US Directs “Invincible Spirit” at North Korea

According to representative officials of both countries, the exercises took place in response to the sinking of the South-Korean warship, the Cheonan, resulting in the deaths of 46 sailors.  The South Korean government moved quickly put blame squarely on the North, without any credible evidence to corroborate its accusations.

The South-Korean government, for its part, flatly denied officials from the North any participatory right in the investigation.  This consequently colored the results of inquires and made refutation of charges lobbed against them impossible.

North Korea’s long-standing ally in the region, China – via the use of its veto power – stymied a South-Korean backed U.N. Security Council resolution placing official blame on the North and calling for a concerted response on the part of the international community.

Many questions, however, as to what caused the sinking of the Cheonan (even within South Korea) remain, but that was only one motivating factor for the exercises.

An Exercise in Intimidation

The Invincible Spirit exercise, despite its pretenses, sought to demonstrate clearly to North Korea just whom is actually “boss” in the region, and that it should remember its place before considering any attempt to alter the balance of power on the Peninsula or between itself and surrounding countries more generally.  It also had more fundamental, far-reaching intentions.

Global imperialism wants to open up the country to penetration by Western capital. It is easy to see what a boon this would be for capitalism worldwide if it were to manifest: an inexpensive labor market ripe for exploitation, fresh natural resources for the plunder, infrastructure at rock-bottom prices, a completely new market for the sale and distribution of goods and services, etc.  In other words, they seek the eventual reintroduction of capitalism and a new subordination of the Korean workers and farmers to imperialism. 

Nuclear Weapons

In order to deter an attack by the United States or of its regional proxy armies, i.e., South Korea and Japan, now and in the future, the North-Korean regime has taken to accelerating the development of its nuclear-weapons program.  Yet while the U.S. talks of “disarmament,” principally of its international rivals, it continues to bolster its own nuclear arsenals.

Armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, refusing to endorse the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the only country to drop an atomic weapon on another, the United States is, therefore, in no position to take any “moral,” indeed, rational high ground or claim it is actually serious on this issue when it refuses to speak of its own nuclear disarmament.  Such claims are entirely duplicitous in nature and marked by hypocrisy. They boil down simply to the inalienable right of the United States to nuclear weapons while other countries, like North Korea, are not allowed any. The UN passes resolution after resolution condemning the nuclear programs of “rogue” states but does or says virtually nothing about the nuclear capabilities of the United States or other Western powers. 

What, therefore, determines who can have nukes? In a word, force.  The unrivaled military power of the US, for instance, over both friend and foe alike allows both protection against the U.N. and other countries interfering in its own nuclear ambitions and its ability to police actively the world, to be the world’s nuclear guardian against any country threatening to “upset” the U.S.-maintained global balance of power.  That is precisely why the U.S. cannot tolerate a nuclear North Korea.

Defense of North Korea

Despite the horrific crimes of and tyrannical oppression against the people of North Korea by the Stalinist bureaucracy and its forces of repression (the army, secret police, etc), it continues to defend the degenerate workers’ state against imperialism and capitalist restoration as the basis of its current privileges as the ruling “caste” in North-Korean society.

The nationalization of industry, economic planning, and the state monopoly on foreign trade, despite the crippling hold the Stalinists have over them, represent historic gains for not only the workers and farmers of North Korea but the international workers’ movement as well.  They are the prerequisites for any future transition to socialism and, therefore, genuine socialists defend them against dismantlement in the form of capitalist restoration. Defense, therefore, does not mean, in this instance, defense of Stalinist dictatorship.

Socialists cannot and do not rely on the Stalinists and their armies to defend the country from attack.  We would demand in any future attack by imperialism or its regional gendarmes that the North-Korean government immediately begin setting the workers and farmers of the country in motion in their own defense against the slaughter. This means the practical arming of the workers and farmers and the legalization and facilitation of their own organizations and militias of resistance.  Such a development would form an important counter-weight to the state-controlled army and secret police.

The Necessity of Political Revolution

The parasitic bureaucracy not only terrorizes the worker and farmers, it systematically blocks the road to the future realization of socialism through its stranglehold over all political, economic, and social life. Its overthrow is essential.

What is needed is a revolutionary party in North Korea to overthrow the Stalinist regime and replace it with genuine workers and farmers’ power – a struggle for political revolution.