Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum

Essence and characteristics are different but closely related. Each being or movement has innumerable characteristics, but their essential characteristic is the most important aspect that distinguishes them from one another. In short, essential characteristic corresponds to the ‘What’ of 5W1H (what, who, where, when, why and how). To understand this ‘What’, we need to answer the question of the ‘Why’. ‘What’ and ‘Why’ are the two main components of a goal. Without knowing ‘What’ and ‘Why’, we can never know ‘How’.

War is a struggle. The battle between those waging a just war and those waging an unjust war is one of the starkest class struggles. The highest level of class struggle is a revolutionary war, and the category of revolutionary war includes an anti-imperialist war.

What should we make of the Ukraine war that broke out in eastern Europe in 2022? This is a question about the character of the war in Ukraine. More specifically, a question about its essential character. In other words: what is the war in Ukraine, and why did it happen?

The simple and clear answer is that it is an anti-imperialist and antifascist war, a liberation war, and a preventive war. This describes the war from the anti-imperialist camp’s viewpoint, and directly, from the standpoint of Russia. For Russia’s opponents, the war has the opposite character.

The war in Ukraine is an anti-imperialist and antifascist war. Waged by Russia, it is an anti-imperialist war against imperialist NATO and also an antifascist war against the Ukrainian fascist forces, puppets of imperialist NATO. Russia called the war in Ukraine a ‘special military operation’ at the beginning of the war in February 2022 and revealed three goals: denazification, demilitarization, and protection of its population.

The elimination of the Azov battalion in Mariupol in May 2022 was an example of the denazification, the seizure of an underground arsenal in Bakhmut in May 2023 was an example of the demilitarization, and the merger of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson was an example of protection of the population.

Further, President Putin first referred to the conflict as a “war” in December last year and did so again at the Victory Day ceremony on 9 May this year. While the war in Ukraine appears to be a war between the Russian and Ukrainian armies, but it is in reality a war between Russia and NATO. The actual operational direction of the Ukraine’s military forces lies with NATO, and its soldiers are trained and its weapons are mainly provided by NATO. Other NATO forces are also directly and indirectly involved in the war in Ukraine in various forms and ways, whether as commanders or soldiers. Without NATO’s involvement, the war in Ukraine would have been over long ago. In fact, it would never have started.

The war in Ukraine is a liberation war. It did not begin in 2022 but in 2014. Its roots go as far back as 1991, with the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and eastern European socialist bloc. Indeed, the imperialist’s plan to use Ukraine against Russia goes back to the 1950s and even earlier.

NATO’s eastward expansion policy since 1991 is one of the root causes of the war in Ukraine, and the Maidan coup in 2014 and the subsequent eight years of fascist genocide against the Russian people is one of the direct causes of the war in Ukraine. Therefore, from Russia’s point of view, the war in Ukraine is a liberation war to free the Russians and the Ukrainian people from fascist and beastly repression.

The war in Ukraine is a preventive war. The imperialist powers have continuously pursued isolation, division, and collapse strategies against Russia. From the infamous ‘grand chessboard’ strategy of Zbigniew Brzezinski to NATO’s eastward expansion policy and a succession of engineered ‘color revolutions’ to depose independent-minded or Russia-friendly governments in former socialist countries.

In February 2022, NATO was secretly propelling its forces towards a full-scale invasion of the besieged Donbass. Its attack forces were based in Mariupol and spearheaded by the neo-nazi Azov battalion. NATO, which had already invaded and dismantled Yugoslavia in the 1990s, was working on such a plan, so naturally, Russia had no choice but to prepare.

There is a view that defines the war in Ukraine as an interimperialist war. The premise of the argument is that Russia is an imperialist country, fighting in Ukraine for colonies and spheres of influence. According to this view, Russia is no different in essence to the imperialist leaders of NATO, namely the United States and western Europe.

This view rests on an unscientific characterization of Russia’s social character, which in turn is based on a wrong understanding of imperialism. The most egregious case of this erroneous reasoning can be found in the theory of the ‘Imperialist Pyramid’ put forward by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

Russia is not an imperialist but a capitalist country with lots of socialist heritage. At the beginning of the retreat from socialism to capitalism, under the regime of Boris Yeltsin, Russia even degenerated into a colony of US and European imperialism. Since then, the country has mainly exported resources not capital. Russia is not a country that lives primarily by exporting capital, importing raw materials and plundering colonies for superprofits, quite the reverse.

The relationship between Russia’s politics and economy is also completely different from that of an imperialist country. In Russia, political circles take the initiative above the economic circles. Many companies, especially in the energy sector, are nationalized in Russia, and they implement the policy of voluntary deviation in which nationalized companies provide cheap supplies to the people and bear their own losses. This is also related to Russia’s socialist heritage.

