 ** This is the second of a two-part article series by the Resist US-Led War Movement on the transition between US Presidents Biden and Trump on the war record of the two and what to expect for the future
Trump has officially been inaugurated for his second term as US President. He ran on a campaign of “peace through strength” in which he played with words to appear at some times as a peace bringer and at other times as a strongman with an iron will to destroy “America’s enemies.” Trump's false promises of peace appealed to some Americans tired of Biden's aggressive and militaristic presidency. However Trump's xenophobic, chauvinist and "America First" narrative fed right into decades of War on Terror rhetoric, training many Americans to view those struggling to achieve their freedom from ages of imperialist domination around the world as "enemies." With a ceasefire signed in Palestine now that the genocidal Zionist regime has been forced to submit to the negotiating table after over a year of steadfast Palestinian resistance, many are wondering how long Trump the supposed "peace-maker" will last. Trump's Bloody First Term Trump’s foreign policy record of his first term is remembered mostly for its bravado. Trump did not wage the shock and awe campaign that Bush led into Afghanistan and Iraq, instead keeping the silent drone war going that Obama kicked into high gear in West Asia and the Horn of Africa. In a seeming show of strength, Trump dropped what he offensively called the “Mother of All Bombs” in rural Afghanistan, the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US military’s arsenal at the time. Trump upheld minimal airstrikes against Syria compared to Democrats Obama and Biden, but made sure that such strikes were massive when they came. He garnered both controversy and praise for meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and speaking for peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula, but silently increased US troop presence on bases throughout South Korea at the same time. He even made bold claims that the US would leave NATO if other NATO countries did not increase military spending to the alliance. What should the peace-loving people of the world and the global anti-militarism movement make of these contradictions inherent in Trump’s bravado-filled record? In short, Trump’s entire image was built around “draining the swamp” of the “deep state” of Washington DC and rising on the shoulders of American voters fed up with the endless war and disempowerment of two war-torn and utterly neoliberal Democrat administrations. Trump’s Presidential tenure has always had to have a false face of peace to it in order to maintain his voter base in the US, while blaming his political opposition for the horror and wasteful spending of the wars that he himself also kept going. Trump comes from the most savage camp of monopoly capitalists, and war has always meant big business for these profiteers. In reality, Trump holds a war record just as brutal as any former President, and he perfected the art of paying other puppets around the world to do the US’s dirty work for it. Trump led his own coup attempt in Venezuela, a brazen attack on an independent country’s sovereignty. He sent truckloads of military aid to the utterly fascist and terroristic Bolsanaro and Duque regimes in Brazil and Colombia. He tore apart families at the US-Mexico border and led a deportation campaign of terror across the US against migrants forced to flee their homelands from US-led militarization at home. Trump’s comments against NATO succeeded in encouraging NATO members to spend more money on their militaries. Before his Presidency, only two member countries were spending over 2% of their GDP on their militaries, while today 23 members spend this amount. Trump gave fuel to the wildfire that was the Ukrainian civil war through massive military aid packages to the US-puppet Kiev regime and brought NATO training camps up to the border with Russia itself, setting the stage for Russia’s counter-defensive invasion of Ukrainian territory that has led to three years of a bloody US-NATO proxy war against Russia. Trump brought the genocidal war on Yemen to new heights with his military aid to Saudi Arabia in exchange for lucrative real estate and development deals. He moved the US-Israeli embassy to Jerusalem in a brazen statement of continued support for the Zionist settler colonial occupation of Palestine. He started a trade war with China that increased military tensions and justified the Obama-initiated Pivot to Asia strategy of US militarization of the Pacific. This was the context for Trump’s assistance in the carpet bombing of Marawi City in the Philippines in which people living there have still not been able to return home, all while referring to the Philippines as “a prime piece of military real estate.” Trump unleashed racist police terror and the military on anti-racist protesters in the US during the George Floyd uprisings of 2020 and even created a new terror designation of “Black Identity Extremists" with the help of his Attorney General Jeff Sessions who had ties to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. Trump ended diplomatic detente with Cuba and pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program, steamrolling every attempt at ending some elements of the US’s inherent imperialist attitude towards other countries. In fact, he made his own utterly racist attitude on other countries well known by banning Muslims from entering the US in the first months of his Presidency while referring to countries in Africa, the Caribbean and West Asia as “shithole countries.” Trump's Expansionist and War-Mongering Future This is the pro-war legacy that Trump tried to hide during his 2024 campaign, but it is the legacy that the global anti-war movement must now prepare to throw everything it has against. Trump appears to speak with the same level of empty bravado in his threats to annex Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. While many laugh away these very likely hollow threats, one only has to look at the vast mineral wealth of the Arctic and the profitable trade route across the Panamanian Isthmus to realize that Trump’s big business cabal would benefit greatly if he followed through on this rhetoric. Trump’s comments that there would be “Hell to pay” in Gaza if a ceasefire was not signed before his inauguration is a dark reminder that he is ready to shield the Zionist regime from any of its genocidal war crimes just as any past President has been. Had it not been for the heroic resilience and militant steadfastness of the Palestinian people, Trump would still be giving Netanyahu the green light. The mass movement for peace must be ready to continue weathering the harsh repression it has faced up until now. And with West Asia being violently redrawn by the US and Zionists in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere, the peace movement must not give up the fight. Regarding the Palestinian solidarity movement in the US, Trump has promised to “deport Pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again,” and Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to answer if he would order the US military to shoot at protesters during his Senate confirmation hearing. Trump’s party platform also includes the ominous promise to “restore safety in our neighborhoods by replenishing police departments,” and “protecting officers from frivolous lawsuits,” responding to the many just attempts to hold murderous police officers accountable to the communities they operate it. With a rising trend of African countries declaring their intention to kick out US and French military presence, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, it is likely that Trump will double down on AFRICOM missions of US counterinsurgency across the continent and attempt US puppet coups. The people of the world must prepare to support the people of Africa in their rightful fight for sovereignty against imperialism and foreign intervention. And no where holds more potential for the spark of a third world war than in the Pacific. Trump may have pulled the US out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, but Biden’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework provides more favorable ground for Trump-style bilateral trade wars, and Trump will wield all the military might necessary to wage them. Biden set the stage with more new Pacific military agreements than at any time since the end of World War Two, and Trump now holds this regional command structure in the palm of his hand. The Tasks Ahead In conclusion, the global mass movement for peace must be just as ready to combat the moves of Trump just as much as it did against Genocide Joe. The Trump-led Republican Party platform states clearly the intention to “ensure our military is the most modern, lethal and powerful forces in the world.” We must remember that it is not just rival states that the US war machine is gearing up to clash with, but it is also the ever-rising movement against US-led war and militarism that the US and its militaristic allies cannot ignore. Wars of aggression and militarization are causing extreme suffering and death of tens of thousands of people and pose an existential threat to life as we know it. We must bind together our movements to overcome Trump and all war profiteers and bring about the downfall of US imperialism in order to achieve a true just and lasting peace.
