The Russia-Ukraine war: A view from the Southern Left

The Russia-Ukraine war: A view from the Southern Left Ranabir SAMADDARa and Biao XIANGb a Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India b Department of Anthropology of Economic Experimentation, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany ABSTRACT The Left is under siege across the globe. Anti-NATO arguments are ridiculed as pro-Putin. The US military-industry nexus is rapidly extending to become a global military-industry-finance-media nexus. The Left in China, India, Turkey, Brazil and many other countries have been crushed or became complicit with authoritarianism. In Europe, progressive ideals that have enjoyed wide support since the end of World War Two are being seriously challenged. In this conversation, Ranabir Samaddar from India and Biao Xiang from China reflect on the shortcomings of the Western Left in their response to the Russia- Ukraine war, and argue that the international Left must take viewpoints from the Global South much more seriously. A finalized version is published as Ranabir Samaddar & Biao Xiang (2023) The RussiaUkraine war: a view from the Southern Left, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 24:1, 174180, DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2156130 KEYWORDS: The Left; war; historical consciousness; peace; Global South; mass movement Introduction Was the European Left too preoccupied with concerns about “Western” imperialism to anticipate “Russian” expansionism, or to understand changes in the forms of imperialism in the neoliberal era? How should we understand the “silence” of the Global South regarding the war—a silence which has apparently disappointed the West—, particularly in relation to sanctions on Russia? Finally, what lessons can the Southern Left draw from the war? To reflect on these questions, Biao Xiang invited Ranabir Samaddar to have a conversation in Halle, Germany on 15 March 2022. This article is a transcript of that interview. It has been 1 edited, and in parts expanded on, for clarity. A video recording of the conversation is available at: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh- qNAAKxUdXW9iL8XFq2PZlwom4jhUD9 The historical unconsciousness of the European Left Biao Xiang (BX): Ranabir, what’s your observation of the responses from the European Left towards this war? As you know, there are a number of debates going on—and some are saying that the European Left was too preoccupied with US imperialism and NATO expansion to understand Russian imperialism. So there is a worry that this war may discredit some thinking on the Left, and that will give more space to a new conservatism. They say, “I told you so, we Europeans still need America to provide the global order.” So what would your advice to the European Left be? Ranabir Samaddar (RS): I think this war will lead to a different situation [from before]. The war is not only about redrawing the map of Europe, the borders of Europe. It’s a question of deciding how you take Russia forward. It’s also a question of deciding what will be the future of NATO or European security. And it’s also a question of finally confronting the financial power of the United States. Economic sanctions have become a part of war. You know, there were sanctions on Iran, on Iraq, on many countries. The power and the experiences of imposing all those sanctions have been now assembled at one point to show that this is a part of war. This is producing a kind of new scenario that I do not think that the European Left, or for that matter the Left globally, is prepared for. If you ask me, I take an opposite view [to the idea that the Left has been too preoccupied with Western imperialism]. Rather, we have understood very little of the strength of imperialism in the neoliberal time. Sitting in Europe, sitting in a European country in the heart of Western Europe, to say that the European Left has been deficient is not a pleasant thing to say. But, on the other hand, tell me how many times in the last ten or 20 years that the European Left has demanded that NATO be completely disbanded? After the Warsaw pact was disbanded, what was the need for NATO? And if NATO was and is crucial for Western Europe’s security, okay, fair enough. But why did NATO intervene in Afghanistan? Why did it intervene in Libya? How would you justify the bombing of 2 Belgrade? And say that Kosovo had a plebiscite and therefore Kosovo has to be immediately given independence? That’s exactly the same thing that Russia is saying, that the Russian- speaking people had their own referendum, and they should therefore be given autonomy and now independence. Let me bluntly say the European Left was too engrossed with the idea of the EU—and was oblivious of the fact that corporate interests, military interests were behind the making of the EU. The economic union was incomplete without its financial might and military might. The European Left had been too committed to the idea of the European Union. This brings me back to the old question: Is debate about the nation question over in Europe? And did the European Left give