Ukraine: A Project of Empire
The confrontation between the United States and Russia is further proof that a workers' revolution is the only solution to global conflicts.
In the early hours of last Thursday, Russia decided to move more troops to two regions of Ukraine. Much of the corporate press coverage has painted a picture of an innocent and neutral United States facing off against an evil and unpredictable Russia. The coverage has also lacked the historical context of the conflict, ignoring unpleasant facts that could implode its narrative of American exceptionalism.
Wars, in addition to being immoral and unjust, never benefit the working class. But the military-industrial complex is a very lucrative business:
According to chief executives of the top taxpayer-funded weapons firms, their balance sheets will benefit from the U.S. engaging in great power competition with Russia and China, the recent escalations in the Yemen war, and the potential for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Those comments were all made on quarterly earnings calls this week, at which executives for publicly traded companies speak to investors and analysts who follow their industries and answer questions about their financial outlook.
The occasion brings out a degree of candor about companies’ fundamentals and their business interests that aren’t always disclosed in marketing materials and carefully worded press releases.
For example, CEOs from both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon outright acknowledged that a deteriorating state of global peace and security and an increase in deadly violence are very much in the interest of their employees and investors.
Lockheed CEO James Taiclet assured investors that the $740 billion defense budget — twelve times the budget provided to the State Department to conduct diplomacy — could continue to grow in 2023, a critical metric for weapons contractors, the ultimate recipient of nearly half of all defense spending.
To be clear, I am in no way defending what Russia has done. What they did is a violation of international law, but, nevertheless, it is also important to recognize that they are responding and reacting to violations of Western international law.
Putin is not alone in not wanting NATO expansion. Many Russian citizens don't want it either. But the imperialist attitude never takes into account the wishes and needs of the working class.
American exceptionalism implies zero self-reflection. But put yourself in the shoes of the Russians. What would you do if an imperial power, which has overthrown various governments for decades, was arming and establishing military bases in your neighboring countries with the intention of overthrowing your president and exploiting its resources and people for the benefit of corporate America?

Many people ask, what should the United States do about this? The only viable solution would be for the working classes to overthrow the US ruling class that uses war to enrich itself, thereby preventing further loss of innocent life to the benefit of a handful of oligarchs.
It would be immoral to entrust an empire with defending the sovereignty of a country that they overthrew in 2014.

Overthrowing the Ukranian President
At the beginning of his second term as president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych constantly tried to appease both the West and Russia.
He spoke to his followers about cooperation with Moscow. He made small gestures like taking steps to make Russian the country's official language (Ukraine was formally part of the Soviet Union), but Yanukovych also made bolder moves like refusing to join NATO.
On the other hand, Yanukovych encouraged US participation in "upgrading Ukraine's natural gas infrastructure." He insisted over and over again that integration into the European Union (EU), led by the United States, was a "key priority." In pursuit of EU membership, Yanukovych sought a free trade agreement with the EU along with a loan that Washington urged him to take from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But he accepted a better offer from Vladimir Putin:
To stop this drift to the West, Putin performed a one-man good-cop-bad-cop routine, offering Yanukovych a no-strings-attached loan the same size as the IMF, while squeezing him with what amounted to a mini trade blockade. . Since the EU offered nothing to match the catastrophic trade loss with Russia that Ukraine was contemplating, Yanukovych made a calculated decision to accept Moscow's offer. In November, he abruptly reneged on the EU deal, using protests that he would be removed from power.
Biden played a pivotal role as vice president during the coup in Ukraine during the Obama presidency, which means he is guilty of aiding Nazi forces in that region:
According to a recent report by Yahoo News, since 2015, the CIA has been secretly training forces in Ukraine to serve as "insurgent leaders," in the words of a former intelligence official, in case Russia ends up invading the country. Current officials say the training is purely for intelligence gathering, but former officials Yahoo spoke with said the program included firearms training, "cover and move" and camouflage, among other things.
… The year the program began, 2015, also happened to be the same year Congress passed a spending bill that included hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military support for Ukraine, one that was expressly amended to let that support flow to the country's resident neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Regiment. According to The Nation at the time, the text of the bill passed in the middle of that year included an amendment that explicitly prohibited "weapons, training and other assistance" to Azov, but the House committee in charge of the bill was pressured by the Pentagon months later to remove the language, falsely telling them it was redundant.
Despite open acknowledgment at times of its Nazism, its former commander once said that Ukraine's "historic mission" is "to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival" in "a crusade against the Untermenschen led by the Semites" - Azov joined the country's National Guard in 2014, due to his effectiveness in fighting Russian separatists. US weapons have found their way into the militia, US and NATO military officials have been photographed meeting with them, and militia members have spoken out about their work with US trainers and lack of vetting to weed out supremacists whites.
Amid the hysteria over a Russian invasion, MSNBC brazenly did a news segment where members of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment trained Ukrainian citizens how to defend themselves against Russians with assault rifles.


