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The Resist US-Led War Movement joins the millions of Filipinos worldwide celebrating the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte, on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. Duterte's arrest is a victory that was only made possible because of the relentless fight for justice and accountability waged by the Filipino people. Resist resolutely supports the people's pursuit of both accountability for the past crimes of the Duterte regime, as well as an end to those of the current president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who continues his predecessor's militarization of rural villages, aerial bombings, strafing, hamletting and other human rights violations in his US-armed and funded counterinsurgency campaign.
Duterte's war on the Filipino people Under the guise of his "war on drugs," Duterte orchestrated the killing of an estimated 30,000 people, waging a war on the poor and working people of the country while continuing to serve as an imperialist puppet. He did this all with US-provided weapons given to the Philippine National Police or in some cases directly into the hands of Duterte's private death squads. Anchored on Duterte’s Executive Order 70, which established the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, the Armed Forces of The Philippines and Philippine National Police implemented the joint counterinsurgency plan “Kapanatagan” (“Security”), unleashing vicious attacks on any person they deemed to be “communist” and organizations tagged as “communist fronts.” The anti-people policies spearheaded by Duterte and modeled after U.S. counterinsurgency strategies led to tens of thousands enforced disappearances, extra judicial killings and victims of torture and harassment by state forces. In 2017 Duterte declared Martial Law in the Bangasamoro region of Mindanao under the justification of the US's own designation of Mindanao as the so-called "Eastern Front of the War on Terror" by former US President Bush. Duterte oversaw five months of ruthless aerial bombardment, displacement, curfews, checkpoints, among other increased human rights violations. These acts displaced more than 200,000 people and paved the way for US imperialist exploitation of the natural resources in the region which holds the largest deposits of oil and natural gas in the Philippines worth hundred of billions in US dollars. Marcos: New puppet, continued attacks on the people Like his predecessor, Marcos Jr continues Duterte's legacy of terror on the people and subservience to his US warlords. His whole of nation approach to national security and counter-insurgency, another strategy model from US counter-insurgency doctrine, calls for the militarization of civilian agencies and functions, subsuming all the branches of government to military objectives and national security goals. Under Marcos, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and fascist terror continue to be a nationwide policy. Marcos came to power with full support from his US backers. What he needed to steamroll his Presidential campaign to victory was to build an unsteady relationship with the Duterte family to win over Duterte’s voter base. Upon consolidating power, Marcos decided to dispose of Duterte by prosecuting the arrest warrant of the ICC. This amounts to the US puppet Marcos cutting the strings with Duterte so that he can make full use of the ruthlessly militaristic state machinery that he inherited from Duterte, who in turn inherited it from decades of US overlordship. In April 2024 during the Trilateral Summit in Washington DC attended by the Philippines, Japan, and the US, Biden revealed his budget request for $128 million for Military infrastructure projects under the Enhanced Defense cooperation Agreement (EDCA)— Far more than the $109 million allocated by the U.S. in the last 10 years combined - with all bases being built in strategic locations facing China, including a military site being built at ground zero in Marawi City seven years after the siege ended. This skyrocketing militarization of the Philippines at the behest of the US war machine is the mantle that Marcos has willingly taken up to protect his own semi-feudal, semi-colonial economic and political interests using the Filipino people and land as a pawn in the US strategy of war against China in the process. The people’s fight for justice continues Just as the anti-US base movement of the Filipino people led decades of systematic campaigns against US military presence and formally ousted the US bases in 1992, the struggle for National Democracy and for an end to US military occupation of the Philippines continues to be one of the biggest obstacles to the US strategy of directing its puppet government to aid in its build-up to war against China. With the expansion of US military presence in the Philippines under Marcos, the peace-loving people of the world must stand and unite with the Filipino people's struggle against their country being used as a pawn of US-led war. While Marcos may have been the one to execute the arrest warrant against Duterte for his own political interests, it was the people who fought against every blow of the overwhelming fascist offensive of Duterte to bring this case to reality. It is the people, and only the people, who will realize justice, accountability, and lasting peace. Justice for the victims of the drug war! Cut military aid to the US-Marcos regime! US out of the Philippines!
