Zizek's cretinous criticism of Neutrality

 Just at the time when the US Secretary of State has gone on the record to say that neutral countries like China and India have had an effect on Putin's decision not to go nuclear in Ukraine, Slavoj Zizek has an article in the always shitty Project Syndicate, claiming that there is a Dark Side of Neutrality

The problem here is that there is an even darker side to commitment and a truly calamitous side to hypocritical commitment. 

In the year since Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine,

That year was 2014. The West preferred to concentrate on killing Muslims rather than standing up to Putin. 

 large developing countries like Brazil, India, and South Africa have sought to remain above the fray.

This isn't their war. It also isn't the West's war. We don't see Prince Harry's old comrades killing Russians the way they killed Muslims. 

 Yet, as with Western “pacifists,” these countries’ non-alignment amounts to tacit support for imperialism.

The West's interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were imperialistic. Iraq has lots of petroleum. The West did manage to kill over a million Muslims and to displace tens of millions more, but they lost their Imperialistic war which they termed 'Regime Change'. That shite won't fly any more. Currently, the West is willing to shed the blood of every last Ukrainian to stop Putin in his tracks. This is very generous of them. But it isn't boots on the ground is it? Russians aren't Muslims. Also they have nukes.  Ukraine very foolishly gave up its nuclear weapons in return for guarantees from the US and UK and Russia. 

Last May, before being newly re-elected as president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, bear equal responsibility for the war in Ukraine. 

Biden bears more responsibility than Zelensky. Biden has been firm in his belief that Russia is a power in terminal decline. The problem is that China isn't. A cohesive Eurasian power block turns the clock back to 1955 except that China is now much much more powerful. By the end of the decade the a China led economic block may be the biggest and fastest growing economic grouping on the planet.

Yet whether the refusal to pick sides comes from Brazil, South Africa, or India, claiming to be “neutral” on Russia’s war of aggression is untenable.

Fuck off! What is untenable is siding with the West which butchered Muslims with vim and vigor wherever they were able to do so. In any case, the Global South is sick and tired of being lectured about human rights or being threatened with Magnitsky sanctions. The US had a Visa ban on Modi. Biden said he wouldn't shake hands with the Crown Prince. The old fool has no fucking credibility. Imran Khan turned down his invitation to the Democracy summit. Singapore and Bangladesh weren't even invited. The US must be kept at arm's length. China, on the other hand, may return to a transactional approach with those country with which it has border conflicts. 

The same is true of individuals. If a passerby saw a man relentlessly beating a child on a street corner,

would the passerby give money to the child to buy a weapon to defend itself? No. The person has a duty to physically intervene or arrange such intervention. If that is not possible, the person should shut the fuck up, not lecture others. What Zizek is doing is not, it is true, publicly flogging a child. He is beating his own meat. 

 we would expect the witness to try to stop it. Neutrality is out of the question. On the contrary, we would deplore the moral turpitude of inaction.

We must condemn our own moral turpitude for not declaring war on Russia and launching our ICBMs at them. 

How, then, should we respond to Roger Waters’ recent remarks to the United Nations Security Council? In a video call, the activist and Pink Floyd co-founder claimed to be speaking for “four billion or so brothers and sisters” around the world. He acknowledged that Russia’s war in Ukraine is illegal and should be condemned “in the strongest possible terms.” But then he hastened to add: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine was not unprovoked, so I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms....

Biden and his disgusting son have their greasy, greedy, mitts all over this shit show. Zelensky bears no blame. 

[T]he only sensible course of action today is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. Not one more Ukrainian or Russian life is to be spent, not one, they are all precious in our eyes. So the time has come to speak truth to power.”

This is perfectly reasonable. It is obvious that, whichever side wins, a substantial minority will be evicted from their homes. 

Is Waters’ “truth” really an expression of neutrality?

No. It is an expression of humanitarian concern. Zizek is as stupid as shit.

 In an interview earlier this month with Berliner Zeitung, he said: “Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am now more open to listen to what Putin actually says. According to independent voices I listen to, he governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government.”

The rest of us loathe Putin because we have listened to what he has been saying recently. 

