○ Oppose the US-led Imperialist “Three-front War”
○ Support a Multilateral Order Led by Socialist China
[1] Intensifying Conflict over the 80th Anniversary of Overthrowing the Nazis: China-and-Russia-led Anti-US, Anti-Imperialist, Peace or the US and Western War Maneuverings?
（１）Peaceful and Progressive Forces of the Anti-American, Anti-Imperialist, and National Liberation Struggle Gather in Moscow
May 8, marking the 80th anniversary of overthrowing Nazi Germany, became the most focal point of the global confrontation over war and peace.
At the Moscow ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, international forces, led by Russia and China, gathered together to prevent new war maneuvers by fascism and imperialism. Leaders from 29 countries around the world, including the former Soviet republics, socialist countries such as China, Cuba, and Vietnam, socialist-oriented Venezuela, and Burkina Faso, which is fighting an anti-French, anti-US, anti-colonial struggle, gathered. It vividly revived historical memories of the international united front of socialist and national liberation forces centered on the Soviet Union and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, which played a key role in the victory of the anti-fascist war. At the same time, it showed the current international power relationship in which the multilateral international order led by China and Russia is the biggest driving force accelerating the decline of the US imperialist world hegemony.
At the Xi Jinping-Putin summit, three joint statements were issued to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the war and the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations: “Deepening the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in a new era,” “Global strategic stability,” and “Strengthening the authority of international law.” These are not just statements about bilateral relations. They have special historical significance, as they show the ability of the world’s anti-US, anti-imperialist, and national liberation forces to break down the US imperialist world hegemony system and point the way to a multilateral international order and a peace strategy. It declared that China and Russia would work together to create a new, peaceful and equal international order, including: 1) affirming that China and Russia made a decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism, and resolutely rejecting historical revisionism; 2) opposing the missile defense plans and deployment of intermediate-range missiles by the U.S. and its NATO allies, which threaten peace, as well as the expansion of military forces in space, and promoting nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation; and 3) rearming the basic principles of the post-war order, such as sovereign equality, territorial integrity, non-interference, and peaceful resolution of disputes, as well as the UN Charter and international law, and reviving them into the present new international order.
（２）The US and Western Imperialism are Commemorating their Victories by Plotting War against Russia and China
The “three-front war” led by the US imperialists is becoming more radical. The US -Israeli block has launched a full-scale occupation — ethnic cleansing — of Gaza, and the US-NATO-Ukraine has launched a large-scale drone attack on Russia. The US Secretary of Defense has called on Asian countries to expand their rearmament against China.
NATO has approved the largest rearmament plan against Russia since the end of the Cold War, and has decided to increase military spending by 5%. The German Merz administration has declared that it will take the lead in rearmament in Europe, and has begun to move toward the introduction of conscription. It has banned and criminalized the raising of the Soviet flag, and banned the distribution of newspapers with the Soviet flag printed on them. It has bared its fangs at the left-wing and anti-fascist movements, and is showing its naked aggressiveness in the confrontation against Russia. The EU has warned European countries to boycott the victory anniversary ceremony in Moscow. Ukraine has even threatened that it cannot guarantee the safety of foreign leaders who participate in the Moscow event.
The Japanese media coverage was also strange. “Put an end to Putin’s warped ambition” (Mainichi) and “The democratic camp must not allow China and Russia to destroy order” (Nikkei) were just some of the articles that unleashed anti-China and anti-Russia propaganda, calling for Western countries to unite and suppress China and Russia.
The US and Western imperialist countries, without exception, have fanned the flames of the Russian threat theory, turning Victory Day into a showdown with Russia and strengthening militarism. Not only have they escalated historical revisionism, which openly denies the decisive role played by the socialist Soviet Union, the Soviet Red Army, and the Chinese people’s War of Resistance against Japan, and erases and distorts the anti-fascist war itself from history, but they have also turned it into an opportunity to point the finger at Russia and China.
[2] The Decisive Significance of the Leadership of Soviet Socialism and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan
(1) Criticize Historical Revisionism = Western-Centrism and Learn the Truth about the Anti-Fascist War
Historical revisionism, which denies the war crimes of Nazi Germany, is rapidly expanding with the rise of far-right and neo-fascist forces, in conjunction with today’s Russian threat theory, such as denial and distortion of the Holocaust, equating the Nazis with the Soviet Union, and criminalization of commemorative events.
In this context, from the perspective of fighting the “war on three fronts” of the US imperialists and criticizing the rapidly increasing preparations for invasion of Russia in Europe, we would like to focus on the denial of the leadership of the socialist Soviet Union and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan in the Anti-Fascist War and emphasize its crucial significance.
