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Ukraine Lebanon and the farce of national sovereignty

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the West's invocation of national sovereignty and self-determination is a cynical ideological cover for imperialist interests, not a principled commitment to international law. The central claim is that the starkly contrasting responses to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's war on Gaza and Lebanon expose national sovereignty as a contingent concept, deployed or discarded according to the strategic needs of the great powers. The author contends that the ruling classes of the West have no genuine concern for small nations' rights—Ukraine is supported not out of solidarity but as a proxy war to weaken Russia, while Palestinian and Lebanese sovereignty is actively sacrificed to maintain Israel as a regional asset for imperialism.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in Lenin's theory of imperialism, specifically his writings on the First World War. The article directly quotes Lenin's observation that imperialist powers use "false phrases about patriotism" to disguise predatory wars as struggles for national liberation. This situates the argument within the classical Marxist tradition that sees the nation-state and its legal fictions—including sovereignty—as instruments of class rule that become transparent in periods of inter-imperialist rivalry.

The piece also draws on the Marxist understanding of the state as a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie. The hypocrisy of Western leaders is not presented as individual moral failure but as the logical expression of a system where "universal democratic rights" are subordinated to the accumulation of capital and geopolitical dominance. The article implicitly rejects the liberal framework that treats sovereignty as a fixed legal category, instead treating it as a political relation determined by the balance of class and imperialist forces.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in November 2024, at a moment when the contradictions of Western policy had become particularly acute. The data points are specific and damning: over 16,500 sanctions against Russia since February 2022, compared to $380 billion in aid to Ukraine (including $118 billion in direct military aid), while a Paris conference for Lebanon could scrape together only €1 billion—"a mere fraction of what the imperialists have sent to support Israel." The piece notes that Israel had already killed more people in Lebanon than in the entire 2006 war, on top of its ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Geopolitically, the article situates these events within the broader crisis of US hegemony following humiliating retreats in Syria and Afghanistan. Ukraine is framed as a proxy war to reassert American dominance, while Israel's invasion of Lebanon is analysed as Netanyahu's deliberate attempt to drag the US into a wider war with Iran. The West's condemnation of Iran for "escalation" while arming Israel's offensive is presented as the logical endpoint of a system where the great powers police the violence of their clients while prosecuting their own.

Where the Argument Continues

The article opens several lines of inquiry that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus. The question of how socialists should respond to wars between imperialist-backed states—neither supporting "our" bourgeoisie nor the other—is a recurring theme in the RCI's analysis of the Ukraine conflict. The piece gestures toward the Leninist position of revolutionary defeatism but does not elaborate it here. Readers should consult IDOM articles on the Ukrainian question from 2022-2024, particularly those addressing the "lesser evil" arguments within the left.

The analysis of Israel's role as a regional proxy for imperialism connects to broader Marxist work on settler colonialism and the specificity of the Zionist state. The article's claim that the Balfour Declaration aimed to create "a little loyal Jewish Ulster" opens a historical materialist account of partition as a divide-and-rule strategy that is developed further in IDOM's writings on Palestine.

The piece also implies but does not fully develop the economic drivers of these conflicts—the crisis of overaccumulation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the role of military Keynesianism in propping up Western economies. These themes are taken up in Against the Stream episodes and IDOM articles on the political economy of the current conjuncture.

Connections

  • Lenin, "Socialism and War" (1915) and "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1917) — the theoretical foundation for the article's analysis of how imperialist powers cloak predatory wars in democratic rhetoric.
  • Trotsky, "The War and the International" (1914) — for the revolutionary defeatist position that flows from this analysis.
  • IDOM articles on Ukraine (2022-2024) — for the detailed political economy of the proxy war and the critique of "anti-imperialist" positions that support Russia.
  • IDOM articles on Palestine and Lebanon (2023-2024) — for the historical materialist account of settler colonialism and Israel's role in the region.
  • Rosa Luxemburg, "The Accumulation of Capital" — for the theoretical framework linking imperialist expansion to the internal contradictions of capitalism.

Key Quotes

  1. "The West's support for Ukraine has precisely nothing to do with defending national sovereignty. In 2014, Washington supported a coup that installed a clique of oligarchs favourable to its interests. It then pushed Ukraine into a conflict it could not win to strike blows against Russia, and reassert American dominance after humiliating retreats in Syria and Afghanistan."

  2. "Despite paying lip service to the 'universal democratic right' of national self-determination, the big imperialist powers have always treated small nations as disposable assets: to be exploited, traded and disposed of as needed."

  3. "Comparing the response of our 'enlightened', 'democratic' leaders to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's bloody campaign in the Middle East exposes what a farce is made of the principles of national sovereignty and self-determination under capitalism. These high-minded ideals are jettisoned the second they interfere with the capitalists' pursuit of profits and political objectives."

  4. "It seems so-called universal democratic rights are in fact entirely contingent on the needs and interests of the great powers."

  5. "Unlike the imperialists and their murderous proxies, we communists have no problem telling the truth. Israel is conducting a genocidal war in Gaza; and now it has invaded a sovereign nation, in an attempt to provoke a disastrous war with Iran, which our own ruling classes in the West are facilitating."