War in Ukraine: How singular is the Ukraine war?

The war in Ukraine is pushing Europe and humanity ever closer to the brink of nuclear confrontation. Constantly new levels of escalation on the part of Kiev and Western states are testing Moscow’s “red line.” The West, divided into a bloc of war-enthusiastic actors in the US power, economic and media apparatus, including the once pacifist German Greens on the one hand and the forces pushing for a quick peace on the other. However, the latter are themselves torn between the forces that demand unconditional support for the invaded Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and those who see negotiated solutions and the search for an agreement with Moscow as the only way to end the war. In such confusing times, precise scientific and historical analysis is required.

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»Every war is opposed by the love of peace and the longing for peace of the vast majority of people, and both are urgently needed when the weapons speak, but they are supposed to be silent again as soon as possible. But both are not enough,” writes Lothar Schröter. We should look for the reasons why wars break out. These should be countered by the martial declarations from politicians and the media, which are intended to make the population “war-ready”. After all, many East Germans have maintained a healthy skepticism about what German involvement in further accelerating the spiral of violence would mean. Nevertheless, many citizens have become war-weary, ignore the news and hope for better times.

Lothar Schröter, a military historian with a GDR background and thorough knowledge of US and NATO strategies, writes against this trend. In the best Marxist manner, he reminds us how wars should be judged. Shortening historical and political chains of events to the supposed first day of the war doesn’t help. Schröter asks about the causes of the war in Ukraine, the respective objectives and strategic lines that led to a constellation in which only minimal reasons were needed to ignite a smoldering fire into a veritable war with unpleasant risks for Europe and the world .

The author recalls the demise of real socialism and the Soviet Union, accompanied by an anti-communist, nationalist orgy promoted by the USA and its allies. Gorbachev’s perestroika was not able to end the systemic crisis, but rather activated the forces that, with nationalism, reinterpretations of history and clear pro-capitalist “reforms”, not only caused a great power to crumble, but also encouraged the confrontations that, after the collapse of the USSR, also led to conflicts between the successor states of the Soviet Empire led.

This is where Schröter classifies the developments in Ukraine, whose new elites sought a final break with Moscow and eagerly looked to the West as the new savior. He shows how, at the end of the 1990s, the West gave up hope that Russia would permanently embark on a Western course and submit to US hegemony, which had previously been associated with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The author repeatedly draws a link from the current situation back to the decades of the Cold War. He sees the Ukraine war as an expression of the confrontation between imperialist powers. And he examines how they acted in the last century and what shaped their politics.

To preserve the capitalist world system, the USA and its allies waged well over 100 major wars using all conceivable means and immeasurable sacrifices, from Korea to Cuba, Vietnam to the Middle East and Latin America. On the other hand, the Soviet Union, which repeatedly sought a policy of peaceful coexistence, supported the world’s anti-colonial liberation movements – an imperfect leader of a bloc that sought to break with capitalist logic. Even though the USSR failed a good three decades ago, its largest successor state, the Russian Federation, follows the traditions of the Cold War like the West, says Schröter. »The West on the one hand and Russia on the other have returned to the trenches of the Cold War. And with a comparable programmatic approach and approach as back then: offensive and at the same time concerned with defending one’s own assets and one’s own security interests.” The recent wars in Yugoslavia, in Iraq and Libya, in the Near and Middle East as well as the latent threat of war over Taiwan speak for this view.

The fact is, we are in a tangible power-political dispute over the future world order: Do we want to continue to live in a unilateral world dominated by the USA or in a multipolar world that is certainly not low-conflict but more flexible and on an equal footing with the larger and smaller ones? Western countries such as China, Brazil, South Africa or India find their place just like the other countries of the global south – and Russia too?

Lothar Schröter: The Ukraine War: The roots, the actors and the role of NATO. Edition Ost, 348 pages, hardcover, €32.