This other historical revisionism, “denial of the leadership of the Soviet-Chinese War of Resistance against Japan,” is based on the “Western-centrist” view of history that is persistently advocated not only by some far-right forces but also by the entire government and ruling class of Western countries. It is an imperialist ideology that 1) regards the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 as the starting point of World War II, 2) emphasizes the battle of the United States and Britain, and ignores and belittles the Soviet Union and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, 3) replaces the US and British imperialism with the “liberators,” and 4) contrasts fascism with “freedom and democracy” and conceals the aggressive and colonialist nature of imperialism.
We must learn the truth of the anti-fascist war through fundamental criticism of historical revisionism and Western-centrism, and obtain a correct historical view of the anti-fascist war and World War II.
World War II has a complex and composite political and class character, being 1) an inter-imperialist war between the Axis powers and the United States, Britain, and France, 2) an inter-system war between the socialist Soviet Union and imperialism, 3) a war of national liberation for oppressed peoples, and 4) a war between fascism and anti-fascism, which combines the above-mentioned. What is particularly important is that it was the socialist Soviet Union and the Chinese people’s War of Resistance Against Japan that led the anti-fascist war and played a decisive role in overthrowing fascism. It was the leadership of an international united front that combined socialism and the resistance struggle of oppressed peoples.
— The Soviet and Chinese people were the ones who made the greatest contributions to the overthrow of fascism. In fact, 27 million Soviet people (one in seven people) and 20 to 30 million Chinese people were sacrificed. About 800,000 women served in the Red Army.
— World War II began on September 18, 1931, with the Chinese people’s War of Resistance Against Japan against the Emperor militarist Japan’s war of aggression against China. It was the starting point of the 14-year-long world anti-fascist war. From the beginning, it was characterized as an anti-imperialist and anti-colonial national liberation war.
— The role of the Soviet Red Army against the Nazis was decisive. About 80% of the German military forces were sent to the German-Soviet front, and this defeat on the eastern front determined the collapse of the Nazis. The second western front of the Allied forces, consisting of the US, Britain and France, was opened after the Soviet Red Army had crushed the German army at Stalingrad, Kursk and Bagration. Without these strategic victories by the Soviet Union on the eastern front, the Normandy landings (June 6, 1944) would not have been possible.
— The number of communists, socialists and partisans of the national liberation movement who cooperated with the Red Army exceeded 240,000. In addition, 360,000 multi-ethnic soldiers from Central Asia alone, including Kazakh brigades and Kyrgyz soldiers, fought on the front lines. It was truly an all-out war by the Soviet people and the oppressed peoples. This “Great Patriotic War” to defend socialism stopped the Nazis from expanding eastward, and led to the fall of Berlin in 1945.
— The Chinese people’s long war against Japan on the Chinese front tied the Japanese army to the mainland and exhausted it (about 80% of the army was fixed on the mainland), which allowed the Soviet Red Army to concentrate on the European front.
— The Soviet Union did not just fight against Nazi Germany. More than 2,000 Soviet air force personnel participated in the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, and more than 200 were killed. Meanwhile, as soon as the Soviets defeated the German army, the Red Army made a complete turnaround, moving soldiers and weapons via the Trans-Siberian Railway and entering the war against Japan on August 9, 1945, and working together with the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, overthrew the Emperor-Fascist Japan. The Soviet Union and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan fought side by side, reinforcing each other, leading to victory in the anti-fascist war.
(2) Fascism and Imperialism are Inseparable
Fascism is a monster born of imperialism. The imperialism of Nazi Germany and the imperialism of the United States, Britain, and France were the same and consistent in their anti-socialism and colonialism. The conflict between the two imperialisms was temporary and conditional.
— First and foremost, the First World War itself was an imperialist war to redivide the colonies between the two imperialist camps of the United States, Britain, France and Russia, and Germany and Austria.
— Germany, the defeated country that had lost its colonies, markets, and resources, began to pursue its ambition for imperialist revival under the Versailles system. In January 1933, German finance capital chose Nazism, “an open terrorist dictatorship by the most reactionary and most xenophobic parts,” and began to erode the British and French colonial markets in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It was a war of colonial redivision.
— On the other hand, British and French imperialism continued and expanded its colonial rule and economic plunder.
— However, while the United States, Britain, France, and Nazi Germany were moving forward with the repartition of their colonies, their primary national goal was the destruction of the socialist Soviet Union. In fact, until the late 1930s, Britain and France tacitly accepted and encouraged German rearmament, and adopted a policy of “appeasement and guiding Eastward” to direct Germany’s attention toward the Soviet Union. The compromise reached at the Munich Conference (September 1938,the annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia) was the result of a conspiracy between Nazi Germany and the imperialist powers, and paved the way for Hitler’s war of aggression and genocide.
