Fight back and unite against the US-led war build up in Asia Pacific (statement from Forum in Iwakuni, Japan December 2025)

Greetings, friends and comrades. I am speaking today on behalf of the Resist US-Led War Movement. We are a global network of peace and anti-war organizations and individuals spanning Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America. We unite under shared principles to resist U.S.-led war and militarism, and to build a just peace.

We are honored to be part of this peace forum today and congratulate the organizers on 20 years of resistance against the Iwakuni base.

Look at our world today. It is beset on nearly every corner by wars, by the preparations for greater war, by a militarization that has devastating effects on peoples' lives and livelihoods. The United States, still the number one threat to peace and stability in the world, is now more isolated than at any point in its history. Its economic strength is waning, and so it is betting everything on its military might.

Yet this empire is desperate and vulnerable. Every day people experience horrific crimes at the hands of the US military. We must understand its strategy to expose its inherent aggressive interests and build a mass movement to end US imperialism once and for all.

The root cause of of modern war is imperialism. So if we want to fight war and build a just and lasting peace, then we need to fight to end US imperialism.

And to do so, we need to understand the strategy and tactics and the current flash points and fronts of today's wars.

The most deadly and horrific manifestation today is the US-funded Zionist genocide of Palestine. It is enabled by near-endless U.S. funding. It is part of a strategy to control the flow of oil and gas, relying on the genocidal Israeli occupation, as well as the Gulf monarchies and Turkish allies. The US uses the same logic to try to destabilize states and destroy movements that stand in its way. This has led to regime change in Syria, bombing campaigns in Yemen, and aggression toward Iran. The militant steadfastness of the Axis of Resistance, across Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, holds this predatory system back. This resistance has sparked world-wide solidarity and struggle for the right of oppressed people everywhere to self-determination, liberation and return.

In Europe, the US still wields the NATO alliance in its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. This war has fueled the rise of pro-war fascist movements in response to this crisis and a "rearm Europe" drive by European Union. In Africa, U.S. Africa Command plays the old colonial role, plundering resources. The recent ejection of U.S. and French bases from Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso has scared the empire into its age-old strategy: covertly supporting armed paramilitaries to violently reassert control. Its hands are in the genocidal proxy wars in Sudan and the Congo, in a spree to extract and control gold, oil, and minerals.

In Latin America, the U.S. actively prepares to invade Venezuela, eyeing the biggest oil reserves in the world, while propping up repressive lap-dog regimes such as in El Salvador and Argentina that trap their economies in neoliberal misery.

Even the Arctic and outer space are not spared from this competition for resource grabs and military positioning.

This trillion-dollar global US-led war machine drains public funds that should be providing healthcare, education, and housing for working people.

And now, we must consider the primary front: here in Asia and the Pacific. Ever since the U.S. declared its “Pivot to Asia” to counter the rise of China, this has been the main front of US imperialism's existential struggle for survival.

Here, the “Island Chain Strategy” is the foundation of the US's Indo Pacific Strategy. Overall the US Indo-Pacific strategy aims to further squeeze the Pacific for what they call "untapped resources" through a strategic military build up.

It callously reduces entire countries to pawns on a Pacific chessboard. We are in the First Island Chain right now, a line curving from the Philippines and Malaysia, up through Okinawa and Japan, to South Korea, with both ends meeting at Taiwan, the imperialists' hub for semiconductors.

These countries host the US's most significant bases: 43,000 personnel in South Korea, 30,000 troops in Okinawa, and tens of thousands cycling through the Philippines. They host the most deadly missile systems: THAAD, Tomahawk, and now the Typhon system.

In line with the US pivot to Asia, the US with Japan as its willing partner, continually roll out new bi-lateral and multilateral agreements. The Japan-US-Korea alliance (JAKUS) and the Japan-Philippines-US trilateral alliance (JAPHUS) expands the US military's network of alliances allowing US and Japanese troops to drag Korea and the Philippines into US war preparations against China. These alliances formalize regular war games, intelligence and missile systems. These measures are not defensive, but amount to an iron web of alliances in East Asia in preparation for war against China.

The US's reliance on Japan is exemplified by the ongoing build-up of the Japanese military, far beyond self-defense - amounting to a drastic change to its constitution, at the behest of the United States. The reliance also looks like the critical positioning of U.S. bases, such as in Iwakuni, which serve as launching pads for American military operations.

The US cannot play out its Indo-Pacific strategy without Japan being its most loyal ally.

Therefore, the local struggle of people in Iwakuni resisting a U.S. base is a great contribution to the global movement against U.S.-led war. Your resistance, here in Iwakuni, is significant to the people of the world.
All around the world, the people living near these bases, these radars, these drills, are put directly in the line of fire. They are already bearing the brunt of the wars of aggression the US is preparing to wage.

Let’s be clear: overseas U.S. military bases are not instruments of defense. They are foundational outposts of US imperialism. Their core purpose is to be a staging ground to prepare for, provoke, and wage wars of aggression. They transform host nations into front-line targets. Their presence is a daily regime of intimidation, violence, human rights violations, sexual abuse. It means contamination and sickness, the theft of Indigenous lands, environmental destruction. Bases destroy local economies and self-determination. They intentionally put oppressed communities, rural, Indigenous, and island peoples in sacrifice zones for Washington’s wars. And we have had enough!

Now, Trump's recent tour in Asia has intensified the process of militarization in the Asia Pacific. Despite boasting of being a president of "peace," and taking credit for fake "peace deals", Trump is pushing an "America first" military strategy, aggressively pushing US ally countries to increase their military spending, the same way he bullied the European countries in NATO to increase their military spending.

The so-called "rules-based order" is in pieces. What remains is a military budget of almost a trillion dollars to enforce imperialist aims with a fascist head of state to back up an aggressive, US-led war strategy around the world.

This funds Trump's fascist today inside and outside the US. The military budget bill would codify many of Trump's unlawful executive orders into law: use of active-duty troops along the U.S.-Mexico border, building nuclear reactors for "national security", and using the military against US citizens and migrants. It would fund the US forces deployed and extrajudicial strikes on fishermen in the Caribbean. Continued funding for the evidenced war crimes against Palestinians.

Our task is clear, we must build solidarity across struggle as we fight to cut the imperialist tentacles of the war machine in each of our nations.

The war making states and the war profiteering corporations are connected internationally. Our movements must also be coordinated so we can tackle the weapons and war supply chains and fight together against shared targets.

Together, our united front can defeat US-led war and militarism and in its place, build a just and lasting peace.
How do we do that? For Resist US-Led war - our movement has launched campaigns to expose and shut down the US military bases. We have waged fights targeting the weapons and war companies including the arms manufacturers, weapons expos, the logistics hubs, airports and seaports that transfer weapons and military equipment, the mining companies and component supply chains, and the big tech companies enabling a cycle of weapons production.

We have campaigned to cancel the multinational war games like Balikatan, Freedom Shield, and RIMPAC.
We are inspired by the Italian doc workers who have shut down their ports to refuse to let weapons flow to the Zionist entity for genocide against the Palestinian people. We are inspired by the people of Ecuador who have blocked new bases from being built. By the Venezuelan people forming militias and using people power to defend their land and sovereignty. We are inspired by the Japanese and Okinawan people fighting against the imposition of American bases on your land. We are inspired by the peoples movements in the Philippines and Vieques who have already fought and won struggles to remove military bases from their territories.

Together, we will break and shatter the US's overstretched war machine and forge new bonds of peace, liberation, and international solidarity.

Long live international solidarity! Long live the struggle for a just and lasting peace!

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