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 Resist US-Led War Movement salutes the steadfast resistance of the Palestinian people, who fought unceasingly against the most vicious genocide waged by the Zionist regime for over 455 days. Their sacrifice and relentless perseverance forced the regime to finally agree to the current ceasefire deal. This is one step forward in the century-long struggle for the liberation of Palestine.
Until Palestine is free, the struggle will continue, and all who strive for genuine peace must also continue to act in solidarity with the Palestinian people. This means we must continue to build the anti-war movement that has been reinvigorated by the heroic Palestinian resistance and reawakened by the barefaced brutality that $17.9 billion in unconditional US military aid over the past 15 months has rained down on Gaza. We must continue the campaigns pressuring cities, universities and other institutions to divest from weapons transnational corporations that have seen their stock values leap over 10 percent and the sales of their arms soar after the war on Gaza began in October 2023. These campaigns have mushroomed over the past 15 months, as more people learned of the direct connection between top weapons producers, the tens of billions of dollars they rake in annually from US military contracts, and the atrocities being committed in Gaza, such as the Lockheed Martin Corporation's Multiple Launch Rocket System, Longbow Hellfire missiles, and 75 F-35 fighter jets favored by the IOF; the Apache helicopters, F-15 fighter jets, and literally thousands of "smart" and "precision" bombs made by the Boeing corporation used in massacres including that of over 100 refugees sheltering at Al-Tabeen school in Gaza City; and the Tomahawk cruise missiles, GBU-53/B "Storm Breaker" bombs, and GBU-12 Paveway II guided bombs made by RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) that have targeted civilians in Palestine and Yemen. We must continue to condemn the IOF's "battle-testing" and experimentation with new weapons through the mass killing of Palestinians and incineration of entire communities and generations of families. We must continue to expose the role of new technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, "multi-domain" warfare, satellite imaging, and other unknown weapons that have been reported to "vaporize" people's bodies, technology being developed in workplaces, universities, and publicly-invested research institutions around the world. We must continue to call for the release of all Palestinian prisoners, even as we celebrate those who are released as part of the ceasefire deal. We must fight to end the deadly exchange of detention and torture tactics shared between the Zionist state and other states such as the US to use against their own people at home and around the world. We must continue to fight against the silencing of students, teachers, tech workers, and others who speak in support of Palestinian resistance and against the war and genocide being committed with their tuition dollars and labor. We must continue to oppose the censoring of journalists who dare to report the truth of the war crimes being committed by the IOF. We must continue to expose the hypocrisy of every US president who has given and will attempt in the future to give unequivocal support to the zionist occupation and killing machine while pretending to broker peace in Palestine. We must fight to end all US military, financial and diplomatic support to Israel. We must continue to build an anti-war movement that promotes the understanding that genuine peace can never be bestowed by entities like the US and Israel whose existence relies on colonialism, occupation, and fascist repression. We must build an international anti-war movement that recognizes that a durable and just peace must be fought for and won by the people themselves struggling for self-determination, sovereignty and freedom from reactionary aggression and violence.  ** This is the first of a two-part statement analyzing the militaristic past of outgoing US President Biden and likely future of incoming President Trump **
As Joe Biden spends his final days in the office of the US Presidency, it is important to look back at his record as a war-making and peace-destroying President, carrying on the militaristic legacy of every President before him who has occupied the office of the most consistently war-making country in the world. Indeed, Biden has left incoming President Donald Trump with a fully loaded (and in terms of the nearly $1 trillion US military budget, very well-funded) weapon to unleash upon the people of the world. Genocide Joe Funds War, Destabilization, and Militarism throughout the World The darkest stain on Biden’s legacy will undoubtedly be the US-supplied and US-protected Israeli genocide of Palestine. Biden allowed an unending flow of weapons to go towards the Zionist state even while open threats of exterminating the Palestinian people were made for years by governments and citizens alike. Since October 7th, Biden has directly handed over $17.9 billion to the Zionist killing machine and has committed billions more to come, including an $8 billion package at the close of his Presidency and after the news has seen hospitals leveled, neighborhoods wiped out, other nearby countries aggressively invaded and possibly over 200,000 deaths in Gaza alone. Many of Biden’s supporters and opponents have tried to paint the outgoing President as a peace-maker by pointing to his act of pulling US troops out of the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, the US’s longest war project on record. However, this was after sending millions of dollars to expand the US presence and fund local warlords who used their positions in the Afghan government and military to create their own regional fiefdoms, rife with corruption and violence, to terrorize their own people as the cost of keeping the country “stable” for US military positioning and the profits of mining and agricultural corporations. On the extreme reverse, Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was done with little concern for the people themselves, who now live under the doubly harsh rule of the US-created Taliban government and one of the severest US sanction regimes in recent years. It is inarguably beneficial for the people of any country to have a foreign power leave their country. But it is just as inarguable that Biden’s actions were not done out of empathy for the workers, farmers and other common people of Afghanistan who were left with no other choice of government besides the extremely repressive Taliban and who are willfully blocked from their much-needed medicine, agricultural inputs, building materials, and other public funds adding up to $200 million in seized government assets still being held by the US government. Biden’s legacy will include the start of the bloody war in Ukraine that has so far claimed the lives of 43,000 soldiers and almost as many civilians. Biden continued the military build-up of NATO troops and training camps that Obama started and Trump expanded, bringing the world’s largest military alliance closer to Russia than ever before as he funded a bloody civil war led by the US-backed Kiev regime right on Russia’s border. Biden ignored all warnings of an all-out war starting between Russia and Ukraine and then crushed every round of peace talks between the two countries by promising a seemingly endless supply of weapons, the latest being long-range missiles that fired deep into Russia itself, threatening to escalate the conflict even further. Biden has expanded US military presence in Latin America as well. He gave $750 million to Central American governments for their repressive police forces ostensibly to stem the flow of migration into the US. Yet, it is actually the US agricultural, mining and real estate companies stealing land and displacing the indigenous and peasant communities with the violent backing of US-funded local police and military that is forcing people to flee their countries and migrate abroad for survival. Instead of offering an easier path for those forced to migrate by his own policies, Biden passed executive orders narrowing access to asylum and speeding up deportation removals. He also created new military agreements with repressive governments in the Caribbean and laid the groundwork for a full invasion of Haiti, a country devastated by US companies since its foundation. He would also follow in his predecessors’ footsteps by attempting to discredit the Venezuelan election system, funding black ops forces to attempt to overthrow the government there, and continuing one of the most brutal sanction regimes in history when those attempts failed. In Africa, Biden re-sent troops into Somalia where counterinsurgency operations by the US and NATO have brutalized the mostly pastoral and fisherfolk communities to support US-friendly local warlords in protecting US economic interests. He signed off on the creation of 2 new military bases in Kenya while the people live in abject poverty under economic polices that sell off the country to foreign investors. He oversaw the advising of repressive