Ukraine War: Where Is the Opposition to Washington’s Warriors?

DSA, Sanders, and the Squad need a bold, socialist approach to stop the war.

• Class-based opposition to the Russian invasion
• No to sanctions on the Russian people
• No support for the NATO-Zelenskyy axis

By Alex Stout

On February 24, 2022, Putin ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This reprehensible act of imperialist aggression against a former Russian colony was also the latest in a series of escalations between the Russian and the Western imperialist bloc, represented by NATO and led by the US. Any socialist analysis must take both of these dimensions seriously as we seek a solution based on independent working class power.

As this is being written (April 23), the Russian invasion of Ukraine is playing out in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. The retreat to these areas came after over a month of stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces and their US-supplied advanced weaponry prevented the fall of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Stopping a rapid Russian victory, however, could not prevent the horrors of war.

Over five million Ukrainian refugees have fled the devastation to neighboring countries, the vast majority of them women and children due to the combination of Putin’s invasion and Ukrainian conscription separating families at the border. Despite being more welcomed by various xenophobic administrations than Syrian and other non-white refugees, refugee women fleeing Ukraine are still at risk of encountering new forms of danger and exploitation.

Despite the significant military difficulties Russia faced in its initial assault which led it to regroup its forces with a new focus on targets in eastern Ukraine, it is unlikely the war will be ended soon by a simple military victory of one side over the other.

What we face is an imperialist war launched by Russia against its former colony, Ukraine. In this sense, the Ukrainian people are fighting against Russian imperialism and neo-colonialism. As anti-imperialists and socialists, we support the Ukrainian peoples in this war of national liberation against Russian domination.

At the same time, this conflict is also a proxy war between different imperialist powers over control and influence in Ukraine, which changed its allegiance in 2014 from Russia to the West. This is part of an ongoing imperialist conflict over control of Eastern Europe through the expansion of NATO over 30 years, up to the Russian borders, as well as growing tensions between US imperialism and a rising China. As anti-imperialists and socialists, we oppose both sides. We are against the imperialist alliance led by the US, just as we oppose Russian imperialism and the authoritarian Putin regime. 

This war remains a volatile and extreme threat to the international working class with the danger that it could spill over into a direct military conflict between nuclear armed rivals.

Whether US or Russian imperialism comes out on top in their struggle for influence, it will not bring peace and justice to the peoples of Ukraine and the region, but will instead further entrench antagonisms that will result in new upheavals and wars sooner or later.

So far, on a global scale, NATO, with US imperialism behind it, is massively strengthened from this war. The ruling elites in Sweden and Finland were quick to use this situation to move toward joining NATO. Dramatic increases in military spending in a number of other European countries — while planned long before this war — were presented to a stunned and fearful public. The war has been used by the German ruling class to remove the post World War II limits on its military. The Social Democratic German government has announced a one time spending of more than $100 billion and a dramatically increased annual spending of more then two percent of the German GDP. All these measures make new wars more likely in the future.

At the same time, Russian imperialism — based on the export of oil and gas plus the power of the Russian military — is dramatically weakened. It will find its future role much more as a junior partner to Chinese imperialist aspirations.

The stage is set for an increase of economic nationalism, an economic detangling after decades of globalization, that will lead to a decrease in wealth — and someone will have to pay for it.

A new period of currency wars, protectionist economic conflict, proxy wars and conflicts between the US (and its various allies) and China (and its allies) is opening up. This even includes the threat of direct conflicts between nuclear powers which could easily spiral out of control.

A Class Struggle Strategy to End the War

Activists who base themselves on the interests of the working class will have to oppose all the imperialist camps, because they are fundamentally at odds with any prospect of peace for working people. Instead, the working class needs a strong, international anti-war movement to combat this crisis and the forces behind it.

The thousands of Russian peace protestors who have been arrested, and the thousands more who have bravely taken their place, represent a significant force though still a minority of the population. They need more support from the international anti-war movement, because despite its small size this movement has the potential to grow and seriously threaten Putin’s power.

