Russia Archives - Invent the Future

Video interview with Carlos Martinez: The Soviet Union, Socialist China, and the New Cold War

Carlos Martinez talks to Midwestern Marx about the conflict in Ukraine, NATO’s ongoing war against Russia, cultural development in the Soviet Union, the Soviet collapse, China’s role in combatting climate breakdown, the nature of China’s reform and opening up, the 20th National Congress of the CPC, and possibilities for the future of working class internationalism.

Interview with Carlos Martinez: The US aims to weaken Russia and further its long-term project of containing China

Carlos Martinez talks to Papagiotis Papadomanolakis of the The Press Project about the conflict in Ukraine, the persistent attempts by the US to divide Russia and China, and the rise of a multipolar world. The interview took place in English and was first published in Greek.

Our discussion is taking place while a special military operation is taking place to denazify and demilitarize the Kiev regime, which came to power with the support of Washington and the neo-Nazis. How is the current conflict in Ukraine linked to the broader strategy of the United States against a multipolar world?

The US has been escalating the conflict in Ukraine in a very cynical way. If it were in the slightest bit interested in ending tensions and establishing a stable peace in Europe, it would have encouraged the Kiev government to implement the Minsk Agreements and to respect the legitimate national rights of the ethnolinguistically Russian section of the Ukrainian population, particularly in Donbas. It would furthermore have stated explicitly that Ukraine would not be invited to join NATO – as opposed to saying, as President Biden did in December 2021, that “the decision on Ukraine’s accession to NATO is the decision of the Ukrainian people.”

Instead, the US has actively fomented tensions in order to consolidate its geopolitical hegemony over Europe. The US and its allies provided significant resources for the Maidan coup in 2014, because they understood that the Maidan leadership was unambiguously pro-West and anti-Russian in orientation, unlike the Yanukovych government, which aimed to have good relations with both Russia and the West.

The US in particular has been vehemently opposed to a federal solution to the crisis in Southeastern Ukraine, as this would potentially give Donetsk and Lugansk veto power over Ukraine joining NATO and becoming fully inserted into the US’s so-called rules-based international order. That’s how the national oppression of the peoples of the Donbas became a question of geostrategic significance; that’s the basis for the tactical alliance that’s been formed between the US, its supposedly liberal friends in Kyiv and Lvov, and the assorted ‘ultranationalist’ (that is, fascist) militia that have been waging a campaign of terror for the last eight years.

US leverages Ukraine crisis for NATO expansion, to push Europe further into chaos

The following article by Carlos Martinez, on the aggressive and expansionist nature of NATO and the importance of dismantling the military architecture of the New Cold War, is a slightly expanded version of an article originally published by Global Times on 15 April 2022.

NATO was formed in 1949, just four years after the end of World War II, to provide military infrastructure for the US-led Cold War alliance. Its existence allowed the positioning of American troops and weaponry in Europe, ready for rapid deployment against the Soviet Union and the newly formed People’s Democracies in Eastern and Central Europe.

NATO’s purported raison d’être was to protect its members from Soviet aggression and expansion. Yet when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1991, there was no serious discussion about disbanding NATO. Indeed NATO only became more aggressive.

In 1999, NATO forces launched an illegal bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, bypassing the UN Security Council and committing numerous war crimes. Hospitals, schools and market places were targeted, and depleted uranium bombs were dropped. Notoriously, even the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was attacked, resulting in the death of three Chinese journalists.

Between 2001 and 2021, NATO led a sustained assault on Afghanistan, causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties, holding back the country’s development, and achieving precisely nothing of value for the Afghan people.

In 2003, NATO countries launched an illegal war on Iraq, resulting in the death of an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis. Then in 2011, stretching the definition of a ‘no-fly zone’ beyond the limits of imagination, NATO led a regime change operation in Libya, leaving the country in ruin and chaos.

Nobody can seriously argue that NATO is fundamentally defensive in character. It is an aggressive, nuclear alliance designed to enforce US hegemony.

Responsibility for Ukraine crisis lies in Washington and Kyiv, not Moscow

The following article by Carlos Martinez, giving an overview of the causes of the escalating crisis in Ukraine, was originally published by CGTN on 26 February 2022.

Contrary to the superficial analysis in much of the Western media, the escalating crisis in Ukraine is not a product of any psychopathology on the part of Vladimir Putin. Nor has it emerged out of thin air. It represents the culmination of a storm that has been brewing for many years.

There are two key components of this situation that are crucial to understand.

First is the issue of Russia’s security. During talks with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his team about the reunification of Germany in 1989-90, Western leaders made firm commitments that NATO would not seek to extend its borders eastward and that Russia’s legitimate security concerns would be taken seriously. Yet in the event, as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying has commented, “the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons,” in a clear breach of the commitments made by George HW Bush and Helmut Kohl. Since the 1990s, 14 states in Central and Eastern Europe have joined NATO.