Oppose the Trump‑Putin axis, oppose European rearmament
First published at Anti*Capitalist Resistance. Slightly edited.
Anti*Capitalist Resistance (ACR) stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine fighting to defend their country against occupation and annexation. We have done so since Putin’s first aggression in 2014. We therefore support the right of Ukraine to obtain the weapons and aid necessary for its fight against Russian imperialism.
The support for Ukraine by NATO and Western imperialism has been for geostrategic and political self-interest. This war has given the West legitimacy after 20 years of the failed “war against terrorism” in the “clash of civilisation” with its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Imperialism is a global system where powerful nations with developed financial and industrial capital seek to dominate the rest of the world by extracting resources and wealth. In order to do this they use military means to back their project — and sometimes to get one up on their competitors
Economic stagnation has made global competition increasingly violent, as each state tries to maintain its position in the world market at the expense of others. This translates into new trade wars and new territorial divisions.
Trump’s presidency has shifted global politics onto dangerous new terrain. His bellicose claims against Greenland, Panama and even Canada — coupled with his tariff war — shows we are at an end to the era of Pax Americana and Washington Consensus neoliberalism. Instead Trump’s argument that “might makes right” because it makes economic sense opens the door for a more violent world with even less checks and balances against the actions of great powers
Imperialism never went away, but now it is even more aggressive. The United States prepares for war against China and negotiates with Russia to divide up Ukraine. Trump and Putin have a similar vision of powerful nations carving up the world into their own spheres of influence. Smaller nations are simply bargaining chips or prey for imperialist expansionist endeavours. This has always been the case to some extent, but Trump is being more honest about it.
Peace deals being discussed in oil rich Gulf Nations without any Ukrainians present are a return to the old colonial order where people’s fates were decided by imperialist leaders in rooms far away. The Ukrainians are left with no agency, no national sovereignty, no ability to determine their own national future.
The Trump regime is tearing up established obligations and alliances in favour of a new way of “doing business” that is almost entirely transactional — reflecting Trump’s background as neither a military man nor a politician but a simple capitalist. If anyone wants military support they have to pay for it — no more “freebies”.
The proposed mineral deal is an example of this: Ukraine is not a nation to be supported against Russia’s imperialist invasion, but a business partner that must pay for military assistance through decades long extractive deals that benefit the US.
Imperialist countries intervene in the struggles of people fighting for independence and democracy to deflect the outcomes to suit their interests. This is the case in Ukraine, where countries providing arms are doing it slowly and in quantities that are insufficient. They are shackling Ukraine with further debt and blocking a socially just reconstruction to impose a deeper neoliberal order. Imperialist countries backing Ukraine are divided in wanting to end the war as soon as possible to resume normal business with Russia, or dragging it out to weaken an imperialist rival.
The idea that Russia is a military threat to “democratic” Western Europe is not credible. It has been unable after three years of war to achieve its objectives: demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, subordinating it to Russia. In rejecting Trump’s peace plan, Putin has demanded new elections in Ukraine claiming Zelensky has no mandate. His real goal is to colonise Ukraine again.
In this global reordering European leaders are increasingly taking measures to remilitarise the continent. Governments who claimed there was “no money” for social spending or the public sector suddenly have billions for the rearming and expansion of their military forces.
This is posed as a “common sense” view that European nations should rearm against expansionist Russian imperialism. But supporting this “multipolar world” is not an alternative to a third world war but likely a prelude to it.
Rearmament or Putin’s victory will fuel the further rise of the extreme right. It is their vision of the world that is being fostered: powerful militarised nations, facing off against each other in a world where there is not even the flimsy liberal pretension of human rights or an “international order”. Patriotism, militarism and nationalism are their guiding ethos, a world defined by men like Trump and Putin.
Keir Starmer’s Labour — ruling over a declining imperial power like Britain — has no alternative but to follow in line and accept this new world order, trying to play nicely with Trump to hope he throws some scraps from his table. It hopes to use the debate among the ruling classes over the war in Ukraine, along with the debate about Trump’s tariffs, to reassert Britain’s position as a major imperialist power — balancing between support for the US and Atlanticism while at the same time trying to build stronger links with the EU, particularly with France and Germany. It also uses the cover of jingoism and militarism to justify austerity measures such as the attacks on disabled people that it wished to carry out anyway in order to present itself as a safe pair of hands for capital
Ecosocialists oppose increased spending on European imperialist war machines. It would be a waste of the limited resources we have as a species with the climate crisis bearing down on us. Their geopolitical calculations ignore the horrors of what a war inflicts on us and our planet.
We do not trust European states claims’ to defend democracy when they back the genocide of Palestinians, support the Gulf States monarchies, have a legacy of colonialism, and have worked tirelessly since WWII to crush national liberation movements, mass socialist parties and any alternatives to their capitalist world order.
ACR rejects imperialist rearmament and instead argues for a new internationalism of the people. Therefore:
We support the right of countries to self-determination and to resist occupation and annexation, including by military means. This applies to Ukraine, Palestine, Kurdistan, Kashmir, etc. Ukraine should get the arms necessary and without delay and without strings from wherever possible. We also argue that there should be no illusions in the intentions of the countries supplying arms in exchange for deep neoliberal reforms and increasing debt.