enough importance to the way in which NATO was operating? I do think that these are new situations. We thought we were done with the past, but these new situations are bringing the ghosts of the past back into our lives. How many European Left thinkers had really thought about the historical consequences of 1989? And if you read Chinese history, and you know this history much better than I, China today has to grapple with its past. It cannot shut its eyes and say, well, whatever is gone is gone. No, it has to make its own rapprochement, to reconcile with its own past. What [in the past] is good? What is bad? What is to be kept? What is to be changed? I read with interest the Chinese President’s speech on the occasion of the Party’s 100th anniversary celebration. Who am I to say whether what he said was right or wrong—but I am fascinated with the way in which the party leadership tries to grapple with its past. BX: A kind of historical consciousness… RS: Yes. The question is: Where is the historical consciousness of the Western Left with regard to Russia or 1989? So, today, when suddenly this Russian nationalist ruler says that Russia is not dead, and that he’s going to invoke pre-1989 Russia, the Western Left finds itself in shock. Why does this Russian nationalist today have to blame Lenin [for “creating” Ukraine]? And why does he have to say that the Russia of the past has to be brought back? It takes a nationalist ruler to tell NATO and Western Europe to say this far and no further. This is history’s irony, that while nobody likes what Putin has done or is doing, why does it take a nationalist to say to Western domination that this cannot go on and begin the clash. 3 I think this whole new question, including the issue of economic sanctions, was never confronted scientifically by the Left. This is why during the Greek crisis, you could see the domination of Greece by the Eurozone, the European Bank, the European Commission, all those things along with the IMF, they finally silenced whatever was attempted in Greece in terms of restructuring the economy along non-neoliberal lines. It’s not the fault of the European Left alone, but of all of us [the entire Left]. I think we have to consider very hard what is new in this situation, and did we do enough to respond to the new situation? Lenin had a famous saying—it’s not enough to know what the new features are, like the war, but that we have to “bend the stick” to our purpose. Bend it. This is what being the Left means. It is not enough to say what is happening. How do you bend it to your cause of peace, to your cause of democracy, to your cause for protecting people’s lives, livelihood, welfare etc.? Where is the mass peace movement? BX: Can I push a little further? One key mistake of the European Left is the loss of historical consciousness, in a way kind of falling into the trap of the so-called “the end of history”. As if after 1989, everything was moving towards a happy liberal world. Apart from that, what are the other key mistakes that the European Left have made? I'm thinking, what do we mean by the simplistic dream of European integration? I mean: European integration at the cost of the negation of local interest, or the lack of understanding of the economy, and too much emphasis on the rule of law and human rights? Can you discuss this a little more? RS: You have already anticipated my answer. In his famous book Capital in the 21st Century, Piketty clearly shows that the postwar years actually contributed to the rise of incomes in Western European countries. And these were also the years of social welfare state, years of rising state expenditure and decades of “the rule of law” etc., everything. And the Left [today] is a product of that time. In many ways, they became disconnected with the Left of the pre-Second World War era. There is an interesting book by Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism. Perry Anderson shows that up until the Second World War, the fulcrum of Marxist thinking, Leftist thinking, was in Eastern (including Russia) and Central Europe, where political leadership, philosophical thinking, and ideological thinking all went hand in hand. Gramsci is a kind of figure who stands in the middle, neither to the West, nor to the east. But then the whole drive of philosophical thinking moves to the West. 4 Marxism relapsed into scholarly thinking. The European Left made peace with social welfarism. But today, neoliberalism has changed everything. Even when the Left protested in a big way against the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, they never saw the European interventions in these wars as integral part of that Europe which they loved very much. So it’s a kind of self-engrossed mentality. Lenin wrote a fascinating pamphlet called On the United States of Europe. He wrote that those who dreamt of European unity, without ensuring that it would be the unity of the European toilers and European working people, were oblivious of the fact that such European unity was bound to be a cartel of the European financiers and magnates of capital. And coming to our time, for example