On February 9, when North and South Korea march side by side at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the two countries’ symbolic unity will signify the erosion of U.S. imperialist dominance on the Korean Peninsula. The capitalist rulers of the U.S. are increasingly desperate to hold onto their deteriorating global top-dog status, a crisis complicated by an unreliable President Donald Trump and the bosses’ own disarray. With China growing in economic and military might, longtime U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan are now hedging their bets and looking to fend for themselves.
As the U.S. bosses debate how best to prepare for the next Korean War, the Progressive Labor Party and the international working class must organize to bury these war-makers once and for all.
All events point to war
As the United States and China beat the drums of war and prepare for an inevitable global conflict, the 680-mile-long Korean Peninsula may be at the center of it. A historic buffer and invasion route in East Asia, the peninsula lies at the intersection of imperialist interests for the U.S., China, Russia, and regional power Japan.
War Secretary James Mattis has announced that U.S. war strategy will be shifting its primary focus from “counter-terrorism” to “great power competition” with China and Russia. In his rollout of Trump’s National Defense Strategy, he said, “‘[O]ur competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare—air, land, sea, space and cyberspace—and it is continuing to erode’” (Bloomberg, 1/19). While the U.S. rulers are soberly admitting their decline as the dominant world power, they won’t accept second-tier status without a fight. At the moment, all events point to war:
More than 1,000 reserve U.S. soldiers will rehearse quick-reaction mobilizations and air-assault exercises in February. The U.S. is also sending Special Operations forces to South Korea and deploying additional bombers, including B-2s, to Guam. Gen. Tony Thomas, commander of the Special Operations Command based in Tampa, Florida, said troops now occupying Iraq and Syria “might have to shift to the Korea theater from the Middle East in May or June, if tensions escalate on the peninsula” (New York Times, 1/14). Meanwhile, plans to modernize and maintain “the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years will cost more than $1.2 trillion” (NYT, 1/13).
China is ramping up security along its border with North Korea, deploying more soldiers and radiation detectors. “China must be ready for a war on the Korean peninsula, with the risk of conflict higher than ever before, Chinese government advisers and a retired senior military officer warned on Saturday. ‘Conditions on the peninsula now make for the biggest risk of a war in decades,’ said Renmin University international relations professor Shi Yinhong, who also advises the State Council, China’s cabinet” (South China Morning Post, 12/18/17).
Japan, in concert with the U.S., is making plans for the evacuation of 60,000 Japanese citizens and 200,000 U.S. nationals in South Korea in the event of a crisis (The Daily Yomiuri, 1/16).  
Trump’s version of the Nuclear Posture Review, begun under then-Imperialist-in-Chief Barack Obama, expands the range of pretexts for a future nuclear attack. This normalization of nuclear warfare, including responses to cyber-attacks, exposes the bosses’ utter disregard for the world’s working class. A single modern nuclear warhead, far more lethal than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on civilian populations in Japan in 1945, could murder millions and damage the working class for generations. The U.S. is the first imperialist to develop nuclear weapons and the only imperialist to have used them in war.
Ready or not
As the top think tank for U.S. finance capital has warned, any U.S. nuclear attack on North Korea will ignite “a full-blown war on the Korean Peninsula that would endanger millions of lives and ultimately diminish U.S. power and influence in the Asia-Pacific” (Foreign Affairs, 1/9). The bosses’ long-range thinkers recognize that a new war with North Korea “would likely be more devastating than any conflict the United States has experienced since World War II, if ever.” Yet given the peninsula’s strategic importance, the U.S. rulers may have no choice.
As of today, the bosses are unprepared to win such a war. It would require a U.S. patriotic revival and a military draft to generate masses of committed ground troops. The capitalists’ internal instability and the deep divisions among ruling-class factions (see page 7) limits their maneuverability. Moreover, as Foreign Affairs warns, even a “limited” nuclear first strike would entail huge political risks for the U.S.:
If Washington initiates a conflict and Pyongyang escalates, Seoul and Tokyo may consider significantly curtailing (or even ending) their alliances with the United States, ejecting U.S. armed forces from their territory, and developing their own nuclear weapons. This would effectively end U.S. geopolitical dominance in the Asia-Pacific, creating a region riven with division and instability, with diminished U.S. power and influence and China poised to fill the void (1/9).
Buying more time
In the January/Februrary issue of Foreign Affairs, Oriana Skylar Mastro points out that neither the U.S. nor China is ready for “a full-blown war” against the other. In the event that hostilities were to break out on the peninsula, she speculates on the possibility of a short-term, shared occupation of North Korea, with the U.S. ceding control over nuclear missile sites within 60 miles of the Chinese border. Mastro underlines how much the Chinese military has evolved over the last 20 years, thanks to modernization and structural reform: “Washington must recognize that China will intervene extensively and military…Beijing would…ensure its interest [was] taken into account during and after the war.”
For the U.S. ruling class, the Korean Peninsula is only one significant area of interest out of many. As Foreign Affairs points out,  “More than anything, U.S. policymakers must shift their mindset to view China’s involvement as an opportunity instead of a constraint…With North Korea out of the way, the United States would have more resources at its disposal to address other threats”—involving Middle East oil, for example.
But given the dog-eat-dog nature of imperialism, in which competition is primary, any temporary cooperation with China would be a delaying tactic, at best. At the end, it would only pave the way for larger wars.
World War is looming
A lack of nationalist unity and fervor in the working class is the biggest obstacle to the U.S. bosses’ war plans. We cannot predict the timing or scope of the next war in the Korean Peninsula. But it is clear that world war with China is looming.  The bosses’ open debate on “best practices” for war reveals their blatant disregard for working-class lives. Workers must refuse to sacrifice ourselves for wars for profit.
The working class remains a wild card, a factor none of the imperialists are adequately taking into account. World Wars I and II birthed revolutions in Russia and China, respectively. Against this period of weak class struggle, we must build an international, communist mass movement and a Progressive Labor Party capable of seizing state power when the time comes. Today we warn of coming war and fascism; tomorrow we turn the guns around!