[In a critical assessment of this new book, reviewer Draitser
challenges some widely-held views and assumptions about the
Russia-Ukraine war.]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

MAKING SENSE OF THE UKRAINE WAR  
[[link removed]]


 

Eric Draitser
January 27, 2023
Tempest
[[link removed]]


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_ In a critical assessment of this new book, reviewer Draitser
challenges some widely-held views and assumptions about the
Russia-Ukraine war. _

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War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies
OR Books
ISBN 978-1-68219-371-6

Several years ago, I was sitting in a Lower Manhattan café with a
friend, the journalist Arun Gupta, lamenting the state of the Left and
how so many ostensible leftists had become little more than
cheerleaders for reactionary politics. While downing mediocre coffee
and an overpriced salad bar lunch, I listened as Arun made an incisive
observation: “In the U.S., the Left has never been close to power.
But even powerless, the Left has had influence through correct
political analysis. The Left has shaped politics by being right.”
And as I thought about it, Arun had a great point. Whether it was the
labor movement, civil rights movement, the anti–Vietnam-War
movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movement, or the
anti-nukes movement, all were propelled into the mainstream of U.S.
political life by the Left.

And so there is a tradition that we on the Left in the United
States—the diseased heart of the imperial “West”—have an
obligation to uphold. Our job is not to cosplay as Little Kissingers
studying the global chessboard and basing our political views on the
positioning of non-Western pieces. Instead, our responsibility is to
discern what is real and to defend and propagate that truth in the
service of internationalism and liberation from capitalist and
imperialist oppression.

Our job is to help others understand violence: who is perpetrating
aggression, who is victimized, and how we can stop it. Our job is to
make sense of the senseless.

With that principle in mind, the new book _War in Ukraine: Making
Sense of a Senseless Conflict
[[link removed]]_ by Medea Benjamin
and Nicolas J. S. Davies (of the antiwar group CODEPINK
[[link removed]]) fails on every level. It offers a myopic
view of Russia’s war in Ukraine that sees the entirety of the
conflict through the lens of U.S.-NATO aggression without making even
a perfunctory attempt to engage with the many other critical aspects
of the war: oligarch rivalries, capital accumulation, imperial
revanchism, anti-communism, resource extraction, and more.

The book makes no effort to understand Ukrainian perspectives beyond
casting the entire society as nameless and faceless pawns of U.S.
imperialism. Similarly, the authors don’t bother to engage with any
Russian perspectives—except those of Vladimir Putin—let alone
provide a materialist analysis of Russian society, economy, or
political institutions. It makes little mention of the events leading
up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, save for those
that involve NATO, omitting Russia’s military intervention in
Kazakhstan
[[link removed]]in
January 2022 to crush a worker uprising. The authors studiously avoid
even a superficial analysis of the nature of the so-called People’s
Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, how the situation came to be, or the
players involved.

In fact, Benjamin and Davies ignore all the critical elements of this
ghastly and criminal war apart from the wrongs of the United States
and NATO. And even with respect to NATO, the authors fail to capture
the complexity of its role since the end of the Soviet Union,
carefully sidestepping the inconvenient examples of NATO-Russia
collaboration.

It is distressing to see leaders of one of the most prominent antiwar
organizations in the United States, in effect, upholding Putin’s
left flank, offering up hollow condemnations of the Kremlin while
using its propaganda to badly misinform the public about the nature of
a war that has already shaken the global capitalist system and has the
potential to end human civilization.

With that in mind, I offer this review for those interested in a
serious analysis of the war and its attendant complexities, one that
jettisons the fundamentally flawed framework of Benjamin and Davies
and instead maintains an internationalist, anti-colonial, and
authentic anti-imperialist perspective.

A Critical Look at U.S./NATO-Russia Relations

Benjamin and Davies are at their strongest when highlighting the
vicious U.S.-NATO war machine, which sends arms and soldiers across
the planet for military exercises, military interventions, and, of
course, profits. The book provides an adequate, though uneven,
introduction to the insidious role of NATO throughout the post-Soviet
period, including most importantly highlighting how the U.S.-led
military alliance expanded to include much of the former Soviet bloc.
However, as with everything in this book, the analysis is partial and
ignores many of the critical elements of the NATO-Russia relationship.

Reading Benjamin and Davies one could easily reach the conclusion that
Russia and NATO have been locked in a conflict since at least 2007, if
not 1991, as NATO crept its way to Russia’s border, thus presenting
Russia with an “existential threat.” That aligns them with Putin,
who has made the same point countless times, including in his
oft-quoted 2007 speech in Munich
[[link removed]].
Conveniently, however, both Benjamin and Davies, like Putin, ignore
the fact that Russia was a critical NATO partner for much of the last
20 years.

