Thread by @DavidNorthWSWS

The World Socialist Web Site will be posting later today a comprehensive statement on the outbreak of war in #Ukraine. This is a preliminary outline of the position of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI): 1/

Despite US/NATO provocations and threats, Russia's invasion of Ukraine must be opposed by socialists and class conscious workers. The catastrophe that was set in motion by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 cannot be averted on the basis of Russian nationalism. 2/

What is required is not a return to the pre-1917 foreign policy of tsarism, but, rather, a revival, in Russia and throughout the world, of the socialist internationalism that inspired the October Revolution and led to the creation of the Soviet Union as a workers state. 3/

The invasion of Ukraine, whatever the justifications given by #Putin, will serve only to divide the Russian and Ukrainian working class, and, moreover, serve the interests of US/NATO #imperialism. 4/

Putin has fallen into a well-laid trap. By refusing to discuss Russia's objections to Ukraine's integration into NATO, the Biden administration used the country as bait. It incited the invasion, which will now be used as a pretext for escalating the confrontation with Russia. 5/

Claims by the Biden administration that the US will not become involved in the Ukraine war have no credibility. US military forces and armaments are pouring into Poland, the Baltic and Black Sea region. 6/

The US is providing advanced weaponry to fascistic Ukrainian paramilitary forces with the intention of prolonging the conflict and exacting significant Russian losses. 7/

Mounting external threats, combined with efforts to strangle Russia's economy, increase the likelihood of expanding the war beyond Ukraine. Biden has again declared that in a confrontation involving Russia with any NATO country, the US will use the "full force" of its power. 8/

This can only mean that nuclear war is not only possible, it is likely. The danger is far advanced and greater than at any previous time. Biden stated today that relations between the US and Russia have completely broken down. 9/

The rupture of diplomatic relations between the US and Russia never happened during the Cold War, not even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. A breakdown of relations has throughout the twentieth century been identified with the outbreak of a shooting war. 10/

That the US/NATO is prepared to take the world to the nuclear war, with all its horrific consequences, testifies to a staggering level of recklessness and aggressiveness that now prevails in all the centers of world imperialism. 11/

How is this to be explained? The present confrontation with Russia is the outcome of a geopolitical strategy pursued by the United States since the dissolution of the USSR 30 years ago. Its aim has been US global hegemony, using military power to offset economic decline. 12/

This has been the source of the numerous and unending series of wars launched by the US, involving the invasion and/or bombing of Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Of course, this history of illegal wars goes unmentioned in the media today. 13/

These wars have all ended in tactical and strategic defeat, undermining the striving for global hegemony. These failures has increased US anxiety over the challenge its faces from China. 14/

But the major impulse for the provocation of this crisis has been the #Pandemic, which has brought the social and political crisis within the United States to a boiling point. The #Covid_19 death toll is approaching one million. 15/

The intensified stress placed by the Pandemic on a society already torn by extreme social conflict has brought the political system to the point of breakdown, exemplified in the attempted coup of January 6, 2021. /16

The Biden administration, which has publicly expressed its fear that the US democracy may not survive the decade, hoping to manufacture domestic unity and project conflict outward through the medium of war. /17

The American crisis is only the most extreme manifestation of the state of world capitalism. The danger of a catastrophe can only be averted by the action of the working class, within the US and throughout the world, on the basis of a revolutionary socialist program. /18

A fundamental principal of this program is the rejection of the defense of the "national state," a historically obsolete political structure whose existence is in contradiction to the dominance of world economy and the global interdependence of the productive forces. 19/

As Trotsky explained in 1934, in the crisis-stricken years between World Wars I and II, "The task of the proletariat is not the defense of the national state but its complete and final liquidation." 20/

The ICFI calls for an immediate end to the war. In opposing the invasion of Ukraine, we denounce the policies of US/NATO imperialism, whose claims to be defending democracy and human rights are blood-drenched with hypocrisy. 21/

The only way to fight war is to fight for socialism. We urge working people, students and youth to join this struggle. 22/22