ALB
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I think “clamouring” is rather an exaggeration. They have just ticked a box when asked. The government won’t be swayed by a mere snap opinion poll. They will easily be able to resist taking such a risky departure from the status quo.
Of course Russia is opposed to Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Like Ukraine that would bring NATO right up to a long stretch to the Russian frontier. Under present circumstances it’s unlikely to happen.
Ironically, the “peace deal” that is said to be being with discussed between Russia and Ukraine is said to be considering that Ukraine should have armed forces but be neutral …. “like Sweden”.
Here is the view of another comrade who is not on this forum:
“I have to say I personally don’t agree at all this has been somehow started by the West, whatever their faults. In fact the very notion strikes me as bizarre and out of touch. Putin for years has wanted to recreate Tsarist Russia but no-one realised just how far he would go. As I’ve mentioned, if the West made a mistake it was over 20 years ago when Putin sounded Clinton and George W out about joining NATO and was rebuffed.
We can’t do or say anything that gives an ounce of sympathy or understanding to Russia, or tail-ends the left who have cosied up to him for years on the basis that an enemy of an enemy is a friend. For one thing they just don’t get that the US is no longer the gendarme of the world it once was, it’s all much more complicated now.
All we can do is express sympathy and solidarity with both the Ukrainian workers and those in the Russian army getting murdered because of the imperial fantasies of their leader.”
Alan, none of your predictions are incompatible with what I suggested are unlikely to happen in Ukraine (no Russian occupation of the whole of Ukraine, no new Afghanistan, no spread of the war beyond Ukraine).
I think you are right that the war and the sanctions imposed on Russia will have far-reaching repercussions outside the area of Ukraine.
For instance, the temporary cutting off of wheat exports from Ukraine to the Middle East and North Africa and the increase in the price of bread there could lead to bread riots and the toppling of governments.
The economic war between the West and Russia, with sanctions and counter measures, will disrupt world trade and risk another world downturn.
Measures to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas imports will slow down the phasing out of burning fossil fuels. There is already talk of keeping coal mines open longer and of more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
In fact future historians may well regard the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as one of the key events of the 21st century.
If it wasn’t having such terrible consequences for ordinary people in terms of death, injury, displacement, and destruction, the whole business would be an object study of capitalist diplomacy and war and how might is right.
In all diplomacy the outcome depends on how each side reckons the might of the other. If a compromise can’t be reached (as it usually is) then the only way of testing who is mightiest is war. Which has happened in this case. Neither Putin nor Zelensky and their advisers are irrational (mad) even if they appear to be. Russia has chosen war as, presumably, it appeared to its government that there was no other way to achieve its main goal (of Ukraine joining NATO or being armed by NATO). Zelensky is stirring up fanatical, even suicidal nationalism because the threat of mass opposition to the Russian invasion is one of the few bargaining chips that his government has (his goal will be the survival of the Ukrainian state).
At some point the war will end and their will be a settlement. What will it be? How can we know? How can anyone know? But I think we can rule out a permanent Russian occupation of the whole of Ukraine. Ukraine joining NATO is out too. That leaves plenty of room for a whole range of possible solutions. For what it’s worth (and that’s not much) I don’t think there will be an escalation to a wider war or it becoming another Afghanistan for Russia.
What won’t help is Johnson and Truss saying that Russia must not only fail but must be seen to fail and calling for Putin to be out on trial. A more diplomatic approach would have been to say Putin must fail but must not be seen to have failed. But it looks as if Russia has already won on the main point.
Looks as if Russia will achieve its main war aim — Ukraine will not join NATO, says Zelensky. But why didn’t NATO let him say this before?
Revealing fact about Mariupol mentioned by the Times’s Diplomatic Editor Roger Boyes today which might explain why both sides there are being so ruthless and bugger the inhabitants.
Boyes, who is a bit of a warmonger himself, explains that Mariupol
“is also a fighting base of the so-called Azov battalion, a 900-strong unit that grew out of a far-right Ukrainian group in 2014. They are now integrated into the Ukrainian national guard; their extremist, white supremacist politics is often overlooked because of their ferocity in battle. Typically they smear their bullets with pig fat before shooting at the equally ruthless Chechen Muslims who are fighting with Russian forces. Originally the Azovs and other similar groups such as Dnipro I were funded by Ukrainian oligarchs.”
These are amongst those who the non-Marxist anti-Humanists and the Alliance for Workers Liquidation are supporting and urging on.
It can be easily imagined that the Russian Army and their proxies from the breakaway statelets would like to eliminate them while they are never going to surrender or allow the civil authority to surrender. Meanwhile it’s the ordinary people living there who suffer.
The demand to “Hang the Kaiser” is already being raised:
“Vladimir Putin will be “held responsible” for war crimes in Ukraine at the international criminal court in The Hague, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, has pledged, saying the UK would help gather the necessary evidence.
The justice secretary, Dominic Raab, was travelling to The Hague on Monday to help make sure that “when that prosecution comes, the court will have what it needs”, Javid told BBC One’s Breakfast programme.”But if they are going to apply victor’s justice they are going to have to win first.
Given the current war hysteria he doesn’t stand a chance, quite apart from Priti Patel being keen to kick one more foreigner.
More about conscientious objectors in Ukraine and Russia here:
https://eprimefeed.com/latest-news/russia-and-ukraine-prosecute-conscientious-objectors/30966/
“We are in favour of the delivery of defensive weapons to the victims of aggression with no strings attached – in this case to the Ukrainian state fighting the Russian invasion of its territory.”
Who is going to deliver these weapons? Why don’t they come out and openly say: We demand that NATO supply the Ukrainian state with guns and bombs and missiles? Or go around spray painting: No-Fly Zone Now.
In fact, why don’t they take the next step and themselves go and join the armed forces of the Ukrainian capitalist state? I believe that state has set up a foreign legion and is recruiting.
This war is certainly sorting out the sheep from the goats.
Another leftist group to go off the rails (at least our rails though not theirs as following Rays Dunasksyeva they have always supported “national self- determination”) is the “Marxist” Humanist Initiative, including Andrew Kliman despite his high understanding of how capitalism works and does not work.
Here is their statement on the war.
Scroll down to the end to see their slogans including “Victory to Ukraine!”. They even oppose Ukraine becoming neutral ie defend its right to join NATO if it wants.
Appalling and unforgivable from a working class point of view.
