The ICC and Putin

Putin heads up a vile, anti-working class regime that every socialist wants to see gone.  We would like to see Russian workers deal with him in he same way that Italian workers dealt with Mussolini.  But, the decision of the International Criminal Court to charge Putin with war crimes, shows it up for what it is, an instrument of imperialism, indeed much as is the United Nations, and other global para state bodies.  We can have no more faith in these global state bodies of the ruling class dealing with our class enemies than we can with the capitalist courts dealing with our own rulers, or acting impartially in disputes between labour and capital.

Its not that we doubt that Putin and his vile regime is guilty of all kinds of horrendous crimes, but so too are many other politicians and regimes across the globe, that the ICC is not bringing to book.  For example, Biden was quick to back the ICC's decision, but had to do it in shame faced manner, because he had to admit that the US does not recognise the ICC either!  And, for good reason, because if the ICC operated impartially, then it would have long since hauled US leaders before it to answer for the thousands of Iraqi children and civilians that died as a result of the US blockade of essential medicines and so on that took place during its opposition to Saddam Hussein.

Indeed, it would have been hauling both US and UK politicians before it for the war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib, on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and so on.  If it were able to look back it would be dragging other US and UK politicians and military leaders before it for the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the blanket bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, not to mention the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan.  

It would also be dragging UK politicians and military personnel before it for the shooting of unarmed civilians in Northern Ireland, and for the operation of a shoot to kill policy, implemented in Ireland and in Gibraltar.  It would also have plenty of material to work with in relation to the deportation of British children in the 1950's and after to Australia, not to mention the systematic abuse of children by the Catholic Church and so on.  But, the British government backed by Starmer has passed laws protecting British soldiers from any sanction.

But, it would also have been hauling before it politicians and military personnel of the colonialist and racist, Zionist state in Israel, not only or its racist laws, and systematic discrimination against non-Jews, but also for its documented illegal military occupation of Palestine, the Golan Heights and so on.  It could do toofer and try Putin and his mate Netanyahu at the same time.  But also, Al Jazeera and others have been calling for nearly a year for the ICC to bring charges in relation to the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, but it has failed to do so, whilst Israel openly brags that none of its soldiers will face action for the murder.

The ICC like the UN and other global para state bodies is just an instrument of imperialism, and consequently of its dominant powers, even though that most dominant imperialist power, the US, does not recognise it, and refuses to allow it to adjudicate on the upholding of those very principles it is supposed to support and abide by.  It is like the absolute monarch sitting above their laws.

As such, the ICC is highly partial in its operations, and the charges against Putin, whilst undoubtedly valid, are simply a part of the current global imperialist war being waged by US imperialism and its allies against Russia and China.  At the start of the last century, Trotsky wrote about the Balkan Wars, where similar things could be seen.

Countries in the Balkans, in the first Balkan War fought for national independence against their oppression by the Turkish, Ottoman Empire.  Given the historic links between Tsarist Russia, and the various Slavic nations in the Balkans, Russian liberals offered their support to these national liberation struggles, doing so, obviously for its own imperialistic reasons, in opposition to Turkish imperialism.  You could take the events and cut and paste them, and the arguments used, almost word for word for the actions and arguments used by liberal interventionists to justify US imperialism/NATO supporting this or that struggle against occupation or oppression across the globe, including, now, in Ukraine.

And, so too could the fact that, then, the media of the time in reporting events only mentioned the war crimes and atrocities committed by the Ottomans, whilst failing to mention the equally atrocious acts of those that were at war with them, including those supposedly liberating armies from Russia.  A glimpse of those atrocities commited by Serbs against Turkish civilians is given by Wikipedia.  Writing in response to the fact that his own reporting of Russian atrocities against Turks were repeatedly censored, Trotsky says to the Russian liberal Miliukov,

"You are one of the initiators and inspirers of what is known as the 'Neo-Slavonic' movement, which comes forward not otherwise than in the name of the most respected general principles of civilisation, humanity and national freedom.

You have frequently, both in the columns of the press and at the tribune of the Duma, assured the Balkan allies – that is to say, the dynasties and dynastic cliques ruling in the Balkans – of the unaltered sympathies of so-called Russian society for their campaign of 'liberation'.

Recently, during the period of the armistice, you made a political journey to the Balkans; you visited several centres and, what is of particular importance, you went to the regions recently conquered by the allies.

Did you not hear during your travels – it must be supposed that this would be of interest to you – about the monstrous acts of brutality that were committed by the triumphant soldiery of the allies all along their line of march, not only on unarmed Turkish soldiers, wounded or taken prisoner, but also on the peaceful Muslim inhabitants, on old men and women, on defenceless children?