This is one of the reasons why Russia has not deviated from the line of anti-imperialism even though it is not a communist and internationalist country. Especially in recent years, Russia has joined the unitary anti-imperialist front, along with North Korea and China, and never derailed or wavered from it.

In 2023, the probability of the spread of war in eastern Europe and the outbreak of war in East Asia is rising. In East Asia, Taiwan and South Korea are the most likely places for wars to break out. When the wars materialize, we should call them the Taiwanese War and the South Korean War. An agreement between the President of North Korea Kim Il Sung and the Premier of China Zhou Enlai in 1961 states that when war in either Taiwan or South Korea breaks out, the other will immediately follow. The prerequisite for this agreement is that it has to be an anti-imperialist war. In the current context, it is clear that such a war will have anti-imperialist character. So it can be affirmed that they will happen almost immediately.

The wars in Taiwan and South Korea are anti-imperialist wars, national-liberation wars and national reunification wars. Concretely, a war in South Korea is an anti-imperialist and antifascist war, when we consider the common point with a war in Taiwan, it is an anti-imperialist war.
The wars in Taiwan and South Korea are anti-imperialist wars. They are anti-imperialist wars in which China and North Korea are ostensibly fighting the Taiwanese and South Korean authorities respectively, but in reality they are fighting US imperialism, the true ruling power in Taiwan and South Korea.

The imperialist camp includes Japanese militar-ism and European imperialism which follow US imperialism. Unlike Taiwan, South Korea is a fascist society. It really has fascist evil laws such as the National Security Act and repressive institutions such as the National Intelligence Service. The regime of Yoon Suk-yeol is escalating fascistization by repressing political parties and conducting anti-communist campaigns in South Korea. It describes North Korea as the “main enemy”, insisting on its right to make a “preemptive nuclear strike” and holding huge nuclear war exercises one after another.

Recently, it joined in forming the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral military alliance to create an Asian version of the NATO. Clearly, the war in South Korea has a relatively more antifascist character compared to the war in Taiwan, so it should be considered both an anti-imperialist and an antifascist war.

The wars in Taiwan and South Korea are national liberation wars. Taiwan has been one with the Chinese mainland since the middle ages, and currently, only 1-2 percent of Taiwanese are ethnically Taiwan aboriginal. The vast majority of Taiwan’s people are Chinese. Meanwhile, Korea has been a single nation for over 5,000 years.

The war in Taiwan is a national-liberation war to free the Chinese people living in Taiwan from the domination of foreign imperialist powers. The war in Korea is a typical national-liberation war aimed at establishing the sovereignty of the Korean nation on a nationwide scale, not only in the north but also in the south, driving out the US army that entered South Korea as an occupying force in September 1945, and finally achieving the national liberation that was left incomplete in August 1945.

The wars in Taiwan and South Korea are national reunification wars. Taiwan and South Korea are the targets of the reunification, which is at the very heart of the both China’s and North Korea’s core interests. Taiwan was separated from the Chinese mainland when Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, and South Korea was divided from the north by the US occupying forces. The people in Taiwan and South Korea have as a result had to suffer the pain of division for more than 70 years.

There is no more important task or need for the Chinese and Koreans than resolving this issue of their countries’ division. There are many ethnic nations in the world that have been divided by foreign powers, and Korea is a representative example. That is why the war in Korea will be a representative national reunification war.

North Korea describes the war in South Korea as the “South Korean Liberation War”. This reflects North Korea’s recognition that it had already been liberated on 15 August 1945 and its determination to complete the victory that was only partially achieved on 27 July 1953. This concept also implies a national-liberation war and a national reunification war. Thus, the concept of the South Korean Liberation War centers on the goal of the war rather than the target of the war — that is, national liberation and national reunification rather than anti-imperialism and antifascism.

Anti-imperialist, antifascist, liberation, preventive, national-liberation and national reunification wars are all just wars. The character of the war is defined depending on one’s position. In this respect, for Marxists and anti-imperialists, the just character of these wars is historically, morally and scientifically proven and undeniable.

As we know, WW1 was an interimperialist war, WW2 was an antifascist war. Following the war in Ukraine, if wars break out in Taiwan and South Korea, WW3 will be in full swing. The common point of the wars in Ukraine, Taiwan, South Korea is that they are anti-imperialist wars. Absolutely, WW3, the anti-imperialist war, is a just war as like WW2, the antifascist war.

A just war may not necessarily be won, but political and moral superiority is undoubtedly one of the main factors that assist in it towards victory. If you have the way and means to achieve the goal of justice — namely, a strong army and exceptional operations — the chances of victory are close to perfection. And if the goal of justice is achieved, humanity has the opportunity to take a great leap forward.