Defend North Korea, Defeat U.S. Imperialism!

DECEMBER 27 – As we go to press, the U.S. is giving off multiple indications that it is gearing up for military action against North Korea. This goes beyond the bellicose threats that the seriously unstable U.S. president has been bandying about, the “preemptive war” scenarios emanating from the fevered brains of neoconservative strategists, and “table-top war exercises” in the Pentagon. The escalating economic sanctions and military maneuvers are deliberate provocations designed to elicit a response from the embattled North Korean regime, that could then be used as the excuse to strike. The aim is “regime change” in Pyongyang, seizing or destroying its nuclear deterrent and restoring capitalism. The ultimate target is China. Contrary to the media hysteria, it is the predatory warmongers in Washington who are aiming at mass murder. Against the mounting imperialist assault, it is the duty of all class-conscious workers and revolutionaries to unconditionally defend North Korea – and all the bureaucratically deformed workers states.

Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to slaughter millions of people on the Korean peninsula, evoking images of a totally bombed-out wasteland with whole villages and cities fried to a crisp by napalm. At a press conference in August he vowed to unleash on North Korea “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” A few days later he followed that up with the threat that “military solutions are fully in place, locked and loaded.” At the United Nations in September he started referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with the sneering epithet “Rocket Man,” later saying in a tweet that Kim “won’t be around much longer,” and declared that the U.S. may have “no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” This is nothing short of a threat of genocide: Trump’s “final solution.” The North Korean population is well aware that the U.S. is the only power ever to use nuclear weapons in wartime, murdering hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with its A-bombs in 1945. And they know well that the U.S. already “totally destroyed” their country in the Korean War (1950-53) when every city in the North was leveled.

That anti-Communist and racist U.S. war on Korea, carried out under the guise of a Untied Nations “police action,” never officially ended. The United States military still maintains over two dozen army camps, munitions depots, air fields and 28,000 troops in South Korea. Command Post TANGO, the U.S.’ tactical air/naval/ground operations center, is reputedly able to withstand a nuclear blast. Some in the Pentagon are itching to use that arsenal. A renewed imperialist war would be vastly more destructive. But this time North Korea could make the U.S. imperialists and South Korean militarists pay. South Korea’s capital Seoul is barely 35 miles from the de-militarized zone (DMZ), with 25 million people within range of North Korean artillery and short-range missiles. An article in Newsweek (25 April) on “What War With North Korea Looks Like” showed a graphic proclaiming “ONE MILLION DEAD,” adding “(and that’s if it doesn’t go nuclear).” A recent article in Foreign Affairs (November-December 2017), the voice of “establishment” imperialists, went into detail:

“According to a detailed study published in 2012 by the Nautilus Institute … North Korea has thousands of conventional artillery pieces along the demilitarized zone that by themselves could inflict some 64,000 fatalities in Seoul on the first day of a war. A major attack on South Korea could also kill many of the roughly 154,000 American civilians and 28,000 U.S. service members living there. If the North Korean regime used its large arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, the fatalities would be even higher. Finally, there are a number of nuclear power plants near Busan that could be damaged, spreading radioactive materials, in an attack. All told, one million people could die on the first day of a second Korean war.”

Recall that the last U.S. imperialist war on Korea slaughtered some three million Koreans. During 1950-53, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of conventional bombs on the Korean Peninsula, compared to the 503,000 tons of bombs that were dropped in the entire Pacific theater of World War II. As for chemical weapons, the U.S. dropped over 32,000 tons of napalm on Korea. This sticky, flammable gelatin adheres to skin and is virtually impossible to put out with conventional means. It was used in the “democratic” imperialists’ terror bombing of Berlin and Tokyo in 1944-45. Korea was a testing ground for the future devastation they would wreak in Vietnam, where between 1963 and 1971 the U.S. dropped 338,000 tons of napalm (as well as 100,000 tons of Agent Orange).¹ Smarting over its failure to conquer the whole of the Korean peninsula in Democrat Harry Truman’s anti-Soviet war, the U.S. sponsored a military dictatorship in the South whose leaders were collaborators in Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea, in addition to funding death squads of fascistic youth to round up and murder leftists.²