militaries in Angola to build US-owned railroads and in Congo to mine cobalt in what much of the world has called a genocidal situation. Among other militaristic actions on the continent, Biden facilitated weapons transfers to the occupation regime of Morocco to continue its settler colonial project against the Saharawi people of Western Sahara. Biden created more military agreements in the Pacific than at any period of time since the decade following World War 2. These agreements with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia (together with the United Kingdom), and the Pacific Islands Forum have led to an unprecedented expansion of US military bases, exercises, and forward positioning of military forces and missiles including nuclear weapons up to the very borders of China and North Korea. This massive military build up in the Pacific has caused environmental devastation, violence against poor communities, particularly women, and force entire countries to live in a constant state of fear if a war will start in their home tomorrow. Militarization of the Border, Cuts to Services, Repression of Organizing in the US At home in the US, Biden’s Countering Domestic Terrorism program has seen state and municipal police budgets skyrocket and a heightened increase in police violence against Black and other communities of color, migrants, workers on the picket line and activists in the streets. Trump’s boastful promises to unleash the police on anyone calling for peace in the have been set up for success by Biden himself. These last four years of militarization and war build-up underline what Biden has never ceased to proclaim as the coveted “rules based order” of the US’s presence in the world. It is not hard to follow the paper trail of Biden’s military record to see that they cover the tracks of incredibly exploitative trade and investment deals such as the Partnership for Global Investment and Infrastructure across Europe and the Atlantic, the India-Middle East-Economic Corridor across South and West Asia, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Partnership across the Pacific. The US rules-based order has paved a path of blood across entire nations under Biden’s pen. Biden’s Democrat party stated in their party platform under an ill-fated Harris presidency that “the Democrats will revitalize American diplomacy to ensure that the United States remains the world’s pivotal power and a principled force for peace and prosperity.” While the reins of the world’s most powerful military machine will pass to Trump in a few day’s time, Biden’s four years already spoke to this intention of his own Presidency from day one. Billions of dollars were spent by Biden on a genocidal holocaust in Palestine, on a frozen stalemate in Ukraine, and countless other situations in which people striving for only peace and stable livelihood were gunned down by the hired gangs of monopoly capitalists in Washington, London, Berlin, Tokyo and many other imperialist capitals around the world. Yet there remains little for the failing infrastructure, relief from record inflation and precarious employment and devastating environmental destruction for the people of the US itself. As wildfires consume entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles, as they did in Lahaina Hawaii, the massive military bases in Southern California and Hawaii are made some of the most climate-resilient structures on the planet. Truly, the US war machine brings death and destruction to the people of the US itself while it spreads it around the world. Joe Biden’s record as President is a world torn apart by conflict and genocide engineered and funded from the White House with an earnings check sent to Wall Street. There is much to fear when it comes to the war threats of the incoming Trump regime, but Biden’s record is a sobering reminder that a less maniacal warmaker in the White House is still a warmaker and not a genuine alternative. Only a global mass movement for a just and lasting peace in solidarity with all peoples’ struggles around the world can bring about the end of the US war machine. Resist US-Led War Movement condemns the attacks on Syria by Israel and mercenary forces backed by the US and Turkey. This recent onslaught comes on the heels of over 100 Israeli air strikes in Syria over the past year, including 12 attacks on the airports in Damascus and Aleppo as well as in communities, killing numerous civilians. This escalation furthers a decades-long history of intervention and destabilization of Syria, aimed at plundering the country’s resources, exerting control over its geopolitically strategic location, and eliminating the resistance of the Syrian people and state who are frustrating the imperial and expansionist interests of the US, Turkey and Israel.
The current situation in Syria exemplifies the legacy of chaos and humanitarian crisis wrought by the US “War on Terror.” Under this doctrine, the US and its allies have spawned terrorist proxies backed up by multi-billion dollar arsenals and state occupation forces to target liberation movements, peoples, and countries in the region, including Syria, which refuse to fall in line with the western imperialist agenda. Last week’s capture of Syria’s second-largest city of Aleppo and the current attacks on Hama were launched by the armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was trained and armed by the US and Turkey. HTS is known to be an offshoot of the al-Nusra Front which has its roots in al-Qaeda and the majority of whose members formed ISIS. Many of these fighters received their training under the CIA’s covert $1 billion Operation Timber Sycamore and were initially utilized in a failed attempt to destabilize and take down the government of Bashar al-Assad. Attacks were also launched in the northwest region of Syria by the Syrian National Army (SNA), which is comprised of members formerly with the Free Syrian Army, a group given safe haven by Turkey as well as being armed and trained by both Turkey and the US. Turkey unleashed these mercenary groups to terrorize the Kurdish people in Northwestern Syria, tens of thousands of whom have been residing in refugee camps as a result of offensives by these same groups in collaboration with the Turkish army itself in 2018. The brute force of terrorist mercenaries and state forces has been coupled with economic sanctions which have cut off food, medical supplies and equipment, and other basic necessities to Syria, to further destabilize the country. Overall, at least 500,000 people have been killed and 13 million displaced since the US intervention in 2011. The current attacks by Israel, Turkey and the US-backed groups will only worsen the toll taken on the lives of the Syrian and Kurdish people and expand the war already engulfing the region. While the US, Turkey and Israel claim to be targeting Syria and the al-Assad regime for supporting terrorism, the truth is that they are the ones committing atrocities for their own self-interests. We must not forget that the Syrian Civil War itself was instigated by the US, Turkey, and other Western powers in 2011 by turning a protest movement for government reforms into a full blown coup attempt to install a pro-Western government by advising extremist groups to hijack the movement and launch a civil war, very similar to 2014 in Ukraine. Finally, Israel seeks to destroy Syria’s weapons manufacturing, transport, and storage facilities and cut off supply routes to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, thereby eliminating a key logistics hub of the Axis of Resistance. But the long-term perspective of the Zionist occupation has been expressed by its leaders like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who declared that Israel should expand its territory by taking over more parts of Syria beyond the occupied Golan Heights. The long-held interest of the US and western imperialist powers has been to exert full control over the Arab world, including the oil rich lands and critical sea lanes for trade and commerce which run through the region. The Zionist occupation serves as the US’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the region, a military outpost armed to the teeth and currently committing genocide of the Palestinian people, while Turkey has proven it will act in the US’s interests as long as it gets a share of the spoils. The US and its Western allies are relying on their bloodthirsty satellite state of Israel and their expansionist ally of Turkey to reshape West Asia and eliminate all peoples who stand in their way, especially the Palestinian and Kurdish people. The peace loving people of the world reject all these attempts by the US-led war machine and stand in solidarity with all peoples fighting for and defending their self-determination and sovereignty, the only true guarantors of peace in the world. Stop the Attacks on Syria! End the Sanctions on Syria! End the Zionist onslaught on Palestine and the wider West Asia! Long live the Palestinian, Lebanese, Kurdish, and Syrian peoples’ fight for just and lasting peace! As the UN marks its 43rd commemoration of the International Day of Peace today, wars of aggression, occupation and intervention