Ask Lemmy

Everyone believes their cause is just. Every conflict ever can be framed as defensive. The US has compared every major conflict since WWII to stopping Hitler, even cases like Vietnam. My mother once quoted, "All that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing" in the context of supporting the invasion of Iraq.

If You investigate and deconstruct the concept of "defensive" wars (as You are so wont to deconstruct concepts) then You will find that they are entirely dependent on socially constructed ideas about "legitimacy." If Switzerland does not have "legitimate ownership" of Zurich, then to station troops there or to fight against Zurich being occupied by foreign powers would make Switzerland the aggressor. It could be argued that, when the US invaded Vietnam, it was merely "coming to the aid" of the Republic of Vietnam, which had requested our aid (nevermind that they were our puppet). Likewise, in Ukraine everything about how you view the conflict is dependent on who you think is legitimate - the "consensus" interpretation in the West is that the central government is legitimate and the separatists are just Russian puppets, while the pro-Russia view says that the separatists are legitimate and the central government just Western puppets.

So V.I. Lenin observes:

...the bourgeoisie [of all the imperialist nations] are always ready to say—and do say to the people—that they are “only” fighting “against defeat”.

Funny enough, this observation was shared by Leo Tolstoy, the Christian Anarchist/Anarcho-Pacifist, who writes:

For ever since the beginning of the world, the use of violence of every kind, from the Inquisition to the Schlüsselburg fortress, has rested and still rests on the opposite principle of the necessity of resisting evil by force.

World War I is a prime example of how things can go wrong. There had been a major socialist movement at the time across every major country in Europe, and there had been a significant fear that, should the imperialist powers start a major war like that, it would lead to a coordinated revolution across all of Europe. But instead, when war broke out, the social democrats all found reasons to rally around the flags of their respective countries. They were committed to keeping their positions within the realm of acceptability, and the war narrowed that realm of acceptibility to the point that coordination with ordinary people of other countries (or genuine opposition to the war) was considered treasonous. So, all the social democrats of Europe rallied around their flags and drafted proles to go out and kill each other for no good reason.

If Your "anarcho-antirealist" stuff is supposed to have any merit at all, then it ought to allow You to recognize that the concept of "defense" is largely arbitrary - or are You seriously of the belief that national borders have some inherent natural truth when even the law of gravity does not?