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peace
The Moral Insanity of Trump's Endless Warmongering
Politically, war and militarism are taken utterly for granted, but the “creation of peace” is controversial. Why?
May 23, 2026
“In the 21st century, the United States has spent almost $8 trillion on foreign wars, with nearly 5 million lives lost.”
And we’re only a quarter of the way into the century. Are we aiming for 20 million dead civilians by 2100? Here’s a recent Truth Social post from the current president: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”
There’s a moral insanity to these words, hiding behind a ho-hum collective shrug. People either brush it off as “just talk” or, even more ominously, nod their heads and smile in agreement. Yeah, he’s keeping us safe. War, the planet’s great, lethal abstraction, is necessary. It keeps us safe. It eliminates evil. Yada, yada. No matter it does none of those things—indeed, does just the opposite. Public acceptance of the inevitability and necessity of war has been expanding throughout my lifetime.
The quote at the top of the column, tossing out a few incomprehensible statistics, is one of the findings included in the 2025 bill presented before Congress to establish a Department of Peacebuilding, introduced by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). It’s the most recent in a long, long line of bills and proposals over the years, meant to establish peace—whatever that is—as a matter of national significance and responsibility. No such bill has ever been passed; all have remained marginal... and no doubt cynically dismissed.
Probably the only way to gain political traction is to focus on peace not as political or ideological, but as structurally logical. Peacebuilding works!
Politically, war and militarism, as well as armed policing and the prison-industrial complex—all of which are funded annually by multitrillions of dollars of the federal and other public budgets—are taken utterly for granted. But the “creation of peace” is controversial. Why?
Of all the questions buzzing around in my mind, this is perhaps the largest—and most predatory. Here are some more findings from the 2025 Department of Peacebuilding bill:
- “According to the Centre for Global Research, the United States has been at war for more than 90% of its existence. Many of our citizens today have never known a peaceful year in their lifetimes..."
- “Suicide is the second leading cause of death among Native Americans aged 10 to 34. Approximately 17 veterans a day commit suicide nationwide. About 12 young people in the United States die from homicides each day..."
- “Each day, an average of 132 people died from gun violence—one death every 11 minutes. In 2024, there were more than 500 mass shootings... Young people go to school wondering where to hide when a shooter enters their classroom."
And on and on. The bill also notes:
The preamble of the Earth Charter provides, "To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”
Which country would you rather live in? That country or this one, as summed up by “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth:
America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course classified effects. All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives.
Can peacebuilding even be acknowledged as legitimate in such a culture? The ever-present necessity of war not only unites the nation state—it’s us vs. the bad guys, the commies, the terrorists, or whoever—it provides moral protection for those who have already committed or supported murder of “the other,” including the murder of children. Including genocide. The vet suicide rate is an example of what happens when this moral protection vanishes.
What a complex reality faced by those of us who believe—with all our hearts—in the recognition and establishment of peacebuilding at the national level. Probably the only way to gain political traction is to focus on peace not as political or ideological, but as structurally logical. Peacebuilding works! Restorative Justice is certainly one example: creating a structure of healing for people harmed by a crime, rather than simply hunting down and punishing the “offender,” changing nothing.
Of course, another problem faced by peacebuilders is that the current violence-based, non-functional system is lucrative for investors—in weaponry, prisons, etc. How dare those peaceniks challenge this!
All we can do is refuse to give up—and refuse to look at “peace” as an us-vs.-them problem, easy (and tempting) as that is to do. The powerful will, and should, also benefit from peacebuilding, though not perhaps in a way they can understand. Power comes with connection, not domination.
Note: I’ll continue to address this issue and, indeed, continue writing my column, even though this is the last one being syndicated by the Chicago Tribune, after 27 years.
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Humanity's Journey to Peace: From a Chicago Lunchroom to the World Stage
When we listen to and empathize with our “enemy,” we can start seeing beyond the moment and working to create a world that works for everyone. We can only evolve together.
May 10, 2026
Yes, I’m still trying to write a book. Meanwhile, horrific wars rage and the outrage I feel quietly morphs into helplessness and then, after a while, shame. I believe, in some deep place inside me, that we can move beyond this. I know we can.
I also believe I have a role to play, as a writer, to help push our collective awareness beyond a public shrug over the cost and consequences of militarism: our trillion-dollar-plus military budget and ho-hum acceptance of the “collateral damage” that budget inevitably winds up creating... over there somewhere. This is simply assumed to be the nature of power. You know, dominance. It’s how we stay safe.
What I want to cry out is that this is fake power. It’s a trap. It keeps us in hell. Connection and creative conflict resolution are a different form of power. When we listen to and empathize with our “enemy,” we can start seeing beyond the moment and working to create a world that works for everyone. We can only evolve together.
I say these words humbly, quietly. In no way am I suggesting that anything about such a process is simple. But it can only begin if we believe it’s possible, and then find the collective courage to begin the journey... together.
When emotions are uncontrolled—when they are uncontrolled and armed—the fragmentary nonsense has lethal potential.
