Platform rally in Gwangju: Nato war drive threatens Korea, Taiwan, east Asia

The following joint statement was read out by Comrade Joti Brar on behalf of the World Anti-imperialist Platform at its mass rally in the revolutionary city of Gwangju, south Korea on Saturday 13 May.

Despite the fact that Nato is clearly losing its proxy war in Ukraine, this impending defeat has not stopped the imperialists from accelerating preparations to try the same regime-change strategy in Korea and in China.

Just as Ukraine’s army has for a decade been transformed into a proxy Nato force, and just as whole sections of the Ukrainian population have been groomed to accept their role as cannon fodder to be hurled in front of the Russian guns, so too are the people and armed forces in south Korea and Taiwan being prepared to act as proxy forces in US-led wars aimed at bringing down the governments and getting control of the territory of the DPRK and of China.

In their bid to find proxy forces, the imperialists are not stopping at the borders of Korea or China.

They are also doing everything in their power to turn the territory of neighbouring countries into military bases and the armies of those countries into back-up proxy forces – just as we have seen them doing in eastern Europe.

As in eastern Europe, so in east Asia, the imperialists are prepared for any number of people to die and any number of countries to go up in flames if they can only get their way in the end.

But why are these countries being targeted? What is it that they have in common?

They are targeted not because of their social system, but because of their independence.

Because they refuse to bow the knee to the imperialist financiers; refuse to allow their people and resources to be the subject of imperialist superexploitation by western corporations; refuse to allow their economic and political life to be controlled by the CIA and the US state department.

And why should the imperialists be driving to war so desperately at this particular moment?

People all over the world are aware that we are suffering a cost of living crisis that is impoverishing workers everywhere, and the poorest the most.

But relatively few understand that our problems are the result of a recurring crisis in the global capitalist system, which is failing because it has impoverished the masses and left them unable to buy all the goods their own labour has produced.

To try to save their failing banks and monopolies, the imperialists are printing money that is causing inflation not only in their own countries, but all over the world.

And they are driving to war as the last remaining means for taking hold of those territories that they are not presently able to loot for maximum profits.

The history of the twentieth century shows us that the ultimate means for bringing back demand into the failing global economy is war, which first creates a massive demand for armaments, and later creates a demand for reconstruction of all the products and infrastructure that have been destroyed by the war.

As far as the imperialists are concerned, war is also a convenient way of getting rid of large numbers of people, who they consider to be ‘surplus’, since they cannot find useful work to give them.

This is why our people are being asked to suffer and to fight: to save the economic system which keeps them poor and subjected, and to allow our exploiters to continue to grow rich off the back of their labour.

There is only one way out of this death spiral: we must break the bonds of imperialist domination over the world, and replace the system of wage-slavery with a system of planned production: where each nation’s resources are owned collectively and used to meet the needs of the people rather than to make profits for a handful of billionaires; where peace and international cooperation between the peoples of the world take the place of competition and war.

Standing here today in the revolutionary city of Gwangju, on the very spot where so many brave martyrs gave their lives in the cause of Korea’s still unfinished nation-liberation struggle, we cannot but be humbled and inspired by their brave actions and their great sacrifice in our shared cause.

The best tribute we can pay to them is to pledge to continue their struggle until final victory. Uniting the widest possible forces to defeat the imperialists in the coming war is the first vital step we must take in the long march to freedom, liberation and socialism for all.

Death to the neo-nazi Nato alliance and its criminal offspring in east Asia, the US-south Korea-Japan trilateral alliance!

Victory to the united forces of anti-imperialist resistance!