Opinion – Latinoamérica21: The Latin American left and its vision of the war in Ukraine

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From an international law perspective, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine cannot be excused.

However, while no Latin American country voted against Russia’s condemnation at the United Nations General Assembly, countries such as Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cuba abstained, and Venezuela was absent.

In this sense, the position of some political actors on the Latin American left generates consternation.

For the former ambassador of Mexico to the United States, Martha Bárcena, her country’s vote came to define an official position that finally “took the right path, as a product of the work of Mexico’s mission to the UN”.

It was a correction to the ambiguities in the speech of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, according to the ambassador herself, was being pushed to distance himself from a clear and forceful condemnation of the invasion by the most orthodox wing of his party, the Morena.

The initial ambiguity of the government of Mexico is symptomatic of a difficulty that certain governments and political forces of the Latin American left had in positioning themselves in this new international political conjuncture.

The Puebla Group, which brings together leaders of Latin American progressivism, was also limited in its statements, both in substance and in form.

In his February 24 statement, he made a “cordial appeal to the parties involved, to maintain Ukraine’s peace and security, abandoning the path of military intervention and unilateral economic sanctions against Russia”, without mentioning the words “invasion ” or “aggression”.

However, two days later, he issued a second statement, condemning “the unilateral use of force and the serious humanitarian consequences”.

The reading of the international situation that part of the Latin American left did and continues to do is influenced by different factors. Some of them are evident.

For Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, the issue is to maintain a good relationship with the states that represent a counterweight to the US, and to which they can turn to overcome the sanctions and enmities they have with their northern neighbor.

This implies not only giving a nod to Russia, but also maintaining a certain harmony with China, which avoids condemning Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

This geopolitical positioning is similar, but not the same as that which seeks to distance itself from any type of aggressive action towards Russia, such as those implemented by the members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the European Union.

Here, too, commercial interests and expectations of possible foreign direct investment, especially from China, are paramount.

This group does not only include countries that define themselves as center-left, such as Argentina, but also right-wing governments, as is the case of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

But what is most regretted is that there are narratives that denote an ideological perspective that still persists in the region, despite its limitations: “naive anti-imperialism”.

It still believes in the official discourse of the state apparatuses of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and is willing to subordinate a progressive position consistent with orthodox Manichaeism in which everything the US does is contrary to the interests of the revolutionary spirit.

Within the framework of this crude Manichaeism, the war in Ukraine was presented as another episode of American hegemonism, which uses NATO to achieve its objectives.

There is a paradigmatic question posed in the media of Prensa Latina: “What is the United States’ objective in defending a not very popular government so far from its shores?”.

From this position, this left made a series of conceptual contortions, which basically justify the invasion of a sovereign country by a greater military power, something unacceptable when it comes to Latin America.

In the article “The naive anti-imperialism and the ‘westplaining’ that outrage Central and Eastern Europe”, it is argued that the Polish left was surprised by the paralysis in the taking of a position of its fellow travelers on a global scale, mentioning in particular the Latin America and Spain.

What is criticized is that the naive anti-imperialism presents the process of “expansion” of NATO as a unilateral will of the USA, when the expansion was not a unilateral incorporation of the countries of the extinct Soviet Union by the USA, but a process through which requests to join the club were accepted.

Each of the tickets was based on a sovereign decision by independent nations seeking to shelter under the defensive umbrella of NATO.

These countries did so precisely out of fear of Russia’s imperial impulse, which after the fall of the Soviet Union did not seem likely, but which with Putin became evident.

In the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Russia, the US and Britain agreed to the incorporation of Ukraine into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, whereby Ukraine would get rid of its entire nuclear arsenal.

In the same document, Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity, and was curiously presented to the UN Secretary-General by the then Russian ambassador to the organization, Sergei Lavrov, the country’s current Foreign Minister.

Evidently, that commitment was broken, to the point that today we are faced with bombing by unarmed civilians.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine should lead the traditional Latin American left, which has fallen into the dangerous path of denialism, to reconsider its positions.

Where is fascism, if not in Putin’s terrible realization, in which he declares that he is “convinced that this necessary and natural self-purification [sic] of society will strengthen our country, our solidarity, our cohesion and our ability to respond to any challenge?”.

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