The clashes of armies in the Middle East and Ukraine are not embedded in any perspective of historical accommodation, either global or regional. The purpose of imperialist war is war, capital, war. And it is also an economic activity in itself, a branch of industry.

Moreover, in it’s national and religious disguises, it serves to arouse division and dismay in proletarians.

The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had no military purpose, nor were they dropped on naval bases or industrial complexes. Instead, they were knowingly used against the population. By August 1945, World War II had its victors, in the East as well as in the West. It needed an ultimate sanction of the overwhelming power of America’s capitalists, of their conquered world empire.

But it was also a "vae victis" (woe to the vanquished) launched against the proletariat, a reminder of what the bourgeoisie is capable of in order to maintain its domination. The proletariat emerged from the second imperialist war annihilated, politically defeated and prone to the capitalist interests of reconstruction and national capital accumulation. In Russia, the counterrevolutionary Stalinist ideology had been the expression of the working class’s submission to domestic state capitalism, and in the war to the "democratic" imperialist bourgeoisie front. It had cost the working class tens of millions of deaths.

Then began eighty years of social peace, of bourgeois peace, with increasingly bestial rhythms of exploitation of workers, and of robbery by imperialists in all corners of the world.

But the capitalist economy has its limits. The giantism of production collides with an evershrinking market; the inordinate increase in the mass of the means of production strangles the rate of profit. Capital today, increasingly hungry for profit, like a wounded monster runs mad the world in order to invest itself.

But submission to order is already creaking in areas where bourgeois rule is less firm. In more recently formed countries with extensive proletarian youth, social peace is shattered by uprisings, still sporadic, still disconnected and still lacking class organization and direction.

In the Middle East

Hamas’ Oct. 7 action fits into this context, kicking off a war not between religions and nations, but between world giants of capital that in the narrow region come to measure and challenge each other, through proxies, supplying states and militias with endless giant arsenals and with aircraft carriers at anchor.

The war in the Middle East benefits all capitalists, near and far. Among other things it supports the price of oil. And it is against all proletarians, near and far.

Hamas, a "terrorist" party founded with the financial support of the State of Israel, would have prearranged an incursion of this size without the ubiquitous Mossad and CIA spies having any inkling of it and without any defensive reaction from the efficient Israeli army.

Militarily, it has had the sole purpose of exacerbating tempers in the certainty of immediate fierce retaliation by the Israeli state. Domestically, the war is necessary for Hamas, a bourgeois party, to keep the mass of the dispossessed in the Gaza Strip subdued.

The deadly Israeli Air Force bombardments are not against Hamas but against the population, to push them, in desperation, to side with Hamas or seek its protection. Bombing militarily makes no sense, in the tunnels underground life goes on, and the ruins are only an obstacle to armored action. The German defeat at Stalingrad teaches this.

But the massacres by the Israeli air force benefit all the bourgeoisie in the area. It is a warning to workers, Egyptians, Syrians, Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese: this is fiery wrath of your local bourgeoisie.

That is why in imperialist warfare, in which brigands among themselves share the spoils, it is profoundly wrong for the working class to take sides.

Knowing the relations and interests of imperialist blocs and their changing sides is important, to refute we communists the lie behind their "morals" and their false "international law". But for the working class, the enemy is at home. The war is not so far away. In fact the class war every day the proletariat fights it.

The bourgeoisie has its centers of analysis and study for military and economic issues. But above all it has its state, the supreme organ for its defense as a class. The proletariat today has its party, tomorrow it too will have its state, temporary but inflexible, which will be able to deal with the bourgeois enemy states with defeatism and war on war.

 
In Ukraine

While attention is focused on the massacres being perpetrated in the Middle East, Russian armed forces are marking progress in eastern Ukraine: in the southern Donbass region, the country’s industrial heartland, they have occupied the mining town of Vuhledar after a resistance of nearly three years. A few days later they entered Toretsk, another important center on the Pokrovsk route, a key access junction to the region.

The fall of these cities confirm that Ukraine, despite its government’s bellicose declarations, will have to surrender to the greater strength of the Russians.

Even during this tough battle, as in many episodes of this war, Ukrainian soldiers were forced by their commands to hold out to the last, even when it was evident that any further sacrifice would be in vain. The surviving troops had to retreat under enemy fire, which was approaching from three directions. Hunted down by drones over their heads ready to launch grenades, under mortar and rocket fire and with the constant threat of guided bombs, the Ukrainian soldiers had to flee on foot to save themselves.

This shows how much the Ukrainian government and General Staff care about the fate of their soldiers,defending the "aggrieved homeland", who are increasingly sent to the front without adequate training and armament. Many young recruits try to abandon the front, deserting.

The lack of the class party, the absence of an organized labor movement, and the consequent rampant individualism, prevent this refusal to fight from taking on a collective aspect today, from being transformed into a movement against the imperialist war that, starting from the trenches, involves the proletarians in the cities, taking on classist and anticapitalist connotations.

The lies of the bourgeois Ukrainian government match those with which the equally bourgeois Russian government defends its war, called a "special military operation".

It is actually a war against the Atlantic Alliance and the United States, which is very interested in striking, in addition to the Russian state, the German ally and Europe in general. A Europe increasingly linked economically with Russia and China.

