Image Transcription:
An 8-panel Phoebe Teaching Joey meme.
The first panel is Phoebe from Friends saying "Russia".
The second panel is Joey from the same show replying with "Russia".
The third panel is Phoebe saying "has invaded".
The fourth panel is Joey repeating back "has invaded".
The fifth panel is Phoebe saying "Ukraine".
The sixth panel is Joey repeating back "Ukraine".
The seventh panel is Phoebe saying the completed phrase "Russia has invaded Ukraine".
The final panel shows Joey proudly proclaiming "NATO just started a proxy war".
There are many hypothetical ways. For example, that might prevent further war in the future, or might be the continuation of an existing conflict. It might alter the balance of power in the world in a way that is eventually beneficial to working class struggle. Hell I can think of thousands of ways in which not starting a war would have been worse than starting it. The fact that you can simply stamp a meme, appeal to emotion and make a huge logic jump without a single word is perplexing.
Ok, so I need to think bigger, ok:
The invasion has shifted a lot of power in Europe back into NATO and the MIC.
If russia gets anything out of this, it will only demonstrate that challenging borders by force is worth it to all authoritarians out there (even the ones you don't like). Keeping unilateral border change taboo is one of the most effective ways to prevent wars, by removing the long-term economic incentive at the short-term cost of lives and working class suffering.
If russia gets what it wants, expect more nuclear proliferation and a more unstable political landscape.
Humiliating the UN as a mediator and multilateralism by adopting an offensive realist perspective where the strong impose and the weak suffer...those are some working class values right there.
All of these are major working class losses, but keep dreaming about how russia's violence is going to bring about your working class utopia on these foundations of violent bullshit.
Those are very good points, and I agree with most of them. Overall I think this invasion is detrimental to the international interests of the working class. The only part where I disagree with you is that I think bringing about a more unstable geopolitical order (a side effect of the path the conflict has eventually taken) is beneficial, as it will weaken the mechanisms holding together imperialism. I might be wrong though, and I would like to discuss this more in depth to hopefully understand what options I should support. But I fully reject the argument expressed by this meme and some of the people in this thread, as such simple (even emotional) reasoning tends to give me paranoia that I'm being manipulated by ideas created by propagandists. Is it okay if we continue this conversation in the dms?
The assumption that "a more unstable geopolitical order" will "weaken the mechanisms holding together imperialism" seems incredibly flawed, to put it in charitable terms.