Instead of relying on this letter to guess at what Chomsky says, I suggest people actually read what he said. Here's the interview that the letter links to[1]. Chomsky says he wants Ukraine to be able to defend itself, but also wants there to be a diplomatic rather than military end to the war, and an effort to keep the war from escalating:
> I think that support for Ukraine’s effort to defend itself is legitimate. If it is, of course, it has to be carefully scaled, so that it actually improves their situation and doesn’t escalate the conflict, to lead to destruction of Ukraine and possibly beyond sanctions against the aggressor, or appropriate just as sanctions against Washington would have been appropriate when it invaded Iraq, or Afghanistan, or many other cases.
**
> However, I still think it’s not quite the right question. The right question is: What is the best thing to do to save Ukraine from a grim fate, from further destruction? And that’s to move towards a negotiated settlement.
Chomsky is also quite critical of Russia:
> Well, two questions, points of fact: You’re quite right, that the overwhelming mass of the war crimes, the ones that we should be considering, are carried out by the Russians. That’s not in dispute. And they are major war crimes.
Saying that Chomsky isn't anti-imperialist because he disagrees with the method of ending the conflict in Ukraine reminds me of how people who opposed the war in Iraq were said to be friends of Saddam and against Iraqi people getting freedom and democracy. Whenever war fever grips the establishment, even disagreements on tactics coming from people who share the same general goals gets treated as abhorrent heresy.
It would be nice if open and honest debate was possible before we made major geopolitical decisions.
> The right question is: What is the best thing to do to save Ukraine from a grim fate, from further destruction? And that’s to move towards a negotiated settlement.
That's a frame, that Chomsky knowingly pushes forward, and it sweeps a number of significant issues under the rug (trusting the Russians, freedom, future deportations, threats to other countries, all of which are addressed in the open letter). And the facts might have proven him wrong. He's been saying so since the start, but Ukraine seems to have been rather successful in repelling the Russians.
> It would be nice if open and honest debate was possible before we made major geopolitical decisions.
I'm not sure I would count Ukraine as being successful when you factor in the human cost of the conflict. Ukraine already has had a huge problem of people emigrating the country, this just multiplies that, not to mention all the men that are never coming back. Families, young men, prisoners of war, and even the men that do survive will pass their scars onto the next generation.
>That's a frame, that Chomsky knowingly pushes forward, and it sweeps a number of significant issues under the rug (trusting the Russians, freedom, future deportations, threats to other countries, all of which are addressed in the open letter).
This isn't really fair to the context in which he's saying a negotiated settlement is the best option. Its more like he's saying its the least bad option.
Russia has not been doing well, but they are not on the verge of defeat and if they fully committed to it they could probably continue fighting for a year or more. The entire time they would continue their scorched earth policy that has already done so much damage that it will likely take decades to recover from.
Chomsky seems to believe that because Russia was considered a formidable opponent on the world stage before this conflict and many assumed they would win in a few days, that Putin is going to come to the conclusion that his only option for remaining in power is to keep fighting and escalating. Chomsky thinks that this will lead to the destruction of Ukraine without intervention from powerful allies.
He also thinks that the intervention of a nuclear power would significantly increase the chance of a nuclear war. He thinks that if a nuclear war happens that it is very possible for it to spiral out of control into a global nuclear annihilation.
So a more honest assessment of his promotion of a "negotiated settlement" is that he simply thinks that its preferable to the near total destruction of either just Ukraine or the entire world.
Note that I'm not saying his three imagined possibilities are infallible, just pointing out that he isn't ignoring all of the things that make a negotiated settlement a bad option.
> And that’s to move towards a negotiated settlement.
This is, unfortunately, half the problem. Western intellectuals are working under the assumption that they are dealing with a state that thinks in modern terms. Ukrainians know that Russia thinks in 19th century terms, but this simple fact seems to be lost on the West. There cannot be a negotiated settlement to an old-style conquest; Ukraine is literally fighting for its existence.
It's like living with a psychopath. He knows exactly what to say to placate or distract or sideline everyone else, and give himself room to abuse and torment his target. And since Russia's propaganda machine is so effective, they actually have the elites in many places (for example Italy) parroting the party line. Hell, they even have the venerable and respected Chomsky playing their game!
To put it in perspective:
- Since when is it acceptable to invade another country, flatten their cities, send tens of millions fleeing as refugees, block their ports and threaten the world food supply, giving "because there are nazis there" as your reason? How in the hell did this ever become a valid talking point?
- Since when is it acceptable to invade country X because country Y is allowing it to join a treaty? Shouldn't country X be allowed to decide with whom they ally themselves without getting killed over it? That's like beating up your girlfriend because some other guy hit on her.
The Western intellectuals have been thinking in imperialistic terms (USA vs Russia), when in fact it's about UKRAINE, a sovereign nation with a right to exist, a country that did not threaten its neighbors or build up troops on the border like Russia has done (and then invaded). All they want is their territorial integrity back and to live securely. And no negotiated settlement with Russia will bring that because allowing Putin to "save face" will involve giving up territory, blocking any potential future defense pacts, and then sitting around waiting for invasion #3.
I don't think it's 19th vs 20th vs 21st century terms or whatever.
It's political-economic interests and contradictions and competing interests around global capital. A fight over who controls resources and which country's capitalist classes get dominance over resources and markets. Aka a classic imperialist war.
And clearly the Russians are willing to mobilize 19th century Tsarist style "Great Russian" nationalism + a heaping dose Duginist Russo-fascism in service of this agenda. But I think it's naive to think that Lavrov (Mouth of Sauron) and Putin and the people lining up behind them actually truly believe this cack.
The counter argument is the Western elite are thinking the world has changed while every other country including Russia are still playing by 20th century Sphere of Influence geopolitics.
The US invaded Cuba when the Russians installed missiles, so is it surprising in the least that Russia is intervening when NATO moves up to their border?
I see your point, but at the end of the day, when it really is two imperialist powers, USA vs Russia actually calling the shots, does it matter that western intellectuals aren't acknowledging the Ukrainian perspective? From my outside perspective, the Ukrainain perspective isn't what people focus on, simply because Ukrainians have no choice, or rather, there is only a singular choice. And they are entirely dependent on the whims of the two imperialist powers fighting a proxy war with Ukrainain blood.
American politicians couldn't care less about the actual Ukrainian people. This is about either crippling Russia and scoring the political points to say they did it, or securing money either for their personal coffers or feeding their local Military Industrial Complex.
I personally think that the Ukrainian perspective matters, but we(westerners) won't care until it's too late. Tangentially related, our most recent home grown white supremacist shooter was inspired at least in part by Azov battalion, he wore a black sun patch and lifted several parts of his manifesto from Brendan Tarrant directly, another neo Nazi that actually spent time in Ukraine, with the Azov battalion being an inspiration. I imagine Russia will also be facing internal unrest for generations for what's happening in Ukraine. Maybe this is their Chernobyl moment.
If you read this letter I encourage you to read the Chomsky interviews they linked. These interviews were my first experience reading things he wrote or said. After reading those it seems like the authors of this letter didn't really understand his statements.
I don't agree with everything Chomsky said, but he seems to try and understand all of the opposing viewpoints in this conflict as a way to figure out what the possible outcomes are. It didn't come across as blatantly or negligently pro-Russian to me.
For example, I think its pretty reasonable to hold the opinion that Ukraine probably isn't getting Crimea back without forcibly taking it (and I have no idea if they are capable of it). Chomsky and I could be wrong about this but I don't think it makes either of us pro-Russian shills. He's not attempting to predict what ought to happen in the fantasy world that we want to exist, he's trying to predict what may happen in the deeply flawed world that we actually have.