cover the globe, waged principally by the US and its proxies to secure control over territory, natural resources, and markets in a multi-polar world. The people now face the gravest crises of genocide, famine, poverty, forced displacement and homelessness. With the theme of “Cultivating a Culture of Peace,” the UN’s 2024 Peace Day statement gives vague encouragement to “lay the groundwork for peace” by “propelling the Sustainable Development Goals” and seizing “this month’s Summit of the Future [as] a vital opportunity to advance these aims.” These words ring hollow, as the UN calls us to trust in the very same institutions and strategies that brought us to the current crisis. Resist US-Led War Movement rejects the UN’s call to follow the same beaten path to more war. Rather, we call for following the lead of the movements fighting against imperialist war and the system itself, seeking to build a new world with lasting peace built on justice. Provoking instead of preventing war According to the UN, cultivating a culture of peace “means focusing on preventing conflict,” but the US and its most powerful allies are instead instigating wars and conflict. After two and a half years of war between Russia and Ukraine, a staggering one million people have perished and over 10 million more have been displaced, yet the two countries are as far from a diplomatic resolution as when the war began. The US and its NATO allies must bear most of the blame, for enacting a coup to install a pro-western anti-Russian government in Kyiv to set the stage for the war to begin with; prolonging it through an ever-increasing supply of weapons and a new pledge of 40 billion Euros in annual military aid to Ukraine. The US and the entire NATO alliance are actively sabotaging the chances of diplomatic negotiation by declaring Ukraine to be on “an irreversible path” to NATO membership, a red line Russia has unequivocally stated it would not tolerate right on its western border. The UN has done nothing to enforce its own ban on the use of cluster munitions by Ukraine, further endangering the lives of more civilians. The one million lives lost in this war add to the estimated 30 million civilians killed in imperialist wars of aggression and counter-revolution since the UN was founded at the end of World War II. The US is also fanning the flames of conflict in East Asia and the Pacific. This includes forming new military alliances, setting up bases, and testing weapons with countries surrounding China and conducting the largest multi-lateral maritime military exercises in nearby waters. Despite lawsuits and mass protests of the people in these countries against these actions which trample their sovereignty and destroy their environment, the violations continue, with little to no interference by the UN, despite its claim that respect for sovereignty must be a fundamental principle to establish a culture of peace. Undermining instead of laying the groundwork for peace This year, the UN also proclaims: “The International Day of Peace has always been a time to lay down weapons and observe ceasefires. But it now must also be a time for people to see each other’s humanity." There is no more palpable example of how the US and its allies have made a mockery of UN bodies and processes than their actions on Palestine. For almost a full year, the world has witnessed the Zionist state of “Israel” committing a full-blown genocide of the Palestinian people. The Zionist state’s relentless bombing and ground war, forced starvation, and ecocide, have killed at least 41,000 people; left tens of thousands of people still missing under the rubble of bombed schools, hospitals, and homes; and completely destroyed the food and water systems of Gaza thereby threatening the future ability of the land to sustain life. Rather than act to stop the carnage, the US has repeatedly vetoed ceasefire resolutions considered by the UN Security Council since October 7. Just days before International Peace Day, the US cast one of only 14 votes against the historic resolution passed by the UN General Assembly calling for the withdrawal of the Zionist occupation from Palestinian territories. And while the UN invokes respect for sovereignty and self-determination as a value on which its “culture of peace” must be based, the UN itself insists on imposing the framework of “the two-State solution for the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East,” even though this violates the Palestinian people’s collective right to self-determination and national liberation of Palestine from the River to the Sea. In other countries, the UN has also worsened situations by directly contributing to more conflict and violence. One example is the deployment of UN “peacekeepers” in Haiti and the Congo, where they act as another armed force which further militarized the countries and abused the people; or in Cyprus, where they occupy a demilitarized zone but do nothing to challenge the occupation of the country by Turkey and the UK. Summit of the Future will lead to future wars The UN states that its road to peace ends by reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The draft document for the upcoming Summit of the Future doubles down on the SDGs and proposes 58 action steps to reach them. But these proposals will never result in anything but the exacerbation of the current crisis, when they promote the same institutions and strategies that led here. The UN plan to “catalyze increased private sector investment in sustainable development, including by promoting inclusive and innovative finance mechanisms and partnerships” will put more power into the hands of private corporations and away from national development in control of the people. The UN proposal to “Scale up and fulfill our respective official development assistance commitments, including the commitment by most developed countries to reach the goal of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for official development assistance (ODA/GNI), and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of gross national income for official development assistance to Least Developed Countries” does not address why there is the disparity in the first place–and how the UN’s very call to drive more private sector investment into “development” and continuing to tip all the rules of trade in favor of the large multinational corporations will worsen these conditions it claims to be trying to repair. Perhaps most indicative of how skewed the UN’s priorities are is its statement on trade: “We are committed to a rules-based, non-discriminatory, open, fair, inclusive, equitable and transparent multilateral trading system, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core.” This ignores the actions taken by leading WTO members such as the US and G7 powers in implementing aggressive military strategies that keep their in-house multinational corporations in a favorable position for global trade. Finally, the UN view on how to address the outcome of war–the forced migration of tens of millions of people–is to “Maximize the positive contribution of migrants to the sustainable development of origin, transit, destination and host countries and strengthen international partnerships and global cooperation for safe, orderly and regular migration to comprehensively address the drivers of irregular migration and ensure the safety, dignity and human rights of all migrants, regardless of their migration status.” The aim of such a policy is to utilize migration for development and manage the process to make it seem more humane, ignoring the exploitative and violent roots of why people are forced to migrate. The solution: peoples movements for just peace The people are experiencing the US-backed Zionist occupation carrying out an unmitigated genocide of Palestinians; NATO fueling, instead of de-escalating, its proxy war in Ukraine by pledging billions of dollars more military aid and weapons with longer ranges and higher destructive capacity; unilateral sanctions destabilizing more than one third of the world’s countries bringing their economies to the brink of collapse. While the UN may tout the rules-based order and lofty principles of a culture of peace, Resist US-Led War Movement rejects these as hypocritical. The UN’s 2024 Peace Day Declaration is hitched to the Sustainable Development Goals and Summit of the Future–a strategy that will inevitably lead to war. Resist sees the true beacon of hope emanating from the people who choose to fight instead for a just and lasting peace. Resist US-Led War reiterates the call from its manifesto to: Build a Just Peace, through justice, social equity, and solidarity amongst peoples, including the recognition of the right to self- determination, economic, and food sovereignty, and self-defense of nations and oppressed peoples from reactionary aggression and violence. Build peace through genuine sustainable development, job creation, and the health and well being of our communities. While Joe Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 Presidential election race, the oppressed and exploited people of the world are still made victims by two sides of the same pro-war imperialist American government.