Tony Benn, the famous British trade union organizer and Labour Party leader, tried to draw up a different manifesto for Europe in the 1980s. He did not agree that the UK should join this European project. The Swedish Labor Movement tried to draw up a different manifesto for the European Union too, but later surrendered to political pressure from the Right and the Center. I don’t want to go into details, all I want to say is that the Left has not questioned this Europe enough. Today, we have to rally for dialogue between Ukraine and Russia: It is the duty of Europe not to further militarize the situation, but to bring about some kind of ceasefire settlement, and mobilize European voices, citizens’ voices on how to make a rapprochement possible. Where is that effort here? Where is that independent peace campaign by the Left? If you remember, in the wake of the threat of nuclear war in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, doctors, physicists, scientists of the United States and the USSR—they all joined hands. [They said] whatever our states say, we want peace. We will not allow [the war] to happen. BX: Today, reality seems to be going in the opposite direction—almost certainly there will be worldwide re-militarization. The “silent” south BX: This war takes place in Europe, but its implications will certainly be global. How has the Global South responded to this war? And how should we understand their responses? Can 5 you tell us how the Indian public responded to the war and, in particular, how the Indian Left responded? RS: Indian newspapers, by and large, draw their stories and reports from Western media. So you do not find much of, let’s say, what is the Chinese response, or the Russian response, or other South Asian countries’ response. The Indian media establishment is so Westernoriented that it’s not surprising it reacts that way. The Indian media’s attention has also been self-centric, by which I mean that it has devoted quite an amount of space and time to the implications of the Indian government’s stand when it abstained from voting in the Security Council, as well as in the General Assembly. Media reports and analyses have endlessly discussed the question: Does India stand to lose or does India stand to gain? On the Indian Left’s position, I think that reflects the position, or let us say, the discomfiture of the Global Left. On one hand, the Indian Left cannot say what Russia is doing is right. On the other hand, the Left also knows that if it simply stops by saying that it is Russian expansionism, then of course it condones what NATO and the West are doing, and the continuous militarization of Eastern Europe. And because India knows that, in the past, America had similar kinds of military alliances in this region like the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Left, like the Global Left, is in a state of extreme discomfiture. I have read one political weekly of a major Indian Left party which said: No to NATO, No to Putin. That in a way sums up the stand of the Indian Left. Now, if you ask me how much bite this slogan has, I think, if it had been raised earlier, probably this would have had much more bite. As time progresses, the bite is lost. But at least in my understanding, that is by and large the attitude of the Indian Left. This brings me to a more important question which is: What is the response of the Global South? In a way, and pardon me for saying so, the Left’s response is already antiquated. Given the march of globalization and the change of time, the Left has to reinvent itself. There is no global peace movement led by the Left, as there was, say 50, 60, or 70 years ago, when E.P. Thompson and others led campaigns against nuclear weapons and all that. That was a global peace movement. But that is not there today. Also, neoliberalism has done away with that kind of global scenario. But something else that you said is important. And I would say that the silence of the Global South on the Ukraine conflict is a significant fact. Tell me, why do I have to take sides? You know, there was a famous saying by Julius Nyerere: “When the elephants fight, 6 the grasshoppers die; when the elephants make love, the grasshoppers die.” Why do I have to take sides? If a large section of the world says we have nothing to do with this, why should we not welcome it? Not everything in the world has to be globalized. When the West sees there is a quarrel between, say, two countries in sub-Saharan Africa or two countries in Asia, do they take sides? No. They become the referee. So all I'm trying to say is that there is a new meaning in claiming neutrality, in being non-aligned. There is a new meaning in invoking the past of the nonaligned movement. Let's recall the non-aligned movement led by Tito, Nasser, Nehru, and others. The Global South has to refuse to be a party [to the game]. We should not easily say that the war is good or bad. We have to ask, why is Europe taking a moralistic viewpoint? [Through] these sanctions, the West has made the economy part of warfare. Not only that. If Russia is accused of endangering the lives of common