What Does the Ukraine War Tell?

The Ukraine war continues with all its outrage. Thousands of people have lost their lives. Cities and towns are being devastated. Millions are becoming displaced. A significant part of them are leaving their country. (According to the UN’s estimates at the time of writing, around 10 million people have been displaced, of whom 4 million have fled abroad). Although there are various reports that a peace agreement is underway and the war will end soon, the destruction continues to expand. When considered together with the previous build-up of contradictions, the Ukraine war has opened up a new chapter, a climate change, marking a new turning point where dramatic changes are taking place, which go far beyond ordinary developments.

The Ukraine war shows more clearly than ever that today's world is a world of war. Although aimed at putting pressure on Western governments and peoples to help Ukraine at a much higher level, the words of Podolyak, Zelenskiy's official spokesperson, pointed to this important fact. After stating that the Third World War had already begun, Podolyak said, “You sit in cafés in Amsterdam, Brussels, watch Netflix and think that the war will not touch you.”

Yes, bombs have not yet begun to fall on everyone's head in the world. But almost everyone has begun to feel the effects of the war nearby, even if it is taking place far away. Almost all over the world, the war exacerbated the impact of the crisis and limited the access to the most basic and vital necessities for people. Soaring energy and food prices have become a heavy burden on working people who struggle to make ends meet. The price of wheat, one of the most essential nutrients, rose by 20 to 50 per cent globally. The Center for Global Development calculates that the war in Ukraine will plunge another 40 million people into extreme poverty on a world scale. United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director says the war “will have consequences on a global scale, going far beyond the disasters seen since the Second World War”. Thus, in addition to the question of heating in some countries, a worldwide shortage of essential nutrients has also emerged as a possibility. The fact that people are anxiously rushing to the markets in some countries is a symptom of war psychology. On the other hand, there is the cumulative effect of the wars of the last 30 years. People fleeing war zones inevitably migrate to areas and countries that are not yet actual battlefields. Human masses, reaching tens of millions in numbers, have spread across many parts of the world, and this movement continues without interruption. People are fleeing the horrors of war and becoming neighbours and workmates to the people of other countries who have no relation with the war. Such is the world that we live in.

In fact, as a particular example, we can also cite a noteworthy case from Turkey, which is a direct result of the war in Ukraine. The general public in Turkey learned after the war that thousands of Turkish students were studying at the universities in Ukraine. Let us think for a moment from the point of view of these students. Probably, majority of them were preoccupied with personal concerns, far from the state of war in the world. The lives of these young people were most probably filled with the ordinary matters of the student life in a modern European country, such as career concerns and socialisation issues. But all of a sudden, they came face to face with troubles that they had only seen in movies before: bombs, shelters, food shortages. Once again, a phrase that we often utter as class revolutionaries has been painfully confirmed: You may choose not to be interested in the realities of the world, but sooner or later they will come to knock on your door!

On the other hand, as pointed out in our articles, the imperialist capitalist propaganda machine is trying to prepare people all over the world for more violent and ruinous forms of war. Through this propaganda, the things considered as “unacceptable” are gradually being drawn into the realm of “acceptable”. In an increasingly blatant way, formerly “unacceptable” attitudes are being defended and presented as “reasonable”: militarism, rapid increase in military spending, the calls for direct involvement in the war under the guise of helping Ukraine, sending (or calls for sending) fighters, prettifying neo-Nazism through those who fight in Ukraine and so forth. It is essentially during times of war that such things become widespread among society.

The reality of world war

How to characterise such a process that has begun to affect daily life routines on a global scale? As Marksist Tutum, we have been defining this process as the Third World War for many years. The way this war is being waged is not similar to previous world wars and we have been warning that this could be misleading. With the Ukraine war, this process reached a new phase and its consequences which we tried to summarise above became more evident. As a result, more and more people began to talk about the “Third World War”. Some others speak of the beginning of a new Cold War. In fact, the Third World War is an extremely hot imperialist war that started not with the Ukraine war, but long before it.

