Coordinator of the Corean International Forum (South Korea) | Stephen Cho
Today we are living in the era of the third world war. In eastern Europe, the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022, and in east Asia, wars in south Korea and Taiwan are imminent. The third world war began with the war in Ukraine and will become global with the outbreak of war in east Asia. The war in south Korea and the war in Taiwan are essentially connected. Therefore, these wars in east Asia are on one battlefield. At the moment, there is fighting on only one theatre, in eastern Europe, but when the battlefield in east Asia forms, there will be two battlefields. The single front that embraces these two theatres of war is the united anti-imperialist front. Consequently, the formation of east Asian battlefields leads to one front and two battlefields – one anti-imperialist front spanning two battlefields in eastern Europe and east Asia.
While battlefields also exist in the middle east and Latin America, and contradictions in the USA itself are intensifying, the war theatres in eastern Europe and east Asia have a different characteristic, which is their potential to provoke a nuclear conflict between the world’s largest militaries. Unfortunately, eastern Europe and east Asia are the most dangerous places where tactical nuclear weapons are most likely to be used in practice. The US imperialists have already deployed their B61-12 tactical nuclear missiles to Italy, Poland, Germany and other sites in Europe. In east Asia, F-35 stealth bombers, which can carry a B61-21, have frequently been involved in war exercises aimed at north Korea. The infamous 1990s OPLAN 5027 nuclear war plan targeting the DPRK has recently been expanded and modified into OPLAN 5029, 5030 and 5055. With the inauguration of the Yoon Suk-yeol government last year, nuclear war and invasion rehearsals have been conducted with unprecedented frequency and ferocity.
The imperialist alliance, including the USA, pushed forward with its strategic plan for the eastward expansion of Nato after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the east European socialist bloc in 1991. While bombing Belgrade in 1999, Nato forces even destroyed the Chinese embassy. Dismantling Yugoslavia, the imperialists didn’t conceal their aim of expanding this same Balkanising model to Russia and China. From the mid 1990s onwards, they pursued a policy of isolating and suffocating the DPRK, even causing two million north Korean people to die of starvation. The imperialist forces’ strategy of dismembering Russia and China and destroying the DPRK has been embodied in various provocative manoeuvres over the last three decades. Each time, Russia, China and north Korea had to exercise the utmost patience to prevent a war crisis. However, the eight-year genocide of ethnic Russians after the Maidan coup in 2014 and the Nato-led neo-nazi invasion of the Donbass crossed a red line for Russia.
For China, the stoking of the Taiwan independence movement, and for north Korea, the advent of a fascistic belligerent government in south Korea and their plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike exercise against it, are also crossing red lines. The war situation in east Asia developed fiercely in the second half of last year as the suspicious assassination of Prime Minister Abe last July helped promote Japan’s plan for remilitarisation. This was combined with US House Speaker Pelosi’s provocative visit to the Taiwan in August, and the dangerous entry of the Reagan nuclear-powered aircraft carriers into south Korea in September. Already this year, Taiwan’s president visited the USA, south Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol visited Japan to meet with Kishida and finalise the formation of the US-Japan-South Korea ‘trilateral military alliance’, and even more nuclear war exercises were conducted against north Korea, mobilising a US nuclear aircraft carrier, nuclear submarines and nuclear bombers, east Asia finds itself now on the brink of a nuclear war that really could break out at any moment.
