You’re listening to Back in the USSR on 93.3 FM CFRU. I am Siegfried and this week we’re going to continue discussing the broader context of the war in Ukraine. You may recall that in my last episode I described it as the elephant in the room that no one could avoid and how Western media has gone into overdrive hyping up this “European War” affecting people who “look like you and me”. There’s just no getting around it because the media and politicians have made it all-consuming, in complete contrast with the wars in Yemen, Mali, Afghanistan, Congo, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Colombia and the list goes on. These wars, which mainly affect non-white people, are considered “normal” and violence in those countries is taken for granted by media consumers in Canada and other Western countries in the imperial core. Obviously, people actually living in those war-torn lands would beg to differ. The same is true for the violence waged by the Ukrainian government against the people of the Donbass in eastern Ukraine since the US-backed coup in 2014. 14,000 people, mainly civilians, died there prior to the current Russian intervention according to UN figures and yet the Western media and Ukrainian-Canadians didn’t say a word. Just like they prefer not to talk about Ukrainian neo-Nazis getting guns and training from Western governments.
This gets to the heart of the sheer hypocrisy that is everywhere these days and which is driving me absolutely crazy. I checked out both of the “stand with Ukraine” rallies held at Guelph city hall in the last two weeks and, for all their talk of peace, there was nothing anti-war about them. Basically, you have a bunch of angry white people, most of whom have probably never attended a protest or demo in their lives, and would certainly never show up in solidarity with indigenous land defenders, Palestinians or Black Lives Matter activists, showing up and parroting the talking points of the mainstream media, doing a lot of macho “support our troops” nationalist posturing, and calling for the devastating sanctions and collective punishment of Russian civilians to be expanded further. The one this past Saturday was attended by the mayor and our local MP, who gave the usual BS about Ukraine being a “peaceful” and “democratic” country that was suddenly set upon by this monster called Putin because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day or something – zero analysis, zero context, pure propaganda. But these people were eating it up.
These demos can hardly be considered protests in any real sense, they’re officially sanctioned outlets for white solidarity and white rage against an officially approved adversary. In short, these demonstrators are doing what they’ve been told by the government and media. They’re certainly not defying any authority in this country and can hardly be considered “brave” or “defiant”. The lack of a police presence at these demos was notable. Canada, as a settler-colonial state based on genocide hasn’t got a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing Russia and yet Lloyd Longfield and Cam Guthrie were talking like it’s an untarnished shimmering beacon of freedom and democracy. I think the folks at 1492 Landback Lane might have a thing or two to say about that, let alone the Wet’su’weten or the folks from dozens of First Nations across the country who are in the process of digging up the bodies of their children from the sites of former residential schools.
It's a scary situation we’re living through. Everything Russian is being demonized and censored. The University of Milan in Italy even cancelled a course on Dostoevsky, citing the conflict as justification, before an online backlash forced them to renew it. The LCBO is pouring out Russian vodka. Russian media is being banned on every social media platform and practically every means of economic warfare in the book is being piled on the Russian people – from banking and credit card shutdowns to suspensions from international sporting events. All this happened practically overnight. I can understand the frustrations of Palestinian activists who have been pushing for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Apartheid Israel for years only to be censured and even criminalized at every turn, because they were pushing for punitive actions against a government that targets and oppresses non-white people, which is something that the West doesn’t really have a problem with. Once again, major double-standards but it’s easy to understand if you know how imperialism works.
Israel is an extension of the US Empire. When it oppresses Palestinians or bombs people in Syria and Lebanon, that’s not Israeli imperialism, it’s US imperialism. Saudi Arabia is an extension of the US Empire. When it bombs Yemen it’s not Saudi imperialism, it’s US imperialism. Even when they don’t come right out and say it, the actions of these countries fundamentally serve American interests. Every since the coup in 2014, Ukraine has also been an extension of the US Empire and this is the main reason why the Minsk Accords in 2015 and other peace negotiations since then have failed…because the US wanted them to fail. The US wants to use Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as a bludgeon against Russia. They want Ukraine and Russia to fight one another. It serves American interests in unifying NATO against a common enemy, blocking Chinese and Russian economic cooperation with the EU, ensuring a market for US fracked natural gas in Europe at the expense of cheaper Russian natural gas, providing a market for the US arms industry, and potentially destabilizing a major adversary through sanctions and other means – all without a single American soldier dying in combat. This is the real game being played here.
