Following Britain's provision of longer-range, Stormshadow Cruise Missiles to Ukraine, and as NATO/Ukraine's War with Russia has got bogged down into an inevitable stalemate, the use of aircraft type drones, by Ukraine, to bomb Russia, targeting a residential area, where Putin lives, was a foreseeable development. It follows Ukraine's terroristic car bombings in Moscow, attacks on oil pipelines in Russia, and NATO's blowing up of the Nordstream pipelines. Its typical of such situations. Even looking at NATO's designs on Putin's regime, it involves a putschistic adventure by generals to remove him.
Viewed in the kinds of moralistic terms that petty-bourgeois liberals, and social-imperialists use, after months of Russia's bombing of Kyiv, Putin and his regime could hardly complain at getting repaid in similar treatment. But, Marxists do not operate on the basis of such moralism and moralising justifications. We are not concerned with who shot first, who engaged in the worst or greatest number of atrocities – because, as Trotsky described, in relation to the Balkan Wars, wars inevitably involve atrocities by all sides – but with what represents the interests of the working-class, as a global class, and what leads to an historically progressive solution.
Viewed in those terms, its clear that what the bombing does is to confirm the narrative of Putin and his regime that it is under attack from NATO imperialism, and that NATO's expansion Eastwards, its development of bases in Central Asia, where it has aligned with vile regimes, is all part of a grand plan to encircle and defeat not only Russia, but also China. Like a Hobbesian sovereign, therefore, Putin says, you must submit to me as your defender against these invaders. Trotsky noted exactly the same thing with Hitler in the 1930's.
“Fascism is a form of despair in the petty-bourgeois masses, who carry away with them over the precipice a part of the proletariat as well. Despair, as is known, takes hold when all roads of salvation are cut off. The triple bankruptcy of democracy, Social Democracy, and the Comintern was the prerequisite for the successes of fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism...
The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler's regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody, and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the "pacifist" jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler's speeches. "You see," he says to the German people, "even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!" Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin —Jouhaux, Toledano, 16 and Company — are the best aides of Hitler in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers...
The struggle against fascism demands above all the expulsion of the agents of "democratic" imperialism from the ranks of the working class. Only the revolutionary proletariat of France, Great Britain, America, and the USSR, declaring a life-and-death struggle against their own imperialism and its agency, the Moscow bureaucracy, is capable of arousing revolutionary hopes in the hearts of the German and Italian workers, and at the same time of rallying around itself hundreds of millions of slaves and semi-slaves of imperialism in the entire world. In order to guarantee peace among the peoples we must overthrow imperialism under all its masks. Only the proletarian revolution can accomplish this. To prepare it, the workers and the oppressed peoples must be irreconcilably opposed to the imperialist bourgeoisie and must be rallied into a single international revolutionary army. This great liberating work is now being fulfilled only by the Fourth International.”
And, after the fall of the USSR, a similar fate befell, Russia. Putin was the child of imperialism's pillaging of the USSR, under the tutelage of its puppet Yeltsin, as Hitler was that of the Versailles Treaty, and the failures of German democracy, and social-democracy. Putin's narrative works, just as did Hitler's, because, as with any successful lie, it is based upon a core of truth. US imperialism did pillage Russia; it is seeking to limit the rising economic and strategic power of China; it has expanded Eastwards to encircle them both, just as the US did in the Pacific in the 1930's with Japan; it does want again its puppets in Moscow and Beijing, or to break apart these vast states, so as to install its puppets in parts of them. The lie, of course, is that the Russian workers, solution to that comes from Putin, rather than, as Trotsky describes above, an alliance with other workers, globally, to overthrow the ruling class, and its capitalist/imperialist world order.
Of course, the same is true in reverse. Its almost certain, as former NATO General Secretary, George Robertson, confirmed, that NATO deliberately goaded Putin into invading Ukraine. They thought they would draw him into a war that Russia could not win, that would drain its resources, provide cover for stepping up the sanctions and isolation of the Russian economy, and so create the conditions for a putsch against him, so as to install a more compliant regime. In addition, what Putin's invasion did, was to strengthen the reactionary forces;, like the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, in Ukraine, just as NATO's war against Russia strengthens the fascistic and nationalistic forces in Russia. It rallied workers in Ukraine around the flag of that reactionary nationalism, and gave cover to the corrupt regime of Zelensky, and its narrative of the need to join NATO, a narrative which had continually won the support of only a minority in Ukraine previously.
More than that, however, that narrative was conveyed wider into the Baltic and Scandinavia, drawing Finland and others, also, into the structure of NATO imperialism, as the world divides, at an increasing pace, into two competing, nuclear armed camps, hurtling towards World War III. It demonstrates, in stark terms, that the proxy war being fought out in Ukraine, is thoroughly reactionary on both sides. The idea that it could be viewed as simply a national war of independence, by Ukraine, as Ukrainian liberals and social-patriots, and other social-imperialists have claimed, was always nonsense, and Ukraine/NATO's bombing of Moscow, as well as the series of previous terroristic car bombings, blowing up of Nordstream, the incident in the Black Sea, and so on illustrate. Again, Trotsky describes, precisely, the same conditions, in relation to the run up to World War II.
“It is impermissible to consider a war between Czechoslovakia and Germany, even if other imperialist states were not immediately involved, outside of that entanglement of European and world imperialist relations from which the war might have broken out as an episode. A month or two later the Czech-German war – if the Czech bourgeoisie could fight and wanted to fight – would almost inevitably have involved other states. It would therefore be the greatest mistake for a Marxist to define his position on the basis of temporary conjunctural diplomatic and military groupings, rather than on the basis of the general character of the social forces standing behind the war...
