• regul [any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Was that worth the lives of all the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians who were killed, or the generations afterwards who died from unexploded ordinance or birth defects? I don’t think that’s such a clear cut “yes”.

      Point being that non-interventionism would have been preferable, which is the position I’ve been taking all along.

      • uherbs [none/use name]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Revolutionary defeatism includes undermining your own nation’s war effort, I don’t understand the difference in your position. If you can’t prevent the war, you undermine the capacity to continue it.

        Since the left isn’t in any position to stop the war the better outcome would still be that the smaller bloc of capital survives as a counterweight to hegemonic capital. Better if the Russian federation remains friendly to China, and remains available to anti-colonial movements as a counterbalance to colonial forces in Africa and the Middle East (regardless of how effective they are, it seems these anti-colonial governments still want them). It’s better when capital is divided and limited than unified and able to exercise unlimited exploitation.

        It seems like the Ukrainians wanted a peace deal almost immediately after the threat to Kiev, it wasn’t Russia or the Ukrainian government that blew up those peace talks.

        • regul [any]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Realistically, there’s no way this war doesn’t end with Russia gaining Donetsk and Luhansk and not much else (because they don’t really want anything beyond that, short of regime change in Kiev, which is definitely not happening). Both Russia and the US seemingly have the resources to indefinitely drag out this war just sitting on the same battle lines. Continuing the stalemate only results in more needless death.

          Also realistically, my capacity to “undermine” anything is 0, so let’s have this conversation with that in mind. Continuing: as already established, I don’t support the US’s efforts to continue this war. Similarly, I don’t support Russia’s efforts to do the same. I don’t think they realistically have the ethnic Russian support base to hold western Ukraine without serious loss of life for everyone involved. Because I feel the evolving multipolarity would have been occurring anyway, I don’t think the geopolitical implications of a western “defeat” here are worth the continuing loss of life.

          • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            15
            ·
            1 year ago

            Because I feel the evolving multipolarity would have been occurring anyway, I don’t think the geopolitical implications of a western “defeat” here are worth the continuing loss of life.

            Western leftists often historically have “felt” that progress happens on its own, imagining a hypothetical idealist universe where everything good happens without anything bad. It’s ahistorical and just silly. There’s one country actually defeating and damaging the US empire in reality, but instead you want a parallel reality where America damages itself

            • regul [any]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              progress happens on its own

              I don’t think this is the case. I think China’s economic gains are causing it to happen without any senseless loss of life.

              America damages itself

              This happens all the time. There’s about to be a government shutdown again. We’re continuing to provoke this unwinnable trade war with China for no clear purpose.