North Korea: Stop the War Mongering of US Imperialism!
Down with the imperialist sanctions against North Korea! No political support for the Stalinist Kim Regime!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, 4 April 2017, www.thecommunists.net
1. The Trump Administration is threatening North Korea with more sanctions and war. According to media reports, "Trump's national security aides have completed a review of U.S. options to try to curb North Korea's nuclear and missile programs that includes economic and military measures". (Reuters, 2 April 2017). It is currently deploying the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea which will increase the U.S. potential to attack North Korea.
2. The official justification of these threats is that North Korea is continuing to develop it's nuclear and missile programs. What hypocrisy! According to the 2016 issue of the SIPRI Yearbook, the U.S. is – together with Russia – the world's biggest nuclear power with a war head inventory of 7,000. North Korea possesses, at maximum, 10 war heads! Furthermore, it is the U.S. and not North Korea which is regularly waging wars in other countries – most recently in Syria and Iraq. Finally, while North Korea is no threat to the US, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and modern weapon system are stationed on the Korean Peninsula.
3. The RCIT sharply denounces once again the further threats and provocations of US imperialism. It is an attempt to pressurize and subjugate North Korea. Worse, it could present the pretext of an US-led imperialist war against North Korea. The international worker’s movement must oppose the sanctions and mobilize against such a possible war. In case of a military conflict the RCIT calls for the defeat of the imperialist forces and their allies and for the defense of North Korea.
4. The same tactic would apply in any confrontation between North Korea and South Korea. In such a conflict the RCIT would stand on the side of North Korea and for the defeat of its Southern neighbor which is a close ally of the US and a small imperialist power.
5. One element of this conflict is the accelerating rivalry between the U.S. and China – the old and the emerging imperialist powers. While the RCIT does not support any of the two powers in a confrontation, the present conflict is between the U.S. and North Korea where the inter-imperialist rivalry is a secondary factor. The primary element is the conflict between the biggest imperialist power and a small Stalinist country.
6. In fact, U.S. imperialism has already stationed troops on the Korean Peninsula since the end of World War II. It waged a war against North Korea in 1950-53 and tries to intimidate the country with a massive military build-up in South Korea. According to reports, the then U.S. Administration was close to wage war with North Korea in 1994 and was prepared to go for it despite calculating "the potential of a million dead in South Korea [which] was judged a viable if unfortunate cost." (One can assume that such considerations would have been different if the potential causalities would not have been Koreans but American!) The war was avoided "by most accounts in the last hours of Washington's decision-making process." (STRATFOR: North Korea: A Problem Without a Solution, January 10, 2017)
7. While the US policy of aggression against North Korea has been going on for more than half a century, the present situation is particularly explosively. The reasons for this are, first, the deep crisis of the Trump Administration which is utterly incompetent and at loggerheads internally. It is furthermore despised both by most the American people as well as large sections of the ruling class itself. Secondly, the South Korean ruling class itself is also facing a major domestic crisis with President Park Geun-hye kust being ousted and arrested. Hence the ruling classes, particularly of the U.S., have a major interest in an external political crisis or even war to deflect public attention from its domestic crisis.
8. We have not the slightest political sympathy for the bureaucratic dictatorship of Kim Jong-Un in North Korea. It is a degenerated workers state, i.e. a country where a counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy rules over the working class based on a planned economy. We support the working class' struggle for a political revolution against the Stalinist dictatorship.
9. But the U.S. aggression has nothing to do with democratic efforts as its decades-long alliances with the Gulf monarchies, its accommodation to the Assad tyranny waging a genocidal war against its own population or its past support for the military dictatorships in South Korea have sufficiently demonstrated. The Trump Administration is accelerating its aggression against North Korea exclusively to deflect public attention from its deep crisis and to continue the U.S. position as the world's hegemonic predator. Therefore a defeat of U.S. imperialism is desirable not only for North Korea but also for the whole international working class and all oppressed people!
* Down with the imperialist sanctions against North Korea! Stop the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea!
* In any military conflict between the U.S. or South Korea on one side and North Korea on the other side: defeat the imperialist forces and their allies and defend North Korea!
* For demonstrations, strikes, sabotage etc. to stop the US military aggression!
* Down with the Stalinist dictatorship! For the political revolution!
* For the revolutionary unification of the Korean peninsula! For a Korean Workers and Peasant Republic!
International Secretariat of the RCIT
See also our past statements on the imperialist aggression against North Korea:
RCIT: New Imperialist Threats in East Asia: Hands off North Korea! 12.3.2013, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/asia/defend-north-korea/
RCIT: No War against North Korea! Call for Protests on the Day when a War starts! 6.4.2013, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/asia/no-war-against-north-korea/
For our analysis of the Trump Administration and the crisis of US imperialism we refer readers to various documents:
RCIT: World Perspectives 2017: The Struggle against the Reactionary Offensive in the Era of Trumpism. Theses on the World Situation, the Perspectives for Class Struggle and the Tasks of Revolutionaries, 18 December 2016, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/world-perspectives-2017/
Michael Pröbsting: The Meaning, Consequences and Lessons of Trump‘s Victory. On the Lessons of the US Presidential Election Outcome and the Perspectives for the Domestic and International Class Struggle, 24.November 2016, http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/meaning-of-trump/
For our analysis of the emergence of South Korea as a small imperialist power we refer readers to various document:
Michael Pröbsting: Capitalist Development in South Korea and Taiwan (1997), https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/capitalism-in-south-korea-taiwan/
For our analysis of China as an emerging imperialist country we refer readers to various documents:
Michael Pröbsting: China‘s transformation into an imperialist power. A study of the economic, political and military aspects of China as a Great Power, in: Revolutionary Communism (English-language Journal of the RCIT) No. 4, http://www.thecommunists.net/publications/revcom-number-4;
Michael Pröbsting: Russia and China as Great Imperialist Powers. A Summary of the RCIT’s Analysis, 28 March 2014, in: Revolutionary Communism No. 22, http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/imperialist-china-and-russia/;
Michael Pröbsting: The China Question and the Marxist Theory of Imperialism. Again on China as an imperialist Power. Reply to a Polemic from CSR (Venezuela) and PCO (Argentina), December 2014, in: Revolutionary Communism No. 32, http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/reply-to-csr-pco-on-china/