I’m trying to learn more about the Russia/Ukraine conflict. In the articles that I find that seem to be critical of Ukraine, there are a few that are right wing that seem to have similar viewpoints as what I’ve read on here or in the more leftist articles.
For example this piece from National Interest, or this from the CATO institute.
There are others that aren’t flagged as right wing that are critical, but it’s just got me wondering, why would right wing politicians/publications perceive these things similarly to how some communists would when the ideologies of both are so extremely opposite?
Disclaimer: I’m not pro-ukraine at all, but in my search for info that’s not super pro-Ukraine propaganda, this is the stuff that comes up for me
“USA provoked Russia into invading Ukraine” is not a communist talking point. It’s just a straight up fact. And it’s a fact that the American mainstream thought denies. Some interest groups will use this fact to delegitimise the current ruling party which is what is happening here. In the end, funding the war ended up pretty badly for the US with Europe somehow ending up worse off than Russia and the Global South rejecting the American line of sanctioning Russia. Republicans who want to win the next election are going to use facts as a cudgel when it is convdnient for them.
Libs support ukkkraine. Conservatives love owning libs, so they stumble into a correct idea.
American fascists believe that the US should team up with Russia (which, for all its faults, is still a Christian and “anti-woke” nation) to take down China. American liberals believe that the USA is powerful enough to take on the entire world at the same time. Both are utterly deluded and are basically like the Eye of Sauron just after the ring has fallen into Mount Doom—looking around frantically, lashing out at everything. (Sorry for the Harry Potter-esque reference.)
Communists are against all imperialist wars. Fascists are only against the war in Ukraine—they’re completely in agreement with liberals when it comes to genociding Palestine. This is why, on the surface, communists and fascists coincidentally agree on Russia/Ukraine. Communists believe that Russia deserves critical support for fighting imperialism, even if it is far from a flawless country.
I don’t think there’s even a need of critical support to Russia as the later is as eager as the USA to expand and export its imperialist core, that is the capital, to the said buffer states. These imperialist viewpoints are disguise as “geopolitical interests” for the so called Russian government without genuinely asking for the consent from the Ukrainian people. The fact that Putin and his gang denies the concept of Ukrainian nation is an evidence that it is nothing but a fascist state. Not saying that whatever Ukrainian government doing is great, as we know that Zelensky banning on the Russian language and the employment of the Nazis in their programme are well known to the leftist circle. I’m simply treating it as a proxy war between two decaying imperialist powers fighting against each other. I only throw my pity on the Ukrainian and Russian people for their suffering in this meaningless war.
even so, supporting the imperialist that is not currently the global hegemon is the correct move towards weakening imperialism, no? obviously the only reason russia (its ruling class at least) is fighting the US is because it wants the same status, or at least similar geopolitical dominance of its region, but it is still fighting the US and its interests all the same. aren’t 2 competing imperialists interfering with each other’s imperialist goals better for the rest of the world than 1 unified imperialist coalition that can sweep aside any and all resistance with ease?
this is what we mean by critical support, we are critical of the theory and politics of russia, but conditionally and temporarily condone in some senses particular actions by russia against US global hegemony. if russia was the primary global right-wing hegemon exporting nazi-ism and terror throughout the world instead of the USA the positions would likely be reversed. even if you think russia is just a less powerful version of all those things the US is, we would prefer to see our enemies fight each other rather than team up.
I don’t think there’s even a need of critical support to Russia as the later is as eager as the USA to expand and export its imperialist core, that is the capital, to the said buffer states.
That’s not what imperialist core means (phrase is imperial core and it refers to a region and populace, not capital). Imperialism requires a lot more than simple export of capital. They also are not imperialist in this case, just as Saddam Hussein wasn’t imperialist to resist US invasion. Russia has plenty of domestic areas for investment and are famously the lowest capital-to-asset ratio in the capitalist world. Russia is not capital rich. They aren’t imperialist. Stop repeating this Liberal lie and misanalysis. Russia’s economy resembles that of a colonized resource nation, not an imperialist financialized economy. They are anti-imperialist and destroying imperialist outposts. They are allied with all AES. Wake the fuck up and get on the right side of the line, I’ll be celebrating when Ukraine’s fascist junta is destroyed and NATO is kicked out of Eastern Europe.