So I open up the soul of my book and tell a story: a story about Restorative Justice, which I have written about a great deal. People sit together in what is called a peace circle, sometimes to discuss a harm that has been done, a wrong that has occurred. All sides in the matter are part of the circle; they sit in vibrant equality. A talking piece is passed around. When you hold it, you speak; otherwise, you listen. Often the words go deep. People tell difficult truths.
The following story is that of Robert Spicer, who at the time was the culture and climate coordinator at Chicago’s Fenger High School. To put it more simply, he was the peace guy. He had a peace room. He trained students in conflict resolution. He brought Restorative Justice to Fenger.
One day, as students were eating breakfast in the cafeteria, waiting for the first bell to ring, two boys were standing together and suddenly ignited the volatility in the room—the volatility present at every struggling school in a low-income neighborhood. They tried out a new handshake.
Amid the talk and laughter, Spicer explained: “Another student noticed them doing their handshake and began to question them about what they were doing. Feeling disrespected, the students started to have words and then other students gathered around to see what was going on.”
And suddenly, the first two boys, he explained, “postured themselves to fight.”
But Fenger was a high school that knew about something beyond fighting—beyond the unleashing of righteous anger, the subduing of an enemy. Fenger, like other schools that have opened their doors to Restorative Justice, had peace ambassadors roaming their hallways. These are young people trained in restorative practices, like listening, like keeping calm, like refusing to surrender to the inevitability of hatred. Sometimes they were called peer jurors: students who help run conflict-resolution circles, circles that address disputes and attempt to undo—that is, heal—harm that has been done.
And there were peace ambassadors in the cafeteria that morning.
“As I was preparing for my day, some of my peer jurors who were in the lunch room approached me and told me about the situation and who was involved. One of my peer jurors said, ‘You’re going to have a big peace circle today. Let me know if you need my help.’ Quite frankly, because this situation happened in the lunchroom, I knew that all of the eight male students involved were not going to end up in my office but be sent home on a suspension. But was I in for a surprise that day!”
Both the dean and the principal had interviewed the boys and, oh changing world, decided they needed to sit in a peace circle with one another. The Chicago Public School System, like most American school systems, is primarily ensconced in punishment-based discipline, but this is changing.
Eight boys, along with the dean and the principal, entered the Spicer peace room and sat with one another. They passed the talking piece around the circle. As each one talked, an awareness filled the room: This was a big misunderstanding, nothing more. Some of the boys talked about other issues they were dealing with, complicating their day and their behavior. People got it.
“After the closing ceremony,” Spicer wrote, “each of the students shook hands and even hugged each other as they were preparing to leave my office. They did this without any adults prompting them to do this, which showed their sincerity. Once we concluded the circle, the adults decided to allow them to blow off some steam and play basketball. And the students who were the main ones in conflict were on the same team. They played for about 25 minutes and afterwards were sent to class skipping and excited about the school day.”
And so it begins. Kids talk, a community that hadn’t existed—a sense of commonality and understanding among a group of tough guys at a Chicago high school—emerges. Punishment morphs into basketball, into joy, into healing. This is not a simple process, but—cynics, beware—it’s possible; it happens, in schools and elsewhere. An awareness is slowly shifting.
Sometimes it’s a matter of life or death. When emotions are uncontrolled—when they are uncontrolled and armed—the fragmentary nonsense has lethal potential. This is the case in so many broken communities, around the country, across the planet.
How can we transcend war? For those planning for peace, Restorative Justice is a gold nugget.
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Pivot to Peace This Mother's Day
Let us be as committed to peace as the war mongers are to war; they all do it for transaction and money—together let us build a future that serves life with love.
May 10, 2026
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe penned her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” calling for peace. Her words still ring with truth, calling us not to raise our children to kill another mother’s child but rather to gather together to “promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” She wrote this following the ravages and violence of the Civil War, a war like the wars today waged for the needs of the rich. Now the War Economy has consolidated in the hands of the rich to a level never seen in history.
We live deep inside the War Economy—the extractive, destructive, oppressive economy founded upon greedy capitalism and imperialism. With the years-old genocide in Gaza ongoing, the continued dehumanizing blockade of Cuba, and the inhumane and strategically disastrous war on Iran all coinciding, we see how war serves the War Economy. Proof of this violence is served up, ubiquitous and relentless, via our phones, those devices we hold so near and dear to us. The War Economy has mesmerized us into participating in its cynical lullaby: We accept domination, dehumanization, demoralization, cynicism, and apathy as normal and natural, allowing War Economy thinking to pervade everyday interactions with our families, communities, and even our relationship to ourselves. The War Economy knows that, individually, we have little power to stop it. Convincing us that we are alone and powerless is its greatest trick.
These, however, are lies. We know this intuitively. We can understand that the War Economy is trying to lull us into a fugue of forgetfulness of our own nature. How do we remember what care and connection feel like? How can we begin to practice something other than the addictions the war economy forces on us? What experiences that we perceive as normal and natural are just internalized War Economy thinking and behaviors?
The Peace Economy is how humans have survived for millennia; it is how we have served each other and the world since humanity began tens of thousands of years ago. It is how people across the ages and the globe have learned to survive and thrive through the experience of community, collaboration, and connection. It is showing up for the needs of each other with generous and caring hearts. It is the giving, sharing, caring, thriving, relational, resilient economy that serves all life on this planet. Whether we know it or not, it is fundamental to serving life and cultivating peace. We can’t end war until we end the War Economy, so we who desire peace must create a future built on the habits of peace.
