The irony of “anti-imperialists” defending Putin’s war, a war that is *explicitly* a revanchist imperial war, has not been lost on me. We don’t have to guess what Putin’s motives are in invading Ukraine because he published his thoughts on the topic last summer...
1/18
1/18
...in a lengthy screed bemoaning the disintegration of the Russian Empire, particularly the Bolsheviks’ decision to partition the territories into republics.
See these quotes from Putin’s “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”
2/18
See these quotes from Putin’s “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”
2/18
In short, Putin does not think the Ukrainians are a real people, nor does he believe that Ukraine is a real country. He believes the territory of Ukraine belongs to Russia and resents the country’s westward drift.
3/18
3/18
His war is an irredentist war, no matter how desperately the tankie left tries to spin it. What Putin ultimately desires is for the boundaries of Russia to be as they existed prior to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. He seeks to restore the Empire of tsarist (not Soviet) Russia
4/18
4/18
But what about NATO?
As a lifelong anti-interventionist, I have always been anti-NATO.
No doubt, unipolarity, with the US at the helm, has been terrible for the world. NATO has been an instrument of US hegemony.
5/18
As a lifelong anti-interventionist, I have always been anti-NATO.
No doubt, unipolarity, with the US at the helm, has been terrible for the world. NATO has been an instrument of US hegemony.
5/18
Putin himself asked Clinton if Russia could join NATO, and though Clinton said he was personally for it, there’s no universe in which Russia could be part of NATO, as the alliance ultimately exists to contain Russia. No doubt, NATO expansion was deeply humiliating for Putin
6/18
6/18
...as Russia no longer had any influence on the world stage. Putin witnessed how irrelevant Russia had become right before coming to power, when Russia was not consulted before NATO’s air strikes in Kosovo in 1999.
7/18
7/18
But there was never any path for Ukraine to join NATO, even tho Zelensky & the majority of Ukrainians want it. Neither was/is there any path for Georgia to join NATO. NATO has never offered either country a formal plan to join. Admission to NATO requires unanimous consent.
8/18
8/18
Germany, France, and other countries would have vetoed it. The US doesn’t even want Ukraine to join NATO, as their current military priority is to contain China. (Of course I do not endorse this hawkish stance toward China.)
9/18
9/18
Support for joining NATO in Ukraine was low until the annexation of Crimea. Zelensky basically gave up on joining NATO anyway when he admitted that joining the alliance was a pipe dream. Putin could have taken that as a win and pushed to codify it.
10/18
10/18
But Russia’s legitimate security concern (re: NATO expansion) was not the primary driver of the invasion, even though it’s an essential piece of the context.
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Neither NATO nor the US will put boots on the ground in Ukraine, nor will the US enforce a no-fly zone. Why?
11/18
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Neither NATO nor the US will put boots on the ground in Ukraine, nor will the US enforce a no-fly zone. Why?
11/18
The answer is short: they can’t. Doing so would stoke nuclear war. The hawks & MSNBC pundits will pound their war drums, but Biden has no desire to get ensnared in a war W Russia, partly because he thinks China is a bigger threat.
(To be clear: we MUST reject war w Russia)
12/18
(To be clear: we MUST reject war w Russia)
12/18
Are there neo-nazis in Ukraine? Yes. Did the US fund them? Yes, when restrictions on funding neo-nazis were lifted from the military aid the US provided Ukraine. Such groups are dangerous, but by no means do they dominate the country.
13/18
13/18
The Azov Battalion consists of an estimated 900 members, in a country of 43+ million people. They currently have 0 MPs in a parliament with 450 seats. Svoboda, another ultranationalist group, has 1 seat.
14/18
14/18
Does Russia have neo-nazis? Yes. Tho I think people overstate the influence of Alexander Dugin on Putin’s geopolitical strategy, it’s hard to look at Putin’s recent moves & not recognize the imprint of Dugin’s esoteric nazism, which operates under the banner of Eurasianism.
15/18
15/18
Eurasianism is a quasi-religious geopolitical ideology that functions as a Russian brand of manifest destiny. Putin has made it crystal clear that his ambition is to realize what he believes is Russia’s manifest destiny.
16/18
16/18
Putin has repeated the same mistake the USSR made when they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. His hubris will be his downfall.
17/18
17/18
This is a long way of saying, my heart breaks for the Ukrainians.
How many civilians will be killed by cluster bombs and thermobaric vacuum bombs?
Everyone loses in war.
18/18
How many civilians will be killed by cluster bombs and thermobaric vacuum bombs?
Everyone loses in war.
18/18
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