"Stalin’s last Third World adventure, the Korean War, testified to how far down the road toward theoretical tautologies the Boss came during his final years. Seeing socialism in only the northern part of Korea as unviable in the long run, in spite of the new Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under Kim Il Sung being contiguous to the Soviet Union and receiving aid from it, Stalin by early 1950 claimed that ‘‘the South was determined to launch an attack on the North sooner or later and it was important to forestall this aggression.’’ In giving Kim the go-ahead to attack the US-supported regime in South Korea, Stalin also pointed to ‘‘the significant strengthening of the socialist camp in the east: the victory of the Chinese revolution, the signing of an alliance between the USSR and the PRC, and the USSR’s acquisition of an atomic bomb,’’ as well as ‘‘the obvious weakness of the reactionary camp: the shameful defeat of America’s intervention into Chinese affairs, Western troubles in Southeast Asia, and the inability of the South Korean regime and its American masters to improve the social, economic, and political situation in South Korea.’’ For Stalin, indirect support of Kim’s war would also be a way of getting back at ‘‘the dishonest, perfidious, and arrogant behavior of the United States in Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, and especially its decision to form NATO.’’ It was pessimism and not optimism about the future of the Korean revolution that led Stalin to accept Kim’s plan for reunification by military force. As many of the Communists who were in charge of Soviet foreign policy realized, the Korean War showed that Stalin had left behind any hope that social processes in the Third World by themselves would lead toward socialism. Even under the best of geographical and political circumstances – such as in North Korea – the primary objective of Third World Communism should be to serve Soviet purposes in the global Cold War, because the defined circumstances under which they themselves could carry out a successful social transformation were so narrow as to be almost nonexistent. It was as if Stalin – having started the climb toward socialism in one country – was deliberately kicking away the ladder for others to follow."