What should the Left outside Ukraine say about this? What can we do, if anything, by way of solidarity? The Stop the War Coalition has issued a
statement, which concentrates its fire on NATO expansionism, neo-Cold War rhetoric by Western politicians, and the proposed deployment of UK troops to Russia's border. It calls for the UK to support "serious diplomatic proposals" which recognise both Ukrainian integrity and Russian security concerns. To this extent, it focuses on what the Left in the UK can actually affect. And if it avoids saying a single critical word about what Russia is doing, I would infer that's largely because it doesn't want to expend a single cent of political capital on giving comfort to the West's warmongers. After all, there is a history of leftists collapsing, through shades and degrees of intellectual dereliction, into liberal imperialism. I get it. And, up to a point, I accept its priorities for mobilisation.
However, while it's up to Stop the War how they calculate their interventions, it would be a
serious mistake for the Left to be uncritical, or mealy-mouthed, about what Russia is doing. Russia shouldn't be demonised, but it is
not a victim here. It may not be the global threat to peace that NATO is, but is a major source of peril in this situation. It may have 'security concerns' like any other state, but it also a continental imperialist power and a great deal of bloody mayhem has been justified by those 'concerns'. The Left didn't hesitate to oppose the murder in Chechnya, and I think we have to be on our guard that it could happen again, even if it's averted in the short-term. What if we find ourselves protesting, 'Hands off Ukraine', having not clearly explained beforehand that we opposed what Russia was doing?
In general, I take the view, which
not everyone supports, that the US is a declining power. This means I think we have to grapple with the challenges posed by rising regional powers, like Russia and China. We have to think critically about the kinds of economic, political and cultural reach they have beyond military intervention, and how that relates to their different conceptions of political order. Russia's alliance with the
European far-right, for example, is a problem that is congruent with its domestic political priorities and its approach to global order. Which means that Russian chauvinism 'over there' is also a problem 'over here'. If we don't engage with that, then obviously we leave our own side intellectually disarmed, and we leave the job of formulating important political realities to our opponents. We cede the monopoly over certain truths to those who want to weaponise them. There's a real danger in that.
