[This is a shorter, more conjunctural,piece and is best read alongside the article, The War Over Ukraine: A Class Perspective, written at the outset of the war. https://www.blakdwarf.org/post/the-war-over-ukraine-a-class-perspective ]
As Washington and Moscow sit down to discuss the carve-up of Ukraine, the 3-year long war appears to be coming to an inglorious finale. Whether or not Trump and Putin can stitch together a solution which will hold together remains to be seen. The other pigs around the trough, most notably Westminster and Brussels, are also demanding a say. For all of these antagonists, the resistance and sacrifices of the Ukranian people are merely pawns in a game where the kings and queens of capitalism sit behind the battle lines surveying their potential gains and losses.
Never since the victors’ feast at the Potsdam and Yalta conferences, has the naked self-interest of contending imperialist forces been so openly and shamelessly exposed. For the Ukranian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, his role is primarily one of honest broker seeking the best deal for Ukranian capital within the new pecking order.
In my article, The War Over Ukraine: A Class Perspective, written at the outset of the war, I made the following observation:
“In its essence, this is a turf war between two gangs of thieves over a disputed territory, which itself is run by some of the biggest crooks going.................................Ukraine is the largest country entirely in Europe, with the seventh largest population It is amongst the highest ranking in mineral deposits - iron ore, uranium, titanium”
As Trump himself has highlighted, Ukraine is also home to one of the largest deposits of lithium in Europe – a rare earth mineral used to produce batteries for electric vehicles, mobile phones and virtually every weapons system and military application currently used by the Pentagon. In a world where Chinese imperialism has emerged as a counterweight to the US colossus, Washington has now become dependent on lithium supplies from Beijing, a potential enemy which controls some 70 per cent of rare earth mineral production. Breaking this near stranglehold is a cornerstone of Trump’s “make America great again” campaign aimed at halting the decline of US military and economic hegemony.
Although Biden would never state it so brashly, Washington’s investment in the Ukraine war has always been part of this. It is now payback time and, in return for the nearly $70billlion of worth of US war supplies, Trump is demanding Washington’s dividend in the form of a $500 billion deal favouring US companies access to rare earth production as well as other mineral deposits including oil and gas.
As in previous inter-imperialist conflicts, the territorial character of the war is now crystal clear and, after 3 years of war, all sides seem to have reached an impasse. Any pretence at a multilateral solution involving NATO or the United Nations is simply not on the table.
Neither Washington nor Moscow have been able to fulfill their war objectives, and a deal seems the best way forward. As part of a mutual non-aggression pact, Moscow will most likely annex the huge industrial swathe of territory it has already occupied in the east and, in return, will guarantee safe access for direct US capital investment in key sectors. The sticking point will be over security guarantees to protect the Ukranian side of the new border.
This could also form part of a broader rapprochement leading to the end of sanctions and an opening of new trade and investment deals between the two imperialist powers. The signs are it might even facilitate the renewal of the G8 (this was the world’s rich man’s club whose members included France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Russia until the latter was expelled in 2014 following its annexation of Crimea).
Where exactly this leaves the EU or the UK remains to be seen. Although they claim to have matched US military investment in financial terms, it is clearly impossible to continue the war with only half of the existing funding, especially since this would also exclude vital military hardware such as the patriot missile system which is produced almost exclusively in the USA.
In the scramble for the dividends of the war, the Ukranian people count for nothing. As far as Washington is concerned, Zelensky has served his purpose and is quite dispensable.
Zelensky is not exactly a marionette, but he has certainly danced to the tune of western imperialism for some time now. Although he stands at the head of the Ukrainian people’s just struggle for sovereignty, he is totally contemptuous of other national liberation struggles.
As part of his pro-imperialist stance, he has sided openly with Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza. Hence, whilst he has been critical of Trump’s arrogant unilateralism, Zelensky can do little more than accept some sort of a deal that will inevitably violate Ukrainian sovereignty.
Should this be the case and the war is brought to an end, it will only exacerbate the social and economic crisis which started the war in the first place. For the masses of Ukranian workers who enlisted voluntarily and fought so magnificently, their class interests will once again come to the fore.
The end of the war will undoubtedly be greeted with joy in Russian where millions of families have lost loved ones or seen them traumatised by a war in which they had no stake. It may well be that Russian capitalism will enjoy some dividends from its military adventure but, with such heavy losses, its lasting impact will be far more complex. The numbers may be miniscule at the moment, but class conscious workers will surely find a road back to the true legacy and heady days of the Bolshevik revolution.
There remains a lot of haggling over the dividends of the war, with the UK also entering into the fray to protect and develop its substantial investments there. It is still doubtful if a compromise deal would hold and how it would be enforced whilst the rivalries remain unappeased. Moreover, it is impossible to set aside the huge impact of these three years of bloodletting.
This is a war which has produced colossal devastation in Ukraine, a Russian economy suffering from prolonged stagflation and a combined casualty list for both countries numbering around 1.5 million and still rising. The underlying class antagonisms, which have so far been suppressed, are bound to surface from this carnage. Although the pace and scope of this will vary, a social crisis is inevitable and will become part of the equation.
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