Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum
The flames of World War 3, instigated by imperialism, are spreading from Eastern Europe to West Asia (the Middle East) and traveling toward East Asia. The main culprit in provoking war in the modern world is imperialism. Imperialism is provoking World War 3 to form the “New Cold War” confrontation. The war in Ukraine began with the Maidan coup in 2014 and entered full swing with the launch of Russia’s special military operation in 2022. The war in Palestine began with Hamas’ operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” as a response to zionist occupation and endless provocations. The war in Ukraine didn’t immediately expand into a wider war across Eastern Europe, but the war in Palestine immediately expanded into a wider war across West Asia. The war in West Asia began with the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation and entered full swing with Irans operation “True Promise”. It is a war between Israeli zionism and the “Axis of Resistance,” including Iran. While the war in Ukraine was a trigger for the war in West Asia, the wars in Ukraine and West Asia are now acting as triggers for war in East Asia. We can expect the war in East Asia to promote the expansion of the war in Eastern Europe and the further escalation of war in West Asia.
Imperialism is driving World War 3 to the point of no return in the run-up to November’s US presidential election. The imperialists are trying to prevent Donald Trump from coming to power, fearing that he may try to pull the USA out of the war in Ukraine, and even withdraw the country from NATO. While the DPRK and China are enduring constant imperialist provocations with patience, and are refraining from precipitously launching a war in East Asia, the imperialists are frantically trying to expand their ongoing wars in Ukraine and West Asia. They have given explicit permission to Ukrainian forces for direct attacks on Russian territory with NATO-provided long-range weapons. France has sent its own troops to Ukraine, and its nuclear aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle has conducted military exercises in the Mediterranean, threatening Russia’s military port in Syria, while French Rafale fighters flew to Kaliningrad as part of this tactical nuclear drill. In the same vein, the US army rehearsed the deployment of its containerized missile launcher, capable of firing tactical nukes, in Bornholm, Denmark. The Baltic Sea has been transformed into the “NATO Sea”, and Poland is requesting the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Israel has launched a brutal attack on 1.5 million civilians camped out in Rafah, continuing to massacre civilians and to push for an escalation of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Like Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, whose presidency is over, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no other option but to expand the war, beleaguered by plunging approval ratings, protests demanding his resignation, and cabinet resignations.
A world war is a major war between camps on a global scale. World War 1 was an interimperialist war, World War 2 was an antifascist war, and World War 3 is an anti-imperialist war. Unlike World War 1, World War 2 and World War 3 were just wars waged under the banner of antifascism and anti-imperialism for one of the sides. The anti-imperialist camp does not want war; it actively pursues peace. It has always been imperialism that wants and provokes wars. Imperialism plots, instigates and provokes wars to maintain and expand its colonies, to militarize the economy and earn monopolistic superprofits through special demand for war. Through means of war it aims to strengthen the imperialist camp and crush the anti-imperialist camp. The Korean war, the Vietnam war and the Iraq war were not world wars, which are large wars between camps on a global scale, but local wars limited to one country. The war in Ukraine, the war in West Asia, and the impending war in East Asia are World War 3 in which Russia, the “Axis of Resistance” such as Iran, the DPRK and China form the anti-imperialist camp while the USA and Europe form the imperialist camp. In the present situation, we have one war against imperialism, an anti-imperialist war, and one front against imperialism, an anti-imperialist front. There is only one war and one front, but several battlefields. The three main battlefields are in Eastern Europe, West Asia, and East Asia. Although fighting is taking place in many parts of west Asia, these essentially form a single battlefield against Israeli zionism and its imperialist masters waged by the “Axis of Resistance”.
The war in Ukraine is an anti-imperialist and antifascist war, a war of liberation, a preventive war. The war in West Asia is an anti-imperialist, anti-zionist liberation war. The war in Taiwan will be an anti-imperialist liberation war and a war of reunification. The war in the “Republic of Korea (ROK)” will be an antifascist, anti-imperialist war of subjugation and an internal war. Although each of these three battlefields has different specific characters, all have the essential commonality of being anti-imperialist wars. The opposition to imperialism is a banner of justice that represents our era. Even if the imperialist camp denies it, it cannot deny the just nature of antifascism, liberation and national reunification. The war of the anti-imperialist camp is not only a just war waged against imperialism but also a just war waged under the banner of antifascism, liberation and reunification. In World War 3, justice is entirely on the side of the anti-imperialist camp.
Monopoly capital is the domestic expression, while imperialism is the external expression. Monopoly capital conceals the contradiction of polarization between lower and upper with the two-party system of “left” and “right”. It also dominates the people, combining social-democratic reform policies with openly fascist repression policies. Social democracy in the USA and Britain and fascism in Germany and Italy before World War 2 are essentially the same, rooted in monopoly capitalism; the only difference is the outward form of political control. In developed capitalist countries, monopoly capital changes its ruling method sometimes to social democracy and sometimes to fascism in order to overcome its political crisis and carry its economic purpose. On the other hand, the fascism that has emerged in the oppressed countries since the 1960s was exported and planted by imperialism. The mainstream of domestic capital in these countries is either foreign monopoly capital or comprador capital, and the military fascists are mostly puppets trained by imperialism.