Would you not agree that a conspiracy of silence by all of our 'leading' papers.... that this mutual agreement to keep quiet makes all of you fellow travellers and moral participants in bestialities that will lie as a stain of dishonour on our whole epoch?

Are not, in these circumstances, your protests against Turkish atrocities – which I am not at all going to deny – like the disgusting conduct of Pharisees: resulting, it must be supposed, not from the general principles of culture and humanity but from naked calculations of imperialist greed?”

Of course, the Russian liberal interventionists had no intention of reporting the "bestialities" committed by the liberating forces, any more than today they report on those committed by Ukrainian forces, or other forces engaged in wars as allies of US imperialism.  The response of the BBC to the mild criticism of Gary Lineker to the barbarous nature of Tory government policy in respect of asylum seekers, which even the Home Secretary herself admits probably breaks human rights laws, is just this same partiality on a very minor scale, compared to the way the bourgeois media acts to promote the interests of imperialism, by decrying the acts of its enemies, whilst keeping quiet or whitewashing its own barbarous acts.

To expect these institutions to act in any other way, let alone as the social-imperialists do, actively promote the involvement of imperialism in resolving the problems of the world's oppressed, is not just naïve, but an outright betrayal of workers interests.  We cannot rely on our class enemy, and its capitalist state to act impartially, let alone to promote our interests, whether it is in relation to the national economy, or in relation to human rights across the globe.  Those that suggest we can are deceivers of the working-class who should be shunned and thrown out of our movement.  As Trotsky put it, in relation to the Balkan Wars,

"But it is not at all a matter of indifference by what methods this emancipation is being accomplished...  That positive, progressive result which history will, in the last analysis, extract from the ghastly events in the Balkans, will suffer no harm from the exposures made by Balkan and European democracy; on the contrary, only a struggle against the usurpation of history's tasks by the present masters of the situation will educate the Balkan peoples to play the role of superseding not only Turkish despotism but also those who, for their own reactionary purposes, are, by their own barbarous methods, now destroying that despotism...

Our agitation, on the contrary, against the way that history's problems are at present being solved, goes hand in hand with the work of the Balkan Social Democrats. And when we denounce the bloody deeds of the Balkan 'liberation' from above we carry forward the struggle not only against liberal deception of the Russian masses but also against enslavement of the Balkan masses.” (p 293-4)

When we see those in the labour movement who are more than familiar both with history, and with the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, take such words, and turn them into their opposite, so as to justify their current support for such liberal intervention, as for example in Serbia, Libya, and now Ukraine, what are we to make of such people? 

The AWL, for example, took Trotsky's writings above, to justify, if not openly give support for the intervention of US imperialism, which would have been a more honest approach on their part, then, for a refusal to oppose it, as Trotsky demands above.  They take one part of what Trotsky wrote,

“An individual, a group, a party, or a class that ‘objectively’ picks its nose while it watches men drunk with blood massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive."

And, interpret it to mean that we cannot sit idly by whilst a Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad or Putin carry out atrocities, and, if our own weakness means we cannot stop them, then why would we oppose them being stopped by some other force, such as US imperialism/NATO?  Of course, if they applied that consistently, they would demand the same action against the Zionist regime in Israel, and so on, and, of course, would be calling for the US to invade and bring about regime change in Moscow and Beijing!

But, of course, as all of Trotsky's writings above demonstrate, this paragraph means the opposite of what the AWL would have us believe.  It was not written as a justification for liberal intervention, but in opposition to it, the atrocities that Trotsky refers to are those of the "liberators"!  And, that is made clear in the paragraph that follows the one the AWL quote, but which the AWL never quote along with it.  In it, Trotsky makes clear that he is referring to atrocities committed by the liberators against which the socialists should protest.  He says,

“On the other hand, a party or the class that rises up against every abominable action wherever it has occurred, as vigorously and unhesitatingly as a living organism reacts to protect its eyes when they are threatened with external injury – such a party or class is sound of heart. Protest against the outrages in the Balkans cleanses the social atmosphere in our own country, heightens the level of moral awareness among our own people. The working masses of the population in every country are both a potential instrument of bloody outrages and a potential victim of such deeds. Therefore an uncompromising protest against atrocities serves not only the purpose of moral self-defence on the personal and party level but also the purpose of politically safeguarding the people against adventurism concealed under the flag of ‘liberation’.” (p 293) (emphasis added).

We need to deal with all crimes against humanity, but we cannot give credence to the institutions of imperialism as impartial agents in any such process, and those like the AWL that suggest otherwise are simply acting as conscious agents of that imperialism within the labour movement, and should be removed from it.  It is for the working-class itself to deal with the butcher's, all of which serve the interests of our class enemies in one camp of imperialism or another.  Asking the UN, NATO, the ICC and so on, to deal with our class enemies is like asking Satan to deal with the devil.