AnthonyJK-Admin
Here's another example of how neoliberalism hooked within the Democrats and the MIC/Cold War Liberal mindset leads to the endless war mindset.
So, the way to avoid WWIII with Russia is to incite WWIII with Russia by backing Bandera Nazis and a repressive right-wing government that wraps Russian-based citizens around street poles and beats them?
If not....nuke Russia FIRST???
Nuh-uh.
Toot Engineer
the Ukraine war has really NATO pilled a lot of people, and the whole question of nuclear war is something they really don't want to deal with -- i like the cognitive dissonance that 1. Putin is an unhinged madman but 2. He would never escalate to nuclear war
and yeah idk, Putin seems pretty rational, evil sure, but he's acting within the limits of imperialist real politic, obviously Ukraine is important strategically for Russia, it's not just because Putin is an unhinged lunatic, the US or any western power would do the same thing. In fact, were Russia allied with the West America would help them fight Ukrainian 'terrorists"
I don't really agree with you though about the characterization of Ukraine as run by Nazis, not to downplay the brutality committed by Ukrainians against ethnic Russians but let's not act like this happened in a vacuum, there's both centuries of Russian colonization and Recent provocation by Russian, exacerbated by Western interference... and there is certainly a fascistic streak in mainstream Ukrainian nationalism but it's more complicated than them all being nazis, Far Right Parties repeatedly lose at the ballot box, their ideology is more of a pan-euro liberal democratic thing within the context of mass war mobolization
AnthonyJK-Admin
Points well taken.
And, in fact, I thought I had clarified that the Ukrainian government wasn't necessarily stone cold Nazi, but did allow them as part of their coalition against Russia.
And I do recognize the long history of conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which far predates the Cold War period.
However, even if Far Right parties get clobbered electorally, they still get plenty of power from coalitions with "conservative" parties in power.
Toot Engineer
and Ukraine is pretty diverse on the level of popular militias there are anarchists, socialists etc. along with the liberal and right wing forces, a very unstable coalition and you could see it moving any way. Zelensky is by all accounts a very effective war time leader but shit could change in an instance and he could be usurped from either left or right.
I'm pretty sympathetic to ukranian or other eastern european people's, but if you now history you know they get fucked over by the west just as quickly as by Russia, and if/when ukraine wins they'll find this out. What we see with Ukraine is the US very effectively coopting a natlib struggle and ensuring it is ideologically compatable with being a US client state.
There's also a major over emphasis on defeating Russia *militarily* which naturally serves the interests of arms manufacters, but there are other paths to what Ukraine might consider a just peace, the US could offer concessions like removing nukes from Turkey would be a big one...
Personally I think the only thing that will "stop Putin" is a socialist revolution inside Russia, military defeat in Ukraine could catalyze this, but maybe not, the war may go on for years / decades with not decisive victory. War Keynesianism goes both ways.
Toot Engineer
I'm sorry If I'm splitting hairs but i think it's very important to try to articulate an real proletarian line that opposes both NATO and Russia as two poles of Imperialist domination and so we have to resist simple narratives,
Fascists are present in basically every state in the west at this point: the US, UK, France, fascists are part of the state but have yet to achieve complete control. Relatively speaking I think the outright fascists may be smaller in Ukraine, but what they've done, cleverly, is dig in and become essential parts of the coalition, like you say, so there power may be limited now, but they will bide their time for when it becomes more opportune.
Like if Russia were to be decisively expelled from Ukraine, there.may well be ethnic cleansing in the donbass, where supposed russian collaborators are rounded up and killed. Another real danger NATOist cheerleaders refuse to acknowledge.
Toot Engineer
last thing I'll say on this is Ukraine ideology, like other countries in the Russia sphere of influence is they 'look towards Europe' for their future, but their idea of European democracy is incredibly dated, it's pre austerity: social democracy + free markets, I suppose many European countries are still like this, Netherlands, Switzerland etc. but these are the winners, never really was the case for southern or eastern Europe, And we know how the US and Europe "rebuilds" war torn countries these days with shady neoliberal public/private partnerships,
It's probably why so much emphasis is placed on post war reparations from Russia, a just demand, sure, but if Ukraine wins it's not gonna be in any position to extract that from Russia, especially if the US is unwilling to concede anything else.
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