[ If U.S. leftists take seriously their commitment to self-rule
and loathing of foreign aggression, they should shed their ambivalence
about supporting Ukraine.]
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EJECT THE LEFT-RIGHT ALLIANCE AGAINST UKRAINE  
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Michael Kazin
March 7, 2023
Dissent Magazine
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_ If U.S. leftists take seriously their commitment to self-rule and
loathing of foreign aggression, they should shed their ambivalence
about supporting Ukraine. _

The “Rage Against the War Machine” rally on February 19, 2023 in
Washington, DC., photo: Pamela Drew/Flickr // Dissent Magazine

 

At critical times, foreign wars have tested the moral convictions of
American leftists and affected the fate of their movement for years to
come. The Socialist Party’s opposition to entering the First World
War provoked furious state repression but later gained a measure of
redemption when Americans learned that U.S. troops had not made the
world safe for democracy after all. Leftists proved prescient again in
the late 1930s when they rallied to defend the Spanish Republic
against a right-wing military and its fascist allies, Italy and
Germany. The republic’s defeat emboldened Adolf Hitler to launch
what quickly became the Second World War. When, twenty years later,
American Communists backed the Soviet Union’s crushing of the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956, they shoved their party firmly and
irrevocably to the margins of political life, which opened up space
for the emergence of a New Left that rejected imperial aggressors of
all ideological persuasions.

The war in Ukraine has a good chance of turning into another such
decisive event. Who to blame for the bloodshed in that country should
be obvious: a massive nation led by an authoritarian ruler with one of
the world’s largest militaries at his disposal is seeking to conquer
and subjugate a smaller and weaker neighbor. In pursuit of that
vicious purpose, Vladimir Putin’s soldiers have committed countless
rapes and acts of torture. His air force is systematically trying to
destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure and economy, hoping to undermine
its citizens’ will to resist. Yet Ukrainians, with the aid of arms
from the United States and other NATO countries, have so far managed
to fight this superior force to a stalemate.

A sizeable number of American leftists have embraced an alternate
reality. For them, the culprit is NATO’s post–Cold War expansion,
fueled by the drive of the U.S. state and capital to bend the world to
their desires. The popular author and journalist Chris Hedges cracks
that the war in Ukraine “doesn’t make any geopolitical sense, but
it’s good for business.” The Green Party condemns the
“perpetual war mentality” of the “US foreign policy
establishment” and concludes, “There are no good guys in this
crisis.”

These critics ignore or dismiss the fact that every nation that joined
NATO did so willingly, knowing that Russia was capable of launching
the kind of attack now underway in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the
Soviet Union’s demise, the expansion of NATO may well have been too
hasty. But not one of its newer members has done anything to threaten
Putin’s regime. And every country that joined the alliance enjoys a
democratically elected government. They contrast sharply with the
handful of nations, besides Putin’s, that voted against a UN
resolution last month demanding the Russians withdraw from Ukraine:
Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua, Eritrea, and Mali. All but the
last are one-party dictatorships, and Mali relies on Russian
mercenaries to battle Islamist rebels.

It seems not to bother these leftists that they are making common
cause with some of the most atrocious and prominent stalwarts of the
Trumpian right. Tucker Carlson routinely bashes the U.S. commitment to
Ukraine with lines like “Has Putin ever called me a racist?” while
Marjorie Taylor Greene recently declared, “I’m completely against
the war in Ukraine. . . . You know who’s driving it? It’s America.
America needs to stop pushing the war in Ukraine.”

On February 19, some members of the alliance of right and left staged
a demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to vent its
“Rage Against the War Machine.” Speakers included Ron Paul and
Tulsi Gabbard as well as Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 nominee
for president. Carlson promoted the event on the highest rated
“news” show in the history of cable TV. At the Memorial, several
protesters flew Russian flags.

To paraphrase August Bebel’s famous line about anti-Semitism, the
hostility of those leftists who oppose helping Ukraine is an
anti-imperialism of fools—although, unlike past Jew haters, they are
fools with good intentions. Wars are always horrible events, no matter
who starts them or why. And we on the left should do whatever we can
to stop them from starting and end them when they do.

But neither the United States nor its allies forced Putin to invade.
In speech after speech, he has made clear his mourning for the loss of
the Soviet empire and his firm belief that Ukraine should be part of a
revived one, this time sanctified by an Orthodox cross instead of the
hammer-and-sickle. As the historian (and my cousin) David A. Bell
wrote recently, the United States is not “the only international
actor that really matters in the current crisis.” It may have the
mightiest war machine, but Biden is not shipping arms to Ukraine in an
attempt to subjugate Russia to his will. We should, Bell writes,
“judge every international situation on its own terms, considering
the actions of all parties, and not just the most powerful one. . . .
the horrors Putin has already inflicted on Ukraine, and his long-term
goals, are strong reasons . . . for continuing current U.S. policy,
despite the attendant costs and risks.”

The monetary cost is obviously not small. By the end of January, the
United States had spent $46.6 billion on lethal aid to Ukraine. But as
a portion of what our bloated military has available to it every year,
that sum is little more than a rounding error. The defense budget in
the past fiscal year was close to $2 _trillion_. The cost of the
latest U.S. aircraft carrier ran to $13 billion all by itself. The
Navy now has eleven aircraft carriers. Isn’t helping Ukraine defend
its right to exist as an independent country a worthier expense?

The debate over the war among American leftists could have an impact
on whether the United States keeps sending substantial aid to
Ukraine’s armed forces. Progressives wield more influence in the
Democratic Party than they have in decades. So far, most have followed
the lead of Bernie Sanders in denouncing the Russian onslaught and
endorsing the NATO effort to repel it. More Republicans oppose aiding
Ukraine than Democrats. But if that changes, public backing for U.S.
policy, already slipping after a year of inconclusive fighting, could
crumble entirely. A negotiated settlement may be the only way the war
ends. But without a strong and consistent policy of support to the
government in Kyiv, the agreement would be on Putin’s terms.

One doesn’t have to think the stakes of the conflict in Ukraine are
similar to those in the Spanish Civil War to hear echoes from that
benighted past. If American leftists take seriously their commitment
to self-rule and loathing of foreign aggression, they should shed
their ambivalence about supporting Ukraine. But I’ll let a
democratic socialist from Ukraine have the last words. “I know that
the left tends to look for a nefarious U.S. plot behind everything,”
writes the sociologist Alona Liasheva. “Of course, I think it’s
important to analyze every conflict to understand all the players, the
dynamics, and who’s culpable.” But “In the case of Ukraine,
it’s far simpler than many on the left think. Ukraine was attacked
by an imperialist army, and as a result we are in a struggle to defend
our lives and our very right to exist as a sovereign nation. . . .
This is not an abstract question for us. The international left can
make a material difference in whether we are able to win or lose.”

_[MICHAEL KAZIN is co-editor emeritus of Dissent. His most recent
book, What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party
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came out in paperback.]_

* anti-imperialism
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* Ukraine war
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* Ukraine
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* Russia
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* NATO
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* Europe
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* war
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* imperialism
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* peace
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* peace movement
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* Fascism
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* foreign aggression
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* Self-determination
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* the Left
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