I think Chomsky’s original sin here is his treatment of Russia as a sensible actor who will negotiate in good faith. Russia showed time and time again this is not the case, and that it responds only to strength.
His 2 ways of ending the war are of course correct, but in his follow-up he misses an possibility: weaken and tire your opponent before negotiating in earnest, to provide a better negotiation position. Russia is still in a mindset to plough ahead at any cost, and won’t settle for reasonable concessions. They want Ukraine beaten, humiliated and subdued to Russia.
What I’d imagine US “no negotiation” stance means is to call this game of strength, support Ukraine so that Russia’s continued war becomes untenable and then settle.
Is that pig-headed, arrogant or cavalier? I don’t think so. I think it’s just a recognition that right now Russia doesn’t respond to reason, only strength. So strength and resolve must be served up in copious amounts.
If you're a westerner who wants to understand the cultural context of the war, I can't but recommend Kamil Galeev mega-threads [1], and this one especially: War of memes [2]. You probably will be able to understand why NATO has little role here, and why we (Ukrainians) are demolishing Pushkin statues after Feb 2022.
You can ignore that noise coming from "experts" like Noam.
In the first days of invasion, when the shock and uncertainty was at its highest, I was reading everything I could to get some sense of what's truly going on and what are the odds. Kamil's threads struck me by the depth of undestanding of russia's internals. I mean, many things are no surprise to me, and are well known for Ukrainians, and yet that was another level. In a way, reading his analyses and explainers helped me psychologically at that moment – even empowered in a way. I can only compare it with being diagnosed with cancer, and reading Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer-winning book "The Emperor of All Maladies". It doesn't fix your problem, but empowers with knowledge and more intimate understanding of the enemy, which can dramatically shift your internal assesment of risks and danger.
The second thread is quite good, but I wonder if its author understands that he just described why all his buddies' efforts towards building the "non-imperialistic benign Russia without the color of the war" are doomed since the beginning.
As someone from the west who has near zero understanding of Russian or Ukrainian culture and history, I preferred to take a step back and try to find stuff I do have in common with them.
To me, the west sponsoring the war in Vietnam comes close. The ideological basis for that war was the "domino theory", which postulated Asian countries would fall the communism like domino's. It's not too different from the way Galeev paints Russian's motivation for invading the Ukraine today. The west wanted to expand it's western way of doing things. The domino theory postulated the reverse was happening - western style culture would be snuffed out in Asia by communism. So the west decided to sponsor a horrific war to force the issue.
The west lost that war emphatically in the end. Amazingly, that loss didn't stop the US and it's allies trying to pull the same stunt again and again in subsequent years, most recently in Afghanistan. And unless it's some tiny nation as happened with Russia and Georgia, the outcome has always been the same - humiliating loss. It always costs enormous sums, inflicts huge human suffering, lasts for years, brings down governments, and yet we in the west do it over and over again. It just boggles the mind.
Russia's foray into Ukraine looks very similar to me. Ukraine was moving from a Russian style culture to a more a western style. Russia loathes and fears the displacement of their way of doing things just as much as the west loathes any drift from capitalism and individualism to communism and cooperatives. Russia's attempt at fixing this by installing a puppet government in Ukraine failed. So they decided to fix it with a war.
It's amazing two cultures believe they are so different they are willing kill each other over it, are nonetheless near identical in their instinctive approach to solving those differences.
The outcome will be no different - Russia will lose this war, just as they lost in Afghanistan and the west lost most of their similar wars. And it will have no effect on the outcome in the end. The west lost the Vietnam war, so we got to see the domino theory pan out. Turned out it was a crock of shit, little more than a mass paranoid delusion. Asian countries (including China) has been moving from communism to their own unique style of capitalism ever since.
Unfortunately I doubt it will work out that way for Russia. Unlike the domino theory, its fears are well justified. Rule by law and well managed markets work better than a kleptocracy. It means you get to have nice things. In raw numbers, Russia's economy is about the size of Australia's - a nation with 1/5 the population. Another number: Australian GDP per capita: USD$50k, Canada GDP per capita: $40k, Russia GDP per capita: $10k. All are resource rich nations.
Young Ukrainians compared what they saw in the west and the east - and made the rational decision. You can only see so far in either direction, so in the east of Ukraine where their view of the west is obscured, they are still endorse the Russian way. But if you look at poll results on joining NATO there is a line dividing east and west. People on the western side voted to become more like NATO, on the east to remain with Russia. That line has been moving steadily eastwards over time. Russia decided to wage a war to stop the advance of that line. It makes about as much sense as trying to stop jelly sliding down a wall with nails. Insane.
I wish I could say our politicians in the west were better, but history demonstrates otherwise. That's something else Russian's and westerners have in common.
This is pretty terrible. Chomsky is way more right than these guys. Some notes:
1. Crimea is a settled issue. You may not like it and the referendum was obviously flawed by repeated Western polls since 2014 have shown annexation by Russia to be widely popular (~70% support). So much of this post talks about agency. What about Crimean agency?
2. While Russia is the bad guy here without doubt, you can't gloss over Ukraine's failings here. Stop with the binary thinking here that one or the other is wrong or that criticizing Ukrainian actions is victim-blaming. Prime example: cutting off the water to Crimea following 2014 by any objective standard is a human rights violation;
3. Ukraine has been a pawn for US foreign policy. It's wild to pretend otherwise. For the US military-industrial complex the current situation is basically ideal. Russia is mired in a war they cannot win, Russia has been isolated from the international community, Europe is set to become less dependent on Russian energy exports, NATO is strengthened and the US gets to sell lots of weapons to Ukraine.
4. The idea that Russia doesn't want a buffer to NATO is laughable and hypocritical. It ignores 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine where the US will not accept any foreign military presence in the Western hemisphere (it's self-declared sphere of influence). This was practically tested when the US almost started World War Three over a Soviet presence in Cuba. So why is that OK for the US but not Russia?
5. These authors make the same mistakes most US wonks do: they view the US as benign. Even if you agree with that you should at least accept that not everyone else does and there's plenty of evidence it isn't. I mean NATO's raison d'etre was to destroy the USSR. The USSR is gone so now it's by default the destroy Russia alliance.
6. As for the diplomatic solution, there ultimately will be one. There always is. Even unconditional surrender is a diplomatic end. Russia is a nuclear power. The pre-WW2 standards of defeating hegemonic powers just don't apply any more. There's a whole straw man bit in this about how the only alternative is unconditional surrender. Nobody is saying that.
I think the only thing I agree with is the justification for the invasion (most notably "denazification") is completely ridiculous. This is propaganda and it's what imperial powers do. It's really no different to the US spreading democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is settled in a sense, that there's no solution besides destroying Russia as a state that would result in return of Crimea to Ukraine. As OP said, whether we recognize Crimean referendum or not, is irrelevant, so bringing Kherson into conversation does not make much sense. Polls in territories occupied after 24.02 would not show the same level of support of the referendum results, as it happened in Crimea.
>You may not like it and the referendum was obviously flawed by repeated Western polls since 2014 have shown annexation by Russia to be widely popular (~70% support). So much of this post talks about agency. What about Crimean agency?
This is a complete lie. Also the USSR settled Crimea with many Russians to change its demographics.
1. So: force natives out, settle the land with military officers and other not-collonists-only-in-name, fix some polls and call it Crimean agency.