Ukrainians, [what about] all these sanctions that impoverish the common Russian, the common Iranian, or the common Iraqi. There was a UNICEF or UN study showing that thousands of children in Iraq had become malnourished, and many children had died because of ill health. Baby food did not reach them. Iraq and Iran were completely stripped of their assets and couldn’t earn anything. So if Russia is accused of waging war, why shouldn’t these sanctions be similarly accused of attacking the common people, the civilians? So to think that the Global South does not understand the politics of sanctions is to bring back the old colonial way of thinking, that we know much better than you people. Also, sanctions are extremely discriminatory. Where are the sanctions on Israel for killing so many Palestinians, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank? What about the manufactured charge that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear and chemical weapons and the subsequent war against Iraq? So the history of responsibility and power is an extremely, extremely discriminatory history. And no section of the world is more aware of that than the South. To think from the angle of the South means to think from the margins, to step outside and then see what is happening, to interrogate what is being given to you as the truth. This is true of any critical knowledge. So I think there is much to understand from the response from the Global South. If the Global South thinks in a “selfish” way, isn’t Western Europe thinking of the South in a “selfish” way? World war or global wars? 7 BX: Yes, the South as a method for global rethinking. This is also a very hopeful message that you have given us—basically the Global South is adopting a “weapon of the weak.” They are trying to empty out the global hegemony by refusing to join one side or the other. Now I'm thinking, why has the hegemonic power been successful? It was easy to understand during the Cold War. The two hegemonic superpowers could capture smaller states and make them their vassal states, and the smaller states would depend on them [the superpowers]. But after the Cold War, how has hegemony been successful in capturing the Global South? Put in a different way, how can the Global South develop more capacity to refuse to be part of the global game? How can we empower the refusal strategy? RS: This is a very important question. I would give two tentative answers. First, the world looks more and more like the 19th century, when you had different power centers. And you therefore had this whole theory of the balance of power—you had different treaties and alliances, secret treaties, secret alliances and so on. The great power game of the 19th century operated through practicing colonialism—the Germans, the Austrians, the French, the British, the Dutch, all the great powers were playing against each other. They all conspired against Napoleon. Now we have a parody of Napoleon and Stalin in whatever Putin is doing—so Europe has ganged up against him. Therefore, in the multipolar kind of scenario, you cannot actually say that ganging up will not happen. America is trying to bypass what you call “old Europe” to gain control over new Europe, which is Eastern Europe. The British have gone out of Western Europe, and now they’re either completely following the American tune, or, at the same time, they are also trying to build a new bridge with Eastern Europe. And Western Europe now understands that it has to strike its own path. It has to emerge as an autonomous power—it cannot do that, unless it is a military power. So ganging up will happen. So, I would rather say that instead of looking at it from the angle of hegemony, which is an important theory, we must look at the new reality. I think what is much more important is that we take note of the centrality of the role of the financial power of the West. That’s one answer. The second is that you could not have had the non-aligned movement without the presence of socialist China and the Soviet Union. Today, where is that inspiring presence? First of all, China doesn't follow that theory anymore. I don't think that China has any policy or any politics of organizing or facilitating a separate voice for the South. I don't think China looks at it in that way. Also, China’s politics is a kind of mercantilist policy. It thinks only of trade and economy—the Belt and Road Initiative, etc.