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The International Migrants Alliance (US) and the Resist US-Led War Movement echo the peoples call, from the migrants inside and across the U.S. region resisting their detention at Guantanamo bay, and the 50,000 Cubans protesting outside to condemn use of the illegal decades-long occupation of Cuba in Guantanamo Bay by the US military, amidst the slew of fascist immigration executive orders since Trump came into office.
Militarized immigration enforcement and fascist terror The Trump administration has used US military bases and the so-called "whole of government immigration crackdown" to put shackled immigrants on U.S. military planes for deportation fights and sent at least 127 migrants in February to the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The former/recent detainees described "small, windowless cells, constant lighting hindering sleep, inadequate food and medical care, and verbal and physically violent abuse from staff," labeling the conditions as "a living hell." The executive order of the President aims to prepare Guantanamo Bay to expand its capacity to transfer 30,000 migrants there. The Trump administration has also expanded federal agents’ arrests of people in the U.S. without documentation and abandoned programs like Temporary Protective Status (TPS) or the asylum process that gave some permission to stay. Just like his previous term, Trump inherited an immigration system used by both Democrats and Republicans for terrorizing and tearing apart migrant families to advance their profit-driven political projects. While this current moment recalls the horrors of voice recordings of crying children after being torn away from their families during Trump’s first term, or the images of migrant children being kept in literal cages inside warehouses, it must be remembered that this policy has been documented since at least US President Clinton’s mass deportation campaigns. Past President Biden deported around 1.5 million people, Bush Jr. deported around 2 million, while Obama deported a staggering 3.2 million, earning him the name “Deporter in Chief.” Conditions in detention facilities have been kept nightmarish by each of these Presidents as well, with over 50 deaths reported between 2017 and 2021 alone (and many more likely to have been not reported), and migrants suffering disease, starvation, and abuse by detention staff. Now Trump plans to expand ICE detention capacity to 151,500, with overall mass deportation plans that could reach a cost of $27 billion in its first year. Truly, Trump’s war on migrants is a war launched against the people long ago, but from his campaign threats during the election to his actions in his first month in office, it’s clear that things will only get worse, with the Guantanamo Bay detention of migrants signalling the worst.. Trump's openly fascist immigration policies target migrants and left-leaning movements equally as "enemies of the state," wielding repression and criminalization as militaristic tools to build up a narrative aligned with the Bush and Obama era’s "War on Terror" doctrine. Trump's targets, lumped into the category of "terrorists," have included everything from student activists fighting for Palestine, migrants at the border, loosely identified “Marxists” and “woke radicals,” and drug cartels operating within Mexico itself. Deploying ICE and CBP but also DHS, FBI, DEA, and ATF agents to round up migrants and other scapegoats, the War on Terror policy continues, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth describing the base at Guantanamo Bay as “the front line of the war against America’s southern border.” Using the racist trope of "guarding against an invasion," the US is using the Southern Command of the US military to deploy forces, with an overall border program that is estimated to exceed $1 billion. Since Trump’s second term began and he immediately declared a “National Emergency” and closed the border, about 6,500 new active duty forces have been ordered to deploy to the southern border. Before that, there were about 2,500 troops already there, largely National Guard troops on active duty orders, along with a couple of hundred active duty aviation forces. In fact, Trump's "Whole Government Immigration Crackdown" is part of his shock and awe policy scapegoating immigrants for falsely causing the economic crisis that is underpinning the racist and xenophobic attacks of his administration and everyday Americans suffering the failure of both parties’ neoliberal, neoconservative, and fascist policies. A history of torture, intervention and impunity From Guantanamo Bay, the US spent the last century surveilling its hemispheric neighbors, plotting overseas coups, and torturing hundreds of “War on Terror” suspects. Since inception, the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay has faced ongoing legal, political, and international scrutiny regarding its operations. In the wake of Spain’s defeat in the 1898 Spanish American War, the US promised Cuba its freedom; it came with heavy caveats, including access to the 45-square-mile military base. Established in 1903, Guantanamo Bay has been under U.S. control for over a century, despite its location on Cuban soil. The US held Haitian asylum seekers in Guantanamo Bay starting in the early 1990s, being picked up by the US Coast Guard, and held without due process in the detention facility. Guantanamo Bay gained