The Ukrainian pretext

Looking for the causes of the new crisis on the eastern borders of Ukraine, it is impossible not to take into account the context in which it occurred. The economic crisis affecting the main countries of the world presses on the various actors, making their moves all the more bold and awkward.

In the last months of last year, Russia began to amass a large amount of men and military assets on the border with Ukraine. Western sources speak of more than 100,000 heavily armed men. Military maneuvers are taking place in the north, in Belarus, and in the south, in Crimea.

Faced with protests from the government in Kiev and its Western allies, who cry danger of invasion, Russia responded that these are normal exercises within its territories and that there is no plan to penetrate the Ukraine.

The improbability of war would be confirmed by the climate among the high spheres in Moscow. Il manifesto” of January 15 reports Everyone in Moscow knows the risks of an open war in a country with 45 million inhabitants, and the repercussions it would have, first of all on internal stability. They are aware of the men of the military apparatus as well as those of the political establishment Putin, interested in defending relationships and even privileges built over time with European countries.

Also the Italian General Leonardo Tricarico, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, in a recent interview to RAI said that “it is not the Russians to encircle NATO but the opposite (…) [Russian troops] are not ready for any invasion. They participate in maneuvers in Belarus, and even in patrols in the Mediterranean, but the Russian troops threatening the Ukrainian border are a pressure, certainly risky, to reiterate that the entry of the country into NATO would be unacceptable”.

The Encirclement of Russia

The Kremlin’s showdown did not come as a bolt from the blue; been thunder for a long time. As Sylwia Zawadzka wrote (“Strategic Observatory” No. 4, 2020), “Beginning in 2014, the strategic direction of the Russian military effort shifted decisively from the Caucasus, Turkey, the Near East and Iran to the regions directly bordering Ukraine and Crimea, and this was joined, since about 2016, by the northwest direction i.e., the Kaliningrad enclave, which was further militarized to counter Allied action in the Baltics”.

This decision was due to the so-called “encirclement syndrome” that arose in Russian leadership circles due to NATO’s expansionist policy in the decades following the disintegration of the USSR.

Back in 2007 Putin had expressed Russia’s opposition to the military activism of the United States and allies, in the former Yugoslavia, in the Middle East, etc., but especially for the expansion of NATO to the east. During the Munich Security Conference held that year, the Russian president voiced Moscow’s strong concerns: “I think it is obvious that the expansion of NATO has no relation to the modernization of the Alliance itself or to ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion directed? And what happened to the assurances made by our Western partners after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where have those statements gone today? Does no one remember them anymore?”. Rhetorical questions of a president trying to bring Russia back to the status of an imperialist power.

These NATO moves were also criticized by US politicians. As early as February 1997, diplomat George F. Kennan, a theorist of the Soviet Union’s post-World War II containment policy, wrote in the “New York Times” an article entitled “The Fatal Mistake” in which he expressed the opinion that “the expansion of NATO would be the most fatal mistake of American policy in the entire postwar era. Such a decision can be expected to inflame nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian public opinion; to have a negative effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the Cold War atmosphere in East-West relations; and to push Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking”.

The former diplomat highlighted the fact that an aggressive NATO policy, if it would have weakened Russia from the point of view of military deployments, would, however, have strengthened the regime internally by giving voice and strength to patriotic and nationalist anti-Western positions.

United States v. Germany

But evidently the United States had no choice. In the general crisis of the imperialist order that followed the fall of the USSR, a crisis that continues to this day, there was less and less room for a policy of détente or simple containment. In the event that the countries of Eastern Europe were not incorporated into NATO and the European Union, they were destined to end up once again either under the influence of Russia or, even worse for Washington, of Germany, a danger that the United States did not want to run.

NATO has therefore had to physically occupy the space between Berlin and Moscow, with the aim, as “Limes” wrote in November 2019, “The new Iron Curtain”, of “denying the resurgent German nationalism (…) d’intendersi one day with Russia. As has been the case for centuries between two powers, forced by proximity and power relations to come to terms (…) The obsession with Germany is, moreover, a characteristic feature of American strategic culture. For one hundred and two years, since the intervention in the First World War against the Wilhelminian empire, it has informed the approach to Europe”.

Germany, one of the major economic powers in the world and the largest in Europe, still lacks an army of a weight corresponding to its strength on world markets, but with its industrial and technical apparatus it could soon become a power again, including a nuclear power. Today it is an ally of the United States, but in perspective it could become one of its most formidable competitors.

The Ukrainian crisis pits the United States and Russia against each other, but it mainly affects Germany and Europe, both from the point of view of trade with Russia and for Russian energy supplies, which still represent more than 40% of the gas and oil imported by the EU. It is Germany and Italy that have the largest economic and trade relationships with Russia and would lose the most if sanctions were taken against it. The negative impact on the U.S. economy would be much less, in fact they might even benefit.

The United States has made no secret, despite the agreements made with Bonn, that one of its objectives is to block Nord Stream 2, the new pipeline linking Russia to Germany, worried about the EU’s growing dependence on Russian gas. “It is very difficult to think that the Nord Stream pipeline will become operational in the event that Russia renews its aggression against Ukraine”, repeated U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on January 12.

And it was the US that proposed to supplant Russian gas supplies to Europe with liquefied gas from the US and Qatar. According to data provided by “The Press” on February 5, “In January, natural gas shipments to Europe (at least half of which came from America) exceeded natural gas imports from Russia”.

A bold move ?

Why did Moscow decide on such a risky step in these uncertain times due to the pandemic and the economic crisis?