—, as if politics is determined by that. But politics is determined only half by that, the rest is not. 8 Even the economic game is not completely managed by mercantile rules and by trade and logistics alone. China has no ambition of turning BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] into a political bloc. China never claimed that it's a political bloc. And Russia, in any case, is still struggling to cope with the consequences of [the period from] 1989 to 1992. And even though it has some stability of leadership today through Putin, and it has improved quite a lot after the massive de-industrialization and great loot of Russia during Yeltsin’s time, the [post-1989] disaster was so great that it will take another 20 or 30 years [to stabilize]. Also, we have to understand that Russia cannot reenact the Chinese way of development: You can't make Russia the factory of the world anymore. The world has changed. China did it at a time when this strategy was successful. But it will not be similarly successful anywhere and at any time. It was a specific historical moment and came against the backdrop of a specific national and global history. Inasmuch as the East and the West are being remade in the neoliberal time, the South is also being remade. The Global South will also have to be reimagined or reconfigured. But interestingly—I know this is a provocative remark—it is war that will remake the South, not so much economy. War will continuously force the South to face some of the questions that it wants to avoid. Whatever you call Nehru or Zhou Enlai or Tito or Nasser, they all came out of the Second World War. They were all sons and daughters of decolonization and they were all sons and daughters of long liberation fights against colonialism. That is gone. So today, in the remaking of national economies, how will interests coalesce? How will that united front emerge? Is this agenda not as crucial as the things we are discussing now? In that sense, I do think that the Global South, by refusing to play the game of the North, is actually giving a message about how to respond to the war. You see, the idea of a world war is a very Western concept. Do we call the European war of Napoleon’s time a world war? No. The First World War is called a World War. But it happened only in Europe. It didn't happen elsewhere. Colonies remained colonies. You may say that we call it World War One because it changed the world order, [as] the League of Nations came after the war. But then the Napoleonic Wars also changed the 19th century through the Congress of Vienna, the Holy Alliance, etc. The Second World War was, in some ways, a greater war. But the Second World War was many wars. At the time when the Second World War was taking place, Indian freedom fighters were saying “no” to British rule—we had our 1942 Quit-India Movement. Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam wanted to strike out a different path too: We know that he had to fight the Japanese, but equally the French. 9 Africans had nothing to do [they had no stakes in taking sides], because the British were as colonial as the Germans or the Italians. So the idea of a world war is a very Western way of looking at things. Actually, we shall have [the concept of] “global war”, which means there will be mini-wars, many mini-wars taking place. The end to the legacy of World War does not mean saying, then let us have a general, noble peace for humanity for 1000 years. But it means very precisely dissolving this monolithic concept of war and shifting our understanding to the 1000 wars that are happening. So, if you can localize war, you are able to prevent world war. Neoliberalism has done away with the earlier monolithic ideas. The new thinking must accept this reality, must encourage us to frame our responses to the situation in a new way. BX: This shows clearly that the political must start with the analytical. So, first of all, we have to see the world in a different way, then we can find new space and devise new strategies for interventions to “bend” the reality in a way that will facilitate our purpose. Thank you very much, Ranabir. RS: Thank you. Your questions were very penetrating. Notes 1. Biao Xiang is the corresponding author of this article. Notes on Contributors Ranabir Samaddar is the Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies at the Calcutta Research Group in Kolkata, India. His writing on migration, forms of labor, urbanization, and political struggles have signaled a new turn in post-colonial thinking. Among his influential works are The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal (1999) and Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age (2018). His most recent publication is written against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, A Pandemic and the Politics of Life (2021). Biao Xiang is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. His work takes migration as a lens to examine a wide range of issues in Asia, including state-society relations, labor, social reproduction, and governance. His books include Global Body Shopping (winner of the Anthony Leeds Prize, 2008), 跨越边界的社区 (published in English as Transcending Boundaries, 2005; reprinted in 2018 as a 10 contemporary classic), and 自己作为方法 (co-authored with Wu Qi; ranked the Most Impactful Book 2020 in China on leading Chinese social network Douban; published in English as Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World, 2022). His work has generated wide discussions in China and beyond and is translated into multiple languages. Contact address Ranabir Samaddar: [email protected] Calcutta Research Group GC 45 (F.F.), Sector 3, Salt Lake City Kolkata 700106 India Biao Xiang: [email protected] Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Advokatenweg 36 06114 Halle/Saale Germany 11