Tell me: in 1941, did the Baltic States enter the Soviet Union willingly (via democratic votes of coincidentally brand new Soviet-aligned governments) or did it happen due to Soviet military coercion, threats and ultimatums? Was it a settled issue in 1945-1953[1]? In 1989[2]? How about now? Same question about Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
2. Finding it really hard not to see this as victim blaming. Do you believe cutting off the water supply to Crimea was what prompted a military invasion that targeted Kiyv, among other targets? Should Ukraine have absorbed the infrastructure costs, maintenance, etc. to keep the water supply operational for a, your words 'settled issue'? Since it would then be an international matter, the water supply question would be governed by treaties, yes? Again, at the very least, there are costs involved in keeping the water flowing. Unless you feel this is a situation where Russia can take what ever it wants and get paid for it. A sort of Bullying as a Service, if you will.
3. First of all: what if Russia's the pawn? Secondly: did the US organize the 2003 Tuzla Island incident, where Russia tried to annex Ukraine's island in the Kerch strait? Might this be a pattern that's not solely the interest of the US military-industrial complex?
4. Whataboutism. Or, as the Soviets used to say: "Oh yeah? And you're lynching negroes in the US!".[3]
5. Since you are equivocating the Soviet Union and Russia, the US is objectively more benign. To paraphrase your point: you are making the same mistake that most US "anti-imperialists" make by seeing it as the most active and subversive force in human history. In terms of repressiveness and meddling in foreign countries (coups, revolutions), Russian and Soviet history is hard to beat. Bucha in 2022 is what my great grandparents and grandparents had to live through when the Soviets occupied our country. The equivocation is justified.
6. It takes two to tango, but it's hard to listen to the crowd shouting about how you should start dancing when the other side has just left the floor and stabbed your mother in plain sight of everyone.
Fascinating how you agreed that the Russian narrative is completely ridiculous and then ended with another whataboutism about the US.
I wonder if you really understand what „natives“ mean in the context of Crimea. E.g. Eastern Slavs were present there long before conquest by Ottoman Turks, so technically Crimean Tatars can be called colonizers, which wiped or assimilated the original population of the peninsula. Even if we start calling them natives, the sequence that you described is a nonsense. Crimea became part of Ukraine only after Tatars were resettled by Stalin, so this could not be part of some plan of Russia to take it from Ukraine. It was already Russian, with Russian population bigger than Ukrainian.
I was really hoping Chomsky would offer a point of view less firmly entrenched in the politics of 20th century economic imperialism, because he’s normally very insightful.
But it does seem like in his own way he adopted a belief in American supremacy. The US is powerful, and unprecedentedly so (especially throughout the 90s), but they don’t control all world politics.
Articles like this are kind of the point of this war: people exchanging views in a respectful ways in written form is a freedom we have that is currently denied to many Russians and that Ukrainians are fighting to preserve in their own country, which has been invaded.
IMHO the reason Chomsky's views are disappointing is that he in effect picks the oppression of Ukrainians by Russians as a lesser evil compared to them fighting for their freedom. War is ugly and Chomsky is of course a life long pacifist. So that isn't a surprising point of view. But you'd hope he'd value his own freedoms a bit higher. To deny that freedom to others is the bit that disappoints.
I was surprised to read this, and indeed a quick google of "is chomsky a pacifist" returned many examples of Chomsky saying and writing that he's not a pacifist.
I am very disappointed by many of my fellow travelers on the "left" on this issue. They have an instinctual gut reaction against NATO and western imperialism, and this has led them to lazy thinking in regards to the situation in Ukraine. I saw similar things around the situation in Kosovo over 20 years ago. It's sloppy thinking.
NATO is not a singular person or one monolithic entity, and I am saddened by the black & white quasi-religious thinking which seems to not see the complexities and contradictions here.
The people of Ukraine need to be defended from the vicious authoritarian gangsterist government that holds power in Russia. No amount of whataboutism and pseudo-pacifist handwringing will change that. Western leftists need to listen to what Ukrainian socialists are saying, instead of yammering about in a purist echo chamber.
My definition of socialism is of a worldview that stands on the side of the oppressed. To me, this is a litmus test that some people on the "left" have failed.
Actually what I've seen from Chomsky though so far is a bit more subtle than others. One of the worst I've seen was from Yanis Varoufakis.
The breadth of bad takes about the situation is absolutely incredible. I'm currently on the ground in eastern europe, I speak a slavic language natively and can communicate okay in a few others. Even in countries with a vivid memory of soviet occupation there are vocal supporters of broad concessions to russian aggression and even people who outright believe in russian propaganda. Several of my friends are housing Ukrainian refugees and are afraid to make it publicly known. A friend of mine was debating removing the Ukrainian flag on her profile for fear it would result in her children being bullied in school. It's fucking wild.
THE FUCKING RUSSIANS WERE OCCUPYING YOU A COUPLE DECADES AGO, IT WAS NOT A GOOD TIME, HOW DO YOU NOT REMEMBER THIS?!?!?!
fwiw I would say the plurality of people are in support of Ukraine but I never imagined there would so much visible support for russia, or even concessions to russian aggression. It's very disheartening to see any question about the validity of Ukrainian sovereignty.
It is very disheartening, indeed. I fear also that the almost universal emotional support that the Ukrainian people had from the average westerner is going to chip away as the actual cost of the war continues, and as the Russian propaganda machine keeps pumping. What happens after the US midterms in the fall? What happens when gas prices continue to be high?
JFC being implicitly in favour of a powerful military occupying and bombing its weaker neighbour is not an edgy or contrarian or clever position. It's ethical bankruptcy.
I'm in a post-sov country that is strongly supporting Ukraine publicly and where no one is fearing persecution or bullying for taking in refugees. Nevertheless, there are always (33 years and counting) vocal minority voices that parrot Russian narratives.
I strongly believe there are several key factors to this: a similar cultural experience and societal identity for people over 50[1] and a strong influence stemming from the combination of only knowing Russian as their single foreign language and the prevalence of Russian TV channels in the 90s/00s as well as Russian YouTube channels more recently. The 90s were hard in post-soviet countries, many people got disillusioned, some never really got back on their feet.
In terms of misremembering the occupation: cognitive biases and flaws[2], nostalgia, regressively conservative, hyper nationalistic, as well as anti-US/Western sentiments, etc. are all abused by Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Some narratives are really textbook political myths[3] about the Savior, the Golden Age (I guess the US got a real taste of this one with the MAGA movement). Much like a significant number of Trump supporters in the US, supporters or Russia in my country are more likely to believe in chemtrails, sovereign citizen claims, global pedophile conspiracies, anti-LGBTQ narratives, etc.
Both Ukraine and Russia have been dominated by a set of oligarchs since the fall of the Soviet Union, who have amassed an extreme amount of wealth and therefore, because of weak laws and bribery, control their respective countries to an extreme degree.
I don't see why anyone on the left, should prefer one of the sets of oligarchs to the other.
Jeez, it's almost like one could be opposed to both autocracies and still support resistance against the Russian state. Like the actual left (or what's left of it) in Ukraine (and Russia) are.
People on the left should stand up for the people getting their homes bombed. It shouldn’t matter if it is America bombing Afghans or Russia bombing Ukrainians. Unfortunately some people will only stand up for one or the other.
All of that is true. The problem is that both sets of oligarchs are currently fine; Russia is attacking everyone -else- in Ukraine. I know people personally who are displaced. There are refugees in what used to be my personal office. The Russian oligarchs are doing this unilaterally, and can stop any time. The west is sending only gadgets, not men, and regular Ukrainians are fighting the fight. (They too can stop any time, but it’s their country.) While I recognize why Russians are upset, they could have handled this better.
Since the crippling of unions and the deregulation of many economic sectors under Reagan, now ossified by the Citizens United decision, I could replace "Ukraine and Russia" with "Democrats and Republicans" and say (almost) exactly the same words about the US.
