By Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax, NS] Chronicle Herald

We know that ever since the collapse of the east European Communist states in 1989, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself two years later, the advanced capitalist states of North America and Europe — what we used to call the First World — have sought to draw these newly independent nations into the imperial sphere America and western Europe control, via the European Union and Nato.

This hegemonic system goes by various names — “the West,” the “free world,” “Davos,” “globalism,” the “rules-based international order,” and so on. But we are talking about good old fashioned economic and political imperialism. And its main military organization, NATO, was not going to let an enfeebled Russia (or, for that matter, China) stop them.

The West claims it’s defending democracy in Ukraine, but let’s be frank, that’s not really true. Even Afghanistan and Iraq had ostensibly “honest” elections under American tutelage — but who really believes that? In actuality, Ukraine, like most of the other ex-soviet states, is run by oligarchs — just ask President Biden’s son, Hunter!

Ukraine has had five presidents since independence, but none of them were “dictators.” The 2010 election of Viktor Yanukovych — the incumbent overthrown unconstitutionally in 2014 when he tilted towards Russia — was likely no more, but also not any less, honest than the two that have been held since.

Yes, Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine has plunged the world into a perilous situation. By any reasonable standard, his move was an over-the-top response. However, that conclusion is different from saying that there were no provocations, as far too many policymakers and pundits in the West are doing now.

It has become especially fashionable to insist that NATO’S expansion to Russia’s border was in no way responsible for the current Ukraine crisis. But whether or not Russia has imperial ambitions, it is clear that the United States has consistently had such ambitions, and never more so than in the past 75 years, a period in which it consciously took over Britain’s role of dominant Western empire.

It was inevitable that NATO expansion eastward would at some point run into a hostile Russian reaction, given the ideologically driven obsession by American political leaders for global hegemony.

This is, of course, an old story. I’m not saying anything new. As many, many socialists have noted over the decades, the political economy of a home country such as the United States is intrinsically related to imperial expansion.

John Stuart Mill, one of the 19th century’s foremost political philosophers, speaking of his own nation, in his 1848 study Principles of Political Economy, argued that Britain had developed to a point where it produced more capital than could be profitably invested at home.

The solution to the problem of surplus capital, he suggested, was “systematic” state-sponsored colonization. This, “in the present state of the world, is the best affair of business, in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage.”

Many others, including J.A. Hobson, another British writer, in his book Imperialism, published in 1902, came to the same conclusion. Hobson contended that capitalist business activity brought about imperialism.

What he called the “taproot of imperialism” was not due to nationalism but in capitalist oligarchy.

The 1998-99 Kosovo War was the first time that NATO operated without United Nations approval. As James Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, has stated, “It was a historical turning point and a serious blow to the framework of world peace and security. NATO was converted from a purely defensive body acting in accordance with the principles of the United Nations into an organization that could use force to intervene whenever and wherever it deemed it necessary to do so.”

Once the Soviet bloc fell, NATO had no reason to exist, so its existence must be justified. Today, the U.S. intervention in Ukraine, from 2014 to the present, has centred on promoting a proxy military conflict with Russia. Perhaps accusing Russia of imperialism is just projection for what NATO itself is guilty of?

Meanwhile, we may be at the brink of a dangerous escalation. The influential American magazine Foreign Affairs, in a July 12 piece by Dan Altman, called on NATO “to encourage, organize, and equip its soldiers to volunteer to fight for Ukraine.”

Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs commentator for the Guardian of London, in a July 17 article recommended “using NATO’S overwhelming power to decisively turn the military tide. Enough of the half-measures and the dithering!” He wants to “force Putin’s marauding troops back inside Russia’s recognised borders.”

People like this seem to think that a cornered Russia would simply fold. A more likely outcome is that they’ll use nuclear weapons sooner than face defeat.

As for Canada, it is simply a junior partner and political ventriloquist for Washington. Its former identity as a “peacekeeper” on call on behalf of the United Nations has gone with the wind.