{"id":50714,"date":"2024-12-28T08:01:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T16:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=50714"},"modified":"2024-12-28T08:01:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T16:01:39","slug":"what-would-you-say-this-war-is-about-tom-knapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/28\/what-would-you-say-this-war-is-about-tom-knapp\/","title":{"rendered":"What Would You Say This War Is About, Tom Knapp?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\"Bakhmut,<\/a>
Bakhmut, 2023. State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More than 40 years after its release, an exchange in the opening scene of Warren Beatty\u2019s Academy Award-winning film\u00a0Reds<\/em> floats to the front of my mind whenever I think about war.<\/p>\n

Master of Ceremonies: \u201cI, for one, see no reason why we here at the Liberal Club shouldn\u2019t listen to what Jack Reed has to say. What would you say this war is about, Jack Reed?\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed, standing, looking a bit confused and annoyed: \u201cProfits.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The one-word answer, while correct \u2014 Reed, as a staunch Communist,\u00a0 held to some fairly silly ideas on economics \u2014 was also incomplete.<\/p>\n

World War One was indeed about profits. It was a clash of declining empires: Empires purpose-built to\u00a0 rake off a share of profits, taken by imperially protected business enterprises from colonized places and peoples, for the benefit of the imperial political classes.<\/p>\n

World War Two largely killed off the old empires, but created new ones for its victors, the US and the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Eighty years later, the declining remnants of THOSE two empires (and even smaller European remnants of the imperial age) rage against the dying of their light, scrapping over territory and the attached profits in the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and, of course, Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Nearly three years into the second phase of that war (the first phase involved the 2014 secession from Ukraine of, and subsequent \u201cfrozen conflict\u201d over, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea), I\u2019ve still got friends who want to believe the war is over \u201cdemocracy\u201d versus \u201cauthoritarianism,\u201d \u201cprotecting ethnic Russians from literal Nazis,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n

In fact, that war is, and always has been, about whether poor, politically corrupt \u2014 but resource-rich, and geographically located in ways that maximize its strategic importance \u2014\u00a0 Ukraine will go forward as the US\/EU\/NATO imperial satrapy it became in 2014, or revert to its former status as a Russian imperial satrapy.<\/p>\n

In other words, it\u2019s about profits for Rome on the Potomac versus profits for Constantinople on the Moskva.<\/p>\n

An odd bifurcation: Whenever I point this fact out on X, I\u2019m accused of being \u201cpro-Russia.\u201d Whenever I point this fact out on a site where I frequently comment, I\u2019m accused of being \u201cpro-US\/EU\/NATO.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m going to stick to my guns \u2014 pardon the militaristic turn of phrase \u2014 on this one.<\/p>\n

There are no \u201cgood guys\u201d at the policy level here. The only moral principle at stake is whether it\u2019s acceptable for imperial gangs to murder each other\u2019s colonial serfs to benefit their own political classes.<\/p>\n

I say no, but hey, that\u2019s just me. Your mileage may vary. If it does, and if you think you must take a \u201cside\u201d in this war other than the side of peace, at least be honest with yourself about what you\u2019re supporting.<\/p>\n

Thomas L. Knapp (X:\u00a0@thomaslknapp<\/a>\u00a0| Bluesky:\u00a0@knappster.bsky.social\u00a0<\/a>| Mastodon:\u00a0@knappster<\/a>) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bakhmut, 2023. State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. More than 40 years after its release, an exchange in the opening scene of Warren Beatty\u2019s Academy Award-winning film\u00a0Reds floats to the front of my mind whenever I think about war. Master of Ceremonies: \u201cI, for one, see no reason why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[816],"class_list":["post-50714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50714"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50725,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50714\/revisions\/50725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50714"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}