It is not a correct approach to look for precise dates or events to mark the beginning of major historical turns. But in order to identify the turns in the overall curve, approximate dates may sometimes be illustrative. In this respect, the millennium turn can roughly be taken as the beginning of the Third World War. In fact, the whole process had begun with the collapse of the USSR. It can be said that the first Gulf War and the wars in Yugoslavia, in the Caucasus and Somalia were, in a sense, a prelude to this process. But no matter how they are defined, the context and underlying motives of those wars were the same as those of the more recent wars. There is no question that the September 11 attacks marked a milestone and a turning point in this process. This event had a similar impact to that of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, which led the US to enter the Second Imperialist World War. In the aftermath of the September 11, the US launched a destructive offensive against Afghanistan and Iraq. And since then, a vast area has become a war region, stretching from broader North Africa to Central Asia, from the east of Europe to the Caucasus and the Middle East. In the most common versions of world maps, this area constitutes the centre of the world. The civilisation and major religions were born at the heart of this vast area. Symbolically, this means that the centre of the world is burning. On the other hand, in many countries including the US, England, France, Spain, Australia and Russia, many major attacks took place in the 2000s. Although they were often presented as isolated acts of “terror”, they were, in fact, part of this war. They took place as the military actions within the context of this war. These attacks revealed that flames of war were not only engulfing the ancient regions, but also making themselves felt in the developed capitalist countries, where war had generally been considered as a thing of the past.

Breaking out in various parts of the world, the wars and conflicts of the last 20-30 years were, in fact, part of the imperialist Third World War. The importance of establishing this fact must be more apparent now. By defining this process as the Third World War, it becomes possible to place the seemingly isolated local or regional wars within an interrelated context. This perspective allows us to see that local wars and conflicts should not be regarded as “minor” phenomena limited to a single region. An individual war in this sequence is not an isolated event, which starts and ends on its own. Rather, it is a link in the chain of wars, forming a whole that affects the entire world. This perspective implies that, without revolutions aimed at overthrowing the imperialist capitalist system, one should not console oneself with the actual or ostensible end of a local war, nor ignore these wars just because they are taking place “far away”. For, the war is taking place within the context of today’s world and all the working people on earth may face the direct sufferings it causes. Therefore, the struggle against war is pressing a task in front of the world working class.

Once this reality is grasped firmly, it becomes easier to identify the meaningless and misleading nature of certain arguments about the war in Ukraine. Just like the previous two imperialist world wars, the Third World War is an imperialist war that arose from the objective contradictions of capitalism. Today, even children know that major historical phenomena such as world wars do not result from some isolated development. Today, nobody claims that the First World War was caused by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the Serbian student Princip. Even the schoolbooks explain the background behind this war to a certain extent. Similarly, the Third World War is also far from being the result of an individual act. It follows a unique course and takes on peculiar forms and appearances. But in the end, it is the product of the rivalry and conflict between imperialist powers. Thus, neither the occupation of Ukraine by Putin's Russia and nor the September 11 attacks are the causes of this war. All these events are only the links of the one and the same chain of big war.

Leaving aside other facts and developments, even if we limit ourselves to Russia, we can see that, for the last 20 years, the Russian ruling class has directly or indirectly taken part as a major party in the wars in this broad region for similar reasons. Russia’s attack on Georgia, its role in the war in Syria, its involvement in the war in Libya, its intervention in Ukraine in 2014, and the occupation and annexation of Crimea are milestones in this process. And it is no accident that, during these conflicts, the main rivals of Russian imperialism have always been the US imperialism and its imperialist allies. In almost every conflict, war or civil war, we see the involvement and confrontation of these imperialist forces. All over the world, militarism, military spending and preparations are on the rise. These powers are fighting in these conflicts either directly or through proxies. Thus, it would be a grave mistake to ignore the fact that there is a war process going on for a long time. Such a course of events clearly points to one grand context and the reality of a single big war: the Third World War!

Only on the basis of this background can one place the Ukraine war within its proper context. On the other hand, even though the Third World War has long started, claimed millions of lives and caused great destruction, the Ukraine war is more than an ordinary link added to this process. With this war, the process reached a new and higher stage marking a turning point. Both the words of Zelenskiy’s spokesperson above and Biden’s recent statement below should be regarded within this context: “I think this presents us with some significant opportunities to make some real changes. (…) we are at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy — not just the world economy, in the world. It occurs every three or four generations. As one of the top military people said to me in a secure meeting the other day, 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946. And since then, we’ve established a liberal world order, and that hadn’t happened in a long while. (…) And now is a time when things are shifting. We’re going to – there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”

The Ukraine war signifies the direct attack of a leading nuclear imperialist power like Russia against a neighbouring European country, and not a tiny one. Putting aside the Yugoslavian civil war, which included partial interventions of major imperialist powers, Ukraine war represents the introduction of the Third World War into European soil in the form of interstate warfare. Secondly, Ukraine is a buffer zone located between two major power centres (Russia and Europe). The area lies at the crossroads for the transfer of many commodities, especially vital energy sources between the two great powers and regions. One of these powers attacked this buffer zone with its own army, embarking on an invasion. Thirdly, this war coincided with a global economic crisis, which had begun in 2020 and reached an unprecedented level of severity with the pandemic. Fourthly, it started in a period when China, Russia's ally, became the second-largest economy in the world. Fifthly, a major nuclear power, Russia, is being cornered by sanctions that have an unheard-of extent and a destructive capacity. (According to one estimate, Russia is now the most-sanctioned country in the world, faced with 5,530 sanctions). If we also consider the advance of capitalist globalization in the last 10 years, it becomes self-evident that the war has now entered a new and higher stage. The contradictions are sharper and the dangers are greater now. The Ukraine war is pregnant with even more dramatic changes in the course of events on a global scale.

Putin's madness?

One of the theses spread about the war is that it is the work of Putin who makes crazy plans as a dictator. This thesis is based on two premises. One is irrationality, and the other one is the extraordinary bourgeois regimes, also referred to as “one-man regimes”, where one person possesses dictatorial powers. To get to the bottom of the matter, these are inflated or fabricated points aimed at paralyzing the minds of the masses and preventing them from understanding the war. Demet Yalçın’s recent article in Marksist Tutum provides enough clarity about the issue of “madness”. (Putin’s War or Imperialist War?) Elif Çağlı also evaluated the basic Marxist view about “madness” in her various articles. Let us first cite from one of these articles, published in 2006:

 “The reason why the imperialist war started and spread out is not the fact that Hitler, in the past, and Bush, today, come to power by chance. On the contrary, the extraordinary crisis conditions that capitalism is being dragged into push such crazed people onto the front of the power stage. For this very reason, this type of historical times are extremely turbulent periods made up of deep waves hitting from the bottom, which are not restricted to the term of one bourgeois party or one political leader.” (In the Middle of Danger, marksist.com)

Demet Yalçın makes the same point within the context of the ongoing Ukraine war. Citing her lines would help us: “As put forward by Marxism, it is not crazy and sociopath leaders that give rise to wars. It is capitalism, its competitive nature and its internal contradictions that bring about wars. Without them, these leaders cannot provoke wars. It is not the sociopaths that provoke wars; it is objective conditions that cause wars. And it is these same conditions that bring sociopaths to the forefront. The ongoing Third World War involves intertwined components. The steps taken by rival powers lead to multidimensional consequences. The ongoing historical crisis of capitalism further sharpens the conflicts and deepens the chaos and uncertainty. Considering these facts, we must say that the question of war is far from simple.”

Having clarified this fundamental point, we can now talk on Putin's so-called madness. Yes, Putin’s willingness to take risks and his adventurous leanings play a role in this war. But it is not right to explain the cause of war by reducing it to this role or to overstate this element to that effect. It is no accident that a Putin-style bourgeois leader rose to power in Russia. But even if some other leader had come to power, already-existing explosive contradictions would have brought this war up. In that case, the bourgeois media would be telling us about the madness of some other authoritarian leader with a different name.