Among all south Korea’s pro-US stooge governments, the most corrupt and incompetent, the most fascistic and belligerent of them all has been the new regime of Yoon Suk-yeol. Under the orders of its puppet-master, the USA, Yoon Suk-yeol visited Japan to finish the formation of the US-Japan-South Korea ‘trilateral military alliance’, which is described as the “Asian Nato”, and strengthened the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), frantically conducting nuclear war exercises against the DPRK alongside the USA and Japan. In the unprecedented economic crisis that broke out amid the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, and fuelled by the ‘three highs’ of high oil prices, high interest rates and a high dollar, the economic crisis in south Korea is now surpassing the 1997 IMF crisis (the state of ‘economic trusteeship’ in which south Korea had to receive a bailout from the IMF) and the 2008 financial crisis that spread across the world from the United States banking system. As a result, the south Korean people are suffering their worst conditions in decades and are being driven to the brink in this ‘Hell Chosun’, where now it has the highest suicide rate in the world. Our people are holding candlelight demonstrations by themselves and are moving towards a people’s uprising by the popular demand having escalated from “Resign, Yoon Suk-yeol government!” to “Overthrow the Yoon Suk-yeol government!”.
Believing that we on the verge of witnessing a decisive counterattack by the anti-imperialist forces against the provocations of imperialism, it follows that the organisation of mass anti-imperialist struggle on a global scale has become an urgent practical task demanded by the times and the people. The World Anti-imperialist Platform, as the first of its three goals, affirms its intention to organise this anti-imperialist mass struggle, holding world anti-imperialist joint struggles every month. Along with members of the Platform, we have launched the Platform News website and strengthened our social media presence, doing what we can to expose the provocations and atrocities of imperialism and to spread information about the achievements of the growing anti-imperialist struggle day by day. In Latin America, where the anti-imperialist mass struggle is part of daily life in many countries, we recently held our third international conference and organised an anti-imperialist demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela, on the tenth anniversary of the death of Comandante Hugo Chávez.
As the contradictions between the anti-imperialist forces and the imperialist bloc are intensified, the manoeuvres of the revisionist, opportunist, factionalist group in the international communist movement are becoming more severe. It is logical and predictable that the World Anti-imperialist Platform, standing at the spearhead of the ideological war, should be slandered by the factionalist and opportunist groups, which revise revolutionary principles, commit left and right opportunist errors, divide the international communist camp, and objectively serve the interests of the enemy. Against the fact that international factionalist and opportunist groups recklessly counter Lenin’s thesis on “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” with the absurd “imperialist pyramid” theory, claiming that every capitalist country in also an imperialist one, disturbing and spliting the international communist camp as Kautsky and Trotsky did, the World Anti-imperialist Platform is impelled to wage its scientific ideological warfare more sharply and militantly.
Having insisted that Russia is imperialist and defined the war in Ukraine as an ‘interimperialist war’, the international factionalist and opportunist group are now repeating their error, defining China as imperialist and declaring that the imminent war in Taiwan will also be one of inter-imperialist rivalries. They even declare the DPRK to be a capitalist country because it has some elements of the market and conducts trade. Following the logic of their argument that every capitalist country is imperialist, they finally define North Korea as imperialist and consider the imminent war in South Korea as another result of inter-imperialist rivalries. Despite the fine words and insinuating looks, the counter-revolutionary nature of international factionalist and opportunist forces has already been exposed. Proven by the Caracas international conference in Latin America, there is no sincere communist or anti-imperialist force on that continent that regards Russia and China as imperialist, and defines the war in Ukraine as an ‘interimperialist war’. And we find the same in Asia and Africa. As time goes by, the errors of the opportunists are being revealed by practice and theory, becoming ever more obvious. It is inevitable that the promoters of these ideas will become more and more isolated in the world.
Aiming to spread world anti-imperialist mass struggle, to conduct an ideological warfare against the international factionalist and opportunist forces, and to strengthen the international communist movement, we will make every effort to remain at the forefront of this struggle. We will go forward resolutely, follow the direction of revolutionary science, hold higher the banner of the just anti-imperialist war, and keep shouting powerfully the two slogans proven by our history and practice: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” and “The people, united, will never be defeated.”
The struggle of our united people will transform the period of great upheaval that we are experiencing into a period of great transition in near future, and will ultimately be developed into a period of great uprising. As we mark the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet forces at Stalingrad, we are convinced both scientifically and with our all hearts that a great victory is on the horizon – one that will echo and even surpass the victory of the popular forces in the second world war.