Brothers and sisters, there is no such thing as “Russian Imperialism” in the 21st Century. Imperialism isn’t a byword for one country invading or taking military action against another, it’s a combination of military, political, economic and even cultural factors. Imperialism is a system. An imperial power doesn’t just conquer territory but markets and seizes economic control of entire societies in order to serve its own interests. This is what US and Western corporations do around the world under the auspices of the IMF and World Bank, which have effectively colonized the economy of Ukraine since 2014 – privatizing the land, labor and resources, as they’ve done in countries throughout the Global South. Countries dominated in this manner are not independent: they cannot independently set monetary policy, regulate the economy or control finance, and are subject to the dictates of international capital as upheld by the American Empire. Countries that defy this global order, like Iraq, Venezuela or Syria can expect sanctions, sabotage and military action.
This is not what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Russia does not economically dominate Ukraine and, given that Russia’s economy is on par with some of the smallest countries in the Eurozone, lacks the capacity to control or exploit foreign markets. The Russian economy is overwhelmingly dependent upon the export of raw materials, from oil to titanium, and produces few finished products. The basis of an imperialist economy is the import of cheap resources from the Global South and the export of finished products to countries in the Global South. This is what the West does, keeping the Global South in a position of subservience and exploitation. Russia, on the other hand, might be described as a Third World country with nuclear missiles.
There have been a lot of stupid comparisons between the Russian intervention in Ukraine and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, with attempts being made to equate the two. This despite the fact that Iraq was on the other side of the planet from the United States, presented no credible threat to the United States and was ultimately targeted because it stood outside of the American-dominated global order and refused to follow the free market dictates of the IMF. Because of its economic and political independence from global capitalism, it was targeted for destruction by the US Empire in an imperialist war – just as Libya and Syria would later be targeted in 2011.
Ukraine, on the other hand, is directly on Russia’s border. Its membership in NATO, and the potential deployment of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil, does present a credible threat to Russian security. Ukraine was not targeted because it stands outside Russia’s economic orbit, which is very small and globally insignificant, but because the US Empire has been aggressively expanding in Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War, finally putting NATO troops directly on Russia’s western frontier. It’s notable that Russian gas exports to Europe via the Soviet-era pipelines through Ukraine have gone completely unmolested in this conflict. This is not a 1914 situation when rival great powers were competing to divide up the world and become the new hegemon. The US is the global hegemon in 2022 and the sole imperialist power in the world, to such an extent that Russia is compelled to continue supplying Europe with natural gas in the midst of a warzone, a supply Ukraine cannot interfere with either.
Russia’s goal in the conflict is to keep Ukraine out of NATO and ensure security on its borders, not carve out new export markets to exploit or destroy an independent economy that the Fortune 500 views as a lost business opportunity – which is what America does and does regularly. America is imperialist, Russia is not. America, with its 800 + military bases worldwide, is the guarantor of the entire global capitalist order and uses imperial violence to keep so-called “rogue states” in line. All Russia can do is intervene militarily in neighboring countries from time to time in order to deal with a real or perceived security threat. America and Russia are very different countries and the wars they fight are very different too.
I want to cut to a clip from Danny Haiphong of The Left Lens (please follow him on Youtube) for his excellent analysis of the Ukraine conflict and the deep racism it has revealed, but first I want to play this short clip from Peoples Dispatch detailing the persecution of left-wing forces by the far-right Ukrainian government. I want to express my solidarity with Mikhail and Aleksandr Kononovich of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine, who were detained by Ukrainian authorities on March 6th, have experienced torture and are facing the very real threat of execution. They must be freed.
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