Let us be clear: any consequences of such a new war in Korea would be the direct responsibility of the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean regime of counterrevolutionaries, who since the Korean War have tried to strangle the deformed workers state by imposing ever-harsher economic sanctions. As defenders of the revolutionary program of the Bolsheviks Lenin and Trotsky, the League for the Fourth International and its U.S. section, the Internationalist Group, stand for the defeat of the imperialist warmongers and for defense of North Korea, while giving no political support to the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. In defending North Korea against imperialism we also defend the collectivized property forms on which it is based – and the same goes for China, Cuba and all the remaining deformed workers states. At the same time, the Stalinist misleaders of these states, with their nationalist dogma of building “socialism in one country” (or in Korea’s case, in half a country), their yearning for illusory “peaceful coexistence” with the imperialists and their bureaucratic rule, endanger the remaining revolutionary gains. The LFI and IG call for:

“Revolutionary reunification of North Korea, political revolution in the North to replace the conservative ultra-Stalinist bureaucracy with internationalist soviet democracy, and socialist revolution in the South to overthrow capitalism and drive out the imperialists.”

–“Lies, Dumb Lies, and Imperialist Whoppers,” The Internationalist No. 49, August 2017.

Tightening the Economic Screws as an Act of War

The latest round of U.N. sanctions passed on December 22 were accurately described by the North Korean government as an “act of war.” Ominously, after Trump’s December 13 phone call to Vladimir Putin, complaining that Russia must get on board over North Korea, and his November 11 tweet praising Xi Jinping for “upping the sanctions on #NoKo,” Russia and China both signed on to the sanctions. This economic blackmail would severely restrict North Korea’s oil supplies and mandate all North Korean “guest workers” abroad to return home within two years. Now Russia is urging the U.S. and North Korea to engage in diplomacy, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry is advocating “restraint” and easing of tensions. Fat chance: both Russia and China just signed off on fast-tracking imperialist war moves on the Korean Peninsula. This conciliation of the imperialists could be even more dangerous than in February 2011 when China and Russia both abstained (i.e., failed to veto) the U.N. Security Council “no-fly” resolution that set off the NATO attack on Libya.

On December 18, Trump delivered a speech on the newly released White House “National Security Strategy” document, where he declared about North Korea that “America and its allies will take all necessary steps to achieve a denuclearization and ensure that this regime cannot threaten the world.” The North Korean “threat” was its successful launch of the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), that experts believe can reach the U.S. East Coast. Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who frequently serves as a conduit to leak the thinking of Pentagon top brass, said that as of December 14 he calculated there was a “three in ten chance we use the military option,” which would be “an all-out war against the regime.” Graham elaborated that “if you ever use the military option, it’s not to just neutralize their nuclear facilities – you gotta be willing to take the regime completely down.” To that end, Graham advised the Pentagon in early December to begin moving the families and spouses of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea off the peninsula.

The latest U.N. Security Council Sanctions would cap North Korea’s oil imports at 500,000 barrels per year. The imperialists have been pushing for an oil embargo for some time, but the North has vast reserves of coal which can be liquefied and used as fuel. According to Pierre Noel, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London foreign-policy establishment think tank:

“North Korea does not, strictly speaking, need oil from China. It gets its liquid hydrocarbons from China out of convenience, not necessity.…

“North Korea would need to liquefy about six million tonnes of coal to cover all of its 2015 reported oil imports. North Korea produces more than enough coal to do this; its total anthracite-coal exports, mostly to China, were reported to be 25 million tons in 2015.”

–“North Korea: An oil embargo probably wouldn’t work,” The Survival Editors’ Blog, 6 September

Economic sanctions have been the U.S.’ weapon of choice against North Korea, whether it’s over the country’s dramatic achievements in missile technology and nuclear weaponry, or dubious claims of “cyberterrorism” (like a 2014 cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, allegedly for distributing a comedy movie in which Kim Jong Un is assassinated). Republican and Democratic presidents alike have tried to strangle the economy of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK, the official name for North Korea), hoping that this would persuade the regime to abandon its nuclear weapons program. But Kim Jong Un and the bureaucrats in Pyongyang know full well that a nuclear deterrent is key to ensuring the survival of the deformed workers state against imperialist aggression. As we wrote this past April 17, after Trump announced a U.S. Navy battle group was heading to Korea (and eleven days after he had launched an air strike against Syria), “it is crucial to defend North Korea and uphold its right to develop nuclear arms for its defense against predatory U.S. imperialism” (“Defend North Korea Against Crazed U.S. War Threats,” The Internationalist No. 47, March-April 2017).

