Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Magpietothemax]

Imperialist powers are now in a crisis re the war in Ukraine.

Putin just recently changed the nuclear policy of Russia, so that it included a nuclear response against even a conventional weapons attack, if that attack were deemed to having been orchestrated by a nuclear armed power.

Just after this declaration, Biden cancelled a scheduled meeting with his NATO counterparts, with the excuse that he needed to stay in the US due to Hurricane Milton.
Since then, he met with fellow war criminals Macron, Scholz, Starmer in Berlin, to discuss the next move in Ukraine.

In his subsequent interview with the media, Biden declared that as yet "no decision had been made" as to whether authorisation would be given to Zelensky's regime to pound targets deep in Russian territory with NATO missiles.

In military terms, it has now threatening to be a debacle for Ukraine, and only the direct intervention of NATO forces can stave off defeat.

The intervention of NATO forces would have a high probability of leading to WW3 directly.

It seems at the moment that instead the Biden administration will give Zelensky just enough aid to keep his military on life support while it turns instead to escalating its proxy war against Iran via its agent Netanyahu.

However a direct attack on Iran likewise could trigger an action by Russia or China either in the Middle East or elsewhere, because neither country can afford to allow a stranglehold over Middle East oil supplies by US imperialism.

So in these conditions of insane and incalculable political dangers, the Biden administration is caught in an apoplexy of frustration and total disorientation.

[Durka]

You lost me with your first sentence.

I know that I will regret asking such a simple question, but by every definition, isn't your motherland Russia an imperialist power too?

[David]

What with Israel baiting Iran and now this, MTTM's warnings of WW3 might finally be coming to fruition:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-23/ ... /104499998

[stui magpie]

^

How many of those North Korean soldiers will drop their guns and run to surrender and seek asylum first chance they get?

[Magpietothemax]

Why would anyone, even from North Korea, try to seek asylum from the police state dictatorship that Zelensky currently presides over in Ukraine.
And no point in seeking asylum anywhere else in Europe right now, because every European government is currently carrying out a full scale war against immigrants and asylum seekers.

So no, they will stand and fight, just like the Ukrainian conscripts who are being forced to die on the battle fields for the interests of governments who all are all criminal and care not one iota about their death, but only about securing the wealth and privileges of their respective national elite.

[Magpietothemax]

You lost me with your first sentence.

I know that I will regret asking such a simple question, but by every definition, isn't your motherland Russia an imperialist power too?

You will regret asking this question because
1) the answer is not so simple (reality is not for simpletons)
2) the answer is not what you hope for.

a) My "motherland" is not Russia. I have no motherland. I am an international socialist, which means that I oppose the entire nation state system, and will do everything I can to promote the understanding that the nation state system is leading to world war and must be abolished before it is too late.

b) When I use the word "imperialist", I use it according to its strict scientific definition, as explained by the Marxists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Imperialism, in the contemporary, scientific use of this term, refers to nations that from the late 1800's to early 1914 built up and consolidated enormous economic and financial power due to their ability to seize colonies and plunder their wealth.

This came on top of the historic development of industrial capitalism, within first Britain, then Germany and France and of course then extending to the US. The Japanese ruling class also seized upon the modern methods of industry to establish industrial power in Japan which was likewise supplemented by colonial expansion into Asia.

The imperialist nations, according to this scientific and historical understanding, are : US, Great Britain, Germany, France, Germany, Japan and other smaller imperialist powers (such as Italy, Australia)

The history of Russia is totally differnet. Russia in the late 19th and early 20th century was under the heel of a despotic and backward Tsar, where the vast majority of the population was held in illiterate and grinding poverty in feudal like conditions.

Then foreign imperialist capital flooded into Russia ( I believe primarily from Britain), setting up gigantic modern factories, to exploit the cheap labour available in Russia.

Russia was then dragged into WW1 as an ally of Great Britain in its conflict with German imperialism.

But Russia had no independent industrial base, and never dominated world finance and economy like Great Britain.

So no, Russia is not an imperialist power.

Further verification of this fact is found in contemporary reality: it is not Russia enforcing strangulating economic sanctions against the US, Great Britain and Germany, but the reverse.

It is not Russia freezing US, British, German assets in international banks and then confiscating them, but the reverse.

In the same way, China is not an imperialist power either, because its history (of colonial oppression under Japanese and European imperialism) is similar in that fundamental way to that of Russia.

[Durka]

You are nothing if not predictable.

Marxists have a "scientific" definition of "imperialist"? Really? Most would think that your mother country Russia has had a fair crack at developing its own empire.

"Russia was then dragged into WW1 as an ally of Great Britain in its conflict with German imperialism" is, with all due respect, rubbish. Russia had a treaty with Serbia, which was attacked by the Austro Hungarian empire because they were pissed that Franz F bit the dust. Enter your motherland. If you know a little about history, you will know that the Kaiser tried to dissuade the Austro Hungarians from attacking Serbia, but I suppose that doesn't support your socialist nuttiness theories.

[stui magpie]

I'm fascinated by the concept that China can't be an imperialist power because of it's history of "oppression "

What happened 100 years ago is different to what's happening now. Roping in Pacific nations under their Belt and Road initiatives, sending Australia a list of demands and then banning imports from Australia to flex their muscles, threatening Taiwan, all the shit they're doing in the Sth China Sea and so on.

And Russia? Forcing all the surrounding countries into the USSR post WWII?

Britain was an imperialist power, so were Spain and France, none of them are now.

Maybe time to update the reading material.

[David]

An article on the experiences of Russian civilians in territories captured by Ukraine over the border in recent months:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/27/worl ... lians.html