international notoriety in the early 2000s as a detention center for terrorism suspects. Numerous reports have documented human rights violations within its facilities, including long-term isolation, inadequate medical care, and documented torture. In addition, many people imprisoned there were found to have been detained indefinitely without trial. The cost of the Guantanamo Bay detention center has amounted to half a billion US dollars a year, pulling from what could have been spent on much-needed revenue for government services for the people. Such is the cost of the “War on Terror” forcibly paid for by taxes of people in the US, including undocumented immigrants. Militarism and forced migration are a cycle caused by imperialism War and militarism contribute greatly to forced migration. In the first 9 months of 2023, over 100 million refugees were displaced by war and conflict throughout the world, and this was before the genocidal Israeli war on Palestinians in Gaza even started. US imperialism and imperialist countries continue to wage and prepare for wars while subjecting the people of their colonies and neo colonies to policies of economic plunder that put their people into poverty. Local reactionary and fascist rulers wage war against their own people, often at the behest of these same foreign imperialist interests who provide them weapons, training and a cut of the future profits to enact brutal counterinsurgency wars. War devastates local economies and forces people and whole families to migrate for better opportunities abroad, fleeing violence, climate crises, and political repression as well, leaving them with no real choice - either starve or die at home or gamble on highly exploitative jobs far away from their family with still little chance of maintaining a sustainable livelihood. Forced starvation through blockades and sanctions has been a favored tactic of US imperialism - in Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan and many other countries. In Venezuela alone, these sanctions caused the people to be deprived of food and medicine, led to the death of over 100,000 and forced thousands to flee the country. The US is retaliating against Venezuela for asserting their sovereignty. Not only do they prohibit US-Venezuela trade, they coerce the entire world economy into ceasing exchange as well. But the Venezuelan people have frustrated attempts to break their sovereignty and continue to struggle to build a nation free of US imperialism in spite of crushing sanctions. One migrant, José, was detained in Renton, WA and recently transferred to Guantanamo from a detention center in Texas, alongside others deemed a “high-threat.” Contrary to the Trump administration’s blatant lies about the migrants being transferred to Guantanamo, José is a beloved father, husband, brother, son, and friend who fled violence from his homeland and supported his family and migrant community in Washington state. The Trump administration has cowered to the collective people power and removed all Venezuelans from Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, February 20th including José. He was then deported from Guantanamo Bay back to Venezuela. His family, IMA, and a community of migrant activists have been fighting alongside him for his freedom every step of the way. The fight is not over, we need to demand justice for the atrocities that José has had to live through at the hands of the US imperialist state. JUSTICE FOR JOSÉ! Many migrants and refugees from war are suffering fates similar to the “War on Terror” detainees at Guantanamo Bay and other US Black Sites around the world. In the end, war makers and fascists will always need a scapegoat to falsely lay blame on, subject to unimaginable torture, and, when no longer needed, disappear into the world where their fates become unknown. Such is the inherent relationship between militarism, forced migration, detention and mass incarceration, and fascist rule under the imperialist system. Who profits from these attacks? Who profits from this violence? The private prison executives that want the prospect of lucrative new detention center deals, since Trump's mass deportation plans would massively expand the largest immigration detention system in the world. Over 90 percent of all people detained by ICE in the U.S. are held in private detention facilities today. Who else benefits? The use of Guantanamo for Trump's mass deportation program gives the US the excuse to maintain its military outpost in the Caribbean after over 2 decades of “War on Terror” imprisonment, using the military base to stake out US influence over resources and riches to extract from the Caribbean and across the continent. Struggling to end the illegal military occupation and shut down Guantanamo Bay Where there is systematic oppression, there will always be peoples’ resistance. The enduring occupation of Guantanamo Bay has been a source of mass opposition, with Cuba asserting its sovereignty and the US maintaining its military presence. Though the US maintains around 750 military bases throughout the world, Guantánamo is a base in a sovereign nation whose government has described US presence as an “illegal military occupation.” For more than half a century, the government and people of Cuba have been demanding the return of the occupied territory in Guantanamo and an end to military activities in the area. They argue that the US military presence on their territory is not only illegal under