War and Terror

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg There is a saying that generals are always ready to fight the last war. The same may be said of political leaders. The difference is that they are ready to stop the last war, and have learned the lessons of what caused it. In the 1930s, when Japan, Italy and Germany began to menace neighbouring countries, a consensus began to emerge in the democracies — and in the Soviet Union — that only collective security could prevent another world war. But collective security proved to be unachievable, and by the end of...

Did the Morning Star believe Putin’s denials of plans to invade Ukraine? Here’s a brief synopsis of the paper’s repeated claims that Russia was seeking a peaceful resolution and that fears of invasion were down to Western propaganda. 19 Jan: “Western countries say an armed build-up in Russia’s west could be preparation for an invasion of Ukraine, something Moscow rejected as ‘total disinformation’” (report by “Foreign Desk”). 20 Jan: “Russia... called for the US to ‘end hysteria over the Donbas issue,’ referring to frequent claims being made that Russia is about to invade... ‘We stress again...

On 14 February the Mauritian ambassador to the UN raised his country’s flag above Peros Banhos, part of the Chagos archipelago north east of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Jagdish Koonjul explained: “We are performing the symbolic act of raising the flag as the British have done so many times to establish colonies. We, however, are reclaiming what has always been our own.” In the run up to Mauritian independence in 1968, the UK (Labour) government separated off the Chagos islands and maintained control of them. Between 1967 and 1973, Britain evicted the islands' inhabitants, about a thousand...

This article, written in January 2020, is republished from the Clarion magazine website . In February 2022, as tensions mount over Ukraine, opposition to NATO is being misused by many on the left to alibi Russian imperialism - which is the main issue in the Ukraine conflict. Nonetheless it remains necessary for the left to oppose NATO. When the New Statesman published Paul Mason’s provocatively titled article, “How the left could save Nato” , in late November 2019, it attracted a deserved torrent of criticism. Left activists unsurprisingly objected to the idea that Labour’s social-democratic...

A Ukrainian soldier deepens a trench If Russia invades Ukraine — as looks increasingly likely — it will be a continuation and escalation of the regional-imperialist project pursued by Putin since he came to power in 2000. It will constitute an assault on Ukraine’s right to national self-determination. Over the past two decades Putin has coupled increasingly authoritarian domestic policies, aimed at stifling any display of internal opposition to his rule, with an expansionist and imperialist foreign policy, aimed at bringing neighbouring ex-USSR independent states back into Russia’s sphere of...

We republish a statement from the Ukrainian socialist organisation Social Movement. The Kremlin has ordered the Russian army to the Ukrainian borders and is threatening to intervene if the US, NATO, and Ukraine do not fulfill its demands. We, the Ukrainian socialists, call on the international left to condemn the imperialist policies of the Russian government and to show solidarity with people who have suffered from the war that has lasted almost eight years and who may suffer from a new one. In this address, "Social Movement" exposes the phenomenon of the revival of Russian imperialism...

The first part of this series, ‘The origins of Bangladesh and Pakistan’s 1968’ , was published in December 2021. “Kill three million and the rest will eat out of our hands.” So Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan is said to have told his top brass in March 1971, as they prepared war against the people of East Bengal. By the time Bangladesh – “Bengal Nation” – gained its independence in December, Pakistan’s army had murdered at least several hundred thousand civilians and many more had died from disease, malnutrition, etc. These were among the worst atrocities of the 20th century, seeking to suppress...

Demonstrations started in the first week of full Taliban rule, particularly in Herat in the west of Afghanistan and in Kabul and other major cities. In these cities at least women before the collapse of the old government had some basic rights, like having jobs and going to school and university.

Workers' Liberty published this on 14 September 2001. Against the barbarism of the New York massacre, we fight for socialism To use civilian planes, full of people, to attack buildings full of civilians, mostly ordinary workers, is a crime against humanity, whatever the supposed aims. What cause could the hijackers have been serving when they massacre thousands of workers in New York? Not "anti-imperialism" in any rational sense - whatever anyone may pretend or imagine - but only rage against the modern world. Only on the basis of a dehumanised, backward-looking world-view could they have...