The Left and the war in Ukraine
The political left in the United States tends to be anti-war. Yes, and the sky tends to be blue on a clear day, while I am making obvious statements here, but leftist opposition to national use of force is something that needs to be understood and tested for its moral and practical justifications if we on the left are to take informed stances on this topic.
This is, of course, nothing new, nor is it unique to American leftists. Eugene Debs, labor activist and frequent socialist candidate for president, joined Europeans of similar political minds such as Bertrand Russell in England in opposing World War One, seeing the conflict as just another opportunity for the rich to exploit the poor as pawns in a contest for honor and wealth that only the few would enjoy. The Social Democrats of Germany were in agreement, a fact that would later draw the ire of Hitler and the Nazis, not that the fascist right needed any additional causes for hating the soft left. But throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, the consistent position of many progressive Democrats and socialists has been to say that war is about profiteering, as if this were a sufficient characterization of the subject.
I do not mean here that they are necessarily wrong in that. In a capitalist economy, corporations want to make profits, and that includes the manufacturers of weapons. But it is simplistic to say “profits bad” as a standard for evaluating the actions of all businesses, since while we may agree that the system as a whole needs revising, there are nevertheless elements within the economy that perform a useful function and must do well to continue delivering to the people.
There are two parts here to be analyzed: profits and the use of force. If the use of force is ever justified, we must have the tools to carry it out. That would be as true in a well organized socialist economy. Worker cooperatives in which all employees were compensated fairly for their contributions to the corporate output would need funds to pay salaries and to maintain and upgrade equipment. They would need more funds to conduct research and development of new products as the nation’s enemies adapted to current weapons and tactics. Thus, if we agree that some combatants are just in fighting, we will have to pay the makers of weapons to make such combat something that can be won, as opposed to nobly lost.
But is war ever justified? The pacifist left will say no, and while I respect the moral integrity of someone who absolutely will not use force—unlike the squeamishness of the wimps who gladly summon others to use force for them—I do not agree with their philosophy. The concept of a just war has been debated in western philosophy at least since Augustine of Hippo, and I will leave that long discussion for another time. For my purposes, it is enough here to say that the human world rarely allows easy claims of actions being always right or always wrong. War—like self-defense in personal interactions, like choices of method of energy production, like presents for one’s beloved—must be weighed in terms of motivations, of interests, and of potential outcomes before we can say if this or that or the other war is something that we can accept as necessary or morally oppose.
Here, many of the left have pointed out that the United States is acting in our own perceptions of national interest by aiding Ukraine in that country’s fight against Russia. Just as with questions of profit, the reply I make is, “yes, and?” Smart nations calculate their interests before participating in geopolitics. And in any case, if my house is on fire, I will accept a bucket of water from my neighbors without asking if they consecrated it to their gods, if they are hoping for favors of one kind or another in the future, or if they look on my need for a smothering fluid with contempt. To put it another way, a smugly given fifty dollar bill is of more value to a hungry person than fifty cents and best wishes. In the same vein, America’s motivations for helping the Ukrainian people may be dubious or pure, but they need that help.
But what of the claims that the war is due to U.S. actions, namely our drive to expand NATO or to promote western-leaning leaders in Ukraine? We did do those things, and I say that we were right to do so. NATO is seen as an evil institution by some on the left for its opposition to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, but this is an outgrowth of an attitude that generally views the U.S. as always wrong and America’s enemies or rivals as always right. The Soviet Union was communist—of some variety—and the NATO countries used and continue to use varying degrees of market economies, but there is a third position between demonizing the latter and worshiping the former. As a leftist, I can say that the Soviet Union as an imperial authoritarian power had to be stopped and that Denmark is no less of a social democracy for participating in that effort.
I will concede another point here by saying that the United States has done wrong at various times. We entered the conflict in Vietnam without understanding the various players and without caring what happened to the ordinary Vietnamese. We invaded Iraq with muddled motives and no coherent notion of what to do or how to do it. We have propped up dictators around the globe who swore that they were not communists, as if the bullets of a fascist or the whips of a capitalist plantation owner are any better. All of that is true, and none of it comments on whether we should or should not aid Ukraine beyond telling us to listen more to what the Ukrainians need rather than to tell them what to do.
Whatever anyone may think of President Zelenskyy and the rest of Ukraine’s leadership, whatever Putin may say about the west’s imperial acts and tendencies, and whatever conspiracy theories may titillate those who are susceptible to such things, the people of Ukraine are being killed by the military forces of an aggressive tyrant, and unless Putin is thwarted, unless the Ukrainian people are able to win peace and not have an enslaved ceasefire imposed on them, there can be no lasting and just resolution to this war.
As an anti-authoritarian leftist, I see it as my duty to support whatever promotes the interests of ordinary people everywhere. This puts me on the side of Ukraine against Putin.