Arms shipments to Israel and Saudi Arabia, other Gulf monarchies, India, etc. should be halted immediately. The supply of arms necessary to Ukraine can be done without increasing Britain’s military budget. Britain’s military budget is not for defence. Nuclear weapons are offensive and retaliatory (they should never be used and therefore be abolished) and aircraft carriers are designed for imperialist adventures far away from Britain.
Anti-militarism is not the same as pacifism. We counterpose the military institution, its chain of command, the barracks without democracy, and its nationalistic fervour around the flag and “King and Country” to a civic and popular armed territorial defence. The arms industry should be nationalised to remove the profit motive and ensure that it supplies arms to those fighting for the liberation of their country. We demand an end to the production of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear bombs and those that are indiscriminate and disproportionately affect civilians such as cluster bombs, land mines, phosphorus).
Britain and others should rigorously respect UN treaties, for example The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the decisions of the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice.
Britain should halt F35 purchases, scrap its Trident missiles, and remove the 18 US military bases in Britain
Friday 18 April 2025, by Gin Vola, Elias Vola
Since the abrupt reversal of US policy towards Ukraine, the Russian concessions obtained by President Trump have been non-existent. The ceasefire on energy infrastructure has not been implemented; worse, bombing on Ukrainian territory has never been so intense, while the opening of a corridor to resume maritime trade in the Black Sea only benefits Russia.
These negotiations deprive the Ukrainian people of the essential means for their defence, while helping the Russian regime to hide the military and human disaster of its offensive. Trump’s latest threats of sanctions against Russia are part of this asymmetrical logic. His annoyance at the immobility of Putin, in whom he continues to place “his trust”, has not been followed by any action. At the same time, the US President has urged Ukraine to sign an agreement on minerals without delay, which would establish a new kind of economic colonialism. Aware of his advantage, Putin continues to play the maximalist card, calling for elections in occupied Ukraine.
Weapons, not speeches
Yet the Ukrainian people continue to stand united in defence of their right to self-determination. For “if Ukraine is partitioned, the millions who are either in the occupied territories or have had to flee will have nowhere to return. They know that an outcome that hugely rewards the aggressor will only strengthen Putin’s authoritarian regime and mean even more repression, especially in the occupied territories. So, Ukrainians have two things in mind when thinking about any deal: the fate of the people in the occupied territories and how to prevent Russia from restarting the war.” [1]
For that Ukraine needs weapons, and it needs them now. But on the European side, the dangerous excessiveness of the military investments announced by certain countries (led by France, Germany and the UK), contrasts radically with the weakness of the concrete and immediate military aid they are providing to Ukraine. The meeting between Zelensky and Macron finally resulted in two billion in aid... in old military equipment invoiced at new prices.
Standing by Ukraine
Let’s make no mistake: the return to militarism of the imperialist powers of Western Europe is not the right response to Putin’s imperialist war. All the more so when the neo-fascist danger is growing all over the continent. It is the Ukrainian resistance that can stop this madness and avert a warlike escalation.
Between a bloc of conservatives and liberals, seeking to defend their national interests and continue to attack our social rights, and a Left locked in a chauvinistic pacifism that offers no solution to the peoples of Eastern Europe faced with the neo-fascist peril, it is up to an internationalist, anti-fascist Left to be the best ally of the resisting Ukraine. We will proudly continue this fight!
L’Anticapitaliste 2 April 2025
Attached documentsukraine-to-avoid-warlike-escalation-weapons-for-ukraine_a8943.pdf (PDF - 905.2 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article8943]
Footnotes
[1] ‘The left should support a just peace for Ukraine, not a Trump-Putin deal to appease the aggressor’: An interview with Ukrainian socialist Denys Pilash - Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières, March 2025.
Elias Vola
Gin Vola
International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
Western Media Continues To Prepare the Public for Defeat in Ukraine
On March 29, The New York Times published an article that “reveal[ed] that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” Its undeclared thesis was that the U.S. has done everything possible for Ukraine to win the war. Ukraine would not trust them and listen. Now the war is lost, and there is no choice but to negotiate. The article was the first major attempt to prepare the public for defeat in Ukraine.
Not to be outdone or left behind, less than two weeks later, the British paper The Sunday Times has published the British version, establishing the pattern of preparing the public for defeat.
Though the British version, like its American predecessor, is full of daring British accomplishments, its real, undeclared thesis is that if America did everything to achieve victory in Ukraine, the United Kingdom did everything to make what America did possible.
The New York Times piece credits Britain for managing “the logistics hub.” The British piece claims they did much more. It opens with the same drama as its American counterpart: “the extent of its involvement and influence – last-minute dashes to Kyiv, help forging battle plans and collecting vital intelligence on the Russians – has remained largely hidden. Until now.”
