The liberals think that the lure of “democracy” as against Russian authoritarianism will override such concerns. It won't.
As Trotsky put it, explaining why the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, chose Nazi rule, in Germany, over “democratic” rule in Czechoslovakia,
“Intolerable social and political conditions must exist for citizens of a "democratic" country to be seized by a desire for fascist power. The Germans of the Saar in France, the Austrian Germans in the Europe of Versailles, the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia felt themselves citizens of third rank. "It will not be worse," they said to themselves. In Germany, at least, they will be oppressed on the same basis as the rest of the population. The masses prefer under these conditions equality in serfdom to humiliation in inequality. The temporary strength of Hitler lay in the bankruptcy of imperialist democracy.”
Trotsky did not argue, from such a basis, that Marxists should support Nazi Germany in seizing the Sudetenland, or other such majority ethnic German regions, elsewhere in Europe. Of course, not. Trotsky saw the solution, necessarily, coming from the actions of workers, themselves, uniting across national borders against the real enemy, the main enemy at home, the ruling capitalist class, not from the intervention of some other capitalist state, to which the workers would, then, subordinate themselves. As he wrote, citing Lenin from WWI,
“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?””
Similarly, as the world's largest, most heavily armed, and successful bandit – US imperialism/NATO – has continually gone back on its word, given to Gorbachev, at the time of his agreement to the reunification of Germany, by expanding its remit ever closer to Moscow, and has, during that time, continued to develop its weapons, is it any wonder that the other bandit, Russian imperialism, and its ally Chinese imperialism, has decided to launch an attack first?! That does not mean that Marxists support Russia's invasion of Eastern Ukraine, any more than Trotsky supported Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia, or Marx and Engels supported France invading Germany. Recognising the laws of motion of imperialism, and its consequences and setting them out, in opposition to bourgeois liberal humbug, is not at all the same as supporting, what, in the given conditions, are inevitable actions by the contending forces.
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