so i visited a tankie subreddit to get a view into the opposing perspective. i take it ya'll agree with this assessment?
The primary contradiction is imperialism.
Imperialism is a system of global financial hegemony enforced by US dollar hegemony and NATO.
Imperialism is not "big country attack small country"
Russia is fighting a proxy war against a US backed Banderite Nazi regime that was installed after a coup in 2014.
Russia is anti-imperialist because they fight against the hegemonic financial system of the west.
Supporting Russia is what all principled Marxist-Leninists support.
Russia's opposition to NATO expansion and U.S. unipolarity objectively weakens the global imperialist system. It doesn't matter if they are socialist or not, Russia stands at the center of a popular front against Western imperialism, just as the Soviet Union once did. They provide material and military assistance to every country that opposes the system of Western imperialism that has ruled the world for the last 400 years.
Furthermore, Ukraine is a Nazi outpost of the imperialist system. Their government is illegitimate since it was overthrown by a Western coup in 2014. Russia has every right to protect the Russian minority living in Ukrainian occupied territory from Banderite Nazis who want to genocide them.
Eh, let me say it in a way that sounds a little less 4chan.
Pax Americana is indeed an expression of American Empire - bases everywhere, domination of sea lanes, global currency and underwriting of commerce, cultural hegemon, and arsenal of Democracy. This is the best a dominant great power has ever behaved in human history and it is a beautiful thing for the human race. It is a moral failing for the US to withdraw completely from world affairs and allow the so-called rules based system to collapse which would lead to a dark age of sorts.
Where's the rub? Pax Americana was not established solely with military force. Yet, somehow, leftists clamor for Russia to be met with American military force. Russia is too big and too loaded up with nuclear weapons to be considered among the massive cohort of minors that will crumble under American diplomatic influence at the flip of a switch, and thus should be respected. I said respected, not ass-kissed. By respect, you know your rival. You know their goals and desires. We know that Ukraine is deep within the Russian sphere of influence and falls entirely behind the carpathian/baltic/etc western corridors that Russia considers a "safe" level of expansion as a means to protect against Western aggression as indeed Russia has been subject to multiple western invasions that while failed inflicted grievous damage. Expanding NATO into the entirety of Ukraine is a catastrophic misstep. It's overextension, it's provocative, it's bullying, frankly it's clumsy, and it betrays the spirit of how Pax Americana came to be in the first place. It's like inserting a tumor next to your rival that you already knew they would aggressively try to expunge, similar to Hull against Imperial Japan. Except against Imperial Japan, we already had a plan to dismantle them. Against Russia, we do not and will not for the foreseeable future. When you don't respect your rival, you don't learn them, you underestimate them, and then you fail.
It's okay to admit a mistake was made even as the world hegemon.
In a saner world, Russia could be, probably at best, a begrudging frenemy, like China is now. Tension, mutual spying, condemnation, all of it, but still keeping trade mostly open and free. This would ONLY help the American rules-based world order. Russia sits on virtually unlimited natural resources that it doesn't have the capital or manpower to develop and could be a boon to the world rather than the sole source of a Russian war machine's funding as it is now. (Russia as a massive trading partner rather than exporting their stuff to buy more drones and missiles to use in a pointless grinding proxy war) So because of American hubris, instead of anchoring Russia into a manageable state, we have a radicalized, militarized, dependent on China, desperate Russia with nothing to lose and this only hurts the American rules based world order.
This post was edited by Thebarba on Dec 6 2025 08:02pm