international law but also violates the principles of self-determination of peoples. The mass protests of 50 thousand Cubans last month to demand the US withdrawal and oppose the US government's ongoing interference against Cuba's sovereignty are a powerful show of the people's willingness to struggle against the US’s fascist anti-migrant agenda and its illegal military occupation. There are growing mass protests across the US of migrant communities rejecting the militarized ICE enforcement in their communities, at the border, at detention centers, and all the way back to our homelands. This growing resistance shows that both in the host countries and in their home countries, migrants will struggle for an end to the US intervention in US colonies and neo-colonies. The people of the world have had enough of the policies that subject their people to the neoliberal plunder that forces their people into poverty and compels them to migrate. Migrants, survivors of detention, and all other peace-minded people will continue to fight against the abuse, detention, family separation and exploitation of Trump’s fascist agenda. In this way, the migrant justice and peace movements must be arm in arm, united in the struggle for a bright future out of the hands of the war profiteers and fascist strongmen!  The Resist US-Led War Movement asserts its grave concern over the looming war clouds and rising global military spending that overshadow US President Trump's so-called "Ukraine Peace Plan." What attempts to come across as a criticism of a vain and endless war in Ukraine by Trump hides instead a recalibration of US military priorities to other fronts of war while bluffing European powers into ramping up their war production and preparations for more severe conflicts to come. The War in Ukraine has just passed its third anniversary. Since then, over 58,000 Ukrainians and Russians have died with over 250,000 wounded, the majority of them Ukrainians. This is in addition to over 14,000 killed in the 2014-2022 Ukrainian Civil War. An estimated $155 billion in damages has been met on Ukrainian infrastructure, and approximately 2.4 million hectares of farmland has been damaged, leading to $1.5 billion lost for farmers in the country. 3.7 million are internally displaced in the country with 6.7 displaced abroad. Yet for 3 years, the US and Western leaders have refused to come to the table for peace talks, instead promising Kiev endless supplies of weapons so that it could win the war in their favor, regardless if they had to fight it down to the last Ukrainian soldier. Yet, all this took an unexpected turn in Washington, DC. In a shocking White House meeting covered by international press, Trump berated Ukrainian President Zelensky for relying too much on US military aid, for forcing conscripts to the front lines, for not thanking the US enough for its aid, and for "gambling with World War 3." Zelensky was then officially asked to leave the White House, notably without signing the much-spoken of mineral deal between the US and Ukraine that Trump had touted as the key dealbreaker for continuing military aid to the country. Instead, Trump froze all military aid to Ukraine the very next day. The TV-style drama of this incident truly was unprecedented in the history of US foreign policy meetings, but beyond the public entertainment factor that Trump has made the hallmark of his political tactics there exist deeper truths to what this moment represents for the current state of US-led war strategy. It is necessary to break down the different aspects of Trump's public accusations of Zelensky. First, it is indeed true that Ukraine has been facing a crisis in its soldiers' will to fight over the past year, with mere inches of territory being traded back and forth for every dozen or so fighters killed. War deserters have been rounded up and imprisoned, with many forced back to the front lines. The war has devastated the country, and there seems to be no end in sight as neither side has made significant gains in relation to the amount of fighters who have been killed on either side. Ukraine spent 36.7% of its GDP on its military in 2023, yet that only amounted to $65 billion, showcasing on the one hand how devastated its economy in general has been with social spending at all-time lows for its civilian population, and on the other hand how utterly reliant it has had to have been on foreign powers up against Russia's $109 billion at just 5.9% of GDP the same year. This leads into other aspects of Trump's tirade: relying "too much" on the US and, according to Trump and Vice President Vance, not being personally "thankful" enough to the President. Both of these accusations speak to a fundamental feature of the relationship between the US and Ukraine. The US is an imperialist power, and as such prefers to wage the majority of its wars through puppet regimes in countries on the periphery of its geopolitical influence while it enjoys the "peace" of being able to plunder the rest of the world through investment schemes and wage war against its exploited and oppressed people at home. Ukraine is one of these puppet regimes and has been ever since the CIA-backed "Maidan Revolution" in 2014 that overthrew Ukraine's independent government and installed one more friendly to Western influence and investments that immediately started a bloody 8-year civil war against Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists in the Eastern Donbas region. NATO's Secretary