Wars of Imperialism and Resistance

A Primer on the Characterization of Wars Under Imperialism and the Fight for Just and Lasting Peace

Download the primer for sharing and printing here.

Introductory overview of primer points

The world today is facing intensified inter-imperialist hostilities through wars of aggression, heightened militarization, economic coercion, fascist terror from state and non-state forces, and the normalization of prolonged conflicts that are reshaping the current international order. Through launching brazen assaults on countries that have devastating impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods worldwide, the US has shamelessly unmasked itself as the number one threat to peace and stability in the world and caused itself to become more isolated than at any point in its history. With its economic strength waning and China’s rising, the US is betting everything on its military might and set to increase its military budget to $1.5 trillion in 2027 from over $1 trillion in 2026, which is already larger than the military spending of the next 9 countries combined.

War is agonizingly familiar to the masses of people caught in the middle and those compelled or forced into fighting them. But today’s wars are fought on a much wider-reaching battlefield encompassing entire supply chains and extending even into the digital sphere. The world has become defined by the worldwide clash between imperialist superpowers for control of the world’s resources and markets, and nearly all current conflicts in the world are influenced by this competition. This inter-imperialist competition drives us ever closer to what may become the world’s most catastrophic war since World War II. US imperialism knows this is the greatest threat that has ever existed in its lifetime, as it is being dethroned from its hegemonic position over the world imperialist system. Its actions prove it will spare no depravity on human life to attempt averting its fate.

Yet, US imperialism also faces another powerful threat to its existence in the form of rising people’s movements and people’s wars for just and lasting peace that are uniting more and more people to fight for a world beyond imperialism — a world free of endless war.

This primer explains how the imperialist system itself is the root cause of all wars today. It describes different forms that imperialist war takes, and how imperialist war stands in direct contradiction to people’s war, a war of resistance against imperialism and its puppet proxies around the world. Finally, it explains how the only way to end imperialist war is to end imperialism itself, and outlines how a global united front for just and lasting peace can unite democratic mass movements for peace around the world. This is done using a variety of tactics to galvanize the moral and political support of the masses for people’s wars of national liberation that will weaken the foundations of imperialism, one puppet regime at a time.

What is the relationship between war and imperialism?

Imperialism is the political and socioeconomic system of the world today. Monopoly capitalists are the most powerful class in society as the owners of business, finance, and ultimately, capital. Imperialism exists when the world’s most powerful owners of capital have decimated their competitors in their respective industries and sit at the head of large multinational corporations and financial institutions. Monopoly capitalists are the ruling class at the helm of imperialism. This financial oligarchy must always grow their profit, exporting their capital through supply chains for cheaper resources, land, and labor-power. This system where these oligarchs compete with each other to secure these sources of super-profits is prone to chaotic and anarchic shocks of boom and bust.

To protect and grow their ever-increasing private division over the world’s resources, economies, and ultimately people, imperialists claim to defend the sham “independence” of former colonial countries, while in reality they prop up neocolonial puppet governments who will carry out their interests. When this does not secure their full control over these lands, they use their power to violently enact their will for plundering ever more resources and capital, influencing the diplomatic and military strategy of neocolonial states to achieve their ends. Military and economic strategy are inherently linked, leading to such recent aggression as the US invasion of Venezuela to seize its oil, the US-Zionist war on Iran for control of both its oil and control of shipping lanes, the war over the vast agricultural and mineral resources of Ukraine, as well as the massive military build-up in the Pacific to control the world’s busiest trade routes and most profitable markets.

War is therefore a direct product of imperialism, and will continue to be until imperialism is ended. Revolutionary wars waged by liberation movements are a just and necessary response to imperialist wars and the exploitative system that they protect. What other option do oppressed peoples and nations have in the face of such a system? The contradictions that imperialism breeds within society must be analyzed to understand the root causes of war and militarism and build an international united front to achieve a just and lasting peace.

