Like the Phoenix, Gaza will Rise from the Fire / by Ronnie Kasrils

_{^{Palestinians in Gaza celebrate the announcement of the ceasefire in May 2023. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)}}

_{Reposted from The Palestine Chronicle}

The Palestinian spirit is unbreakable. Like the mythical phoenix, defiant and heroic Gaza will rise from the fire.

The aerial bombardment of Gaza’s most crowded Jabalia refugee camp piles on one massacre after another. It signifies Israeli barbarism and a fascist inability to understand the heroic human spirit to resist repression.

History has shown that the bombing of civilians – from the Basque town of Guernica in 1937 to Soviet and British cities in World War 2, from America’s destruction of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to the massacre of Gaza today – strengthens the determination to resist.

As the Israeli state’s inhumane attack on Gaza continues, with the ground-zero onslaught grinding forward, civilians are being killed at a terrifying rate – the ghetto reduced to rubble.

By the end of October, well over 8,000 of the 2.3 million people packed into the walled sliver of land have been killed. The lives of more than 3,500 children have been taken, with women and the elderly accounting for most other deaths. Entire families have been wiped out. Over 20,000 people have been wounded, many with life-threatening injuries. A Palestinian child is being killed every 10 minutes. More children have been butchered in October than in all the world’s conflicts since 2019.

People across Gaza are in unspeakable pain and anguish. People across the world are reeling from television images of frantic parents rushing bloodied infants through shattered hospital wards or people digging through collapsed rubble with their bare hands in search of loved ones.

At this rate of slaughter, over 30,000 people will be killed by Christmas, 40% of them children, 30% women, and 150,000 injured.

Netanyahu and his generals declare that their “war” could last months, so these statistics are not improbable. This is a war crime, a crime against humanity on an unimaginable scale. These crimes are backed by the likes of US President Joe Biden and Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and much of the Western media, including Zionist outposts in my own country, South Africa – shamelessly ignoring the disproportionate blood bath Israel has visited on Palestinians.

Announcing the onset of a “total war”, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, declared in words that will shame Israel for all time: “I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel… We are fighting human animals.”

I do not say this lightly, but it is a plain fact that these words could have come from the mouth of a Nazi exterminator.

Seared into collective memory is Gallant’s chilling warning to the 1,1 million in the northern part of the ghetto giving them 24 hours to flee their homes. Thousands of women and children sheltering at Gaza City’s Al Aqsa Hospital, are refusing to leave even under that deadline, for as at Jabalia, there is nowhere to go.

The Gaza population under siege for 16 years, was already suffering borderline starvation with only 500 trucks allowed in each day prior to the current onslaught. After intense pressure, Israel has permitted a trickle of UN relief to deliver food, water and medicine to enter through the Rafah border crossing. No fuel has been allowed. The tiny amount of supplies permitted through Egypt’s border allows Israel to claim it is providing basic necessities while denying sustenance to most people in practice.

It is evident that many will die of thirst and hunger, bereft of care and medication. Already 12 of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed and 32 medical centers partially damaged or put out of service. This includes the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza City where 500 people died from a direct hit by an Israeli missile. Unlike the missiles used by Israel the rockets used by Hamas or Islamic Jihad don’t have the power to destroy entire buildings. This was another Israeli war crime.

Amidst this devastation there are an estimated 55,000 pregnant women with 5,000 of them close to giving birth. There are 130 babies in incubators and 140 in ICU.

In 1948, when Israeli fascists slaughtered 240 men, women and children in the Deir Yassin village near Jerusalem, its agriculture minister, Aharon Zisling, declared in horror: “We have behaved like Nazis and my whole being is shaken.”

Fascism

The great physicist Albert Einstein, and the philosopher Hannah Arendt, an expert on the Nazis, correctly labelled the architect of that massacre, Menachem Begin, a fascist. He later became Israel’s prime minister. It is an undeniable fact that the government that is raining hell on the people crowded into the Gaza ghetto are proto-fascists driven by a racist myth: They are the chosen people and Palestine is their God-given land.

Israel is a settler colony, that has adopted apartheid practices, and its crimes have been funded and legitimated by the West since its illegitimate birth as a state in the 1948 Nakba. The US has vetoed and undermined UN resolutions and international law from that time through the 1967 occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Today the West colludes with Israel in its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, war crimes and aggression against neighboring states.

The US currently provides $3.8 billion per year funding for Israel’s military alone. Biden has now announced a further $14 billion in support for the Israeli military with not a cent of humanitarian aid for Palestinians. The US has dispatched two aircraft carrier groups, with 2,000 marines, to “protect” Israel and has delivered more bombs and missiles for the “defensive” onslaught on Gaza. Israel likely requires an inventory of gas and flame throwers for the ground attack on the vast Hamas tunnel system now underway.

While Western support for Israel is driven by racism, there are also more personal motives at play in some instances.

Sunak’s wealthy family has enormous investments in Israel as do many others on the Zionist bandwagon, including many Western corporations. The claims made in support of Israel by most Western politicians and dutifully echoed by most of the Western media need to be rigorously assessed.

Let’s take the chorus of statements describing Operation Al-Aqsa Flood launched by Hamas on October 7 as ‘unprovoked’ and declaring that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself.

The two-billion-dollar Gaza security fence was breached, and 360 Israeli soldiers and 1,200 settlers killed by Resistance fighters engaged in a liberation struggle against apartheid settler-colonialism – although eye-witness testimony has emerged that scores of Jewish settlers died by indiscriminate shooting from their own side. Those settlers died because the Israeli state failed to protect them from guerrilla fighters who had broken out of perpetual open-air imprisonment.

The action of the mujahedeen takes place within the context of almost eight decades of brutal oppression, going back to the time of the dispossession of their grandparents. The Israeli towns, villages and kibbutzim that they raided were built on land stolen from their very own families in the 1940s, during the Nakba that had cast them into refugee limbo. Indeed, two- thirds of the residents of Gaza are refugees, many from those same destroyed villages.

Western Hypocrisy

Western media commentary has been awash with ‘fake news’. The claim that forty babies had been decapitated has been debunked, and it has emerged, as already stated, that many settlers died owing to frenzied shooting by Israeli soldiers, operating under the military’s ‘Hannibal doctrine’ that death is better than being taken captive by the Resistance.

When the West and its servile media claimed that this attack was ‘unprovoked’ no reference was made to more than the 75 years of ethnic cleansing, incremental genocide and collective punishment; the 16 years siege of Gaza; the five deadly onslaughts on Gaza since 2008, including the cold-blooded assassination of 220 protestors – 42 children among them – and injuring of 36,000 in the peaceful March of Return of 2018-19. Settlers from nearby Sderot ate popcorn and cheered Israeli snipers as they mowed down defenseless people.

Around the world people of conscience remember and celebrate the courage of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who rebelled, guns in hand, against Nazi incarceration, prepared to die on their feet rather than passively await death like sheep. Although South Africans were declared to be terrorists when we took up arms against apartheid the armed struggle was widely recognized as wholly legitimate. Armed resistance against military occupation and tyranny is recognized as a universal right in international law and as a moral right in the theory of just war.

Hamas is a national liberation movement, engaged in an anti-colonial struggle. Israel, the USA and the wider West seek to delegitimate Hamas by conflating it with ISIS but this is a wholly bogus comparison. Hamas, unlike ISIS, is a political organization emerging from an occupied and oppressed people with a clear project to end colonial occupation.

The hypocrisy and racial double standards of the West and much of its media has become crudely evident in the difference in the response to the situations in Ukraine and Gaza.

The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, often praising her grandfather who was a Nazi general, has declared that: “Russia’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, in Ukraine is a war crime. Cutting off men, women, children from water, electricity and heating with winter coming – these are acts of pure terror. And we have to call it as such.” However, when Israel does all these things, and worse, it enjoys the enthusiastic support of the West.

Israel’s End Game

We should recall that when Zionism’s 19th Century founder, Theodor Herzl, sought support from European powers, he promised that a “Jewish state” in Palestine, would build an iron wall “against Asian barbarism”. He was offering to securing Western imperialist interests against the Arabs and eastwards, by a European colonial settlement in what for centuries had been a flourishing land called Palestine.

Along with racism, this explains much of the financial, military, diplomatic and servile mainstream media support for Israel. It is an extension of Western imperialism. Oil and gas, including the recent discovery of vast reserves off the coast from Gaza to Lebanon, have compounded the West’s willingness to sacrifice the Palestinian people in its support for a loyal settler colony with shared economic interests.

As Israel rains death and destruction on Gaza we need to ask what its end game is. To answer this question, we must go back to the origins of Zionism, and its desire for great lebensraum at the expense of the Palestinian people – who had cultivated the fields, developed agriculture, trade and towns, and created a thriving culture, from the times of the Canaanite Kingdom.

Herzl explained that “Once in power, we will spirit the penniless Arabs across the borders.” This was the basis for ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people begun by Ben Gurion in 1948 when 750,000 people – three-quarters of the Palestinian population at the time who vastly outnumbered Jews – were forced into exile as refugees. Gaza and the West Bank, seized in Israel’s 1967 war of expansion, created more refugees.

It seems clear that Israel’s objective in levelling Gaza and terrorizing the population is to force the survivors out into refugee camps in the Sinai Desert where they will become Egypt’s responsibility. Along with realizing the avarice for Gaza’s offshore oil and gas fields.

The extreme nature of the crisis in Gaza must not overlook that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are in turmoil. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, and its mirage of a solution, Zionist expansionism has seen settlers increasing from 250,000 at that time to 700,000 today.

This makes the two-state solution impossible. The desecration of the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque, with the mob attacks on worshippers and residents of East Jerusalem peaking this year, has compounded the worsening situation. The pogroms launched by illegal settlers screaming “Kill the Arabs” and laying waste to the town of Huwwara have shown the fascist character of the settlers.

Almost 2,000 West Bank Palestinians have been injured and more than 120 killed since October 7, with 200 murdered in the preceding months this year. Those attacks were met by courageous armed resistance in towns such as Jenin, Nablus and Hebron, which has challenged the military occupation.

As popular resistance increased prior to October 7, numerous Israeli army battalions were transferred from Gaza to the West Bank and the number of Palestinians imprisoned (or taken hostage) by Israel has almost doubled to over 6,000, including 200 women and children as young as twelve.

Some 1,600 have been detained without charge or trial. The Israelis being held by Hamas are being offered in exchange for the freeing of those prisoners, held under abominable conditions, and many for longer than Nelson Mandela’s 27 years’ imprisonment.

Israel’s policy is not to negotiate a prisoner exchange. This has been exposed by Qatari and Egyptian mediation for the four women released by Hamas. All indicated they had been well treated although the experience had been traumatic. Another woman, Yasmin Poral, held hostage in kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, explained on Israeli TV that many Israelis had been killed by indiscriminate fire from their own soldiers. She clarified that the house she was sheltering in was destroyed by Israeli tank fire. The interview was swiftly removed from online platforms.

Anti-Fascism is not Anti-Semitism

It is not at all difficult to understand the hatred harbored by Palestinians for Israel given the barbaric treatment they have endured for generations. Any credible analysis of the situation would understand this.

However rational analysis is often made very difficult by the deeply cynical response of declaring criticism of the Israeli state and the settlers it supports as ‘anti-Semitic’. It is deeply offensive for Israeli proto-fascists to misuse the historical oppression of Jews to justify the oppression of Palestine. Nonetheless this tactic has successfully suppressed reasoned discussion in a number of societies and organizations.

In contrast, many Jews, including some courageous citizens of Israel, are deeply opposed to Zionism and to the Israeli state. In the United States large numbers of younger Jews have turned against Israel. International anti-Zionist Jewish networks have been proclaiming that Palestinians have every right to resist, declaring that Israel does not speak in their name. This is an important rebuttal of Zionist propaganda, claiming that Israel represents all Jews across the world.

Righteous people mourn the loss of life of all the civilians that have died, Jews and Palestinians. This is a basic point of moral decency. Yet decency also requires the recognition that the losses on both sides are incomparable and vastly disproportionate where 95% of dead and wounded, and thousands of children, are Palestinians.

Palestinians had no hand in the Nazi Holocaust but have been made to pay the price for a crime of European fascism. They have lost their land and rights as victims of a colonial project and are the ones suffering unspeakable brutality. Throughout history slave uprisings have targeted slave owners and their families as well as the system of slavery. These uprisings were just. We must regret all loss of civilian life, especially war crimes, but that regret cannot be misused to deny the justice of the Palestinian cause and the moral and legal right of Palestinians to armed resistance.

Whither Gaza – Whither Palestine – Whither Israel?

The gravity of the situation for Gaza, and all Palestinians, looks bleaker than ever. Or could there be a twist in the tale?

As horrendous as the situation is, Israel’s plans might not be as unchallenged as expected. It is never wise to deploy military force on the scale involved in an emotive knee-jerk reaction, with no clear military and political objectives.

Apart from the lack of a clear strategy, at the tactical level, the prospect of the ground invasion having to contend with the intricate tunnel system the resistance fighters have developed over the years would be daunting for any military.

Attacking in urban conditions, with rubble and collapsed buildings creating problems for tanks, against a formidable opponent, is the most difficult and dangerous of all military operations. Hamas has demonstrated extraordinary mastery of guerrilla tactics as illustrated by the lessons it dished out to the Israeli army on October 7, and in previous Israeli assaults on the territory.

The Israeli army cannot afford to face any further calamities. The Israeli public will not readily forgive the political elite and a military whose inadequacies have already been so rudely exposed – in part owing to racial hubris and complacency; in part because it has become a glorified police force dealing with stone throwing teenagers.

An occupation force of a corrupt and decrepit state, despite all its boasting, cannot produce sustained high morale, especially when up against a highly motivated opponent, contemptuous of death, with a deeply felt cause. Hamas knew that a ground force invasion would inevitably follow an operation such as Al-Aqsa Flood and would have carefully prepared much more than the anticipated booby-trapped tunnels. Who knows what surprises there are in store for the invaders?

Moreover, Israel has to maintain considerable force on its northern front with Lebanon, and its feared opponent, Hezbollah. Skirmishes have already been occurring there as guerrilla fighters probe Israel’s defences. Likewise, the West Bank resistance is likely to register a potent response, along with possible flare-ups within Israel itself.

Guerrilla fighters throughout the region have developed impressive operational capacity and daring and demonstrate a far greater threat to Israeli military prowess than the conventional Arab armies that Israel contended with in 1948 and 1967. The Israeli army’s deployment is already greatly stretched as will be Israel’s economy and military call up of its reserve force over a protracted period.

The Israeli families of those Hamas captured, are becoming extremely impatient with the Government’s reluctance to negotiate a prisoner exchange. The release of some captives with Western citizenship, through outside intervention, is placing enormous pressure on Netanyahu and his ilk. As possible prisoner exchanges like those take place, the obduracy of the Israeli state will become more objectionable. Recall that in 2011 the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas is holding a very strong card. And its support will grow.

Furthermore, the US-Israeli objective of propping-up the Palestine Authority (PA), of dividing Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza, between Fatah and Hamas, has long rendered Mahmoud Abbas a lame duck with no credibility, the two-state solution as futile, and the notion of only peaceful forms of struggle as inadequate.