What can you choose to practice this week, right where you live? How might you care for others the way a mother might care for her child?
The Peace Economy is rooted in maternal care. When we are born, most of us experience love and connection effortlessly. We are provided for without the need for transactional thinking and relationships. The War Economy lies to us and says we can find love and connection through the purchase of things and transactional relationships. An insidious lie.
Think about it. How do you experience connection and care in your life? How do you experience joy and creativity? How do you play? How do you give of yourself to others and to things that matter to you? When you disconnect from phones and computers and walk out into the more-than-human world, how do you relate to what surrounds and sustains you? None of those things has a purchase price. They are freely given, like a mother’s love.
The War Economy forces addictions on us to survive its abusive thrall. We can break those addictions just by practicing habits of peace and walking through life with the care and connection of a mother’s love. Habits of peace, which we like to call “Pivots to Peace,” build muscles that will help us thrive and participate in the creation of a more beautiful future. It is a way to “mother” the world. A pivot is a commitment you can make on this Mother’s Day, a day hijacked by the War Economy to be one of consumption. Let us be as committed to peace as the war mongers are to war; they all do it for transaction and money—together let us build a future that serves life with love.
Here are some Pivots to Peace.
- Pivot from Transactional Relationships to Relational Connections: Our relationships are what keep us alive and thriving. One of the ways our War Economy has isolated us from each other is by turning our relationships into transactions. Transactions do not support life and relationships. Instead, transactional interaction steals what nourishes you and your community. Because our culture is based on transactions, this pivot can be especially challenging. It will require some self-honesty to witness what drives you. This will take a lifetime of practice, and the reward is life itself. How might you decrease transactionality in your everyday interactions with your family, friends, and neighbors?
- Pivot from Feelings of Scarcity to Abundance: The War Economy takes those things that were once free—food, water, land, entertainment, etc.—and monetizes them, forcing us to experience them as scarce. The War Economy also forces us to think we need an excess of things that are not essential to life; these things don’t really bring us true joy and pleasure, but rather distract us. How do you experience scarcity in your life? What feels out of reach to you? Which of your needs are unmet? What always feels out of your reach, and how does that make you feel? Ideas to pivot to abundance: Start with defining what is “enough.” What is it that you really need? What do you already have? What can you share with others who have less than you? Give something away every day this week—not as a transaction but as a way of relating.
- Pivot from Self-Oriented to Community-Engaged: It’s easy to see why we’re all alienated from each other when we live in a society that emphasizes individual achievement and self-directed actions over community care and engagement with those around us. What if our culture valued community care and engagement with those around you as the highest virtue? What are some ways you retreat into self-directed actions and individual achievement? Reflect on what nourishes you when you are community-engaged. Take some opportunities to see those who are caring for and creating your community—the teachers, healers, caretakers, nurses, essential workers, gardeners, etc., who enrich all of our lives. Thank them.
- Pivot from Reactionary to Investigative: In the War Economy, the corporate elites and warmongers control the media and the cultural narrative that is so pervasive in our lives. They capture your heart and mind to support their goals of domination and control. Often, they are weaponizing you to serve their goals, maneuvering you into a reactive stance. Mainstream media relies on us becoming reactive so that we will support the agenda of the War Economy. Instead of swallowing what the media is serving up, begin to practice investigating. What stories are seeking a reaction? What stories are investigative and nuanced? Begin to pay attention to who is benefiting. Where do you notice informed journalism that is not serving the War Economy? Notice what changes when you practice investigative and discerning media intake.
- Pivot from “Us vs. Them” to All of Us: Have you noticed that in most movies, the solution to the problem is to kill the villain? From an early age, we are fed the “good guy vs. bad guy” narrative. What are some ways this has permeated your own life and thinking? Where do you hold on to an “us vs. them” attitude? How does this serve your life? Can you transform your idea of separation from “them” into a more complex understanding of how relationships to the larger systems are affecting all of us—instead of placing blame on an individual or particular group of people? The War Economy thrives on divide and conquer, and people are the power if we stay connected.
- Pivot from Consumption to Creativity: The War Economy is fueled by consumption. Through the lifestyle the War Economy creates, we are forced into an addiction to consuming—be that the consumption of material goods, media, entertainment, or something else. Most of the things we consume are not what we need but what we are taught to need. Often, they distance us from joy and pleasure, creating a cycle of dissatisfaction and emptiness. Creativity is usually the way to truly fill the void we are seeking to fill through consumption. We are fulfilled through connections. We are fulfilled when we create avenues for feeling, art, expression, and for life to thrive. How can you create space for creativity in your life?
- Pivot from Limitation to Imagination: Limitation of ourselves is one of the great crimes of the War Economy; it gets us locked into transaction, productivity, and patterns of comfort that sever us from free thinking, creative action, and imagination. The War Economy convinces us that we need to stay narrow to survive, and often, we don’t even realize how narrow our bandwidth for creative thought, wild expression, and imagination has become. Where in your life does your imagination find expression and value? Take time each day to let your mind wander beyond what feels safe or familiar. Gather with your community and discuss what frustrates you. Then start a free flow of ideas that could address the frustrations. The more “out there” the idea, the better. Being in relationship with new pathways and new potential realities is a great way to expand creativity and birth the future.