The ongoing war in Ukraine is not simply the result of the choices of a few hawkish leaders or a crazy Russian dictator, something which could be avoided by electing or establishing leaders with better morals. At best this reasoning is well-intentioned, but too zoomed-in on the final domino on the path to war. In fact, inter-imperialist wars, as well as proxy wars using other countries like Ukraine as pawns and battlegrounds, have been and will always be a threat under the modern imperialist stage of the capitalist system.

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What is Imperialism?

Lenin’s treatise on the subject was called Imperialism – the Highest Stage of Capitalism. It was a polemical title for the debate in the international socialist and workers’ movement at that time. Every comrade could see the tendency toward militarism, arms races and military conflict, long before World War I. But how should this phenomenon be understood on a deeper level?

Karl Kautsky and others argued that there were competing policies favored by different parts of the ruling classes. While there were more aggressive sections of the capitalists who favored war, another tendency — according to Kautsky — pointed in a different direction: Large multinational corporations and their global needs would point away from militaristic and nationalist policies, and instead toward “ultra-imperialism” or “super-imperialism,” a more unified world market without an interest in military and other conflicts disrupting the interest of these large corporations.

In 1914, Kautsky wrote that next to a tendency toward war on the one hand, on the other hand “capitalist industry is threatened by the conflicts between the various governments. Every far-sighted capitalist must call out to his associates: Capitalists of all lands unite! […] From a purely economic point of view, therefore, it is not impossible that capitalism is now to enter upon a new phase, a phase marked by the transfer of trust methods to international politics, a sort of super-imperialism.”

For Kautsky, imperialism was only a temporary stage of capitalism, which might soon be discarded as capitalism continued to mature.

Lenin argued against this idea of a peaceful evolution of capitalism. A key concept for him was the “division of the world among the great powers.” As the access to markets, raw materials and geostrategic positions was already divided up amongst existing powers, the way forward for their rivals was only by means of force.

Capitalism leads to world markets and international production but is unable to overcome the limits of the nation state. These two factors are in contradiction with each other, and therefore capitalism cannot remain stable. In its highest state, the battle over spheres of influence intensifies. There are alternating periods of globalization and protectionism within imperialism – periods of expansion and ensuing battles over division of a growing pie, and periods of stagnation and depression where the contradictions escalate. However, capitalism inherently leads to imperialism, and imperialism leads to war.

Only a revolutionary, international, socialist workers’ movement can really end this.

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In our anti-war work Marxists are consistent internationalists because the only way to ensure a permanent peace is to end capitalism by a democratic, socialist rupture: we must overthrow global capitalism and its system of rival nation states, and replace it with a socialist system based on international cooperation and planning.

Socialism is the democratic rule of the working class, the only social force whose self interest is for a new international order based on its common interests. The working class under capitalism is usually dominated by pro-capitalist and nationalist ideas, but as it revolutionizes and becomes consistently class conscious it moves in the direction of common international struggles and adopting an internationalist outlook. While the capitalist class depends on outdated rival nation states, the logic of working class power points towards uniting working people globally.

Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and many more Marxists advised socialists to take the crisis of imperialist war and change it into a revolutionary mass movement (and since the class conflict starts in the political arena of each nation state, the movement must be directed first of all against our “own” capitalist classes in our respective home countries). We do that not by simply arguing for the ultimate necessity of a socialist revolution, but by fighting today for an immediate end to the war, as well as an end to the conditions which caused it, using that same working class power which has the potential to end all war. Only through the experience of organization and struggle can this class power be fully realized, and that starts with good-faith participation in whatever movements against the war exist today, while explaining what we believe will ultimately be necessary to eradicate the capitalist and imperialist roots of war.

