Stalinists back Trump on Ukraine

Whatever about other things, the Morning Star and the people it quotes with approval are clear about one thing: Trump is on the right track when it comes to Ukraine: no more arms, and a deal with Mr Putin, are what’s required. And it looks like the Donald will deliver this.

Some contributors (like leading CPBer Andrew Murray) have argued that Trump may or may not be a fascist but, either way, is “nothing to fear” and not the “main enemy”. Others (like C J Atkins of the CPUSA, which called for a Democrat vote), that he is a “wannabe dictator” whose Maga movement contains “the classic formula for fascism”. Yet others (the US cultural commentator Dennis Broe) reserved all their fire for Harris and the Democrats, concluding “there is no lesser of two evils”.

Ramzy Baroud of the Palestine Chronicle got space in the paper to positively welcome Trump’s victory, seeing it as “the perfect opportunity to translate votes into sustained action”… in support of Palestine (13 November).

But they all agree about Ukraine. C J Atkins (8 November) made his case obliquely. Trump voters may, he conceded, “have been influenced by right-wing messaging and the isolationist façade that Trump pushes, but a lot of people are unconvinced about the necessity of shoring up Nato in Eastern Europe — a case that peace activists have been trying to make for years.”

More openly, under the headline “Biden Accused Of ‘Baiting Russia’ In Missile Gamble” (19 November), it quoted the Stop the War Coalition’s Lindsey German denouncing Biden’s permission for Ukraine to use American missiles to strike into Russian territory as “a wish to go out with a bang at the end of his failed presidency.” Donald Trump, we were told, is “telling the truth” about Putin being “goaded into the Ukraine war by Nato expansionism” and “when he says this war is unwinnable, when he says that people want peace, this was a popular argument with people in the US.”

Elite

The next day’s editorial also backed Trump over Ukraine: “President-elect Donald Trump represents those sections of the Washington elite who, with considerable support, accept the military realities, resent the vast sums US taxpayers are spending on the conflict and prefer to concentrate on the ‘Chinese threat’ in any case”. So (apart from the “Chinese threat”, obviously) Trump’s approach meets with their approval.

Even the editorial acknowledged that Putin’s Russia “might not accept a peace based on existing military dispositions since its territorial claims are more ambitious and made without much reference to the populations concerned” — which, given Putin’s repeated claims that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent entity, might be considered something of an understatement.

Peace-maker

But the message from them is clear: Trump (whatever his motives) is a peace-maker, and anyone who stands by Ukraine is the enemy: “the centrist elite worries that its proxy war in Ukraine may be terminated by the arrival of president Donald Trump… Biden and Starmer want to make it as difficult as possible for him to follow through on his stated policy of seeking to bring the conflict to an end” (editorial 22 November).

The Morning Star and its political masters, the CPB, are at least consistent in their unwillingness to support the Ukrainian people and (despite a few mild criticisms) to give de facto backing to Putin.

Having spent December 2021 and January 2022 dismissing warnings that Russia was going to invade, when it happened all they could do was bleat about alleged Nato (or sometimes, EU) “provocation”.

Denying the Ukrainian people any agency, they then declared the invasion to be a “proxy war” by the West against Russia.

Very soon, the word “invasion” all but disappeared from their coverage of Ukraine.

No one knows what Trump is going to do about Ukraine, but it will almost certainly involve a betrayal: and that betrayal will be supported by the Morning Star and CPB.