Fikret Başkaya
“The Soviet Union was never a socialist country in the true sense of the word. It was a bureaucratic totalitarian regime. And Ukraine was a republic of oligarchs. The overwhelming majority of the people lived on the edge of poverty and hunger. Russia attempting to occupy Ukraine was exactly what the imperialist camp, and the USA in particular, wanted to happen,” Fikret Başkaya writes for Yeni Yaşam.
It is indisputable that the USA became a dominant power at the end of the Second Imperialist War, to such a degree that alone it secured more than half of the world’s manufactured production. The sphere of influence of the Soviet Union too extended to the centre of Europe, and its prestige also increased. According to a compromise between Stalin and US president Roosevelt, the “Free World” was to be America’s area of influence, and the “Communist Bloc” the Soviet Union’s.
But in 1949 the USA established the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a military attack pact. Turkey became a member of NATO in 1952 and from that date on it became a satellite to the USA (the West). It lost its ability to make independent foreign policy. In 1955 the Soviet Union responded by establishing the Warsaw Pact. This was the start of the era of the Cold War and the arms race.
In 1990 the Soviet Union dissolved. The raison d’etre for the Warsaw Pact was no more, and it was abolished. The enemy having left the stage, NATO too should have been abolished, but the opposite happened, and NATO continued to expand. In 1990 there were 16 members, whereas today there are 30 members, and three candidates waiting…
When the Soviet Union dissolved, the USA, and NATO as a whole, were left with no enemies. But imperialism could not exist without war, and dominance could not be brought to bear without enemies. So they discovered “Islamic Terrorism”. They trained, armed and financed jihadist killers and put them out in the field. Then at the turn of the century, Russia gathered its strength and China took its place on the stage as a force to be reckoned with. Now the imperialist West had not one but two enemies. Things were looking much more comfortable.
After the 1990s the NATO front hemmed Russia in from the West. There were almost no countries left that were not members on its western border. If Ukraine too were to join the alliance, the time would come when NATO would try to enter the belly of Russia. A regime supporting the West moved into Ukraine with the ‘coloured revolution’ of 2014, which came about to a great extent with the intervention of a NATO front. The people of Donbas, whose population were of Russian descent, rebelled and called for autonomy. Since 2014 the people of Donbas have been bombed incessantly by paramilitary neo-fascist elements supporting the Ukrainian army. To date thousands of children, women and people of all ages have been murdered. Did that paragon of freedom, democracy and law, the West, know nothing of these massacres?
Although the Minsk agreements anticipated a ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Ukrainian forces (the neo-fascist elements) and the recognition of autonomy to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukraine did not apply the Minsk agreements, and no moves were made towards autonomy. If Donbas had achieved autonomy, supporters of Russia would have been in a majority in the parliament, and it was impossible for today’s Ukrainian government to accept such a thing. When the agreements were not honoured, two people’s republics declared independence. When Russia recognised them the NATO front rose up. What was this ‘recognition’ of a violation of the integrity of the lands of Ukraine? This was a ‘violation of international law’! But didn’t ‘international law’ come to mind when the USA and its allies were bringing Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan to their knees, when they were decimating Yugoslavya?… Didn’t ‘international law’ come to mind when Turkey settled in Cyprus and the north of Syria? It remains to say that for the last 30-40 years the USA and its allies have bypassed the international law that has been in place since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. They have developed a new theory of law, things like, “preventative warfare”, “humane intervention”, “necessary intervention”.
In fact the discourse of international law is no more than ideological manipulation directed at twisting morals… Anyway the USA did not want the Minsk agreements to be honoured. Such a thing would have weakened the possibility of picking a fight, and so it was not actually Moscow, but Washington and its allies – the NATO front – that were responsible for the situation that arose at the end of the eight year war in the Donbas region. In any case during this period of time it was the USA that was pulling the strings in Kiev.
Although it was the work of a great revolution, the Soviet Union was never a socialist country in the true sense of the word. It was a bureaucratic totalitarian regime. And Ukraine was a republic of oligarchs. The overwhelming majority of the people lived on the edge of poverty and hunger. Russia attempting to occupy Ukraine was exactly what the imperialist camp, and the USA in particular, wanted to happen. Naturally a third world war would not break out, because if it did there would be no winners, since the Third World War would be a nuclear war…
The large media organisations that are the “consciousness” and “world view” of the people in the service of the capitalist oligarchies are formed by the still more flexible so-called “think-tanks” and the Western universities (which have great prestige as centres of science). The rest of the world is handicapped by the (Western) centralist ideological alienation of Europe. Things cannot fall into place without taking the centralist ideological alienation of Europe into account.
It is not possible for anything to change until we succeed in looking at our own reality through our own eyes…
Western democracy is said to be representative democracy, but actually bears no relation to real democracy. It is made possible through the exploitation, plunder and looting of the rest of the world. To give an idea of the extent, the exploitation of Africa’s natural resources and labour is greater today than it was in the days of colonialism. But one thing should be known. True democracy is in any case impossible in capitalism, because democracy and capitalism are mutually exclusive concepts… Where the one exists the other does not.
When war is mentioned all that comes to mind is human death. But wars do not only kill people. They also destroy nature. They corrode ecological balances. They destroy the basis of life. And capitalists do not profit simply from war itself. When the war is over they profit from rebuilding what they have destroyed.
As long as capitalism and imperialism exist, wars, clashes and mutual slaughter will also continue to exist. But here’s the rub: There is no future for humanity and civilisation in capitalism. If we do not make a timely exit from this sinister system there may be nothing left to save…
To say, ‘I am anti-war’ is all well and good, but it is not enough. It is necessary to analyse the reasons behind war, and of the system, which is the real perpetrator of war, and to take the necessary action. In short, it is important to know what one is grappling with…