We can see these pro-imperialist puppets today in Ukraine, Israel, the “ROK”, and Taiwan. Zelensky, Netanyahu and the “ROK”s Yoon Suk-yeol are all outright imperialist puppets and fascists. There is no doubt that Lai Ching-te in Taiwan is also an imperialist puppet. Imperialism manipulates them in various ways. One of its common tactics is to force them to resort to war as a nuclear option, since the more profound the political and economic crisis grows, the more dependent they become on imperialism. In East Asia alone, the Japanese and Taiwanese governments, on the so-called “first island chain” and the “ROK” government, which threatens the DPRK, are all in this situation. Taiwan’s Lai Ching-te is a fierce separatist, while the “ROK”s Yoon Suk-yeol has declared the DPRK to be the “primary enemy” and has been conducting nuclear war exercises to invade the North with the USA, claiming the right to make a “pre-emptive strike”.
In Japan, Fumio Kishida, who took office after the leading pro-Russian politician Shinzo Abe was mysteriously shot and killed in July 2022, is keen on forming the Asian version of NATO with the “ROK” as forced by the USA. Kishida of Japan and Yoon Suk-yeol of the “ROK” are actively working on completing the “Indo-Pacificisation of NATO” having participated in successive NATO summits in Madrid, Spain (June 2022), Vilnius, Lithuania (July 2023) and Washington, USA (July 2024). The fact that NATO, an imperialist warmongering alliance that has been initiating and perpetuating World War 3, is extending its war scheme beyond West Asia to East Asia is raising great concern not only among Asians but among all the peoples of the world who long for peace. Already, imperialism has been thoroughly implementing a strategy to expand NATO, the supposedly “North Atlantic” military alliance, into to the Indo-Pacific via the “Aukus” and “Quad” groupings.
Imperialism is worried about the possibility of a Trump victory in the upcoming US presidential election. This is because if elected, Trump will likely try to immediately withdraw from the war in Ukraine and eventually from NATO. Trump met with the DPRK Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2019, and in Panmunjom, Korea in 2020, and has remained in contact with him since leaving office. While Trump’s “decoupling” policy is limited to the economic sector, President Joe Biden’s “de-risking” policy, under the guise of the “New Washington Consensus”, while appearing to be milder than the “decoupling” policy is in fact merely a disguise for pushing for Taiwan’s separation and independence and driving cross-Strait relations toward war. Of course, we thoroughly oppose all imperialist policies that represent the interests of US monopoly capital, whether they come from Trump or Biden. However, we take note of political conflicts that have erupted because of the deepening inner contradiction in the USA owing to its political and economic crisis, and we do not overlook the importance of the antiwar peace movement, which is amplifying these conflicts. We naturally oppose racism and fascism, which execrate Jews in general, and agree that the fundamental solution to the Palestinian issue lies in the eradication of zionism. We support a peaceful coexistence based on the eradication of zionism, not on the “two-state solution” of the Oslo accords, which is practically bankrupt―another “Minsk agreement”. We note that historically, it was Christian Western Europe that persecuted Jews, not Islamic West Asia.
Imperialist New Cold War schemes are a reflection of the system’s weakness, not its strength. World War 3 is an extreme option for attempting to escape the political, military and economic crises that arise from the realistic recognition that the unipolar world domination system cannot be maintained. Roger F Wicker, the Republican ranking member of the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, himself let slip in late May that it is an intentional provocation to define Russia, Iran, China and the DPRK as a “new axis of aggressors”. Grouping Russia and the “Axis of Resistance”, including Iran, which are presently at war, and China and the DPRK, which are not presently at war, into one “axis” or camp clearly confirms the fact that the war in East Asia is imminent and who is the driver and provocateur of World War 3. Imperialism is no longer hiding its strategy of demonizing Russia, China and the DPRK as “aggressors” through World War 3, exhausting them as much as possible through proxy wars, and creating a “New Cold War” system to eventually win the final victory as it did in the “Cold War”.
The “Cold War” and the “New Cold War” have big differences. Both have in common that they reflect the political and economic crisis and vulnerability of imperialism. But, unlike the Cold War, which emerged after World War 2, the New Cold War began with World War 3 and will enter full swing after World War 3. Both the “Cold War” and the “New Cold War” are confrontations between the anti-imperialist and imperialist camps. However, during the “Cold War”, the anti-imperialist camp was formed by socialist forces as the leading force with the forces of national liberation as the auxiliary force. On the other hand, in the New Cold War, the DPRK, China and Russia are the leading forces, and the other world anti-imperialist forces, including Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” are the auxiliary forces.
The DPRK, China and Russia are all nuclear and missile powers with all types of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, with the DPRK being the most steadfast socialist country, China being a socialist country with Chinese characteristics, and Russia being a country with a strong socialist heritage. The current socialist states of the DPRK and China, along with the former socialist state of Russia, have been more united than ever in the same anti-imperialist camp. It is no coincidence that after being re-elected recently, President Putin first visited China and then the DPRK in June to sign the “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty”, elevating the DPRK-Russia relations to the highest level, the alliance level.
