In the view of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which is ultimately a proxy war between U.S. imperialism and The Russian Federation, has inaugurated a turning point in international politics.

Since the overthrow and dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc socialist states in 1989-1991, the U.S. has remained the dominant imperialist power in the U.S. Without any alternative social system to “check” its power, the U.S. proceeded on a wave of invasions and wars, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Syria, as well as covert wars and low-intensity wars from Venezuela and Bolivia to Sudan and Somalia.

The new post-Soviet geopolitical environment was seen as highly challenging to the United States because of the movement by France and the newly reunified Germany to press for further European integration. To the United States, this portended the possible end of the U.S. role as a “European Power” – something the ESSG stated as a “principal challenge” to U.S. “interests.” A briefing for President Bush additionally noted that this would challenge the U.S. ability to “harness European power in support of our broader alliance of values and global interests.”

As the National Security Advisor put it in a memo to the President, the United States had to avoid an “independent European security identity” that would “reduce our influence in Europe and weaken domestic support for our European presence.” NATO was seen as the “foundation for Atlantic cooperation in addressing political and security concerns.” And, to underline how imperial the thinking in Washington was, the National Security Council staff noted that the United States had to determine “what limits…to place on the development of a common European foreign and security policy in order preserve a vital North Atlantic alliance.”

The general point is driven home by the Department of Defense “Defense Strategy for the 1990s” (the public version of the infamous “Wolfowitz doctrine”) which noted that the principal goal of U.S. engagement with Russia and former Soviet states was to “reduce their [military] forces,” through “military budget cuts” and “conversion…[of] military industries,” and, more bluntly, “demilitarization.” In other words, Russia and any potential post-Soviet Eastern European alliances must pose no actual threat to U.S. hegemony.

In short, enlarging NATO in Eastern Europe was seen as key to preventing the consolidation of rivals to American unipolar power by preventing pan-European cooperation – including with Russia – that stood as its own pole. While the United States would become more open about NATO expansion, it attempted to continue the rhetoric begun in the Soviet days, cloaking their aggressive orientation behind the rhetoric of peace and cooperation.

While Russia was scrambling to regain its sovereignty in the 1990s, the People’s Republic of China, having successfully defeated the counterrevolutionary attempt at Tiananmen Square, continued its “Peaceful Rise.” Even after Russia reasserted itself as a substantial power, neither Russia nor China challenged U.S. hegemony in any serious way. For example, neither power vetoed UN Resolution 1973 that authorized the U.S.-NATO military intervention to overthrow the social-democratic government of Gaddafi. Yet in 2015, things began to change as Russia blocked the U.S.’s attempts at the Security Council to intervene against the democratically elected and widely popular Assad government. In fact, Russia intervened to defend its principle ally in a manner that decisively prevented the U.S. from overthrowing that government. This was the first time Russia or China blocked a U.S.-attempted regime change operation.

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The war in Ukraine is ushering in a new period of heightened danger in world politics and the threat of a global conflict that would devastate humanity. Socialists and people who want peace need to recognize that the entire U.S. foreign policy and military establishment is now organized around “great power conflict” against Russia and China as the defining strategy for decades to come. It is essential to recognize that Russia, China and other countries are not being targeted fundamentally because of human rights, or this or that military action, but because they no longer accept the U.S.-dominated world order.

We must stand in opposition to this new Cold War-style period of confrontation. This major power conflict is not in the interests of the great mass of people in the United States or worldwide. The logic of it will only produce severe economic pain, climate disaster and ultimately catastrophic war. The working class has no interest in being dragged into such a conflict in the name of preserving the dominance of Wall Street and the Pentagon.

In the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and ever since, the corporate media in the United States has been working overtime to spread misinformation and confusion. They hope that inundating people with non-stop anti-Russian content will manufacture the consent necessary not just for a short-term military escalation in Eastern Europe, but so as to sign people up for a whole new Cold War. Against this, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is advancing five basic points that can serve to unite those who oppose U.S. imperialism and support peace. 

1. NATO provoked the war

The U.S. government has been intentionally escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine for years. From continuing NATO’s eastward expansion, despite promises not to, to supporting the pro-Western coup in Ukraine in 2014, to heavily arming the Ukrainian government, NATO’s aggressive actions set the stage for the war. The U.S. was determined to bring Ukraine into a western sphere of influence, and so refused to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate security concerns about NATO expansion and advanced missiles being placed on its borders. Russia’s “red lines” were well known for decades, and NATO did all of this knowing it could potentially lead to intervention. In some respects, it appears NATO set a deliberate trap that Russia fell into.

2. The solution to the crisis is to dissolve NATO

NATO’s drive to turn Europe into a staging ground for its military threats against Russia means that not only is Ukraine militarized, but that all of Europe is. Currently, the principal obstacle to establishing a peaceful Europe is the polarization of the continent around NATO as a de facto anti-Russian alliance. NATO is a relic of the Cold War, and needs to be dissolved; its only purpose is to maintain U.S. military hegemony. The only way to have discussions about the many issues causing conflict between European nations (borders, languages, economic relations, etc.) without raising the possibility of war is through the dissolution of NATO, the demilitarization of Europe, and the removal of U.S. troops, missiles, and nuclear weapons. Russia should follow suit with their own demilitarization, step by step.