The Sunday Times claims credit for Britain for three pivotal roles in the war. The first is that they were the vanguard of the operation, the first to push many of the red lines. The UK “played a leading role in getting Ukraine the weapons it needed in the early days of the war.” Britain’s Secretary of Defense, Ben Wallace, we are told, was affectionately called “the man who saved Kyiv” by the Ukrainians. Later they would be the first “to provide Ukraine with long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles to boost its chances of success.” Anti-tank missiles, tanks, long-range missiles “all happened as early as they did because of” Wallace and Britain.
But it was not just in sending weapons to Ukraine that Britain was the first. It was also the first to put boots on the ground. In its cheap novel narrative style, The Times says that the UK had “the derring-do to deploy troops inside the country when no one else would.” The UK, The Times reports, had boots on the ground in Ukraine from the beginning. Early on, London had sent “a few dozen regular British troops” to Kiev “to instruct new and returning military recruits to use NLAWs, British-supplied anti-tank missiles that were delivered in February 2022 as the invasion was just beginning.” Later, they would “secretly” send troops “to fit Ukraine’s aircraft with the [long-range] missiles and teach troops how to use them.”
While U.S. military chiefs would only go to Ukraine “on rare occasions… Britain’s military chiefs… were given the freedom to go whenever necessary.”
The second pivotal role claimed by Britain is that it was the brains of the operation. “Behind closed doors,” The Sunday Times reports, “the Ukrainians refer to Britain’s military chiefs as the “brains” of the “anti-Putin” coalition.” They helped in “forging battle plans and collecting vital intelligence on the Russians.”
The Sunday Times piece also flirts with familiar themes from The New York Times article, like the known risk of nuclear war and the incompetence of the Ukrainian government and military command that led to defeat. There was “nervousness,” we are briefly told, “that giving Ukraine increasingly heavy weaponry could escalate tensions with Russia.” The Russians “had been rattling the nuclear sabre.”
We are told that the United States and Britain had carefully planned Ukraine’s counteroffensive but that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and General Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s ground forces commander, “had other ideas.” To emphasize again the thesis that the U.S. and Britain had done all they could and that defeat rests with the Ukrainian political and military leadership, The Times stresses that the U.S. was getting “frustrated” and “impatient.”
Though it again spends less time on these digressions, The Times also touches upon one of the more cynical aspects of The New York Times’ reporting. The New York Times reports that one value of the war in Ukraine is that it was “a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.” While “the Ukrainians were the ones fighting and dying,” the U.S. was “testing American equipment and tactics and sharing lessons learned.” The Sunday Times makes a similar cynical point: “Ukraine has paid a terrible price in defending themselves but they’ve also given us a window on modern warfare.” The UK would take “the lessons [they] learnt during the spring and summer of 2023 to the army, which [they are] seeking to transform into a more lethal, agile force.”
But the third and most pivotal role that The Times piece claims for Britain is that they played the role of mediator between the U.S. and Ukraine that kept the partnership together and made the war effort possible. “Most crucially,” The Times reveals, “as the Americans provided the ‘cream’ of the weapons to Ukraine and the precise targeting data to use them effectively, it was British military chiefs, under Operation Scorpius, holding Washington and Kyiv’s difficult relationship together.” Unreported at the time, while the Biden administration was “still presenting a faultless, united front with its Ukrainian allies… behind the scenes tensions had been mounting for months and by the early summer of 2023 had reached a point where they threatened to spiral out of control.”
At the point that “relations between the Ukrainians and Americans hit rock bottom,” British Admiral Sir Tony Radakin broke off “a long-planned holiday” and, telling Wallace that it was getting “too fractious,” said “he needed to get out to Ukraine to pull both sides together.” Radakin “would sit down with Zaluzhny, hear the Ukrainians out, and try to explain their perspective to the Americans.”
Britain’s mediation was a success. Its “diplomacy brought the two sides back together and in mid-August, Radakin, Zaluzhny, and [commander of US Army Europe and Africa] Cavoli met in person on the Polish-Ukrainian border. During a five-hour discussion, they thrashed out plans for the counteroffensive and plotted for the winter, as well as the following year. It was a sign that the Americans were not going anywhere soon.” Once again, Britain had saved the partnership and kept America in the war. This was a regular role for Radakin: “He was the person keeping the U.S. on side, and keeping the Biden administration leaning into Ukraine.”
The U.K. has done everything it can to help Ukraine win the war. It has provided “unwavering support” for Ukraine. It led the charge to send weapons and long-range missiles, and it put boots on the ground “when no one else would.” It was the “brains” of the coalition and brought “vital intelligence… to the table.” “Most crucially,” The Sunday Times tells us, the British provided the indispensable mediation that preserved the American-Ukrainian relationship and kept America in the war and the war effort and the partnership possible.
There is a pattern emerging in Western mainstream media reporting of the history of the war. It is not Ukraine that did everything it could and the West who let them down with insufficient weapons and limits on their use. It is the West who did everything that it could and Ukraine who let them down by not following orders. The New York Times’ March article led the way, and The Sunday Times’ April article establishes the pattern. The undeclared purpose of all these top-secret revelations American and British officials are choosing to share with the press seems to be the preparation of the public in the West for defeat in Ukraine and preparation for whatever comes next.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
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