The peace and anti-imperialist movement will never get much of a hearing from the American people, as long as it spends more time critiquing Biden and NATO than unambiguously condemning Putin and the immoral, illegal, and indefensible Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It seems like Putin’s order to invade Russia rested on some flawed assumptions of his and his underlings. The first – and the biggest – was an underestimation of the fighting morale and capacity of the Ukrainian people. Another was the depth and spread of a distinct Ukrainian nationality since 2014. Still another the reaction of the countries, comprising NATO. Instead of setting them once against another, as Putin anticipated, the invasion drew them together in common purpose to oppose Russian invasion. A fourth assumption was a misreading of how negatively the world would react to Russia’s invasion and war crimes. Finally, the level of resistence in Russia to the invasion, despite state organized repression of protesters and tight control of the media, was greater than anticipated.

Some days the sun shines, social boundaries are crossed, and freedom and justice ring!

It’s peculiar that the peace movement in the US and Europe doesn’t call for the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory. From what I see, its main demands are a ceasefire, negotiations, and de-escalation. All well and good, but, by themselves, they don’t get to the heart of this bloody war – Russian troops on Ukrainian territory. Why is that?

Under the pressure of the non-aggression pact, signed by Hitler and Stalin on August, 23, 1938, most of the communist movement, including the Communist Party, USA, kept its distance from the widening war between Hitler’s remilitarized Germany and other European states. With its signing, the military clash became overnight no more than a fight between imperialist states with no democratic or anti-fascist content in the eyes of the communists. In the U.S. Roosevelt, not Hitler, became the party’s target of criticism and vitriol. Much the same, albeit with different particulars, happened elsewhere. It was’t until June 22, 1941 when Hitler’s invaded of the first land of socialism did this policy change.

Overnight, the inter-imperialist conflict in the political imagination of the communists turned into an existential, all class fight for democracy and against fascism. In the U.S., it would be led in the U.S. by none other than FDR.

In today’s circumstances, I can see echoes of this mistaken policy once again insofar as the democratic, anti-imperialist content of the war between Russia and Ukraine shows up on a much lower register of the communist movement than the clash between NAT0 and Putin’s Russia. As is said, past is prologue to the future.