American fascists believe that the US should team up with Russia (which, for all its faults, is still a Christian and “anti-woke” nation) to take down China
This is absolute delusion that will never happen unless Russia is regime changed. Russia and China are closer than ever before, and Russia and America are more alienated than ever before. 0% chance of this in the short to medium term.
The conservatives I’ve been hearing being anti-Ukraine aren’t fascists, they are “realist” more moderate conservatives like The Duran and Mearsheimer. They actually talk positively about China and don’t buy into the sinophobic fear mongering.
If they lack principles (i.e., if they are liberals or fascists or conservatives or libertarians or whatever you want to call them) I can’t trust them.
Conservatives: (incoherent false consciousness attempts to critique the contradictions of class society by talking about “globalism” or Soros or whatever)
Marxists: (less incoherent because they have Leninist critiques of finance imperialism which drives such actions such as CIA coups in east Europe to overthrow states)
As much as the “realist” faction (Mearscheimer, for example) sounded like the more rational ones, ultimately they’re wrong in their calculations.
Post-2009 global financial crisis saw Europe‘s rapid industrial recovery through bridging its economic ties with Russia/China to get away from the American sphere of influence, just as the US capital was hit hard by the financial crisis.
In other words, post-2009 America has been so thoroughly de-industrialized and its financial base weakened that it does not have the ability to take on China without taking out Europe first. If Europe throws its weight behind China during an ongoing US-China conflict, it very well could tilt the balance of power towards China, which is bad for America.
The war in Ukraine is America’s war against Europe, its imperialist rival. It really has less to do with Ukraine/Russia than Nord Stream and the expanding economic ties between Europe and Eurasia. The neocons, unfortunately, made the correct move: America’s only chance to take on China is to devour the European capital first.
The Neocons fully expected to win in Ukraine, regime change Russia and balkanize Russia. This was has been a disaster for them that has tilted the balance of world power towards Russia/China/Iran, not away from them
It doesn’t matter. Europe is already destroyed, that’s what mattered. Russia is irrelevant on the grand economic scale. What the US really fears is China, but BRICS still hasn’t come up with a way to dedollarize, and that’s still a win for the US.
The US empire cannot be defeated without dedollarization. More precisely, the US will go through its own decline but so long as the rest of the world is still tied to the dollar, the periphery will be the ones to take the brunt of the damage while the US will be the last one to go down.
The real problem is nobody knows how to cut ties with the dollar cleanly, so everyone is just dragging their feet instead of going for the short term pain. That’s exactly how the system is designed to work.
Russia is the strongest military on Earth probably at this time and is absolutely not irrelevant, you sound like the libs who called them a gas station masquerading as a nation. Russia outproduces all of EU and America in war production by orders of magnitude. Stop looking at GDP numbers.
The EU being cannabalized is a long term loss for the anglo-American empire as it’s weaker than ever.
Also if the goal was to separate Russia from China or weaken Russia they have only accomplished the opposite
I agree with most of what you’re saying but I think that the US vastly underestimated both Russia and China’s economic resilience. The US still achieved its goals of cannibalizing European capital, but it failed to inflict a battlefield loss or economic recession on Russia, who is now growing faster than the European powers. China is knocking down semiconductor trade barriers one by one by developing their own chips and stealing diplomatic marches (like the Iran-Saudi reprochmen) on the US empire without any warning. Moreover, China continues to respond to American provocations over Taiwan with the kind of political sangfroid that is only possible when you don’t have to pander to voters ever 4 years.
The jury is also still out on just how much cannibalizing EU capital will help America in the long term. The whole NATO bloc is now having trouble producing enough 155mm shells to outproduce just Russia. China has 200x the shipyard capacity of the US and the gap is growing.
I think that the US is doing what it calculates to be its only good options, but its calculations are off because it refuses to see anything except its own bloated GDP.
