Against CodePink!

I love the Pinkies. I love the way they bust up Congressional hearings and other displays of the National Security State. They always show up. But I’m no peacenik. Their stance on Ukraine, if you don’t mind the technical terminology, is fucked up.

Few are reluctant to admit that the Russian invasion is a monstrous crime. Anyone who apologizes for this mass murder has taken up residence in Tuckerville and has put themselves beneath dialog and beyond any notion of what it means to be on the Left.

Certain people have come to be called the “Horseshoe Left,” founded on the cliché that the extreme left tends to shade into the Right. That’s bullshit. The very extreme left can be dogmatic and imprisoned in some sectarian variant of Marxism-Leninism, but it would have to transform altogether to be on the Right. What we have seen is a batch of lightweight, leftish Twitter and online comedians with weak-to-no roots in the Left jumping bad. Even Mussolini had stronger ties to socialism.

But the Pinkies, their anti-war record is long and honorable. Their fundamental error here is to deny agency to the victims of this slaughter – the people of Ukraine. Hey! White folks have the right of national self-determination too, especially in the face of what is properly called “national cleansing.” As long as those daring dudes and dudettes are willing to blow up Russian armor with hand-held missiles, I say ship those bad boys by the boatload. It should be up to them how to negotiate, what concessions to consider, and when to stop fighting. Back in the day, nobody was demanding that the Vietnamese start negotiating with the U.S.

The no-fly zone is tricky. I am skeptical that intercepting Russian aircraft over Ukraine leads to nuclear WWIII, but who wants to take that chance? Nobody in his right mind. The problem is that failure to do the NFZ effectively cedes sovereign Ukrainian airspace to Russia, which facilitates Putin’s Grozny/Aleppo solution – just leveling the entire country. Bombing the buildings, then bombing the gravel, all while still unable to take control on the ground. Still, I would concede the wisdom of foregoing the NFZ.

National self-determination for Ukraine encompasses their choice of whether to be neutral, what kind of military to have, and whether to join NATO. Note that even if NATO declines to invite Ukraine to join, an all-EU counterpart to NATO could do so. Again, it is not for outsiders to tell Ukraine how to attend to its affairs. Their choices include whether to ask to join NATO, which would coincide with the possibility of any invitation from the U.S. The conduct of U.S. sanctions should also be up to them. And of course, an all-Europe security agreement should be up to the Europeans. Duh.

What we should do in the U.S. is to supply whatever can be supplied, both in the way of military means and refugee relief.

Broadly speaking, the EU and Nordic nations are healthier specimens of capitalism than Russia’s wretched Eurasian economic whatever. Expanding the former to include Ukraine would be a Good Thing for the working class of Europe.