Imperialist Provocation Against North Korea Is No “Accident”

The bourgeois media opinion-manufacturing machine has been mobilized to sell the population the myth that North Korea is an aggressor and a mortal threat to the so-called free world. This “free world” is where undocumented immigrants have no rights, are seized on the streets and deported from the U.S. by the millions, where refugees are barred, where African Americans and Latinos are under constant threat of imprisonment or murder by the racist police and “justice” system, and where millions struggle to make ends meet. It’s where Wall Street profiteers make money hand over fist by busting unions and privatizing public services, and free marketeers like the Koch brothers and Walmart rake in billions in government contracts and subsidies. Democrats and Republicans agree that a North Korea with nuclear weapons that can be delivered via ICBM is “unacceptable” whereas the U.S. imperialists having thousands of nukes is just dandy. They repeat in unison the refrain that if Kim Jong Un gets his hands on nuclear weapons (which he clearly has), the North Korean leader would surely incinerate major U.S. cities in a fit of psychotic rage. It’s all to whip up war hysteria.

There is deep bipartisan agreement by the partner parties of U.S. imperialism, as well as their NATO imperialist allies, that North Korea is an “outlaw regime” and “rogue state” that must be “dealt with” militarily at some point in the immediate or near future. Last month, the Pentagon put out a report to lawmakers that the only way to seize North Korea’s nuclear arsenal “with complete certainty” is a full-on ground invasion (Washington Post, 4 November). Some liberal Democratic Congressmen interpreted this as a cautionary warning, but House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in response that she could support such an invasion, declaring: “North Korea’s behavior has to be stopped, reversed – they cannot have a nuclear weapon.” As for self-described “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, while later decrying Trump’s “fire and fury” rhetoric as reckless, back in April he said that Trump was “doing the right thing” on North Korea, arguing: “North Korea is a real danger to this world, and we have got to do everything we can to ... prevent a nuclear war and to get them to stop their nuclear program.”

The bottom line – and all the top U.S. and NATO politicians and military planners know it – is that North Korea will never agree to give up its nuclear deterrent, its means of survival against the imperialist onslaught. The neocons of The National Interest (29 November) are declaring: “North Korea: Why War Is the Only Option Now,” with chilling calculations that it would lead to at most “1.4 million” U.S./South Korean/Japanese deaths! The possibility of war is so high that recently a group of 58 retired generals and admirals wrote an open letter to Trump, urging him to “exhaust every possible diplomatic solution” because “military action by the United States and its allies prompting an immediate, retaliatory barrage on Seoul would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties” (Washington Post, 13 December). A week later the commandant of the Marine Corps and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Robert Neller, told troops stationed in Norway that “I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war coming” (Military.com, 20 December). The sergeant major of the Marines said the real focus was on Russia, and that the number of U.S. troops in Norway “could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight.”

Quite a few liberals are concerned that Donald Trump is a crazed psychopath (true enough), and that irrational behavior of both Kim and Trump could set off a nuclear war. Theirs is a tale of two reckless nuclear-armed madmen who could go off on each other. But the North Korean leader is utterly rational in seeking a nuclear deterrent, and the central danger of U.S. military action is not from some impetuous 3 a.m. Trump tweet but from deliberate Pentagon planning. A related liberal theme is that, “The war of words between North Korea and the United States could be pushing the region closer to the brink of an accidental conflict” (CNN, 25 September), which could easily escalate into a global military conflict. The example cited is how the Balkan Wars morphed into World War I after the assassination of Austrian archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914. Yet WWI was hardly accidental; it was the result of deliberate policy of the major belligerent imperialist powers, all of which had been preparing for it for years. Imperialist wars are not the result of miscalculation but of fundamental economic and geostrategic forces.

Decaying capitalism is pushing toward world war as inter-imperialist tensions mount, with looming trade wars between the U.S. and a host of countries, while an economically weakened U.S. imperialism relies on military prowess to prop up its waning world domination. The U.S. may undertake military action on the Korean Peninsula in order to demonstrate its “resolve” to potential rivals, like Russia and China (both cited as competitors in the Trump administration’s “America First” National Security Strategy). More to the point than comparisons to the outbreak of World War I is how the U.S. and its imperialist allies pushed Japan to enter World War II with economic sanctions. In 1940, Washington embargoed exports of scrap iron and steel, copper and various grades of oil to Japan, which were vital to the resource-poor island power. A year later the Roosevelt administration froze all Japanese assets in the U.S. With war inevitable, the Japanese looked to occupy British, French and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia for supplies of oil, tin and rubber, and prepared to attack Pearl Harbor and Singapore.