As an independent voice who follows Russian media very closely, I am well acquainted with what Putin and his propagandists “actually say.” The major TV channels are full of commentators recommending that countries like Poland, Germany, or the United Kingdom be nuked. The Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, one of Putin’s closes allies, now openly calls for “the fight against Satanism [to] continue throughout Europe and, first of all, on the territory of Poland.”

A cohesive Eurasian power-block would prefer to fight on EU territory. Since Europe still doesn't have a unified military command and since Biden's America has a yellow streak, these threats must be taken seriously. Zelensky knows this. His own people have shown extraordinary valor. But morale can collapse very quickly. By contrast, Eurasia could solve its logistical problems and spend the next ten years inching forward. The big question is the credibility of NATO's nuclear umbrella. America may chicken out and France might prefer a smaller, more defensible, Europe. Currently we think Ukrainian soldiers would be a valuable addition to an European Army. But, we may change our views if their valor proves unavailing against the industrial might of a Chinese led Eurasian block. 

Indeed, the official Kremlin line describes the war as a “special operation” for the de-Nazification and de-demonization of Ukraine.

The Serbs similarly complained that the Croats were all Ustashis.  

Among Ukraine’s “provocations” is that it has permitted Pride parades and allowed LGBTQ+ rights to undermine traditional sexual norms and gender roles.

Last year they had to shift it to Warsaw.  

Kremlin-aligned commentators speak of “liberal totalitarianism,” even going so far as to argue that George Orwell’s 1984 was a critique not of fascism or Stalinism but of liberalism.

So, the Rooskis have commentators as shite as those of Project Syndicate. Big surprise.  

One finds nothing like this in the Western media, where the main motif is that we should help Ukraine to survive.

Unless they can't in which case fuck 'em.  

As far as I know, nobody has demanded that Russia’s borders be changed, or that some part of its territory be seized.

Coz Putin has a fuck ton of nukes. We won't mess even with starving North Korea coz it has a couple of atom bombs. As an Indian General said, the message of the Yugoslav war was 'get nukes. Nobody fucks with you, if you have nukes.'  

At worst, one finds counterproductive demands to boycott Russian culture, as though Putin’s regime somehow represents the likes of Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, and Tolstoy.

This shitty article is just as bad. 

Just as we are supporting Ukraine against an aggressor,

with money and weapons 

so should we defend Russian culture against its abuser in the Kremlin.

with money and weapons?  

We also should avoid triumphalism and frame our objective in positive terms.

If we are the fucking Prime Minister or President- sure. Otherwise we'd look stupid taking out a victory parade up and down the aisles of Waitrose.  

The primary goal is not for Russia to lose and be humiliated, but for Ukraine to survive.

Which it would even if shorn of enough territory to keep the Wagner group happy. 

“Neutral” countries outside the West contend that the war is a local conflict that pales in comparison to the horrors of colonialism or more recent events like the US occupation of Iraq. But this is an obvious dodge.

No it isn't. The plain fact is that the West has been doing nothing but what Obama called 'stupid shit' all over the place for 20 years now. Biden & Co engineered Ukraine's split with Moscow. It started paying a price for this from 2014 itself. Going by past form, the West will give up and China, and its junior partner, Russia, will prevail over the course of the remainder of the decade. The Ukrainians will be left in the lurch just as those Afghans or Iraqis or Syrians who worked with NATO were left in the lurch.  Unless they aren't coz Ukrainians, after all, are White and Christian.

After all, Russia’s imperialist war is itself an act of colonialism.

Colonial wars are fought on non-contiguous territory. This is a war of expansion based on a territorial claim of a Nationalistic type. Russian speaking Ukrainians are supposed to want to be united to Mother Russia. The rest are all reincarnations of Stepan Bandera. Zelensky, being Jewish, is obviously a Nazi like Hitler.  

Those who would claim neutrality forfeit their standing to complain about the horrors of colonization anywhere.

No they don't. Ireland was neutral during the Second World War. Da Valera was a great friend of anti-colonial leaders like Nehru.  

Waters is a vocal exponent of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonization.