Benjamin and Davies, like Putin, ignore the fact that Russia was a
critical NATO partner for much of the last 20 years

Take, for instance, the fact that Russia hosted a NATO base
[[link removed]]
inside its borders for many years, and that it was a critical linchpin
of NATO’s imperial infrastructure allowing the U.S. and its “NATO
allies and partners
[[link removed].]”
to rain death and destruction on Afghanistan for twenty-plus years.
Sounds a bit odd for a country that allegedly views NATO as an
existential threat. In fact, as the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute noted
[[link removed]],
“Russia was the second largest supplier of major arms to the Afghan
armed forces in the period [2001–2020], accounting for 14 per cent
of imports, by volume. All of these deliveries took place between 2002
and 2014.”

Let us recall that Russia steadfastly refused to use its UN Security
Council veto to prevent the NATO-led destruction of Libya, an
egregious war crime carried out by the United States, United Kingdom,
France, and other powers. At the time, Russia had no significant
qualms with NATO’s crime against humanity, with then-President
Dmitry Medvedev—a placeholder for Putin due to constitutional term
limits—saying [[link removed]] that
Russia did not veto Resolution 1973, which authorized the
intervention, “for the simple reason that [Russia does] not consider
the resolution in question wrong. [The resolution] reflects
[Russia’s] understanding of events in Libya too, but not
completely.” So much for “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”
school of realpolitik.

[Map of Europe, northern Africa, and southwest and south Asia, showing
NATO’s logistical supply routes, including the Northern Distribution
Networks through Russia, during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan,
circa 2012.]

Map from 2012 showing NATO’s logistical supply routes, including the
Northern Distribution Networks through Russia, during the U.S.-led
invasion of Afghanistan. Graphic
[[link removed]] from
Third Way Think Tank.

And, in perhaps the most distasteful of ironies, Benjamin and Davies,
like some segments of the Left, allow Putin’s iteration of Bush-era
neoconservative imperialism to go entirely unnoticed. How hard would
it have been to point out, as I did in CounterPunch
[[link removed]]
within the first two weeks of the war, that Putin was following the
Bush-Cheney playbook? A little Azov Bandera Nazis
[[link removed]]
in place of al-Qaeda terrorists, a few Ukrainian biolabs
[[link removed]]
and a non-existent nuclear weapons program in place of “Saddam’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction,” make a nice little neocon war.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Putin in his now infamous speech
just before officially ordering the invasion:

If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the
world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for
Russia. We cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so
since, let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire
these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.

Like a cheaply made Russian knockoff of a carcinogenic Western
consumer product, Putin attempts to replicate the worst of U.S.
imperialism and adapt it to his own needs. While such cynicism is to
be expected from the undisputed leader of the global far right, the
credulity of some on the Left, including Benjamin and Davies, toward
Putin’s words is unacceptable.

About that Putin Speech…

It is interesting to note that Benjamin and Davies quote liberally
from numerous Putin speeches, including the now infamous February 21,
2022, address
[[link removed]]
to the Russian people in which he formally announced the invasion. And
yet the authors studiously ignore all of it save for the bits about
NATO. I wonder why?

Could it be because in the same speech, Putin made very clear that the
war was about righting a historic wrong perpetrated by the dastardly
Vladimir Lenin and those insidious Bolsheviks with their crazy ideas
about the right of nations to self-determination? Could it be because
Putin quite openly declares the conflict to be neocolonial in nature?
Don’t believe me. Here’s Putin
[[link removed]]:

I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring
country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture,
and spiritual space. … Since time immemorial, the people living in
the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called
themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. … So, I will start with
the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be
more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. …

This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and
Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on
Russi—by separating, severing what is historically Russian land.
Nobody asked the millions of people living there what they
thought…When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its
peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a
mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This
became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in
1991… Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and
can be rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.”

And today the “grateful progeny” has overturned monuments to Lenin
in Ukraine. They call it decommunization. You want decommunization?
Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready
to show what real decommunization would mean for Ukraine.

What Putin’s address reveals, and what Benjamin and Davies go to
great lengths to ignore, is the fact that this war is, at its root, an
imperial, revanchist, neocolonial war. From regarding much of Ukraine
as “historically Russian land” to identifying it with Orthodox
Christianity, Putin is quite openly declaring that Ukraine does not,
in fact, have a right to exist. Or, to the extent that it does, it is
exclusively Catholic, Western Ukraine, with the rest of the country
belonging to Russia and Orthodoxy.

