The Imperialist Rivalry at the Heart of the Russia-Ukraine War

Hillary Clinton wants to make Ukraine into the new Afghanistan... what?

Russia-Ukraine, buckle up, it's gonna be a rough one.

Let’s start by getting a few quick points out the way.

1. This war is bad, because imperialism is bad and this is an imperialist war. 

2. Russia is an imperial power. The United States is an imperial power. The two are rivals in the imperial hierarchy of nations. 

3. Ukraine is caught between rival hegemonic blocs within the imperial system. That’s why this war is happening.

So often, we are pushed to take sides in imperialist conflict. Back in World War I it was the German Kaiser vs. the Russian Tsar, but getting bogged down in pointing at the other guy’s imperialism didn’t work out for the European people.

Lesson one, don’t take sides in a war between imperialist rivals.

I don’t like Putin. Russian soldiers conscripted into the Russian imperial army (they have a draft) should mutiny, raise the red banner, and in the spirit of Lenin: turn the imperialist war into a civil war. 

But I’m not Russian. I live in the United States, the nation which has been stage-managing this conflict for decades through a reckless campaign of military encirclement and cultural demonization.   

It is right for antiwar sentiment to be expressed in this tragic hour, but it must not be a one-sided demonization of Russia, lest that well-meaning sentiment be leveraged to obscure the imperialist rivalry which provoked this attack.

We need to raise a new banner and form a new antiwar movement, one that rejects wholesale imperialist triangulation. To do that, we have to know what imperialism is and learn to recognize its logic. We have to look deeper than the day-by-day news reports trickling out across media.

In this article, I will show you the dynamics of imperialism, how it works, why Ukraine is important to imperial hierarchy, and what the U.S. plan for Ukraine is.

Relentless Pressure on the Public

The general public faces tremendous psychological and cultural pressure to go along with establishment narratives concerning this war in Ukraine.

The basic position among the masses is to condemn the invasion, which is good, but that antiwar sentiment is being steered by news media into a logic which ultimately promotes the war. It’s a complex contradiction we find ourselves in.

The intensity of the media campaign is so severe that any condemnation of the imperial causes and reactionary character of this conflict is simply not tolerated.

We are being told that this invasion was “unprovoked” as Hillary Clinton put it, and that Putin is, as Rachel Maddow said in the same TV interview, “crazy… U.S. intelligence and diplomatic sources expressed concern that Putin might actually have gone crazy, like he might be around the bend.” That’s what is being said to the general public across news media. But we all know that Hillary Clinton is the great proponent of the private position, and the public position.

The discourse among the ruling class is different from what gets put on the news.

Ruling class circles have for years known that the aggressive anti-Russia expansion of NATO in Europe was bound to trigger an existential crisis in Russia. This has never even been a private discussion, frankly, as the matter has been extensively discussed in ruling class publications and forums for decades. It is similarly known that the 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup against the Ukrainian government, due this democratically elected government’s planned economic pivot to Russia, would inflame Russian security concerns.

It is acknowledged among ruling class circles that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was an entirely rational, predicted outcome of hegemonic rivalry in Europe – but we among the general public are being pressured relentlessly to ignore that fact and instead slavishly parrot the claim that Putin is “crazy” and this conflict was “unprovoked.”

Among the ruling classes within both the U.S. and Russia respectively, there are divisions and disagreements as to how to approach the imperial system as a whole and their place within it.

The ruling class is not a hive mind, and it’s not a conspiracy. It’s politics. The ruling class has various publications and forums, both public and private, set up to struggle through the contradictions which emerge among those managing imperial relations. 

What Is Imperialism?

Militarism is just one feature of imperial power, but to grasp imperialism we have to know its function beyond its death machines. It may be unsustainable and murderous, but imperialism serves a productive purpose in the world.

Imperialism divides the world in accordance with a core-periphery extractive process. The core-periphery dynamic arranges production by its profitability and permanently tilts the political and economic structure of the world towards the core at the expense of the peripheral. 

Profitability is bound to what Immanuel Wallerstein terms “quasi-monopolies,” or the ability of states to impose protections on “leading-products” to ensure a high profit-rate for capitalist oligarchs. Peripheral states are unable to impose similar protections which core states provide, and thus exchange between the core and periphery results in a “constant flow of surplus value from the producers of peripheral products to the producers of core-like products.” It is therefore extremely difficult for any country in the periphery to rise to the core. A similar dynamic exists in finance, as George Soros attests. 

