The need for an anti-occupation “International”?
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing Israeli apartheid regime’s occupation of the Palestinian people—most recently highlighted by the genocidal assault on Gaza—have placed in front of the world the twenty-first century “national question” or, put another way, the saga of national sovereignty vs. occupation.
Consider for a moment: If you put aside Putin’s bogus suggestion that he had to invade Ukraine in order to stop NATO’s expansion, he made it clear that he did not recognize the independent existence of Ukraine. Ukraine, as far as he was concerned—and despite international law and treaties—did not have a right to exist. If he needs to, he is prepared to take Ukraine apart as if he were dismembering a boiled lobster.
The Israeli government is equally prepared to eliminate the existence of the Palestinian people, again never recognizing the national legitimacy of an entire people.
One of the difficulties shared with the mainstream media by many leftists and progressives is that we look at the world one crisis at a time, frequently in isolation from other events. Thus, the invasion of Ukraine overshadowed everything, including the military junta’s vicious repression in Myanmar, the struggle of the Sahrawi people for national self-determination in Western Sahara, and, yes, even Palestine. Overshadowed, that is, until October 7, 2023, when everything flipped with the Hamas-led attack on Israel and the Israeli genocidal counterattack. After October 7, other world events seemed to disappear.
The result has been increased global attention to struggles for national self-determination and against occupations. These struggles, for many observers, seem to have appeared almost magically out of nowhere. But that is only an illusion since most of these struggles (e.g., Palestine; Western Sahara; West Papua; Kashmir; Kurds) have been underway for years, if not decades.
These struggles are also underway in the midst of and affected by clashes between global and regional powers. Obviously, Russia invading Ukraine is not only about exterminating the national sovereignty of Ukraine but also about repositioning Russia and its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Israel is a regional aggressive power but also an on-again-off-again instrument of US foreign policy. Kashmir is divided between India, Pakistan, and China; both India and China have each always claimed it as their own territory; and Pakistan has done nothing to support the unification and self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The list goes on.
These and other struggles against occupation are highlighting the reemergence in the twenty-first century of the national question (the question of consistent democracy in matters of national sovereignty). The national question, since the end of the Cold War, has fluctuated between battles for ethno-nationalist projects, e.g., Croatia, Serbia, Rwanda, on the one hand, and those fighting for a democratic solution to longstanding problems of national oppression, including but not limited to outright occupations. Ethno-nationalism has been the dominant feature and a very reactionary one at that, often accompanied by ethnic cleansing and war crimes. Genuine fights for national rights, such as the Palestinian and Sahrawi struggles, are not principally ethnic battles but seeking to remove a specific, historical form of oppression which has befallen a population through invasion and/or annexation.
The time has certainly arrived for a broader sense of solidarity in the face of imperialism, regional aggression, and occupations. We need to reclaim a vision and sense that existed in the 1960s of the commonalities of struggles, a vision that for years was contained in the notion of Tricontinentalism. But today, it is not only about battles on three continents of the global South. It is a global battle that is also within the hearts of existing and aspiring capitalist empires. It is a fight not for a multipolar world, but for a nonpolar world that recognizes the legitimacy of the national-territorial aspirations of populations that have been suppressed by imperialism and/or regional aggressors. Such national-territorial aspirations cannot be at the expense of other peoples, i.e., any continuation of population removal, but to borrow from Amilcar Cabral, should be about the ability of these populations to return to history.
We in the global North must make these struggles our own. The search for global peace has the national question as its cornerstone.
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Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a longtime socialist, trade unionist and international solidarity activist. Follow him @BillFletcherJr (Twitter), Bill Fletcher Jr. (Facebook) and billfletcherjr.com. He is the author of two works on labor, and two murder mystery novels.