Ultimately, both the Trump and Biden-Harris Administrations further entrenched… the US war machine. Both expanded military bases, alliances and military assistance around the world. Both expanded the US military budget and pushed forward the modernization of the nuclear arsenal. Both escalated tensions against China and Russia to pre-empt strategic competition. During the elections, the Democrats and Republicans battled out who could be the bigger war-hawk overseeing the world’s largest military chest, currently funded at $841.4 billion with an additional $32.4 billion for national security programs within the Department of Energy (DOE), and $438.0 million in defense-related activities. In Trump’s time as President, he represented the Republicans openly fascist faction of the ruling class and activated the ultra-nationalist and most rightwing currents in the US to take on more visible activity, and more escalated forms of action among both State and extra-state forces alike. Though Trump’s politically chaotic public statements about the US withdrawing from NATO and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan promoted an anti-war illusion to his populist base, Trump’s administration in 2016-2020 was responsible for missile strikes in Syria and Afghanistan, pushing for NATO countries to increase their defense spending, overseeing the drastic military build-up in the Indo-Pacific that Obama started, and illegally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Zionist occupation state Israel. He backed coup-elected Juan Guido in Venezuela to push for further sanctions and destabilization of the nation. He further passed a nuclear posture review that broadened the circumstances under which the United States can use nuclear weapons to encompass cyberattacks. During his 2020 election campaign, Biden marketed himself as a “reasonable” Democratic alternative and response to the fascism under Trump, Biden was able to win over large sectors of progressives towards fundamentally right-wing politics under the guise of “progressive values.” Throughout his term, Biden has exposed himself through his aggressive foreign policy, heightened repression and policing within the US, and the continued worsening economic crisis which is exacerbated by the neoliberal policies under his administration among other things. In the midst of the massive upsurge in global solidarity for Palestine, Biden was brought to court for complicity in genocide. “Genocide Joe” Biden traveled to Israel after the start of the Israeli genocidal war, provided the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with huge quantities of munitions, refused to publicly call for an indefinite ceasefire, and vetoed UN resolutions it opposed while openly calling himself a Zionist. This all reflects the president’s strongly held personal beliefs on the need to support the Jewish state and the idea that public support for Israel gives America greater behind-the-scenes leverage. VP Kamala Harris herself has a concerning pro-war record. Exposing her own genocidal support of Israel through US military aid and diplomatic support, she stated after October 7th, “our support for Israel’s security is ironclad, and we stand with the people of Israel in defense against these attacks.” She has reiterated the U.S. commitment to the transatlantic NATO alliance with America's European partners and earlier this year, she vowed the U.S. would support Ukraine's fight for "as long as it takes, showing that she’d continue Biden’s practice of shredding any Ukrainian peace deal brought to the table. On a visit to Taiwan, the Philippines and other Indo-Pacific states, she stressed what she called the United States' "enduring engagement" in Asia, hitting on previous administration talking points about ensuring an "open and free" Indo-Pacific region, and "freedom of navigation" in the South China Sea. What that really means for the people of the region is more corporate land grabs and militarization to protect them. Harris herself has a political career predicated on the criminalization of poor working-class Black people in the Bay Area of California, as attorney general. She supported inmate slave labor, criminalization of poor parents over truancy, an increase in Black incarceration, and expressed support of the death penalty. We need a stronger anti-war movement to fight against whichever faction of the ruling class takes power in the White House in November. Our task is to take up the calls of the world's people against US military funding, US military base expansion, sprawling military alliances, and war mongering by Washington. We continue to stand with the anti-militarism agenda representing these calls, not the war agenda of any Republican or Democratic candidate, and call on our movements to continue to struggle against US-led war through the elections and beyond.  This speech was delivered by the Resist US-Led War Movement Secretariat at an event in Washington, DC, during the start of the 2024 NATO Summit. It has been modified so as to be a standalone analytical study of the current state of US-led war and how networks like the Resist US-Led War Movement can be used to build an international united front to end all wars of aggression.
