Almost every week we have coverage of what is going on in the war between Ukraine (which is being armed, financed, and given a lot of strategic direction by the U.S.) and Russia. From nearly the beginning of the war, the extent of U.S. aid, coordination and de facto direction have turned this into a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. Almost as frequently, we cover how the U.S. imperialists are increasingly threatening and preparing for war with China, which is also an imperialist power.

Why? Not only because there is terrible—and needless—suffering on account of this proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. And not only because this war—as well as the war preparations against China—could spiral disastrously out of control and end up in a nuclear holocaust. The U.S. rulers use these wars to advance what they see as their “global” (that is, imperialist) interests, and while doing so to condition people in American chauvinism—that is, as Bob Avakian has called it, the disgusting view that Americans are better than other people. But we also give this close coverage because this war with Russia and the war threats against China could, in a flash, change everything very radically—including the political terrain on which people are working to make revolution.

The breakneck pace of the rivalry can seem chaotic and confusing. Here’s what’s been going on in just the past week:

Enormous armies are clashing on the plains of Ukraine, as Ukraine—backed by new infusions of weapons, cash and advice from the U.S. and NATO—has launched a major offensive… tense naval confrontations have taken place between imperialist powers on frigid waters above the Arctic Circle… massive assemblies of aerial weaponry have happened over the skies of central Europe… and “war games”—that is, active preparations and rehearsals of major armies to actually wage and win wars—have gone on in the vastness of the western Pacific Ocean.

If you listen to the “explainers” in this country, it all gets back to unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine, Chinese refusal to condemn this aggression and their continued relations with Russia, and “autocracy vs. democracy.”

This is like freezing one frame of a two-hour murder mystery movie and saying that’s all you need to know to understand the whole movie. But in fact, there’s a whole plot that leads up to the climax, and all the characters in this drama have “back stories” and motives that drive the action. Let’s take a minute to look at them.

The United States is on top in the existing global power alignment. It is fighting to maintain its domination of a global empire, an empire built on the backs of the vicious exploitation of billions of people worldwide, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America. During the time since World War 2, the United States has killed nearly 10 million people in wars for empire, whether directly through invasions or through the dozens of military coups they have carried out against governments that defied their dictates.

China is an on-the-rise and expanding power. It is pushing out everywhere, and challenging the U.S. dominance in some parts of the world. The U.S. has responded by violating previous agreements which recognized Taiwan as being a part of China; attempting to encircle China militarily in Asia and carrying out aggressive military exercises in that part of the world; trying to freeze China out of important industrial sectors; and whipping up people in the U.S. to hate and fear China.

Russia saw its empire feasted on by the U.S. after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The imperialists who took the reins of power in Russia in the early 1990s have watched as the U.S. violated deals it had agreed on and began to dominate more and more countries that Russia used to control.

In terms of what is going on in Ukraine, history did not begin in February of 2022 with the Russian invasion. In 1999 America began to violate an agreement made, when the Soviet Union collapsed, that the U.S. would not expand the NATO military alliance to take in countries that had formerly been part of the “Soviet bloc.”¹ Instead of keeping that agreement, the U.S. rapidly expanded NATO, and in 2008, then-U.S. president George W. Bush pushed NATO to issue a declaration that Ukraine—which borders Russia—would join NATO at a future time.

The next big leap was 2014, when the U.S. supported a coup against a duly-elected government in Ukraine that leaned toward Russia.

As the Ukraine government moved closer to the U.S. bloc—including putting its desire to join NATO in its constitution—the Russians then launched their invasion.

To be sure, that invasion is unjust and has wreaked tremendous suffering. But imagine the response of the U.S. if a government in Mexico asked to join a Russian military alliance. In fact, you hardly need to imagine it—the U.S. has carried out economic aggression, invasion, sabotage, and nuclear threats against Cuba over the past 60 years for breaking with the U.S. and coming under what was then the Soviet umbrella; and this economic aggression continues down to today. The brute fact is this: all of these powers are willing to bring down unbelievable suffering on millions and tens of millions of people to advance what they perceive to be their interests.

So all that should provide a very basic factual “context” for the articles we run nearly every week. In addition to that brief sketch, we are going to select key “background articles” every week to give you the deeper analytical background necessary to put these events in perspective. This week, we recommend you read:

• “DON’T WORRY ABOUT A NUCLEAR WAR—IF THERE IS ONE, RUSSIA WILL LOSE!”
  The Dangerous Demagoguery of Timothy Snyder On Behalf of U.S. Imperialism and Its Proxy War in Ukraine, by Bob Avakian
• UKRAINE: WORLD WAR 3 IS THE REAL DANGER, NOT A REPEAT OF WORLD WAR 2, by Bob Avakian
• Talk by Raymond Lotta: Piercing the Lies, Digging Beneath the Surface
  The Larger Dynamics of the World Imperialist System Driving the War in Ukraine... And a Lesson from When There Was a Genuinely Socialist Soviet Union