At the start of his term, Biden chose Victoria Nuland as his Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Nuland was instrumental in the American coup to overthrow Yanukovych and is a strong believer in American hegemony:
Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her, because the U.S. corporate media's foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden's pick for deputy secretary of state for political affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.
Nor do they know that from 2003 to 2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq, Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration.
You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying "Fuck the EU" during a February 2014 phone call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt appeared to be plotting to replace or undermine elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European Union for favoring former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko to take over as prime minister, instead of the U.S. first choice, Artseniy Yatsenyuk, who indeed took power after Yanukovych was ousted about three weeks later.
The "Fuck the EU" call went viral, as an embarrassed State Department, never denying the call's authenticity, blamed the Russians for tapping the phone, much as the NSA has tapped the phones of European allies.


This is not a conflict that arose two months ago out of the blue. It is part of the new American imperial order to have complete domination over anyone who disagrees with the global capitalists:
...We must examine a policy brief prepared for Biden in March by NATO think tank The Atlantic Council entitled "Biden and Ukraine: A Strategy for the New Administration," it lays out a set of goals to be achieved by the new president; Under its "key recommendations" heading, it outlines a series of actions the Biden administration should take. They include: "Work[ing] with Congress to increase military assistance to Ukraine to $500 million per year;" “Deepening Ukraine's integration with NATO” potentially “establishing a permanent US military presence” in the country; and “launch a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Ukraine”, if Russia remains “intransigent”. "Stay the course on Nord Stream 2" and a "strategic approach to sanctions" are also included in the list of key bullet points, in addition to supporting a series of free-market privatization campaigns inside Ukraine.
Compiled by former US ambassadors to Ukraine, Poland, and Russia, as well as the former Deputy Secretary General of NATO, the report's recommendations serve almost as a checklist of everything the US is trying to do. achieve. Last week, Congress rushed to pass a $500 million emergency weapons bill that would make Ukraine the third largest recipient of US weapons in the world, rivaled only by Egypt and Israel. The United States is sending thousands of troops to Eastern Europe; their Nord Stream 2 opposition remains as strong as ever; while the Ukrainian government under President Volodymyr Zelensky is moving toward the kind of economic shock therapy the Atlantic Council wants to see. All of this could lead a cynic to see the current crisis as little more than an excuse to force the goals set by the American establishment long ago.



Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war.
The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives.
They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasize the fact — and it cannot be repeated too often — that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation.
If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.
- Eugene Debbs, The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)
The working class love their country and are willing to fight dictators who are leading their country in the wrong direction. The US is willing to help those citizens who do not want to be ruled by a dictator. Jacobin writes articles through a socialist lens and is very unfair to use in a newsletter. If you argue that the US is aiding Neo-Nazis, well the UN is sending more military and aid to Ukraine. Would that mean they are also aiding Neo-Nazis? Ukraine has 170,000 active-duty troops, 100,000 reservists, and territorial defense forces that include at least 100,000 veterans. Look up the size of Azov Battalion - they're the size of a regiment. Meaning one to two thousand people, Azov Battalion is not running Ukraine. There are more Neo Nazis in the US with 3,000 to 6,000 Klan members.
“Many people ask, what should the United States do about this? The only viable solution would be for the working classes to overthrow the US ruling class that uses war to enrich itself, thereby preventing further loss of innocent life to the benefit of a handful of oligarchs” - Are you suggesting a revolution of our government? That is a very radical statement. Also, may I ask why? Russia started this war. Not NATO nor the US, Russia invaded a sovereign country off a ridiculous claim about the Nazis. The US citizen does not need to overthrow the government, Russian citizens need to! Putin and his actual oligarchs want this war. Russian citizens are already suffering the consequences of the stupidity of their leader. Russian soldiers don’t even want to invade Ukraine. They were told it was a military operation and that Ukrainians wanted to be liberated.
Overthrowing the Ukrainian President. Why do you blame the US and NATO? Viktor Yanukovych was a corrupt politician who stole money from his people and was a puppet for Putin. No mention in this article about how corrupt he was. Your article is about the working class, then you should support the 2014 revolution in Ukraine instead of talking about Nazis and Victoria Nuland. The people wanted the revolution because they wanted freedom, something Putin hates. Read: “ A brief history of corruption in Ukraine: the Yanukovych era” by Euroasia.org or "What did Ukraine's revolution in 2014 achieve?" by the Economist
In conclusion, blame the west if you want. However, remember who took the first shot. Who killed the first civilian and who denied diplomacy. Russia is an evil dictatorship that is targeting civilians, hospitals, and schools. Ukraine is fighting for freedom while Russia is fighting for control. Russia wanted this war, Ukraine wanted peace. NATO is supporting Ukraine. The US is supporting Ukraine. The world is supporting Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine!