I think you mixed up your timeline. This was during the invasion. Fighting been going on since spring 2014.

By invasion I meant 2022’s SMO. I don’t think it’s fair to characterize the separatists as a Russian invasion, even if they are de facto Russian proxies. Ukraine had just been couped by fascists, isn’t it the correct thing to do to support ethnic minorities that are being massacred by fascists? You know, like how Iran supports Hezbollah and Ansarallah?

And yes, it is a bit silly to link a youtube video. The reason I like that one is that they have the phone call with Victoria Nuland and I think the way he frames it is very nice for illustrating the point, that the West was recklessly installing a fascist government with the goal of threatening Russia.

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• inv.nadeko.net
• yt.artemislena.eu
• piped.video

Exactly, thank you. I think the “if the USA is involved its always the invading force” bothers me so much because it wipes away that cognitive dissonance with delusional dogma.

The reason I agreed with that comment is because, even though it’s not absolutely true and as you correctly point out, it leads to a dogmatic and oversimplified view of history, it actually is correct in the current conjuncture. The US is the sole world hegemon. It is the culmination of imperialism, a monopoly power that holds complete financial dominance on the world stage. 80% of international financial transactions are in dollars. In the broad arc of history, US financial and military hegemony (which are in direct contact and dependence with each other) is currently the motive force of world history. Not an atom moves in the international stage without the US having somehow put it into motion because the US is world hegemon, that’s what world hegemony means.

Read back to the Leninist definition of imperialism.

If you are open heartedly telling me that Putins Russia is an ally on eliminating inequality and distributing capital back to the producers then I don’t get where that is coming from.

They obviously aren’t allies in the strategic goal of the left, to defeat capitalism and institute socialism. But they are tactical allies in demolishing the hegemonic power of Western finance capital, yes. The individual capitalists behave as individual capitalists always do, protecting their financial interests in the short term. But the actual motive forces of the Russian national interest lies, momentarily, in the same direction as the interests of the global working class: in the fight against imperialism.

Ultimately the reason I’m completely opposite to you, despite having a lot of the same principles (which I respect you for, you’re miles ahead of the vast majority of liberals) is because to me, imperialism is a historical phenomenon that exists within the context of the material relations between the ruling classes and the working classes. I’m thinking the USD, US treasuries, international debt owed to the US, the IMF, World Bank, etc. Meanwhile it appears that your definition of imperialism is something a lot more metaphysical and general, that I would argue is actually fruitless to fight against without identifying that expansionist tendencies are inherent to the nation-state.

Setting aside Russia’s moral right to the invasion, let’s look at their economy since. It’s tanked! Are you really suggesting that the Ukraine war was a strategically sound idea?

Absolutely. The alternative was to allow Ukraine to join NATO and continue being encircled by hostile fascist governments (see Georgia coup, baltic states, etc). When the threat is existential, sacrificing economic stability in exchange for continuing to exist is a sound decision.

Also, and I don’t think Putin had this in mind, it turned out to be a good idea to decouple from the world economy which was about to be completely trashed by Trump in 3 years after the invasion. Funny how that worked out.

I do not sit on the sidelines, Ukraine has a full and complete right to defend itself. (As does Palestine, as does (did) Hong Kong, as does any sovereign nation who is not the aggressors and who’s boldest demand is a return to previously agreed upon boundaries from before the invasion.

Did Russia have a right to defend itself against being completely surrounded by an adversarial military alliance? They had warned the West for years that they would never allow that to happen, but the West kept pushing it despite earlier “promises” not to do so. The West didn’t care because they’re willing to fight to the last Ukrainian for their own gain. Had Ukraine chosen to be neutral and said “no, thanks” to NATO, they wouldn’t have been invaded.

You’re not distinguishing between a truly imperialist country that invades other countries completely unprovoked (see US invasion of Iraq for just one recent example) versus a country that invades another purely as a defensive, strategic move (Russia -> Ukraine/Georgia).

Aside from that, saying that Ukraine has a full and complete right to defend itself makes sense only in an ideal world, but not in a real world where it is placed right next door to an 800 pound gorilla. Would Canada or Mexico be completely within their rights to join a full military alliance with Russia and/or China? Absolutely. Would there be a positive outcome for their country and its citizens if they tried? Absolutely not. In a situation like that, neutrality or even outright support for the gorilla next door is the completely rational approach to take.

Edit: minor changes to one sentence in the last paragraph.

Look at history. Usa hasn’t been invaded yet. Usa has been in thousands of conflicts. Either they stoked the conflict, or they were directly the aggressors. They are ALWAYS at fault. And if it wasn’t them, it was their lackeys. And where do lackeys get their orders from? From usa of course.