Current events have put paid to those plans or the idea that the PA could be brought in to govern the Gaza Strip. Gaza is uniting the determination and belief of Palestinians everywhere – in the occupied territories, within Israel itself, in the refugee camps of the region, in the prisons and in the Diaspora.

That’s not the only headache for Western objectives. Both the USA and Israel are concerned at the possible setback to the Abrahamic Accord and Israel’s normalization with its neighbors, which Netanyahu was only recently boasting about in his UN General Assembly address in September.

As spineless and even treacherous as most Arab governments have been regarding support for the Palestinians over the years – Algeria, Syria and Yemen Houthi’s, along with Hezbollah, are among exceptions – the unprecedented Palestinian resistance has galvanized the Arab masses as reflected in the huge protests in the Middle East and beyond and is bound to create a dilemma for those regimes.

The last thing the USA wants is a quagmire in the Middle East, with mass uprisings against client US regimes from Egypt and Jordan to Saudi Arabia. The US simply cannot afford this at a time when their proxy war in the Ukraine is unravelling, the Kiev counter-offensive grinding to a halt, and Russia gaining the upper hand. The US has recklessly generated tensions with China.

At the same time, the alliance between China and Russia is strengthening. They are being less stand-off in their dealings with Israel and would most likely support Iran if needs be, leading to a regional test of strength with the West.

Given such factors, Israel could find that there are limits to the backing it will receive from the US and Western Europe in a volatile situation. Moreover, while buildings might be reduced to rubble, and thousands killed, Palestinians have exhibited the most extraordinary resilience and steadfastness (sumud) over decades.

Ben Gurion once said that after the 1948 Palestinian generation, ‘the old will die, and the young will forget’. These hopes were in vain. Palestinians have not forgotten, and they have not accepted permanent oppression as their fate.

Hamas and the other resistance groups in Gaza and the West Bank are part of the people, not alien entities. This is a key tenet in successful guerrilla struggles. Much depends on how Hamas contains the ground invasion and forces the Israeli army into something of an impasse. Much also depends on international reaction.

It is vital we do everything possible to forestall the slaughter, and through the power of international solidarity enable and strengthen UN’s role, and apply pressure on the US and Western Europe, to support an immediate ceasefire.

Most important of all is People’s Power – direct action in the streets worldwide as never seen before; along with the intensification of the BDS campaign to completely isolate Zionist Israel.

The indiscriminate bombing of civilians deepens resolve and invokes resistance. The Palestinian spirit is unbreakable. Like the mythical phoenix, defiant and heroic Gaza will rise from the fire.

_{Ronnie Kasrils, veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, and South Africa’s former Minister for Intelligence Services, activist and author. He contributed this piece to The Palestine Chronicle}

Putin regime emerges as the main danger to global peace and security / John Bachtell

_{^{Baba Vanga and Vladimir Putin superimposed on destruction in Ukraine. The blind clairvoyant Bulgarian mystic, Baba Vanga, died in 1996.Called the Nostradamus of the Balkans, she made various predictions of events that supposedly would happen up until and including the year 5000. Right wing Russian national chauvinists, including Vladimir Putin himself, must like one of the prophecies she made before her death: “Russia will become the lord of the world whereas Europe will become a wasteland. All will thaw, as if ice, only one will remain untouched – Vladimir’s glory, the glory of Russia.” She made the prophecy shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries in Europe which did usher in warfare and conflicts after a period of 50 years of peace in Europe following World War II. It did not take much clairvoyance to see that inter capitalist rivalries and nationalism would lead to the big trouble we see unfolding today in Europe. AP}}

Russia continues its unrelenting, brutal, and immoral invasion of Ukraine while ignoring the growing global outcry to stop. Russian military forces have widened their lethal destruction to break the will of the Ukrainian population and their unexpected fierce resistance.

It is hard to grasp the breadth of destruction in Ukraine and the danger the world faces. Once unleashed, the dogs of war pursue a path with unpredictable and unknown consequences.

