The extremely dangerous situation in which the U.S. had been threatening North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) with annihilation unless they dismantled their nuclear weapons and submitted to intrusive inspections throughout the country has temporarily simmered down after the Trump-Kim negotiations. At the same time, very little is known about what actually was and was not said and/or settled. Even the objectives of the Trump/Pence regime itself (as well as its internal contradictions) remain opaque and in the shadows. Because of this, and because the underlying sharp international contradictions are not resolved and expectations are raised, the dynamics of the situation remain highly volatile and continue to be " extremely dangerous. The danger of war is not fundamentally lessened.
First, there are dynamics intrinsic to the fascist character of the Trump/Pence regime--with its extremely aggressive foreign policy in general and its need to constantly stay on the offensive and not to be perceived as giving into, or losing to, countries over which it asserts its "right" to dominate. Should Trump and those around him (or a faction of those around him) decide that the negotiations did not, after all, put the U.S. in the light they want--if they decide that their concessions to North Korea are being perceived as weakness by rivals and those nations that they oppress--they are capable of changing their posture in the blink of a tweet.
There are also dynamics intrinsic to the shape of great-power rivalry and contradictions, which are also in a highly unstable, unpredictable, and dangerous state--as seen, most notably, in Trump's attacks on his European, Canadian, and Japanese imperialist allies this past weekend, and his use of aggressive tariffs, but also in the less publicized but even more dangerous ongoing U.S. threats and maneuvers against China. There is a method to what he is doing, but it is a method full of risks. None of this is under anyone's control right now.
Further, for pundits and the "wise" men and women of the media to tell us to now not only breathe a sigh of relief, but to wish Trump well after he has violently threatened the Korean people for over a year (and the people of the world as well) is precisely analogous to thanking a psychopath, who's held a knife to your throat while taunting you, for temporarily pulling the knife slightly back. This regime remains a fascist regime, threatening all of humanity.
Second, the Democratic Party and its mouthpieces and allies in the media--notably, but not only, MSNBC--are actually making the situation far worse from the standpoint of the people of the world. They are loudly complaining about how the U.S. is supposedly being sullied by its association with a regime so horrible as North Korea and that Trump is being played. First off, North Korea is indeed a regressive and repressive state, one that has nothing at all in common with socialism or communism. But, if you multiplied all the accusations against it by 100 it would still not come close to the horror that the U.S. routinely inflicts on the world year after year, day after day.
Where are the commentators and politicians reminding Americans that the U.S. killed three million Koreans after invading Korea during a civil war there in the early 1950s? Where are the commentators who are allowed to mention any of the crimes that the U.S. is carrying out today--say, in Yemen, where U.S. troops and backing to a Saudi war have caused the murder of perhaps as many as 15,000 civilians, many of them children, put over 20 million Yemenis at risk of hunger and epidemic, and how nothing North Korea is doing comes anywhere close, and why therefore regimes which do not knuckle under to U.S. commands might want to have a deterrent--especially, again, a nation in which three million people had been killed by the U.S. in living memory?
These senators and commentators are trying to mold the thinking of people whose inclinations for a just world could lead them, if they were exposed to the actual truth, toward a much better position. Every word they belch normalizes this regime and prepares people to conciliate and collaborate with great horrors. They are training people in a totally upside-down view of the world, and they are preparing them to support a war if Trump should suddenly shift positions. Here too, their USA! USA! propaganda and conditioning--this time by the likes of Schumer, Pelosi, Rachel Maddow and the rest--dwarfs anything that North Korea has done. People are being played for chumps and they need to be told so.
Third, it is very important in this situation to go out with the real truth to people. Neither of the two positions being allowed into the media--either that we are on the road to "peace" or that Korea is taking advantage of the U.S. and needs to be slapped down--is true. Both positions represent lies and come from the framework of what serves U.S. imperialism.
If you were concerned about the danger of war last week emanating from Trump/Pence/Bolton--the whole Trump/Pence regime--now is not the time to sigh in relief, but to heighten vigilance and to expose the gangsta threat behind Trump's newfound honeyed words and the overt bellicose threats from the Democrats and McCain/Graham Republi-fascists. Now is the time to find the ways and means to act to wake people up to the continuing danger to humanity posed by this regime.
We need a different world, where humanity is not held hostage to "great powers" (that is, to imperialist murderers and plunderers) threatening each other and those nations they dominate with weapons of mass annihilation in their insane compulsion to expand or die. The only way to get to that better world is through revolution--through overthrowing this system and bringing into being a whole different economy, political structure, and set of values, and spreading this revolution worldwide.
(Article changed on June 16, 2018 at 01:49)
