What internationalism in the context of the Ukrainian crisis? Wide open eyes against one-eyed “campisms”

Abstract

Was it correct and efficient on internationalist point of view to chose one “main enemy” (and “camp”) during the Kosovo’s crisis and war (1999) – and in Ukraine, after Maidan’s upsurge, Yanukovich’s fall, Russian's annexation of Crimea and “hybrid war” in Donbas? This article argues against “campist” approaches in both contexts, because they lead to downsizing criticisms of real relations of dominations within the chosen supported “camp”, preventing the establishment of real conditions for popular self-determination. Instead of producing concrete analysis of concrete (changing) situations, “campist” positions tend to underestimate both new international unstable and opaque relations and the relative (even if difficult) autonomy of popular upsurges not to be reduced to “pawns” manipulated by great powers.

Keywords:

• Maidan
• Ukrainian crisis
• Kosovo’s crisis
• NATO
• self-determination
• campism
• hybrid war
• internationalism

Notes

1. The use of the same concept – “imperialist” – for different forms and content of domination is not helpful. There are continuities but also sharp discontinuities between “imperial” tsarism, Great Russian Stalinism and since the capitalist restoration, the emerging new kind of imperialist powers in Russia and China, to be analysed precisely. There was no need to qualify a relationship of domination as “imperialist” (or “capitalist”) to reject it. Whatever was the precise “phase” of the Serbian transformation into a capitalist society at the time of Milosevic's rule, it would be stupid to consider it as “imperialist”: the “neither, nor” criteria did not mean a “symmetry”: for the destruction and discredit of the Yugoslav socialist project, Milosevic's policy was much more disastrous than Nato.

2. See Vicken Cheterian (ed.) From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions, (Hurst publication, 2013).

3. This formula is generally used to describe the different forms of a non-declared war, as used by Putin. But it can also picture here the combination of civil war and of real Russian external intervention. The mothers of Russian soldiers have denounced the killing of their sons in Ukraine; and Russia could not, politically, permit a defeat of “pro-Russian” rebels: in August 2014, there was increased external military aid combined with political changes both aimed at a better control over self-proclaimed leaders, but also to give them a more “Ukrainian” profile – before international negotiations.