He's a pop-star. Also he is eighty fucking years old!  

Why is Ukrainian resistance to Russian colonization any less worthy of support?

You can give money to Palestinian organizations just as you can give money to Ukraine. Since I don't have any money I tend to offer my jizz to any attractive women from such places. Sadly, this has gotten me beaten up on many occasions.  

Sometimes, things really are as simple as that, especially now that Russia is preparing to celebrate the anniversary of its war with a new offensive. It is obscene to blame Ukraine

more particularly if you use your own jizz to pen letters of complaint 

for Russian acts of destruction, or to mischaracterize the Ukrainians’ heroic resistance as a rejection of peace.

Zizek does not go far enough. Why not say that it is obscene to belabor the wife of the Ukrainian Ambassador with your dick for rejecting your offer of jizz? I'm not saying it is the sort of thing I would do. It could happen to anybody.  

Those, like Waters, who call for “an immediate ceasefire” would have Ukrainians respond to redoubled Russian aggression by abandoning their own self-defense.

That's not how ceasefires work. Zizek is as stupid as shit.  

That is a formula not for peace, but for pacification.

No it isn't. A ceasefire can be the first step to a withdrawal of the invader.  

It bears mentioning – once again – that Russia is counting on the “neutralist” argument eventually to prevail.

No. It is counting on Ukrainians despairing and surrendering.  

As the military historian Michael Clarke explains, “the Kremlin’s plan will be to keep fighting until the West gets fed up and pressures Kyiv into appeasing them with whatever territory they have taken by then.”

No. The plan is to go back to its original war-aims once the tide of war turns. The fact is, without a neutral Ukraine, the Eurasian power block is vulnerable.  

Russia is digging in for a protracted war that will include the quiet mobilization of some 600,000 soldiers every year for the “indefinite future.”

More, if China jumps in with both feet.  

Waters is almost right: Ukraine is indeed “provoking” Russia by refusing to submit to its imperial ambitions, even in the face of desperate odds. At this point, the only way that it could stop provoking its aggressive revisionist neighbor would be to lay down and surrender. The same, Waters would agree, is true of Palestine.

Only if Waters is as stupid as shit. Russia wants Ukraine to say 'We're Russians too. Ukrainian is just a rustic dialect. Also we hate gay peeps.' Nothing similar could be said of the Israelis and the Palestinians. Indeed, the Conversion Authority of Israel refuses all Palestinian applications.  

But surrendering to imperialism brings neither peace nor justice.

Unless it does. Equally, vanquishing imperialism can put an end to peace and the rule of law.  

To preserve the possibility of achieving either, we must drop the pretense of neutrality and act accordingly.

No. To achieve peace we need to have a threat point that deters aggression. Justice involves having good Laws and a competent Judiciary and so forth. 

Neutrality is the right policy if we don't have 'skin in the game'- i.e. our vital national interests aren't affected- or if being a belligerent causes our obliteration. Getting into a war just coz all the cool kids are doing so is stoooopid. 

Zizek was born in the former Yugoslavia. That country benefited by pursuing Non-Alignment, as did India and Egypt and many other countries. Back then, no small or even medium sized nation could stand up to the might of the Super Powers. America had about 8 million soldiers abroad at the end of the Second World War.  The Soviet Union had about ten million men in Europe. Now, the Biden doctrine is, 'you fight if you want to. Maybe we will give you money and weapons. But, then again, maybe we'll just tell you to fuck off.'  

What is the Putin doctrine? We don't know yet. I think Putin is signaling that he will do what China did in the Eighties and early Nineties when it felt weak. It helped Pakistan and North Korea to get nukes. Putin is saying that's what he will do in Latin America. What about Iran? They may prefer to stay non-nuclear or nuclear ambiguous like Japan. The question is whether the US will permit Taiwan to have that same status. Much depends on the 2024 Taiwanese election. It is possible that China can be appeased and Putin isolated. Otherwise, the reality is that Eurasia will dominate and the West will be isolated and transactional while everybody else would be non aligned save in so far as they show cohesiveness against Magnitsky type sanctions.