The Escalation of World War III and the Global Anti-Imperialist Front
Miguel Alexander Escobar | Rafael Aguiñada Carranza Inter-Union Coordinating Committee (CIRAC) (El Salvador)
General Introduction
Comrades, delegates, fighters of the oppressed peoples:
We do not wish to speculate about catastrophes. We consider it important to read the reality of the world through the method of dialectical materialism. Imperialism, in its terminal phase of financial parasitism and military aggression, has unleashed a fragmented yet systemic Third World War. It is not a single continuous front, but a multiplicity of local, regional, and hybrid wars that form part of a single strategy: to maintain the domination of transnational monopoly capital, led by the United States and its satellites in NATO, the EU, Japan, and Australia.
The Fronts of World War III
1. Imperialist Aggression Against Africa and the Global Struggles for Independence
Africa has been, since the Berlin Conference (1884–85), the laboratory of capitalist plunder. Today, that tradition is renewed in new forms:
• French and US neo-colonialism: France maintains the CFA franc as a mechanism for transferring value from 14 African countries to the French Treasury. The US, through AFRICOM, controls military bases in Djibouti, Niger (until the recent anti-imperialist coup), Kenya, and Somalia — ostensibly against “terrorism,” but in reality to secure uranium (Niger), coltan (Democratic Republic of Congo), oil (South Sudan, Nigeria), and gas (Mozambique).
• Coups d’état as a disciplinary mechanism: When a government of mother Africa attempts to nationalise resources or draw closer to Russia, China, or Iran, imperialism organises soft (or hard) coups. Examples: the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya (2011), which destroyed the most developed state in Africa; attempted coups in Sudan against the popular transition; the destabilisation of Burkina Faso before the triumph of Ibrahim Traoré.
• Popular response — the new African anti-imperialist belt: The peoples of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea Conakry, and Sudan have expelled French troops, creating the Alliance of Sahel States and requesting military cooperation from Russia (through the Wagner Group/Africa Corps). This represents the rebirth of the revolutionary Pan-Africanist movement that looks to Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah, and Patrice Lumumba.
2. The Multiple Fronts of World War III and the Anti-Imperialist Strategy
There is not one single war, but five interconnected fronts:
Front
Form of Aggression
Popular Response
Economic-Financial
Unilateral sanctions, confiscation of reserves (Russia, Venezuela, Afghanistan), odious debt.
De-dollarisation (BRICS+, yuan, ruble, gold), inter-state barter, popular complementary currencies.
Direct Military (NATO)
Ukraine as testing ground; arms to Taiwan; bases in 80 countries.
Russia-China-North Korea-Iran military cooperation; asymmetric deterrence doctrine (hypersonic weapons and drones).
Hybrid-Informational
Media fascism: censorship of anti-imperialist voices, fabrication of ‘terrorism’, deepfakes.
Free networks (Telegram, Signal, decentralised networks), community radios, militant fact-checking.
Biological-Ecological
Fabricated pandemics (USAMRIID laboratories), vaccine hoarding, seizure of seeds and water.
Health sovereignty (local drug production), defence of indigenous territories as the lungs of the world.
Proxy (by delegation)
Ukraine vs. Russia; Israel vs. Palestine and Lebanon; Taiwan vs. China; Armenia vs. Azerbaijan (with Turkey-NATO).
Combative internationalism: anti-imperialist volunteers on all fronts.
3. The War in West Asia and the Imminent War in East Asia
West Asia (Middle East):
• The so-called “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is in reality a colonial settlement war with genocidal characteristics. Since October 2023, Israel — with the full support of the US, UK, and Germany — has bombed hospitals, refugee camps, universities, and churches in Gaza, killing more than 40,000 Palestinians (the majority women and children).
• The Axis of Resistance (Hezbollah, Ansar Allah/Houthis of Yemen, Iraqi militias, official Syria) has demonstrated that Israel’s “invulnerability” is a myth. The Houthis are blockading the Red Sea to ships bound for Israel; Hezbollah has evacuated the north of occupied Palestine with precision missiles.
• Outlook: Open war between Israel and Hezbollah (Lebanon) and Iran is imminent. The US has already deployed aircraft carriers. A victory for the Resistance would mean the collapse of the Zionist project.
East Asia:
• Taiwan: The supreme expression of the US strategy to “contain China” is through the systematic violation of the One China principle, selling arms, training Taiwanese troops and threatening to “defend” the island. China has defined reunification as irreversible and is conducting naval blockade exercises.
• Korea: The peninsula is in a technical state of war (armistice only, since 1953). The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, with tactical nuclear weapons, is the only country that has militarily defeated the US (1950–53). The joint exercises of the US, South Korea, and Japan seek to provoke a conflict that would justify military intervention.
• The Philippines and the South China Sea: The US has reactivated military bases in the Philippines (EDCA) to directly threaten China and Vietnam. The objective: to control 30% of global maritime trade and reserves of gas and marine resources.
We can conclude that: World War III is already being fought from the Donbas to Gaza, from the Red Sea to Taiwan. Imperialism opens all fronts because its internal crisis is irreversible. But each front is also an opportunity: where the empire advances, it meets resistance. And where there is resistance, the empire bleeds.
4. The Anti-Imperialist Struggles in Latin America
Our America, as Martí called it and Che defended it, has been the backyard of imperialism for two centuries. But today we are living through a second wave of progressive and revolutionary governments:
• The Bolivarian bloc: Venezuela resists the longest criminal blockade in history (900 individual sanctions, confiscation of Citgo, assassination attempts and the kidnapping of workers’ president Nicolás Maduro). The Bolivarian Militia and the CLAP (local supply committees) have prevented collapse.
• Cuba: More than 60 years of genocidal blockade have not broken the revolution. Cuba produces its own vaccines (Soberana, Abdala), sends doctors to the world, and educates young people from across the Americas at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). Cuba’s greatest strength: its single party and its system of popular defence.
• Sandinista Nicaragua: Daniel Ortega Saavedra has defeated two coup attempts financed by USAID and NED. Nicaragua: geopolitical project of the Greater Caribbean.
• New actors: Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro, despite contradictions, has broken with the Monroe Doctrine, proposed a debt-for-climate-action swap, and has denounced the genocide in Gaza.
• Social movements: Indigenous peoples (in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico), the MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) of Brazil, unemployed organisations in Argentina, and combative trade unions are the backbone of everyday resistance.
Principal threat: The fascist far-right (Bolsonaro, Milei, Kast, María Corina Machado) is the fifth column of imperialism. Milei in Argentina has already surrendered monetary, energy, and military sovereignty to the US.
Comrades, imperialism is rotten, but it has teeth. World War III will not be won by wishes, but by organisation, discipline, and conscious sacrifice.
Our global anti-imperialist front must be today what the Communist International was in the 1930s: a thorn in the side of fascism, a school of courage, a factory of revolutions.
We do not know if victory will come tomorrow or in 20 years. But we do know that defeat is only certain if we do not fight.
No to the Third World War of capital!
Yes to the war of the peoples against capital!
Long live the global anti-imperialist front!
Ever onward to victory, comrades!
