By the Executive Committee for the National Council of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America
Nearly a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, events continue to validate these conclusions: with millions hungry, homeless, and without health care in our country, we oppose the United States pumping more than $50 billion in weaponry to support the Ukrainian military. We oppose American leadership as their weaponry prolongs a war that is wreaking death and destruction on the Ukrainian and Russian people.
How is it that we can spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on our military budget, but we cannot find the money to build a public health system that will prevent the COVID, RSV, and flu viruses that are running rampant and choking our hospitals? These are the class interests that define this war: Will we fuel an ongoing proxy war in which the United States and NATO have maneuvered Ukraine into armed conflict with Russia, or will we fund the basic needs of the people in rural and urban America?
Since the beginning of the war, the United States has sabotaged every effort to mediate the war and attempt to reach a diplomatic conclusion. In fact, the war is a strategic outcome of a 1997 position taken by former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski: “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” (The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives by Zbigniew Brzezinski). And in 2019, The Rand Corporation delivered a report arguing for the arming of Ukraine in order to destabilize and weaken Russia.
We can view every step along the way, from the invitation to Eastern European countries (including Ukraine) to join the NATO military alliance as moves on Brzezinski’s “Eurasian chessboard.” In that sense, regardless of any culpability of Russia, workers of the United States cannot ignore our government’s provocation and continued prolongation of the war.
The current situation is much more dangerous than when the Russian incursion began. U.S. military aid has led directly to the advance of Ukrainian forces. Propped up by Western arms, Ukraine is demanding that Russia leave the four eastern areas and give up the Crimea. This is territory that has been long contested. Russian missiles have struck the electrical power grid of the nation, but they have avoided the nuclear power plants that generate electricity. But how long can a nuclear accident be avoided? And Ukrainian missiles falling on Poland recently threatened to involve NATO in what might have become a nuclear war. Thus the war danger further threatens to explode.
For revolutionaries in the United States, we have to be very clear about our responsibilities. No U.S. government has fought in defense of democracy in another country, at least not since World War II. In fact, as we claim to be defending democracy in Ukraine, government entities in the United States are fighting to take away our own democracy. We have responsibility for our own state, our own ruling class. As this is written in December 2022, Congress is preparing to pass with overwhelming bipartisan support the nearly $1 trillion National Defense Authorization Act. It will continue to fund not only the war in Ukraine, but also military adventures around the world. Let us make it clear to our elected representatives: We could solve the housing, healthcare, education and many other basic needs issues with the dollars the United States spends on war. Let us end the carnage in Ukraine and on our streets and homes. Not one penny more for the war. Fight to retain and expand our own democracy.
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