The only way I can imagine someone on the "left" having a reaction against NATO and Western imperialism (your term) is if they have an ax to grind ... probably more with regard to Western imperialism than NATO? (Probably with specific regard to the U.S. and Iraq.)
"I am very disappointed by many of my fellow travelers on the "left" on this issue. "
Me too.
I am also very disappointed about their reactions to other issues too. Seems a lot of people on the left like to philosophize about issues but don't really like to acknowledge real world issues. I saw this when the rioting after the George Floyd went on. A lot of people refused to even think that maybe burning down shops is not a good response to racism. Instead they just kept on talking about systemic racism while ignoring the riots.
And now the response to Ukraine is often "Why do these Ukrainians make so much trouble? They should stop the killing and give up. They are losing anyway. We are pacifists, we don't like war". I agree that there may have been ways to deal with the situation better before the war but there is simply no excuse for Russia to attack the country and bomb cities. If somebody has responsibility to stop this, it's clearly Russia and nobody else.
I feel you, I just don’t think it’s limited to this one issue. I too strongly identify with most, perhaps all of the left’s causes: universal human rights, fighting world poverty, peace, protecting the climate. The only problem is, the amount of intellectual laziness displayed by some of the louder advocates of that side political spectrum annoys me beyond belief. For those people, policies seem to be accepted or rejected purely on gut feel and symbolics, not honest analysis of the consequences or even whether they would actually help achieve the purported goal. I can’t be the only one who feels that way, so if there’s an organized “rational left” movement somewhere, please sign me up.
As someone on the left, I think the big problem is the difference between some online leftists and "real-world" leftists, who fight for the things you mentioned, but don't spend time shitposting on twitter.
> Actually what I've seen from Chomsky though so far is a bit more subtle than others. One of the worst I've seen was from Yanis Varoufakis.
Mr. Varoufakis definitely has excellent rhetoric skills, but many of his and his comrades positions and emphasis on resolving Ukrainian conflict would put put Ukraine on a plate for Putin. Makes me wonder what arrangements Mr. Varoufakis had made with Putin regime.
Perhaps apparachik does his analysis and writes books for him in exchange. Maybe popularity pumped up with bots in views, sales, invitations. Or an arrangement which protects the ground of democratic elections in Bolivia, Chile and others against a coup orchestrated by US.
All these things seem possible as the left never in history have been weaker to challenge those who have. And the prospects with Ukrainian war looks even more grimmer. And all of that because of a man who learned that wealth does not bring happiness.
This is a good opportunity to suss out which of your "anti-imperialist" friends are anti-imperialist, and which are actually just anti-US-imperialist. Look for signs of denying Ukrainians agency over their country's future and 19-th century law of the jungle logic (wait what happened to high minded ideals like decolonization and self-determination? Do those only apply when the West is/was in the wrong?).
I've found it shocking that people on the left have willfully taken up de-facto support of Russia in their zeal to oppose the US on ideological grounds. The MAGA crowd and the far right in the US are no better and perhaps much worse, but these people should know better. It's a deadly trap for them.
That people can say that Ukraine is being manipulated by others into defending their country to the death makes no sense at all. The remaining claims are wife beater logic: Look what you made me do! Russia had to invade Ukraine because they wouldn't behave, because NATO wasn't cowed and showed no respect!
A necessary consequence of the logic of opposing interventionist US foreign policy is acknowledging that there will be no “Team America: World Police” to help countries like Ukraine in regional conflicts. There’s nothing ideologically inconsistent about it.
You can’t micro-focus on a single incident. Maybe we are doing the right thing by arming the Ukrainians. But maybe we’re not. We thought we were doing the right thing arming Afghan freedom fighters against the Soviet Union. Look how that turned out. The US was ready to oppose the independence of my home country, to support western-aligned Pakistan against Soviet-aligned India: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kissinger-nixon-tape-declass.... There is a long track record of global powers intervening in regional wars that we can evaluate to see if on the whole the policy is a good one.
Not just anti-imperialism but many other political and philosophical opinions too.
Many things in history and politics are dense. It's expected that people will disagree on these things.
But every so often something happens which is genuinely quite simple to understand. This Ukraine invasion allows you to discriminate between those who are still committed to reality and those who are not.
If you cannot understand that countries desire to join Nato (because they understand the Kremlin better than most Westerners); that ex-KGB Putin holding a candle once a year doesn't make him the grand protector of Christendom; that Russians are victims of this regime too; that this invasion was predicted by many (see Kasparov); etc etc... Then I really cannot take you serious anymore.
Noam Chomsky is anti-imperialist. He also prioritizes anti-imperialism lower than other things and justifies support for imperialist politicians (e.g. Obama, Biden) by proffering arguments from pragmatism and "lesser evilism".
So it's possible to say he's anti-imperialist, but not sincerely so and be correct.
It’s interesting that so many people now deem to authoritatively speak of the agency of a country whose geopolitics were relatively unknown until recently. Chomsky and others simply have the benefit of having watched this completely avoidable tragedy unfold. Putins rise to power, Russia’s ostracization from the western order, etc. And I could say the same in the inverse: there are many who had no interest in anti-imperialism until it aligned with anti-Russian and pro U.S. sentiment. It’s easy to tell from the fact that U.S. imperialism that has been going on alongside the Russian invasion has gone almost entirely ignored. (Somalia being the latest example) Ultimately this is a pointless argument — the stage has been set, the rules agreed upon. The U.S. and EU will fund Ukraine indefinitely and NATO will continue to take in European countries. I hope and pray that the war comes to a resolution that allows Ukraine to keep its sovereignty on its own terms.
When it comes to foreign policy, the Ukrainians have as much agency as the average American, and it doesn’t help them that in this case it’s American foreign policy that has caused them issue.
> This is a good opportunity to suss out which of your "anti-imperialist" friends are anti-imperialist, and which are actually just anti-US-imperialist.
This opportunity has existed for some time. It’s clear to me at least where most Americans stand on this matter. I watched an In Depth with Chomsky on C-SPAN about a month back when in my opinion he summarized the position succinctly: America is willing to fight Russia and the invasion with every last Ukrainian.
That is some real American Exceptionalism from Chomsky. It's as if he is saying Ukraine can't think for themselves and that everything everyone does is somehow attributable to America's meddling.
America fighting "with every last Ukrainian" is the literally the same line the Kremlin uses.
It's propaganda, and makes no sense - against barbaric Russian soldiers committing countless rapes and civilian executions... Ukraine would fight to the last Ukrainian even without any external support.
Ooh, "to the last Ukrainian", man what a zinger, har har. It can't be that Ukrainians are begging to be sent weapons to defend themselves from literal genocide and the US is the good guy in the story. That would just blow up Chomsky's Formula For All Global Affairs: US Bad. And since US cannot be good by definition, Ukrainians should just accept their country, language and culture being erased, like don't they know something something spheres of influence and some guy promised no NATO enlargement (actually not, but don't look into that because remember, US Bad).
I think you're missing that what is now being fought over is whether USA should have control over Ukraine or whether Russia should.
I think you can be an anti-imperialist and not have a strong preference for neither USA nor Russia controlling Ukraine.
And you can be against the war, and against imperialism and so naturally be against arming Ukraine to keep the war going and becoming even more vile and bloody.
As the letter states, what you’re effectively denying is Ukrainian self-determination and agency. Does the U.S. “control” France? Germany? Clearly not.
> what is now being fought over is whether USA should have control over Ukraine
this is a bold claim to make without any tangible evidence to support it. Especially as it contradicts your very next statement about not having "a strong preference for neither USA nor Russia controlling Ukraine". It seems like you are claiming that Ukraine has no agency and autonomy in this situation or that the country is only allowed to resist with the armaments it has? Care to elaborate?
