Dear
Janan
Given
that you are a journalist in Financial Times Global Affairs department, I was a
little surprised that you could only find two previously discredited and
bankrupt theoreticians, namely Francis Fukayama and Samuel Huntingdon, to prove
your assertion that there is no "elegant" theory to explain the "Ukraine
Crisis".Fukayama's "End of History" hardly prepared him for the
Ukraine crisis, and his train wreck of an analysis of the End of the Soviet Union
was almost as bad.
An
elegant document released at the time by the World Socialist Website provided a
superb and, I might add, elegant rebuttal to Fukayama stating "the
dissolution of the USSR provoked within the bourgeoisie and its ideological
apologists an eruption of euphoric triumphalism. The socialist nemesis had, for
once and for all, been laid low! The bourgeois interpretation of the Soviet
Union's demise found its essential expression in Francis Fukuyama's The End of
History. Employing a potted version of Hegel's idealist phenomenology, Fukuyama
proclaimed that the weary march of history had arrived at its final station—a
US-style liberal bourgeois democracy based on the unfettered capitalist market.
This was the summit of human civilisation! This theme was elaborated in
countless variations by gullible and impressionistic petty-bourgeois academics,
always anxious to be on what they take to be, at any given moment, the winning
side of history".[1]
As
a journalist for the Financial Times, you will have access to every global
media publication online and in paper form. So it is a little surprising that
you ignore the one publication that would refute your premise. That publication
is the World Socialist Website (wsws.org). I can only assume that you ignore
this publication out of ideological consideration. It is clear from your
previous writings that from an ideological standpoint, you are an anti-Marxist.
If you were to suspend your ideological prejudice, you would find several
articles on their website that would provide an elegant and correct perspective
on the Ukraine war.
Please
permit me to quote a rather elegant analysis. A letter was sent by WSWS
International Editorial Board Chairman David North to a friend who requested
his opinion on a recent online discussion held at a US college on the
Russia-Ukraine war. David North makes the following point "Momentous
events such as wars and revolutions invariably raise complex problems of
causation. That is one of the reasons why the study of history is an
indispensable foundation of serious political analysis. This general truth
acquires exceptional importance in any discussion of Russia. This country was
the site of arguably the most significant political event of the twentieth
century, the 1917 October Revolution, whose historical, political and
intellectual legacy still reverberates in our own time. The study of Soviet
history remains critical to understanding the politics and problems of the
contemporary world"[2].
Having
read your columns on several occasions, I conclude that you have read very
little about Russian history, particularly its revolution of 1917. Before
writing such a provocative article, you should have brushed up on your history.
In
doing so, maybe you would have suspended your anti-Marxism and not written a
crass piece of journalism. Lastly, you write that "a strict realist wants
you to believe that Putin would now be no trouble if only Nato had not moved
east. Holding domestic values cheap, realism cannot explain why the sanctioning
countries are almost all democracies. It cannot explain why Ukrainians want to
face the west in the first place. When Putin himself cites culture and values,
a realist must diagnose him with false consciousness and stress that what moves
him is the dry calculation of the chessboard".[3]
I
will call upon the elegant Mr North to refute your argument. North writes, "The
examination of the aggressive foreign policy of the United States since the
dissolution of the USSR is not only a matter of exposing American hypocrisy.
How is it possible to understand Russian policies apart from analysing the
global context within which they are formulated? Given that the United States
has waged war relentlessly, is it irrational for Putin to view the expansion of
NATO with alarm? He and other Russian policymakers are certainly aware of the
enormous strategic interest of the United States in the Black Sea region, the
Caspian region and, for that matter, the Eurasian landmass. It is not exactly a
secret that the late Zbigniew Brzezinski and other leading US geostrategists
have long insisted that US dominance of Eurasia—the so-called "World
Island"—is a decisive strategic objective".
This
is not to excuse Putin's actions. I condemn the war in Ukraine, but as the
great Spinoza said once, " I have striven not to laugh at human actions,
not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.[4]
Notes
[1] The
Struggle Against the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-us/58.html
[2] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/19/cmmf-m19.html
[3] No
grand theory can explain the Ukraine crisis- www.ft.com/content/881c14dd-08ce-4266-8127-24f3c398e8d3
[4] Baruch Spinoza 1632–77- Tractatus Politicus (1677) ch. 1, sect. 4