— After the Nazi invasion of Poland (September 1939), Britain and France finally declared war on Germany, but it was a “strange war” in which they did not fight seriously. Even when appeasement failed and they turned toward confrontation with Germany, they maintained their anti-Soviet plans until the very end.
— Even after the outbreak of the German-Soviet War (June 1941), the United States and Britain initially remained on the sidelines. The United States declared war on Japan and Germany in December 1941 and “fully participated,” but the fight against Germany by the United States and Britain was limited. This attitude changed from the end of 1942 to the beginning of 1943, when the Soviet Union stopped the Nazi army on its own and the possibility of a victory for Soviet socialism became a reality.
Fascism was not the “extreme government’s violent act” or “totalitarianism” that historical revisionism preaches, but imperialism itself, whose essence is anti-socialism and colonialism. We must appreciate the leadership of the “international united front against imperialism” built by the socialist Soviet Union and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, and inherit the lesson of the victory of the anti-fascist war that anti-fascism must necessarily advocate anti-imperialism.
[3] China and the Global South’s Construction of a Multilateral Order to Counter the US Imperialist “Three-Front War”
(1) The Driving Force behind the War: Fighting Imperialism and Colonialism
The danger of war today, its roots and driving force, are imperialism and colonialism, just like World War I and World War II. The most important tasks of the international anti-US, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-war and peace movement are to fight the “war on three fronts” led by the US imperialists, to end the Ukrainian war which is a proxy war against Russia and create a system of collective security, to end Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza and realize self-determination and statehood for Palestine, to stop the military encirclement of China and the creation of a war system centered on the US and Japan, and to prevent a war against China.
(2) Imperialism Continues to Trample on the Postwar International Order
The victory of the war against imperialism was the driving force behind the creation of the basic principles of the postwar international order, even though it had various limitations. The Soviet Union played a leading role in creating the framework of the UN Charter, which was followed by the Moscow Joint Declaration of the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and the Soviet Union in 1943, the Yalta Conference in 1945, and the San Francisco Conference, and China also made important contributions. The UN Charter (which came into force on October 24, 1945) clearly stated the principles of collective security, sovereign equality, non-use of force and territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes, right to self-determination and decolonization, respect for human rights, and economic cooperation as principles for preventing the return of fascism, and upheld multilateralism as an ideal. This led to the later international humanitarian law and the Convention against Genocide.
However, the imperialist countries, mainly the United States and the United Kingdom, accelerated the weakening of the principles of the UN Charter in all aspects of military, diplomatic and economics, such as the retention of colonies that violate the right to self-determination and sovereign equality, the hollowing out of the use of force and aggressive wars, and the hegemony of the dollar through the Bretton Woods system, immediately after the war (even in the middle of the war). Immediately after the war, they forced the military re-control of colonies that had been taken by Japan, Germany and Italy or where independence struggles had taken place. Vietnam and Algeria were prime examples. They established the Cold War system by creating the imperialist military alliance NATO against socialism. They have repeatedly waged wars of aggression and colonial intervention, such as the Korean War, the Suez invasion, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and interference in the internal affairs of developing countries and attempts to overthrow their governments (color revolutions) through the establishment of the UN military = US military system. They have used the UN as a tool to suppress the forces of socialism and national liberation.
(3) Towards Building a New Multilateral Order
China and Russia have begun to take an active leadership role in order to suppress the war maneuvers of the US and Western imperialism, especially the current war policy centered on the “war on three fronts.”
The postwar international order centered on the United Nations has been unable to prevent the recurrence of the genocide that was pledged 80 years ago to be “Nie wieder (never again).” This is because imperialism, led by the US, has completely destroyed the achievements of the victory of the anti-fascist war and has repeatedly waged wars of aggression and intervened in developing countries. However, socialist China and anti-US and anti-colonial Russia have taken the lead in demanding and pressuring the US and Western imperialism to restore the UN Charter and the principles of international law and to abide by them as the principles of national action. The United Nations, international organizations, and international law are still unable to be effective due to the constant obstruction of imperialism, but the resolutions condemning the genocide in Gaza and the ceasefire resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, South Africa’s lawsuit and order to take measures against genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the prosecution of Netanyahu as a war criminal are becoming political weapons to surround and isolate the United States and Israel. China, Russia, and the countries of the Global South are actively working to build a new multipolar world that respects sovereignty, peaceful coexistence, and mutual cooperation. This is an important lever to create a new multilateral international order led by China and the Global South that respects and utilizes the United Nations and international law. Its main purpose is exactly to prevent imperialist wars of aggression.