As for the war becoming "even more vile and bloody": do you believe Ukraine should just give up so that the Russians could be able to indiscriminately torture, rape, murder and disappear countless citizens of Ukraine, as they have been doing for centuries in the region? Again, Ukraine used its own armaments to resists and Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and other bloody and vile atrocities still happened.
I am unabashedly a fan of my country. As soon as the US showed some disinterest in Europe and pull back a bit because we have a ton of internal issues and issues with China. Because Trump opened up the doors and made NATO look weak Russia attacked Ukraine thinking NATO would just let it slide. I have been a critic of the Afghan war in particular and what happened in Libya. However, I 100% agree with fighting off Russian aggression in Europe. If Ukraine falls then Russia will roll over all the former Soviet satellite countries and take them back as well. The US doesn't just pass a bipartisan $40 billion for no reason. We know it will cost trillions if the Russians aren't stopped now.
> The US doesn't just pass a bipartisan $40 billion for no reason
Everything for the victory, I guess?
> US Congress quietly enables funding for Ukrainian neo-Nazi-led Azov Regiment
> David Levine
> 1 February 2016
> The 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law by US President Barack Obama late last year, did not include a previously expected ban against the funding of the Azov Regiment, a military organization that originated as a volunteer militia in May 2014 and was subsequently incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine.
> The Azov Regiment is notorious for the openly white supremacist and anti-Semitic views of its members, and its use of the Wolfsangel, a swastika-like symbol once used by certain divisions of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, as well as its leading role in the Battle of Mariupol in May-June 2014. The regiment’s leader is Andriy Biletsky, a current member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) and also leader of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly. In a characteristic statement, Biletsky was quoted by the UK Telegraph last August as stating, “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
100% agree. Like I said below, it's a litmus test of who is truly on the side of the oppressed.
There's also a significant % of the so-called "left" which has inherited from the dark and vile Stalinist past some sort of bizarre Russophilism. A kind of binary thinking that divides the world into "imperialist western bloc" and "anti-imperialist bloc" [that somehow Russia and even Iran and Assad's Syria are a part of]. Idiots like George Galloway are parroting lines like this.
What is a fact is that Ukraine is caught between the geo-politics of US and Russia because of incompetent Ukrainian political leadership. Unlike the Ukranian and NATO propaganda that tries to portray the current Ukrainian President as a hero, anyone who has a good grasp of politics can see that the man is clearly politically incompetent. He is foolish enough to believe that he can stay in power and derive political mileage by siding with one power while openly snubbing another (clearly showing no understanding of geo-politics and spheres of influence and their own standing in the world order). While Biden and Putin's ego in the conflict are understandable because of their superpower rivalry, it is incredibly sad that the amateur politics of the current Ukranian leadership has plunged the country into such a disaster.
Ukraine is just another Iraq or Afghanistan because of similar incompetent and selfish leadership who care more about politics than the suffering of their fellow citizens.
I have no doubt that by the time the conflict ends, US and Russia would have balkanised Ukraine, and the war will turn into a stalemate prolonged low-intensity conflict with proxy battles between the superpowers in this region. Both Russia and US want to prolong the battle, as it is in their interest to do so, and the incompetent Ukranian leadership is totally blind to this.
You make it sound that the "suffering of their fellow citizens" is somehow the fault of Ukraine's leaders, and they should just surrender to Russia's interests, which would somehow would end the suffering?
Also the "snubbing another", i.e. Russia is quite the victim-blaming. Ukraine snubs Russia, which it has the right to do, therefore Russia is allowed to invade?
Also Iraq and Afghanistan were attacked by the US, which according to your words means the leadership there should have just surrendered to the imperialist USA instead, instead of caring about "politics".
No, what’s amazing is hearing people who are well versed in the multiple US foreign adventures that more often than not results in thousands of civilian deaths, political instability and worsening opinions about the US, vehemently argue that of course the US should intervene and anyone who even raises the idea that maybe we should mind our own business gets labeled as “pro-Russia”.
The left is basically parroting the exact same language the right did for all its foreign interventions.
The left is basically parroting the exact same language
the right did for all its foreign interventions.
I don't find it hypocritical to oppose wars of aggression.
GWB's invasion of Iraq was America breaking international law. I was against that.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is Russia breaking international law. I am against that.
I am for whatever strategy (military aid? diplomacy? alliances?) most effectively addresses the Ukraine invasion and limits future illegal invasions. Nobody can know yet which strategy would be best, but it's not hypocrisy to be open to military aid, etc. I want to live in a world where leaders obey the rules.
I'm a bit nihilistic when it comes to geopolitics and war.
Those debates are a bit dry and a bit pointless, good and evil don't matter, only influence and power matter.
I'm for Ukraine but you can't deny that Putin still has a lot of people rooting for him, even in Ukraine.
If you ask Russians, they will easily answer that Irak was illegally invaded (the lapsus of bush did not help), so it becomes difficult for the west to be seen as the good guy, and it's cynical to say it, but opinions of the masses matter.
So of course that comparison is unfair, but this comparison kind of matter in geopolitics.
>good and evil don't matter, only influence and power matter.
"Good" and "evil" are loaded stand-ins for sets of values and actions, but consider: the U.S. has more influence and power than China. Which country would you rather live in or be influenced by?
Can I suggest "interests and power" instead. Influence is a form of power and it's important to pay attention to interests, which drive the use of power. I should also highlight that cost vs. benefit is the other determining factor.
Readit News
> I think that support for Ukraine’s effort to defend itself is legitimate. If it is, of course, it has to be carefully scaled, so that it actually improves their situation and doesn’t escalate the conflict, to lead to destruction of Ukraine and possibly beyond sanctions against the aggressor, or appropriate just as sanctions against Washington would have been appropriate when it invaded Iraq, or Afghanistan, or many other cases. ** > However, I still think it’s not quite the right question. The right question is: What is the best thing to do to save Ukraine from a grim fate, from further destruction? And that’s to move towards a negotiated settlement.
Chomsky is also quite critical of Russia:
> Well, two questions, points of fact: You’re quite right, that the overwhelming mass of the war crimes, the ones that we should be considering, are carried out by the Russians. That’s not in dispute. And they are major war crimes.
Saying that Chomsky isn't anti-imperialist because he disagrees with the method of ending the conflict in Ukraine reminds me of how people who opposed the war in Iraq were said to be friends of Saddam and against Iraqi people getting freedom and democracy. Whenever war fever grips the establishment, even disagreements on tactics coming from people who share the same general goals gets treated as abhorrent heresy.
It would be nice if open and honest debate was possible before we made major geopolitical decisions.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2022/04/14/russia-ukraine-noam-chom...
That's a frame, that Chomsky knowingly pushes forward, and it sweeps a number of significant issues under the rug (trusting the Russians, freedom, future deportations, threats to other countries, all of which are addressed in the open letter). And the facts might have proven him wrong. He's been saying so since the start, but Ukraine seems to have been rather successful in repelling the Russians.
> It would be nice if open and honest debate was possible before we made major geopolitical decisions.
Tell that to Vladimir Vladimirovitsj.
This isn't really fair to the context in which he's saying a negotiated settlement is the best option. Its more like he's saying its the least bad option.
Russia has not been doing well, but they are not on the verge of defeat and if they fully committed to it they could probably continue fighting for a year or more. The entire time they would continue their scorched earth policy that has already done so much damage that it will likely take decades to recover from.
