To Realize International Peace, Resist US-Led War!

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.