Today, understanding how we define the character of Russian and Chinese societies has become a touchstone between revolutionaries and opportunists. Those who mistakenly describe Russia and China as imperialist are basing their analysis on a totally unscientific understanding of imperialism. It is just as problematic to fail to analyze imperialism in its economic aspects as it is to define imperialism only in economic terms. In this context, the Communist Party of Greece’s theory of the “imperialist pyramid”, which views all capitalist countries as imperialist, has emerged. This most absurd revisionist and opportunist, reactionary theory is practically contributing to imperialism’s policy of dividing the communist movement. This is why it is unsurprising that the Communist Party of Greece has taken the lead in dividing the international communist movement.
The most significant feature of the “New Cold War”, in particular, the situation of World War 3, is that, first, the DPRK, the most thoroughly socialist country and the one most severely blockaded by imperialism, has become a nuclear and missile superpower, occupying a key position and playing an important role in the anti-imperialist camp. Second, the former Soviet Union and, currently, Russia, which had been at odds with China since the mid-1950s, are uniting firmly with China in the anti-imperialist camp. Third, the “Axis of Resistance”, including Iran, is waging a robust armed struggle on an anti-imperialist, anti-zionist front. In addition, the world anti-imperialist camp is increasingly raising the level of anti-imperialist armed struggle and popular struggle in Latin America and the Sahel region of Africa. The anti-imperialist camp is overwhelming the imperialist camp by its superiority in capabilities, combining strong leading forces with a wide range of auxiliary forces, and its wisdom in methods, combining anti-imperialist armed struggles with anti-imperialist popular struggles.
Moreover, by holding the banner of not only anti-imperialism but also undeniable justice in the present era―antifascism, liberation and national reunification, the anti-imperialist camp holds the moral high ground in every battlefield of the present war. To make matters worse for imperialism, it has lost even a petty semblance of at least formal logic owing to the glaring logical contradiction between its anti-Russian and its pro-Israeli propaganda.
Imperialist weakness is equally evident in its military operations. In World War 3, the imperialists have used inducing warfare, where it has provoked war; expeditionary warfare, where it fights far away from its own territory and close to its enemies; proxy warfare, where it uses puppet armies; and hybrid warfare, so far excluding tactical nuclear weapons. In the anti-imperialist camp, Russia, China and the DPRK are all fighting or faced with fighting wars close to their present national boundaries, directly and vigorously, avoiding being entangled in war provocations, and none have ruled out the use of tactical nuclear weapons if that becomes necessary to end the war quickly. The imperialist powers are very afraid that if they directly attack the main territories of Russia, China and the DPRK with tactical nuclear weapons, their retaliatory nuclear strikes will eventually result in mutually assured destruction (MAD). It is unquestionable who will be the ultimate winner of the confrontation between the USA and European NATO, countries which are fighting a proxy war and a war of attrition for the superprofits of monopoly capital on the one side, and Russia, China and the DPRK, which are directly and fiercely engaged in wars for the great cause of antifascism, liberation and national reunification. Just as the just antifascist camp won World War 2, the just anti-imperialist camp will win World War 3. Unlike the Cold War, imperialism will suffer a disastrous defeat in its New Cold War.
Since its foundation in Paris, France, in October 2022, with the three major goals of expanding the world anti-imperialist struggle, waging anti-opportunist ideological warfare and strengthening the communist movement, the World Anti-imperialist Platform has held international conferences and organized mass rallies and demonstrations under the banner of anti-imperialism in Belgrade, Serbia (December 2022), Caracas, Venezuela (March 2023), Gwangju and Seoul, the ‘ROK’ (May 2023), and Athens, Greece (November 2023), each time issuing joint declarations and trying to unite the anti-imperialist forces. In March-April 2024, the Platform arranged a European tour for revolutionary musical troupe from the “ROK”. In May 2024, a Platform delegation visited the Donbass region of Russia and stood in active solidarity with local communist and anti-imperialist forces. In June 2024, the Platform held an international conference in Madrid, Spain. All this has been aimed at strengthening the world anti-imperialist struggle.
The most important ideological and theoretical task in the world anti-imperialist struggle today is to wage an unwavering and sharp ideological war against pseudo-communist forces―whether revisionist, opportunist or sectarian―which oppose “Axis of Resistance” countries like Russia and Iran, which are at the forefront of the anti-imperialist struggle, and which are accusing Russia, China and even the DPRK of “imperialism”. And the most important practical task in the world anti-imperialist struggle is for the communist forces to strengthen the anti-imperialist movement’s capacity by wisely leading the pro-Russian and pro-Palestinian forces to join into a single anti-imperialist front with a scientific analysis and revolutionary line.
We will continue our indomitable struggle for the final victory of the world anti-imperialist camp, promoting our slogans “Workers of the world, unite!” and “The people, united, will never be defeated!” Along the way, we will advance and realize a world without imperialism and fascism―a world where the people become the masters of politics and economy. The world anti-imperialist camp’s great cause of justice must win.