- Pivot from Restraint to Pleasure: The War Economy shakes in its boots because the things that bring us joy and pleasure are free and abundant—a secret they don’t want us to realize. What would you be doing with your time and energy if you made decisions based on a feeling of deep, erotic yes? Often, the first thing we need to remove to find pleasure is transaction. Where do you experience restraint in your life? How is it imposed on you? By your habits? By self-limiting beliefs? By the culture? What scares you about pleasure? What excites you? Even when we do things we think will give us pleasure, we are sometimes so lost in transaction and productivity that instead we find emptiness and frustration. What were some times, have you sought pleasure and it has been beyond your reach? What were the circumstances? What one thing can you do today that will make you feel joy without having to purchase something?
These are a few of the 23 pivots you can find at peaceeconomy.org. They are offerings to serve you as you take your life away from serving the War Economy and cultivate a future on the foundation of a peace economy. It all starts small and local. Peace-making starts with our circle of influence right around us—in our families and communities—and that is where our personal actions and their impacts are felt and create effect. What can you choose to practice this week, right where you live? How might you care for others the way a mother might care for her child?
What would it look like if peace came alive in your community, connection by connection, family by family, and eroded the grip of the War Economy habits? What if we all remembered the connection and unconditional love given to us as our birthright by our mothers? Remember, we may be just one drop in an ocean of our culture, but oceans are made, drop by drop, little by little, to become the most powerful force in nature. Together, let us be an ocean of peace.
"No matter what you do it will never amount to anything but a single drop in a limitless ocean. What is an ocean but a multitude of drops.”―David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
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Blessed Are the Peacemakers. And, No, None of Them Are Trump
People are tired of funding wars instead of aid and basic services that could help millions at home and abroad, but simply dumping on Trump’s peacemaking claims misses the opportunity to reach the many people who are sick of war-making.
Nov 09, 2025
If you want to debunk Trump’s claims to be a “peacemaker,” you’ve got plenty of options. You could name some of his most destructive actions, from authorizing weapons sales to Israel to pursuing the largest military budget ever. You could point to his appetite for flashy summits, which serve more to boost his own media profile than to advance diplomacy. You could reveal all the ways that the latest ceasefire in Gaza—while offering some essential reprieve for Palestinians and Israelis—is built on a faulty foundation that is already coming apart.
Trump hungers to make his mark on history, and if that means making peace, he’ll try for that. But just as easily, he will grab headlines by making war, from bombing Iran to deploying troops on U.S. streets. Now he is threatening direct action against Venezuela.
Yet, ultimately, Trump would not be where he is today without his uncanny ability to grasp what other politicians don’t: there is a strong, determined constituency for peace. People are tired of funding wars instead of aid and basic services that could help millions at home and abroad. Simply dumping on Trump’s peacemaking claims misses the opportunity to reach the many people who are sick of war-making.
So, instead of just rejecting Trump’s grandstanding, here’s a prescription for peacemaking that actually works.
Trump campaigned promising to end endless war, but his base is already fracturing under the pressure of this broken promise.
Luckily, those solutions are readily available, embedded in the work of grassroots, women-led peacebuilding in communities on the frontlines of war. These solutions succeed, where Trump’s ill-conceived methods fail—in three central ways.
The Trump administration’s approach to so-called diplomacy emphasizes personality instead of leadership accountable to war-impacted communities. It seeks to extract profit over providing effective care and aid. And finally, it touts rapid, shallow results for the sake of public relations rather than pursue durable peace policy frameworks informed by local expertise. All of this results in weak, short-lived deals.
Let’s take each in turn. First, Trump’s cult of personality encourages allies and adversaries to feed his vanity to improve their position at the negotiating table. For instance, after an initial visit to the Oval Office went sideways, Ukrainian President Zelensky thanked President Trump nine times during his second visit.
Grassroots women peacebuilders know that legitimacy at the negotiating table should not be about kissing the ring. It is instead rooted in the trust they’ve built among war-impacted communities. Their work—as human rights advocates, as aid providers, as community organizers—gives them actual standing to represent community needs in diplomacy. What’s more, these peacebuilders also possess the networks to exchange information and recommendations between frontline communities and policy spaces. Peace agreements that result from this feedback loop are more sustainable because people see their needs represented within them.
In Colombia, which experienced decades of civil war before a 2016 peace accord, community organizations mobilized for years to gather people’s testimonies of the war’s impacts, to transmit their demands, and to include gender and racial justice provisions in their country’s peace process. These were not only positive contributions to their peace process but also built an activated base of political power that propelled a progressive into Colombia’s presidency.
Second, Trump’s emphasis on profits incentivizes economic extraction. The June 2025 peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda promised the United States access to critical minerals needed for the AI sector, despite public objections to the “minerals for profits” paradigm. National Public Radio reports that this peace agreement resulted in “virtually no change on the ground in eastern Congo, despite President Trump’s frequent claims to the contrary.”
Meanwhile, grassroots peacebuilders prioritize nurturing frontline communities by providing much-needed care and aid, not stripping their resources away. SOFEPADI, a women’s organization in the DRC, has provided medical and counseling care to survivors of sexual violence and documented gender violence to inform more responsive policies. In Sudan, a women farmers union organized by Zenab for Women in Development has provided locally-sourced food aid, even amidst civil war.
Finally, the Trump administration has prioritized public relations over real peace, seeding sensationalist and misleading media stories that often declare peace where there is none. These stories give Trump credit for situations he worsened (such as by striking Iran before calling for an end to that fighting). They congratulate him for peace deals where he played little to no role (such as between India and Pakistan), or which failed to address the root causes of conflict (such as between Thailand and Cambodia).
Often some of the most painstaking, vital work of peacebuilding happens quietly and goes unsung. In Yemen, women worked for years, convening across communities and movements, to build together and regularly update a Feminist Peace Roadmap. It laid out the necessary preconditions and steps to secure durable peace. This is not smoke and mirrors; it’s rooted in hard-won, documented expertise and translated into policy language. Women leaders like these know that the peace they seek will not come overnight, in a fleeting headline, but depends upon this deliberate and detailed work.
Trump campaigned promising to end endless war, but his base is already fracturing under the pressure of this broken promise. Amidst this, progressives and feminist peace advocates have a vital opportunity: to refuse to cede the anti-war mantle to the right, while also inspiring constituents across the political spectrum with a powerful pro-peace message. The expertise and lived experience of grassroots feminist peacebuilders points the way forward to a more just world, without endless war.
Reaching across partisan divides isn’t about platforming public officials who may share an anti-war stance but have otherwise attacked human rights and justice. It’s about building ties of shared strategy and solidarity between organizations focused on policy and on base-building, with a common rights-based and pro-peace orientation. This approach also connects communities directly impacted by war and united by the experience of state-sanctioned violence. (The Feminist Peace Playbook we co-produced lays out many of these strategies, to build power for a peaceful and demilitarized US foreign policy, in more detail.)
Last month marked 25 years since the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, asserting the critical importance of women’s leadership in advancing peace and security. For decades, the evidence has been clear. Centering the leadership of grassroots feminist leaders makes lasting peace achievable. But it will remain beyond reach as long as the real peacemakers struggle to secure political backing, attention, and resources, while Trump takes the limelight.
Feminist values of care and inclusion can create policies that will be trusted and embraced by local communities, even in times of violence and collapse. That wisdom is sorely needed here in the United States and around the world.
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NATO's 5% Pledge: An Obscene Betrayal of Global Needs
Presented as a historic step, in truth this increased level of military spending represents a major step backwards for humanity and the common good.
Jun 26, 2025
At this week’s NATO summit in The Hague, leaders announced an alarming new goal: push military spending to 5% of nations’ GDP by 2035. Framed as a response to rising global threats, particularly from Russia and terrorism, the declaration was hailed as a historic step. But in truth, it represents a major step backwards—away from addressing the urgent needs of people and the planet, and toward an arms race that will impoverish societies while enriching weapons contractors.
This outrageous 5% spending target didn’t come out of nowhere—it’s the direct result of years of bullying by U.S. President Donald Trump. During his first term, Trump repeatedly berated NATO members for not spending enough on their militaries, pressuring them to meet a 2% GDP threshold that was already controversial and so excessive that nine NATO countries still fall below that “target.”
Now, with Trump back in the White House, NATO leaders are falling in line, setting a staggering 5% target that even the United States—already spending over $1 trillion a year on its military—doesn’t reach. This is not defense; it’s extortion on a global scale, pushed by a president who views diplomacy as a shakedown and war as good business.
This is not defense; it’s extortion on a global scale, pushed by a president who views diplomacy as a shakedown and war as good business.
Countries across Europe and North America are already slashing public services and yet they are now expected to funnel even more taxpayer money into war preparation. Currently, no NATO country spends more on the military than on health or education. But if they all hit the new 5% military spending goal, 21 of them would spend more on weapons than on schools.
Spain was one of the few to reject this escalation, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez making clear that his government would not sacrifice pensions and social programs to meet a militarized spending target. Other governments, including Belgium and Slovakia, quietly pushed back too.
Still, NATO leaders pressed on, cheered by Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who fawned over Donald Trump’s demand that Europe boost defense spending. Rutte even referred to Trump as “Daddy,” a comment that—while dismissed as a joke—spoke volumes about NATO’s subservience to U.S. militarism. Under Trump’s influence, the NATO alliance is shedding even the pretense of being a defensive pact, embracing instead the language and logic of perpetual war.
Real security doesn’t come from tanks and missiles—it comes from strong communities, global cooperation, and urgent action on our shared crises.
Just before NATO leaders were gathering at the Hague, protesters took to the streets under the banner “No to NATO.” And back in their home countries, civic groups are demanding a redirection of resources toward climate justice, healthcare, and peace. Polls show that majorities in the U.S. oppose increased military spending, but NATO is not accountable to the people. It’s accountable to political elites, arms manufacturers and a Cold War logic that sees every global development through the lens of threat and domination.
