The Trump administration just did something that’s gone against the expectations of everyone who had hope Trump would end the Ukraine conflict. The White House has re-started military aid to Ukraine, and it’s clearly done so with the aim of strong-arming Russia into appeasement. The plan is to have a 30-day ceasefire, at the end of which Russia can either agree to stop fighting or continue the war. This will give Washington some time to prepare for a new stage of the conflict, which Trump’s team hopes Russia wants to avoid at all costs.
There are powerful elements within Russia’s ruling class that do want to simply end the operation, even if this means not fulfilling Russia’s strategic goals in Ukraine. And should Russia agree to the ceasefire, we’ll know that these pro-appeasement forces have enough sway that they could easily win out. But if there’s enough power behind the workers movement—both in Russia and around the globe—then this imperial scheme will backfire, and compel the forces of resistance to strike an unprecedented blow against the hegemon.
This maneuver from the Trump White House proves that the imperial enemy is never going to relent. Which means the only option of those who stand against the empire is to help continue the resistance against it, for however long this will need to take and however many sacrifices this will require. That’s the conclusion Scott Ritter came to while putting together his December 2023 speech on the Ukraine conflict:
This is supposed to be about antiwar, an antiwar movement. I am not antiwar. I just want to make that point as loud and clear as I can. I’m not pro-war, I don’t support war. I’m against war, but if you want to wage war, there ain’t nobody better at it than me. I know how to wage war. That’s why I hate war. I despise war. But if you want to fight, let’s fight. And the reason why I bring this up is we are confronted with some problems today. For instance, let’s take Russia and Ukraine. It’s a war I think we can all agree we want to end. No! We don’t want it to end. Because if it ends today, right now, there is no justice. There is no justice for the children of Donbass. There’s no justice for the Russians who have been oppressed by the fascist regime in Kiev. No, there needs to be war, this thing has to be settled. Once you cross the threshold, once you cross the line of departure, then you must close with and destroy the enemy through firepower maneuver. Now, that’s difficult for an antiwar movement to understand, but Russia didn’t start this war.
These things are still true today (though this week Russia brought justice a lot closer by liberating Kursk). Until the anti-fascist side completes its goals, we will need to be highly cautious of any talk from the U.S. about “peace”; because for as long as the enemy has an opening to render Russia compromised, it will keep trying to do that. As the International Initiative for Peace warned in December 2024:
The idea of establishing an agreement with Putin’s Russia should not deceive us. It is not an impossible new Yalta that the Trump faction has in mind. The neutralization of the conflict with Russia, brought to its peak by the Biden administration, is a dangerous strategy to tame Moscow and detach it from Beijing, in order to concentrate and direct all forces into a confrontation with China, the only rival that could challenge the global supremacy of the United States. No illusions, then: with Trump, peace is not on the horizon, but rather a war conducted differently — Palestinians and various anti-imperialist nations know this well…Trump considers the BRICS phenomenon an existential threat to US hegemony and will undoubtedly try in every way to sow discord and divide them in order to target China.
We also can’t forget that due to the nature of the capitalist system, whatever peace which may come from these negotiations will be temporary. As Italy’s Communist Party of Committees to Support Resistance has observed: “It is possible that the U.S. imperialists will…cede to Russia the areas it claims…But even then, as Lenin put it, until Socialism wins this will be an armstice, a truce, a preparation for a new massacre of peoples.” The problems of fascism and imperialism are only going to be solved when the final, decisive confrontation comes, and the anti-imperialist forces bring the enemy to its end. Which can only happen if these forces have a core basis in the proletariat, the sole class that can cut off core economic functionings through refusing to work.
As the empire prepares a new phase of attacks upon Donbass, and gets ready to back a new Zionist invasion of Gaza, we must redouble our resistance against the war machine. Within this mission, one of our greatest tasks is to build the workers movement; which goes along with a project to mobilize this movement towards fighting against NATO, for Palestinian liberation, and for peace with China.
Union organizing is just one part of how we build the power behind these efforts. I’m talking both about strengthening the unions, and about constructing our own independent proletarian organizations; ones which can provide reliable institutional support for all aspects of our political struggle. This is a practical reality that isn’t recognized by all of the figures who claim to be against the war machine. There are many parts of alt media and “dissident” politics that don’t emphasize class struggle, or even work to undermine it by aggressively promoting anti-communism. These are the types of actors who repeat imperialism’s psyops against socialist China, even though they nominally oppose the drive towards World War III.
Among these actors is Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence. Prior to joining Trump’s cabinet, Gabbard had taken command of the U.S. Army’s 440th Civil Affairs Battalion, a psyops project that’s specifically focused on Oceania, Southeast Asia, and the Western and Central Pacific regions. Which means Gabbard came into the Trump White House while already being engaged in operations to target China. This is worth drawing attention to because Gabbard has gained significant favor within antiwar circles over the years, largely due to her speaking out against the Syria and Ukraine wars. These positive actions from Gabbard have provided some hope that one wing of the state, the wing which Gabbard represents, will dismantle the war machine. But now that the Trump administration has advanced Biden’s cold war schemes, and sought to apply pressure on Russia via both Syria and Ukraine, it’s become clearer than ever that this perception is mistaken.
Victory against the empire is not going to come from top-down forces. The right populist faction of U.S. politics won’t defeat the imperial state, and neither will BRICS. The only thing that can truly end the imperial order is a workers revolution from inside the United States, which means U.S. anti-imperialists must orient our practice around worker organizing. We need to learn from the example of the revolutionary forces in Russia, where the workers movement has successfully pressured the government into combating NATO.
Whether Russia finishes this fight, and embraces a long-term role within the project to defeat imperialism, depends on the state of the proletarian struggle. If we strengthen the workers movement, build a united front among the global anti-imperialist forces, and prepare our cadres for a revolutionary scenario, we’ll be in place to counter the enemy’s next maneuvers. The people of Donbass are counting on us, the people of Gaza are counting on us, and the working masses of our own countries are depending on us. We can’t be made complacent by right populist promises, or by the notion that BRICS will do the work for us; what happens next in this struggle is a question of what we’ll do as a collective.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment