Sunday, June 16, 2024

Ukraine, Continued Aid, and

the Prevailing Logic of

Slaughter

War always commands its own appeal.  It has its own frazzled laurels, the calling of its own worn poets tenured in propaganda.  In battle, the poets keep writing, and keep glorifying.  The chattering diplomats are kept in the cooler, biding their time.  The soldiers die, as do civilians.  The politicians are permitted to behave badly.

With Ukraine looking desperately bloodied at the hands of their Russian counterparts, the horizon of the conflict had seemingly shrunk of late.  Fatigue and desperation had set in.  Washington seemed more interested in sending such musically illiterate types as the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kyiv for moral cuddling rather than suitably murderous military hardware.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, mindful of the losses inflicted on his own side in the conflict, thought it opportune to spring the question of peace talks.  On June 14, while speaking with members of the Russian Foreign Ministry, he floated the idea that Russia would cease combat operations “immediately” if Ukraine abandoned any aspirations of joining NATO and withdrew its troops from the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Rather than refrigerate the conflict into its previous frozen phase, Putin went further.  It would end provided that Kyiv accepted Moscow’s sovereign control over the four regions as “new territorial realities”.  Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine would also be afforded protections; sanctions imposed by Western states would be lifted.  “Today,” he stated, “we have put forward another concrete, genuine peace proposal.  If Kyiv and Western capitals reject it as they have in the past, they will bear political and moral responsibility of the ‘continuation of the bloodshed.’”

He further added that, as soon as Ukraine began withdrawing its military personnel from Donbas and Novorossiya, with an undertaking not to join NATO, “the Russian Federation will cease fire and be ready for negotiations.  I don’t think it will take long.”

Length and duration, however, remain the signal attributes of this murderous gambit.  Ukraine’s defeat and humbling is unacceptable for the armchair strategists in the US imperium, along with their various satellites.  NATO’s obsessive expansion cannot be thwarted, nor can the projection of Washington’s influence eastwards from Europe.  And as for the defence contractors and companies keen to make a killing on the killings, they must also be considered.

This was unpardonable for the interests of the Biden administration.  The Washington War Gaming Set must continue.  Empires need their fill, their sullied pound of flesh.  Preponderance of power comes in various forms: direct assault against adversaries (potentially unpopular for the voters), proxy enlistment, or the one degree removed sponsorship of a national state or entity as a convenient hitman.  Ukraine, in this sense, has become the latter, a repurposed, tragic henchman for US interests, shedding blood in patriotic gore.

In keeping with that gore, US President Joe Biden, in announcing a funding package for Ukraine from the G7 group, promised that “democracies can deliver”.  The amount on the ledger: $US50 billion.  “We are putting our money to work for Ukraine, and giving another reminder to Putin that we are not backing down.”  That particular amount is derived from frozen Russian assets outside Russian territory, most of it from the Russian Central Bank amounting to US$280 billion.  The circumstances of such freezing will, in future, be the subject of numerous dissertations and legal challenges, but that very fact suggests that Ukraine’s allies are tiring from drawing from their own budgets.  We support you, but we also hate to see the money of our taxpayers continually splurged on the enterprise.

Biden’s remarks from the Hotel Masseria San Domenico in Fasano have a haunting quality of repetition when it comes to US support for doomed causes and misguided goals.  The fig leaf, when offered, can be withdrawn at any given movement: South Vietnam, doomed to conquest at the hands of North Vietnam; Afghanistan, almost inevitably destined to be recaptured by the Taliban; Kurds the Marsh Arabs, pet projects for US strategists encouraged to revolt only to be slaughtered in betrayal.

Thus goes Biden: “A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now and to deter future aggression anytime […] in the future,” Biden explains, drawing from the echo of Vietnamisation and any such exultation of an indigenous cause against a wicked enemy.   The idea here: strengthen Ukrainian defence and deterrence while not sending US troops.  In other words, we pay you to die.

The NATO disease, poxy and draining, rears its head.  Weapons and ammunition are to be provided to Ukraine along with the expansion of “intelligence-sharing” and training while “enhancing interoperability between our militaries in line with NATO standards”.  Money is to be put into Ukraine’s own defence industry so that they can duly “supply their own weapons and munitions”.  In the floral bouquet, a cautionary note is appended.  “In terms of longer range of weapons into the interior of Russia we are not changing our positions.”  Killing is always a matter of quantum, and calculation.  The note for Kyiv is clear: use the weapons but do so carefully.

As for the logistics of finance, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan is already voicing concerns about the complexity of the funding venture.  “The simple proposition is we got to put these assets to work.  The complex proposition is how you do that specifically.”

While Putin has turned his nose up at the UN Charter in its solemn affirmation of the sovereignty of states, Washington has taken its own wrecking ball to the text.  It has meddled, fiddled and tampered with the internal affairs of states while accusing Russia of the very same thing.  Spiteful of history and its bitter lessons, it has employed such saboteurs as former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to undertake such tasks, poking the Russian Bear while courting and seducing the Ukrainian establishment.  The horror is evident for all to see, and unlikely to halt.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.comRead other articles by Binoy.

The Perils of Wider War in Eastern Europe

This article appears in the June 2024 issue, with the headline “A Wider War in Eastern Europe?” Reprinted from The Nation with permission from the authors.

Violence continues to haunt Eastern Europe. the attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on May 15 inevitably conjures up the memory of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 110 years earlier, which led to the First World War. It is, tragically, not an exaggeration to say that Europe (and crucially, this time, the United States) again faces a fateful choice: between a negotiated settlement in Ukraine and the possibility of a third, and perhaps final, world war.

If recent statements by US and European officials are to be believed, there is a growing consensus in favor of war. On May 16, The New York Times reported that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, with regard to the possibility of NATO sending military trainers to Ukraine, “We’ll get there eventually.” The same report also noted that a US official floated the “possibility” of NATO advisers “training Ukrainian troops in Lviv.”

Given the Biden administration’s practice of telling us one thing and doing another – as when it was discovered that the administration had secretly sent long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine – there may already be US advisers on the ground. Indeed, in April 2022, a Pentagon official who requested anonymity told Asia Times that it is “likely we have a limited footprint on the ground in Ukraine, but under Title 50, not Title 10” – meaning US intelligence operatives and paramilitaries, as opposed to reserves.

Meanwhile, key officials – including French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock – are calling for the delivery of even-longer-range weapons. The New York Times also notes: “Britain, Germany, and France are working to base defense contractors in Ukraine to help build and repair weapons systems closer to the combat zone.” Russia has responded to these developments with a series of threats.

Russia and the West have started down the perilous path of tit-for-tat belligerence. The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement claiming that Russian forces would “practice the issues of preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons… in response to provocative statements and threats by certain Western officials against the Russian Federation.”

The question remains: Are these the signs of an approaching and tragic “inflection point” – and if so, can it still be avoided?

To do so, the Biden administration should, at long last, adopt a cold-eyed realism in Ukraine and understand that while the plight of the Ukrainian people is heartrending, the more humane option is not to widen the war. Even Ukraine’s original backers are coming to see a widening of the war for what it is: a danger to the future of Ukraine. Former Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass notes that Ukraine should “propose an interim ceasefire along existing lines,” explaining: “Ukraine would be better off with a military and diplomatic strategy that protects the country’s core, preserves its independence, and maintains external support.”

The unpleasant truth is that Russia today has a larger, more capable army than it did at the beginning of the war. As NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe stated in testimony submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee in April, Russia will soon “command the largest military on the continent.”

Every day, Ukraine inches further into the abyss. The United Nations International Organization for Migration reports that “more than 14.6 million people – a staggering 40 per cent of Ukraine’s total population – remain in need of some form of humanitarian assistance in 2024.” It is no surprise, then, that polls conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology show that millions of Ukrainians reject the official line that the war can be ended only by military means.

President Barack Obama recognized years ago that Russia possesses “escalatory dominance” – the ability to continually up the stakes – in Ukraine. “The fact is that Ukraine… is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he said.

President Obama was right. Picking a fight over NATO expansion in Russia’s backyard was a tragic, costly mistake – and for the sake of the Ukrainian people, the Biden administration needs to find an off-ramp, and soon.

James W. Carden is a contributing writer for foreign affairs at The Nation. He served as a policy adviser to the Special Representative for Intergovernmental Affairs and the Office of Russia Affairs at the US State Department.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.


Why Did It Take Russia So Long to Realize 

Donbass Was Worth Fighting for?


As its military operation enters a critical stage, the question of why it took Moscow eight years to intervene remains a sensitive topic


Scott Ritter: Why did it take Russia so long to realize Donbass was worth fighting for?

© Scott Ritter

On May 26, the Donetsk People’s Republic marked the tenth anniversary of the first battle for the region’s international airport. This was a key clash in the fight between Ukraine and local citizens who opposed the nationalist-dominated government that had seized power in Kiev as a result of the US-backed coup in February 2014. The anniversary was but one in a succession of similar commemorations of events which, together, draw attention to the fact that the war in Donbass has been ongoing for a decade.

Earlier this year I traveled to the Chechen RepublicCrimea, and the New Russian territories of Kherson and Zaporozhye, all locations which comprised what I called Russia’s “Path of Redemption,” the geographic expression of actions undertaken by Moscow. The fourth – and final – destination of my trip, the two people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk that are collectively referred to as the Donbass, brought this journey to a close. By visiting the literal ground zero of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, I was able to put a punctation mark at the end of a long and complicated passage which delved into the very essence of modern-day Russia – what it means to be Russian, and the price the Russian nation has been willing to pay to preserve this definition.

When I crossed the border between Zaporozhye and Donetsk, there was no doubt that I was entering a war zone. The bodyguards from the Sparta Battalion that had escorted my vehicle as we drove through Kherson and Zaporozhye was replaced by a heavily armed detachment of camouflaged Russian soldiers, a constant reminder of the ever-present threat posed by Ukrainian partisans and saboteurs. I was being driven in an armored Chevy Tahoe, the former property of a Bank of Russia executive which had been re-purposed for this trip. My host, Aleksandr Zyryanov, the Director of the Investment Development Agency of Novosibirsk, was at the wheel. My fellow passengers were Aleksandr’s close friend and comrade, Denis, and Kirill, a resident of Saint Petersburg who was our point of contact with several Russian military units in Donbass we were hoping to meet up with.

Our first stop in Donbass was the city of Mariupol, site of a bloody siege in March-May 2022 which saw the combined forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Russian army, including Chechen fighters, defeat thousands of Ukrainian Marines and members of the Azov Regiment, a formation of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who openly support the ideology of Stepan Bandera, the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, which fought alongside Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The last surviving remnants of the Ukrainian garrison which had holed up in a complex of tunnels underneath the sprawling Azovstal iron and steel factory that dominated the center of the city surrendered to Russian forces on May 20, 2022, bringing the battle to an end.

Mariupol suffered horribly because of the siege and the house-to-house fighting required to clear the city of its fanatic occupiers. The scars of war were so deep and prevalent as to leave the casual observer grasping to figure out how, or even if, the city and its population could ever recover. This was especially so when looking at the ruins of the Azovstal plant from the vantage point of the restored monument to the its workers who died during World War Two. And yet, like the patches of green that mark a charred forest after the first rainfall, Mariupol bore the evidence of a city coming back to life. The southern districts of the city had been completely razed, and new apartment complexes constructed which are populated by families whose children frolicked in playgrounds and parks nestled between the bright new buildings. Across the highway from the newly built neighborhood was a large new hospital complex. And as one drove into the center of the city, row upon row of damaged apartment buildings were undergoing reconstruction and repair work. Shops and restaurants were open, and people scurried about the sidewalks going about their business. Mariupol is very much alive, although the huge swaths of darkened neighborhoods, their buildings still uninhabitable, bear mute testimony to the work that still needs to be done.

The city of Donetsk, the capital of its eponymous people’s republic, is a living manifestation of the stark contrasts that define a modern metropolitan center during war – shiny high-rise buildings, their glass windows reflecting the morning sunlight, beckon, while in the streets below mothers walk hand in hand with their children, unflinching as the sound of artillery fire – incoming and outgoing – echo around them. Driving through the city, I was struck by the bustling activity at one street corner as families shopped for food and the basic necessities of life in stores fully stocked with the desired goods, only to drive around the next corner to find the ruins of a similar market scene, destroyed by the random artillery and rocket fire from Ukrainian forces who still treat the citizens of Donetsk as ”terrorists.”

I was taken to the Donbass Liberator’s monument, located in the Donetsk Culture and Leisure Park, next to the city’s arena, where we laid flowers to the memory of the fallen. Afterwards, as I was shown the monuments to the fallen heroes of the ongoing war with Ukraine, the sound of rocket fire shook the grounds. “It’s ours,” said my guide, an attractive young lady whose calm demeanor belied the reality of her current situation. “Uragan,” she said, a reference to the Russian 220-mm multiple launch rocket system. “Don’t worry.”

That a female tour guide was serving as a walking resource for weapons identification to a former Marine intelligence officer who used to specialize in identifying Soviet arms and equipment only underscored the disparity between perception and reality which marked the city of Donetsk – a world where normalcy was randomly punctuated with the horrors of war. It would be easy to allow yourself to become shrouded in the kind of flinching paranoia that seizes you when you are convinced that every step you take could be your last. To prevent yourself from simply fleeing to a basement until the all-clear signal sounds, you can overcompensate by taking on a devil-may-care attitude of “what happens, happens.”

But, for most, caution is the name of the game in Donetsk – while death may be randomly delivered in the form of Ukrainian artillery and rockets, you do not need to become a willing victim, especially if you know the Ukrainian enemy is actively searching for you in order to deliver a lethal blow.

I have been labeled by the Center for Countering Disinformation, a US-funded Ukrainian government agency, as an “information terrorist” who deserves to be treated as an actual “terrorist” in terms of punishment – a not-so-veiled threat to my life. Likewise, my name is on the infamous Mirotvorets (“peacekeepers”) “kill list” promulgated by the Ukrainian intelligence service. Daria Dugina, the daughter of the famous Russian political philosopher, Aleksandr Dugin, and Maksim Fomin, a Russian military blogger who wrote under the name Vladlen Tatarsky, were both on this list and were murdered by agents of the Ukrainian intelligence services. While I would have to be an egocentric narcissist to believe that the entire Ukrainian war effort would grind to a halt in order to hunt me down during my short visit to Donbass, the fact that Ukraine has on a regular basis attacked the hotels frequented by journalists reporting on the conflict also means that one you’d have to have a callous disregard for innocent life by staying at a hotel in Donetsk as long as your name is on such lists.

Discretion being the better part of valor, my hosts eschewed the offered room in a high-end Donetsk hotel for a more Spartan setting in a safehouse used during their frequent trips to the region. I traded the fine cuisine of Donetsk that my friend and colleague Randy Credico had bragged about during his visit to the region for the traditional soldier’s fare of fried potatoes and sausage cooked over a gas stove by Aleksandr’s friend, Denis.

Paranoia is the name of the game, however, when it comes to the day-to-day lives of those men and women who govern Donetsk and defend it from the Ukrainian army, if for no other reason than the Ukrainians are, in fact, actively trying to hunt them down and kill them. I had the honor and privilege of meeting with Denis Pushilin, the Governor of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and Aleksandr Khodakovsky, the commander of the legendary Vostok Battalion, one of the first military formations created in the Donbass region in 2014 to fight for independence from Ukraine. On both occasions, extensive security precautions were put in place to forestall any effort by Ukrainian intelligence to discover our meeting, identify its location, and attack it with artillery.

Pushilin and Khodakovsky both recalled their personal histories of the time of the founding of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Pushilin personally led a rally in Donetsk on April 5, 2014, calling for a referendum for the DPR to join Russia. He served as the first head of the DPR before stepping down in July 2014. In September 2018, he was brought back as the head of the DPR following the assassination of then DPR leader Aleksander Zakharchenko in a bombing of a Donetsk restaurant. He has served in that position ever since.

Up until early 2014, Aleksandr Khodakovsky was the commander of the elite Ukrainian police commando unit known as Alpha Group. Following the February 2014 Maidan coup that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, Khodakovsky and most of his Alpha Group commandoes defected to the Donbass resistance, where they were reformed into the Vostok Battalion. It was Khodakovsky’s Vostok Battalion which led the attack on Donetsk Airport on May 28, 2014, and which led the way into Mariupol in 2022. Today the Vostok Battalion has been expanded into a brigade-sized force operating as part of the Russian military, where it plays an active role in the ongoing battles for control of the Donbass region.

The contrast between Pushilin and Khodakovsky is quite stark. Both men are confident in the righteousness of their cause and the path of history they are embarked on. But while Pushilin brought with him the buoyant optimism of a politician looking forward to a better future, Khodakovsky exuded the quiet resignation of a soldier who knows that the victory he is fighting for can only come at a cost which, over the course of a decade’s worth of war, had become almost unbearable. Both men exhibited a deep love for the Donetsk People’s Republic, and a genuine appreciation for the sacrifice made by the Russian army and nation in coming to their assistance, and for bringing them into the fold of the Russian Federation.

The one thing both men had in common was a look of mental exhaustion whenever the subject of Russia’s military intervention was raised. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what caused this look until later, after our meetings had concluded and I found myself in the city of Lugansk, the capital of the Lugansk People’s Republic. The drive from Donetsk to Lugansk took us through towns and villages that had previously been on the front lines of the war with Ukraine. Some of these population centers showed signs of life. Many, however, did not. War, like a tornado, seemed to have a random character, targeting some places for destruction, while skipping over others.

Today, the city of Lugansk is not on the front line, and its citizens enjoy a life of relative calm when contrasted with their neighbors in Donetsk. But war has visited them in the past, with all the violence and horror that currently unfolds in the regions of Donbass located to the south and west of the city. On June 27, 2017, the citizens of Lugansk unveiled a memorial dedicated to children killed because of the fighting that had been raging since 2014. On that day, 33 white doves were released into the air to symbolize the young lives lost.

On January 17, 2024, I visited this memorial, known as the ‘Alley of Angels.’ There is another, more well-known Alley of Angels located in Donetsk. Because of the proximity of the war to that city, media coverage of the Donetsk monument, which commemorates the more than 230 children killed in the Donetsk People’s Republic by Ukraine since 2014, has been extensive, to the point that much of the world has seemed to have forgotten that the war with Ukraine has ravaged Lugansk as well. Since the unveiling of the Lugansk monument, another 35 children have been killed, raising the total to 68, with more than 190 additional children injured, all due to indiscriminate Ukrainian shelling.

Aleksandr and I took part in a small ceremony marked by our laying flowers at the foot of the monument. By the time we had finished, a small crowd had gathered around to witness the sight of an American mourning the loss of their children. I was handed a book about the memorial and given an impromptu tour of the sculptures and plaques that were located there. A television crew asked me for a short interview.

“What are your impressions of this memorial?” the interviewer asked.

“It’s a touching tribute to the young lives that were so needlessly lost,” I replied. “And a constant reminder as to why this tragic war needs to be fought and won.”

Afterwards, a lady emerged from the small crowd that had been watching the proceedings. “We thank you for coming to visit our city, and to honor the memory of our children,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.

She held out her hand, and I took it in mine, a gesture of friendship and compassion.

“You must be relieved now that you are part of Russia, and the Russian army is helping drive the Ukrainians back,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, her voice cracking. “Yes, of course. But why did it take them so long? These children,” she said, gesturing toward the memorial, “did not have to die. Why did it take them so long?”

I looked into her eyes, and immediately was struck by a sense of déjà vu. I had seen that look before, in the eyes of Denis Pushilin and Alexander Khodakovsky, a mixture of relief and exasperation, of hope and dejection, of happiness and sorrow. Yes, the leadership and people of Donbass are overjoyed by the presence of Russian troops on their territory, and the fact that the region is now legally part of Russia. Yes, Russia loves them now. But where was Russia when the children started dying in 2014? Why did it take so long for Moscow to wake up to the need to bring the Donbass into the fold of the Russian nation?

This is the eternal question, one that Russia today struggles to find an adequate answer for.

Russia’s path of redemption ends in Donbass. Here, the sins, errors, and evil which combined to create the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict are manifest. Questions have been asked to which there may be no adequate answer. Today, the situation on the ground increasingly points to a Russian victory over both Ukraine and its supporters in the collective West. But this victory has come at a huge physical and psychological cost. While the dead may be buried and honored, the living will always have to struggle to come to grips over the sacrifices that have been made in support of the cause they were fighting for.

And, in the end, if they believe that the cause was a just one – and it is my firm position that they do, in fact, believe this to be the case – then the answer to the question as to why it took Russia so long to intervene on behalf of Donbass will hang there, unanswerable, if for no other reason than that the pain any honest answer will generate may be too much to bear for those who had been fighting for the liberation of Donbass these past ten years.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War, where he played a critical role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. From 1991 until 1998, Mr. Ritter served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Ritter was a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. His new book, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union, is his ninth. Read other articles by Scott, or visit Scott's website.

 

Democracy Will Not Come through Compromise and Fear


Aisha Khalid and Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), Two Wings to Fly, Not One, 2017.

Half of the world’s population will have the opportunity to vote by the end of this year as 64 countries and the European Union are scheduled to open their ballot boxes. No previous year has been so flush with elections. Among these countries is India, where a remarkable 969 million voting papers had to be printed ahead of the elections that culminated on 1 June. In the end, 642 million people (roughly two-thirds of those eligible) voted, half of them women. This is the highest-ever participation by women voters in a single election in the world.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s 27 member states held elections for the European Parliament, which meant that 373 million eligible voters had the opportunity to cast their ballot for the 720 members who make up the legislative body. Add in the eligible voters for elections in the United States (161 million), Indonesia (204 million), Pakistan (129 million), Bangladesh (120 million), Mexico (98 million), and South Africa (42 million) and you can see why 2024 feels like the Year of Elections.

Alfredo Ramos Martínez (Mexico), Vendedora de Alcatraces (‘Calla Lily Vendor’), 1929.

Over the past few weeks, three particularly consequential elections took place in India, Mexico, and South Africa. India and South Africa are key players in the BRICS bloc, which is charting a path towards a world order that is not dominated by the US. The nature of the governing coalitions that come to power in these countries will have an impact on the grouping and will certainly shape this year’s BRICS Summit to be held in Kazan (Russia) in late October. While Mexico is not a member of BRICS and did not apply for membership during the expansion last year, the country has sought to relieve itself of the pressures from the United States (most Mexicans are familiar with the statement ‘Poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States’, made by Porfirio Diaz, the country’s president from 1884 to 1911). The Mexican government’s recent aversion to US interference in Latin America and to the overall neoliberal framework of trade and development has brought the country deeper into dialogue with alternative projects such as BRICS.

While the results in India and South Africa showed that the electorates are deeply divided, Mexican voters stayed with the centre-left National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), electing Claudia Sheinbaum as the first woman president in the country’s history on 2 June. Sheinbaum will take over from Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who leaves the presidency with a remarkable 80% approval rating. As the mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023 and a close ally of AMLO, Sheinbaum followed the general principles laid out in the Fourth Transformation (4T) project set out by AMLO in 2018. This 4T project of ‘Mexican Humanism’ follows three important periods in Mexico’s history: independence (1810–1821), reform (1858–1861), and revolution (1910–1917). While AMLO spoke often of this 4T as an advance in Mexico’s history, it is in fact a return to the promises of the Mexican Revolution with its call to nationalise resources (including lithium), increase wages, expand government jobs programmes, and revitalise social welfare. One of the reasons why Sheinbaum triumphed over the other candidates was her pledge to continue the 4T agenda, which is rooted less in populism (as the bourgeois press likes to say) and more so in a genuine welfarist humanism.

George Pemba (South Africa), Township Games, 1973.

In May of this year, thirty years after the end of apartheid, South Africa held its seventh general election of the post-apartheid era, producing results that stand in stark contrast to those in Mexico. The ruling tripartite alliance – consisting of the African National Congress (ANC), South African Communist Party, and Congress of South African Trade Unions – suffered an enormous attrition of its vote share, securing just 40.18% of the vote (42 seats short of a majority), compared to 59.50% and a comfortable majority in the National Assembly in 2019. What is stunning about the election is not just the decline in the alliance’s vote share but the rapid decline in voter turnout. Since 1999, less and less voters have bothered to vote, and this time only 58% of those eligible came to the polls (down from 86% in 1994). What this means is that the tripartite alliance won the votes of only 15.5% of eligible voters, while its rivals claimed even smaller percentages. It is not just that the South African population – like people elsewhere – is fed up with this or that political party, but that they are increasingly disillusioned by their electoral process and by the role of politicians in society.