The Russian government wanted to exhibit this show of strength at a time of internal difficulty caused by an economic crisis, which has led to the decrease of wages and pensions, causing widespread discontent among workers, but also in the small and middle class. Shifting the focus to external threats against the Great Mother, and perhaps seizing some successes in foreign policy, as happened in 2014 with the occupation of Crimea, would certainly lead to a strengthening of the regime.

In addition to this, it must be considered that in recent years the Ukrainian army has been strengthened thanks to substantial supplies of weapons from the United States and other NATO members, including the restless Turkey that has provided the UAVs, and also thanks to the sending of hundreds of military advisors, mainly American and British. Moscow’s fear is that this new situation will push the Ukrainian government, which is already implementing a severe policy against the Russian minority still present in the country, to try to reconquer the Donbass region where in recent years the clashes have never ceased in a creeping war that seems to have left 14,000 dead on the ground.

Moreover, the possible entry of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, as foreseen by the Budapest summit in April 2008, would put Russia in an unsustainable situation of weakness that would certainly have negative repercussions on Putin’s government as well. In the press conference at the end of the year, Vladimir Putin said it clearly: “A further expansion of NATO towards the East is unacceptable“; “the West comes with its missiles to our doorstep”; “they keep telling us: war, war, war, but there is the impression that, perhaps, they are the ones preparing the third military operation in Ukraine”.

A united Europe does not exist

The diplomatic crisis has also highlighted the deep divisions that exist between European countries. On one side is Germany, with France and Italy. On the other, Poland and the Baltic countries with the now external support of Great Britain, a bloc that represents the long armsof theUnited States over the EU. Against this opposition, France has re-proposed its plan for the creation of a “European security system”, uncoupled from NATO. In fact Europe, despite the Euro, does not exist as a military power because it lacks a unitary political direction and armed forces.

We have repeatedly said that there will never be a real unity of Europe, the conflicts of interest between the different States are too strong, and that only the proletariat will be able to give life to a Europe without countries and borders.

This crisis has also exacerbated the contrasts that had already exploded in the allied field, in France and Germany but also in Italy, with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, of which they had been kept in the dark until the last moment, or the stipulation of the AUKUS pact in the Pacific between the USA, Great Britain and Australia, without the knowledge of France and Germany with the consequent cancellation of the supply of French submarines to Australia replaced by US nuclear submarines.

Russia is not the first enemy for the USA

In this crisis, the US has been the most decisive among the countries of the Atlantic Alliance in opposing Russia and has demonstrated, once again, to use it as an instrument to defend its economic interests and to reassert its grip on Europe. Washington has sought to monopolize negotiations with Moscow, excluding or overshadowing European allies and Ukraine itself. President Biden has given almost for certain the war by imposing the withdrawal of U.S. personnel from the Embassy in Kiev, followed by Britain and Australia, to the point that the governments of the major NATO powers have had to reassure public opinion by declaring their unwillingness to send troops to fight in Ukraine in case of Russian invasion and the Ukrainian president himself had to say publicly that there is no danger of imminent war.

But Russia is certainly not the danger for the United States, it represents today a regional imperialism, even if it maintains a formidable military industrial apparatus and an arsenal, especially nuclear, of all respect. As economic potential Russia can now be compared to Switzerland and in the annual military expenditure there is no comparison with the two superpowers, the United States and China. Moscow in 2020 spent about 62 billion dollars in weapons, the U.S. well 13 times as much, 778 billion dollars, and China 252 billion, 4 times.

China is the real strategic enemy of the United States, engaged as it has been for years in an increasingly open clash over Taiwan and the South China Sea. Well, Beijing has taken advantage of the Ukrainian crisis to strengthen its ties with Moscow and has not missed the opportunity to turn this diplomatic and military confrontation in the heart of Europe to its advantage. It showed this time solidarity with Russia. During Putin’s visit to Beijing on the occasion of the Olympics, the two countries reached new agreements for “trade and military cooperation, investments and understandings from energy to space, development of new financial instruments to enhance and protect their respective currencies at the expense of the dollar” (“Il Sole 24 Ore”, February 4). They have also presented a project for “a new era” in international relations, based on multilateralism, which translated means unhinging the world hegemony of the United States.

In particular, these new agreements explicitly include the two allies’ opposition to Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO and reconfirmation that Taiwan is “an integral part” of China. Finally, opposition was expressed to the new AUKUS military pact between the USA, Great Britain and Australia. China thus proves to be a major player in the Ukraine game as well.

The imperialist order wavers

The diplomatic whirlwind that in recent weeks has involved not only Russia and the United States, but also the European Union, for what it is worth, Germany and France, Italy itself, and ambiguous Turkey, confirm that a world order, the one that since the fall of the USSR has seen the United States dominate the world, no longer exists. The great power can no longer maintain order and control, from Central Asia to Africa to the Middle East. Alliances are less and less solid and the changes of front are sudden. But the infamous regime of capital won’t be able to find a new balance if not through a new devastating world imperialist slaughter.

A mad arms race in the run-up to war

This descent into the precipice of war is confirmed by the growing arms race, which does not spare even the smallest States, even though only fifteen imperialist States monopolize the production, use and trade of weapons. This race is fueled by a feeling of inevitability of war. Evident is the hypocrisy of international diplomacy that distinguishes between war of aggression and defense, between unjust and just. The former would always be condemned, the latter blessed by States and Churches. This distinction, in the current bourgeois regime of rancid imperialism, has no correspondence with reality.

In the by now chronic economic crisis, of ever more evident contention for resources, energy and raw materials, but in many regions of the world also agricultural products and water, war is permanent. All capitalisms are actually “attacked”, decrepit, by their convulsions of death. The regime of capital is at permanent war with humans; it dedicates most of the planet’s resources to the manufacture of useless or harmful goods. It produces weapons out of all proportion to defend itself, for the defense of this social order based on exploitation, misery, and war.