The attack has created deep hostilities against Russia by Ukrainians in the first place, which will take years to repair, and inflamed Ukrainian and Russian nationalism. Europe faces a humanitarian disaster not seen since WWII, with over 5 million Ukrainian refugees and another 2 million people internally displaced.

The most urgent issue facing the world is bringing the invasion, death, and destruction to an end as quickly as possible. The global community must prevent the conflict from spreading to neighboring countries and escalating to a nuclear standoff between Russia and the U.S. which possess 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Gross violations of law committed

Russian military forces have committed gross violations of international law and war crimes. These include the invasion of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, leveling of cities, using cluster munitions, deliberately targeting civilians, including children, forced displacement, attacking refugee evacuation corridors, destroying hospitals, schools, and government buildings, and reports of rapes and executions.

The worst may be yet to come. On Feb. 27, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s “deterrence forces,” including its nuclear forces, on combat readiness. Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons against any country interfering with the invasion. His Feb. 24 speech invokes the language of Russia’s updated nuclear policy adopted in June 2020 to justify their possible use. Biden’s refusal to impose a no-fly zone, which risks escalation to a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, and global annihilation, has been validated.

Meanwhile, Putin and Russia’s ruling kleptocracy has unleashed its repressive state apparatus upon the growing and courageous Russian opposition to the invasion. The regime has jailed thousands, suppressed the independent media as “foreign agents,” and outlawed any criticism of the invasion or challenge to state-sponsored disinformation justifying it. In a chilling speech on Mar. 16, Putin likened the anti-war movement to “traitors” and a “fifth column” and that Russia must self-purify by getting rid of them.

Settlement requires withdrawal

A peace settlement likely requires a Russian withdrawal, recognition of Ukraine’s (and other countries in the region) national sovereignty, right to self-determination, non-interference in its internal affairs, and security guarantees for its territorial integrity. Ukraine likely accepts neutrality concerning NATO, already twice offered by President Volodymyr Zelensky, barring foreign military bases on its soil, recognition of Russian language rights, and may face some painful concessions, including loss of territory.

However, Putin’s response to Zelensky’s offer was to bomb a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians and children were taking shelter. The action suggests Putin’s real goal may be to take over Ukraine, or at the very least its partition or ruination of its economy and infrastructure, the liquidation of the Ukrainian state, and installation of a puppet regime. Putin has already declared his intention to establish tribunals to try Ukrainian opposition and extinguish all “Western” influence, similar to “purifying” Russia of internal “traitors” and resistance.

It is hard to know all that the Biden administration has done behind the scenes to prevent the war and end it. But the administration’s outreach to China, which has a significant influence on Russia, is encouraging.

The Biden Administration knew about Putin’s plans and thought exposing them would give Putin pause. Perhaps at that moment, more could have been done to forge a compromise to stop the invasion, including emphatically taking NATO membership off the table. At the very least, it would have brought additional pressure to bear.

But suppose the Biden Administration and NATO’s only approach is sanctions against Russia and arms for Ukraine, without a diplomatic blitz. In that case, one wonders if the intent is to drag Russia into an Afghanistan-type quagmire at the expense of the Ukrainian people? A drawn-out war will only result in more destruction, death, and suffering.

The mythic origin narrative

Putin laid out his view of Russia-Ukraine history and relations in a lengthy article on July 12, 2021, which many historians have criticized. In it, Putin conjures up a mythic Russian origin narrative and declares Ukraine an illegitimate state, created by Bolshevik policies following the 1917 October Revolution. In reality, the revolution formed the USSR as a union of republics to address the Ukrainian people’s legitimate national rights and aspirations and other nations oppressed by Czarist Russia, known as the “prison house of nations.”

But Putin believes Russia and Ukraine, along with Belarus, form three branches of a distinct historically developed Russian people. In this version of history, Putin invents a justification for violating Ukraine’s national sovereignty. Putin concluded by stating, “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” And therefore, the aim becomes to absorb Ukraine into Russia or make Ukraine a subordinate colony.

