People Make Peace
This we know.
War is not an answer. Ever.
Empires go to war to protect power and profits, not people.
Empires lie.
When empires clash, people die.
People want peace.
As Russia moves armies into Ukraine, these basic truths are on full display. There is no question that whatever Vladimir V. Putin’s motivation, military force is wrong. The devastation of the Ukrainian people is a tragedy and an action invoking the specter of nuclear war. The Russian people do not want war. Their protests are being put down brutally.
But this does not make the US and its Allies right. Rather, those of us who care about a just future, need to understand just how much the desire to advance US imperial interests have both provoked this crisis and are using it to escalate and consolidate US hegemony.
This moment is the product of forces brewing since the Russian Revolution in 1917. Capitalism cannot tolerate the existence of a power that challenges it. Thus, Western capitalist countries have consistently attempted to overturn the Russian State, beginning with invasions shortly after the Communists came to power. During WWII, Western Allies were never fully supportive of the Soviet Union, who suffered enormously in the fight against Hitler’s fascism, losing some 30 million people.
At the end of WWII this hostility framed the Cold War and was the guiding principle of the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). There, the US made clear that it was more comfortable with fascists than communists. From the Russian point of view, the principle function of NATO has been to encircle them with military might. This fear of assault from the West accelerated after the fall of the Soviet Union as NATO moved quickly to embrace most of the Eastern European nations that had been in the Russian Sphere. NATO troops, missiles and military bases sit on the Russian border. In response to this, Putin has consistently asserted that Belarus and Ukraine have historic ties to Russia and that overtures to include Ukraine in NATO is a direct threat to Russian safety.
This is a long and complicated history, but it is essential to remember that in 2008, watching the expansion of NATO, Russia told the USA that the addition of either Georgia or Ukraine would be a “red line” for their security. Earlier, the West had promised it would honor this concern. In spite of this, the USA pushed for the inclusion of both countries in NATO. It was this push that was behind the Russian-Georgia war, as well as the seizure of Crimea, which has been Russia’s only access to a southern port since the 1700’s.
In 2010 the US orchestrated an anti-Russian coup by allying with right wing Nazi elements in Ukraine. As Gray Leupp, a history professor at Tufts wrote, “The U.S. media never mention that in 2010 the Ukrainian people elected as president, Viktor Yanukovitch, in what international observers called a free and fair election, a candidate enjoying widespread support in the Donbas region and elsewhere and committed to friendly relations with Russia. They don’t mention that the U.S. spent $ five billion to support “regime change” through one of those “Color Revolutions” funded by the coup-plot specialists at the National Endowment for Democracy, bringing down Yanukovych in a bloody coup and installing known proponents of immediate NATO membership."
Some leaders around the world are attempting to stop this conflict and move it toward peace. But the USA and mainstream media are pushing us toward war, not peace. This is not, as the New York Times so boldly proclaimed a “fight to save democracy” from Vladimir Putin.
Democracy is in deep trouble. But not from Putin. The US government could not bring itself to pass basic voting rights protections and has a long troubled history with real democracy. Right wing elements are taking over all levels of public authority. Peace will not come from leaders of empires. Nor will a living democracy. Only, we the people can amass the kind of power necessary to create these.