Textile production was once a core-product, with a high profitability protected by the tremendous state power of particular colonial empires. To be a textile manufacturer in the early 19th century was to be a cutting edge producer using advanced technology, located in the most powerful states on earth like Great Britain. Today, the poorest countries produce textiles – places like Bangladesh.

Most of the world is part of the periphery, with a select few countries among the core. States compete, markets are forced open, and sometimes whole states are destroyed in order to jockey for positions within the imperial hierarchy which facilitates this core-periphery flow. These basic dynamics are foundational to global capitalism. 

Guaranteeing the hierarchy is the main job of the U.S., the primary hegemonic power of the imperial order. That’s why the U.S. has to have such a huge military, and why it is even concerned with Russia and consequently Ukraine.

What Is the Russian Empire?

Historically, Russia's development fit the pattern of a semi-peripheral country. They exported raw materials in exchange for technology and capital from more advanced economies. 

By the 19th century Russia was Europe's largest agricultural producer. Russia's social and technical backwardness meant it had the lowest harvest yields in Europe, nonetheless, Russian grain exports fed Europe – particularly Britain and Germany. Pre World War I Russia accounted for 42% of global grain exports. Stalinist industrialization in the 1930’s also followed this development pattern. 

“The Ukraine” as it was known throughout this period, was an integral part of Russia’s export economy. Ukraine for years was known as the “breadbasket of Europe,” though the tremendous agricultural output which fed Europe during pre World War I Russia was not solely due to Ukrainian farmers. However, even today Russia and Ukraine together account for nearly 33% of all global wheat exports. 

The Russian imperial project has a long history, and the Ukrainian-Great Russian connection has been of particular importance. In fact, the Moscow-Kiev axis has played a major administrative role in global trade flows for nearly one thousand years. 

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90’s, certain elements in the U.S. establishment have sought to isolate Russia from Ukraine. In the late 1990’s former Secretary of State under President Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, explained the crucial role of Ukraine in geopolitics. Brzezinski makes a quite convincing argument that the very future of Russia as an empire hinged on the status of Ukraine.

“Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire… However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as its access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”

Brzezinski is laying down the imperial logic underpinning a hardline position against Russia. Though this conflict is spoken in terms of autocracy vs. democracy, the U.S. government is more than willing to support brutal autocratic regimes whenever convenient. Separating Russia from Ukraine is about neutralizing a rival within the imperial order, even if Ukraine has to go up in flames. 

Yes, Russia is an imperial power. However, its lesser status makes it a particularly vulnerable imperial project. Thus, Russia seeks to shift the balance of power within the imperial hierarchy to better accommodate itself. To the end, Russia and China released a joint statement in February laying out their shared vision for a revision of the imperial order. That is the imperial logic underpinning Russia’s war in Ukraine.

What is the Imperial Consensus on Russia-Ukraine?

The hardline position on Russia and NATO expansion was one among many competing orientations to managing the imperial system after the Soviet Union fell. At the time, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, hardly a beacon of progressivism, initially believed the Warsaw Pact should remain intact as a “fig leaf” for Gorbachev. But virtually all de-escalating measures have been foreclosed.

The current U.S. plan is to more aggressively militarize Europe by encircling Russia via NATO. There has been a consensus building in this direction since the 90’s when George Bush I set this belligerent path into motion by rejecting calls to demilitarize Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, and even refusing compromises like the “fig leaf” suggested by Thatcher. From that point, the question became a matter of what path military confrontation with Russia should take.

In 2014 Brzezinski appeared at a Wilson Center forum titled Mutual Security on Hold? Russia, the West, and European Security Architecture. In that 2014 appearance he laid out his vision for how the U.S. should manage the escalation of conflict with Russia, particularly in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored coup in Ukraine.

“If Ukraine has to be supported so that it does resist, the Ukrainians have to know the West is prepared to help them resist. And there’s no reason to be secretive about it… If Ukrainians resist, they will have weapons.​​ And we’ll provide some of those weapons in advance of the very act of invasion. But what kind of weapons is important. And in my view, they should be weapons designed particularly to permit the Ukrainians to engage in effective urban warfare of resistance.”

Brzezinski advised the U.S. should prepare the way for protracted guerrilla insurgency in Ukraine. The implications of this strategy are quite severe. Millions of people in these types of intractable foreign-funded and armed guerrilla conflicts flee the country, as we have seen in Syria and other nations. One must look at the ideological orientation of the hard elements, the ones who are more likely to stay and fight a U.S.-sponsored proxy insurgency. 