What do you call a war that has as its explicit goal the erasure of an
entire nation? Supremacist? Genocidal? Colonial? Take your pick.
Benjamin and Davies prefer to call it “self-defense.” Or to just
not comment at all.

What Putin’s [February 21, 2022] address reveals, and what Benjamin
and Davies go to great lengths to ignore, is the fact that this war
is, at its root, an imperial, revanchist, neocolonial war…Putin is
quite openly declaring that Ukraine does not, in fact, have a right to
exist.

Seen from this perspective, perhaps we can finally “make sense” of
Russia’s “senseless” criminal attacks on civilian
infrastructure, such as Ukraine’s energy system
[[link removed]],
which Amnesty International, along with every other human rights body,
describes
[[link removed]]
as war crimes. Similarly, one can understand why Putin seems so
cavalier about holding Europe’s biggest nuclear plant hostage
[[link removed]], risking a
catastrophic nuclear accident, since it would most acutely affect
Ukrainians, who don’t really matter anyway. Likewise, we now can
understand the attacks on Ukraine’s cultural institutions
[[link removed]],
including art and science museums, because a nation that has no right
to exist surely has no right to its own unique culture. For Putin,
Ukrainian culture is a figment of the Bolshevik imagination. (I’ve
written about this erasure of Ukrainian identity elsewhere
[[link removed]].)
And, naturally, a people who do not exist have no rights.

Benjamin/Davies and Putin Agree: Ukrainians (Mostly) Don’t Exist

One of the most stunningly asinine aspects of the book is the fact
that it completely ignores Ukrainian society, Ukrainian voices, and
Ukrainian perspectives. There is a grand total of one Ukrainian
activist cited in the book, despite the fact that every day on both
traditional and social media there are countless Ukrainians from all
political persuasions active on every front of this war.

The sole Ukrainian voice belongs to Yurii Sheliazhenko, a pacifist and
war resister. While one can certainly respect a person’s decision to
be a pacifist, it raises the question of why this was the only voice
included in the book.

Benjamin and Davies could certainly have spoken with the comrades of
Maksym Boutkevytch
[[link removed]],
the antifascist, anarchist, and human rights defender who co-founded
the “Without Borders” project, and who since June has been a
prisoner of the Russians, who dishonestly claim he’s a “Nazi.”
Benjamin and Davies would have had no difficulty speaking with Taras
Bilous, a Ukrainian socialist historian, editor of Commons: Journal of
Social Criticism, and an activist with the left-wing Social Movement.
Or Dmytro Mrachnyk, a political activist, journalist, and tattoo
artist turned soldier who participated in the liberation of Kharkiv
and who has seen frontline combat since the Russian invasion began. Or
journalist turned soldier Yevgeny Leshan. Or, until this past Fall,
Yuriy Samoilenko, the head of the antifascist football hooligan crew
Hoods Hoods Klan
[[link removed]], who
became an officer in the Ukrainian Army and was killed
[[link removed]] in
combat. Or members of the Solidarity Collectives
[[link removed]], which
has organized medical aid and foreign medical volunteers in places on
the frontlines like Bakhmut where the reality of Russian aggression is
inescapable.

So, what’s the difference between those Ukrainians listed above (and
many others not mentioned) and Benjamin and Davies’ preferred
Ukrainian voice? Resistance. For Benjamin and Davies, the only
Ukrainian worth talking to is one who does not resist Russia’s
aggression.

Russia is Putin, Putin is Russia

Another inexcusable omission in the book is the complete absence of
any Russian voices and analysis of Russian society and domestic issues
that may have motivated Putin’s invasion. One gets the impression
from Benjamin and Davies that Russia can be reduced to Putin and his
ideas about the West, the world, and Russia’s place within it. How
else is one to interpret the complete lack of any Russian
perspectives? The authors mention in passing the repression by the
Putin regime, the suppression and outright criminalization of
independent media, and other measures taken by the Kremlin, but
conveniently they do not seek analysis from Russian experts.

Had they bothered to do so, they would have discovered a wide range of
factors complicating the simple, myopic Russia vs. NATO narrative that
is the lifeblood of the book. For instance, they could have spoken
with renowned historian, sociologist, and author Boris Kagarlitsky,
whom I interviewed
[[link removed]] in
September 2022 about the political, economic, and social factors
behind the invasion. Benjamin and Davies might have been surprised to
hear Kagarlitsky explain that, while it’s self-evident that NATO
expansion was imperialist, it’s also true that much of the U.S.
motivation was rooted not in targeting Russia but in absorbing the
post-Soviet militaries of Eastern Europe into NATO (along with their
hardware) in order to use them in far-flung operations in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and elsewhere. Poland and Ukraine rank fourth and fifth in
combat deaths in Iraq, for example.

