Rev Left Radio - Red Hot Take: Russia, Ukraine, and NATO

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

In this episode, Breht (while acknowledging this is a fluid situation that can change on a dime) gives his thoughts on the recent invasion of Ukraine, the role that US-led NATO has played in bringing us to this point, what China is (probably) thinking, what Putin's goals might be, the role Nazis play in all of this, the response from the Ukrainian and Russian masses, and how we should think and talk about Russia during this crisis. Our deep history of Ukraine and Russia on Guerrilla History here: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/history-of-russiaukraine-relations-w-alexey-sakhnin-dispatch RealLifeLore video on Russia, Ukraine, and NATO here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE&ab_channel=RealLifeLore Support Rev Left: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio  

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Rev Left Radio. I decided that since I'm here, I might as well jump on the mic and make a few points about Russia. Now, what I'm going to say here is not going to be exhaustive. This is a developing situation. Over on guerrilla history, we did a deep 1,000-year summary of the history between Ukraine and Russia and their relationship.

And over on Red Menace, and at the end of this week, we're going to do a more theoretically informed discussion of Russia discuss the discrepancies between some Marxist-Lennonist and Marxist-Maoist takes on the conflict, discuss the question of imperialism and whether or not Russia meets that, you know, Leninist standard of what imperialism actually is, et cetera. So for the theoretical breakdown, go over to Red Menace here in a little bit for the deep history, go check out guerrilla history, but just for some basic points, I want to make them right here. So the first thing I'll say is that we have to understand, I think most people on the left and the anti-imperialist left in particular do understand this, which is that this entire conflict could have been avoided by NATO refusing to expand eastward, by the U.S. refusing to meddle in Ukrainian politics, the funding and arming of Nazi factions to target and attack ethnic Russians in the south and the east.

the U.S. attempted coup, the attempt to bring Ukraine closer into the orbit of the West and away from Russia. All of these things have created the context in which Russia, rightly or wrongly, and Putin in particular, feels very much backed in a corner. Now, that is not to justify Russia's actions here because this is an escalatory move on their part. But it does, so this is not to, the NATO talk is not to justify what Russia is doing, but it is to understand. the position that Russia is in. If America was in anything close to a similar position, America would act the exact same way. And we cannot forget just a few short years ago.

America was invading, bombing, destroying, and ripping apart Iraq and Afghanistan. And then it wants to turn around and act like it has the moral high ground and wave its finger at Russia. Now, first thing is first, and we have to address massive suffering going on amongst regular working people. It seems that the majority of working people,

in Russia do not want war and certainly the the sanctions implied by Russia's aggression hurt the Russian people more than anybody. We've already seen Russian people unable to use their credit cards, unable to get money out of ATMs, etc. That is, I believe sanctions are an immoral act of aggression against the innocent civilians of a country. And this idea that they are targeted only towards the elite is absolute bullshit. Sanctions ravage entire economies. And those sanctionings are used by the U.S. and its allies historically to destabilize societies that they don't agree with that won't open up their markets for corporate financial investment, that won't tow the American imperialist line when it comes to geopolitics. Sanctions are used in that context to, as Henry Kissinger one said, make the economy scream such that you could rile up, disgust and distaste among the people. for a government that the U.S. doesn't like. And then that makes that society much more vulnerable

to infiltration, funding and arming certain separatist factions, rebel factions, whatever. Maybe we've seen this play out a million times. So these sanctions that are being leveraged against Russia are devastating. So you see the Russian working class against war and being, you know, burdened by the sanctions that come with Russian aggression, the Ukrainian working class, whatever their political alignment, just don't want to be bombed and murdered and slaughter. So, you know, they're against war. The U.S., we should be as Americans against our country going into war. By any means necessary, we have to prevent the escalation on the part of our country insofar as that's even possible.

And I think that's the real position of anybody within a country engaged in this conflict right now is to try to, you know, prevent your government from getting increasingly evolved from escalating the situation, et cetera. I do want to touch on the idea of Nazis as well. because it's important to note that, you know, especially since 2014, the U.S. has been funding and arming Nazi factions within Ukraine, as I said, that have been carrying out for the last eight to nine years attacks in Donbos in particular, but also within southern and eastern Ukraine more broadly. Brutal murders of like dozens of Russian ethnics outside of Odessa by this faction, for example. And it's important to know that. to see the role that they play. But I do see some people, particularly on the ML side of things, not everybody, but some of them over-emphasizing this and saying this is a Nazi government, which of course Putin is saying for his own strategic and rhetorical reasons, but that's been now picked up and

internalized by some, not all, on the Marxist-Leninists specifically left, where they're saying the government itself is Nazis, everybody that supports the governments are fascists. That's not true. The vast majority of Ukrainian people are regular-ass people that have political positions all across the spectrum. Like you would assume anybody, you know, any chunk of people pulled out of any culture or country and asked with their political opinions, they'll span the gamut. But most people just don't want to be bombed. They just want to fucking provide for their family. You know, they do not necessarily want Russia to overtake their country.