A sober appraisal of South Africa’s election results shows that the two political forces that broke from the ANC – Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters – won a combined 64.28% of the vote, exceeding the vote share that the ruling alliance secured in 1994. The overall agenda promised by these three forces remains intact (ending poverty, expropriating land, nationalising banks and mines, and expanding social welfare), although the strategies they would like to follow are wildly different, a divide furthered by their personal rivalries. In the end, a broad coalition government will be formed in South Africa, but whether it will be able to define even a social democratic politics – such as in Mexico – is unclear. The overall decline in the population’s belief in the system represents a lack of faith in any political project. Promises, if unmet, can go stale.

Kalyan Joshi (India), Migration in the Time of COVID, 2020.

In the lead-up to the election in India, held over six weeks from 19 April to 1 June, incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that his party alone would win a thumping 370 seats in the 543-seat parliament. In the end, the BJP could only muster 240 seats – down by 63 compared with the 2019 elections – and his National Democratic Alliance won a total of 293 (above the 272-threshold needed to form a government). Modi will return for a third term as prime minister, but with a much-weakened mandate. He was only able to hold on to his own seat by 150,000 votes, a significant decrease from the 450,000-vote margin in 2019, while fifteen incumbent members of his cabinet lost their seats. No amount of hate speech against Muslims or use of government agencies to silence opposition parties and the media was able to increase the far-right’s hold on power.

An April poll found that unemployment and inflation were the most important issues for two-thirds of those surveyed, who say that jobs for city dwellers are getting harder to find. Forty percent of India’s 1.4 billion people are under the age of 25, and a study by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy showed that India’s youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are ‘faced with a double whammy of low and falling labour participation rates and shockingly high unemployment rates’. Unemployment among young people is 45.4%, six times higher than the overall unemployment rate of 7.5%.

India’s working-class and peasant youth remain at home, the sensibility of their entire families shaped by their dilemmas. Despair at everyday life has now eaten into the myth that Modi is infallible. Modi will return as prime minister, but the actualities of his tenure will be defined partly by the grievances of tens of millions of impoverished Indians articulated through a buoyant opposition force that will find leaders amongst the mass movements. Among them will be farmers and peasants, such as Amra Ram, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and All India Kisan Sabha (‘All India Farmers’ Union’) who won decisively in Sikar, an epicentre of the farmers’ movement. He will be joined in parliament by Sachidanandam, a leader of the All India Kisan Sabha and Communist Party of India (Marxist) from Dindigul (Tamil Nadu), and by Raja Ram Kushwaha, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation from Karakat (Bihar) and the convenor of the All-India Kisan Sangharsh (‘All India Farmers’ Struggle’) Coordination Committee, a peasant alliance that includes 250 organisations. The farmers are now represented in parliament.

Nitheesh Narayanan of Tricontinental Research Services writes that even though the Left did not send a large contingent to parliament, it has played an important role in this election. Amra Ram, he continues, ‘enters the parliament as a representative of the peasant power that struck the first blow to the BJP’s unquestioned infallibility in North India. His presence becomes a guarantee of India’s democracy from the streets’.

Heri Dono (Indonesia), Resistance to The Power of Persecution, 2021.

The idea of ‘democracy’ does not start and finish at the ballot box. Elections – such as in India and the United States – have become grotesquely expensive. This year’s election in India cost $16 billion, most of it spent by the BJP and its allies. Money, power, and the corrosiveness of political dialogue have corrupted the democratic spirit.

The search for the democratic spirit is at least as old as democracy itself. In 1949, the communist poet Langston Hughes expressed this yearning in his short poem ‘Democracy’, which spoke then to the denial of the right to vote and speaks now to the need for a much deeper consideration of what democracy must mean in our times – something that cannot be bought by money or intimidated by power.

Democracy will not come
Today, this year,
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
Listen, America—
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

 

FacebooTwitter

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global SouthRead other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

How Patriarchal Pronatalism Dominates the Conversation about the Human Future



Global Population Growth Is Slowing Down. Here’s One Reason Why,” Scientific American

Governments worldwide are in a race to see which one can encourage the most women to have the most babies. Hungary is slashing income tax for women with four or more children. Russia is offering women with 10 or more children a “Mother-Heroine” award. GreeceItaly, and South Korea are bribing women with attractive baby bonuses. China has instituted a three-child policy. Iran has outlawed free contraceptives and vasectomies. Japan has joined forces with the fertility industry to infiltrate schools to promote early childbearing. A leading UK demographer has proposed taxing the childless. Religious myths are preventing African men from getting vasectomies. A eugenics-inspired Natal conference just took place in the U.S., a nation leading the way in taking away reproductive rights.

The push for more babies to increase our numbers is hardly a new phenomenon. Longstanding forces of reproductive control have always favored population growth. These go back 5,000 years to the institutionalized male domination and patriarchy that emerged upon the rise of early states and empires centered in cities. Societies at the vanguard of civilization had two main goals: population expansion and seizure of resources. These were realized by coercing women to have as many children as possible and by pressuring men to become soldiers. Because of the dangers of both childbirth and war, birthing and soldiering had to be exalted and reinforced through social controls. To this day, pronatalism and militarism remain among patriarchy’s key features.