Your distinction isn’t really reasonable because you’re still just saying all invasions are imperialist (now with the qualifier that this is only the case if you didn’t get invaded first).

Was Abe Lincoln being imperialist when invading the Confederate states? China liberating Tibet? What about if China invaded Taiwan right now? I mean, that one actually wouldn’t even count as imperialist under your own very broad definition given that there’s an international consensus that Taiwan is part of China.

Exactly! A country should belong to the people who live in in and not to neighboring empires who call dibs on someone else’s home.

This view is typically called anti-imperialism.

That effectively removes any concept of agency from the rest of the world.

Imperialism is what removes agency from the world! The working masses toil at the mercy of finance capitalists in the west…with the exception of sufficiently powerful states capable of resisting the incursion of finance capital into their societies. Think China, Russia, Iran. To oppose the incursion of finance capital is the only means to exercise agency.

It is not a meme that the United States dictates to the vast majority of the globe what their policies will be, at least those that affect the export of finance capital and prevent the exploitation of its working population by foreign capitalists. It is the way the world works.

The US lIterally prevents the entire world from doing trade with Cuba. It is a fucking miracle that socialist projects like Cuba, Vietnam, and the DPRK haven’t collapsed under the pressure of imperialist coercion, whether via finance capital export or military force. This is the agency being expressed. These are amongst the few sovereign nations in the global south.

Do you think that Africans, South Americans, and Southeast Asians are incapable of developing on their own? How do you explain the vast disparity in wealth and material conditions between the west and the global south? Are they people who desire to work in utter dogshit conditions, only exporting natural resources in exchange for advanced goods produced by more civilized peoples? Do you think that the comprador regimes across the global south is an exercise of democracy? Do you think that all these countries would continue to voluntarily elect those who consistently sell out their countrymen for personal gain if not for undue influence of finance capital?

Or perhaps it is the export of finance capital that produces and maintains the conditions for unequal exchange that never permit investment in means of production that would allow for their societies to develop? If you cannot develop the means to produce goods on your own, your trade relationships will inevitably consist of those where raw materials are forever exchanged for advanced technologies, guaranteeing they are never produced domestically.

We live in an interconnected world, so no one is truly a fully independent nation anymore

We do. But the relationship is not of a deeply interconnected graph as your presentation suggests. It closely resembles a hierarchical tree with maybe a few edges connecting nodes further from tnon-logic

Claiming that they aren’t imperialistic, just because they aren’t as successful as other imperialists, is also laughable non-logic

Laughable non logic is the proposition that imperialism is merely and exclusively the exertion of military might over another. The Leninist criteria isn’t as flimsy as who can exert their will by brute military force. Your definition of imperialism, invasion or war lol, is merely noticing the byproducts of our definition, reducing war to simply an intent to conquer, never a result of protecting legitimate material interests.

Russia has no real finance capital to export. Where are the Russian banks exercising their influence? Where are Russian capitalists dictating foreign policy of other nations?..in Russia! Their finance capital has no hegemonic status, just Russian capitalists running roughshod over the Russian people.

It is not being exported. Where is the Russian IMF or World Bank? When was the last time a Russian was heading either of those institutions? It dont quack, it don’t waddle. Maybe it has feathers, but it’s not a fucking duck!

Putin’s obvious intent on bringing the previous Soviet states back under his control, is overtly imperialistic in nature

Putin’s obvious intent is not letting the Russian bourgeoisie take a big fat L from the western finance capitalists, and the resulting effects on Russian conditions. Russia would have peaceful relations with its neighbors if not for the US constantly encroaching by fomenting coups and unrest so it can move its strategic weapons ever closer to Moscow.

Russia does not want the Ukraine. He doesn’t want the mineral deposits, he doesn’t want the natural gas reserves, he doesn’t want the fertile farmland…all of which exist in FAR greater quantities within existing Russian territory. He probably wants Crimea for access to sea trade routes, but that’s about all the territorial ambition Russia really wants…to not be cut out of global trade.

He isn’t idealizing Socialism. He’s idealizing the Russian Empire.

You don’t think we know this? Everyone on Hexbear recognizes Putin as a reactionary scumbag who is opportunistically on the side of anti-imperialism.

He is as far from being a socialist as any oligarch can be.

Not really. Resisting Western hegemony is necessarily a top goal of any socialist project. Sometimes interests align between people with radically different ideological underpinnings. We don’t care that he has different views so long as he stands in solidarity with the one goal necessary to achieve all our other goals.

All he wants, is singular control over all the power, influence and capital that he can get his hands on…and by any means necessary.

This view is naïve and cartoonish. Putin is not a fucking Marvel villain. He simply wants him and his capitalist cronies to not be squashed under the thumb of western finance capital, a desire that also happens to benefit the Russian people who experienced the despair and abject suffering that occurred last time after the fall of the Soviet Union.

We don’t even fucking like the guy at all, but you libs and your fairytale views on geopolitics are forcing us to go to bat for the guy and the Russian state because we someone has to actually exist within reality and explain things in a world where magic, opinions, and personal ambitions don’t dictate the course of history.

Man, that’s just what Americans like to think…but it isn’t actually true. That effectively removes any concept of agency from the rest of the world. That kind of thinking lacks any semblance of nuanced reality. We live in an interconnected world, so no one is truly a fully independent nation anymore. We all interact with each other in some way, for better or worse. But that doesn’t mean that we are all having our strings pulled by one nation, just because it has an outsized degree of influence in the world.

Valid. It’s true that the United States didn’t decide what I had for breakfast this morning. But “outsized degree of influence” is definitely an understatement. The US is the wold hegemon. It sucks to admit if you’re not American (I am not) but the world does revolve around the US. Every country needs to sell the US* their commodities to earn USD so they can buy oil, which can only be bought in USD, or US food exports, which are a major dependency for most developing economies that have turned to only farming cash crops. Jason Hickel points out that the Global South contributes 90% of the world economy’s productive labor, yet receives 21% of the global income [source]. So how does this happen? It’s clearly not just that the US has outsized influence, it has a role that is entirely distinct and of a different historical character to just “outsized influence.” It is an imperialist superpower, with unipolar hegemonic prevalence over all world systems.

Russia is no different. Claiming that they aren’t imperialistic, just because they aren’t as successful as other imperialists, is also laughable non-logic. If it quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck…it’s just another kind of duck.

Ok cool, a century and a half of Marxist analysis defeated by “if it quacks like a duck and swims like a duck.” I’m trying to meet you halfway here, if you brush off any kind of systemic analysis with ridiculous truisms then there’s no point to the conversation.

Russia is expansionist, although the current war in Ukraine is not of an expansionist character, as all states are. The nature of the nation-state is to be oppressive, expansionist, violent, etc etc. Putin is a chauvinist because he is the lead of a nation-state that is engaged in conflict and therefore holds up an imaginary ideal that it defends, that’s what heads of state do in times of conflict. These criticisms have been made for a long time (in fact, all the way back to Engels and later Lenin iterating on Engels) and they’re universal to all nation-states. So you aren’t giving us anything actionable that we can do about imperialism as you describe it, just bad vibes that are icky.

Why is Lenin’s analysis naive and fictional? And isn’t the fact that every prediction he makes in Imperialism about the development of imperialism would be vindicated by the next century of history more reason to take the theory seriously? Like, why should I trust your vibes based “quacks like a duck swims like a duck” theory of imperialism, that would actually have me believe all states are imperialist, when Lenin’s theory is what a group like the PFLP subscribes to in their real fight against imperialism?

Furthermore, you say that I’m saying Russia isn’t imperialist because they just aren’t successful as other imperialists and that somehow is a fundamentally incorrect argument. Wouldn’t it be correct to say that a rocket that burns up in the atmosphere is not a space station? If you fail to become an empire because of the conditions of the world, namely how the US has already achieved a hegemonic position, then you just aren’t an empire. That’s that. I’m not saying that there’s something different about how capital works in Russia, obviously if the conditions were different then Russia would begin exporting financial capital and exploiting the Global South as the US does. The thing is that we don’t live in an imaginary world where multilateral free market deals have created a balance of powers where the US, Russia, and some other imperialist powers are bullying around all the little guys. It really is just the US who has even successfully vassalized the other capitalist imperialist powers.

*Yes, they can also sell commodities to other countries that have USD reserves to the same end, but how do you think those countries got their reserves?

How many countries has Russia invaded since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991? How many countries have NATO members invaded since that same time? What was the reasoning behind those invasions?

Perhaps you have a different answer, but here’s mine: Russia has invaded Ukraine (for 10 years, ongoing) and Georgia (for about a week?) since that time, both for legitimate defensive/strategic reasons as I have explained elsewhere in this thread. NATO members (USA) have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan since that time, Iraq for absolutely no good reason for over 8 years, and Afghanistan as an overreaction to 9/11 for nearly 20 years, where a limited intervention to capture Osama Bin Laden would have sufficed. Maybe I have missed some items, but from my perspective, NATO looks like a bigger threat than Russia.