A series of confrontations between the U.S. and China have been escalating in the seas and on the islands of East Asia, as the globally dominant U.S. and increasingly assertive China face off like big gangsters. The U.S. is on top in the existing global power alignment. It is fighting to maintain its domination of a global empire built on the backs of the exploitation of billions of exploited people worldwide. China is an on-the-rise and expanding imperialist power driven by the same basic compulsion of capitalism that drives the U.S.—expand or die—and aiming for a larger share of that exploitation. Each side can establish its own supremacy only at the expense of and by ultimately subduing and defeating its opponent.

Developments over several weeks recently involving the Philippines and South Korea indicate how this entire situation is getting ever more dangerous to humanity. Its trajectory and dynamic are such that neither side can give in to the other. Continual escalations, and the danger of the conflict “going nuclear”—even unintentionally—grow.

The Philippines—A Base for U.S. War Preparations

On Monday, May 1, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met with Joe Biden to begin a five-day state visit to the U.S. The two are strengthening preparations for confrontations, including military confrontations, with China: updating, clarifying and reaffirming the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), and finalizing “new defense guidelines amid growing tensions over the South China Sea and the status of Taiwan.”

Since the Biden administration assumed power, the U.S. has moved aggressively to use large parts of the Philippines as staging areas and bases for the U.S. military in its increasingly hostile confrontation with China. It has also been encouraging and assisting in the modernization and expansion of all branches of the Philippine military, and their coordination with the planning and operations of the U.S. military.

On February 2, U.S. “Defense” Secretary Lloyd Austin announced an arrangement with the Philippines that will allow U.S. access to four military camps in that country, in addition to the five already there. Diane A. Desierto, a professor of law and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame, said bases in the Philippines give the U.S. “a strike capability that [other bases in the region are] unable to give. Its access to the main waterways in the South China Sea enables flexibility for U.S. troops and enables multiple theaters of engagement for the U.S., not just in Northeast Asia but also Southeast Asia.”

Showdown on the High Seas

On April 23, ships from the Chinese and Philippine navies engaged in a “high seas faceoff” that barely avoided a disastrous collision. Earlier in April, the U.S. and the Philippines staged their largest ever collaborative military exercise, in a “high-profile display of their renewed alliance that came just a day after China was set to conclude its own drills around Taiwan.”

The newly reaffirmed Mutual Defense Treaty commits both countries to come to the military aid of the other in the event of any attack by a third country. The definition of “attack” is very broad and includes “on its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific.” The Philippines and China have many territorial disputes about control of different parts of the South China Sea. These could easily erupt into an actual conflict at sea, or an incident could be manufactured to justify a larger conflict. In either case, under current volatile conditions in the region, this treaty serves as a vehicle for turning minor local disputes into major international wars.

As the commander of one of the Philippine ships involved in a recent confrontation said, with all the warships, submarines, and commercial vessels prowling on and below the South China Sea, “these competing interests need just one spark.”

Biden Threatens to Obliterate North Korea

On April 26, at a White House press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Joe Biden blustered that a nuclear attack by North Korea on the U.S. or any of its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action.” To back this up, he also announced that a U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine will be visiting Korea for the first time in 40 years.¹

A few months earlier, U.S. Secretary of “Defense” Lloyd Austin said U.S. deployment of “nuclear strategic assets” in and around the Korean peninsula will be “constant” and “routine.” He said the U.S. Army will conduct “large-scale field exercises” with their South Korean counterparts, which will include a “nuclear use scenario” to counter what he called “provocations” by North Korea.

Provocations?!? Biden and Austin are flaunting the U.S.’s nuclear superiority, and threatening North Korea with obliteration! The U.S. is accelerating military drills with South Korea, as it prepares for possible conflict with North Korea and China. It is deploying aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and submarines around North Korea. The U.S. has over 3,500 nuclear weapons that can reach any place on planet Earth. It is the only country that has used nuclear weapons, and it did that twice. North Korea has (maybe) 30 nuclear weapons. U.S. media often speculates about whether North Korean missiles could reach the U.S. There is no doubt that U.S. nukes launched from land, sea, and air, could quickly hit North Korean targets and obliterate much of the small country.

Clashing Imperialists, and the Future of Humanity

The U.S.-China conflict playing across East Asia could quickly spiral into open warfare. The possibility of nuclear weapons being used in a conflict involving the Philippines or South Korea is great. An escalation in either place could break beyond its initial geographic focus and trigger a wider, even global, conflict. The stakes for humanity, and for life on planet Earth, could not be greater.

And for what?

To be top power in a world that rests upon chains of oppression of billions of humans, including young children, who are savagely exploited in the mines, fields, and factories of the global South, or “Third World.”

The Biden administration says it is striving to preserve a “rules-based international order.” In fact, it is striving to preserve an order it dominates and for which it sets the rules. The rules of a system, capitalism-imperialism, which plunders and despoils the Earth to the point where life itself on this planet is in danger. All the contention, the threats, the actual combat and the preparation for further war, all this is in the service of empire—empire wrenched from and built on the blood and sweat of billions of people across this planet.

These clashing imperialists are risking humanity, and the planet, to sustain the entire capitalist-imperialist system of global exploitation, and to solidify their domination of that foul and blood-soaked system. In just the past 70 years, the U.S. has killed nearly 10 million in its wars to defend this empire; and during that same time, 350 million children have died of preventable disease and starvation. Now, under the leadership of the Democrat Biden, it is seriously preparing to fight and “win” a war that would bring indescribable suffering to humanity. This cannot be allowed to happen.

As Bob Avakian recently said:

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.