to support a “land swap.” Ukraine does not occupy any Russian land. So this demand is that Ukraine give up land that Russia does not already control. Top European leaders accompanied Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to the White House to push back.
Let’s understand there is nothing “natural” about Ukraine’s borders. That territory has at times been Galician, Ruthenian, Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, and more. Twentieth-century Ukraine’s borders were almost continually renegotiated.
The historical tragedy was that the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 set up “Socialist Republics” (including Ukraine) along “national” lines. Today’s crisis is a failure of twentieth-century communist strategy.
We know now that what the masses needed was one communist (not socialist) liberated zone without borders or money. That is what the masses still need, in Ukraine and everywhere.
Today’s Russian imperialists fight to restore the nineteenth-century Tsarist empire. They, like western imperialists, are determined to control the strategic, coal-rich, historically industrial Donbas region.
At stake, too, are major sources of graphite (used in EV batteries), titanium (airplanes, power stations), lithium (batteries), beryllium and uranium (nuclear weapons and reactors). And significant deposits of copper, lead, zinc, silver, nickel, cobalt, and manganese.
Crucially for the US, Ukraine has rare earth metals used in weapons, electronics, and more. The largest deposits are in or near the Donbas. Access to these would reduce US dependence on its arch-rival China, the world’s main source of these elements.
Are the mobilization orders already written out? As imperialist conflict spirals into World War III – not entirely.
As World War I started, the Triple Entente included the United Kingdom, France, and Russia. The Triple Alliance was Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy. But Italy remained neutral in 1914 and joined the Entente in 1915. Each coalition later added new members and affiliates.
World War II officially erupted in 1939. The Allies were the United Kingdom, France and Poland. The Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan only formalized in 1940. In both cases, other countries joined later.
Today, a global jumble of conflicts and alliances is coalescing into two sides of a third world war. Will the US-Europe alliance hold? Will the US peel Russia away from China and India? The “peace” negotiations over Ukraine reflect such questions.
The end of Brecht’s poem implies that workers and soldiers who think will answer these questions with the solution missing in 1917. Communist revolution will destroy all imperialists along with their wars, nations, borders, and exploitation.
