Richard Mellor
Once again, speaking for myself here, I think Mearsheimer's analysis of the situation is accurate. I have said before that what is missing from his world view is the existence of the working class, in Ukraine, Russia, Europe and indeed the world. But he is a bourgeois strategist and we should not be surprised about that.
A friend and I were talking about this situation and were expressing this very point, that the elephant not in the room is the organized working class. Where are the German, French and European working classes in general? Where are the calls from the socialist left and from the leaders of the working class in Europe for fraternity and unity between Russian and Ukrainian troops against Russian oligarchs and their Ukrainian kin. In the US and likely, the UK press, deaths of young Russians thrown in to this inter-imperialist squabble are almost celebrated. Without the intervention of the working class, a nuclear confrontation becomes ever more threatening the longer the war goes on. The working class is the only force, organized for itself and with our own goals and class interests at the forefront, that can halt this descent in to madness and a possible nuclear confrontation.
We are witnessing as my friend and I discussed the other day, is the unraveling of capitalism on a global scale and part of that is the breaking up of the modern nation state, itself a product of the bourgeois (capitalist) revolutions. But it is not just Ukraine. There is Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, which is no longer a nation state in the way it was prior to the U.S. invasion. Turkey is another contender with some 22 million Kurds within its borders. The United Kingdom is also moving in this direction and, what was once thought impossible by most workers I know, the tensions in the U.S. that were made evident in the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol reflect the divisions in the US. The battle for control of the state governments is where this conflict is often played out.
Mearsheimer is correct including in his answer as to where this is going. There are times when there is no immediate solution on a capitalist basis. This is why there are these constant regional wars and what we call these days never ending wars. Nuclear weapons have to a point prevented direct wars between major powers but they don't make those weopans to never use them if the conditions demand it. Capitalism cannot escape this crisis of its own creation and the workers of Europe and the world are the losers all around.
In the US the mass media's love affair with Ukraine has to portray this conflict as the struggle between freedom and democracy and autocracy and dictatorship rather than a competition between imperialist powers for control over the worlds resources. The US sees it's global dominance is under threat.
We are all supposed to be Ukrainians now. But what is rarely mentioned in the US mass media is how this conflict has affected the global south, the poor, former colonial countries plundered for centuries by western capital. The war and Biden's sanctions which have a limited effect on Russia, have caused untold misery and suffering in the poorest regions of the world that rely on the grains produced in the region and the inflation that is a by-product.
Given the absence of the international working class in this scenario, and similar developments throughout the world, we have to face the fact that major destruction and suffering,beyond what already exists, even to the point of regional nuclear conflict between capitalist powers can occur before the working class internationally is forced to enter the scene and carry out the task that history has set for us, the transformation of society and the building of a world federation of democratic socialist states based on cooperation and solidarity with each other and with nature.
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