Ukraine: Western Escalation Creates a Zero Sum Game. Mearsheimer

Richard Mellor

Once again I find myself in complete agreement with John Mearsheimer with his view on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the events that led up to it and the role of the US which is what we are talking about here. It is a proxy war between two imperialist powers being fought on Ukrainian soil and at a great human cost to the Ukranian people.

I do not have to be a supporter of Putin or the invasion to believe this.

His comment early in the video about Japan and Pearl Harbor is important. My father was a prisoner of the Japanese the entire war. I grew up in a family where this was always present. I read books he told me to read, The Jungle is Neutral, A Town Like Alice, Behind Bamboo etc. I understood the attack on Pearl Harbor as an aggressive surprise attack by the Japanese militarized society on the United States. It wasn't until I was in my mid 30's that I learned the US had, as it is trying to do with China as I write, throttled Japan economically, cutting it off from vital imports, energy in the form of oil, Iron ore and others as he says. 

In other words, in the struggle between Japanese Imperialism and US Imperialism for dominance in the Asian markets (European Colonial power was done) and the profits that would bring, there was already a trade war. I knew nothing about this politics, imperialism or the cause of conflict in capitalist society. I just knew that the US were the good guys.

This puts Pearl Harbor in a totally different light.

I think we have to understand this with regards to the situation we have now in Eastern Europe. It is not the first European war since WW2 as western politicians and media claim.  NATO (the US) bombed Serbia in the nineties. We can’t simply start from the position that Putin is a bad guy and he shouldn’t have invaded. Of course he shouldn’t and he is a bad guy as far as all workers are concerned. So is Biden, Rumsfeld, Bush, Obama, Kissinger Trump all of them.

Mearsheimer says that there was another way, but the US “doubled Down” the other person in the video, a Norwegian apparently still has that position. The tanks are a further doubling down, every step from the US and its European junior partners is doubling down.

I agree that there was another way if we look at it from the point of view of the average person trying to get on with their lives. The problem is, wars are not the product of squabbles between individuals, religion or other such things. Capitalism is a system of war. The US, Vatican Inc, the European states all wanted the collapse of the old totalitarian regime in Russia and in China to move to so-called free market economies, but not capitalist states that would threaten their dominance, but capitalist states like South Korea, the Phillipines and others that would be dependent on them, would provide cheap labor, raw materials, a source of growth and profits. This is the cause of the increased tensions with China which is an existential threat to US dominance. Chinese workers, European workers, US workers, have nothing to fear from each other.

So while, in theory there was clearly a way of avoiding this conflict, objectively it was inevitable as are further conflicts and even at some point a nuclear war if environmental collapse doesn’t get us first. When backs are against the wall is when animals are at their most agressive and will take steps that could otherwise be seen as suicidal.

Mearsheimer has no solution. And it’s clear he does not even consider the working class as a force at all. Why would he?  He is a bourgeois strategist but in my opinion one of the more astute ones.