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Why the West fears ceasefires

The demand for peace reveals much about those who reject it — the imperialist politicians who know war is the heartbeat of Western capitalism, writes ANDREW MURRAY

“CEASEFIRE.” It is the word imperialism hates today. The devil would rather chug holy water than the US and British governments would have the guns fall silent and the warplanes stay grounded.

No ceasefire in Gaza. No ceasefire in Ukraine. Each generation seems to need to learn the lesson anew — imperialism means war. Endless war.

But not identical wars. Each conflict has its own configuration and sits embedded in its own narrative.

Nevertheless, it will escape nobody that the countries pushing for a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war and those demanding an end to the Israeli assault on Palestine are very much the same.

And the politicians underwriting war, most saliently the Rishi Sunak/Keir Starmer duopoly in Britain, are the same in both cases too.

So, war and peace are central to our politics. It limps on, bloodily and purposelessly, in Ukraine, where the front lines have barely shifted all year.

It massacres in Gaza and threatens to engulf the wider Middle East, with the US poised to intervene directly.

And its shadow hangs over the Pacific region, as Washington moves to block the emergence of China as a systemic global rival.

In all this, Britain faithfully echoes the US position to a fault. That position is: no ceasefire, no peace, no de-escalation.

War is an ineluctable tendency inherent in monopoly capitalism, as competition for markets and resources — ultimately profit — mutates into inter-state conflict for hegemony and protected spheres of commercial domination.

In that sense, war is profit, or an extension of the profit system, which becomes the more acute the more profits are contested.

But war is also a policy. No particular war is unavoidable, its prolongation is never inevitable. That is politics, and thus province of governments on the one hand, and the masses on the other.

So why are the US and British governments now committed to an open-ended war in Ukraine and backing Israeli aggression, now in its 75th year including a 56-year illegal occupation, to the hilt?

It is not enough to point to the profits of arms firms, the perennial beneficiaries of human conflict. That is a factor, but a subordinate one, although the Guardian headline “Hamas has created additional demand: Wall Street eyes big profits from war” was certainly arresting.

Underlying is the reality that imperialism can only maintain its position through violence at present. That may seem like a statement of the obvious, but in fact imperialism, like the capitalist state in a domestic framework, would usually prefer to have its way through acquiescence buttressed by the implicit threat of violence rather than its perpetual exercise.

A ceasefire in Ukraine would leave Russia undiminished as a rival to Washington in the region, so they would rather bleed it white at whatever cost in lives. This is a hot war that also starts a cold one — for now — against China.

Likewise, an end to the murderous assault on Gaza would compromise Israel’s standing as a policeman securing Western interests in the wider Middle East, a project that had been going rather well, Abraham accords and all, prior to October 7.

Israel is more than a US instrument, it should be said. It is also seen by most, if by no means all, Jews as a refuge and a guarantee against another Holocaust. That reality should not be set aside.

But its ultimate dependence on Washington has seldom been more patent. Israel takes its place as a powerful state in the global network of imperialism, which is its tragedy.

In both wars, Washington is doubling down. It pours more arms into the Ukraine stalemate, and sends aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean, while itself attacking targets in Syria that are purportedly Iran-connected.

Yet for all the hyper-militarised swagger, US global hegemony has never been more brittle. The votes at the UN general assembly prove it. So does the rising power of the Brics bloc, with all its inner contradictions and limited coherence.

So too the reluctance of the global South to endorse the US campaign against Russia.

Above all, the rise of China economically and politically threatens the position of the US across the world.

For the US and its British satrap, peace is not a winning strategy in this situation. War, even with all its risks, is a better bet for keeping the world order on the road a little longer.

So war it is, even at the expense of moral collapse.

How can the Russians be sanctioned for attacking vital civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, yet Israel be given a free pass to wreak the same devastation in Gaza? The world sees the hypocrisy and judges the imperialists accordingly.

Even Paul Mason, reliable weathervane of imperialist social democracy, worries. There must be a ceasefire in Palestine, he writes, because: “The longer this goes on, the more the West loses influence across the world. So a ceasefire is a strategic necessity, beyond humanitarian reasons...”

For Mason, a pause is necessary in the Middle East in order to keep momentum going in Ukraine. The loss of support in the global South prejudices Western hegemony even in Europe, an inversion of tradition which only a European social democrat could fail to appreciate.

Nevertheless, Mason is brighter than his leader, who has done himself irreparable damage by his endorsement of Israel’s denial of food, fuel and water to besieged Palestinians.

That was no mistake, whatever the subsequent spin. The proof? Shadow cabinet patsies Emily Thornberry and David Lammy said the same thing the next day.

It took Starmer nine days to start walking back his blunder, after a haemorrhaging of local councillors and a drop in Labour support amongst British Muslims to vanishing point.

He has proved, as he did with his putative ban on shadow cabinet members attending picket lines during the strike wave, that he does not understand his party, nor the wider Labour electorate.

Starmer’s commitment to elite politics, and above all to the bipartisan signifiers of British imperial power — fealty to Washington and Nato, nuclear weaponry, and support for Israel — is the only thing about him that is not changeable.

He, too, is doubling down, as the wild suspension of Andy McDonald shows.

The contempt felt for Starmer’s Labour on the streets today is palpable. And the streets are playing their part. Three consecutive weekend demonstrations — vast in numbers, angry yet united in a common humanity.

Once again young Muslims have allied with the established anti-imperialist left, recreating the alliances first forged in the anti-war movement of 2002-2003. It is breaking from a Labour Party putting its very worst foot forward in the crisis.

As with the strike movement, it demands political articulation. Who can lead the ceasefire party against the champions of imperialist war? It is one of the more important questions of the hour.

What the Bible tells us about genocide

In case you’re wondering about the Amalekites whom Netanyahu invoked at the weekend, urging the Israeli military to treat the Palestinians in the same fashion:

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Samuel 15.3).

There are, indeed, no Amalekites any more. The world has been warned.

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