[UKRAINE]

[UAE Bird Expert]

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... mperialism

In this introduction, we provide an overall framing of the articles that follow by placing the Ukraine conflict which today embroils the West in confrontation with Russia, within an historical account of the geopolitical economy of contemporary capitalism and the dynamics of imperialism in the twenty-first century, taking particular account of the decline of US and Western power and the rise of other centres of economic and military power, which are able to resist and contest Western power. We pay particular attention to how today’s geopolitical flashpoints, of which Ukraine is among the most critical, emerged to belie post-Cold War expectations of a “peace dividend” and a “unipolar” world, clearly distinguishing the US and the EU roles in these processes. Given the widespread tendency in the West to label Russia “imperialist,” particularly after the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation, we end our discussion with a consideration of this question which concludes that the term, while it continues to be an appropriate description of the pattern of Western actions, is not so for that of Russian ones.

Post-communist Russia remains capitalist in a meaningful sense and as such, it is never impossible that the contradictions of its capitalism will lead the Russian state to seek resolutions for them both domestically and beyond its borders by using the means at its disposal, including its international power. However, both this consideration and its significance for the characterization of the Russian state must be qualified by a number of others.

First and foremost, as underlined by the contributions of Hudson and Sommers and Koltashev in this issue, Western allegations of Russian policy as the chief obstacle to Ukrainian sovereignty rest on ignoring the equal and indeed greater threat to this same sovereignty, not to mention its productive basis and material well being, that the EU represents. This contrasts with Ukraine’s economic links with Russia, which have formed the basis of its economy in recent decades.

Second, as we explained at the outset, the fundamental issue is that capitalist imperialism simply does not function as, and is not the same thing as, that which grounded the pre-capitalist and semi-capitalist empires of Europe and the Middle East in the nineteenth century. The conduct of modern Turkey can no more be understood as “neo-Ottoman” than Austria’s far right can be grasped as revitalized Habsburg expansionism. For the same reason, all attempts to cast Russia as some kind of reincarnation of Romanov imperial aspiration with Putin as a latter-day Ivan the Terrible are rooted in an ahistorical approach. As David Lane argues in his contribution to this issue, it is also one-sided in that the actions of far more powerful capitalist imperialisms of the Western powers are swept under the convenient carpet of human rights and democracy

Third, after suffering the most dramatic decreases in material well-being of any population in peacetime under Yeltsin in the 1990s, the Putin regime’s legitimacy is reliant on providing stability and at least modest increases in living standards to Russians (Kagarlitsky in this issue; Sakwa 2014). Therefore, though popular interests have been subordinated to capitalist ones in many ways as they must be in capitalist countries—for example in the refusal to manage the capital account and instead to permit free capital flows which so regularly inflict currency devaluations—there is a limit to how far Putin can go. Given that the leading Russian capitalists’ overriding aim seems to be to slot their country into an assigned subordinate position in the world hierarchy of capitalist classes, subjecting its economy to ever-greater complementarity-induced dependency, this is just as well. And the requirements of domestic legitimacy also mean that the extent to which the Russian state can be used to impose its capitalists’ will on other territories and populations at the expense of the well being of Russians is also limited.

Further, as the world’s productive, and correspondingly its political, diplomatic and military capabilities, increase and spread, the ability of all powers to exert their will on others shrinks correspondingly, as even the West is discovering. Even when it comes to small countries not yet enjoying the fruits of this spread of productive power, the proliferation of productive, technological and financial capacity among other powers at least gives the former more options and possibilities for playing various trade and investment possibilities off against one another and obtaining better terms

[UAE Bird Expert]

the human rights violations and war crimes that have been committed in the course of this war;
For an end to present and planned austerity policies;
For an end to NATO, EU, US military support for the Kiev government;
For immediate cancellation of the NATO maneuvres in Ukraine and in central and Eastern
Europe designed to give further material and moral support to the Kiev government and its
civil war; and
For an international protest against the NATO summit in Wales in September.

Signed
Aleksei Albu (Ukraine)
Roger Annis (Canada)
Aleksei Anpilogov (Ukraine)
Tord Björk (Sweden)
Richard Brenner (United Kingdom)
Radhika Desai (Canada)
Hermann Dworczak (Austria)
Kai Ehlers (Germany)
Alan Freeman (United Kingdom)
Alla Glintchikova (Russia)
Boris Kagarlitsky (Russia)
Vasiliy Koltashov (Russia)
Yana Manuilova (Donetsk People’s Republic)
Anastsia Pyaterikova (Lugansk People’s Republic)
Vladimir Rogov (Ukraine)

Ukrainian Organizations
Centre for Coordination and Support of Ukrainian Federation
Union of Ukrainian Citizens
Borot’ba Political Party
People’s Unity (Khar’kov)
Lugansk Guard
Initiative groups of Antifascist resistance from Sumy, Kijev, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozh’e, Odessa

[UAE Bird Expert]

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edi ... an-freeman



This book is a unique contribution to scholarship on the sources of the conflict in Ukraine. The volume brings together writers from Russia, Ukraine, Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, many of whom attended a gathering of scholars and activists from all over Ukraine, held in Yalta, Crimea, just after the conflict in Eastern Ukraine erupted. Challenging both the demonization of Russia, which has become standard for Western writing on the topic, and the simplistic discourse of official Russian sources, this book scrutinises the events of the conflict and the motives of the agents, bringing to the fore the underlying causes of the most critical flashpoints of the post-Soviet world order. This volume offers a refreshing, profound perspective on the Ukraine conflict, and will be an indispensable source for any student or researcher.

table of contents:
quote:
1. The Conflict in Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism
Radhika Desai, Alan Freeman and Boris Kagarlitsky

2. Ukraine and Russia: Two States, One Crisis
Boris Kagarlitsky

3. The Donbass in 2014: Ultra-Right Threats, Working-Class Revolt, and Russian Policy Responses
Renfrey Clarke

4. Ukraine and the New Economic Cold War
Michael Hudson

5. Semi-Peripheral Russia and the Ukraine Crisis
Ruslan Dzarasov

6. Russia, the United States and Ukraine in the Long Economic Crisis: Assessments and Prospects for the Developmental State
Jeffrey Sommers and Vasily Koltashov

7. Theses on Ukraine: Dialogue with an Emerging Leadership
Anna Vladimirovna Ochkina

8. The International Context: Russia, Ukraine and the Drift to East-West Confrontation
David Lane

9. Russia: A New Imperialist Power?
Alexander Buzgalin, Andrey Kolganov and Olga Barashkova

[UAE Bird Expert]

Westernization

Резидент posted:
As you know, the Ukrainian authorities have adopted a law on the sale of agricultural land to foreigners. Moreover, agricultural land can be sold without any restrictions to foreign legal entities and individuals, which actually means that Westerners, whose finances are not limited, will eventually own all Ukrainian agricultural land in the territories controlled by Kiev.

To understand the problem: at the moment, only 3 companies have already bought 17 million hectares of agricultural land. This is slightly less than half of all agricultural land (42.7 million hectares). In fact, more than half of Ukrainian arable land has already been sold to foreign corporations for a song. Why is agricultural land being so actively bought in a belligerent state? It's simple: firstly, land is one of the few assets for which you can get at least some money, and secondly, a guarantee that corporations will lobby their assets in Western governments. Even if we hypothetically assume that the conflict will end now, Ukraine has already ceased to be the mistress of its land. What is happening is a purely colonial scheme inherent in the West.