Lula’s position on Ukraine and his opposition to military aid is not some aberration motivated by narrow personal or national interests. Left parties and movements across the Global South have articulated similar perspectives. The Canadian left ought to echo Lula’s principled stance. It is time to end the horrors in Ukraine and push for peace.

A case could be made that what is wrong with much of contemporary Western foreign policy is that it’s so concerned about deontology that it’s lost all track of consequences. Full of good intent, determined to do what it is “right” by promoting democracy and human rights, we embark on policies that fail utterly to do any good and more generally do a lot of harm.

Even if Ukraine were in some sense to win the war, what sort of sovereignty would the Ukrainian people, its working class, possess? What social forces would be dominant in this victorious Ukrainian state, where all opposition parties and media have been banned and whose reconstruction would depend entirely on American and European generosity?

The recent Australia, US, and UK $368 billion deal on buying nuclear submarines has been termed by Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister, as the “worst deal in all history.” It commits Australia to buy conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines that will be delivered in the early 2040s. These will be based on new nuclear reactor designs yet to be developed by the UK.

Many of the apologists for the war in Iraq seek to justify their support by arguing that “mistakes” were made, that if, for example, the Iraqi army was not disbanded, the occupation would have worked. They insist that our intentions were honorable. They ignore the hubris and lies that led to the war, the misguided belief that the US could be the sole major power in a unipolar world.

The defeat of the Russian army is now the only solution for our country which has been taken over by thieves and obscurantist reactionaries trying to destroy education and abolish remaining human rights, including the most basic ones that were upheld even under Stalin. Putin’s victory would be the worst disaster to befall Russia in modern history.

The fighting in and around Bakhmut won’t be another Stalingrad or Verdun, because what is taking place isn’t history repeating itself and nor can it be. It is important to remember that the use of historical parallels is not about the past as some sort of benevolent actor talking to the present, but often about political actors in the present trying to mobilize the past for their own ends.

There will come a time when the Ukrainians, like the Kurds, will become expendable. They will disappear, as many others before them have, from our national discourse and our consciousness. They will nurse for generations their betrayal and suffering. The American empire will move on to use others, perhaps the “heroic” people of Taiwan, to further its futile quest for global hegemony.

For the West to be supporting the idea that Crimea should be recaptured and forcibly re-incorporated into Ukraine—without even attempting to find out whether their populations want that—is just another indicator of the sort of double standards than have and continue to undermine the credibility of Western diplomacy across much of the world.

Rather than eat some humble pie and break ranks with their equally deluded colleagues both at home and abroad, politicians like Joly would rather watch tens of thousands more be killed and wounded in fighting that is unlikely to fundamentally change the ultimate outcome of any future negotiations. It is our moral duty to try to help them see sense.