NATO’s expansion, both in terms of war spending and size (it has grown from 12 founding members to 32 countries today) has not brought peace. On the contrary, the alliance’s promise that Ukraine would one day join its ranks was one of the triggers for Russia’s brutal war. Instead of de-escalating, the alliance has doubled down with weapons, not diplomacy. In Gaza, Israel continues its U.S.-backed war with impunity, while NATO nations send more arms and offer no serious push for peace. Now the alliance wants to drain public coffers to sustain these wars indefinitely. NATO is also surrounding its adversaries, particularly Russia, with ever more bases and troops.
Under Trump’s influence, the NATO alliance is shedding even the pretense of being a defensive pact, embracing instead the language and logic of perpetual war.
All of this demands a radical rethink. As the world burns—literally—NATO is stocking up on kindling. When healthcare systems are crumbling, schools underfunded, and blazing temperatures making large swaths of the planet uninhabitable, the idea that governments should commit billions more to weapons and war is obscene. Real security doesn’t come from tanks and missiles—it comes from strong communities, global cooperation, and urgent action on our shared crises.
We need to flip the script. That means cutting military budgets, withdrawing from endless wars, and beginning a serious conversation about dismantling NATO. The alliance, born of the Cold War, is now a stumbling block to global peace and an active participant in war-making. Its latest summit only reinforces that reality.
This is not just about NATO’s budget—it’s about our future. Every euro or dollar spent on weapons is one not spent on confronting the climate crisis, lifting people out of poverty, or building a peaceful world. For the future of our planet, we must reject NATO and the war economy.
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How Would Gandhi Have Faced Down Trump?
Whatever injustices, cruelties, and evils you seek to end, Gandhi’s life and message are worth studying and emulating.
Feb 22, 2025
On Inauguration Day, I was flying home from India, where I had attended Gandhi 3.0, a retreat that brought together 40 people from around the world to explore how Gandhian principles can be meaningful in today's world. I returned to the U.S. just as my country was erupting in turmoil.
My emotions were all over the place. Having just experienced the most heart-expanding nine days of my life, where I witnessed the most extraordinary acts of generosity and heard some of the wisest of voices, I felt strangely grounded with a deep sense of love for, well, everyone. But I was also aghast, frightened for so many, and startled by those who were delighted by the sledgehammer upheavals, the head-spinning international proclamations, and the unconstitutional decrees.
I certainly understand the desire to upend “the system”—something I’ve been trying to do with multiple unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems my entire adult life—but what was unfolding was inchoate, cruel, and chaotic destruction rather than carefully considered interventions that would reduce waste and corruption.
What could Gandhi teach me and us?
Like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.
Studying Gandhi helps me put my country into perspective. Gandhi spent decades endeavoring to free his country from British rule using only nonviolent methods. He worked to end the evil of untouchability embedded in India’s caste system. He led a movement toward Indian self-reliance. And all along the way he made inner work—the cultivation of love and wisdom; inquiry, introspection, and integrity; and meditation—foundational to everything he did.
Gandhi once said:
I hold myself incapable of hating any being on Earth. By a long course of prayerful discipline, I have ceased for over 40 years to hate anybody. I know this is a big claim. Nevertheless, I make it in all humility. But I can and do hate evil wherever it exists. I hate the systems of government that the British people have set up in India. I hate the ruthless exploitation of India even as I hate from the bottom of my heart the hideous system of untouchability for which millions of Hindus have made themselves responsible. But I do not hate the domineering Englishmen as I refuse to hate the domineering Hindus. I seek to reform them in all the loving ways that are open to me. My noncooperation has its roots not in hatred, but in love.
I posted this quote shortly after my return to the U.S., and a friend commented: “Waiting for your solution? Do we just be still without any action to what is happening in this country?”
Gandhi would hardly want us to keep still. After all, he worked tirelessly. He also worked strategically, wisely, and forcefully, with force embedded in his guiding principle of satyagraha, often translated as “nonviolent resistance.” But satyagraha means so much more than this. The word combines satya, meaning truth, and agraha, meaning insistence, firmness, and adherence. In other words, Gandhi’s force for change was an unshakeable commitment to opposing injustice with truth. And truth for Gandhi meant never doing evil to combat evil; never using violence to oppose violence; and never succumbing to hate to resist hate. It meant no less than living, acting, and teaching with an abiding core of love.
Gandhi is famous for responding to a reporter’s question about his message by jotting down, “My life is my message.” Those five words aren’t just one man’s story. They represent a universal truth. Each of our lives is our message. The question thus becomes: Am I modeling the message I most want to convey?
None of us is or will be Gandhi. Nor will we have the megaphone to the world that he came to have through the power of his character, his resolve, and his at the time unique nonviolent approach to resistance. If you or I declared, as Gandhi did on several occasions, that we were fasting until and unless violence among our citizenry ended, we would surely die of starvation, and that violence would persist after we were gone. But that doesn’t mean that Gandhian principles have nothing to teach us today. They absolutely do.
Here are Gandhian teachings I am taking to heart right now:
- Avoid rash acts and angry outbursts; these will not bring about any positive change.
- Learn from the changemakers who have brought about greater peace and justice and built more compassionate, sustainable systems against all odds.
- Embrace satyagraha, recognizing that this requires cultivating the inner resolve to continually pursue justice through nonviolent, loving means.
- Work toward systemic change, understanding that this takes profound dedication, deep thinking, careful strategizing, and patience.
- Do the inner work as tirelessly as the outer work to achieve all of the above.
If you were hoping for more specific strategies to address your current concerns, this may be a disappointing list, but let’s not forget that most people across the political spectrum care about others and want a future where their fellow citizens can thrive. Rather than consider those with different political views one’s enemies, we can perceive them as fellow participants and even potential friends with whom we can communicate, and maybe collaborate, as we identify better ways forward upon which we can agree.
Gandhi devoted years to readying himself and his followers for nonviolent resistance. He spent nearly two decades in preparation for the Salt March that led to India’s independence. Just ponder that as you consider the role you will play in achieving your vision for a sustainable, peaceful, just world.
Please don’t interpret this as meaning that we should only cultivate inner strength and love, or that we should do nothing now other than plan and strategize for an indefinite future. Rather, like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.
Whatever injustices, cruelties, and evils you seek to end, Gandhi’s life and message are worth studying and emulating. He demonstrated that satyagraha is not only a profound strategy; it is fueled by the most powerful of human capacities: love. Given that Gandhi was perhaps the greatest changemaker in history, it’s worth deeply considering his approach as a model for today’s world. And lest we think we somehow need to dispense with our anger to follow in Gandhi’s footsteps, he also said this:
“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”
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When It's Not Foolishly Romantic to Celebrate Hope
In the year ahead we are going to have to harness the power of organized movements that can bring people together and make what seems impossible, possible.
Dec 25, 2023
After a year of economic hardship, climate disasters, and war, few could be blamed for feeling like our leaders have let us down. As we look ahead to a new year, I find it helpful to remember examples of those who not only saw the problem clearly, but brought people together to find solutions.
In 1967, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called for a “radical redistribution of political and economic power” to address poverty, war, and racism. To do so, he turned to those who were on the frontlines of these crises, not those who perpetrated them.
He worked tirelessly to organize the original Poor People’s Campaign, bringing together welfare advocates, farm workers unions, antiwar advocates, and Native, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and poor white organizers together with the civil rights movement.
King never wavered in his commitment to unite those who’d been divided for too long by politics, race, religion, and geography. “It has been one of my dreams that we would come together and realize our common problems,” he said just a few weeks before his assassination, and to “make the power structure of this nation say yes, when they may be desirous to say no.”
More than 50 years later, the power structures of our nation are invested in systems and structures that are destroying our lives and our planet.
We know that those invested in the status quo won’t come forth with solutions to these crises that compromise their interests.
A new report from Oxfam USA, for example, blames the wealthiest people in the world for our climate breakdown — not only because of their lavish lifestyles, but also their influence on politics, media, and the economy. Every year their emissions cancel out the carbon savings of some of the best green technologies we have. The report calls for a “radical increase in equality” to save our planet.
We know that those invested in the status quo won’t come forth with solutions to these crises that compromise their interests. That’s true whether we’re talking about the climate, inequality, poverty, or war. The answers will come from those who are confronting these systems directly.
And that’s the good news. In many places, people standing up against injustice are shifting what’s possible.
This fall, the United Auto Workers went on strike for six weeks, targeting each of the “Big Three” auto manufacturers. To confront these corporate behemoths, who’ve extracted nearly $250 billion in profits over the past decade by exploiting workers, the UAW called on specific locals to “stand up” and strike, while others continued to work even with expired contracts.
President Shawn Fain rallied their members over social media, reminding them they weren’t trying to wreck the economy, but to wreck “their” economy — the economy of the Big Three and Wall Street.
This is what hope looks like in times of great crisis, war, and inequality.
This clarity helped maintain the union’s united front. It shaped their demands for higher wages, better benefits for all workers, and an end to tiered wages. Significantly, it opened the door for workers to influence the electric vehicle market — breaking new ground for labor to find common cause with the climate movement. The union’s wins were nothing short of historic.
More recently, the UAW became the largest union to join the call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. This is not just a testament to the union, but to the many, many others who are coming together across politics, race, religion, and geography to demand peace, life, and freedom for Palestinians as well as Israelis.
This is what hope looks like in times of great crisis, war, and inequality. It’s not foolishly romantic to celebrate this hope. It’s what gives us the courage and compassion to stand up another day, to find each other, and to make what seems impossible, possible.
May it be so.
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'Like Children's Blood': The Pain and Necessity of Reporting on Gaza
What if the opinions of peace workers were as routinely sought out as retired generals and politicians in the pockets of arms manufacturers?
Dec 13, 2023
What a world! For eight weeks now, events in Israel and Gaza have been the story of the hour, day, week. And what exactly are we to make of that?