They do not want to be used as a proxy between NATO and the U.S. and Russian aggression, et cetera. And so why we should point out these Nazi factions and these fascist elements that have been being funded by U.S. imperialism and armed by U.S. imperialism, it is also not fair to expand that to include the entire Ukrainian government and the entire Ukrainian people. So don't fall into that particular trap. This is still a small fraction within the country who are outright explicit violent Nazis. And so we should not overextend that because then you just lose credibility within. anybody who knows what's actually going on when you are hyperbolic in that way. And specifically when you're saying all these people are Nazis and then like Russia's bombing and killing civilians, well, you know, and you're you're wiping the blood off your hands by saying,

oh, they're all fascist anyway. That is incredibly lazy and incredibly inhuman of a, of a lying to take. So don't fall into that trap. Now the question is, what is Putin's goal here, right? Lots of speculation and nobody can know for sure. We do not. know that this has been planned for a very long time. And it actually sheds a lot of light on that recent protest movement in Belarus that the Russians came in and backed up Lyshenko to solidify his rule and make sure it wasn't challenged, in part because Putin knew that very shortly he was going to be launching this invasion. And while it has Crimea to allow the Russian troops to come up into Ukraine from the south and shares the eastern, the Ukrainian's eastern border with Russia so Russia

can come in from the east. Having Belarus in play and a complete ally to the to the Russia allows for Russia to come in from the north as well because Ukraine and Belarus share a border. It's on the north of Ukraine. And it's actually very close to the capital of Ukraine, Kiev. So having that ability to come from the south, Crimea, the east, Russia itself and the north, Belarus, allows it to sort of do a pincer move on three sides. And it allows it to have very quick access to Kiev, the capital. And today there's been satellite images showing ostensibly a 40-mile Russian military convoy moving towards Kiev. So it's clear that Kiev is going to be central in whatever Putin's plan is. Now here's my utter speculation. Take it

for what it is. And no upfront that it is speculation, nobody knows what's inside Putin's mind right now. But I thought from day one that this could be the strategy he's going to do, which is try to split Ukraine in half. If you go look at a Ukrainian map right now, you can see where Kiev is, right in the center and at the very north of the country, right? And then you look down at where Odessa is. It's on the southern coast, the Black Sea, almost straight south to the southern border of Ukraine. So if you draw a line north to south from Kiev to Odessa, everything east of that, you could imagine a scenario in which that's Putin's goal. Not to take over. the whole country, take over the capital. It's essential if you want to take over even half of the

country. You've got to take over the capital. And then based on where the Russian invasions have happened so far, you can kind of see a move towards maybe splitting down the center roughly from Kiev down to Odessa and everything eastward, Russia straight up taking it over. Maybe putting in a puppet client state government, but perhaps just taking it outright, but then allowing the west of Ukraine to stay. Do whatever you want with Levevev and the rest of the western Ukraine. You know, Zelensky can still be, you know, be the president there. Whatever. The Ukrainians who want to live under that government can move to the west. And fuck, they can even, I mean, Putin has to assume that if he makes that aggressive of a move, there's already movement towards

trying to apply for Ukraine to be led into the EU. And it's only a hop, skip, and a jump before they try to join perhaps NATO itself, specifically if Russia is successful in taking over half the country. But that would, even if Western Ukraine join NATO in the EU, Russia would still have ultimately won because they would have taken over the eastern half, created the buffer state that they've wanted to have, they have expanded access to the Black Sea, and they will have control over the gas and oil that is pumped from Russia. through Ukraine, at least to some extent. So that's just perhaps what Putin is trying to do here, but, you know, you really don't know

for sure. That is my best guess. The fact that he's going so aggressively towards Kiev seems to be indicative that it's not just a little snatch and grab, right? Like they snatched and grabbed Crimea, snatched and grabbed a little chunk of Georgia, you know, and I think it's 2008. And we thought, I thought, perhaps at the very beginning of this. especially when he announced that