This discussion begins with an overview of the current state of US-led war today, followed by an analysis of the ways that NATO is still used as the primary tool of US-Led War, and how an anti-NATO united front of the people must be formed to prevent the worst kind of destruction that modern technology is capable of in the hands of the imperialists and war profiteers. The US has already decided that it is planning for open conflict with its rival states. Its stated goals are very clear in its official documents like the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. This makes it all the more crucial for us to understand the plans being set in place to convince us, the common everyday people of the world, to accept this nightmarish scenario as inevitable. War is not inevitable if we are prepared to fight for a new social paradigm in which the root causes of conflict have been resolved through the combined struggle of the people. Let us reflect on the current status of US-led war, and how NATO plays a significant role. The US is currently waging war on three main fronts: In Europe, the US uses the NATO alliance to cement its strategy with fellow imperialist and reactionary states in the European Union and around the continent in general. This includes the most powerful Western imperialist countries making up the G7, and the so-called Eastern Flank of countries acting as a shield between the G7 powers and the borders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, NATO’s self-perceived frontier. On this front of US-led war, the G7 is the brain, NATO is the brawn and Russia is the chief rival. This has altered the face of Europe, with military spending skyrocketing and new bases being built from the Mediterranean islands, to the Carpathian basin, to the Baltic Sea. This year’s military exercise Steadfast Defender mobilized over 90,000 troops in the largest European military drills since the Cold War. With Sweden and Finland’s ascension to NATO, the US-led camp gains access to the vital Swedish airbase of Gotland and thus secures the entire Baltic for NATO and cuts off Russia’s Baltic Fleet at Kaliningrad, while the recent allowing of US troops to station at dozens of new outposts along Finland’s eastern border puts combined NATO troops within miles of being able to invade Russia’s only highway on the Kola Peninsula and cut off its Northern Fleet port at Murmansk. Sweden and Finland push Russia further into a corner by NATO, and this makes Ukraine that much more of a flashpoint where over 320,000 Ukrainians and Russians are suspected to have lost their lives. The NATO Summit declared Ukraine’s future in the alliance to be “irreversible,” pushing this iron-hot tension to explosive levels. In West Asia, Israel and the Gulf Monarchies make up the US’s preferred alliances in its war drive against Iran. The US relies on Israel’s ideology of Zionism to push its expansionist agenda and wage attacks against Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Horn of Africa to keep these countries weakened. Palestine pays the harshest price with over 75 years of occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide to keep Israel, the US’s favored war dog, forever combat ready. The Gulf Monarchies of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait form a backbone of military bases crucial for US positioning. The ultimate dream of wedding Israel and the Gulf Monarchies diplomatically has met lukewarm response, with the Abraham Accords of a few years ago tying UAE and Bahrain to the Zionist entity but failing to secure the gargantuan Saudi kingdom, and the genocide against Palestine has dashed these hopes further. Nevertheless, the US continues to wield these two alliances against its primary rival in the region, Iran, which it has subjected to assassinations, cyber warfare and a massive sanctions regime. NATO remains a key player in this region too, with NATO members sending warships to protect Israel as it wages its genocide and positioning of NATO technology to fortify the US’s allies that surround key oil and gas fields. The US’s most active front of war is the Indo-Pacific where it actively prepares for open conflict with China and the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. Japan, the Pacific member of the G7, has volunteered as the clear imperialist partner of US-led war, changed its constitution to rearm its military to exponential proportions, and solidified trilateral military agreements between the US on the one hand, and South Korea and the Philippines on the other hand. The so-called QUAD alliance with Japan, Australia, the US and India seeks to win India away from economic and military partnerships with China and Russia, which it has failed to do. The Hiroshima Accord of 2023 stations British aircraft carriers, from a NATO country, in Japan for regular use. The 2023 Washington Declaration between the US and South Korea stations US nuclear armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in 40 years. New US bases and missile systems placed in the Philippines solidify the country and its people as a shield and launching pad in the so-called First Island Chain, a chain of military bases and missile systems along the major Pacific archipelagos extending from the East Asian continental mainland coast. Australia becomes a storage site for NATO technology, with new nuclear submarines from the US and UK placed under the AUKUS deal while surveillance technology from the US, UK and Canada is utilized as part of the Five Eyes alliance. This combined front, this “Pacific NATO” as this iron web of military alliances has been called, enacts some of the most intense military exercises such as the Rim of the Pacific happening as we speak on US occupied Hawai’i, mock “decapitation” exercises over the Korean Peninsula simulating invasions of the DPRK, and even urban warfare training in Taiwan, the US’s most sought-after resources for control of semiconductor markets and military positioning just miles from China. The NATO Summit Indo-Pacific forum exposed just how intertwined these alliances are to US-led war strategy. This is the chess board the US has set with its allies and puppet states to wage all-out war against the up and coming states it sees as its most existential rivals. One only has to look geographically at the three most dedicated trade and infrastructure deals the Biden administration has worked to bring into place to see the economic incentive in breaking the rise of these rivals: the European Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the India-Middle East Corridor, and the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Prosperity. These economic agreements and development plans are the latest attempt for the US and its allies to break open new markets and exploit the people and resources of these countries. To maintain its hold on resources for technological war preparations against these three fronts, the US wages constant counterinsurgency wars against people and nations standing in its way all around the world, and NATO ensures its ability to do so. In Africa, the Americas, South Asia and Oceania, the US and its allies continue their resources wars by destabilizing nations like Haiti, the Congo, Sudan, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, New Caledonia, and many others. Whispers of Argentina and possibly even Kenya joining NATO should warn us of how far the US is willing to go to hold onto its dying and desperate empire. NATO goes far beyond the North Atlantic. NATO is everywhere, and NATO is first and foremost a tool for counterrevolution. This preparation for all-out war that NATO is laying the plans for this week in Washington, DC, is of course not just all-out war on China, Russia, Iran or the DPRK. It will be an all-out war on all of humanity. In fact, the people of the colonies and semi-colonies and the poor and working class people of all capitalist and imperialist countries are experiencing the impacts of rural bombings, paramilitary violence and abductions, disappearances, police violence, forced migration and border militarization, and more surveillance than ever before. Especially impacted are rural and peasant communities in the countryside and working class people whose entire livelihood is uprooted by war. Women and children make up 75% of displaced people in conflict areas where they face increased gender based violence, experience food insecurity, human trafficking and displacement. Preparations for war therefore amount to a state of war for the masses, even if some are experiencing it more than others based on which part of the US’s global military chessboard they happen to live. But these very conditions of suffering and oppression, essentially, are the basis for building our broad, international united front against war and militarism. The reality of the crisis and desires for a just peace are the biggest drivers that push people to struggle against the system that oppresses them. And if no country is untouched, then we can find unity with the people in each country in the fight for a just and lasting peace, a peace beyond the imperialist system that unendingly keeps US-led war alive. The people must be awakened to see their conditions of war and militarism as not individual experiences, but collective experiences. Only then can we raise their consciousness to see that collective suffering can be solved with collective, systemic change. We must raise the militancy of the people, in each of our respective countries, to fight and win their rights and achieve economic, social, political and environmental justice. By gathering in teach-ins, forums, or other educational settings, we are able to share the experiences of our mass organizing against war and militarism in our countries and how we are coming closer to breaking the hold imperialism has via our own countries’ ruling classes. It is even possible to collaborate on long-term and globally-reaching campaigns together, such as this one against the 75th NATO Summit, of which Resist US-Led War was a proud member of the Resist NATO Coalition with other organizations, putting our efforts together to unite and organize the people against the root cause of NATO and US-Led War itself, the imperialist system. Resist US-Led War is a network of peoples’ organizations and so puts the biggest emphasis on organizing a mass movement of the people as the key solution that will change this war-ridden society. While people’s organizations can and should form a united front with whatever institutions and states that make sense at a given time and circumstance in the anti-imperialist struggle, we still assert that it is the people themselves that are the true makers of history and the most important factor of the movement for just peace. The people may seem devastatingly desperate today, but it is US imperialism that is desperate. This 75th NATO Summit is an act of desperation. Unlike the war profiteers, the people have a world to win. The people have something that’s worth fighting for.  NATO just concluded its annual Summit in Washington DC. While celebrating its 75th anniversary of “service to the world,” NATO issued its 38-point Washington Declaration. Point by point, the declaration outlines NATO’s most aggressive and provocative strategy yet for fulfilling its three core tasks of “deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security.” Contradicting its self-declared title as a defensive alliance, NATO shows how in pursuing its three core tasks it is actually gearing up for war on three named fronts–against Russia, against Iran, and against China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)–and making the world more unsafe, unstable and violent for the people of the world.