One contradiction existing within imperialism is between the workers and the monopoly capitalist ruling class. The latter always seeks to maximize its profit, and this will always be by laying claim to the labor power of workers, who are forced to sell it to capitalists in order to survive. In this exploitative relationship, workers experience constant skyrocketing inflation, unemployment, food shortages, and forced migration while the profiteers in government hold the power of the state to start new wars for their own gains.

Another contradiction of imperialism is that between oppressed nations and peoples on one hand and the imperialist countries on the other. The imperialist ruling class is never satisfied with exploiting the labor of just the workers within its own countries. Its endless drive for profit pushes it to violently expand. In this way, wars will always be instigated by imperialist states to lay claim to the land, labor and resources of other nations and peoples.

Nations will never take this blatant oppression lying down forever, and so another inherent contradiction of imperialism is that between the imperialist states and those asserting their national independence from foreign aggression and wars of intervention.

Finally, given the anarchic nature of the capitalist drive for endless accumulation and profit, the most powerful imperialists will always look to seize the shackled land, resources, markets, and labor power from the hands of their competitors for their own use. This quest to redivide the world and win the spoils of war has led to many proxy wars where rival imperialists have tried to hide their involvement. While these conflicts already cause great violence, instability, and displacement for people in the countries they occur, this rivalry also has the potential to turn regional wars of aggression into a full-blown inter-imperialist world war in the direct clash for endless profit.

Today, the contradiction between imperialists themselves has come to define all other wars, either directly or indirectly. To avoid a catastrophic clash between each other on the open battlefield, imperialists wage proxy wars against each other or implement deadly counterinsurgency campaigns in countries to maintain their iron grip over the people, especially people’s movements and keep the country in its sphere of influence by force. This point emphasizes the dire need to end the root cause of inter-imperialist conflict, which can only be done by ending imperialism as a whole system itself before it sets the entire world ablaze.

What forms of imperialist war exist?

Inter-imperialist war is the most devastating form of war, where the full might of imperialist war machines are thrown against each other, using whatever means of propaganda and coercion available to mobilize hundreds of thousands of their citizens to fight each other using the most horrific forms of high-tech weapons such as missiles, chemical and biological weapons, drones, carpet bombing, and even threats of nuclear bombings. Only twice have inter-imperialist “World Wars” fully broken out between imperialist states, including the only use of nuclear weapons ever wielded as weapons of war against civilians being dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The form of weaponry in the hands of imperialists today is unimaginably more destructive than was the case in the last World War. The threat of a US-provoked inter-imperialist war with China is stronger today than ever before, with both the US and China rapidly expanding their military capabilities and readiness through exercises, recruitment campaigns, and new laws to requisition civilian infrastructure for military use.

While inter-imperialist war has not been waged directly since World War II, imperialist countries like the US have used their own militaries to directly invade and occupy other countries. Sometimes this was done to destroy the allies of their rivals. Other times invasions were conducted against countries just for asserting their national independence from imperialist influence, such as when the US invaded Korea (1950), Vietnam (1965), Somalia (1992, 2006), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (1986, 2011, 2015), and many others. The recent kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro and First Combatant Flores in January 2026 was nothing short of a military invasion of this same type, and the US and Zionist missile strikes on Iran during the 12-Day and Ramadan Wars are no different.

Given the cost of directly waging wars themselves, imperialist states have resorted much more frequently to proxy wars since the end of World War II. This is done when the imperialist state uses its influence on neocolonial puppet states to provoke them into regional conflicts and then arms them to influence the outcome. Proxy wars of this sort are the ones that have raged between India and Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, Türkiye and Greece, US-backed Ukraine against Russia, and the starkest example of the US-Zionist entity of “Israel” against Iran and the entire people of Palestine and West Asia. Brutal civil wars such as those in Syria, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo must also be viewed as proxy wars influenced and armed by imperialists from the outside.