Dineska and Lujansk were going to be independent nations needing help that he was just going to try to take Dombas. You know, this sort of little section in the far east, a little bit south of Ukraine, in this heavily ethnic Russian, culturally Russian

separatist territory. I thought that maybe he was just going to grab a chunk of that. But the fact that this seems to be much more widespread, that multiple cities much further west are being invaded, seems to say that his ambitions are our little broader and it's it is important to note that that that history exists there between russia and ukraine and what Putin is arguing is that kiev is the ancestral

homeland of the russian people under both the russian empire under the romanov's and then under the soviet union under the bolsheviks all of ukraine was more or less integrated into russia at first under the empire and then the soviet union under the bolsheviks and then the soviet union under, you know, Lenin, Stalin, and those boys. So his argument is that actually, you know, throughout history and with different structures of government and different ideologies, Ukraine has deep connections to Russia, the Russian people. Ukrainians and Russians often see one another as brothers and sisters. Therefore, this is, this is, you know, just as much ours as it is anybody else's. And, you know, America, you can go and invade Iraq.

Afghanistan, bomb Libya, bomb Syria, you know, help commit genocides in Yemen. There's no world outrage. You can help Israel devastate the Palestinians. No huge sanctions, no move by the rest of the world to isolate the U.S. economically. But when Russia acts aggressively towards its very own neighbors and Putin's eyes at least, their own people, these are our brothers. This is where we come from. You know, this is a complete American hypocrisy. he's right on that. I mean, America is an incredible hypocrite here. Now, this has to be

understood, though, which is that the West and NATO, as I've said earlier, are trying to make Ukraine a chess piece in their game against Russia, and this has had devastating consequences. This has created the context in which this war is happening. And the ideal solution to this problem, if we could have done it beforehand, would have been to at least make Ukraine completely neutral to sign some sort of agreement, some sort of contract, we will never allow Ukraine into NATO. The U.S. and its allies will not operate in Ukraine to influence elections, to coup governments they don't like, to fund fucking Nazis, carrying out attacks on ethnic Russians, etc. And if that was a possibility, if that was

carved out, that would have been a logical, rational response. It would have helped decreased tensions. It would have been great for Ukraine because their country would not be getting destroyed right now. And it would be good for Russia because they wouldn't have the insecurity thinking of thinking that there is this malicious eastward push by NATO, led by the U.S., and ultimately wants to take over Ukraine itself. And so that was the solution. And if you understand that, then you understand that although it does not justify what Russia is doing, it makes sense about the corner they've been pushed into and shows the culpability of the U.S. and NATO allies in creating this conflict that cannot be ignored here.

And again, that's not to justify anything Putin's doing. It's just to make sense of it. Say this is what has happened. And if the U.S. was ever put in anything like a similar situation, they would have acted a long time ago. So that is important to note. And I'll let me read this really quick. So I type this out, and this basically summarizes the points I've made thus far. We must understand this.

This could all have been avoided if U.S.-led NATO had not been driving eastward, meddling in Ukrainian affairs, attempting coups in Ukraine, arming and funding brutal Nazi factions to attack ethnic Russians in the east and south, and basically using Ukraine as a pawn in its proxy fight with Russia. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and murdering of civilians is not justifiable, but is understandable, in that Russia has been backed into a corner and Russia won't simply sit back and accept that. Nobody should expect that they would. In the same exact way that nobody should expect the U.S. would sit back and accept anything similar happening to them. So pointing out how U.S.-led NATO created this entire situation is not condoning Putin's actions.

Rather, it's making an objectively correct assessment of how we got where we are today. Guaranteeing the neutrality of Ukraine would have avoided all of this. But the U.S. and its allies can't help themselves. They truly think they own the world and have the exclusive right to do to other countries what the U.S. would never accept being done to them. And so here we are. People are suffering. People are dying. Americans remain largely ignorant of why this is happening.

And this will be used by the U.S. to double down on military spending, expand its influence and NATO, demonize new enemies for the military industrial complex, distract from its many domestic failures, and fuel profits for those defense contractors. We learn absolutely nothing from history. And so that is what we are seeing right now. There's another implication to what's happening here, which is the implications for China. And there's a sort of shallow analysis here that is basically saying China and Taiwan are a parallel analogy for Russia and Ukraine. And China must be sitting back with bated breath watching what Russia is doing, hoping that they win because that will create a press. for China to do the same thing for Taiwan. I think this is fundamentally wrong. And I think from a Chinese perspective, they don't like this. They would prefer this not happen. And they see Ukraine as an

independent nation in a way that they do not see Taiwan. Right. And I'll get to that second in a point, but I just want to make one more point, which is about NATO, which is, you know, far from splintering NATO, which perhaps was Putin's, you know, idea here. That by doing this and given the fact that like 30% of European natural gas comes from Russia, that by doing this it would create fisions or exacerbate already existing fissions within NATO and make that entire formation weaker. What has actually happened, unfortunately, at least thus far, is that NATO is coming together. That it seems to be strengthening its resolve, bolstering and extending its dying,

