Iran and Ukraine: Take a stand based on principles and not on sides

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If what I am seeing on Twitter is accurate (and Google Translate isn’t garbling it), Russia is heading for another big collapse in the Kherson region that could end up with its entire military adventure in Ukraine in ruins. 

After such a fiasco, it is hard to see Russia’s President Vladimir Putin surviving. Russia has twice had a revolution after a military collapse, in 1905 and (more successfully) in 1917.

At the same time, the anti-regime protest in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for not wearing the hijab, is escalating, rather than being brought under control by violent suppression. It has spread now to school children and there is no sign that fear is stopping it.

Are these events turning points or, as some would have it, CIA plots to undermine anti-Western forces who are standing up to imperialism?

Neither of these events has the typical hallmarks of a CIA Cold War intervention. Typically, the US supported the wrong side for a country claiming to be the “leader of the free world”. For example, in 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup to overthrow the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in favour of elevating Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to an absolute ruler. 

Pahlavi, while promoting economic development, was overthrown in 1979 in the face of growing popular resistance to autocratic rule and was replaced by an Islamic Republic, which is now also facing popular resistance. Ironically the current popular resistance is more similar to that which overthrew the Shah than a typical CIA plot, which starts with elites.

Contrast also with South Africa, where the United States government at least tacitly supported the apartheid regime with some exceptions. Jimmy Carter, for example, introduced human rights as a major component of his foreign policy. Even Carter was inconsistent; he was slow to drop support for the Shah when it was clear that the people of Iran didn’t want an authoritarian government.

In Ukraine, the turning point was the mass protests that resulted in President Viktor Yanukovych being removed from office in 2014. Putin apologists call this a CIA coup, yet this too does not have the hallmarks of a CIA intervention. It was a mass movement that persisted despite lethal force by the government. It was more like Soweto 1976 than Iran 1953. Similarly, Iran today is clearly a popular uprising, not the sort of thing the US typically supports.

It is dangerous logic to assume that everything the US does is imperialism, therefore everything that opposes them is anti-imperialism.

Any government that tries to enforce its will by force beyond its own borders is imperialist. A government that tries to enforce its will on its own people is authoritarian. Neither is progressive, no matter what cause it supports outside these situations.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia has been involved in numerous wars, many of which cannot be justified purely as an intervention as peacekeepers. Much of this conflict has involved components of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. Russia has also had a major role in other conflicts such as Syria.

The US has also been involved in numerous conflicts: Iraq (twice), Afghanistan and Libya, to list the most obvious. Add these to Cold War conflicts, where the US was often on the wrong side, and it is easy to see that those who oppose imperialism have a good case to be sceptical of any conflict in which the US takes part.

But that does not mean that no one in opposition to the US is also an imperialist. The US at least has a strong civil society that can oppose its own excesses. What Russia and Iran illustrate is that an authoritarian regime is not self-correcting, nor does it correct based on civil society criticism.

None of this makes one kind of imperialism better than the other; we should stop trying to pick our favourite imperialism and work towards ending the concept once and for all.

How do we do that?

A good start is to pick causes and principles, not sides. That means we do not rally around the flag but behind the right side of an issue. Sometimes this can be hard because of old allegiances. Many in Africa are old enough to remember the Soviet Union being on the side of liberation while the US and United Kingdom were at best lukewarm on apartheid and supported the wrong side in many liberation struggles. In the Middle East, many see Iran as a bulwark against US imperialism.

We need to remember that the anti-apartheid movement put human rights on the international relations map. And that is a position of principle, not one of taking sides.

If we remember who we are, our history and how we got here, we should support the people of Iran against an authoritarian regime and the people of Ukraine against a war of aggression even if it temporarily puts us on the side of imperialists we normally abhor.

Tomorrow, when a different issue comes up, we judge it on its merits. And oppose our current “allies” if they are on the wrong side of that issue.

And that is real liberation. We can be ourselves on every issue, rather than being anyone else’s proxy.

Philip Machanick is an associate professor of computer science at Rhodes University. 

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.