Chomsky seems to believe that because Russia was considered a formidable opponent on the world stage before this conflict and many assumed they would win in a few days, that Putin is going to come to the conclusion that his only option for remaining in power is to keep fighting and escalating. Chomsky thinks that this will lead to the destruction of Ukraine without intervention from powerful allies.
He also thinks that the intervention of a nuclear power would significantly increase the chance of a nuclear war. He thinks that if a nuclear war happens that it is very possible for it to spiral out of control into a global nuclear annihilation.
So a more honest assessment of his promotion of a "negotiated settlement" is that he simply thinks that its preferable to the near total destruction of either just Ukraine or the entire world.
Note that I'm not saying his three imagined possibilities are infallible, just pointing out that he isn't ignoring all of the things that make a negotiated settlement a bad option.
Best case scenario now is Russia and Ukraine settle with Ukraine losing a bunch of territory.
Russia gets time to regroup, and if unsatisfied, invades again in another 3-5 years.
Remember, this didn’t start this year, it’s been going on for almost a decade.
Russia can win by simply keeping Ukraine unstable and ungovernable and slowly taking more and more territory. And keeping NATO at bay.
Dead Comment
This is, unfortunately, half the problem. Western intellectuals are working under the assumption that they are dealing with a state that thinks in modern terms. Ukrainians know that Russia thinks in 19th century terms, but this simple fact seems to be lost on the West. There cannot be a negotiated settlement to an old-style conquest; Ukraine is literally fighting for its existence.
It's like living with a psychopath. He knows exactly what to say to placate or distract or sideline everyone else, and give himself room to abuse and torment his target. And since Russia's propaganda machine is so effective, they actually have the elites in many places (for example Italy) parroting the party line. Hell, they even have the venerable and respected Chomsky playing their game!
To put it in perspective:
- Since when is it acceptable to invade another country, flatten their cities, send tens of millions fleeing as refugees, block their ports and threaten the world food supply, giving "because there are nazis there" as your reason? How in the hell did this ever become a valid talking point?
- Since when is it acceptable to invade country X because country Y is allowing it to join a treaty? Shouldn't country X be allowed to decide with whom they ally themselves without getting killed over it? That's like beating up your girlfriend because some other guy hit on her.
The Western intellectuals have been thinking in imperialistic terms (USA vs Russia), when in fact it's about UKRAINE, a sovereign nation with a right to exist, a country that did not threaten its neighbors or build up troops on the border like Russia has done (and then invaded). All they want is their territorial integrity back and to live securely. And no negotiated settlement with Russia will bring that because allowing Putin to "save face" will involve giving up territory, blocking any potential future defense pacts, and then sitting around waiting for invasion #3.
It's political-economic interests and contradictions and competing interests around global capital. A fight over who controls resources and which country's capitalist classes get dominance over resources and markets. Aka a classic imperialist war.
And clearly the Russians are willing to mobilize 19th century Tsarist style "Great Russian" nationalism + a heaping dose Duginist Russo-fascism in service of this agenda. But I think it's naive to think that Lavrov (Mouth of Sauron) and Putin and the people lining up behind them actually truly believe this cack.
That's for all the useful idiots.
The US invaded Cuba when the Russians installed missiles, so is it surprising in the least that Russia is intervening when NATO moves up to their border?
American politicians couldn't care less about the actual Ukrainian people. This is about either crippling Russia and scoring the political points to say they did it, or securing money either for their personal coffers or feeding their local Military Industrial Complex.
I personally think that the Ukrainian perspective matters, but we(westerners) won't care until it's too late. Tangentially related, our most recent home grown white supremacist shooter was inspired at least in part by Azov battalion, he wore a black sun patch and lifted several parts of his manifesto from Brendan Tarrant directly, another neo Nazi that actually spent time in Ukraine, with the Azov battalion being an inspiration. I imagine Russia will also be facing internal unrest for generations for what's happening in Ukraine. Maybe this is their Chernobyl moment.
I don't agree with everything Chomsky said, but he seems to try and understand all of the opposing viewpoints in this conflict as a way to figure out what the possible outcomes are. It didn't come across as blatantly or negligently pro-Russian to me.
For example, I think its pretty reasonable to hold the opinion that Ukraine probably isn't getting Crimea back without forcibly taking it (and I have no idea if they are capable of it). Chomsky and I could be wrong about this but I don't think it makes either of us pro-Russian shills. He's not attempting to predict what ought to happen in the fantasy world that we want to exist, he's trying to predict what may happen in the deeply flawed world that we actually have.
His 2 ways of ending the war are of course correct, but in his follow-up he misses an possibility: weaken and tire your opponent before negotiating in earnest, to provide a better negotiation position. Russia is still in a mindset to plough ahead at any cost, and won’t settle for reasonable concessions. They want Ukraine beaten, humiliated and subdued to Russia.
What I’d imagine US “no negotiation” stance means is to call this game of strength, support Ukraine so that Russia’s continued war becomes untenable and then settle.
Is that pig-headed, arrogant or cavalier? I don’t think so. I think it’s just a recognition that right now Russia doesn’t respond to reason, only strength. So strength and resolve must be served up in copious amounts.
You can ignore that noise coming from "experts" like Noam.
[1] https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711
[2] https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1516162437455654913
To me, the west sponsoring the war in Vietnam comes close. The ideological basis for that war was the "domino theory", which postulated Asian countries would fall the communism like domino's. It's not too different from the way Galeev paints Russian's motivation for invading the Ukraine today. The west wanted to expand it's western way of doing things. The domino theory postulated the reverse was happening - western style culture would be snuffed out in Asia by communism. So the west decided to sponsor a horrific war to force the issue.
The west lost that war emphatically in the end. Amazingly, that loss didn't stop the US and it's allies trying to pull the same stunt again and again in subsequent years, most recently in Afghanistan. And unless it's some tiny nation as happened with Russia and Georgia, the outcome has always been the same - humiliating loss. It always costs enormous sums, inflicts huge human suffering, lasts for years, brings down governments, and yet we in the west do it over and over again. It just boggles the mind.
Russia's foray into Ukraine looks very similar to me. Ukraine was moving from a Russian style culture to a more a western style. Russia loathes and fears the displacement of their way of doing things just as much as the west loathes any drift from capitalism and individualism to communism and cooperatives. Russia's attempt at fixing this by installing a puppet government in Ukraine failed. So they decided to fix it with a war.
It's amazing two cultures believe they are so different they are willing kill each other over it, are nonetheless near identical in their instinctive approach to solving those differences.
The outcome will be no different - Russia will lose this war, just as they lost in Afghanistan and the west lost most of their similar wars. And it will have no effect on the outcome in the end. The west lost the Vietnam war, so we got to see the domino theory pan out. Turned out it was a crock of shit, little more than a mass paranoid delusion. Asian countries (including China) has been moving from communism to their own unique style of capitalism ever since.
Unfortunately I doubt it will work out that way for Russia. Unlike the domino theory, its fears are well justified. Rule by law and well managed markets work better than a kleptocracy. It means you get to have nice things. In raw numbers, Russia's economy is about the size of Australia's - a nation with 1/5 the population. Another number: Australian GDP per capita: USD$50k, Canada GDP per capita: $40k, Russia GDP per capita: $10k. All are resource rich nations.
Young Ukrainians compared what they saw in the west and the east - and made the rational decision. You can only see so far in either direction, so in the east of Ukraine where their view of the west is obscured, they are still endorse the Russian way. But if you look at poll results on joining NATO there is a line dividing east and west. People on the western side voted to become more like NATO, on the east to remain with Russia. That line has been moving steadily eastwards over time. Russia decided to wage a war to stop the advance of that line. It makes about as much sense as trying to stop jelly sliding down a wall with nails. Insane.
