What is this strange war in Ukraine where the invaded country is asked to submit to the will of the invader?
by Yorgos Mitralias
Of course, it's only natural that the current escalation of the war in Ukraine should be frightening. And also, nothing could be more normal than that the possession of nuclear weapons by one of the forces involved (Russia) should give rise to entirely justified concerns. However, nothing could justify the current - umpteenth in almost four years - outburst of alarmist statements, which always end with appeals not to the nuclear-armed invader (Russia), but to the invaded country (Ukraine) to be reasonable, making concessions so as not to provoke the nuclear ire of its invading enemy!
The logical conclusion: when faced with a nuclear-armed power, countries that don't possess nuclear weapons are duty-bound not to resist, but to submit without question. In short, all those who fought tooth and nail against nuclear powers in the past were just irresponsible fools who didn't give a damn about the harm they were doing to the rest of mankind! Like, for example, the Vietnamese, who successfully fought against the North American nuclear superpower, or the Algerians, who did the same against the French nuclear power. This also logically leads us to consider (retroactively) those who supported these Vietnamese and Algerians fighting for their freedom and self-determination, as political adventurers, unconscious and sorcerer's apprentices who were playing with the fate of humanity...
In reality, the only thing new about these appeals by people on all sides - left and right - to the reason of... victims, is their all-too-clear reference to the nuclear arsenal of the Russian invader. Because for almost four years now, we've been hearing the same litany of reminders to the Ukrainians, inviting them to give up part of their country so as not to upset Mr. Putin too much. Which obliges us to (re)propose, without changing a single word, what we wrote as long ago as June 2022, a few months after the start of this interminable war that we were already describing as “strange”, accepting as a matter of course that “the two countries at war do not have the same rights and are therefore not fighting on equal terms”:
«This war is “strange” because most of those who declare themselves to be in solidarity with the struggle of the Ukrainian people are at the same time opposed to sending weapons that would allow these people to defend themselves in any effective way. In other words, they are in solidarity with them on condition that they cannot defend themselves, and that they are content with the role of… a heroic corpse!
But the “oddities” of this war – which is not a war – are endless. For example, how can we explain the fact – unprecedented in world history – that the two countries at war do not have the same rights and are therefore not fighting on equal terms? That is to say, while one (the aggressor Russia) has the right to have an air force, the other (the defender Ukraine) does not. That one (Russia) has the right to monopolize the sky of the other (Ukraine), while this other – which is in fact the one defending itself – only has the right to be sprayed with bombs and missiles falling from the sky. And also, while Russia can have and use heavy weapons of all kinds and without any restriction, the defending Ukraine can only use “defensive” weapons and no “offensive” weapons. And moreover, while Russia can bombard Ukraine and fire missiles from the Russian and Belarusian territories, Ukraine is expressly forbidden to retaliate by hitting targets inside Russia and Belarus, etc. etc.
But the “strangest” thing about this war is not that Ukraine has been subjected to all these outrageous restrictions on its (inalienable) right to defend itself as it sees fit. The most “strange” thing is that all Western governments and all Western media not only support these “restrictions”, which have no precedent in the history of wars, but also present them permanently as obvious, self-evident, and unquestionable! And the result of this scandalous situation is that when Zelensky dares to challenge one of these “restrictions”, for example by asking for airplanes to protect his cities and their inhabitants, not only is his request instantly rejected, but it is also qualified as inappropriate and… “dangerous”…
The reason for this “strange” treatment of Ukraine by enemies, and especially by friends, became known gradually, over time, and only from the moment when the possibility of failure or even defeat of the Russian “special military operation” began to be considered: Ukraine is entitled only to a low-intensity defense against the Russian invasion because… “President Putin must not be defeated or humiliated”! And not only that. The proponents of this position, who are not only avowed reactionaries like Orban or the old zombie Kissinger, but also more presentable neoliberal democrats, like all Western leaders, Macron in the lead, keep asserting with increasing insistence that “there must be a way out for Putin”, a proposal that allows him to win something in this war in order to avoid facing his countrymen empty-handed at the final count. And all this so that he is not ousted and so that he stays in power, which is what they all publicly want! And to achieve this goal, not only are they starting to “advise” Zelensky more and more urgently to abandon his current “rigidity”, to become more “realistic” and to accept to give Putin a part of his country. But they also have the nerve to start discussing among themselves which part of Ukraine they could give up, these Western imperialists (!), to Putin, behind the backs of Ukrainians and their government!
Although we have here a patent case of the most outrageous imperialist interventionism and paternalism, there are few on the left who dare to do the obvious, namely to denounce it publicly, as it deserves. And unfortunately, there are even fewer who dare to support the even more obvious and elementary right of Ukrainians – which they defend tooth and nail – to fight to the bitter end against the Russian invaders, deciding themselves freely and democratically, and without any hostile or “friendly” foreign interference, about the future of their country and the people who live there!
In fact, a look at the very recent past shows that the present attitude of the West towards Russia is not surprising, but, contrary to what some rather naive Putinists think, it is in line with its firm position in favor of the unhindered development of its economic relations with this country, a real Eldorado for its capitalists. Indeed, let’s remember what were the first reactions of all its leaders (Biden, Macron, Johnson…) in the hours and days following the Russian invasion of Ukraine: They suggested to Zelensky to exfiltrate him from Ukraine, because they and their country’s media firmly believed that the occupation of Kiev, and the whole country, by the Russian army was a matter of a few days.
Everything changed when Zelensky urged his countrymen to resist, responding to Biden’s proposal with the now historic phrase “The battle will be fought here in Ukraine. I need weapons, not a cab! » And indeed, it was because the Ukrainian people resisted and are still resisting tooth and nail, provoking an unprecedented wave of sympathy and solidarity in international public opinion, that they in fact forced Western governments to do something that was not in their agenda and was radically different from the passivity they showed when Putin occupied and annexed Crimea in 2014: Supporting Ukraine’s war effort and imposing increasingly harsh economic sanctions on Putin’s Russia and its oligarchs »(1)
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