Venezuelan communards from El Panal Commune in Caracas with Palestinian leader Laila Khaled in July, 2025. Photo: Voces en Lucha/file photo.
By Wayne Kublalsingh – Feb 5, 2026
World War II gave colonized nations a chance to break out from global genocide, slavery, indenture and colonialization. Break out into a world shaped by the very same masters. A world which created killing fields everywhere.
Here is a list of the Euro-American Empire’s post-World War II killing fields: Korea (1950-1953), Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1955-1975), Guatemala (1960-1996), Indonesia (1958-1961), Cuba (1961), Colombia (1964-2013), Dominican Republic (1965-1966), Congo (1967), Chile (1973), East Timor (1975-1999), Angola (1976-1992), El Salvador (1979-1992), Nicaragua (1981-1988), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), Iran (1980-1988), Panama (1989-1990), Iraq (1990-2003), Somalia (1992-1995), Haiti (1994-1995, Yugoslavia (1993-1999), Afghanistan (2001-2021), Yemen (2002-2023), Iraq (2003-2011; 2014-2021), Pakistan (2001; 2004- 2018), Somalia (2007-2024),Libya (2011-2020), Syria (2014-2021), Palestine (2023-present).
The killing on these fields involves direct massive expeditionary invasions, special forces operations, insurgency against ‘enemy’ governments and counter-insurgency on behalf of ‘friendly’ governments, coups, and CIA, MI6 and Mossad secret assassinations. It uses weapons of mass destruction, large-scale saturation bombings, chemical weapons, electronic and sonic warfare. For Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and countries like Korea in North East Asia and Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia in the Far East, the fictitious Cold War was not cold. It was a hot war.
“The most severe of the US’ acts of aggression have resulted in some 13-23 million deaths in at least 28 nations. Direct US military actions in at least 16 countries have caused around 7-13 million deaths. US-supported or instigated armed conflicts in 19 countries have led to some 6-10 million deaths.” (IBON Foundation, 2024).
Western democracies are dictatorial, despotic. They alone reserve the right to own the world’s reserve currencies (Bretton Woods 1944), the right be the world bankers (World Bank), the right to curate and censure the bank defaulters (IMF), the right to create and break the rules of the game (the rules-based order and new world order), the right to lever unilateral sanctions as economic weapons, the right to own nuclear weapons (outdone by the triad of India, Pakistan, North Korea), the right to print money free from the constraints of gold backing (US President Richard Nixon, 1971) backed only by the limits of military power and prestige, the right to permanent seats in the UN Security Council (the exception being China), the right to immunity from war crimes in international criminal courts, all glossed over and justified in their globalized corporate media by the illusion of democracy, freedom and human rights.
The shining examples of anti-imperialist success have been China, which, by 1948, booted out all imperialist spongers from China; India, which kicked out the British Raj by 1947; and Egypt, which booted out the British from the Suez Canal in 1956. Following on the heels of these successes, scores of Caribbean and African nations assumed independence between the 1950s and 1960s. Three examples of post-World War II low-down, extreme imperialist wickedness involve Iran, Congo, and Cuba.
In Iran, the democratically elected Prime Minister (1951-1953), Dr Mohammed Mosaddegh, was overthrown in a US CIA and British MI6 coup in 1953. He was imprisoned, charged with treason, and under house arrest he died, and was secretly buried in his home to prevent an uprising. The US and Britain replaced him with Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who secured their oil interests for them in Iran. In 1979, this imperial Shah was dethroned by the Islamic Revolution. Between 1980 and 1988, the US armed and supported Saddam Hussein of Iraq to wage war against Iran’s Islamic Revolution. This bloody war caused up to 700,000 Iranian deaths, many by chemical weapons, the raw material and precursors provided by Western firms. Israeli slander and war on Iran have become habitual. Instinctive.
In 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After six months, Congolese troops, with the complicity of Belgium and the US, captured him, cuffed him about, shot him before a firing squad, dismembered his body and dissolved it in sulphuric acid.
And Cuba has stood tall, despite the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and a lifetime of US blockades, sanctions, and assassination attempts – some ninety-odd against Fidel Castro. It has fought imperialism everywhere, particularly in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, where it has provided troops, technical, engineering, and advisory support, including military specialists, doctors, and construction teams. Twenty-four of its soldiers died in the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and thirty-two in the recent US attack on Venezuela.
The most serious resistance to Western imperialism has been provided by the USSR/Russia, and China. Twenty-seven million Russians, and twenty million Chinese (the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945) had died in World War II. The US and British death toll in this war together amounted to less than one million. The USSR/Russia and China have counterbalanced Western imperialism with their support for nationalist struggles across the planet. They kept the wheelbarrow of ‘Third World’ sovereignty from toppling over full tilt.
Today, black, white, brown, yellow and red people are uprising everywhere. We are facing not merely a Prague (1968) or Arab (2010) spring, but a global spring. The promise of independence for colonized nations, post-World War 2, have been met with denial, oppression and killing fields. Now, in the incoming wars—despite the puppets, reactionaries, validating elites, CIA/Mossad/MI6, and BBC-CNN sycophants in their midst—these nations have a meteoric chance: to break loose from the shackles of the Euro-American Empire.
WK/OT
Wayne Kublalsingh
Wayne Kublalsingh is a graduate of the University of the West Indies, Columbia University and Oxford University. He has written twenty-eight books, including novels, books for children and works on economic development. He is a former lecturer at the University of the West Indies, a bookbinder, and is a development activist.
