No US War with Russia! Stop Sending Arms to Ukraine!
No US War with Russia! Stop Sending Arms to Ukraine!
February 4, 2022
The Anti-War Committee stands resolutely against the United States’ current attempts to start a war in Eastern Europe. Over the course of the last two months, the US news media has whipped itself into a frenzy over the prospect of a war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The US government would like us to believe that war is inevitable, and that US intervention is a political and moral necessity. When the United States begins to beat the war drums, deciding that an international conflict thousands of miles from its own borders warrants US intervention, we have to investigate and reveal this warmongering for what it really is.
Even as the US government is telling us that Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine, the Ukrainian government is reporting that no invasion is likely. US media is reporting that the roughly 100,000 Russian soldiers on the border are enough to overrun the entire country. On January 27th, Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov stated outright that “as of today, there are no grounds to believe” that a Russian invasion is imminent. But the facts notwithstanding, the US has now deployed 3,000 troops to bordering NATO states and is ready to deploy 8,500 more to back Ukraine. Nearby NATO countries are ready to chip in 30,000-40,000 soldiers too. The US is threatening new sanctions on Russia, sanctions that would not only have catastrophic effects on the lives of Russian citizens but could also destabilize the global economy.
This US-funded, US-generated crisis did not appear overnight. Ukraine has undergone significant political upheaval in the past decade. In 2014, elected president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in what amounted to a US-backed coup. The US seized upon discontent with Yanukovych’s corruption and funded a movement to replace him with a pro-NATO right-wing government. The post-coup Ukrainian government and military include outright neo-Nazis, as Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzia pointed out on January 31st during UN peace talks. The US’s recent shipment of $200 million in military hardware to Ukraine — under the euphemism of “lethal aid” — has made headlines, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $2.7 billion in arms that the US has delivered since the 2014 coup. Likewise, the 8,500 US soldiers that were recently placed on high alert for deployment to Ukraine are by no means the beginning of US military “support” in Ukraine: the CIA has been training Ukrainian paramilitary organizations to “kill Russians” since 2015.
Since 2014, Ukraine has been transformed into a pawn in the US’s geopolitical chess match with Russia. Ukraine’s motive for cooperating with the US’s warmongering is the promise of NATO membership and stronger ties with the West, with all the political and economic benefits this would bring to the upper crust of Ukrainian society.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a military alliance originally created to ensure US domination in postwar Europe and contain the growth of communism. Today NATO is being used to threaten the Russian Federation. Russia’s military buildup along the Ukrainian border is not merely a defense against Ukraine, but a defense against NATO expansion and, in turn, the expansion of the United States’ war machine. Drafts of security guarantee proposals recently presented to the US and NATO show that Russia’s central demand is for NATO to cease its eastward expansion. Residents of Crimea and the Donbas, breakaway regions formerly belonging to Ukraine, recognized the 2014 Ukraine coup for what it was and, with their backs against the wall, chose to part ways with Ukraine. In the case of Crimea, this meant choosing Russia over NATO; for Donbas, it meant a referendum on regional independence. Those in Donbas are now being punished by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Batallion for that decision .
It’s no coincidence that this new bout of US warmongering and NATO expansionism is occurring amidst growing economic and military cooperation between the Russian Federation, Latin American republics, and the People’s Republic of China, among others. Last week, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced that Russia was planning on deepening its cooperation with Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba — three countries that have recently seen, and rebuffed, US-backed coups much like the one that succeeded in Ukraine in 2014. Moreover, Russia is a key participant in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is building new trading networks connecting East Asia, Eastern and Southern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. China and Russia have begun to hammer out the details of a new international banking system that would allow them to delink their economies from the Western, US-dominated SWIFT banking system. Forcible exclusion from the SWIFT system is part of how the US executes its deadly sanctions, like those deployed against Iran, and those it currently threatens to use against Russia. If these alliances come into their own, the US’s status as the solitary dictator of the global economic order may finally be on the decline. The US government’s decision to push a war in Eastern Europe is a desperate attempt to reassert dominance and destabilize its enemies.
The Ukrainian government’s recent attempts to dial down the war drums show it has begun to realize that allying with NATO and the US means making a deal with the devil. The US has no concern for the people of Ukraine. It does not care how many Ukrainians die fighting. The US’s only real concern is driving NATO further east in order to weaken Russia.
Those of us in the anti-war movement in the US have a duty to oppose this war in every way we can, from exposing its foundations to marching against it in the streets. We hope you will march with the Anti-War Committee to say NO WAR WITH RUSSIA! this Saturday, February 5, 11:00 a.m. at 301 Cedar Avenue South.
PROUD TO SHOUT: US OUT!