Deterrence and defense: NATO-speak for nuclear build-up, massing troops and weapons in member countries, and spending billions to modernize weapons NATO says that “Nuclear deterrence is the cornerstone of Alliance security,” making the twisted argument that security is dependent on the very weapons that pose the greatest annihilative threat to life on the planet. With the Washington Declaration, NATO continues to push its members to modernize and expand their nuclear arsenals. Hypocritically, NATO calls for the complete denuclearization of North Korea and for the prevention of the building of a nuclear weapon by Iran. NATO’s modernization doesn’t stop at nuclear weapons, but also “further accelerating the modernisation of our collective defense,” which includes “battle decisive munitions and air and missile defense… new technologies and innovation...air surveillance capability… Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear defense capabilities required to effectively operate in all environments.” Is it any wonder that NATO this week conducted the Defence Industry Forum with special guests from weapons corporations and launched the “Drone Coalition,” signing a new Memorandum of Understanding pledging $48.8 million to supply one million drones to Ukraine? As NATO continues to identify Russia as “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security,” it has ramped up “more frequent and large-scale training and exercises,...including through Steadfast Defender 24, NATO’s largest military exercise in a generation,” that mobilized over 90,000 troops. The military drills have also extended into the Arctic, with NATO wasting no time in involving its newest members, Finland and Sweden, by conducting exercise Nordic Response with 20,000 personnel including from the two countries this year. Modernization and expansion come at a cost–literally. NATO boasts that the “Allies are stepping up: defence expenditure by European Allies and Canada has grown by 18% in 2024, the biggest increase in decades. They are also investing more in modern capabilities, and increasing their contributions to NATO operations, missions, and activities.” Altogether, NATO members poured a total of $1.34 trillion into military spending just in 2023. When these countries spend more of their budgets on the military, they have less for their people’s basic needs, leading to more wealth inequality, more instability, and less security. Instead of crisis prevention and management, NATO incites and prolongs crises NATO claims it “does not seek confrontation, and poses no threat to Russia.” But NATO was founded from the start to contain Russia, relentlessly adding more member countries closer and closer to Russia’s borders after promises to not do so, and enabling the US to use existing or build new bases to surround Russia. With the addition of Finland and Sweden into its ranks, the alliance is positioned literally on Russia’s doorstep and covers the entire Arctic region with the exception of Russia itself. Although Russia has unequivocally stated that it would not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO, the Washington Declaration makes crystal clear that NATO is dead set on crossing that red line by saying, “Ukraine’s future is in NATO…we will continue to support [Ukraine] on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.” The stubborn insistence that Ukraine will join NATO preempts any chance for a diplomatic solution. But the longer the US-NATO proxy war continues, the more money NATO members will continue to shell out to keep providing military equipment, assistance and training to Ukraine; the just-inked “Pledge of Long-Term Security Assistance for Ukraine” commits a minimum of Eu40 billion annually. NATO claims “Terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, is the most direct asymmetric threat to the security of our citizens and to international peace and prosperity.” But it is NATO with the US leading the charge which has manufactured terrorist threats and used the War on Terror doctrine to wage state terrorism on the people and counter-insurgency on legitimate liberation movements. It was to come to the “collective defense” of the US that Article 5 of the NATO pledge was first invoked to draw NATO into the invasion and over 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. Cooperative security means new webs of military cooperation and big bucks for the war profiteers NATO has its tentacles in every region of the world, using special designations (i.e., “Global Partners”), offices and outposts (i.e., in Japan and announced to soon be in Ukraine), and cooperative agreements with dozens of countries in strategic locations. At this year’s Summit, NATO announced the opening of a new NATO office in Jordan, corresponding with its view to “foster greater security and stability in the Middle East and Africa;” announced new Defense Cooperation Agreements (DCA) between the US and Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, in the expanding Arctic frontier; and held meetings with leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, to discuss China’s continuing “challenge [to] our interests, security and values” in the Indo-Pacific. With its expansion, NATO brags that it has “undertaken the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense in a generation. We continue to enhance NATO’s deterrence and defense against all threats and challenges, in all domains, and in multiple strategic directions across the Euro-Atlantic area…Providing the necessary forces, capabilities, resources, and infrastructure for our new defense plans, to be prepared for high-intensity and multi-domain collective defense.” This rhetoric could be lifted straight from the US’s own strategic defense plans for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), a sweeping campaign to create a wholly connected military, with information and forces coordinated across land, air, sea, space and cyber terrains. By the Pentagon’s own admission, JADC2 would likely have no end–meaning no end to the billions of dollars wasted on the new technology. NATO is inherently a tool to wage war for imperialism. NATO 2024’s focus on “bolstering allied defense and deterrence; support for Ukraine; and strengthening NATO's global partnerships” means war and misery for the people. As long as NATO exists, there will be no peace in the world. The only solution is for the people to resist NATO and fight for a just and lasting peace until it is achieved! On April 10th the Resist US-Led War Movement joined the International Women’s Alliance and BAYAN USA in launching the international campaign to Cancel the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercises. RIMPAC is the world’s largest US-led joint war exercises, held biannually in occupied Hawai’i and involving the militaries of more than 20 US allies. In support of the people of Hawai’i who have been organizing against RIMPAC since it began in 1971, the international campaign aims to galvanize people throughout the continental US and around the world to expose and oppose the destructive and lethal war games. The international campaign will culminate with a convergence in San Diego this summer, where the US Navy will host an opening reception prior to departing for RIMPAC in Hawai’i.