Counterinsurgency campaigns are an arm of imperialist war, taking the form of a fascist counter-revolutionary war on the people. Imperialist states utilize the fascist puppet regimes of their neocolonial states to wage war on their own people, especially the laboring classes who create the nation’s wealth, on behalf of the imperialists looking to plunder their nation’s resources. Fascist counterinsurgency is therefore an extension of class warfare under imperialism. Deliberately misclassified as so-called “low-intensity conflicts” to mask the full-scale wars on the people that these operations encompass, these campaigns often target people’s movements and tag them as “terrorists” to isolate them from the people, while also targeting the people themselves for the political and socioeconomic interests of the state.

These take the form of long term military and police operations that constitute de facto martial law enacted by fascist regimes utilizing highly advanced military technologies of their imperialist patron states. They combine military force, repressive laws to legitimize fascist rule, and psychological warfare through ideological manipulation and control of mass media. Longstanding US and US-backed counterinsurgency campaigns exist in the Philippines, India, Kenya, El Salvador, Egypt, and many other countries across the world.

Finally, when imperialist states cannot impose their interests through direct warfare, they use sanctions and blockades as a form of economic warfare. This includes the forced blocking of food, medicine, finances, and other necessities from a country or territory with the goal of weakening a state or people. While masked as targeting only specific individuals, they in fact are waged against the whole people with the intent to starve them into supporting the interests of the imperialist aggressors. Notably, the US continues to ruthlessly employ these genocidal sanctions and blockades against countries asserting their national sovereignty against US imperialism, such as Cuba, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and Venezuela.

How do the people of the world resist imperialism and imperialist war?

Imperialist and inter-imperialist wars only serve the predatory and parasitic interests of monopoly capitalists to secure or expand the territories under their economic, political, and military control. As long as imperialism exists, the workers and people of the world will be met with catastrophic violence and misery to facilitate their exploitation and oppression by the imperialists. And since imperialism has been shown to lie at the root of all wars, then war will exist until imperialism is ended.

But history has shown that when the people unite to overthrow imperialism’s hold in their countries, the pathway to peace is laid. Examples from Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, South Yemen, and others have shown how the oppressed people of an entire country, under the leadership of the most exploited classes in that country, are able to achieve victory through immense sacrifice while united on a common goal. These are countries that were able to mostly overturn imperialism’s hold on their countries and begin the process of building socialism and establishing an economic and political system based on independence as well as peace and cooperation between nations. Many have seen reversals in the socialist gains made by the people over the years, for reasons that are outside the scope of this primer. But none of these victories throughout history would have been possible without the waging of people’s war as the path towards each country’s liberation.

There are other forms of resistance wars and assertions in defense of sovereignty that anti-imperialist states undertake even if they did not achieve power through a nationwide people’s war. The starkest example of this today is Iran’s just war of defense against US-Zionist aggressors that has done more to damage US military infrastructure than any war in many decades. Another example is Venezuela’s many defensive actions against US intervention, which the Bolivarian Revolutionary movement continues to this day against de facto US occupation of the country. Yemen’s war against Saudi and UAE-backed intervention and confrontation with Zionist “Israel” is another heroic example, while the Alliance of Sahel states of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have united their military and political capabilities and continue to resist US-proxy intervention using the state machinery they now control to defend their independence.

Meanwhile, people’s wars continue to be waged against the imperialist regimes ruling on the backs of the people in the Philippines, India, West Papua, Burma, Colombia, and many other nations, even if these movements are still gaining strength towards eventual parity with and victory against the puppet armed forces of their own country’s rulers. One of the boldest and bravest examples of a people’s war of this type today is the united resistance of the Palestinian people in the Al Aqsa Flood campaign to overthrow the US-Zionist occupation and end the imperialist-driven genocide of Palestine.

How is people’s war different from imperialist war?

While the interests of imperialist war have already been defined above as serving the interests of monopoly capitalists and being waged in the most brutal forms of anti-people warfare using the working peoples of the world as cannon fodder, people’s war serves much different interests and is waged using vastly different means.