Therefore, taking Putin at his word, the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign nation is at stake. Ukrainians will never accept such an outcome and the fierce resistance reflects their national aspirations. An occupation will result in ongoing resistance by Ukrainians and brutal repression by Russia.

But the invasion and Ukraine’s struggle for national sovereignty and self-determination also occurs under sharpening global geopolitical rivalries, including between U.S. and Russian imperialism and the US’s “strategic competition” with China and Russia. Simultaneously, Russia is attempting to assert its role in the global order, including military means, and upend the US’s still mainly hegemonic role. The invasion may signal a tectonic shift in international affairs, an era of greater instability and fracturing, and a growing world war danger.

NATO and other factors

But it still begs the question: did NATO expansion precipitate the invasion, or did other factors play a role? Indeed, NATO expansion and U.S. interference were critical to laying the foundation for the crisis. But it can never justify Russia’s brutal invasion and war of choice over diplomacy. In any case, NATO wouldn’t have accepted Ukraine’s bid for membership because Germany and France opposed it.

Indeed, Putin would have known a Russian invasion would strengthen support for NATO and militarization of Europe, which precisely is what has happened. Perhaps Putin didn’t care and made it quite clear in his Feb. 22 speech that all territory once part of the Russian empire is fair game.

Whether Putin means this as a rhetorical device or not, it alarms those countries that were former Russian colonies which have struggled for independence against Russian domination historically. As such, public opinion has swung in favor of NATO. That includes the countries of the former USSR, including the Baltic States, Finland, and Poland.

Not only do NATO countries in Eastern Europe feel more vulnerable, but previously unaligned countries like Finland are aligning with NATO, and Germany and Norway are increasing military budgets. Any effort to phase out NATO, demilitarize and denuclearize Europe is now much more difficult, if not impossible, for the foreseeable future.

An even more significant issue may be Ukraine’s desire to join the European Union, robbing Russia of what Putin believes is a critical part of Russia’s economic sphere. Putin refuses to acknowledge Ukraine’s right to pursue its foreign policy, trade, and financial relationships.

Other justifications falling apart

Putin’s other justifications for invading are falling apart. By shelling majority Russian-speaking cities, Putin undercuts his claim to be protecting Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

The military offensive across the breadth of Ukraine undermines the claim of “denazification” of the Donbas region. A “fascist regime” doesn’t square with a country that elected a Jewish president, who lost family in the holocaust, by 73% of the vote and where far-right parties got less than 3% of the vote in the last presidential election.

Nor does Putin define what he means by “fascists,” which could encompass the Ukrainian people as a whole given its historical meaning in Russia. Ousting the Zelensky government, what Putin describes as the “neo-fascist” regime, is a cover for justifying the imperial expansion of Russia.

Indeed, Ukraine has become deeply polarized since the Euromaidan events of 2014, Russia’s invasion of Crimea, and the orientation toward EU and NATO. Since the invasion, the government has curtailed democratic rights, including banning political parties, and inflamed nationalism, including far-right nationalism.

Right-wing nationalism and the integration of fascist militias, including the Azov Battalion and other followers of the WWII fascist Stephen Bandera, into the national guard in the Donbas region is a dangerous development made worse by the invasion. But this still does not justify the attack, and defeating this menace is an internal matter for the Ukrainian people.

The struggle for economic and political democracy is a matter for the Ukrainian people, as it is for each country. And Ukraine’s national democratic movement has been struggling to win advances. Still, it now wages the fight for democracy and against far-right movements while defending national sovereignty in a war situation.

Great Russian nationalism and fascism

According to some scholars, the ideas of Ivan Ilyin, Russia’s Christian fascist philosopher and an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, have a significant and insidious influence on Putin. Ilyin asserts “a quasi-mystical belief in the destiny of nations and rulers” and that Russia is pure and the embodiment of redemption from the corruption of the West.