As Kagarlitsky noted, “The eastward expansion of NATO was part of
Western imperialist policies…but up to at least 2014 it had very
little to do with Russia. It was much more about Iraq, Afghanistan,
Iran, and maybe China to some extent.” Kagarlitsky explains:

[NATO expansion] is one side of the coin. And the other side is
Russian sub-imperialism. Russian elites accumulated enormous
quantities of hard currency throughout the Putin era, and this is a
very typical crisis of overaccumulation as described by Rosa
Luxemburg… the Russian elite accumulated much more capital than it
could use and invest inside its own country…this accumulation by
both the state and private sector was enormous and led to a specific
type of expansionism because Russian corporations were interested in
taking over companies, and especially resources, of former Soviet
Republics; Ukraine was of special interest but also Moldova,
Kazakhstan, etc. And here you have a classic capitalist-imperialist
conflict between competitors [as] Western capital and corporations
were moving into the same markets.

Perhaps such an analysis might have proven useful in making sense of
this senseless conflict?

The “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk: A Fairy Tale

In what is a running theme of War in Ukraine, the authors spend many
pages detailing the events of 2014 and the establishment of the
“People’s Republics” without ever asking any of the key
questions: Who created them? How? What is daily life like there?
Indeed, an uninitiated reader would be hard-pressed to identify
anything about the “People’s Republics” from the book other than
some vague explanation about “anti-coup” uprisings that led to
their creation. Benjamin and Davies write:

On April 7 [2014], anti-coup protesters in Donetsk stormed a
government building, declared the formation of the Donetsk People’s
Republic (DPR) and announced a referendum on independence from Ukraine
to take place on May 11. Luhansk followed suit on April 27, declaring
the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and announcing a referendum for
the same day as Donetsk.

And that’s it. What Benjamin and Davies omit is that nearly all
significant early leaders of the “People’s Republics” were
Russian-backed intelligence operatives and/or fascists with deep
connections to the Russian state and fascist tendencies within it. For
brevity, we’ll highlight just a few.

Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov), a Russian FSB (Federal Security Service)
colonel, was an early leader of one of the primary paramilitaries
involved in fomenting the conflict in Donbas. Girkin admitted as much
himself when he brazenly boasted [[link removed]]
about creating the war, stating
[[link removed]], “If our unit had not
crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv
and in Odesa.” One would think that a book written by leaders of a
prominent antiwar organization would perhaps have included such
relevant information about how the war actually began.

Pavel Gubarev rose to prominence in the early days of protests in
Donetsk, leading anti-Maidan rallies, the seizure of government
buildings, and eventually appointing himself the first “People’s
Governor.” Gubarev spent formative years as a member of Russian
Nation Unity (RNE), a far-right, neo-Nazi group where he participated
in training camps, and internalized a Russian imperial revanchist
politics aligned with Alexander Dugin, the influential Russian fascist
ideologue and political operator. Konstantin Skorkin, a Russian
journalist specializing in Ukrainian politics, noted
[[link removed]] that Gubarev is understood to
have been connected to, and financed by, Russian fascist oligarch
Konstantin Malofeyev, who is both Dugin’s patron and was named
[[link removed]]
in a federal indictment as one of the “main sources of financing for
Russians promoting separatism in Crimea.”

Malofeyev, Dugin, and Gubarev are all unreconstructed imperial
revanchists who see the Russian-fomented war in Donbas as an
opportunity to re-establish “Novorossiya,” the Russian imperial
name for the region. Dugin himself is on record saying
[[link removed]]
that the goal in Donbas was not incorporation into the Russian
Federation but “restoration of the old Russian Empire.”

Andrey Purgin is another of the early instigators of the conflict. He
founded the “Donetsk Republic” in 2005 in direct response to the
Orange Revolution of 2004, which brought the pro-western Viktor
Yuschenko to power. Like Gubarev, Purgin was also connected to Dugin
and Malofeyev, with activists of his organization having been trained
[[link removed]] in
Dugin’s International Eurasian Movement camps. Also, like Gubarev,
Purgin was sidelined by the end of 2014 in favor of more reliable
United Russia party apparatchiks like Alexander Zakharchenko
(succeeded by current Donetsk warlord Denis Pushilin).