The escalating imperialist sanctions against North Korea – with the complicity of the leaders of the Chinese deformed workers state and of Russia, a regional capitalist power – are not just “muscular diplomacy” but economic warfare leading to provocative military action. Such actions could include a naval blockade and/or mining of North Korean harbors, decreeing a Libya-style “no-fly zone,” or other options. In early December, the U.S. carried out a joint four-day military exercise with South Korea, codenamed “Vigilant Ace,” the third annual aerial drill simulating the bombing of strategic North Korean targets. Over 12,000 U.S. troops and 230 military aircraft took part in the exercise, including F-22 and F-35 stealth fighter jets. Simultaneously, South Korea announced a military “decapitation unit” tasked with murdering North Korea’s leadership and seizing its nuclear facilities. And a few days later, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “let slip” that the U.S. had “had conversations with the Chinese” about U.S. plans to “secure” North Korean nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the annual “Foal Eagle/Key Resolve” U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise is coming up in early March, which includes massive troop mobilizations, a major military rehearsal for war on North Korea. Last year’s exercise involved over 17,000 U.S. and 300,000 South Korean troops. And as early as January 16, there will be a meeting of the imperialist consortium on North Korea co-hosted by the U.S. and Canada. The so-called Vancouver Group includes all of the original members of the United Nations command that waged the last Korean War, plus Japan, India and Sweden. According to Tillerson, the summit’s aim will be to advance “diplomatic efforts” toward a “nuclear-free future on the Korean Peninsula.” But making North Korea “nuclear-free” means launching war. Tillerson’s offer of U.S.-North Korea talks “without precondition” was immediately contradicted by the White House, and Tillerson recanted days later. They all know that the DPRK won’t give up its nukes without a fight – nor should it.

While criminally going along with imperialist sanctions, just two days after Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” in his September address to the U.N., China and Russia conducted an eight-day joint military exercise in the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk. This was part of their Joint-Sea 2017 program, the first phase of which took place in the Baltic Sea in July, greatly annoying NATO. Chinese Lt.-Gen. Wang Hongguang warned at a conference on national security in Beijing on December 16 that “the war on the Korean peninsula might break out anytime between now and March next year” and that “China should be psychologically prepared for a potential Korean war, and the northeast China regions should be mobilized for that.” That same day, China and Russia started five-day joint air-defense exercises aimed at defending against missiles. Meanwhile a document appeared on a Chinese website about preparations to set up five new refugee camps along the North Korean border.

But the Pentagon war planners may badly miscalculate. Despite the propaganda about a potential regime collapse, believable reports from the DPRK say that after years of privation, the standard of living of the mass of the population has noticeably improved lately, and that there is real determination to fight. In the South there is huge opposition to unleashing war on the Korean Peninsula, as shown in the demonstrations against the THAAD anti-missile system and the mass outpouring to protest Trump’s visit to Seoul this past November. In South Korea, the possibility of mobilizing the power of labor against imperialist war moves can be seen in the historically militant workers movement that for decades has fought the giant chaebols (industrial conglomerates like Hyundai and Samsung) who run South Korea like a fiefdom, and the military-based governments that fostered these capitalist monopolies. In Japan and Europe as well, and around the world, revolutionaries must call for a proletarian fight against imperialist war.

A war on North Korea would cause carnage on a monstrous scale. There should be no doubt that U.S. rulers are prepared to unleash such a horrific slaughter against a weaker nuclear power. The blog of the National Security Archive at George Washington University reported on the basis of declassified documents that at the time of the 1961 Berlin crisis, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up a Single Integrated Operation Plan (SIOP-62) that included a target list of 983 installations and foresaw between 80 million and 108 million killed in the Soviet Union, and 104 million Chinese dead (Unredacted.com, 8 November 2011). As the media goes into high gear regurgitating war propaganda and manipulating fears of nuclear annihilation, revolutionary Marxists (Trotskyists) must wage a class fight against the would-be masters of the world in Washington and Wall Street, who are the fundamental enemies of working people everywhere. The struggle against imperialist war can only be successful if it leads to international socialist revolution to overthrow the rule of these rapacious and bloodthirsty exploiters. Defend North Korea against U.S. war moves, defeat U.S. imperialism! ■