The day following the campaign launch, the White House hosted the first ever Trilateral Summit of the US, Japan and the Philippines. Shoring up US military alliances in a build up to war with China, the Trilateral Summit undergirds the very reason we launched this campaign against the RIMPAC joint military exercise -- the exercises are blatant shows of force designed to project the power of US-led military alliances. The alliances themselves are tools used by the US to secure its long term military and political interests, over which the US is rapidly losing its grip. On the Philippines’ side, the US-Marcos puppet regime raked in $128 million in military aid from the US, amounting to more than the past 10 years combined. This will go primarily into infrastructure for the at least nine new bases that Marcos is allowing the US to use under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. Funds will also purchase new attack helicopters, missiles, fighter jets, rifles and other weapons that the Armed Forces of the Philippines uses in repressive military operations against their own people. Further, the Philippines Enhanced Resilience Act of 2024 (PERA Act) was introducedenate in the US Senate to strengthen and modernize the U.S.-Philippines alliance through significantly increased U.S. security assistance--a total of $2.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing over the next 5 years. On the Japanese side, the US-Kishida parter imperialist regime advocated for a place in the Australia-United Kingdom-US (AUKUS) military agreement to secure investments in military AI, cyber and hypersonic warfare, while declaring plans to double the nation’s military spending within the next 5 years. This would make the country the fourth largest military spender in the world after the US, Russia and China. Japan also discussed its other Trilateral Agreement with the US and South Korea and plans for continued military exercises that have been taking place over the Korean Peninsula as an unprovoked show of force to the government of the DPRK. With this Trilateral Summit, the governments of both Japan and the Philippines made it clear that they will toe the line of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, marking China as their main target and allowing their countries to be used as pawns in the US so-called “Island Chain Strategy” of encircling China with bases, missile silos and surveillance radars. Japan and the Philippines pledged to conduct even more military exercises together, including joint patrols around the Taiwan Strait, outside the maritime borders of all three nations. This will only put a target on both countries as the US plans its aggressive strategies miles across the ocean in Washington DC. As the US works to put in motion ever more military agreements in Asia and the Pacific with the help of its partner imperialist and puppet governments like Japan and the Philippines, the peace loving people of the world must unite and show our mass opposition to US-led war and the build up to World War 3. Join us in the international campaign to Cancel RIMPAC and say no to all provocative military exercises and alliances! The US uses RIMPAC to strengthen the abilities of 26 of its allies’ militaries to wage wars of aggression around the world, further fueling tensions between major military powers. Through weapons testing and war-games during RIMPAC, defense contractors and fossil fuel corporations reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. The US military occupation of Hawai'i violates native Hawaiian sovereignty and turns Hawai'i into a testing ground for current and future wars. RIMPAC leads to environmental destruction, violence against women, and a gross neglect of the day to day needs of people all over the world by advancing US-led wars. But just as people around the US and the world took to the streets to condemn the Trilateral Summit, we will do the same for every manifestation of rising militarism that we are able to, culminating in the mass mobilization to San Diego this summer! Get involved in the international Cancel RIMPAC campaign today! Sign up on the campaign interest form: https://tinyurl.com/CancelRimpacSupport To learn more, view the recording of the campaign launch: https://youtu.be/uL1V967FhVc. Also download the slides for an in depth look at RIMPAC and the campaign. The Resist US-Led War Movement demands an end to the build up to another regional war in West Asia and North Africa. The continuing Israeli assault and genocide on Gaza and the Palestinian people is inflaming tensions throughout the whole region, tensions deeply rooted in the long history of foreign intervention. US leaders are deliberately stoking the fires of their war machine, and so only a united international anti-war movement has the power to demand they stop.
This region of the world has been in a constant state of war for over one hundred years, and since 1945 it has been the US that has led, financed, advised or otherwise encouraged wars in order to protect its profit-making influence. Over the years, these have killed tens of millions of people, destroyed critical infrastructure, caused mass starvation and destruction of food and water systems and other crimes against humanity. The genocidal assault on Gaza with US-provided weapons is part and parcel with this history. The US sent Secretary of State Blinken, Secretary of Defense Austin and even Biden himself to meet with the Zionists and promise them full support. Biden then went on TV decrying the killing of US-Israeli citizens in the October 7th military strike by Palestinian resistance fighters, saying nothing about the killing of US-Palestinian citizens by Israeli forces in Gaza. Biden also had the gall to openly support the Israeli government’s claim that the bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that killed over 500 seeking refuge and medical help, was an accident caused by the Palestinian side. Upon this announcement, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as well as the leaders of Egypt and Jordan canceled a meeting with him, demonstrating the diplomatic isolation that the US is pushing itself into in its continued support for Israeli war crimes. US shipments of further weapons to Israel are escalating geopolitical tensions to new heights, provoking Iran to respond by pledging its own intervention if an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza occurs. The US responded by sending a second aircraft carrier to the region. Following this act, US military bases in Iraq and Syria were hit with missile and drone attacks and a missile was fired from Yemen, all countries where armed groups in alliance with Iran exist. This shows that Iran’s promises are not empty, and that the people of West Asia, regardless of religious or political affiliation, stand against the Israeli assault on Gaza. The US has pledged $105 billion in emergency military spending, the largest single purchase in US history. This would include $14 billion for Israel but also $60 billion for Ukraine, $7 billion for Taiwan and $14 billion for US-Mexico border militarization. This shows how desperate the US-led war machine has become, and how profit-hungry the weapons companies have become. Instead of condemning its allies' war crimes, the US deliberately covers them up and asks US citizens to keep funding them through their tax dollars. Instead of negotiating with its rivals, like Iran, Russia or China, the US seizes on military options given that it is still the most powerful military in the world. But despite this last fact, it has isolated itself further from the rest of the world more so than ever before by its own actions. The rise of its regional rivals, in this case Iran, is a sign that if the US continues on its path of supposed military dominance of the world it will, this time, lead not only to the continued genocide of the Palestinian people, but also an expanding and devastating conflict that will drag millions into what may become the beginnings of a third World War. The anti-war movement must unite and take to the streets, demanding the US end its march to World War Three. The people united is the only chance for a just and lasting peace around the world. |