The nature of the regime in Russia is another issue of distortion worth mentioning. In their efforts to seize the opportunity to peddle bourgeois liberalism, hired pens of the bourgeoisie are trying to portray the oppressive anti-democratic regime in Russia as the sole responsible for the war. This way, the issue strays away from imperialist capitalism, which inherently involves rivalry for spheres of influence, and it is reduced to a question of political regime, which is called “one-man regime” or “dictatorship”. The advocates of this view think that they can hide the fact that it was precisely the liberal democratic US imperialism and other Western imperialist powers that destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another important issue, which is expressed along with the above-mentioned issues, is the argument that Putin made a “miscalculation”. Let us cite just one example. White House spokesperson Kate Bedingfield says, “Putin is being misinformed by his advisers, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership.” And she continues, “Putin's war has been a strategic blunder that has left Russia weaker over the long term and increasingly isolated on the world stage.” As the war prolongs and defies the expectations of the first days, this “blunder” thesis has increasingly gained ground. Therefore, it would be appropriate to clarify this point.

The conclusion expressed by the White House spokesperson may actually come true at the end of this war process. However, the implicit reasoning behind this conclusion is incorrect. First of all, it is true that there are many assessments in the Western media that point to serious mistakes made by Russia in this war. But apart from the high-ranking staff of the belligerent forces or those who have access to such high-level intelligence, noone can precisely know the accuracy of such claims. For, every war is also a war of false propaganda. Therefore, we cannot know to what extent the assessments in the Western media reflect reality or to what extent they are products of false propaganda. It is necessary to approach all news and evaluations with great caution.

Once this point is clarified, we can say that Russia may come out of this war with serious damage. But, this would still not mean that the war resulted from a “miscalculation” or a “blunder”. As an imperialist state playing a power game at the global and regional level, Russia’s involvement in this war is based on objective grounds. It is more or less an inevitable result of the imperialist rivalry, and conflicts inherent in the system and of the ongoing imperialist war. In short, the Ukraine war is not the consequence of a “blunder”. On the other hand, there are “mistakes” in every war. Things never go exactly as planned in the beginning. Life always disrupts these plans to this or that extent. In some cases, planning and operational errors reach grave dimensions and lead to debacles and defeats. In some other cases, they are less damaging or can be compensated. This is determined by the course of war. War always poses a risk for those who embark on it. Rival powers embark on wars to settle problems that cannot be settled by other means. Thus, they prepare the ground for events that usually shake the lives of societies seriously and produce severe consequences.

During the First World War, none of the belligerent imperialist powers was able to foresee the picture that would emerge in the aftermath of the war. All calculations failed, first and foremost due to the October Revolution. None of the main belligerent forces achieved their goals. Including the victors, they all received such a severe damage that none of them had anticipated. Four great empires were thrown into the dustbin of history. In the end, the United States, which had not been a major actor in the war, emerged as the new rising power. Moreover, from the standpoint of the imperialists, the war did not solve any problems. It only paved the way for a new war, which would break out 20 years later and result in a much more destructive massacre. That war, too, defied the majority of the calculations and anticipations, leading to a completely different world. Two world wars involved countless “mistakes” which are often mentioned by military experts and historians. But none of them can be taken to mean that the war was caused by this or that mistake. Today, both the aggression of the Russian rulers towards Ukraine and US imperialism’s campaign to encircle and corner Russia through Ukraine have an objective rationale that emanates from the logic of the imperialist-capitalist system. Since the collapse of the USSR, the policy of US imperialism to encircle and control Russia has been consistently pursued by every single government, despite all the changes capitalism underwent. Likewise, Russian ruling class has maintained its approach towards the former USSR countries, seeing them as its own backyard and shaping its policies accordingly.

Where is the war going?

