US Capitalism Worried as Koreans Open Talks. Didn't Ask Permission.

US: A great threat to world peace. North Koreans shake hands.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The main goal of the capitalist media is to keep us all in a state of tension, fear, perpetual insecurity. When a working class populations feels this way, and is not organized in that it has its own party, apparatus, media etc., it is more susceptible to manipulation. Of course, the ruling class doesn’t want open race war or nationalist, or religious sectarian gangs on the streets fighting each other, but they do want these tensions to simmer, maybe a minor containable clash here and there. The same is true of the fear of foreigners, we must distrust them all as the ruling class wants us to see the world as they see it.

Sometimes I think about what it must be like living in one of the Koreas. Here in the US people worry about nuclear war but this fear must be a thousand times worse in Seoul or Pyongyang.  In the event of any military confrontation, even a non-nuclear one, between North and South Korea, massive destruction of property and millions killed will be the result.

The Korean Civil war, one in which US imperialism took a side, has never ended.  What we have there is a US imposed border and an armistice. It must be terrifying for the people on both sides every time the US Predator in Chief lets fly one of his Tweets. It’s easy for people in his position to talk tough as neither he nor the generals, politicians of capitalism, and other decision makers will be victims of their own aggression.

Thawing of Korea Ties Divides U.S. and Seoul, a Wall Street Journal headline read yesterday. The US government is upset, or angry more like it that Seoul decided to institute talks with the North after Pyongyang hinted that they might be willing to participate in the Winter Olympics. Washington, and the Pentagon no doubt, never knew about it until a few hours beforehand according to the Journal.

South Korea’s decision to talk to the Koreans in the other half of the country without permission from Donald Trump and co. is “stirring tensions” with the US the Journal adds.  In a humane, civilized world, such a development would be encouraged. Instead, Trump was very angry and despite having quite the Twitter mouth on him, never mentioned it in his State of the Union address---just the opposite, he “reiterated” his call for tougher sanctions (a nice name for economic warfare) against the North.

More threatening to our American way of life and freedoms, even more than nuclear war apparently, is the result of these talks between the North and South------the athletes from both sides of the 38^th Parallel marching under one flag when the games open on Friday. Can anything be more frightening and threatening to humanity than this?

U.S. officials are “particularly frustrated”,  as Seoul’s reaching out a hand to the North comes in the wake President Moon Jae-in’s “Repeated demands last year that the U.S. seek his consent before taking any pre-emptive military action against North Korea.” Says the Journal.

Heavens! The gall of these people wanting to decide for themselves whether or not to enter a military confrontation with the Northern half of the country. Living each day in fear of a nuclear attack, millions dead, cities destroyed---John Wayne could do it. And making a decision about their own fate without consulting the geniuses in Washington. What are they thinking?  Moon had better watch out, he may go the way of former U.S. stooge, Saddam Hussein, who misread US signals and thought he could make decisions on his own.

The madness of U.S. capitalism, it’s bad enough for us, but it must be pure hell for workers on the Korean Peninsula living in a world knowing that military and political representatives of a decaying capitalist class hold your fate in their hands.  It’s like a video game only real. There is “….talk in Washington that some officials are considering a limited ‘bloody nose’ strike on North Korea…” according to the Journal report. Then the mass murderer and world’s number one war criminal Henry Kissinger is reported in the press saying, that this talk of launching a preemptive strike on North Korea  “is strong and the argument rational”.  If the reader hasn’t done so, Christopher Hitchens' book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger is a must read.This man Kissinger has some blood on his hands.

It’s inconceivable that intelligent human beings can talk this way, act this way, but they are driven to this behavior by the laws of their own system. It’s life or death for US capitalism in its struggle to maintain its global position not merely as the world’s major military power but economic one as well. The North Korean regime is a paranoid remnant of the Stalinist era but they have every reason to fear and distrust the US as it destroyed almost every city in the country with its unchallenged air superiority; and, like them or not, the regime is absolutely correct in its claims that South Korean policy is totally subservient to US capitalism and its occupation. In the past, the North has shown willingness to halt its nuclear program but it would be madness to do so in the face of US imperialism’s aggressive goals. Without nuclear weapons it would have no defense at all against the most heavily armed nuclear equipped US military. The North Koreans aren't developing nuclear weapons to attack the US, they are doing so as a deterrent to the US attacking them. The book included here is an excellent introduction to recent Korean history and should be read by all class conscious workers.

The Korean working class North and South knows fear and it is quite natural they would welcome any efforts at increasing friendly relations between the two regions. This pressure is felt by the body politic as well,  “This city (Seoul) was once completely destroyed. No Korean is interested in seeing that happen again---period. If there is war….the cost will have to be borne by us.”, one South Korean politician tells the Journal. That’s suits the US ruling class fine. As long as the victims of their activities are overseas, the U.S. mass media will keep the reality at bay. US capitalism has no interest in solving the problem of Korean unity unless it is in a way that extended US control of the country to the Russian border. The North Koreans know this---millions of Americans don't.

The U.S. mass media is extremely biased and censored and centered on keeping its citizens in this perpetual state of insecurity, fear and distrust of foreigners. I suppose Mexicans are to blame for poisoning the water supply of numerous US cities and causing our dams, roads, bridges and rail system to collapse. And the recent market declines that wiped out a month's gains in a couple of days? Mexicans again.

It is not North Korea’s nuclear weapons program that is the major concern except in that it makes it more difficult for the U.S to invade and bomb the country. It is the global struggle for markets and containing a major and growing competitor---China and to a lesser extent, Russia. And as I wrote earlier, “Such a conflict would also draw China in to the mix. Even if the North was not only de-nuclearized but completely defeated, China could not tolerate a united US puppet regime on its northern border.” And the US doesn’t want a united, pro-China or independent Korea either. The reason the US intervened in the Korean civil war, much like the Vietnamese one, was to contain the spread of the Chinese revolution and keep the world safe for capitalism and US corporations. I once read that the US taxpayer financed South Korea with more military and other aid than the entire continent of Africa. The propaganda from the US gutter press is that it gives billions in humanitarian aid to the rest of the world when the truth is most of our tax money is spent on military aid, military hardware and WMD’s aimed at suppressing resistance to the despotic regimes US capitalism supports.

There is no way a US strike in this area would not bring China in to it. The arrogance of US imperialism will be the death of it, and unless we stop it and offer a different US face to the world, it will be the death of us.

It is not something people enjoy hearing but there is no solution to this crisis on the basis of capitalism. It becomes so obvious when a small gesture of unity between the two Koreas as has happened with the Olympics is so upsetting to the U.S. ruling class.

Read more on the Korea’s here  and at the Korea labels on the right.