It is all too often a characteristic of movements without power to seek consolation in fantasies – and delusions of granduer.

The Plan for “Another Ukraine” from Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, and endorsed by John McDonnell and others rests on gigantic contradictions.

Graph from Ukrainian support for war effort collapses, which continues

More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in early July — 69% say they favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible, compared with 24% who support continuing to fight until victory.

This marks a nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022, when 73% favored Ukraine fighting until victory and 22% preferred that Ukraine seek a negotiated end as soon as possible.

• With a majority of Ukrainians now wanting peace,
• and recognising that reconquest of Russian speaking territory in the East and Crimea is not realistic, even if they wish it were,
• and driving the war on and on is now dependent on increasingly aggressive and deeply unpopular press ganging,
• as soldiers from the front desert in increasing numbers

USC nevertheless continues to play its role of covering NATO’s control of Western Ukraine with a series of progressive sounding fig leaves.

On the one hand they call for “trade unions and civil society” to bloc with the British, European “and allied” imperial states to carry on cheerleading for the war, on the other they call for outcomes which cannot possibly be achieved through working class subordination to such a bloc.

• The chance of a Ukrainian reconstruction under the aegis of Western powers that does not leave Ukraine’s natural resources exploited “by Western corporations and oligarchs” is nil. The existing reconstruction plan, agreed by the Ukrainian government and the West in 2022 hands the job over to Blackrock. This simply cements the process of privatisation of land and assets that accelerated sharply after 2014, and is partly what Western intervention in Ukraine is FOR.
• Likewise, what level of fantasy do you have to be capable of to imagine that any reconstruction deal in Ukraine, run by its current Oligarchy in subordination to the EU and US, would “empower Ukrainian trade unions and civil society” or “withdraw the proposed Labour Code that restricts workers’ rights and unions”? Thats the last kind of deal they’d even consider, unless they are defeated. The authors of this “plan” must be aware of that, but they put it up all the same.

To achieve either of these aims would require the defeat or overthrow of the Ukrainian oligarchy. Or sufficient pressure on it by a mobilised working class in western Ukraine, with international support in the context of a defeat, that would force it to make concessions. This is not possible if sections of the Left in Ukraine, and internationally, continue to subordinate the working class to backing the war effort in a framework of a national unity that lionises Fascists like Stepan Bandera, denies self determination to the large Russian speaking minority, and seeks to “Ukrainise” the others. When the resistence to conscription becomes a movement for peace, on this “plan”, USC will oppose it.

Trying to mobilise support for increased weapons flows, and the (unspecified but enormous) finance required, means an attack on working class living standards across Europe. Do John McDonnell, or any of the other signatories, imagine that European imperialist governments are going to put the costs of this war onto the backs of the class whose interests it serves? And, if we did have governments committed to massive wealth redistribution in the imperial heartlands, would they also not be looking for a peaceful modus vivendi with the Russians, and others?

This line of thinking becomes positively farcical when they state that we have to “Recognise Trump’s alignment with Putin”. Really? Now?

This line was a convenient one for the European ruling classes, who have used it to mobilise support for exactly what Trump wants, a doubling of European “defence” expenditure, when they already outspend the Russian by 3.5 to 1, during the period when Trump was trying to woo the Russians away from their international bloc with China – the better to pick them both off later. This has been characterised as a “reverse Nixon” or “reverse Kissinger”; which underlines one reason it hasn’t worked. The Russians have a bitter experience of how that worked out for them last time.

Commentators from Timothy Garton Ash to George Monbiot talked this up a storm while they could; and its possible they believed in it. Its a bit more difficult to sustain now that Trump is shooting his mouth off about apocalyptic sanctions on countries that continue to trade with the Russians and deploying nuclear armed submarines “close” to Russia as an explicit warning. And, after a brief revival during the Alaska talks Trump is now making statements like this.

“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia”.

“Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND. How did that work out? Regardless, this is a war that would have NEVER happened if I were President – ZERO CHANCE. Interesting times ahead!!!”

Making Trump’s “betrayal” of Ukraine, as if it was ever anything other than a poisoned pawn for US interests, a major plank in mobilising opposition to his state visit in September now looks absurd as well as self defeating. Getting angry that the core of global imperialism is not being aggressive enough in one of its proxy wars, is a self destructive emotion. What do they want him to do, send more nuclear subs?

Now he knows that his wooing attempt on the Russians has failed, Trump is trying to cut his losses. If he goes for a deal at the Alaska talks, this will be to try to freeze the conflict more or less as it is, so that the current inexorable Russian advances are stopped before the Ukrainian Armed Forces collapse like the South Vietnamese Army did in 1975 – putting the asset stripping deal he has already made with Kyiv at risk. This is not inevitable, but tipping points do get reached. Either way, even if he doesn’t, he has already outsourced the resourcing of the war to Europe. So, if the war continues, Ukrainians will fight and die, US arms firms will profit, and the European working class will pay for it.

This is not in our interests.

The last, and probably most important, point is what they mean by a “just peace”. It seems an a priori position on their part is that a “just peace” is one that does not take any Russian concerns into account; a Western imposed one.

In my last blog on this issue I asked USC supporters three questions about the initial Russian proposals to settle the conflict in Ukraine without a war in 2021. These were;

1. No further NATO expansion
2. No forward deployment of US forces or weapons into Eastern Europe
3. A ban on Intermediate Range Missiles
4. A limit on military manouvres and activities
5. Limits on nuclear weapons
6. A Mutual Security Pledge
7. Establishment of Consultation Mechanisms
8. An Indivisibilty of Security Principle.

These seem to me to be to be the basis of a just peace, not simply for Ukraine, but for Europe as a whole. The questions for USC supporters are

• which of of these proposals do you disagree with?
• Would an agreement on these lines be a viable way to end the war?
• Would an agreement on these lines have avoided it in the first place?

I have had no answers. The silence is deafening.

As it is impossible at this point in the war for the West to impose a peace on its terms, the USC “plan” is nothing more than the subaltern Left playing its part in NATOs current attempt to spin the war out in the hope that something will turn up, while it retools its military industrial complex enough to intervene more directly by the end of the decade.

This would, of course, be a suicidal course of action that will be averted by resistance to rearmament and a NATO defeat in Ukraine; at which point “another Ukraine” becomes impossible to avoid.