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For Bold, Socialist Demands

In our initial statement, tinyurl.com/rnr-ukraine, after the invasion of Ukraine, Reform & Revolution advanced the following slogans:

No War in Ukraine! Build a Global Anti-war Movement! Disband NATO

• Russian troops out of Ukraine
• NATO battle troops and missiles out of Eastern Europe
• Solidarity with the Ukrainian people and the Russian anti-war movement
• Defend the democratic rights of the Russian minority within Ukraine

In addition to these central demands, we should add three more: 

Cancel all Ukrainian foreign debt. The US and other Western powers could offer financial assistance to Ukraine by pushing to cancel the significant national debt Ukraine owes to private banks, along with any debt owed to the IMF and other international financial institutions, some of which has been used as leverage to force neoliberal policies on Ukraine. However, Western governments adamantly oppose the cancellation of the debt. For them, solidarity with the Ukrainian people is currently a useful political sentiment to mobilize public opinion in support of their imperialist agenda against Russia and China. But they do not want support for Ukraine to undermine the sanctity of debt, setting a dangerous precedent that would harm their financial interests.

Address our energy needs not through expanding access to fossil fuels but through a socialist Green New Deal. We don’t need to get more oil from Saudi Arabia or by expanding drilling at home. We need massively expanded renewable energy, free and frequent public transportation, and a federal job guarantee shifting the economy toward low emission jobs like nursing and teaching alongside wage guarantees for workers transitioning careers. This can be accomplished by nationalizing the fossil fuel companies. As an immediate measure to defend living standards the government must provide energy subsidies for workers and the middle class, paid for by taxing big business.

Open the borders to all refugees of wars, not just from Ukraine, and to refugees from the climate crisis. Tax the rich to pay for more jobs, schools, healthcare and housing for refugees and people already in the US.

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Against Sanctions

Rather than seriously address the interlocking economic and humanitarian crises caused by the war, the Biden administration has instead sent billions of dollars in arms to Ukraine and has levied broad economic sanctions against the Russian people. This has helped to consolidate public opinion in Russia in favor of Putin’s war and against Western imperialism, which is blamed for the hardship inflicted on ordinary Russian people who played no part in starting the war.

The starting point for socialist internationalism is looking to the common interests of the world working class against war and against all capitalist ruling classes as the foundation on which to organize an effective fight against imperialism. This means foregrounding the need for a struggle against all the interlocking class and national oppressions involved in the conflict, including the workers of Ukraine against Putin’s invasion, the Russian minority within Ukraine against the repression of Zelenksyy’s government, the workers of Russia against Putin’s repressive regime, and the workers of the US against our own ruling class.

US-led Western imperialism has been struggling to maintain hegemonic control over the world, and expects the working class to foot the bill for the cost of preserving its power. Partly due to these destructive sanctions, we are seeing widespread inflation even in the US, and a sharp increase in gas prices.

The Biden administration has tried to mitigate this through various ad hoc measures, first announcing the release of some oil reserves in the State of the Union address, then seeking to pressure other countries to produce more oil for US markets. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, engaged in their own criminal war against Yemen, have so far declined to even speak with Biden until they are given even more support, while Venezuela has been more open to US requests for increased oil trade, despite the sanctions previously put on the Maduro regime. Despite these maneuvers, gas still averages over $4/gallon, inflation still greatly outpaces wage increases, and about two thirds of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.

Against Pro-war Propaganda

The response of the US working class to the war has so far been one of massive popular revulsion against Putin’s brutal attack on Ukraine, and a desire to help the Ukrainian people in their struggle, which we agree with. Unfortunately, this sentiment is being mobilized cynically by the US and Western ruling classes to further their own imperialist agenda. In this situation this popular reaction is encouraged — but when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen or Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, the mass media in the US turns a blind eye, leading to a tacit acceptance or ignorance of US policy in those cases.