[4] Support and Fight Together with the International United Front against US, Imperialism, and Colonialism
（１）The Mistake of Some Western Leftists Who Deny the Challenges Posed by China and the Global South
Some Western leftists and communists look down on, hate and criticize the unity and ties between socialist China, capitalist Russia and the Global South. They argue that both China and Russia are imperialist, that BRICS and the Global South are fragmented and cannot unite, and that they have no power to change the real world. They argue that what is important is class struggle based on the domestic labor-capital contradiction, and that a socialist revolution must be started immediately.
However, have they ever thought about why it has been more than 100 years since the failure of the German Revolution in 1918 that a revolution in developed countries has not been started? If a revolution in developed countries had been achieved, how much of the Soviet socialism that bore the military and economic burden of the Cold War with Western imperialism led by the US imperialists would have been freed from such a heavy burden and could have focused on building socialism in its own country? How much of the Chinese revolution, the Vietnamese revolution, the Cuban revolution and many other developing country revolutions would have been spared the onslaught of invasion, destruction and massacres by Western imperialism led by the US imperialists? How much could they have protected themselves from sanctions and economic destruction attacks, overcome neocolonial domination, pillage, exploitation and plunder, and freed ourselves from the pressure of backwardness and focused on the economic development of our own countries? Are we, the left-wing communists in developed countries, aware of how much the lack of “support from revolutions in developed countries” for over 100 years that Lenin expected immediately after the October Revolution in Russia has delayed the development of human history?
Although the unipolar hegemony of the US imperialists has retreated, the power of the five major hegemonies (military, political, dollar/finance, high technology, culture/media) cannot be underestimated. That is why China, Russia and the Global South are cooperating and uniting beyond their differences, and are using all their strength to push back imperialist aggression and hegemonism. Otherwise, peace and stability, and development and progress under such conditions, will be impossible.
Even if we cannot bring about a socialist revolution, if we can thwart the aggression and brutality of our own imperialism, we can establish direct solidarity with the peaceful development of developing countries, including China, and open up the possibility of further development of socialism and developing countries. This is exactly solidarity with socialism, solidarity with the national liberation movement, the true form of the “unity of the three great revolutionary forces,” and proletarian internationalism.
(2) Confront Anti-China and Anti-Russia Propaganda and Fight to Prevent the U.S. Imperialist “Three-front War”
Led by socialist China, together with Russia and the Global South countries, a de facto anti-US, anti-imperialist international united front has been formed to revive postwar international law and order, and to contain and suppress the invasion, territorial expansion, genocide, and intervention and plunder of developing countries by the US and Western imperialism. It is the most important task of the world’s leftists, communists, and anti-war and peace movements to actively support this international movement, fight in solidarity with it, and unite international forces to prevent and end the “war on three fronts” that the US imperialists are leading the imperialist countries in.
The biggest obstacle to the anti-war and peace movement in Western countries is the Chinese threat theory, the Russian threat theory, and anti-China and anti-Russia propaganda. In Japan, too, the government ruling party, the opposition parties including the Communist Party, the leftist forces, and the media are almost all anti-China and anti-Russia, and are pro-government. Let’s thoroughly criticize the anti-China and anti-China ideology, anti-Russia and anti-Russia ideology. Actively promote the role played by the Soviet Union and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan in the anti-fascist war. Let’s appeal to the significance of a multilateral international order led by China, Russia, and the Global South, and support the anti-US and anti-imperialist peaceful offensive to prevent the US’s “three-front war” and the Gaza genocide.
First, to oppose the US-Israeli Gaza massacre/ethnic cleansing war, to focus international condemnation and sanctions on the Netanyahu neo-Nazi regime, and to realize Palestinian national self-determination and statehood. Second, to end the Ukrainian war, which is a proxy war against Russia by the US and NATO, and to demand a fundamental solution based on a collective security system to prevent future European wars. And third, to prevent another war against China. These are the urgent tasks of Japan’s anti-war and peace movement and anti-fascist movement. We must directly criticize the preparations for war that are being carried out at the expense of people’s lives, and stop the progress of war preparations.
Let’s oppose war against China, the sudden increase in military spending, the expansion of the military in preparation for war, the equipment of long-range attack weapons, and the turning of the whole of Japan into an attack base. Let’s strengthen the movement for “food over weapons” and “peace and friendship between Japan and China, not war against China.”
June 7, 2025
Editorial Office of Communist Democrat