EDITORIAL
$40 Billion to Escalate War in Ukraine

May 23, 2022

Joe Biden has signed into law a bill passed by Congress to send massive amounts of mostly military aid to Ukraine—40 billion dollars worth. This is even more than Biden initially proposed. Republicans and Democrats in Congress, who haven’t addressed any of the problems faced by the population here, agreed with little to no discussion to 40 billion dollars for war.

All this money and military weaponry is in addition to what the U.S. had already been sending weekly to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion. And it is on top of the weapons and military training that the U.S. had been providing to Ukraine for many years prior to this. The U.S. and NATO’s military aid to Ukraine is now more or less equaling the entire military budget of Russia.

Biden signed this latest military aid just a few days after he had welcomed the leaders of Finland and Sweden to the White House and encouraged them to join NATO. Sweden and Finland had already been somewhat militarily aligned with the U.S. and NATO. But with these countries officially joining NATO, it will encircle Russia militarily, because Finland shares an 800-mile border with Russia. It will also strengthen NATO’s control over the Baltic Sea and could limit Russia’s access to it.

These latest moves by the U.S. government are not a move toward bringing about any kind of peace. It was the U.S. and NATO’s policy of encircling Russia and arming the countries on Russia’s border that pushed Putin to invade Ukraine in the first place. And the U.S. sending more and more military weapons to Ukraine is not going to end this war any time soon, either. Just the opposite, it looks to extend this war.

While the U.S. media has proclaimed the success of Ukrainian forces in driving back the Russian military in some places, it is also true that, with its capture of Mariupol, Russia has now consolidated its control over southeast Ukraine. Russia is building defensive military fortifications in this area, and it has begun to organize economic and political control over southeast Ukraine. If the U.S. government’s goal is to push Russia out of Ukraine, it will mean an even greater escalation of this war.

Whatever their intentions are in Ukraine, the latest actions of the U.S. government show us the future that they are planning for the people of Ukraine, for people in this country and for people in the rest of the world—a future of wars.

Yes, it was Putin who ordered this brutal and criminal invasion of Ukraine. But it was U.S. imperialism’s policies which laid the groundwork for this war. It is the U.S. government which organized NATO after World War Two to militarily threaten Russia. It is the U.S. government which has military bases in 75 different countries. It is the U.S. government which sends its troops to every corner of the world, including right up to the border of Russia. And the latest moves by the U.S. government show that they are doubling down on this policy of aggression, a policy which can only lead to more wars, future wars, bigger wars.

Today the people of Ukraine are the ones who know what that means. Thousands have been killed and millions have been forced from their home. The Ukrainian economy is in shambles, grain is not being shipped and its effects are being felt around the world.

If the people of this country and the world want a different future than what is happening in Ukraine today, then we can’t leave the future in the hands of those who run a system based on wars.

The working class of Ukraine, the working class of Russia, the working class of the U.S., the working class of the entire world does not benefit from this war, or any war. We are its victims. But the working class of the entire world, including this country, also has the power to fight for a different future, a future without wars.