The USC talk about the annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights by Israel, and say that socialists have opposed it, not accepting Israel's security concerns as justification. True, but socialists have, also, not been supporting a war against Israel to reverse those occupations either! What would be the USC's position be if Syria, or the Palestinians engaged in a war with Israel to end those occupations and sought military support and weapons from wherever it could obtain it, say Russia and/or China, to do so?!
But, the issue also ties in with the USC's next comment in relation to the Minsk Agreements, because the UN has repeatedly stated that Israel's actions in those occupations, along with its occupation of the West Bank are illegal, and called for them to be reversed, but without any effective action to bring that about. In response to the Russian annexation of Crimea, the US and its allies instituted the comprehensive and growing set of sanctions against Russia, and provided the huge amounts of military hardware, and financial support to Ukraine.
So, we might ask where is the same response of sanctions against Israel, where is the same level of military and financial support to Palestine and Syria to oppose the occupations by Israel. USC supporter, Paul Mason has called for even more in the way of sanctions, as have others, and yet, despite the corrupt and reactionary, racist regime of Netanyahu, who is also close to Putin, expanding its occupation and creation of settlements, USC affiliates such as the AWL, oppose any such sanctions against the Zionist state in Israel. A state whose very ideology and basis is founded in colonialism and nationalism, and denial of nationhood to Palestinians! There is a lot of empty talk and hand-wringing about the actions of Israel, but never any effective action to oppose it, in sharp contrast to the actions in support of Ukraine.
And, similarly, socialists could have no more faith in the actions of the UN, let alone the US, to implement pacifist measures in respect of the Minsk Agreements than they could in respect of the actions of Israel, and denial of rights to Palestinians. In the end, something like those Agreements will be implemented, as Russia consolidates its hold over Eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine will sign a peace treaty acknowledging the reality.
The USC also discuss the wider context in relation to the Baltic states. They admit that the US attempted to take advantage of historic suspicion of Russia in those states, which also have significant ethnic Russian populations. They refer to Georgia in 2008, and state,
“In the event, parts of Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) were occupied by Russian troops, and still are. A part of Moldova is also occupied by Russian troops. The context is Russia’s reluctance to pull back from territories that it historically colonised.”
But, the reality is somewhat different. In 2008, after having been encouraged by NATO, as the USC admit, the dangerous fantasist Saakashvilli, launched genocidal attacks on South Ossetia. We saw the same claims by Georgia about Russian activities and so on, that even US Defence Secretary Robert Gates had to distance himself from. Yet, once again, we saw members of the AWL, who now support the USC, acting as apologists for Saakashvilli, just as now they do for Zelensky, and as they painted the Libyan jihadists in rose-tinted colours. In 2008, Russia could easily have occupied the whole of Georgia. NATO claimed that it would do so, but, it didn't, as Gates account shows. If the USC claim about a reluctance to pull back from its former “colonies” were true, it would have taken the whole of Georgia.
Does Russia have its eyes on a restoration of the Tsarist Empire, or of all the territory of the USSR? Maybe, but I doubt it. The age of colonial empires died, at about the same time that Lenin was discussing them in 1916, in his mistaken belief that WWI was about imperial powers carving up the world. Those colonial empires were based upon the dominance of merchant and financial capital, and a still significant role played by the old landed aristocracy. They depended upon monopoly and protectionism, and the extraction of surplus value via unequal exchange. That was wholly inefficient and costly to maintain. It was undermined in the late 19th century by the rise to dominance of industrial capital deriving surplus value, via relative surplus value, and exploitation of labour, and the drive, therefore, to break up the old colonial empires, and their associated monopolies and protectionism.
This imperialism is characterised by the need to forge ever larger single markets, and states based upon them, such as the EU. The world is not going back to the age of 19th century colonialism and territorial empires.
No comments:
Post a Comment