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U.S. and World Politics

Defend North Korea!

U.S. threatens North Korea with annihilation

By Chris Kinder

The unhinged and perhaps pathological president of the United States has threatened North Korea with “Fire and Fury” such as “the world has never seen.” Such a direct threat of using obliterating force by a head of state is virtually unheard of, and has been condemned world-wide. But this imperialist idiot, Trump, says he is ready to take the world to nuclear winter over what amounts to little more than an insult.

The North Korean people—in fact Koreans generally—have already seen what a threat of annihilation from the U.S. might mean, because they lived through it. In the U.S. war on Korea, 1950-53, almost every substantial building in the North was destroyed, and cities and villages were reduced to rubble. People were forced to live underground! One million Chinese soldiers had to die to free Korea from this genocidal assault; with the Chinese having just achieved victory in their own war for liberation from capitalist imperialism, with the establishment of the Chinese (deformed) workers state in 1949.

After the end of World War II, the U.S. had imposed a military-puppet regime in the south of Korea using elements from the former Japanese imperialists, who had ruled Korea since 1910; while the Soviet Red Army meanwhile had liberated northern Korea. Thus, Korea ended up being divided at the 38th parallel.

Now, the North Koreans want a peace treaty finally ending this outrageous war—the Korean War was halted in an armistice, not a peace treaty—and a guarantee that the U.S. won’t invade again. With that, I think they would be satisfied. The North Korean government has been willing in the past to give up its nuclear capability development in exchange for some semblance of peace, but this semi-reconciliation agreement was dumped under Bush the lesser, hitherto known as the “worst president” of the U.S. (I think he’s been displaced in that.) 

And while the DPRK (North Korea) under Kim Jong-Un will not give up its hard won nuclear deterrent—nor should they—they will no doubt agree to some form of peaceful coexistence. But the aggressor in chief—the U.S. under Trump/Pence—seeks “regime change” and world domination, not peace, and therein lies the problem.

The North, while ramping up its nuclear and missile capacity in its own defense in recent years, has forsworn any intention of a first strike, unlike the U.S., which has never done so. And diplomacy? Trump wouldn’t know what diplomacy was if it ran him over in one of his casino parking lots. 

Both Secretary of State Tillerson, late of Exxon, and the uncompromising “mad dog” Mattis, of Defense, are looking more like the adults in the room compared to Trump’s insecure brat routine. Perhaps this bodes well for Trump’s imminent departure, which would be good as far as it goes, but nowhere near enough. The left’s focus on “dump Trump” leaves a lot of needed change off the table.

North Korea and South Korea are of course one country. Both southerners and northerners are more interested in reuniting families and in national reunification than they are with a new war, which they see as something between the U.S. and the North. But the reactionary U.S. regime could care less about that, or about the millions of casualties that would result from a nuclear war with North Korea.

The U.S. under both Republicans and Democrats insists on annual “war games” and mobilizations of troops in the region and right on the border between the Koreas, as well as stationing thousands of troops there year round. Russian and Chinese troops, meanwhile, have been off the Korean peninsula for decades. Ending these annual U.S. mobilizations is another, very reasonable, North Korean demand. But for Trump, giving in on anything might mean to him that he’s a loser—which he is of course—but the world might have to pay a heavy price in proving that.

U.S. imperialism is now bent on an “Asian pivot,” started under Obama, which is intended to surround and contain China. This now includes the stationing of three-quarters of the U.S. naval fleet in the region. This “pivot” is just another example of the U.S. trying to rule the world. In this context of isolating China, North Korea is a bit of a distraction. The North Koreans are just trying to avoid another devastation of their country such as happened in the 1950s. But to Trump, any defiance of his imperial will is an abomination.

Both China and the DPRK are workers states, which are deformed by bureaucratic ruling castes: they have working-class state planning and economic control, but are dominated by bureaucrats instead of democratic workers councils (soviets), such as emerged in the Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, their state economies have produced remarkable results. China, while burdened with capitalist parasites who were invited in under Deng Xiaoping’s “capitalist road” strategy, is now a highly developed world power. The DPRK meanwhile survived both the U.S. attempt at obliteration in the 1950s and the mass starvation that ensued after the collapse of the Soviet Union; and now has grown remarkably. 

Both China and the DPRK must be defended against the attacks of the imperialist U.S., which seeks to impose its capitalist domination and perhaps nuclear Armageddon on the world. The only permanent solution to capitalist/imperialist war and exploitation is workers revolution to establish a socialist future for humanity world-wide.