ska invita
back on the other side
this is the hard thing for me to square with, and looking at the generally messy and unconvincing response from many corners of the left its been a hard thing to have a good position on for lots of people.
personally, individually, i likely am a pacifist, the proof is in real-world moments where that is tested in killing-practice though, which ive never had to experience Im happy to say, but i cant imagine a situation i would ever take up arms in a war....if i lived in ukraine i would expect that I would not be fighting, i would run or get imprisoned for desertion or get shot in the back - i just dont have it in me to kill. its not for fear of dying myself i should add - id be prepared to put my life on the line some other way if it was a cause i believed in and thought my potential death was a price worth paying.
that said im definitely not judgemental of others who do take up arms in self-defence. from a philosophical point of view i tend to fall in with the Veterans For Peace line which is firmly against all war and actively against the roots of all war, but reserving the right to fight in self defence.
and so yeah with a very heavy heart i can see the justification for arming the ukraine resistance, but it comes with the constant weariness of the extension of the war into a US(+)-serving proxy war, and of the support of far right Ukrainian nationalism, and with the deliberate attempts to prolong the war for the sake of selfish gains of other countries, but as these things overlap so much it is near impossible to draw clear lines.
i am sceptical of "more weapons makes the war shorter" as you say. the US-led policy seems to be to draw the war out so as to long term weaken russia as much as possible. there also seems to be a rationale of not overproviding arms enough for ukraine to genuinely push the Russians out...a drawn out stalemate, possibly lasting decades (according to some western analysts) creates the most US (and allies) advantage on the Grand Chessboard.
To pick up on the point about a binary attitude regarding militarism, im not really one for puritanical politics and dont tend to judge others on those lines either....im much more of a pragmatic, realpolitik, take the world as you find it kind of person. i dont find it contradictory to be anti-militarist, to be against the war machine and all the politics that feed it, and still recognise the right to self-defence. so for me that is still a pretty clear cut binary.
this thread is really about No To NATO though...there will now be an increase of military spending across NATO countries....Germany is breaking from its post-war limited militarism, etc. even here with my realpolitik hat on I think less reliance on the US and therefore on US policy could be a good thing for European countries from a genuine 'defence' point of view. The US politically is the most aggressive state in the world for decades now, and so decoupling from that as much as possible is potentially 'good for peace' on some level. But that's being generous...the problem with NATO is that the record is more of offence than it is of defence and this is being looked at by hawks as a generational great opportunity to gain real military advantage and bring public good will along for the ride.
Last edited:
