When the leaders speak of peace,
The common people know that war is coming.    
When the leaders curse war, the mobilization orders are already written out.
—Bertolt Brecht, German communist

On July 4, the celebration of U.S. imperialism, and just three days prior to the G20, the annual gathering of the world’s leading capitalist states and their bankers, North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching Alaska. The launch intensified tensions between the U.S. and China and moved the world closer to the next major war.
While war is inevitable under capitalism, none of the major imperialist powers are presently able to win masses of workers to fight and die for the rulers’ interests. Although the bosses are all planning for war, world events are not fully under their control. Historically, an important task of communists is to warn the working class of coming war and to organize to turn imperialist war into class war for communism, where the working class seizes state power. That task is now more important than ever.
Nuclear Weapons in an Inter-Imperialist Flashpoint
North Korean bosses, led by Kim Jong-un, have learned the fatal danger of giving in to the United States. They witnessed the overthrow of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the top Libyan boss for more than 40 years, after Libya surrendered its nuclear weapons program. “That is what Mr. Kim believes his nuclear program will prevent—an American attempt to topple him. He may be right” (New York Times, 7/5).
The Korean Peninsula is a historic buffer and invasion route, a node of vital imperialist interests in East Asia. The U.S. threat of force was aimed to intimidate North Korea and China and reassure its wary allies. But despite talk of a pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s missile installations, U.S. maneuverability is limited by its own internal instability and increasing isolation.
Shifting Alliances, Global and Regional
The weakening of U.S. imperialism correlates with a global power shift. The major U.S. imperialist rivals, China and Russia, appear to be drawing closer to each other, at least for the moment. A temporary collaboration between the U.S. and China to subdue North Korea has given way to a joint effort by China and Russia. The two countries’ foreign ministries have proposed a moratorium on North Korea’s testing of nuclear explosive devices and ballistic missiles while asking the U.S. and South Korea to halt their “large-scale joint exercises” (The Duran, 6/5).
Indeed, Russia and China have common interests there. Both share a land border with North Korea and have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. But, above all, both are desperate to check US ambitions in their backyards. It’s this desire, this fear of being hemmed in by the West and its allies, that is one of the factors pushing Moscow and Beijing together in a seemingly ever-tightening embrace (CNN, 6/7).
Instability Begets Instability
The relative decline of the U.S. as the top imperialist super-power is reflected in the behavior of its longtime regional allies in East Asia, Japan and South Korea. The new president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, claims the country will “learn to say no” to U.S. rulers (Washington Post, 5/9). South Korea has already stopped deployment of the U. S. THAAD anti-missile system, which China considered a threat. Moon Jae-in is well aware that his nation would be North Korea’s first target in a nuclear war.
Japan, the main regional rival to China and main regional ally for the U.S., is also wavering. Japan felt slighted by Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement embraced by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. By entering a new trade deal with the European Union, Japan sent the U.S. a message: “Both [Japan and the EU] want to show that they can fill the vacuum left by America’s withdrawal under…Trump from its role as the world’s trade leader” (The Economist, 7/8).
Diplomacy + Military Buildup =Inevitable War
For a capitalist power in crisis and decay, the solution is sure to be war. Diplomacy—and its inevitable rupture—paves the way. As the bosses’ media noted, North Korea’s actions were “quickly closing off the possibility of a diplomatic solution” and the United States was “prepared to defend itself and its allies with its considerable military forces if need be” (Reuters, 7/6).
Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, the leading think tank in service to U.S. hegemony, recently rejected two U.S. options: accepting North Korea as a nuclear state or an immediate military strike. With diplomatic negotiations having repeatedly failed to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, the best Haass can propose is “more creative diplomacy,” a transitional step toward a war that will slaughter millions of workers:  

“Trump correctly concluded that the greatest threat to U.S. national security is North Korea’s accelerating nuclear and missile programs…
An interim agreement would not solve the…problem…And even if diplomacy failed again, at least the United States would have demonstrated that it tried negotiations before turning to one of the other, more controversial options” (Foreign Affairs, July/August).

For all their hypocritical talk about diplomacy, sanctions, and the horrors of nuclear conflict, the U.S. bosses are just buying time. Preparations for bigger wars are proceeding at full speed. New
submarine-based “super-fuze” devices triple the killing power of the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal, which was already exponentially more threatening than North Korea’s nukes. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes (3/1), the implications for World War III are clear:
“Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability—a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. “
Need Nationalism for Warfare
The U.S. bosses know from past experience (such as in Vietnam) that technological superiority is not enough to prevail in war. Unless masses of workers—including working-class soldiers—are won to lethal nationalist ideas, the capitalist rulers will lose. For all of Trump’s weaknesses, his “America First” sloganeering helps the bosses divide the international working class, and mislead U.S. workers into identifying with their murderous rulers. The bosses’ media plays its anti-communist part by attacking North Korea as a repressive dictatorship and painting its workers as unthinking robots. In reality, every government on earth today—with or without the cover of “democratic” elections—is a dictatorship of the capitalist class. And as the history of the Korean Peninsula attests, workers have the potential to fight back (see above article).
Turn Imperialist War Into Class War
In the 21st century alone, imperialist war and the ravages of capitalism have destroyed the lives of tens of millions of workers. An inter-imperialist proxy war has decimated Syria, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions made refugees. Imperialist war remains the bosses’ ultimate weapon in their perpetual battle to dominate resources, markets, and labor, all in pursuit of maximum profit.  
Living on the brink of wider war has become the “new normal.” This is a great danger for the international working class, especially in the absence of a mass anti-imperialist mobilization, as we saw in the communist-led and communist-influenced movements during the Vietnam War.
With unpredictable politicians like Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-un, a major war could erupt sooner rather than later. But most workers are not yet won to the bosses’ agenda. The Progressive Labor Party’s task is to rebuild hope and class consciousness among the workers of the world—to show that communism is a future worth fighting for. Let’s turn these imperialist wars for profit into a class war for communist revolution. Let’s redouble our efforts to build PLP. Power to the working class!