Putin and his Western apologists

For more than a decade now sections of the British left have been fawning over reactionary tyrant Vladimir Putin. From Ukraine to FIFA there are certain members of what some may describe as the Chomskyite left who will parrot Russian propaganda word for word. I personally am uncomfortable with throwing Professor Chomsky in with George Galloway and the like- his writings tend to contain a degree of nuance and empiricism which are lacking from his self appointed disciples.  Nevertheless what is clear is that there is a very obvious yearning for the Cold War certainties of the 20^th century. I can very well understand the impulse to defend, rightly or wrongly the actions of the Soviet Union against Western capitalism but that’s all finished now. The wall came down and in preceding 2 decades Yeltsin and Putin have set about creating an authoritarian form of Russian nationalism, which has abandoned free services for the free market.

 Lets start with Ukraine, and to be clear I am not attempting to regurgitate the liberal Western view on European relations and Ukraine. Indeed, I would concede there is an element of truth to the Russian line that the removal of President Yanukovych by an armed pro-EU protestors constituted an illegal coup d'etat. Of course, that’s not to say that Yanukovych was a good guy- he evidently was not, he was however the democratically elected President of a European country who was overthrown with the help of the European Union and the US. Indeed the enlargement of NATO in 1999 to include Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland was a betrayal of Washington’s promise to Gorbachev that NATO “would not move one inch eastward,” referring to East Germany. But to use the Yanukovych ousting and NATO enlargement as a justification for the annexation of Crimea is indefensible. We on the left should be able to oppose military expansionism by both sides, and not advocate the childish policy of my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Slavoj Zizek in a clever rebuttal of the Chomsky position on Ukraine points out that “the entire European neo-fascist right firmly supports Russia in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, giving the lie to the official Russian presentation of the Crimean referendum as a choice between Russian democracy and Ukrainian fascism.”

This engrained Cold War logic frequently leads some Western leftists to say, “ah but what about Iraq”. The I-word is a sure fire way to discredit opposition and end a conversation quickly. Now, I would agree that Iraq was an unmitigated disaster. It was a unilateral folly, which subverted international institutions and plunged Iraq and the region into a chaos which is in the process of destroying Iraqi civilization. However we cannot continue to justify Russian or indeed Syrian aggression for that matter by trying to argue that those who oppose this violence are the same people who laid waste to Iraq. Anti-imperialism is of course a historic tenant of the left but so too is internationalism. We must not brand every Western foray into international affairs as inherently imperialist and thus illegitimate.  It is lazy and ideologically inconsistent to decry Western interventions as imperialist whilst hailing Russian aggression in Georgia and Crimea as a brave repost to Western liberalism. Again, we should be able to lament both Assad and Blair for their crimes- not pick a side and slavishly defend the indefensible. And on the subject of Iraq and the continuing “war on terror” which has manifest it’s self in brutal drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan, it is important to remember that Putin too is engaged in his own war with Chechen rebels that is often just as bloody as American efforts in the Middle East.

The supreme irony is that those leftists who view the world in terms of good and evil are mirror images of the US Generals and neo-conservatives they so deplore. Journalist and Respect Party member John Wight tweeted in March that “The Huthi uprising in Yemen is opposed by the Saudis and the US while the uprising in Syria is supported by them. Pure hypocrisy.” However on further analysis it was determined that Mr Wight’s position was in support of the uprising in Yemen and in opposition to the uprising in Syria. Thus being the exact reverse. Who’s the hypocrite now, John? The same John Wight just a few days ago also claimed that the decision by US authorities to arrest senior FIFA officials was all part of some Western plot to remove the 2018 World Cup from Russia. It’s that old Bush line “You’re either for us or against us.”

International politics is infinitely more complicated than two sides of a false dichotomy. The refusal to acknowledge this can lead morally normal people to come to morally repugnant positions- defending the incarceration of Pussy Riot and supporting the suppression of LGBT groups to name just a few. The left is perfectly capable of opposing both Western neoliberalism and Russian chauvinism. To support the latter simply because it chooses to define itself in opposition to the former is a betrayal of our values and leaves us in the company of some pretty suspect bedfellows.