By combining ideas of Russian national and racial supremacy with authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and white Christian nationalism, the result touches many of the hallmarks of fascism. Indeed, these ideas resonate with fascist movements globally, and Putin and Russia are a beacon for far-right movements, white nationalists, and fascists worldwide, including the US.

Putin’s stated objective is to break up the prevailing world order by brute force, one he sees dominated by the U.S. and “globalists,” which is eerily similar to the “global Jewish conspiracy.” Putin seeks to ensure Russia has a top place in a multipolar world and sees himself as the historic figure who will restore the traditional Russian empire under authoritarian rule.

A new global reality

Russia’s invasion challenges the post-Cold War paradigm whereby U.S imperialism is the world’s sole superpower and source of global tensions. And anything opposing U.S. policies, including by Russia in Ukraine, is seen as anti-imperialist.

U.S. imperialism has a long, shameful history of invading and occupying other countries, committing state-sponsored terrorism and war crimes, engineering coups, installing puppet governments, possessing colonies, and controlling and exploiting other countries by dominating the global financial system. But that view doesn’t account for a vastly changed world in which U.S. domination is steadily giving way to a multipolar world, and other actors have emerged on the global stage.

The rise of China as the world’s largest economy and its growing trade and diplomatic relations is profoundly influencing global developments. The newly emerging economies like Russia, Brazil, and India, the election of left governments in Latin America and elsewhere, and other global alliances also herald a new era of globalization.

On the one hand, U.S. imperialism is not behind every development. On the other, nations and people are not passive actors but also have agency. Domestic democratic movements impact national developments and national sovereignty within the broader geopolitical struggle.

At the same time, new threats to peace, security, and democracy have emerged, including climate change, pandemics, mass disinformation, global fascism, white nationalism, other anti-democratic movements, regional rivalries, and far-right religious nationalist movements.

The main danger to peace and democracy

The invasion of Ukraine reflects the logical outcome of what some call kleptocratic patronage capitalism and the narrow economic interests of Russia’s ruling elite. This immensely wealthy cabal enriched themselves by looting the vast wealth of the USSR. Putin’s extreme nationalism and reverence for the glory of Czarism and Russian fascism reflect this gangster-reactionary class outlook. Repression and attacks on democratic rights flow from this internal dynamic.

As part of the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry with the U.S. and effort to assert its role in the world order, the Putin regime interfered in U.S .internal affairs, including the 2016 elections when it helped Trump. Russia also interfered in the 2018 and 2020 elections, Brexit vote, and spread mass disinformation about covid vaccines to widen internal political divisions in the U.S .and other capitalist countries.

By invading Ukraine and seeking to redraw internationally recognized borders violently based on Great Russian chauvinism, the Putin regime has emerged as the main danger to global peace and international law at this moment. Global collective unity is required on the order of the WWII anti-fascist alliance to end the invasion and in solidarity with the Russian people to oust Putin from power.

The world must chart a way forward that rejects war and seeks a new global democratic order. One that strengthens international law respects national sovereignty and self-determination, non-interference in internal affairs, equality of nations, democratic and human rights, demilitarization, and dissolving military alliances.

Humanity faces existential threats from ecological crises and nuclear destruction. Our survival depends on global cooperation over competition and peaceful co-existence between states. Too much is at stake.

_{John Bachtell is president of Long View Publishing Co., the publisher of People’s World. He served as national chair of the Communist Party USA from 2014 to 2019. He is a regular writer for People’s World, and active in electoral, labor, environmental, and social justice struggles. He grew up in Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque and attended Antioch College. He currently lives in Chicago where he is an avid swimmer, cyclist, runner, and dabbler in guitar and occasional singer in a community chorus.}

_{People’s World, March 23, 2002, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/putin-regime-emerges-as-the-main-danger-to-global-peace-and-security/}