Undoubtedly, the biggest question in people's minds about the Ukraine war is how and when it will end. Seizing upon this question, bourgeois media elements and experts largely reduce the discussions about the war to military and geopolitical issues. For sure geopolitical assessments could be useful and significant when made by a correct method which helps put things in the right context. But we cannot expect these experts explain the fact that we live in a world of war and that war is the manifestation of the impasse of the capitalist system. These media elements are trying to accustom people to the mindset of the power games and geopolitics pursued by the ruling class. Thus, they are seeking to hide away the real causes of the war. Therefore, notwithstanding their importance in understanding the process, it is necessary to be careful with such approaches confined to geopolitics.

Keeping these remarks in mind, we can touch upon some points. Above all, the US-British imperialist bloc is absolutely in favour of a prolonged war. This is very important, as it clearly illustrates that the imperialist Western powers, who keep telling the whole world about the sufferings of the Ukrainian people, do not actually care at all about them. Their only concern is to enjoy the prospect of seeing Russia trapped, and to prolong the war to this end. It is clear that NATO provides an extensive military aid to Ukraine in this war, including arms, equipment, logistical facilities, intelligence and training. This factor cannot be ignored. Heavy casualties of the Russian troops, including high-profile generals, cannot be explained without regard to these factors. As the war prolongs, its cost to Russia will increase exponentially. Combined with the unprecedented heavy sanctions and the loss of reputation among the peoples of the world, it is clear that things are not going to be easy for Putin and his henchmen.

On the other hand, it is uncertain to what extent the war will affect the world economy, which is already wobbling. In the face of unexpected effects, all powers may prefer, at some point, to halt the war for a while. But aside from this possibility, even if the war in Ukraine ends, this would not mean the end of the world war, nor would it negate the fact that today’s world is a world of imperialist wars, as shown by the “end” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, even in the particular case of Ukraine, the danger of a recurrence of the war will not be cleared off the table. Neither US imperialism nor Russian imperialism will take their hands off Ukraine. As long as the imperialist capitalist system exists, Ukraine will always be in danger as a buffer zone, with its wide and strategic area located between the great powers. This tension will definitely affect the internal power struggle in Ukraine. If Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk remain under Russian control, claims over these regions will surely produce a mainstream political tendency in Ukraine. It seems unlikely that these regions would come out of Russian control anyway. But if this happens, the Russian population in these regions would obviously be subjected to oppression by Ukrainian nationalism, which could potentially provoke war at any time.

A concise answer to the question in the title, “What Does the Ukraine War Tell?” could perhaps be given as: The Ukraine war tells that there is an ongoing war not only in Ukraine, but also in the world. The contradictions of capitalism are getting shaper. More and more wars are breaking out. More and more destructive conflicts are taking place. And actual war zones are spreading like wildfire across the world. To ignore this fact is to live in a fantasy world. And to fear is no option. Our persistent emphasis on waking up to the reality of war is not intended to spread fear. If we wage struggle with this consciousness, it would be possible to get rid of wars and eliminate their terrible consequences. Closing our eyes to this reality would only help bring more destruction.

We often emphasise that today's world is a world of crises and wars. But it is also a world of revolts and revolutions. As the history of the modern world shows, such deep crises and large-scale wars are also the seedbeds of revolts and revolutions. A host of mass struggles and revolts since the beginning of 2000s has already shown clues of this. Taking advantage of the pandemic, the rulers created an atmosphere of fear, which is now beginning to dissipate. The painful consequences of the war are being felt by more and more people on a world scale. It is clear that we will witness an increase in mass struggles and revolts. In addition to these struggles, there is also a significant increase in the number of young people who turn to socialism. It is no surprise to see such a change among the youth, who are pushed by capitalism into a dead end. Therefore, although the war and all its dangers stand in front of us, the dynamics of the struggle are gaining impetus and the anger against the system is growing among all sections of the working class, especially the youth. Today, what is needed is to spread this anger in every area, make it more organised and lead it in order to hit the foundations of capitalism.