Its strength undiminished over the course of millennia, pronatalism serves powerful institutions of the state, the church, the military, and the economy by preaching that parenthood is an obligation, not a choice. Pronatalism runs so deep in our society, has become so pervasive, that to this day it colors the most important policy discussions and social norms.

As the Earth system groans under the burden of too many people consuming too much stuff, a new twist on this ubiquitous ideology – one that contemptuously sees women as mere procreative vessels – plays out on the global stage. While scientists warn that human numbers are a key driver of ecological and social crises, the subject of overpopulation gets short shrift by policymakers, think tanks, and even environmental groups. We are told that numbers don’t matter; what matters is solely the level of per capita consumption.

For example, when the revered Jane Goodall spoke about the harms of population growth, environmental journalist-cum-activist George Monbiot attacked her by insinuating that she was proposing the culling of people. Elsewhere he wrote, “It’s no coincidence that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men.”

I am a woman, born in India and now living in Canada, happily childfree as I near the end of my reproductive years. I am grateful to have a steady income, but I am not wealthy. Some might say I’m obsessed with overpopulation, though obsession isn’t the right term to describe a rational assessment of the role of population in the ecological degradation that makes humanity’s future precarious.

But Monbiot’s is just one example. Environmental journalist David Roberts acknowledges that population growth is a problem and then goes on to explain why “there’s much downside and not much upside to talking about population.” Katherine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, an organization that has been accused of “promoting false climate solutions,” says in an interview, “As a climate scientist, I know that it’s not the number of people that matters. It’s how we live.” A formal statement by The Union of Concerned Scientists reads, “We’re sometimes asked ‘Isn’t population growth driving climate change?’ But that’s the wrong question—and it can lead to dangerous answers.”

Let’s unpack these statements, all of which fall into what political and social theorist Diana Coole has called the discourses of population denialism.

The first of these, “population shaming,” justifies silence about population by pointing to the excesses of “population control” movements of the past. And it is true that these coercive efforts deserve repudiation. Beginning in the 1970s, India forcibly sterilized millions of poor people (and it was backed in this endeavor by some Western powers). That was a dark moment in a benighted time, which focused on decreasing population growth in the lower-income countries rather than on moderating dramatically higher per capita consumption in the high-income countries.

But it would be fallacious, and a disservice to the valiant history of family planning, to suppose all approaches to curbing population growth are destructive. During and following India’s reprehensible conduct, family planning programs in ThailandCosta RicaIran, and elsewhere not only advanced greater personal and reproductive autonomy for girls and women, but also led to significantly lower fertility rates, decreases in poverty, and gains in environmental conservation.

We know from historical experience that slowing population growth requires upholding fundamental human rights: championing universal education, prohibiting child marriage, empowering females, improving access to family planning services, and, most of all, standing up to patriarchy and pronatalism.

This relates to another oft-used and largely-superseded discourse of population denialism that “development” or economic growth is required to spur declines in fertility, a claim that plays directly into the hands of pro-growth neoliberal interestsResearch shows that declining fertility rates, however, are most closely associated with increasing use of modern contraception and are largely independent of changes in the economy.

Disproportionately focusing on reproductive control efforts in the recent past, as so many environmentalists do, entirely misses the millennia-old chokehold of compulsive pronatalism in driving population growth—which makes these environmentalists unwitting accomplices of pronatalist patriarchy.

Equally as offensive is that population denialism defies scientific evidence.

In its 2022 report, the IPCC makes abundantly clear that “globally, GDP per capita and population growth remained the strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade.” In a 2024 survey conducted by The Guardian, leading IPCC scientists candidly discussed their decisions to have no or fewer children, citing as their main motivations the impact of overpopulation on climate change and the fear of bringing their potential children into a perilous world environment.

In 2017, over 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issued a warning that “we are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats.” Other Scientists’ Warnings have raised similar alarms.

In 2022, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification warned that “within the next few decades, 129 countries will experience an increase in drought – 23 primarily due to population growth and 38 because of their interaction between climate change and population growth.”

In its 2022 report, the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs warned that “rapid population growth makes it more difficult for low-income and lower-middle-income countries to afford the increase in public expenditures on a per capita basis that is needed to eradicate poverty, end hunger and malnutrition, and ensure universal access to health care, education and other essential services.”

It goes without saying that hyper-consumerism and affluence-seeking in rich countries have played an outsized role in these crises, yes. But to focus on consumerism alone misses the full complexity of the world problematique.

The global middle class is the fastest rising demographic group, with at least one billion people—88% from Asia—projected to join it this decade, totaling 5.3 billion middle-class consumers. And other poorer billions surely have the right to increase their standard of living. Given that we are already in an extreme state of ecological overshoot, in which we are consuming 75% percent more than Earth can regenerate, further growth in our population and economy can only come at the expense of biophysical Earth systems, which means increased peril to our collective future. Refusing to deal with the twin threats of population and consumption, both of which are at unsustainable levels, only accelerates the destruction of other life and puts us on a long-term trajectory of immiseration of billions of people.

Meanwhile, some politicians and pundits seem to believe the great threat to humankind is a shrinking economy driven by declining fertility rates and aging populations — that is, the threat is not too many people but too few. “Population declinism,” as this is known—another tentacle of population denialism—is what is fueling the global trend of pushing women to pump out the babies.