General in 2021 promised eventual NATO membership to Ukraine, therefore solidifying a US and EU puppet regime right on Russia's doorstep to be the sacrificial lamb when Russia invaded in 2022 to protect its shrinking buffer zone between it and a military alliance that has existed to destroy it since the end of World War 2 and had looked for whatever reason possible to provoke a war against it that its own soldiers would not have to fight in. The current bloody war in Ukraine provided the golden opportunity. Kiev has fought both the 8-year civil war and the as-of-now 3-year Russia-Ukraine war with US and EU member-provided weapons. That is the nature of it being a puppet state. Such a state must exist in complete reliance on its imperialist master. When Trump berated Zelensky for this, he was hiding his own country's role in encouraging further war and military aid (including millions of dollars worth during Trump's first term) in order to weaken Russia's growing influence without sacrificing US soldiers. The difference now is that the US President has other priorities for his other puppets. The blanket support for the Zionist assault on Palestine and West Asia with fully-loaded US weapons could not be a starker difference in public messaging, but underneath the surface this puppet relationship is completely the same. Imperialists only care for their puppets when they are useful, and they are tossed aside and bled dry for what they are still worth (like Trump's rare earth mineral deal) when they no longer are. Zelensky and the rest of the Kiev regime are now paying the price for selling their sovereignty to US overlordship. To add insult to injury, Kiev's government took Trump's bating language at face value, and made a public statement thanking Trump for his supposed efforts to end the conflict, desperately hoping this would win back favor with the narcissistic President. This came a day after Zionist leader Netanyahu publicly did the same, calling Trump "the most pro-Israel President in American history." Regardless of the political charades being played, the puppets will always rush to lick the boots of the puppet master. The final accusation of Trump towards Zelensky requires the most critical eye of all of them. Who really is "gambling with World War 3?" The US has tried to use Ukraine against Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, using its age-old strategy of turning ethnic and national groups against one another. The US and its NATO allies have spent decades turning Ukraine against its nuclear-armed neighbor while using neoliberal schemes to dismember the economies of both. If anyone has been gambling with World War 3, it is the US. In fact, Trump's surprising abandonment of its puppet regime in Ukraine becomes less surprising upon looking at the other ways in which he is gambling globally with a potential World War 3. Freezing military aid to Ukraine comes a day after Trump unfroze $12 billion in aid to the Zionist military to continue violating its ceasefire with the Palestinian resistance and continue its genocidal assault while continuing its expansionist drive in Syria, Lebanon, and towards Iran. It came a day before Trump's aggressive tariffs towards multiple countries, including China, another nuclear-armed power the US has spent years decoupling its economy from so that it can wage war without losing profits. The stopping of aid to Ukraine allows the US to pivot further into its militarization of the Asia Pacific where the US aims to contain its main competitor and adversary, China. The recent Trump's freeze on global foreign aid, while exempting security aid to the Philippines to continue its war build up with Marcos as another puppet and the unfreezing $870 million in security assistance programs for Taiwan show the US's strain and stretching beyond the front of US led war with Russia, and the need to pivot forces to the pacific. Once again, in the gambling, Ukraine is only a pawn, the US is the true gambler. Finally, Trump's gamble is not just with the US's rival superpowers like China and Russia. By making such a public scene of Zelensky, he gambled with European NATO members' decisiveness to keep the war in Ukraine going at any cost. Trump's cabinet criticized NATO members at the recent Munich Security Conference, saying that members should be paying 5% of their GDP on military (a percentage higher than what the US even spends itself). Taking the bait, European members made promises to arm both Ukraine and themselves to the teeth without US support, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer calling for a "coalition of the willing" to arm Ukraine until it wins against Russia and Vice President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas reigniting calls for an "Army of Europe" that would take the place of NATO. Stocks of European weapons manufacturers rose exponentially after these announcements, with Rheinmetall up 15%, Leonardo up 17.3%, Thales up 16.7%, BAE Systems up 14.3%, and Saab up 11.6%. Regardless of what agreements the US makes with Russia, the war in Ukraine will most likely not be ending anytime soon. Despite the dramatic row Trump's White House meeting with Zelensky caused amongst US allies, in the end the war makers and war profiteers all got what they wanted - a reason to crank out more guns and fighter jets and new opportunities for using them (and therefore buying more). Far from bringing peace, this will only bring more unnecessary deaths. It