TL;DR: “Multi-polarity” is simply a by-product of a declining US unipolar hegemony, the main question is in identifying the historical forces behind such movement and whether it is beneficial to the proletariat of the world.

First, the war in Ukraine is indeed an inter-imperialist conflict, but one that is between the US and European imperialists, with Ukraine and Russia caught in the middle as peripheral states.

To understand this, you first need to see this conflict as part of a much larger struggle between finance and industrial capital.

Ask yourself this: why would the US want to destroy Russia in Ukraine? Russia’s economy is tiny, it serves zero threat to the US hegemony unless we’re talking about nukes. Russia has no major industries that are in active competition with the US (name one except for military industrial complex - we’ll get to that in a moment), it has no financial foothold in the international stage (85% of the world’s transaction runs in dollar).

What does Russia have? What role does Russia play in the context of global imperialism? Serving as a cheap resource colony for Europe.

The European Union was formed in 1993 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and through the financialization of the crumbling post-Soviet economy, was able to establish itself as competing rival to the US imperialist hegemony. The establishment of eurozone in 1999 further threatens to compete with the dollar itself.

There are only two major rivals to the US today: China and the EU. To take on China, the US cannot risk Europe throwing its weight behind China which could tilt the balance of power away from the US. Therefore, Europe must be destroyed before the US financial capital can move to directly take on China’s industrial capital. Ukraine was the entry point to destabilize Europe.

After the global financial crisis of 2009, the EU was able to rapidly recover its manufacturing industries by forging closer economic ties with Russia. Nord Stream 1 opened in 2011, supplying cheap Russian gas to bolster European manufacturing sector. It is not a coincidence that the Maidan revolution happened in Ukraine in 2013. It is also not a coincidence that when Nord Stream 2 finished its construction in 2021, the US kept finding faults to delay certification throughout the year, and through endless provocations led to the war in Ukraine in 2022. As the Europeans began to cave in to the blowback of sanctions against Russia, both Nord Stream pipelines were bombed.

The above events, and the outcome of the war in Ukraine after nearly two years, can only make sense when understood in this context. Europe has been properly disciplined by the US, with its financial capital now completely aligned with the US, while sacrificing its industrial economy in the process. Europe was “forced” to donate their military hardwares to Ukraine, and are now being replaced by signing contracts with American military contractors. Most importantly, it is simply a prelude to the final confrontation with China.

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Second, once you have understood that the US global hegemony is largely financial in nature, you’d understand that no left wing governments and movements can flourish so long as the US imperialism remains in place.

Here’s what Michael Hudson wrote about Argentina, and the lesson about why every left wing government is forced to behave like a right wing government in the Global South (the election of Milei by the Argentinian people can only make sense once you have understood how the economic and financial arms of US imperialism work to further entrench its global hegemony):

Among the BRICS+ countries, Argentina is a case in point. Its foreign dollar debt has grown largely by IMF sponsorship. The IMF’s main political function in US foreign policy has been to enable pro-American client oligarchies to move their money out of countries whenever there is a chance of a left-wing or simply democratic reformer being elected. Convert their Argentinean currency into dollars lowers the peso’s exchange rate. Without IMF intervention, that would mean that as the exchange rate falls, the wealthy classes engaging in capital flight receive fewer and fewer dollars. To support the currency – and hence, the hard-currency dollars that capital-flight actors receive – the IMF lends the right-wing government dollars to buy up the excess pesos that the client oligarchy is selling off. That enables Argentineans to move their money out of the country to obtain a much higher amount of US dollars than they would if the IMF were not lending money to the right-wing puppet government.

When the new reform government comes in, it finds itself loaded down with a huge foreign debt owed to the IMF. This debt has not been taken on in a way that helped Argentina develop its economy and earn dollars to pay back the loan. It is simply a result of IMF support of right-wing governments. And the IMF then tells the new government (whether Argentina or any other debtor) to pay off its foreign loans by lowering the wages of labor. That is the only way that the IMF recognizes for countries to “stabilize” their balance of payments. So the reform government is obliged to behave just like a right-wing government, intensifying the class war of capital against labor. The “cure” for their balance-of-payments deficits thus becomes even worse than the original disease, that is, its rentier oligarchy moving their money out of the country.

The US controls the global supply of energy, food, trade and financial transactions through a network of global financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO and threaten the Global South countries who refuse to submit to this liberal free trade order with economic sanctions.

When such threats of economic warfare fail to dissuade emerging left wing governments seeking to assert their own economic sovereignty, the more direct, fascistic military coup takes place:

The Afghan communist government, whose progressive policies once allowed women to go to schools and hold professional jobs, had to be brutally destroyed in the name of anti-Soviet communism.

The Indonesian communist-aligned government, who once proposed a Non-Aligned Movement for the Third World countries to become independent from the US and the USSR (Bandung Conference), had to pay with one million innocent people murdered in the name of anti-communism.

The Iranian social democratic government, who once sought to nationalize its natural resources from being exploited from foreign corporations, had to be couped and the corrupt monarchy restored, which eventually precipitated in the Islamic Revolution and the rise of religious conservatism.

The Chilean social democratic government, also sought to nationalize its resources, met again with the same fate of hundreds of thousands of left wing activists brutally murdered by right wing death squads, and the introduction of neoliberal shock therapy to completely ruin whatever remains of its economy.

As you can see, progressive left-wing movements have emerged many times throughout the Global South, and wherever you look, you can see the fingerprints of US imperialism behind their destruction over the past century.

All this talk about “supporting left wing movements” are complete nonsense and useless if they are not paired with the destruction of US imperialism itself.