I wish I could say our politicians in the west were better, but history demonstrates otherwise. That's something else Russian's and westerners have in common.
1. Crimea is a settled issue. You may not like it and the referendum was obviously flawed by repeated Western polls since 2014 have shown annexation by Russia to be widely popular (~70% support). So much of this post talks about agency. What about Crimean agency?
2. While Russia is the bad guy here without doubt, you can't gloss over Ukraine's failings here. Stop with the binary thinking here that one or the other is wrong or that criticizing Ukrainian actions is victim-blaming. Prime example: cutting off the water to Crimea following 2014 by any objective standard is a human rights violation;
3. Ukraine has been a pawn for US foreign policy. It's wild to pretend otherwise. For the US military-industrial complex the current situation is basically ideal. Russia is mired in a war they cannot win, Russia has been isolated from the international community, Europe is set to become less dependent on Russian energy exports, NATO is strengthened and the US gets to sell lots of weapons to Ukraine.
4. The idea that Russia doesn't want a buffer to NATO is laughable and hypocritical. It ignores 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine where the US will not accept any foreign military presence in the Western hemisphere (it's self-declared sphere of influence). This was practically tested when the US almost started World War Three over a Soviet presence in Cuba. So why is that OK for the US but not Russia?
5. These authors make the same mistakes most US wonks do: they view the US as benign. Even if you agree with that you should at least accept that not everyone else does and there's plenty of evidence it isn't. I mean NATO's raison d'etre was to destroy the USSR. The USSR is gone so now it's by default the destroy Russia alliance.
6. As for the diplomatic solution, there ultimately will be one. There always is. Even unconditional surrender is a diplomatic end. Russia is a nuclear power. The pre-WW2 standards of defeating hegemonic powers just don't apply any more. There's a whole straw man bit in this about how the only alternative is unconditional surrender. Nobody is saying that.
I think the only thing I agree with is the justification for the invasion (most notably "denazification") is completely ridiculous. This is propaganda and it's what imperial powers do. It's really no different to the US spreading democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Would it be valid?
Theres a reason the Crimea "referendum" is not accepted, and the issue is far from settled.
This is a complete lie. Also the USSR settled Crimea with many Russians to change its demographics.
Tell me: in 1941, did the Baltic States enter the Soviet Union willingly (via democratic votes of coincidentally brand new Soviet-aligned governments) or did it happen due to Soviet military coercion, threats and ultimatums? Was it a settled issue in 1945-1953[1]? In 1989[2]? How about now? Same question about Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
2. Finding it really hard not to see this as victim blaming. Do you believe cutting off the water supply to Crimea was what prompted a military invasion that targeted Kiyv, among other targets? Should Ukraine have absorbed the infrastructure costs, maintenance, etc. to keep the water supply operational for a, your words 'settled issue'? Since it would then be an international matter, the water supply question would be governed by treaties, yes? Again, at the very least, there are costs involved in keeping the water flowing. Unless you feel this is a situation where Russia can take what ever it wants and get paid for it. A sort of Bullying as a Service, if you will.
3. First of all: what if Russia's the pawn? Secondly: did the US organize the 2003 Tuzla Island incident, where Russia tried to annex Ukraine's island in the Kerch strait? Might this be a pattern that's not solely the interest of the US military-industrial complex?
4. Whataboutism. Or, as the Soviets used to say: "Oh yeah? And you're lynching negroes in the US!".[3]
5. Since you are equivocating the Soviet Union and Russia, the US is objectively more benign. To paraphrase your point: you are making the same mistake that most US "anti-imperialists" make by seeing it as the most active and subversive force in human history. In terms of repressiveness and meddling in foreign countries (coups, revolutions), Russian and Soviet history is hard to beat. Bucha in 2022 is what my great grandparents and grandparents had to live through when the Soviets occupied our country. The equivocation is justified.
6. It takes two to tango, but it's hard to listen to the crowd shouting about how you should start dancing when the other side has just left the floor and stabbed your mother in plain sight of everyone.
Fascinating how you agreed that the Russian narrative is completely ridiculous and then ended with another whataboutism about the US.
1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Soviet_partisans#During_S... 2- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way 3- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
But it does seem like in his own way he adopted a belief in American supremacy. The US is powerful, and unprecedentedly so (especially throughout the 90s), but they don’t control all world politics.
IMHO the reason Chomsky's views are disappointing is that he in effect picks the oppression of Ukrainians by Russians as a lesser evil compared to them fighting for their freedom. War is ugly and Chomsky is of course a life long pacifist. So that isn't a surprising point of view. But you'd hope he'd value his own freedoms a bit higher. To deny that freedom to others is the bit that disappoints.
I was surprised to read this, and indeed a quick google of "is chomsky a pacifist" returned many examples of Chomsky saying and writing that he's not a pacifist.
NATO is not a singular person or one monolithic entity, and I am saddened by the black & white quasi-religious thinking which seems to not see the complexities and contradictions here.
The people of Ukraine need to be defended from the vicious authoritarian gangsterist government that holds power in Russia. No amount of whataboutism and pseudo-pacifist handwringing will change that. Western leftists need to listen to what Ukrainian socialists are saying, instead of yammering about in a purist echo chamber.
My definition of socialism is of a worldview that stands on the side of the oppressed. To me, this is a litmus test that some people on the "left" have failed.
Actually what I've seen from Chomsky though so far is a bit more subtle than others. One of the worst I've seen was from Yanis Varoufakis.
THE FUCKING RUSSIANS WERE OCCUPYING YOU A COUPLE DECADES AGO, IT WAS NOT A GOOD TIME, HOW DO YOU NOT REMEMBER THIS?!?!?!
fwiw I would say the plurality of people are in support of Ukraine but I never imagined there would so much visible support for russia, or even concessions to russian aggression. It's very disheartening to see any question about the validity of Ukrainian sovereignty.
JFC being implicitly in favour of a powerful military occupying and bombing its weaker neighbour is not an edgy or contrarian or clever position. It's ethical bankruptcy.
I strongly believe there are several key factors to this: a similar cultural experience and societal identity for people over 50[1] and a strong influence stemming from the combination of only knowing Russian as their single foreign language and the prevalence of Russian TV channels in the 90s/00s as well as Russian YouTube channels more recently. The 90s were hard in post-soviet countries, many people got disillusioned, some never really got back on their feet.
In terms of misremembering the occupation: cognitive biases and flaws[2], nostalgia, regressively conservative, hyper nationalistic, as well as anti-US/Western sentiments, etc. are all abused by Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Some narratives are really textbook political myths[3] about the Savior, the Golden Age (I guess the US got a real taste of this one with the MAGA movement). Much like a significant number of Trump supporters in the US, supporters or Russia in my country are more likely to believe in chemtrails, sovereign citizen claims, global pedophile conspiracies, anti-LGBTQ narratives, etc.
1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus 2- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory#Mandela_Effect 3- http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/pas/pas201201/pas2012-08.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Ukraine
Both Ukraine and Russia have been dominated by a set of oligarchs since the fall of the Soviet Union, who have amassed an extreme amount of wealth and therefore, because of weak laws and bribery, control their respective countries to an extreme degree.
I don't see why anyone on the left, should prefer one of the sets of oligarchs to the other.
Jeez, it's almost like one could be opposed to both autocracies and still support resistance against the Russian state. Like the actual left (or what's left of it) in Ukraine (and Russia) are.
A good resource is https://lefteast.org/
Deleted Comment
This goes for Chomsky as well.
1. https://github.com/binka/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md
That is, if by left, you mean socialists rather than liberals.
Me too.