We have repeated hundreds of times the priceless thesis of Clausewitz that war is but the continuation of politics by other means. In order to determine in each concrete case the historic and social character of the war we must be guided not by impressions and speculations but by a scientific analysis of the politics which preceded the war and determined it. These politics from the very first day of the creation of Czechoslovakia had an imperialist character...
One can say that besides the partition of the Sudeten Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and possibly the Slovaks too, Hitler will not stop before the enslavement of the Czechs themselves and that in this case their struggle for independence will have every claim upon the support of the proletariat. To pose the question in this manner is nothing but social-patriotic sophistry. What concrete roads further development of imperialist antagonisms will take we do not know. Complete destruction of Czechoslovakia is possible, of course. But it is also possible that before this destruction will have been accomplished a European war will break out and Czechoslovakia will find itself on the side of the victors and participate in a new dismemberment of Germany. Is the role of a revolutionary party then that of nurse of the “victimized” gangsters of imperialism?”
NATO imperialism miscalculated. Despite all of their propaganda about Russia seeking to invade all of Ukraine, Putin never had any such intent. Indeed, he would probably have preferred some kind of deal that left the Eastern republics inside Ukraine, giving him future leverage inside the country, on the basis of some kind of Minsk III, agreement, which is still probably where this war ends up, but, now, in the form of a peace deal, in which Crimea and the breakaway republics are annexed by Russia, as previously with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As with the new flare up of ethnic violence in Kosovo, and the 70 years of ethnic conflict that has followed the creation of the Zionist state in Israel, the carve up of the Indian sub-continent, into continually warring ethnic groups in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and so on, it provides no lasting, historically progressive solution.
As with Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, Putin has followed the NATO playbook, used in its war against Russia's historic ally, Serbia, using Kosovo as its pretext. In fact, its the same approach that colonial powers always adopted, of creating ethnic enclaves, as bulwarks, as with Britain in Gibraltar, the Falklands, the North of Ireland, and so on. Putin has no need to invade the whole of Ukraine, and it would be idiotic and suicidal to do so. But, in the last 6-8 months, Russia has been able to consolidate its military position in the Eastern Republics, making it near impossible for Ukraine, even with NATO support, to retake them. That is why, the much vaunted “Spring Counter-Offensive” by Ukraine, failed to happen.
In modern warfare, offensive weapons such as tanks, aircraft and missiles have become more or less redundant, as means of offense, against any reasonably equipped defence. All can still be used effectively defensively, on your own territory, but become useless, or at least highly vulnerable, on the enemy's territory. Russia's tanks were minced by Ukrainian infantry, using shoulder launched anti-tank missiles, and, now, Ukrainian tanks, trying to launch a counter-offensive, face exactly the same fate, whether they travel by road or across country. Aircraft and missile systems can be used to defend, on your own territory, with the support of radar and electronic jamming systems, against both land attacks and air attacks, but are vulnerable on the enemy's territory to being shot down by their own such defensive systems. As with WWI, it becomes, again, a war of attrition, but, now, the attrition is of weapons, not of soldiers.
Last Summer, we were told, by NATO apologists like Paul Mason and others, that Russia was on the brink of defeat, complete with maps and so on. Russia was about to run out of weapons and ammunition, as though its vast resources could not simply produce an endless supply of them, as well as buying them in from China, Iran and elsewhere. It went along with the NATO propaganda that Putin was weeks away from dying of cancer that a palace coup was imminent and so on. A year later, Putin is still there, and continues to lob artillery shells, bombs and missiles at Ukraine at a heavy and steady pace.
If anything, its Ukraine, despite its massive NATO supplies, that is in danger of running out of supplies, and that is part of Russia's strategy of sitting back in its Eastern enclaves, and simply attacking from long range, Ukrainian infrastructure, including its military command and control and defence infrastructure, in the shape of fuel and arms dumps, radar and communications, and air defence systems. Anyone who has played any of the Command & Conquer computer games will be familiar with the strategy. I'm only surprised Russia hasn't yet used small commando units to take out those Patriot systems, and so on.
But, there is probably a reason not to. Paul Mason, as well as becoming a professional propagandist for NATO, has also become a sales representative for western arms producers, who supply those huge amounts, and hugely expensive weapons being tested out, using Ukraine as a live firing range. He reports that the Patriot missile defence batteries have been able to take down, even the Russian hypersonic, Kinzhal missiles. However, to do so, it fired 30 missiles in the space of 2 minutes, and that is the equivalent of 6% of Raytheon's entire annual production!
The problem for Ukraine, and NATO, is that Russia can keep lobbing drones and missiles at these Patriot defence systems, of which Ukraine only has two such batteries, until Ukraine runs out of missiles to fire, at which point the battery not only becomes useless, but can itself be destroyed by even cheap drones and missiles. As with all of the very expensive, and sophisticated, but, more or less, useless, offensive weapons supplied by NATO to Ukraine, it would be a big propaganda blow against NATO.
The territorial war of offensive and counter-offensive has, more or less, run its course, and achieved a stalemate. As with Bakhmut, Russia might slowly capture additional bits of territory in the East and South, but nothing beyond that, whilst Ukraine might make small counter-offensives, at great cost in men and materials, but with no chance of capturing Eastern Ukraine, Crimea or the Black Sea Coasts, without a large-scale active involvement of NATO forces, which would mean the opening of World War III proper. NATO is not ready for that, yet. Hence, the war settles into this long range air war of attrition, accompanied by the sporadic terroristic attacks of Ukraine on Russia itself, undoubtedly supported by NATO/US intelligence and Special Forces, as set out in the leaked US Defence Department papers.
The last legs of the argument of the social-imperialists of the USC etc. have been broken by Ukraine's bombing of Moscow, as the nature of the war as an inter-imperialist war, reactionary on both sides, becomes, now, undeniable.
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