NATO, Russia, War and Empires
“In a war of empire vs empire, there are no “good guys.” Does that mean the people of Ukraine deserve to be invaded and occupied? No.”
Ukrainian Anarchists During the Russian Civil War. Public domain image from Wikipedia.
“The State is Incapable of Good”
“We hold that the State is incapable of good. In the field of international as well as of individual relations it can only combat aggression by making itself the aggressor; it can only hinder crime by organizing and committing still greater crime.”
These were the words of Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, when he heard that many well-known socialists and a few anarchists had decided to support the Allied side in the First World War. The working class of Europe had the power to stop the war if they had come together in a general strike and refused to fight each other. Instead, they listened to the politicians, to the lies of patriotism, and marched out to be slaughtered.
Malatesta was not listened to, and the horrors of the First World War led only to the rise of fascism and the still-greater horrors of the Second World War. It’s been more than a century since then, and we haven’t learned a thing.
Empire vs Empire
A small minority of leftists, motivated by a parody of anti-imperialism, have chosen to take Russia’s side in the conflict in Ukraine. In their simplistic analysis, any action taken by the United States or NATO is by definition imperialist, so any action by the adversaries of the United States and NATO must be anti-imperialist. Never mind the fact that invading another country is an imperialist act, or that the Russian government has strong links to the Far Right despite any specious claims to be “anti-fascist.” Never mind the sheer brutality of modern warfare, or the murderous recklessness of launching rocket strikes into populated areas and artillery bombardments against nuclear power plants.
A majority of liberals have taken Ukraine’s side even more enthusiastically, ignoring the fact that the trigger for the conflict was NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, or that the Ukrainian National Guard includes the openly Nazi Azov Battalion, whose founder believes that Ukraine has a mission to, “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade”. Never mind the fact that every brutal thing Russia is doing in Ukraine has been done earlier by our own forces in the Middle East. Or that NATO member Turkey invaded neighboring Syria to seize the city of Manbij from democratic revolutionary forces, behavior indistinguishable from that of Russia. Or that Nazi organizations in Ukraine received training and support from the United States.
In a war of empire vs empire, there are no “good guys.” Does that mean the people of Ukraine deserve to be invaded and occupied? No.
Does it mean the United States should send troops to Ukraine and go to war with Russia, quite possibly leading to World War III? Obviously not. The fact that liberals are seriously suggesting this illustrates the moral bankruptcy of liberalism as a political philosophy. The death of every human being on earth is not a reasonable risk to take.
No War Between States
Malatesta’s quote at the beginning of this essay may sound pacifistic, but anti-militarism does not imply pacifism. In Malatesta’s view, there is only one legitimate type of war: the war of liberation against oppression. As Malatesta said:
“I am not a ‘pacifist’. I fight, as we all do, for the triumph of peace and of fraternity amongst all human beings; but I know that a desire not to fight can only be fulfilled when neither side wants to, and that so long as men will be found who want to violate the liberties of others, it is incumbent on these others to defend themselves if they do not wish to be eternally beaten; and I also know that to attack is often the best, or the only, effective means of defending oneself. Besides, I think that the oppressed are always in a state of legitimate self-defense, and have always the right to attack the oppressors.”
Russia had no right at all to invade Ukraine, and the Ukrainian people have every right to resist – just like a lot of other people all around the world, whose own resistance efforts have been labeled as “terrorism” because they don’t happen to be white, even when they don’t even have guns to fight with. Having said that, calls for NATO to intervene in this conflict are wildly irresponsible, based on a naïve worldview in which the United States is always the “good guy” despite all evidence to the contrary, and run the risk of triggering a nuclear war that could mean the end of human civilization.
Christopher Scott Thompson
is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, and devotee of Brighid and Macha. Photo by Tam Hutchison.