Pacifist alibis and hard militarism in practice:

By Aníbal

The Spanish Prime Minister says that we must “stop Putin’s feet now in Ukraine to avoid World War III.”

We can also read Pedro Sánchez does not dare to rule out the possibility that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could lead to the outbreak of World War III. He was asked tonight in an interview on La Sexta: “Is there a risk of World War III?”

The President of the Government avoided giving a yes or no answer to a direct question: “That is what we must avoid. It is essential “That is what we must avoid, and for that it is very important to measure words. After a verbal escalation, something irreversible can happen”, said the head of government.

According to his “diagnosis,” a nuclear power “has illegally invaded a democratic European country,” which is another step in the “expansionist spirit” of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. For this reason, Sánchez considers it “important that we now stop Putin in his tracks in Ukraine because we don’t know which country will be next,” he said. In this way, he considered “unity” within the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance to be fundamental, a unity which, in his opinion, Putin has been trying to break for years “through disinformation strategies and by financing ultra-political movements”.

This represents an alibi to hook the population behind the Spanish state and its government. This government has been notoriously involved in the war effort in favor of the NATO (“Western”) imperialist side, led by the USA, providing economic, military and political support for this purpose, resulting in sacrifices for the proletariat, demands to keep prices higher than wages, etc. That is why the government has to give this Spanish imperialist action, in collaboration with its partners, a supposedly pacifist historical character. If it succeeds in stopping the Russian army, the course to World War III has been halted… In the end, that is what they want us to think. So much military effort has been worthwhile. So much blood and suffering have served to achieve a “higher purpose”: to avoid World War III, which of course, would also affect the Spanish people…

NATO, led by US capital and followed by that of the EU, since the end of the USSR and its bloc, has dedicated itself to expanding in Eastern Europe, bringing its missiles and troops ever closer to the borders of Russia and Belarus. It has not stopped the militarization of Ukraine and its government’s desire to join NATO and the EU. It has also been baiting it with billions and military equipment, systematically supporting its cause. Russia has seen the strategy and knows its aims and implications. Therefore, it has reacted by invading Ukraine, having secured the support of the most critical piece in the new imperialist bloc configuration of international capitalism, China.

From then on, the course of events is visible. Both sides accuse each other of what they all do. Blood runs and refugees flee as best they can or fall by the wayside. Arrests of opponents of the war follow one after the other in Russia. Western sanctions are put in place, with the consequences they bring for the proletariat. Military and economic remittances continue to pour into Ukraine. Its government calls for resistance and uses force to compulsorily enlist fighting-age males and women who can perform these and other support tasks into nationalist militias. Meanwhile, it has continued to bomb pro-Russian separatist-held areas in the Donbas since 2014. All these actions have caused an exodus of more than a million refugees, some 20,000 casualties, and all kinds of militaristic outrages. The entry of the Russian army and the action of pro-Russian militias in the Donbas do the same, and the outrage continues.

They invoke bourgeois rights, such as the right to self-determination or general democratic rights, but trample on them when and how it suits them. Russia invades a territory whose government denies self-determination to one part and attacks it. Russia talks about fighting Nazi fascism and maintains a very significant harshness against opponents. At the other side of war, in Ukraine since the 13th the pro-Russian Ukrainian CP has been outlawed. … Meanwhile, they all set up ultra-nationalist militias, where there are numerous nazi-fascist tendencies… Nothing new in the actions of imperialist capitalism. Hypocrisy and deceit accompany their wanderings and permeate their movements. They lie and select their truths, all to advance in the material balance of forces against their enemies and to keep their society as cohesive as possible. This way, they try to prevent the proletariat from responding in a militant, unified and internationalist way, despising capitalist nationalisms and their alibis. They need order, militarism, and surplus value.

If NATO and the Ukrainian army were to defeat Russia, the march towards World War III would not stop. This military campaign is a further step, significant in time and place and the configuration of the contenders.

The imperialist capitalist bloc headed by China and Russia tries to add more partners, as does the one led by the USA and the EU. The latter follows the USA and cannot set up an autonomous bloc headed by itself.

This dynamic is not eliminated in the case of Sanchez’s assumption, but it would maintain it. His alibi only appeals to the true believers in democracy and pacifism. To those who are peace-loving but end in producing and sending missiles to one of the parties in order to develop the war.

The atmosphere of social tolerance of imperialism, social imperialism, provides the various capitalist governments with ammunition. This is why the only worthwhile response is to fight against all governments everywhere, show international solidarity with the victims of war everywhere, and raise the revolutionary independence of the proletariat to eradicate capital, its forces, and states. This is revolutionary internationalist defeatism.

Not acting in this way allows conditions to continue to ripen for the outbreak of World War III.

There is no permanent peace in capitalism. At this moment, there are several other wars in the world, which are silenced daily, which are taken out of the concern of public opinion. Public opinion is conditioned and molded according to the dominant bourgeois appetites. Imperialist capitalism generates warmongering and militarism, nourishes it and takes advantage of it. Numerous wars of various kinds have marked the history of capitalist deployment throughout the world. Wars will not stop because Russia is defeated; something very unlikely unless NATO enters directly into the fray, which they avoid so that World War III does not start at the wrong time. Nor will wars stop because of a truce, keeping Ukraine out of NATO, having another non-interventionist government, keeping Crimea in Russia’s hands, as well as the Donbas republics and other areas won through military combat.

World War III will only disappear from the historical scene if the working class eradicates capitalism and succeeds in overcoming it by creating a classless, classless, stateless, humane society of free and equal associated producers, where the maxim “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” prevails.

Without a triumphant world revolution through the force and coordinated organization of the proletariat, the march towards world war will sooner or later be imposed on a road marked by local and regional wars, by misery and exploitation, by mystification and hypocrisy, by environmental and human degradation, particularly of the working class, by the effects inherent in the process of accumulation of capital and the political domination of the forces and states of the bourgeoisie.

Source

Anibal, Coartadas pacifistas y militarismo duro en la práctica.Derrotar o frenar al imperialismo ruso en Ucrania no es evitar la III Guerra Mundial. 23/03/2011