I am also very disappointed about their reactions to other issues too. Seems a lot of people on the left like to philosophize about issues but don't really like to acknowledge real world issues. I saw this when the rioting after the George Floyd went on. A lot of people refused to even think that maybe burning down shops is not a good response to racism. Instead they just kept on talking about systemic racism while ignoring the riots.
And now the response to Ukraine is often "Why do these Ukrainians make so much trouble? They should stop the killing and give up. They are losing anyway. We are pacifists, we don't like war". I agree that there may have been ways to deal with the situation better before the war but there is simply no excuse for Russia to attack the country and bomb cities. If somebody has responsibility to stop this, it's clearly Russia and nobody else.
They call those people "radical right wing extremists" and "Nazis"
You'll have to get out of the "left" far enough to see the rest of the spectrum first. That's hard right now.
https://verdverm.com/ukraine
The playlist is more up to date
Deleted Comment
What do you mean by "travelers" in this context?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_traveller
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Mr. Varoufakis definitely has excellent rhetoric skills, but many of his and his comrades positions and emphasis on resolving Ukrainian conflict would put put Ukraine on a plate for Putin. Makes me wonder what arrangements Mr. Varoufakis had made with Putin regime.
Perhaps apparachik does his analysis and writes books for him in exchange. Maybe popularity pumped up with bots in views, sales, invitations. Or an arrangement which protects the ground of democratic elections in Bolivia, Chile and others against a coup orchestrated by US.
All these things seem possible as the left never in history have been weaker to challenge those who have. And the prospects with Ukrainian war looks even more grimmer. And all of that because of a man who learned that wealth does not bring happiness.
That people can say that Ukraine is being manipulated by others into defending their country to the death makes no sense at all. The remaining claims are wife beater logic: Look what you made me do! Russia had to invade Ukraine because they wouldn't behave, because NATO wasn't cowed and showed no respect!
A necessary consequence of the logic of opposing interventionist US foreign policy is acknowledging that there will be no “Team America: World Police” to help countries like Ukraine in regional conflicts. There’s nothing ideologically inconsistent about it.
You can’t micro-focus on a single incident. Maybe we are doing the right thing by arming the Ukrainians. But maybe we’re not. We thought we were doing the right thing arming Afghan freedom fighters against the Soviet Union. Look how that turned out. The US was ready to oppose the independence of my home country, to support western-aligned Pakistan against Soviet-aligned India: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kissinger-nixon-tape-declass.... There is a long track record of global powers intervening in regional wars that we can evaluate to see if on the whole the policy is a good one.
Dead Comment
Many things in history and politics are dense. It's expected that people will disagree on these things.
But every so often something happens which is genuinely quite simple to understand. This Ukraine invasion allows you to discriminate between those who are still committed to reality and those who are not.
If you cannot understand that countries desire to join Nato (because they understand the Kremlin better than most Westerners); that ex-KGB Putin holding a candle once a year doesn't make him the grand protector of Christendom; that Russians are victims of this regime too; that this invasion was predicted by many (see Kasparov); etc etc... Then I really cannot take you serious anymore.
So it's possible to say he's anti-imperialist, but not sincerely so and be correct.
This opportunity has existed for some time. It’s clear to me at least where most Americans stand on this matter. I watched an In Depth with Chomsky on C-SPAN about a month back when in my opinion he summarized the position succinctly: America is willing to fight Russia and the invasion with every last Ukrainian.
It's propaganda, and makes no sense - against barbaric Russian soldiers committing countless rapes and civilian executions... Ukraine would fight to the last Ukrainian even without any external support.
I think you can be an anti-imperialist and not have a strong preference for neither USA nor Russia controlling Ukraine.
And you can be against the war, and against imperialism and so naturally be against arming Ukraine to keep the war going and becoming even more vile and bloody.
this is a bold claim to make without any tangible evidence to support it. Especially as it contradicts your very next statement about not having "a strong preference for neither USA nor Russia controlling Ukraine". It seems like you are claiming that Ukraine has no agency and autonomy in this situation or that the country is only allowed to resist with the armaments it has? Care to elaborate?
As for the war becoming "even more vile and bloody": do you believe Ukraine should just give up so that the Russians could be able to indiscriminately torture, rape, murder and disappear countless citizens of Ukraine, as they have been doing for centuries in the region? Again, Ukraine used its own armaments to resists and Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and other bloody and vile atrocities still happened.
Perhaps there is more nuance than “controlled by the USA vs controlled by Russia - equally bad?”
Everything for the victory, I guess?
> US Congress quietly enables funding for Ukrainian neo-Nazi-led Azov Regiment
> David Levine
> 1 February 2016
> The 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law by US President Barack Obama late last year, did not include a previously expected ban against the funding of the Azov Regiment, a military organization that originated as a volunteer militia in May 2014 and was subsequently incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine.
> The Azov Regiment is notorious for the openly white supremacist and anti-Semitic views of its members, and its use of the Wolfsangel, a swastika-like symbol once used by certain divisions of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, as well as its leading role in the Battle of Mariupol in May-June 2014. The regiment’s leader is Andriy Biletsky, a current member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) and also leader of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly. In a characteristic statement, Biletsky was quoted by the UK Telegraph last August as stating, “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/01/azov-f01.html
There's also a significant % of the so-called "left" which has inherited from the dark and vile Stalinist past some sort of bizarre Russophilism. A kind of binary thinking that divides the world into "imperialist western bloc" and "anti-imperialist bloc" [that somehow Russia and even Iran and Assad's Syria are a part of]. Idiots like George Galloway are parroting lines like this.
Chomsky is literally an anarchist who opposes the existence of all states.
Ukraine is just another Iraq or Afghanistan because of similar incompetent and selfish leadership who care more about politics than the suffering of their fellow citizens.
I have no doubt that by the time the conflict ends, US and Russia would have balkanised Ukraine, and the war will turn into a stalemate prolonged low-intensity conflict with proxy battles between the superpowers in this region. Both Russia and US want to prolong the battle, as it is in their interest to do so, and the incompetent Ukranian leadership is totally blind to this.
I think he needs weapons but he has no money, so he is running the biggest tv donation marathon ever.
Also the "snubbing another", i.e. Russia is quite the victim-blaming. Ukraine snubs Russia, which it has the right to do, therefore Russia is allowed to invade?
Also Iraq and Afghanistan were attacked by the US, which according to your words means the leadership there should have just surrendered to the imperialist USA instead, instead of caring about "politics".
You've predicted 2014.
The left is basically parroting the exact same language the right did for all its foreign interventions.
GWB's invasion of Iraq was America breaking international law. I was against that.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is Russia breaking international law. I am against that.
I am for whatever strategy (military aid? diplomacy? alliances?) most effectively addresses the Ukraine invasion and limits future illegal invasions. Nobody can know yet which strategy would be best, but it's not hypocrisy to be open to military aid, etc. I want to live in a world where leaders obey the rules.
Those debates are a bit dry and a bit pointless, good and evil don't matter, only influence and power matter.
I'm for Ukraine but you can't deny that Putin still has a lot of people rooting for him, even in Ukraine.
If you ask Russians, they will easily answer that Irak was illegally invaded (the lapsus of bush did not help), so it becomes difficult for the west to be seen as the good guy, and it's cynical to say it, but opinions of the masses matter.
So of course that comparison is unfair, but this comparison kind of matter in geopolitics.
"Good" and "evil" are loaded stand-ins for sets of values and actions, but consider: the U.S. has more influence and power than China. Which country would you rather live in or be influenced by?
Can I suggest "interests and power" instead. Influence is a form of power and it's important to pay attention to interests, which drive the use of power. I should also highlight that cost vs. benefit is the other determining factor.