On November 5, the Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality will hold a conference, “Socialism vs. Capitalism & War,” at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

This emergency conference has been called to mobilize workers, students and youth all over the world against this immense threat to the very survival of the planet.

Since declaring the “war on terror” fifteen years ago, the United States has invaded or bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and countless other countries. More than a million people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands turned into refugees. Entire countries have been laid to waste, while trillions of dollars have been squandered on death and destruction.

Now, the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia are more and more intertwined with the global confrontation of American imperialism with Russia and China, two nuclear armed powers. Not since the eve of World War II has the danger of a global conflagration been so great. Yet the issue of war has been all but excluded from the 2016 election campaigns of Clinton and Trump.

The foreign policy of American imperialism is determined by the banks, major corporations and the arms industry. The fight against war is the fight against capitalism. All the great issues confronting the working class–including inequality, poverty and the drive to dictatorship–are inseparable from the struggle against war.