Marc Bonhomme
A “just peace” requires armed struggle imposing a total Russian withdrawal
Through its public statement published in Le Devoir under the title “Beyond the End of the War, a Just Peace is Needed in Ukraine” [1], the Québec collective “Échec à la guerre” (“Checkmate to War”) shows itself favorable to Trump’s U.S. reversal regarding the war against Ukraine, seeing this as a path toward peace.
The collective sees in Trump’s de facto rejection of NATO, which Putin obviously also rejects, the basis for an agreement that could lead to respect for international law. Beyond the utopia of a Russian withdrawal from the conquered Donbass while Russia is winning the war, Ukraine should accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014! It is remarkable that the collective, while speculating on Trump’s foreign policy and seeing it as a factor for war, says nothing about his execrable racist, sexist, super-austerity and freedom-killing domestic policy, which is not at all speculative.
In the same way that it corroborates Russian propaganda regarding the 2014 Euromaidan, the collective conveys the old theory of NATO expansion justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which fortunately it considers illegal. If twelve Eastern European countries joined NATO in three waves between 1999 and 2009, well before 2022, this is as much due to these countries’ desire to protect themselves from Russian imperialism as to Western imperialism’s desire to expand. On the eve of the failed Russian invasion of all of Ukraine in 2022, following the latent invasion of the southeast in 2014, NATO was “brain dead” (Macron) following the fiasco of its invasion of Afghanistan. The Russian invasion resurrected it and extended it further to Finland and Sweden. Speaking of international law, what can be concluded about the 1994 Budapest Memorandum where Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s borders in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons inherited from the former USSR?
The collective fundamentally fails to understand, which is surprising for Quebec activists denouncing federal militarism, the struggle of the Ukrainian people, and of their government, however neoliberal but not fascist, for their very existence. For Putin, as for the tsars and Stalin before him, Ukraine is “Little Russia” or “New Russia.” For Putin, Ukraine is an invention of Lenin that Stalin could not formally erase even if he did so in reality. It seems all the more odious to me for Quebecers not to recognize themselves in the struggle of the Ukrainian people when for many federalists, Quebec is intrinsically part of Canada. The collective’s dogmatic pacifism seems to blur in their minds any understanding of history other than a superficial geostrategic analysis stuck in the 20th century... becoming confused in this century.
Some will respond that I don’t care about the carnage of deaths, suffering, and destruction. It is the Ukrainian people, leading their government in their wake, who heroically chose the path of armed resistance, and also non-armed resistance by organizing internal solidarity, to the great surprise of Russia but also of the US and NATO who expected a quick capitulation. It is up to the Ukrainian people, and them alone, depending on internal and external power relations, to give it up. The duty of all democrats is to support them by all means, starting with the erasure of their government’s external debt, civilian donations, and, last but not least, weapons, more weapons.
Ukraine’s defeat, even in the masked form of a ceasefire, would be an encouragement to all the “bullies” of the world. This lull would allow Putin to rearm and not just against Ukraine. China would be encouraged to invade Taiwan... the US, who knows. It would be a repressive hell for the Ukrainian people, as is already the case in the occupied areas. Even the part that remained “free” would experience more repression since defeat would roll out the red carpet for the vengeful far-right. The latter is currently marginal in Ukraine, unlike in Russia, France, Germany, and the US. This supposed peace of the conqueror would open the door to a global dystopia, just as the defeat of Republican Spain in 1938-39, due to lack of support from Western democracies, had opened the door to the Second World War.
[1] https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/848494/idees-dela-fin-guerre-il-faut-paix-juste-ukraine