Above: supporters of Burkina Faso’s anti-imperialist leader Ibrahim Traore after he came into office in October 2022, photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP
The most significant impact of Russia’s Ukraine operation is the one it’s had upon the global anti-imperialist struggle. Because Russia successfully beat back NATO, and could keep building up its economy amid the sanctions, the remaining illusions of American strength were shattered. It revealed the true nature of today’s strategic situation, showing Washington can no longer crush the anti-imperialist forces as easily as it used to. And those who paid serious attention to Operation Z knew that if they joined in on this uprising against U.S. hegemony, the enemy would become further weakened.
Both the Sahel’s anti-colonial revolutionaries, and the Palestinian resistance, have been acting with Russia in mind. When Burkina Faso and other Sahel countries overthrew neo-colonial rule two years ago, the crowds which rallied behind these efforts were waving Russian flags, showing the hope Russia had instilled among much of the Global South. And when Gaza’s resistance coalition carried out the Al Aqsa Flood operation, this came after a Hamas official had declared that Ukraine represented the end of Washington’s dominance. Because Russia had emboldened these anti-imperialist forces, it became inevitable that a domino effect would follow, with more movements and entities becoming part of this revolutionary process. The Houthis blocked ships in the Red Sea to resist the Gaza genocide; South Africa led an effort to prosecute the genocide’s perpetrators; Colombia, traditionally a close ally of the Zionist entity, fully fell out of the entity’s orbit.
The Palestinians are now closer than ever to freeing their land, because Zionism has vastly accelerated its own collapse. Hamas knew that Al Aqsa Flood would be able to bring things to this point, and Russia helped give it this foresight; it was clear that if all of NATO’s combined efforts couldn’t get Russia out of Ukraine, then Washington’s unlimited military aid would never be able to eliminate the Palestinian resistance. The Al Qassam Brigades are in a stronger position than they were on October 6, with Hamas membership now being bigger than it was back then; which guarantees that the entity’s next aggressions will backfire even harder than its last ones. At the same time, the post-Z actions of the Sahel’s revolutionaries continue to weaken the hegemon’s grip over Africa; the Sahel countries have completed their evictions of U.S. troops, and this has inspired the Ivory Coast and Senegal to kick out the imperial forces as well.
These actions represent what comes after the emergence of multipolarity, and after the rise of BRICS; for multipolarity to bring revolution, the peoples across the globe must wage revolutionary struggle. This is increasingly what’s happening across a growing number of countries, which is what alarms monopoly capital the most. The imperialists are trying to reverse the recent anti-imperialist gains by working to buy off the leaders of the China-aligned countries, and thereby leave the PRC isolated. But if we keep advancing the class struggle, this scheme will fail, like Washington’s Ukraine strategy did.
The next stage in this struggle looks like an international effort to counter the hegemon’s plans for war with China, and to bring a new wave of revolutions. Such a mission can only be undertaken on the same basis as that of the Palestinian and Sahel revolutionary movements; this being principled commitment towards ending U.S. hegemony. These movements understand the need to take this task seriously, because the people behind them have a material interest in taking it seriously; the Palestinians are living under a genocidal occupation, and the masses of Africa continue to be viciously exploited. When they see Russia win against the hegemon, a common reaction from them is to be encouraged. That’s why they’ve been able to take advantage of this moment, while the leftist orgs in the imperialist countries have kept stagnating.
To be an effective revolutionary in the 21st century, you need to properly grasp our geopolitical situation; you must recognize that this new world war is one between pro-imperialist forces and anti-imperialist forces. The leftists and “Marxists” who’ve opposed Z say they want an international proletarian movement, but if they were capable of building one, they would have built it decades ago. The actors which can seize the post-Z era’s opportunities are the ones who recognize the revolutionary significance of Z, and who are dedicated to the class struggle.
The class struggle aspect is something anti-imperialists must be careful not to overlook. Because just as it’s possible to support class struggle in concept, while undermining this by failing on anti-imperialism; it’s possible to support multipolarity while neglecting class struggle. That’s the error we’ll make if we act like BRICS will do all the work for us, and use the anti-imperialist movement’s global successes as an excuse to be complacent. The anti-imperialist struggle’s recent victories did not come about on their own; the proletariat needed to bring these victories into being.
Z wouldn’t have happened if not for the class struggle. It was the Donbass miners who led the mass movement to push Russia into intervening against the Kiev fascists; and during the crucial moment in February 2022, it was Russia’s Communist Party that provided the political pressure for Z to be undertaken. The infantile left’s big mistake on Ukraine has been to view Z as Putin’s war, when really it’s a war that’s come out of the Russian people’s anti-fascist spirit. To portray Z as the product of a plan from Russia’s ruling class is to insult the country’s proletarian revolutionaries, who’ve tirelessly worked to make their bourgeois government defy NATO. We who’ve supported Z cannot commit this same error, and view the wins from these last several years as having come about through a top-down effort; it was the efforts of the proletarian movement that made Russia’s anti-fascist action a reality. The lesson to take from this is that any future progress can only come about if more of the globe’s workers do what Russia’s workers did, and take on an active role in history.
Will Russia’s working class define the next direction their country takes? That will mainly be determined by the outcome of Russia’s internal political struggle, though we in the United States can also influence this by working to combat Trump’s cold war maneuvers. The Trump team’s strategy is to diplomatically sway all of China’s major partners, leaving the PRC more vulnerable to Washington’s planned East Asia war. One of our central goals must be to frustrate this scheme. Applying scrutiny towards Russia’s liberal pro-appeasement elements is part of how we can do this; but the most significant way we can help the anti-imperialist forces in places like Russia is by getting our own country’s proletarian movement behind them. By building ties between anti-imperialist groups and the unions; and thereby pushing the labor orgs towards joining in the fight against U.S. hegemony.
This is how we expand our domestic workers movement into the geopolitical struggle, which is itself an extension of the class struggle. If we can bring organized labor into the anti-imperialist fight, the proletarian movement will be strengthened in all places; we’ll be able to form a global united front against the hegemon, one that has class struggle as its driving force.
We’ve been getting closer to achieving this. The rise of the pro-Palestine movement has already led to a working-class backlash against the labor leadership’s bourgeois, pro-imperialist elements; we must further this effort to defeat the forces of opportunism. As we get involved with the unions, we need to help increase agitation for solidarity with the Palestinians, and with all other peoples who the hegemon is assailing. It’s this tactic that can take the revolutionary cause extremely far; far enough to bring the capitalist state’s overthrow within reach. In the last three years alone, our allies abroad have massively furthered the revolutionary struggle; now it’s time for us to fulfill our own role in this.
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