Arms manufacturers everywhere are doing a brisk business. While many tens of thousands are dead or maimed proletarians at the front, the industries for war are working at full capacity. In Russia, unemployment would have all but disappeared. The blood of Ukrainian and Russian proletarians is spilled in defense of the interests of capital, arms suppliers, industrialists and bankers. Through war capitalism seeks to overcome its economic crises of overproduction and settle scores between rival imperialist blocs, making its wage slaves pay the price.

The Debate Over Long-range Missiles

In September in the upper echelons of diplomacy of the United States, Britain and European states, the possibility of allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory with missiles supplied by Western countries was discussed. For their use, in fact, Ukrainian personnel are not enough, but Western technicians are needed.

The "experts" were already taking the concession for granted. The foreign minister of Britain’s new Labormajority government, but as militaristic and warmongering as the previous "rightwing" one, had even gone to Washington to urge President Biden to assent. But in the end this decision was again postponed. The reason may perhaps lie in the threatening intervention of the Russian government, which said it would respond very harshly. But also because of the doubts expressed by many governments in NATO itself, such as Germany and Italy.

The use of these missiles, from a military point of view, could not change the fate of the conflict, and lead to "victory" in the Ukrainian camp. Last week both U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby clearly illustrated their substantial military futility.

But Kiev insists on this demand only to involve the Allies in the war: it knows that it has no resources to hold out much longer and seeks an escalation of the conflict and its widening.

The Russian government, for its part, has made it clear that if it is allowed to launch those missiles, it will consider itself at war with NATO, respond militarily and has even threatened the use of the atomic bomb.

The European Parliament, which sees war as good business and tanks as a useful substitute for electric cars, which are "environmentally friendly" but do not "pull", has passed a resolution calling on states to remove restrictions on the use of weapon systems supplied to Kiev against Russian military targets. While this decision is not binding on individual states, it demonstrates that the European one is a warmongering lobbyist assembly. This is confirmed by the appointment of former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, a member of the Fatherland Party and the strongly anti Russian European Conservative Group, as European Commissioner of Defense.

The Adventurous Foray into Kursk

In early August Ukraine launched a daring offensive in the Russian Kursk region, using surprise and speed to outflank Russian defenses. The operations were led by a mixed group of units, totaling about 10,000 to 15,000 men, with elements of regular brigades and special operations forces. These were some of the best and most experienced Ukrainian troops.

Some were withdrawn from the Donetsk and Kharkiv fronts, where they were fighting the Russian advance, while others would serve as an important reserve to stem it.

This operation, which immediately received the support of Western diplomacy and was prepared in cooperation with the intelligence services of Britain and probably the United States as well, is turning out to be a major failure.

The purpose was probably the capture and control of the Kurchatov nuclear power plant and the Sudzha power distribution node, as well as forcing the Russians to divert some of their troops from the offensive in Donetsk.

Neither goal was achieved. The nuclear power plant remained in the hands of the Russians, who used the superior availability of assets and soldiers to stop the Ukrainian advance without diverting units from the Donetsk front. The commanderinchief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces himself, Oleksandr Syrsky, said Russia had intensified its efforts and deployed its most combatready units to the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk.

Moreover, the invasion of Russian territory by enemy troops, with the blatant technical, material and training support of Western powers, reinforced Moscow propaganda based on the syndrome of encirclement of the homeland and aggression by the West.

Diplomacy Talks Peace While Expanding War

The difficulties of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are reflected in recent statements by President Zelensky, who, going against a law he himself had passed, proposed inviting Russia to the next peace summit scheduled to be held in November. A few days later he made another trip to the U.S. to present his bumptious "Plan for Victory" and to call for new loans and weapons to continue the war.

According to the Financial Times, Ukraine and its allies are considering a possible deal that would see Kiev join NATO in exchange for a compromise on Russianoccupied territories. Russia would gain "de facto" but not "de jure" control of the currently occupied Ukrainian territories, a fiction by the Ukrainian government to justify before its people the sacrifices, deprivations, and nefariousness it has imposed to fuel the war.

This situation of uncertainty and diplomatic vacuum increases the danger of provocations that could lead to a widening of the conflict. The blows struck in recent days on important ammunition depots inside Russia seem to respond to provocative will rather than to results on the military plane. Ukraine risks collapse and its rulers risk their heads, while the vaunted reconquest of "all occupied territories" would demand costs in men and weapons that not only Ukraine but not even its Western allies can afford and do not want to shoulder.

The Russian government, which immediately rejected the invitation to participate in peace talks, also has quite a few problems to solve. Although tens of thousands of young men have been sacrificed in this war and many voices even in Russia are ready to demand an explanation, for Moscow, the occupation of the Donbass alone would probably not be sufficient to provide the soughtafter security guarantees, especially if Ukraine, though maimed of part of its territory, joins NATO. Russia’s objectives therefore could expand and the war continue.

But even when peace is reached, it can only represent an uncertain truce in preparation for the general war that is brewing.

Let the proletariat, the Ukrainian proletariat as well as the proletariat of Russia, who have suffered deprivation and death in recent years because of their capitalists’ war, draw the painful lessons and turn against the criminal instigator, which is the bourgeois regime and its states.

This is the only true historical dissolution, the transformation of war between states into war between classes, the overthrow of bourgeois power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which alone can pave the way for communism.