According to Jonathan Brunson, a former political analyst stationed at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, "The far-right is… vocal in its intent to fight even harder than other Ukrainians." Brunson himself supports the proxy war in Ukraine, despite the fact that hard rightwing elements have been incorporated into the Ukrainian security forces, saying, "today is not the time to criticize Ukraine's military." Even so, he concedes, "Western allies could have isolated the far-right, but blew it by delegitimizing all this as conspiracy theories and propaganda, even after decades of documented covert and overt support [of the far-right]."

So we should not be surprised when, for instance, the official Twitter account for the Ukrainian national guard tweets a video showing a Ukrainian volunteer soldier coating bullets in pig’s fat intended to kill and desecrate Muslims – referred to as “orcs” – in the Russian armed forces. Nor should we be surprised when we see rightwing paramilitary forces flying the red-and-black flag, a multi-layered symbol of Ukrainian nationalism which was used by Nazi collaborators in World War II.

Here is a New York Times story on Ukrainian paramilitary forces, at least one member flies the red-and-black Right Sector flag, which is a known far right movement.

 These guys are not subtle. Only if we inhabit the imperial world view, does it follow that the acknowledgement of far-right reactionaries among the Ukrainian security forces is tantamount to support for Putin. However, we mustn’t simply point at those foreign-backed reactionary forces without examining the broader imperialist order which structures the entire arrangement.

Ukraine as the New Afghanistan

It is well known among ruling class circles that reactionary forces are being recruited and unleashed within Ukraine, despite the efforts to dismiss public discussion of that fact in media as Putin’s propaganda. That’s why Hillary Clinton, carrying the torch for Brzezinski’s line of imperial reasoning, invoked the reactionary hellscape that was the Afghan insurgency against the Soviet Union in the 80’s as her “model” for Ukraine today. 

“But, remember, the Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980. And although no country went in, they certainly had a lot of countries supplying arms and advice and even some advisers to those who were recruited to fight Russia. It didn`t end well for the Russians. There were other unintended consequences, as we know. But the fact is that a very motivated and then funded and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.”

In Afghanistan, it was hard reactionary elements who were recruited both within Afghanistan and from around the world to fight Russia. By drawing the comparison to Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton is signaling what has been true for some time: the U.S. is willing to support rightwing forces within Ukraine and internationally as its primary proxy force to fight Russia. 

In Afghanistan, the U.S. recruited and armed international brigades of rightwing fighters, along with a domestic rightwing Mujahideen force to fight Russia. When Hillary Clinton speaks of “unintended consequences” flowing from recruiting, arming, and politically supporting hard right elements in Afghanistan, she is talking about Osama bin Laden. 

Bin Laden was among those rightwing elements to join the fight against Russia in Afghanistan, aided by the United States. It was the war in Afghanistan where a young bin Laden first cut his teeth, and for a decade would have a battle space to prove himself. 

Reflecting on his 1998 interview with bin Laden, John Miller recounts just how arming proxies for one conflict can ignite others, as was the case with bin Laden. 

“The war [in Afghanistan] changed bin Laden… He was blooded, a hero among militant Muslims, with perhaps three thousand men waiting to follow him. But follow him where, into what battle? Many of these men had not been home for years. By then, fighting was all some of them knew. And there were huge stockpiles of weapons and grenades and rocket launchers, many of them bought for the mujahideen rebels by the CIA.”

For the ruling class, arming rightwing lunatics and providing them freedom of maneuver is just the cost of doing the business of running an empire. Michael Moran, in a 2003 report for NBC, documents that “to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move.” He writes, 

“Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. “It was worth it,” he said. “Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,” he said.

Osama bin Laden, a mass murderer set into motion as a direct effect of U.S. imperial policy, was “worth it” in the eyes of Sen. Orrin Hatch. He’s not alone in such cruel calculations.

Hillary Clinton went on Rachel Maddow’s show to effectively tell us that they’re doing it again, this time in Ukraine. These people are ghouls, and they share responsibility for so much bloodshed, including in Ukraine, but the more we follow the script of one-sided demonization of Russia, the harder it will be to defeat them.

We do not owe loyalty to an imperial ruling class – of any nation – which holds the world hostage and treats its people as disposable. Their order is crumbling, and it is the masses of people around the world who have to suffer the fallout. It is time for imperialism to go away, to be deposed, to no longer impose its narrow interests and externalize the costs. 

To quote the Hunger Games, let’s fight the real enemy.