Socialists must stand with the Ukrainian people against the invasion. At the same time, we also need to be critical of attempts to heroize Ukrainian president Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy’s administration has been supportive of the NATO expansion and aggression toward Russia, and had demanded that NATO include Ukraine long before the war started. He has been waging a war in eastern Ukraine against the Russian minority there, works with fascist forces in the military, and has worked to ban various political parties in a continuing effort to consolidate power. Eric Toussaint, spokesman of the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, has pointed out that even in the midst of this war, the Zelenskyy government is continuing to implement neoliberal austerity policies and allocate money to pay off debts in order to “remain credible in the eyes of the financial markets and various lenders.” While international socialists should call for all Ukrainian foreign debt to be canceled, Zelenskyy’s government itself could and should take a different approach: “suspending the payment of the debt [and] asking the country where the assets of the Ukrainian oligarchs are located to expropriate these assets and return them to the Ukrainian people.”

We should also see through attempts to blame Putin for the rise in gas prices or to promote the idea that Putin and Russia are somehow uniquely evil (while the US quietly continues to send arms to Saudi Arabia and Israel in support of their campaigns of human rights violations against the people of Yemen and Palestine).

Still, the impact of this propaganda can only go so far. Although there are a range of hawkish commentators eager to run headlong into nuclear war, the righteous sentiment from below combined with the wave of propaganda from above has so far only led to general support in the US for indirect intervention alongside general opposition to direct intervention. This much, at least, has been accomplished by demonizing the enemy, heroizing the ally, and normalizing US involvement.

For years now, US workers have been under sustained pressure, only increased by US involvement in this war, and conditions are still primed for more social explosions akin to the 2018 teacher strike wave or the 2020 BLM uprising. If the war drags on and the economic impact of the war on US workers were to increase further, or if the war escalates into a direct conflict between the US/NATO and Russia, public opinion in the US could move against the war. The war in Afghanistan, for example, was initially very popular, but ended in defeat for the US after two decades of increasing unpopularity.

There are also supplementary efforts to not only flood the mainstream media with pro-war and pro-NATO propaganda (or pro-war, pro-Putin propaganda, if you live in Russia), but also to control the flow of information through censorship. A wide array of countries in Europe (plus Australia and Canada), along with various major corporate-controlled platforms, have banned Russia Today (RT) and other state-funded sources of Russian media. As a side effect of this propaganda, anti-Russian sentiment is also rising, leading to xenophobic acts like the banning of Russian pianists in international musical competitions.

In this environment, and under goading from the hawkish mass media, a majority of US workers can be convinced to support (upwards of 74%) the abstract idea of instituting a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine; however, the majority opposes the actual result of such a policy — direct military conflict with Russia — and will oppose the measure if this link is made when asking the question. While unscrupulous war hawks obfuscate, an anti-war movement needs to spell out the consequences for such actions and tap into the sentiment of the majority of workers (around 65%) who do not want the US to get mixed up in a new military conflict with the risk of nuclear war.

As a result of all this confusion, the anti-war movement in the US is very weak, and mostly liberal in character — opposition is mainly directed at Russia or Putin, with little recognition of the role of NATO and the US in setting the stage for this conflict. After some initial protests, most areas have no active movement at all. Perhaps the largest organized progressive anti-war force, CODEPINK, has no more notable actions planned, and their campaign page has a few petitions calling for diplomacy which haven’t yet reached their goals of 10,000 signatures. It is currently difficult to cut through the propaganda to show most people how even indirect but severe economic sanctions are actually against our own interests as workers. A strong, clear lead from public figures on the left is needed to break through.

DSA initially played a good role in this regard, explaining the role that Western imperialist expansionism played and calling for the US to withdraw from NATO. This sparked immediate outrage from mainstream media and even the White House, which called DSA’s statement “shameful.” Where DSA’s statement fell short, however, was in addressing the critical question of what to do about all of this. After the initial statement, DSA has had no national campaign regarding the war, and never did call for protests in the US.

Sanders and the Squad

Unfortunately, when it comes to the war in Ukraine, left representatives on the national stage including the DSA members in Congress have largely failed to do much to help.