legitimacy for at least a generation. I think that will be the case, depending on how this all ends, that when we look back, we'll see that this actually ultimately helped solidify NATO and prolong its existence as opposed to weaken splinter and disintegrate it, which is, you know, I don't know what Putin's plan was, but perhaps he thought that this would put pressure on those fissures and weaken NATO seems thus far it's only strengthened it, which is unfortunate for Putin's strategy. Now, China sees Taiwan, right? I think, as literally just a part of China that an illegitimate rebel government has taken over and illegally claimed. It has never been seen by China as an independent state. It was where the

Chinese nationalists fled to after the communist won the Civil War. And for the first several decades of Taiwan's existence, it was a fascist military U.S.-backed dictatorship. And a brutal one at that. It's since democratized in various ways, but it still does not mean that this is not Taiwan. And I think China says, hey, Ukraine has an independent existence in a way that Taiwan doesn't. So I think China kind of thinks this Russian invasion will probably make it more difficult for them when they inevitably move to take back Taiwan as the false equivalencies between Russia and China will be a key rhetorical strategy of the West. It's very important to understand. While there's a qualitative substantive difference between China and Taiwan's relationship and Russia and Ukraine's

relationship that will be muddied over and completely obscured by Western media outlets and political pundits, et cetera, and made to seem like the same thing. So the fact that most of the world is on Ukraine's side here and is against Russia is going to be a good rhetorical sort of, you know, toy for the West to play with in the case of Taiwan, saying this is the exact same thing. And just like, you know, Russia was completely unjustified in invading Ukraine, so too in the exact same way for the exact same reasons, China is illegitimate and belligerent in their attempt to take back Taiwan. Now, those are fundamentally different, but that is how it's going to be. So I don't think China loves this, and I don't think this is making U.S. imperialism weaker.

It's certainly calling a certain sort of bluff. It's certainly an experiment that teaches us a lot about the actual state of U.S. legitimacy in the world, U.S. imperialism, and the alliances that the U.S. have built ever since World War II. So we'll see where that goes. So overall, I think that's where we're at right now. This is a very fluid situation. Things can change overnight. Speculation will continue to abound.

It is worth pointing out the explicit disgusting racism that we've seen with white Ukrainians trying to get on trains to flee the country into Poland, preventing actively black people from being able to get on those same trains. to exit as well so that disgusting fucking racism comes into play and that is that is absolutely grotesque and inhuman to the core and shows the deep anti-black racism inherent in the so fucking called civilized west fuck over yourself and it's also worth pointing out the extreme racism in the overfocus or the special focus on Ukraine and all of the the news reporters telling on themselves about blonde-haired and blue-eyed people and it's different

and this is Europe. This is a civilized world. We expect this with brown and black countries, but not white countries, right? It's really people are telling on themselves and just the amount of attention it gets and the hypocrisy, not only against the U.S., but like everything that a random fucking pro-Ukrainian American is saying about Ukraine and Russia, you know, every liberal, the same exact arguments, almost word for fucking word could be used in, let's say, Palestine versus Israel. And yet never do we get that sort of. of steam in the media and worked-upness among the population against the brutalities that Israel inflicts on Palestine on a daily fucking basis. In fact, our government moves to criminalize peaceful protests like BDS, for example, to even just try to protest what's going on there.

So that always needs to be pointed out because it is a fundamental structure of racism and whiteness and anti-blackness and anti-Islam, anti-Semitism, et cetera, that permeates the global structure and that when we look at certain events, it skews us towards caring about certain ones better. And it's not acceptable. We have to, as anti-imperialists, call out everything, not to diminish what's happening in Ukraine right now, but to bring everything else to the level of concern that those places should have to. Libya, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, on down the fucking list. And so it's never not worth saying that I think it's really essential.

Another thing I thought it was a really great video, if you want to hear more about NATO expansion and the Russian mindset, And the corner that Putin is specifically being backed into here, it's really helpful to go on YouTube and look up. The channel is called Real Life Lore, L-O-R-E. It's one word. Real-life lore has a windmill, purple and orange windmill as its logo.