Knowing the above facts and considering Russia’s status as a nuclear power, if U.S. strategists actually wanted to avoid war then that would be taken into account when determining policy. However, looking back at the historical record from the George HW Bush administration onwards the United States knowingly pursued a policy of NATO expansion and clearly misrepresented their position to Russia. In other words, they pursued a war-like policy knowing full-well that it was exactly that.

The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the unraveling of the Soviet Union created both “risks and opportunities” for the United States, as then-National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft wrote to then-President Bush. The opportunities could only be seized, in his mind, by making sure NATO was “vital in these new circumstances.”1ﾠfurther told the President that there was room for a more “robust” role for the United States in Central Europe, later asking his staff how the US could “get between Germany and the USSR.” This was a common theme among U.S. planners in their views of the post-Cold War era, the need to make sure a new security architecture centered on the Soviet Union – or else a German (Western European) axis outside U.S. influence could emerge. Indeed, in 1990, the State Department planning staff was writing to their top leadership noting that the United States, through NATO, could create an “active buffer” and “organize the region.”

There was significant discussion of the issue of the U.S. role throughout 1990. Just after German reunification, high-level discussions took place at the National Security Council and the State Department where one scholar states interest was “pervasive” in NATO enlargement into Eastern Europe. 

Despite the interest, however, the United States had cold feet about making the issue public, specifically because it would be seen as a majorly aggressive move by the Soviet Union. National Security Advisor Scowcroft wrote to the President that it was critical to broader U.S. goals of defeating the Soviet Union to avoid “steps that could push the Soviets to change course,” on the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, noting that moving forward in this way was “risking a lot.”

The European Strategy Steering Group (ESSG), the high-level interagency task force on European issues, sought to tamp down similar discussion in early 1991 by noting that even talking behind closed doors around allies about NATO expansion would be “certain” to “increase Moscow’s anxieties” akin to “poking…Soviet hardliners with a sharp stick,” putting in jeopardy “the complete end of Soviet hegemony.”

3. Fight anti-communism and fight fascism

For decades politicians and the corporate media, liberal and conservative alike, have pushed a false equivalency between fascists and communists. At the end of the day, this anti-communist slander is also a sleight of hand that lets fascists in through the back door. In Ukraine, where the Communist Party is banned, the rapid and dangerous normalization of Nazi Germany and its collaborators has taken place. Ukraine has integrated outright Nazis and Nazi-adjacent forces into the armed services and police. Now the U.S. media, which just a few years ago noted the neo-Nazi presence in Ukraine, assists in their rebranding as “patriots.“

The mainstream equation of communists to fascists is also pervasive in the United States. This idea must be confronted head-on and vigorously combated. Humanity is calling out for an alternative to capitalism, and we cannot allow the idea of socialism – of working-class power and international unity – to be taken off the table. Doing so just strengthens the appeal of far-right “alternatives” of extreme nationalism, chauvinism, racism and sexism.

Putin has also defamed socialism as the cause of current antagonisms between Ukraine and Russia – a familiar position of the right-wing in Russia. We defend the legacy of the Soviet Union, for all its imperfections and problems, as a heroic attempt to build a system that would be people-centered rather than profit-centered, with an intense focus on multi-national unity.

4. Socialism is the only answer

The underlying cause of this conflict, beyond NATO, is that we still live in a world that is divided into states run by capitalist elites who prioritize their own wealth and power above all else. The only way to build a world that allows for global cooperation and peace between all peoples, the elimination of poverty, the abolition of nuclear weapons, and the implementation of real democracy that puts the power in the hands of the people, is through socialism.

In mid-April between Russia and Ukraine, President Biden announced on Wednesday that the United States will be providing an additional $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, including heavy artillery that hasn’t been included in previous aid packages. It also includes hundreds of armored vehicles, helicopters, landmines and 300 “switchblade” attack drones. This latest arms shipment will bring the total amount of U.S. aid provided to Ukraine in less than two months to over $3 billion, equivalent to more than half of Ukraine’s total military budget in 2020.

More recently, Biden approved $30 billion to fund the war in Ukraine.

The billions of dollars that are being provided to Ukraine in order to continue to escalate and drag out the war could and should be used to provide relief to the millions of workers who are suffering and struggling every day inside the so-called richest country on Earth. Instead, as always, the government has chosen to put its money towards death and destruction – on top of the $813.3 billion dollars already proposed for U.S. war spending this year.

To the U.S. government, none of these dire crises are enough to warrant the kind of emergency action they have taken to deepen the war.

Another example of how the U.S. government is working against a peaceful resolution to the conflict is the accelerated drive to bring even more countries surrounding Russia into the NATO military alliance. After decades of neutrality, both Sweden and Finland are now seriously considering joining NATO, with a decision expected in just weeks. Russia has expressed that it would take military measures in retaliation, including deploying nuclear weapons in the Baltic region.

What workers throughout the world, and especially those in Ukraine and Russia, truly need is a path toward peace. In every war between capitalist nations, the elite are shielded from the suffering and the lives that are lost are those of the poor. Peace is in the best interest of the working people of all of the involved nations. By encouraging the addition of Sweden and Finland into NATO and pumping weapons into the war zone, the U.S. government is proving that what it really wants is to sabotage peace talks as a means to weaken and damage Russia – regardless of how many people die in the process.