We post below links to an article and a statement issued by the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) in the United States.
RED ANT does not have the resources to fully study the situation regarding Ukraine, Russia and NATO but the analysis provided by the PSL is convincing.
The statements should be read in full to understand the PSL’s position which in part states:
“While we do not support the Russian invasion, we reserve our strongest condemnation for the U.S. government, which rejected Russia’s legitimate security concerns in the region, with total intransigence that they knew could provoke such a war.”
and, later, also states:
“Recognising that Russia has legitimate security concerns does not require an endorsement of all its military actions, nor Putin’s suggestion that Ukraine has no basis to exist as an independent county, nor his larger geopolitical strategies. The role of the U.S. anti-war movement is not to follow the line of countries in conflict with U.S. imperialism, but to present an independent program of peace and solidarity and anti-imperialism.”
RED ANT adds:
A major contradiction in world politics today, with direct bearing on the crisis, emerges from the substantially capitalist, top-down nature of the larger non-monopoly capitalist states such as Russia and China. This means that when forced to defend themselves against aggressive containment from US/NATO imperialism, they usually adopt strategies based on militarism or direct state-to-state diplomacy.
A socialist government in any of these countries would – by contrast – take its case for defence against imperialism to the peoples living in the imperialist states and attempt to win them over to an anti-imperialist view and action.
Current Russian strategies relying mainly on military moves are defensive vis-à-vis US/NATO aggression.
The US/NATO led alliance of rich imperialist states is both the dominant global hegemonic force and undeniably highly aggressive in relation not only to Russia but also China, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela or any country that defies the dictates of the global “rules based order”; an order that continues to enrich a small number of imperialist states.
This critically important context – the global imperialism of the rich, monopoly capitalist countries – is something that socialists active inside imperialist states like Australia need to constantly emphasise and explain. If this is not explained, then the propaganda line peddled by the capitalist media and governments remains unchallenged.
The vast majority of the working people in Australia are unaware of the various acts of US/NATO aggression in the Ukraine and against Russia. Nor are they aware of Russia’s decades long defensive security demands against NATO aggression – reflecting a Russian policy of attempting to establish peaceful co-existence with the vastly more powerful European imperialist powers.
However, even if defensive in relation to imperialism, Russia’s invasion is clearly an act of aggression against Ukraine. It creates many dangers for working people in all the affected nations and it also may backfire on the Russian state.
It is instructive that, in launching the invasion, Vladimir Putin directly attacked the original Bolshevik policy led by Vladimir Lenin’s government which – as the PSL outlines – was based on the democratic right of nations to self-determination.
The two PSL statements on this crisis can be found below:
RED ANT 