Bernie Sanders called for alignment with the forces of NATO and US imperialism:  “Now is the time to maintain unity with our allies and impose severe sanctions on Vladimir Putin and his government. Severe sanctions. These moves should not only isolate the Russian economy, but should include freezing access to the billions of dollars that Putin and his oligarch cronies have stashed in European and American banks,” Bernie Sanders said in a video speech, published on Feb. 25. Despite also voicing support for “targeted sanctions,” Sanders has not meaningfully opposed the Biden administration’s sweeping economic sanctions which have so far primarily hit the Russian people.

Out of the Squad only Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush ultimately voted against the ban on Russian oil. In contrast, AOC went so far as to broadly praise Biden’s State of the Union address (only offering mild critiques of his limited domestic policy). This was the same speech in which Biden pretended the pandemic was over, pledged to escalate the conflict with Russia, and which notably included the disturbing sight of a room full of US lawmakers and executives chanting “USA! USA!” in response to Biden’s mostly impotent promises to rebuild the US economy’s independence.

Sanders praised the anti-war activists in Russia, but said nothing about the need for an anti-war movement in the US. Ilhan Omar did not oppose in principle the US imperialist policy of sending arms to Ukraine, only raising concerns about the “size and scope” of US involvement. While DSA’s official statement correctly said “DSA reaffirms our call for the US to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict,” the four DSA members in Congress have not said a word against NATO. 

While most have been silent, Jaamal Bowman took the worst position, explicitly supporting NATO. The NY Times wrote that Bowman “signal[ed] distance from the DSA’s position, without the sort of direct condemnation that might alienate a component of his base and play into his opponent’s hands. He declined to comment for this article, but in a prior statement, he said he supports NATO, ‘and will continue to do so during this crisis.’” They also went on to report that “none of the nine New York City candidates the DSA endorsed this year would consent to an interview on the topic [of DSA’s opposition to NATO], even as more centrist Democrats are now using the subject as a cudgel.”

There is a natural sympathy with the Ukrainian people and a rightful condemnation of Putin’s brutal invasion from below, which the wave of liberal propaganda takes advantage of from above. This is the attitude of the average worker, who then sees left representatives in office doing what they can to curb excesses while supporting the main planks of US imperialist policy which don’t seem too objectionable, like sanctions and sending (some) arms to Ukraine. 

Working people want to defend the freedom and lives of the people of Ukraine, and while the hawkish liberals/progressives are convinced they have a solution in the current course of massive military aid to Ukraine, punitive sanctions on Russia, and escalation (with the vague hope of regime change), left representatives just come across as indecisive and weak. They gently press the brakes but do not challenge the overall motion of the war machine, saying something about not going too fast and trying not to hit bystanders on the way.

If socialists are to play our role in the anti-war movement we must first be understood to represent something different from the “progressive” stance on the war, which tends to collapse into the liberal stance on the war — support for (or at least failure to meaningfully oppose) US imperialism. This means having a class-based approach to the war, including clear opposition to US and Russian imperialism.

Arms for Ukraine?

Socialists support the struggle of the Ukrainian people against the Russian invasion, which absolutely includes an armed struggle. Does this mean we should call for the US and other Western governments to continue providing a massive flow of weapons to the Ukrainian government?

Socialists in the US and other NATO countries should answer, no, we cannot support this, for three main reasons.

First, we need to recognize that Western imperialist powers are intervening to further their own agenda, which is to expand their access to markets, raw materials, and control of Eastern Europe, as shown by the aggressive NATO expansion over the last 30 years — they aim to weaken their rivals in Russian and Chinese capitalism. This leads to new wars in the future.

Second, we cannot support arming the Ukrainian government, which is carrying out a policy of discrimination against the Russian minority in Ukraine seeking independence, has worked closely with NATO and Western corporations including through corruption (remember Hunter Biden!), and has a clearly right-wing, capitalist character.

Third, we know that there are terrible consequences to the US habit of flooding a region with high-tech arms when it fits their interests. There are many cases throughout modern history of US arms ending up in the hands of unscrupulous actors, with the Taliban in Afghanistan being just the most recent example.

