Seoul declaration: The rising tide of global war in east Asia

The following text was approved by consensus at the fourth international conference of the World Anti-imperialist Platform in Seoul on Monday 15 May.

Understanding:

That the imperialist global economy is in a deep a systemic crisis, from which the monopolists are desperately trying to extricate themselves at the expense of the world’s masses.
That as the economic crisis worsens, the drive of the exploiters to find and control profit-taking opportunities, their drive to maximise profits at all costs, is assuming ever more desperate proportions and pushing the world relentlessly into a third world war.
That this war, like the two world wars that preceded it, stems from the inescapable contradictions that are built into the system of production for profit – contradictions that went global along with the capitalist market.
That no cost will be considered too great by the exploiters if they can ultimately be successful in restoring demand to the global capitalist market. This they hope to do via a hugely-expanded need for armaments and via the need for reconstruction following the enormous destruction of lives, products and infrastructure.
That the logic of capitalist-imperialism is incompatible with and impervious to the logic of human beings; and that this is why the masses have consistently proved unable to persuade the exploiters to modify their behaviour through the force of rational argument, no matter how self-evident are the truths we try to present about shared human needs or mutually-assured destruction.

We, the participants at the World Anti-imperialist Platform international conference in Seoul, declare the following:

That the escalation of the war in Ukraine was provoked by the US-led Nato imperialist alliance, training and directing its neo-nazi forces, which had looted the country’s people and resources and transformed its army into a proxy force, to be used as a battering ram in a longstanding imperialist quest to destroy the integrity, sovereignty and independence of Russia and open its vast territory up to unfettered looting by western corporations and financiers.
That the same aggressive imperialist alliance is pushing to open more fronts in its profits-driven war in east Asia, and has to this end spent decades creating proxy armies in Taiwan and south Korea, which it hopes in a similar way to use to destroy the integrity, sovereignty and independence of China and the DPRK, opening up their people and resources to imperialist domination and superexploitation.
That these regions, though separated by thousands of miles, are intimately connected, forming two fronts in one global war that is being conducted and accelerated by the imperialists, who are trying to shore up their profit margins and preserve their failing system by any means necessary.
That the people of south Korea, suffering under the triple burden of the global economic crisis, capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination, have lived for the last 78 years as colonial subjects of the USA, whose bases dominate their country, whose officers direct their military, whose financiers control their economy, and whose secret services direct the entire framework of the their social and political life.
That the re-arming of Japan is aimed at reinforcing US military structures in the Pacific and at bolstering the proxy armies at the imperialists’ disposal in conducting their planned wars against China and the DPRK.
That the fascistic puppet Yoon Suk-yeol and his government in Seoul are acting on behalf of their US paymasters and selling out the interests of their Korean compatriots in uttering ever more bellicose and reckless statements that indicate their readiness to catapult the country into war at any moment.
That by endlessly conducting provocative rehearsals for nuclear war and for leadership ‘decapitation operations’ against the DPRK on south Korean soil, over south Korean airspace and in south Korean waters, the US-led USA-Japan-south Korea ‘tripartite alliance’ is forcing the people and military of the DPRK onto a permanent war footing, never knowing when one of these ‘rehearsals’ might be used as a cover for a real invasion.
That the best defence for the Korean people from this madness is the emerging northern triple alliance of DPRK-China-Russia, whose increasing cooperation in the military and economic spheres offers hope of escape from imperialism’s clutches to people across the region.
That in using the Korean people and land as mere disposable pawns in their moves to control the territory and resources of what they clearly see as a ‘grand chess board’ – just as they have done with the people of Ukraine, and are preparing to do with the people of Poland, the Baltic states, Taiwan and elsewhere – the imperialists are showing once again how little they care for the lives of the masses of humanity.
That in doing so, they are clearly revealing that despite all their subsequent talk of ‘never again’, the ‘rights of nations’, ‘human rights’ and ‘equality’, their supremacist attitudes remain unchanged since the days when they were hurling the workingmen of the world into the trenches and in front of the cannons of World War One in their tens of thousands.
That no matter who fires the first shot in any escalation of the wars being incubated in south Korea and in Taiwan, the DPRK and Chinese armies will be fighting a war of self-defence and national liberation.
That the party that is provoking nuclear confrontation, and which has pushed so many other states into developing these supremely destructive weapons in order not to be forced into colonial subjection, is US imperialism. That the USA is the only country that has used these weapons, and that it only did so when it was sure of no reprisals in kind.
That the only way to secure full global nuclear disarmament is to destroy once and for all the capitalist-imperialist global system of production for profit and exploitation of man by man and nation by nation. In this quest, all progressive humanity must be firmly on the side of those who are fighting the neo-nazi Nato alliance, no matter where they are situated in the globe or what their present social system may be.
That the primary contradiction in the world today is that between the US-led Nato imperialist bloc and the mass of suffering humanity, and that the primary task of socialists and anti-imperialists is to maximise the forces that can be brought together to defeat this enemy of human dignity and progress.