will also bring more damage to infrastructure and farmland, and with even more of Ukraine's public funds going to war spending, this will mean more devastated livelihood for the people. The war profiteers of Europe are willing to throw the entire population of Ukraine into the slaughterhouse of war or the hellsscape of economic ruin just to maintain their status quo of power and to keep the war industry booming. How should the peace movement respond to this moment? Of course, an end to the dire conflict should be welcomed, as the people deserve an end to the constant death and destruction of their country. But we must be wary of how any war ends, with foresight to how the war profiteers will use it to start another conflict as soon as they can. The most important thing to remember is that our government leaders are not interested in peace, especially not Trump who is just using an opportunistic moment to re-evaluate the US's war strategy. In the end, it is the people who make peace since the people are the ones most impacted by wars of aggression and militarism in all its forms. Our leaders will continue these public charades to try and fool us, but we must continue to raise our demands and take them to the streets where we can stand united against the US-led war machine. NATO and other US allies have never been this at odds with each other, so the peace movement must take advantage of this moment and expose the cracks. This movement will always be more united than the war makers ever can be! Finally, these imperialist machinations of the US show just how little it cares about the people living in the nations being oppressed by their puppet regimes. The peace movement must be firmly united with these movements for national liberation from semi-colonial oppression. Only then will the arbitrary moves of strongman governments like the US be challenged from the only force that can challenge them - the people themselves. This united movement is the only path towards just and lasting peace.  Since the start of 2025, a total of 85 people have died in major U.S. aviation incidents.
On January 29, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter above the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. All 64 people on board the CRJ700 and 3 on board the helicopter were killed. The Black Hawk helicopter, is made by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, has been sold to governments of Saudi Arabia, "Israel", Philippines, Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan, Republic of Korea, Taiwan and others. This infamous attack helicopter model has been used by US-backed militaries around the world to bomb entire neighborhoods, strafe whole countrysides with bullets, and land soldiers into villages to abduct and terrorize civilians under the guise of the "war on terror". February 12th, a Boeing fighter jet crashed into the San Diego Harbor. The EA 18G Growler is a Boeing "carrier-based electronic warfare aircraft". It has been used in the Operation Odyssey Dawn enforcing the UN no-fly zone over Lybia, deployed from Iraq in 2011. It was deployed as part of the Operation Prosperity Guardian attacking the Yemeni people and downing a Ansar Allah drone. February 6th, a US-Department of Defense-contracted surveillance plane crashed in Philippines, killing four people, including a US military personnel. The plane was a Beechcraft King Air 350, owned by Textron Aviation and formerly by Raytheon. The surveillance operation, which happened not far from the site of the notorious 2009 Maguindanao Massacre, is yet another event which raises serious concerns about the devastating impacts of the United States role in “counter-terror” and counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines. The recent plane crashes in San Diego, the Potomac River, and the Philippines serve as reminders of the deep-rooted imperialist system that prioritizes military interests over human lives. These crashes are not mere accidents but the dangerous consequences of unchecked of militarization and global dominance, where the lives of ordinary people are expendable to further the aims of the military-industrial complex. The military’s disregard for safety standards in its operations—whether during training exercises, military drills, or even maintenance— are just a small part of the overall death and destruction intentionally meted out by the US military through its wars of aggression all around the world. The people affected by these crashes and the people around the world on the receiving end of the bombs, strafing, surveillance, counterinsurgency programs, military exercises and proxy wars are the true front line victims of US wars of aggression. While the loss of lives by these military "accidents" are tragic, the US military has intentionally killed more than 4.5 million people in its wars since the start of the US-War on Terror, and millions more before, using weapons jets and military equipment such as the ones involved in the crashes. Weapons transnational corporations, headed by the richest class of monopoly capitalists in the world, sacrifice the lives of people around the world every single day for the sake of raking in superprofits. We must escalate further our campaigns against the Weapons TNC's and the governments who contract them to fight to end wars of aggression and build just peace.  ** 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.  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. |