Ukraine Crisis: “Another Nation Where People Cannot Make Their Own Choices”

Trigger Warning: Mentions of war crimes

This is a bad time to write this article, as the Ukrainian people are engaged in repelling a Russian invasion of their country. The focus of the entire world right now is how Ukrainians are suffering and how they can be helped.

Even the Russian government has been facing mass protests in their country against the invasion. However, countries like India, China and many others maintain an ambiguous stance – not knowing how to respond.

It is a rather cowardly act to maintain neutrality during a full-scale invasion. How can anyone not condemn the Russian government for invading a nation? Is it not the right thing to do to condemn such a brazen act of aggression?

In this article, I will explain why condemning Russia is not enough, why it is hypocritical, and how we are missing the larger picture of things.

History Behind Lead Up To The Ukraine Crisis

First things first: No matter the sides, war has always meant suffering for those being invaded. It is a widely documented fact that soldiers commit war crimes — from torture to rape.

Indian soldiers did that in Kashmir during the insurgency, American soldiers during the American war in Vietnam, Japanese soldiers in Korea during WWII. I could keep going on, and the list will not end. To form an opinion on the invasion of Ukraine, we must analyse the relevant historical and contemporary events that led to the current situation. In doing so, we will find out why condemning Russia is not enough.

When Stalin died in 1953, there were widespread changes in how the Soviet government and economy functioned under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. These ‘reforms’ would eventually lead to the dismantling of socialism in eastern Europe and give rise to the Russian Federation and 14 other nations around it – one of them being Ukraine.

The Russian economy (and presumably the other east European economies) were in tatters at the time. The so-called win of capitalism that the West was celebrating (as the Berlin wall was torn down) was a bleak situation for the people of eastern Europe.

The robust welfare system established in the USSR’s early years had been depleted due to the free-market reforms. As a result, there was an upsurge in mortality, a plunge into poverty and the rise of organised crime. Nonetheless, Russia was still a military power with nuclear warheads numbering in thousands, and as a UNSC member, it was a state of reasonable influence over the world.

The United States could have dismantled its NATO alliance (whose stated purpose was to defeat the USSR) and made peace with Russia. Instead, the United States followed a policy of expanding the alliance towards the East up to the Russian border countries. The NATO alliance allows the USA to place its weapons, armies and even nuclear missiles in any allied country.

This meant the possibility of American nuclear missiles right at the borders of Russia. If this was not an aggressive and irresponsible policy on the West, I could not say what it was. The NATO and EU have pursued a policy of bringing more and more east European nations into their fold. In 2014, the Ukrainian president had declined a trade deal with the EU, in favour of a Russian trade deal, amid protests against him.

The next day, a coup in which the current Ukrainian president, a pro-Western candidate, came to power. The ‘Euro-maidan’ protests had minor ideological support from the USA. John McCain, a US senator, had travelled to Ukraine and rallied with one of the neo-Nazi groups participating in the protests.

Furthermore, the leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland, an assistant secretary of state and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, showed how closely the US was deliberating and attempting to control the situation in Ukraine. In light of the history of American interference in Latin America, Asia, Africa and even India, it would not be an unreasonable claim that the US provided material support for the coup in Ukraine.

The Crimean invasion by Russia occurred in the aftermath of this coup in 2014. Thus, the Russian military aggression directly results from an irresponsible Western expansion policy. Therefore, I believe that blaming Russia solely as the perpetrator of the current situation (as international media has done) ignores the historical context and the role of the US is fanning the flames of the current war.

The West’s Expansionist Policies

Between 2014 and 2022, there have been conflicts worldwide with an American hand behind them. However, these events were barely mentioned in the American mainstream media and, as a result, did not get a mention in most of the international press. For instance, Yemen has been going through a civil war where Saudi Arabia (an American ally) has been punitively bombing Yemeni cities with ammunition and weapons supplied by the USA.

The United States has been conducting airstrikes in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 1989, the USA had invaded a small country in Latin America — Panama, as its dictator, Manuel Noriega (formerly on CIA payroll), proved to be a problematic puppet. Under John F Kennedy, the US military-sponsored an invasion of the small island nation of Cuba, next to the USA.

These attacks, invasions and crimes are no different from what Russia is doing in Ukraine today, yet you would not hear even a whisper of these American crimes in the mainstream media. What Russia is doing today, the US has probably done that multiple times over the last century.

The American news propaganda machine is so robust that they do not need to lie. The media gives undue coverage to events beneficial to US foreign policy and very little coverage to events in which they are on the wrong side of history. Thus, it is quite hypocritical of the international media to take a moral high ground and condemn Russia for the invasion when they did very little to condemn American wars worldwide.

Greed And Capitalism Fuelling War

Finally, the larger picture that we are missing in this argument of Russia vs the USA is imperialism’s phenomena. In one of his seminal works, Lenin described colonial and imperial wars of the European nations as a direct consequence of the capitalist mode of production in Europe.

The capitalist mode of production is based on increasing revenues and profits, a promise of always creating more wealth and more of everything. But how do you create infinite profits in a world of finite resources? Today, the capitalists tell us that we need to colonise Mars and take humanity forward! A few centuries later, when Mars no longer serves their purposes, they will tell us that we need to colonise some other planet and so on.

Two centuries ago, the answer for European capitalists was to conquer lands in the third world. However, by the end of the 19th century, no land on this planet could be occupied, and the different colonisers had carved up the world. So how would capitalism quench its desire for infinite profits when they are faced with such a material limitation? War.

Thus, Lenin predicted that there would be a war between the colonial powers so that the capitalists in their respective countries could gain access to more resources, new markets to invest in, and more labour force to use. This war would go on to be the first world war. But unfortunately, capitalism still lives on today, and thus imperialism is what we are seeing when smaller nations become the battleground for the superpowers of this world.

The formation of the USSR and China was a significant challenge for Western powers because a new socialist nation (such as Vietnam or Korea) would mean land, labour and a market that their capitalists failed to penetrate. Thus, the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Algeria, Cuba etc., were fought against the imperial ambitions of the capitalist class of the Western world.

While the USSR and its socialism no longer remain, the situation of Ukraine is very much an imperial phenomenon. Today, as a full-fledged capitalist state with a reasonably powerful military, Russia is a rather extreme challenge for Western capitalism. Unlike the Middle East and Africa, one can not punitively drop bombs on Russia and get away with it.

As the capitalist nations collided in WW1 over colonies, the superpowers today run over smaller nations like Ukraine – some attempt to capture through ideological warfare, propaganda, sponsoring fascist groups, and some through brute military force. But, no matter the players, the eventual outcome is a nation whose people could not make choices for themselves.