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Against the Stream: The War in Ukraine — Setting the Record Straight

Against The Stream · 2025-05-01

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the war in Ukraine was not an unprovoked Russian aggression, but the culmination of three decades of relentless NATO expansion eastward, in violation of explicit promises made to the Soviet Union at the time of German reunification. The episode argues that Western imperialism — led by the United States — deliberately provoked the conflict to achieve two strategic objectives: to weaken Russia militarily and economically, and to force a rupture in the Sino-Russian alliance, thereby solving Washington's "problem of simultaneity" in confronting both powers.

The argument is not a defence of the Russian ruling class, which is treated as a capitalist regime hostile to working-class interests. Rather, it is an analysis of causation: the war was provoked by the West, and the Ukrainian regime installed after the 2014 Maidan coup is characterised as a colonial administration serving US and German imperialist interests, not the Ukrainian people.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on several classical Marxist concepts:

Imperialist rivalry and interimperialist contradictions: The war is situated within the broader competition between imperialist powers for spheres of influence, markets, and strategic advantage. The episode treats NATO not as a defensive alliance but as an instrument of US and European imperialist expansion.

The state as instrument of the ruling class: The Ukrainian state is analysed as a vehicle for oligarchic interests, with successive governments alternating between Russian and Western alignments based on the sectional interests of different capitalist factions. The Maidan is presented as a Western-backed coup that installed a puppet regime.

Bonapartism and the balance of class forces: The episode implicitly draws on the concept of Bonapartism in its treatment of the Yanukovych and Zelensky governments — regimes that oscillated between competing imperialist pressures while suppressing working-class interests.

National self-determination under capitalism: The episode argues that genuine Ukrainian sovereignty is impossible under capitalism, because the country's oligarchic structure and geopolitical position reduce it to a battleground for rival imperialisms. True self-determination requires socialist revolution — a position consistent with the Leninist tradition on the national question.

The analysis sits within the Trotskyist tradition of the Revolutionary Communist International (formerly the International Marxist Tendency), which emphasises the impossibility of progressive national liberation under capitalism in the epoch of imperialist decay, and the necessity of international socialist revolution as the only genuine solution to war and national oppression.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode connects the war to several specific conjunctural features:

NATO expansion as a 30-year process: The argument traces the broken promises from 1990 (Baker to Gorbachev, Kohl to Gorbachev, Major to Gorbachev) through successive waves of enlargement in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2017, and 2020, culminating in the 2008 Bucharest summit where Ukraine and Georgia were declared future members.

The 2014 Maidan and its aftermath: The episode provides detailed analysis of the US role in the coup, including the Nuland-Pyatt phone call, the role of far-right paramilitaries as shock troops, the Odessa massacre of 2 May 2014, and the subsequent "Anti-Terrorist Operation" that killed approximately 14,000 people in Donbas over eight years.

The Mitchell strategy document: The episode cites West Mitchell's August 2021 article in The National Interest as evidence that US strategic planners explicitly sought to use Ukraine to inflict a military defeat on Russia, forcing it to break with China and accept a subordinate role in Asia.

The sabotaged peace deals: The Minsk II agreements (2015) and the Istanbul peace deal (April 2022) are presented as genuine opportunities for a negotiated settlement that were deliberately undermined — Minsk by far-right elements within Ukraine, and Istanbul by Boris Johnson's intervention on behalf of Washington.

The mineral rights deal: The episode notes the recent US-Ukraine agreement on mineral rights as evidence that Ukraine is being carved up between imperialist powers, with the US extracting economic concessions while Russia retains occupied territory.

Where the Argument Continues

The episode explicitly references several texts that develop the analysis further:

  • The IMT thesis on the war in Ukraine (2014): The founding document of the RCI's analysis of the conflict, which should be consulted for the theoretical framework.
  • Alan Woods' 2014 articles: A series of detailed historical analyses of the background to the conflict, covering the restoration of capitalism in Ukraine, the national question, and the role of imperialism.
  • "How the West Prepared the Way for the Ukraine War" by Nicholas (March 2022): An article published immediately after the Russian invasion, tracing the diplomatic and military provocations that preceded it.

The argument also connects to broader RCI analyses of: - The rise of China and the crisis of US hegemony - The nature of the Russian state after the restoration of capitalism - The critique of "lesser evilism" and the refusal to support either imperialist camp - The strategy of building revolutionary parties capable of intervening in war situations

Connections

  • Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination": The theoretical foundation for the episode's treatment of the national question.
  • Trotsky, "The War and the International": For the method of analysing imperialist war and refusing support to any imperialist camp.
  • Alan Woods, "The History of the Bolshevik Party": For the historical treatment of the Ukrainian national question within the Soviet Union.
  • Other Against the Stream episodes on Ukraine: The series of episodes from 2014 onwards that developed this analysis in real time.
  • Spectre of Communism episodes on China and the new Cold War: For the broader analysis of the US strategy of containing both Russia and China.

Key Quotes

  1. "Any war and any war you take in history there's always two sides and one side always denounces the other as the aggressor... wars do not happen because of provocations, wars do happen because of underlying important reasons and then provocations or justifications for the wars are made up, created, fabricated."

  2. "If you want to find one single question or one main process that led to this war, I will say it is the constant provocative and relentless eastward push by NATO since the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-91, which is contrary to what Western imperialism had promised the Russian rulers at the time."

  3. "Rather than attempting to woo or court Russia into a conciliatory stance, we should present it with a combination of insuperable obstacles to westward expansion... while presenting new opportunities for cooperation, investment, and growth in Russia's east. Simply put, the goal should be to alleviate America's simultaneity problem by giving Russia incentives to be less of a European power and more of an Asian one."

  4. "Ukraine for the last 30 years has been ruled by the oligarchs, not by the people... They have played with Russia and the West for their own benefit and they have the money in Austria, in Germany, in Cyprus, elsewhere. They don't have any country. They don't have any nationality. They only want the loot."

  5. "Ukrainian self-determination only makes sense as part of a socialist revolution — the expropriation of the oligarchs... The only way that Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, can be really independent and sovereign is when they rise up against the oligarchs, overthrow capitalism, and take control over their own lives, and they can only do so as part of a wider movement of the workers in Russia also taking control."