People’s war is not a war directed by one class using the soldiers of another, but a war waged by an entire class itself. The workers, peasants, and semi-proletariat, whether through the class leadership of a party or the national leadership of a liberation organization, wage their struggle against the puppet regime’s military forces.

People’s wars resist imperialism not only by annihilating the imperialist puppet forces on the battlefield, but by serving the needs of the people who have had their livelihood destroyed and plundered by imperialism. In doing so, the toiling and oppressed people waging their war against imperialism show how it is a war for land, liberation, and genuine sovereignty for the whole people of the nation. This encourages the whole nation of people to willingly join the fight, and therefore the struggle to truly liberate their country. Therefore, people’s wars are not merely ones of class struggle but also of national liberation. They are just struggles for an entire people’s freedom and are even acknowledged as such under international humanitarian law, despite the weaponization of such laws by the imperialists to further their own goals.

While imperialism is stretched around the world, as US imperialism is today, people’s war rallies the whole nation together to overthrow their imperialist-backed puppet rulers and begin building a system that asserts their national sovereignty and genuine democracy in place of the neocolonial system that oppressed the people on behalf of imperialism. This weakens imperialism’s proxies around the world one at a time, and therefore weakens its ability to wage its wars. Given that these struggles are national in scope, and that a national united front of all progressive and patriotic classes in each country is necessary to support the people’s war until victory, the greatest contribution that these national liberation struggles can give to the anti-imperialist movement around the world is achieving victory in their own country. A weakened imperialism can help other movements confront and defeat their imperialist puppets as well, until even the people of the imperialist countries are in a position to unite and overthrow the imperialist regimes themselves from the seat of their own governments.

Genuine peace is not merely the momentary absence of conflict, nor is it the absence of open war in the shadow of imperialist exploitation and suffering of the masses of the world’s people. When speaking of just and lasting peace, it must be paired with social, economic, and political justice alongside solidarity amongst peoples. This includes the right to self-determination, economic self-reliance, food sovereignty, and self-defense of nations and oppressed peoples from reactionary aggression and violence. People’s war is waged for the realization of these just people’s aspirations.

What is the broad united front for just and lasting peace?

The exploited and oppressed peoples of the world are the ones who are impacted and uprooted due to imperialist war. But one has only to remember the contradictions of imperialism to see how, rather than dividing the people, imperialism’s attacks pushing them closer together.

As workers are exploited by the monopoly capitalists, they are left with no choice but to organize and fight back. National liberation movements have the same stake in the anti-capitalist struggle of the workers, and vice versa, for a new system of dignified livelihood, collective empowerment, and peace in their countries. Since independent countries are actively pushing back against unilaterally imposed sanctions, attempted coups, and other destabilization machinations of the imperialists, both the workers of the world and oppressed nations striving for liberation can find a friend in these states keeping imperialism at bay. Finally, inter-imperialist rivalry puts the workers, oppressed nations, and independent countries of the world into a natural union against genocide and possible nuclear annihilation. This puts the people of the world into a natural united front for just and lasting peace against imperialism.

This united front can only be successful if it utilizes a broad range of tactics, taking full advantage of all forms of struggle where they exist to expose and oppose the imperialists through mass democratic means. But the repressive laws of fascist and war-making states ensure that these just tactics are made illegal and crushed mercilessly. Therefore, mass movements for peace have a natural stake in offering moral and political support to the forces directly confronting the imperialists and their puppet proxies on the field of battle.

At first thought, these tactics may seem to be in contradiction. However, the interests of the legal mass movement and the advancing people’s wars of the world align in seeking to end imperialist war and achieve just and lasting peace. It can be seen that these movements hold the same goals in principle even if they are fighting for these goals using different means.

Therefore, the broad united front for a just and lasting peace is one in which all movements, including those waging wars of resistance against imperialism and those engaged solely in the democratic mass movement, are directed towards the same goal. Only in this way can the vast majority of the people of the world unite to end imperialism and pave the way towards a just and lasting peace and a bright, socialist future for humanity and the planet.