And on YouTube, three days ago, they released a video called Why Russia is Invading Ukraine. It is not ideal, like, if you're trying to say, like, I want objective, non-ideological in any direction, analysis of how we got here, that video is very helpful. And it really is, I think, as objective as one could possibly be in just talking about the objective facts of how we got here, what Russia's perspective on all of this is, et cetera. It's only, it's a 30 minute video, but like 10 minutes is like ads and stuff. So it's about 20 minutes of condensed historical facts that can be very helpful if you want to flesh out some of the nuances and complexities here.

and get a deeper understanding of the conflict altogether. So I highly recommend that. And as I said, over on guerrilla history, we already have a deep dive into the Ukrainian and Russian history over the last, I mean, thousand years. It goes back to Kiev Rus, to the Kievan Empire. There was a period of time where Mongolia invaded and the Golden Horde took over what is now Kiev and Western Russia and Ukraine. And they made it past that. And then you see the rise of the Russian Empire. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, you know, Catherine, et cetera, all the way down to Lenin and Stalin,

and then all the way through to Putin himself. So that history, I think, is very crucial to understand. You cannot understand the present if you do not understand the past. That is a core Marxist tenet. It's also just a core tenet of understanding history and politics in real time. You have to understand the historical conditions, the historical movements, the historical movement that gave rise to present situations. And so on guerrilla history, we've done that, and there's other resources out there as well.

And then, of course, on Red Menace, we're going to do more theoretical breakdown here next week. So be on the lookout for that. And with seven more days of context between now and our recording of Red Menace, I think we'll have even more to say about certain questions. And specifically questions on the left that are being hotly debated between different factions on the left. I think we can bring some clarity at least to those conflicts. So that's it for now, just a little 25, 30 minute breakdown of sort of where I am on this entire thing, trying to bring some analysis and nuance in here. At the end of the day, war is hell.

I don't like seeing people of any nationality being brutalized, having their neighborhoods bombed, having their cities under attack, having to flee, having to hide in bunkers. It sucks. It's brutal. My heart is with the Russian people, the Ukraine. people during this conflict and understanding why Russia is doing this

again is not justifying them and you know people say don't even talk don't even don't even pay credence to like we don't support Russia you know this the narrative is so skewed towards the U.S. rhetoric and Ukraine that even having to hedge your

even having to add the caveat you know I don't I don't support what Russia's doing but that is that is bad and I don't necessarily think that's true. Maybe if you're just talking to a broad audience, like hammering something out on Twitter and throwing it up to who knows how many people that will see it, but the people coming to listen to this analysis are going to more or less be comrades, socialist, communist, people that know the damn deal, that know where I'm coming from. And so I think we should say

amongst each other at least that, you know, this is not time for us to say we're on the side of Putin and the Russian oligarchs, you know, but we should strike. to understand why they're doing that. And that's what I hope this little brief, this little brief episode will help do. And again, go check out that real life lore episode for more historical context and to see exactly, it's really fucking well done. I cannot sing its praises enough. And even just looking at a map, you know, I have a family and friends that whenever a political event of any sort happens, immediately come to me to help try to figure out, what's going on, Brett? Can you help me? And I have this big ass world map right above my desk in my

bedroom at home. And like when they come over and they ask me those questions, I take them back to the bedroom. First of all, here's the map. Okay. Here's where Ukraine is. Here's where Kiev is. Here's where Moscow is. This is what NATO is. Here are the countries that are part of NATO. This is where it's moved since the fall of the Berlin Wall, right? And being able to have that visual aid is very helpful. And in that real life lore video, it's all visual aid as well. And they actually like move the map around so you can see like from Russian perspective looking westward over Europe, what NATO expansion looks like, et cetera. So again, that can be very helpful.

Just looking at a map, very helpful in sort of understanding what exactly is happening here. And I've made great use of it in trying to help people in my life understand what's going on. So think about that. If you're that person in your family and friend group where people come to you to ask what's going on, it's very helpful to have that visual aid. Okay, we're at 30 minutes, love and solidarity, and I will talk to you soon. you're masters of war Here they build the big guns Here they build the death planes

Here that build all the bombs Is it hide behind walls Yeah that hide behind desks I just don't want you to know I can see through your mask You that never have done nothing But build to destroy You play with my world

Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes Then you turn and run fine When the fast bullets fly Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won

You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain like I see through the water that runs down my drain You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you sit back and watch When the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion When the young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And it's buried in the mud You thrown the worst fear They can ever be hurled Fair to bring children Into the world

Before threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins How much do I know But to talk out of turn You must say that I'm young You must say I'm unlearned But there's the one thing I know

I'm younger than you Even Jesus would never forgive what you do Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy your forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll

All the money you made will never buy back your soul and I hope that you die And your death will come soon I follow your casket By the pale afternoon And I watch while your lord Down to your deathbed And I stand over your grave

grave and I'm sure that you're dead