But aside from the “activists” on the ground doing Russia’s
bidding in fomenting the war on Donbas, there was also pro-Russian
neo-Nazi infiltration of the region that helped spark what became
called a “civil war.” Among those groups were the Russian Imperial
Movement (RIM), described
[[link removed]]
by Stanford University’s Center for International Security and
Cooperation as

An extreme-right, white supremacist militant organization based in St.
Petersburg, Russia [which] promotes ethnic Russian nationalism,
advocates the restoration of Russia’s tsarist regime, and seeks to
fuel white supremacy extremism in the West. RIM maintains contacts
with neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups across Europe and the
United States…Members of RIM’s armed wing, the Imperial Legion,
have fought alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and
been involved in conflicts in Libya and Syria. In addition to its
ultra-nationalist beliefs, RIM is known for its anti-Semitic and
anti-Ukrainian views.

RIM was joined by Task Force Rusich
[[link removed]],
a Russian neo-Nazi mercenary outfit understood to be a cadre of the
infamous Wagner Group
[[link removed]].
Task Force Rusich was especially brutal in summer 2014 when it was
deployed to Donbas at the peak of the fighting that year.

I could go on and on naming all the individuals, groups, and oligarchs
that are never even mentioned in a book purporting to make sense of a
senseless war, but this is not a full catalog of all the players or
the innumerable human rights abuses occurring in Donbas every day.
Rather, it is an attempt to ask a fundamental question of both
Benjamin and Davies as well as others parroting Russia’s talking
points about Donbas: Why didn’t they bother to study the war before
forming their political position on the issue?

Similarly, why didn’t Benjamin and Davies examine the financial
flows to and from Donbas? Had they done so they might have discovered
a company called VneshTorgServis, which is headed by a Putin ally and
former governor of Irkutsk region, Vladimir Pashkov. The company was
established to take control of seized Ukrainian factories and funnel
the revenues, resources, and capital goods into the pockets of
Kremlin-connected insiders. Some of the factories seized
[[link removed]]
by Russia’s proxies and turned into money-makers for Russia’s
oligarchs and elite include Donetsksteel Iron and Steel Works,
Yenakiieve and Makiivka Iron and Steel Works, Yenakiieve Coke and
Chemicals Plant, Yasinovka Coke Plant, Makiivkoks, and Khartsyzsk Tube
Works.

Why Understanding the War Matters So Much

Were this a simple disagreement among U.S. leftists, I would never
have bothered to critique this book. But how we understand the nature
of this war directly informs how we develop a sound leftist position
on it and how we rebuild our international movement.

Reading Benjamin and Davies leaves one with the simple,
straightforward analysis, dominant in some corners of the Left, that
this is an easily understood proxy war between NATO and Russia. Seen
through this distorted lens, one could understand why some on the Left
call for an end to the war via “peace negotiations” (and
dismembering of Ukraine) and oppose sending vital weapons to those
fighting the Russian invaders.

[O]pposing Ukraine’s right to defend itself and eject its invaders
is an abandonment of every principle of internationalism, solidarity,
and anti-colonial and, anti-imperialist politics.

However, a serious examination of the war and its many dimensions
leads to the very different conclusion that Ukraine has been invaded
by an aggressive sub-imperial state, which also happens to be the
traditional colonial power in the region, and that resistance to such
aggression is not only justified, but a prerequisite for the survival
of the people of Ukraine and the defense of their right to
self-determination. In fact, such an analysis leads to the logical
conclusion that opposing Ukraine’s right to defend itself and eject
its invaders is an abandonment of every principle of internationalism,
solidarity, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist politics.

Some Concluding Thoughts

While I don’t know Davies, it is truly a shame to see Benjamin,
whose work I’ve often found valuable and whom I’ve hosted
[[link removed]] on my
podcast, degrade herself with such an embarrassing distortion of an
extremely complex and exceedingly dangerous war.

Benjamin and Davies, like Noam Chomsky and Katrina vanden Heuvel (who
contributed the preface to this book), are correct that the threat of
nuclear war still looms over everything happening in Ukraine, and
everyone globally should be concerned about that. They are also
correct that U.S.-NATO imperialism is critical to understanding the
invasion. Unfortunately, the book they’ve produced misinforms more
than it informs and distorts more than it clarifies.

Benjamin and Davies have done a tremendous disservice to the people of
Ukraine resisting an invasion, the people of Russia living under
(especially those resisting) a criminal regime, and the international
Left as a whole. And in so doing, they provide left cover for
Putin’s war machine. Echoing Gupta, even if the Left in the United
States lacks effective power at the moment, we must at the very least
provide a serious analysis, based on historical truths as well as
current political realities. Anything less fails all those suffering
under the guns of imperial aggressors—in this case, the forces led
by Vladimir Putin.

* Russia-Ukraine war
[[link removed]]
* NATO
[[link removed]]
* the Western Left
[[link removed]]
* Vladimir Putin
[[link removed]]
* Politics in Ukraine
[[link removed]]

*
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*
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