In terms of the immediate military need to fight the invasion, yes, the Ukrainian people benefit from access to high-end military weaponry. If there were an independent working class resistance not subject to the control of the Zelenskyy regime, then the international labor and left movements should absolutely send them military aid. But even in the absence of such independent working class organizations capable of directly addressing the military dimension of the conflict, we can still support the Ukrainian resistance through political means.

Instead of calling for short-term aid which strengthens imperialism in the long run, we argue for a class-based political approach to the war not only for socialists in NATO countries but for the Ukrainian resistance as well. The Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion would actually be far stronger if the working class organized itself independently from Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian ruling class, because it would have the freedom to utilize its own political messaging as a powerful weapon against the invasion. 

Putin benefits from and relies on the narrative of an inevitable nationalistic confrontation between the West and Russia, in which the Russian people of course must side with Russia (and Putin’s regime). A recent poll from Russia’s most respected independent pollster showed that 81% of Russians now support the war, and say that the protection of the Russian minority in Ukraine is the primary justification. An international anti-war movement together with a Ukrainian resistance that openly supported the democratic rights of the Russian minority in Ukraine, including their right to autonomy or independence, that rejects NATO’s eastern expansion, and which opposed sanctions from Western imperialism, would undercut Putin’s cynical messaging. In fact, this approach would be far more effective in appealing to Russian soldiers to desert or mutiny, as it would clarify for them what they are really being asked to fight for.

What Next for the Anti-war Movement?

The calls for diplomacy from left representatives, various trends in DSA, and progressive organizations, might seem more innocuous. Many working people have hopes in diplomacy. If there is a chance to solve this conflict by talks, great! But is there?

The kind of negotiations needed to establish peace will not happen just by us calling on the parties to the conflict to sit together and “work it out.” Unfortunately, the calls for diplomacy from CODEPINK, DSA, and others on the broad left neglect the need for working class people to force the contending ruling classes to end the war. Only under pressure from a powerful anti-war movement based on the working class would the warmongers implement a peace solution that isn’t geared towards preparing for the next conflict by promoting one side’s imperialist interests over the other’s. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what diplomacy is if left in the hands of the imperialist ruling classes — one more tool in their soft power toolkit.

If this is not laid out clearly in our messaging, we end up propping up liberal illusions about the potential for a stable system of peace and international law under imperialism. In reality, global capitalism is descending into a new era of escalating big-power tensions and war. Our job is to soberly explain that a just system of international security requires an international socialist order based on the common interests of the working class, and no system of international law could deliver peace and justice if it keeps in place the deadly system of capitalism and rival nation states.

We understand that a class struggle approach to war can appear far off to most people today who want an immediate, “realistic” solution. But how “realistic” is the Western policy of sanctions? It’s not working — it’s increasing Putin’s domestic support. And a peace deal based on capitalist forces would be a temporary, unstable peace that would deliver new oppression and new wars.

Although the anti-war movement in the US is very weak, and the movement abroad is not yet all that much stronger, we should bear in mind that mass movements can spring up quickly in response to shifts in the objective situation. Even in September of 1965, several months after the draft was imposed for the Vietnam War, a little less than a quarter of the US population thought the war was a mistake. However, over the next few years the anti-war movement massively grew within the military and the wider population, making it extremely difficult for the US war machine to continue running, and ultimately helping to defeat the imperialist war (alongside the incredible resistance of the Vietnamese people).

Alongside clarifying our own approach, we should attend any anti-war events and build the movement on the basis of principled mass work, advancing our own politics while forming united fronts for joint action between socialists and other anti-war groups, so that we may be prepared to take advantage of any future surges in anti-war sentiment. Even at a small scale, we can still lay the groundwork for effective resistance to the US military industrial complex, and we can support direct action by workers in NATO countries and in Russia to block or shut down military supplies for Putin’s war machine as well. No matter how dire the situation, we can only rely on the working class of all nations, in international solidarity, in the pursuit of peace. We have a world to win; we have a world to keep safe.