Even amid declining fertility rates due to greater gender equality, global population is still growing by about 80 million people annually, just as in 1970, adding a projected 2.5 billion before the end of this century.

Observers of the panic about declining fertility rates, such as Nobel laureate Steven Chu, have suggested that we are caught in a “Ponzi scheme” of endless growth that is “based on having more young workers than older people.” This unsustainable and ecologically-destructive scheme, which relies on an ever-increasing population, mostly serves the interests of tech billionaires, elites like Elon Musk, and the ideologies of far-Rightreligiousnationalist, and market fundamentalists.

Not only has population denialism among progressives emboldened the far Right to pursue its pronatalist agenda of rolling back reproductive rights, passing stricter divorce laws, and relaxing domestic violence laws, progressives are now joining the chorus of “baby-bust” alarmism.

Media outlets regularly platform growth-biased pieces: this in the New York Times by an author whose organization received $10 million from Elon Musk for “fertility research”; thisthis, and this in the Washington Post by contributors affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank with a history of climate denial and whose funders include ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers; and this by Vox in their Future Perfect section, a billionaire-funded project embedded in the deeply controversial effective altruism philosophy.

More disturbingly, attempts to challenge pronatalism today are strategically conflated by these pro-growth actors with anti-natalismbaby hating, or misanthropy.

Meanwhile, the rights of children to be born into conditions conducive to their social, psychological, and material well being are all but trampled as nations compete to pump out, by any means necessary, the next generation of worshippers, workers, consumers, taxpayers, soldiers, and of course, procreators. Warnings from leading authorities about dire population-driven consequences for children in the form of climate change impacts and extreme poverty, among others, go unheeded.

The alarmism surrounding declining fertility rates is unfounded; it is a positive trend that represents greater reproductive choice, and one that we should accelerate. A smaller human population will immensely facilitate other transformations we need: mitigating climate change, conserving and rewilding ecosystems, making agriculture sustainable, and making communities more resilient and able to integrate more climate and war refugees.

Research shows that societies with smaller populations and aging demographics can prosper. Instead of coercing women to have more babies, we can adopt progressive policies that strengthen social safety nets, wisely reallocate resources, and see seniors as meaningful contributors to society rather than a growing burden on a shrinking pool of younger workers. We can shift the failed paradigm of endless growth and transition to an economy that respects the biophysical limits of our planet.

It’s time to reject “population shaming” that pretends to champion human rights while echoing pronatalist ideologies that treat women’s wombs as cogs in the growth machine. To defend the right of all to a livable future, we need to get off the growth treadmill, get past population denialism, and work for a future that has both fewer human beings and less consumption,

Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of the NGO Population Balance and an adjunct lecturer at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University. Her research and advocacy work focuses on the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice. Read other articles by Nandita.

They’re Arresting the Wrong People Inside of Congress

[Photo by: Celâl Güneş]

I was arrested again inside of Congress for speaking out against US-backed genocide. Myself and others were brutally tackled and carried out of the room by Capitol Police. I was charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” for speaking out and holding a sign as the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense testified in Congress for more money for the endless US war machine.

While they are arresting peace activists for exercising first amendment rights they are making plans to host Netanyahu- a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

For decades, people following CODEPINK’s lead have been protesting inside the halls of Congress. The year before October 7, there were a handful of us protesting the bloated military budgets and the US warmongering. I was arrested several times on my own, but since October, dozens of us have been arrested in Congress, hundreds in DC, and thousands across the US and the world for Palestine.

The sustained energy and activism are the result of the 40,000+ thousands of Palestinians murdered, millions being starved and displaced, their land, water, and air poisoned, and neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps demolished.

The real criminals are the ones we are protesting against–the ones literally sitting directly in front of us inside the hearing room–and should be the ones arrested, charged, and found guilty for the war criminals they are funding and supporting and the war crimes they are committing.

Any of us speaking and acting out on the side of justice know we are taking risks. We see it as our duty as people in the US in solidarity with and inspired by the Palestinian people facing and resisting this horror.

As I await my court date, I think of the people I spent the night with at the DC detention facility. Just this year, there have been 5 deaths inside the D.C. jail. The dozen or so women in there reminded me that poverty is a policy choice and our carceral, systemically racist state perpetuates harm and cycles of violence.

According to the US Center for Palestinian Rights in Washington DC, for this year alone (before our additional billions of aid weresent), $15,596,311 to Israel’s weapons could instead fund 451,735 households with public housing, 1,322,199 children receiving free or low-cost healthcare, 41,490 elementary school teachers, 10,818,505 households with solar electricity produce, and 100,563 students with their loan debt canceled.

The fight against US militarism is one where the climate, feminist, Indigenous, economic, and racial justice movements are all uniting around right now. And as it deepens and strengthens, we must become more organized as we escalate while we continue to make those in power uncomfortable.FacebookTwitter

Olivia DiNucci is an anti-militarism and climate justice organizer based in Washington DC. Read other articles by Olivia.