Let’s start with the obvious: American media coverage of the horrors there has been nonstop since the Hamas slaughter of October 7th. In fact, it’s knocked Russia’s war in Ukraine, the one we were told was so essential to the future of democracy, off front pages (and their media equivalents) everywhere. And the coverage of recent protests has strikingly outpaced those of any other antiwar protests in this century. What the American news media do is, of course, only part of any story, but their recent protest focus contrasts vividly with how they’ve typically covered antiwar and peace actions and so reveals something about how we Americans are thinking about war and peace right now.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, American journalists did report on the outrage over that country’s actions and the outpouring of support for Ukraine, but in the endless months of conflict since then, they’ve paid almost no attention to actions calling for a negotiated settlement there, even as that war goes bloodily on and on. Neither was there much coverage of antiwar protests against Washington’s endless conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan after February 15, 2003, when (depending on whom you read) six to 15 million people took to the streets of 600 to 800 cities around the world in the largest one-day antiwar protest in history. There, too, even though antiwar veterans and peace groups continued to stage actions, the interest of American news outlets soon evaporated.
Admittedly, Camp Casey, a sprawling encampment of relatives and supporters of soldiers and veterans who wanted to stop the war in Iraq, which sprang up near a vacationing President George W. Bush in August 2005, temporarily caught the attention of a bored press corps idling in the heat. By spring 2008, however, when I was trying to drum up interest in Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, a sizeable gathering of Americans who had fought in those two wars and were publicly testifying about their misguided actions there, I was dismissively told by a New York Times reporter, “If you read the New York Times, you would know that it doesn’t cover rallies.”
A couple of summers ago, the Boston Globe and other local news outlets showed no interest in talking to anyone boarding buses in that city for the Poor People’s Campaign’s Moral March on Washington, which included antimilitarism in its platform. In contrast, when about 100 locals boarded buses for a pro-Israel rally in Washington this November, the Globe devoted 24 paragraphs to the story. (Granted, the pro-Israel-march buses loaded at Gillette Stadium, home to the Patriots football team, which is always news in these parts.) It’s common to gripe about insufficient reporting on a cause you care about, but for me — and I’ve covered antiwar actions since 2001 — it’s striking that the media, in their gatekeeper and agenda-setting roles, have been so eager to cover protests about Israel’s war in Gaza in ways they seldom did when it came to U.S. antiwar actions earlier in the century.
Does it matter if you throw a protest march and reporters don’t come? Yes, because the very point is to be noticed. The news media are a sphere where competing ideologies and aims play out in the open. So, the way marches and other actions are or aren’t covered helps shape public opinion, affirms or challenges received wisdom, creates a historical record, and — fingers crossed — helps define future political practices.
In this case, with the United States in a powerful position to influence the course of the war on Gaza, continued reporting on antiwar protests could help pressure President Biden to stop embracing (could there have been a worse optic?) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demand a permanent ceasefire instead.
Why This Story Now?
Amid competing narratives, unverifiable information, intense emotions, and everything we still don’t know, it’s important to keep all the often-contradictory realities we do know in mind — and be suitably alarmed.
We know that the United States lavishes at least $3.8 billion yearly in military aid to Israel, along with Get Out of Jail Free cards when it comes to human-rights abuses. Josh Paul, a State Department official who resigned in protest over the way our weaponry was killing Gazans, reminded us of just that recently. (The U.S. has also given money to the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, but vastly less of it.)
We also know that 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered in the October 7th raids by the armed wing of Hamas, the most Jews killed at one time in that country’s history. And we know that about 240 others of all ages were kidnapped in those raids and held hostage.
We know that nearly 16,000 Palestinian civilians have now been killed in Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and that about 1.7 million Gazans, three-quarters of the population there, have been forced to flee their homes in search of ever more elusive safety. We know that, of about 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons without charge or trial, 240 were released in exchange for 105 Israeli hostages and that, in the same period, about 244 Palestinians and four Israelis were killed in clashes on the West Bank.
We’ve gotten little information on combatant casualties in Gaza, save occasional announcements from the Israeli military and a rare statement from Hamas, but that’s not unusual. In recent American wars, only independent organizations like icasualties and the Costs of War Project have tried to offer comprehensive reckonings of the damage done.
“Far too many” Palestinians have been killed, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken in early November, but how many is the right number when civilian deaths of any sort should be unacceptable? In the face of so much slaughter, destruction, and upheaval, the urge to choose sides, take a stand, make a statement, or man the barricades was compelling. And so it was hardly surprising, after the barbarity of October 7th, that rallies in sympathy with the Israeli hostages, against anti-Semitism, and even calling for revenge sprang up around the world. As many as 290,000 protestors gathered in solidarity with Israel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on November 14th. But as the Israeli assault on Gaza escalated and civilian deaths soared, sympathies began to shift and protests here and elsewhere calling for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Gaza grew rapidly.
Meanwhile, staff and political appointees at the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and at least 40 other government agencies signed letters or memos calling for a ceasefire, as did at least 100 congressional staff members, who staged a walkout. People put up posters of Israeli hostages. Others tore them down. Businesses and institutions issued position papers and those that didn’t were pressured to do so. Even restaurants got into the act.
On university campuses, those sympathizing with various positions sprang into action and began to duke it out. Students for Justice in Palestine was kicked off certain campuses; some student protesters were vilified and doxxed, even losing future job offers; and alumni weighed in, threatening to withhold donations. All of this was heavily covered by news outlets, which thrive on stories about extreme positions staked out early, along with in-your-face actions, heavy-handed responses, the selective suppression of speech, and the influence of money on all of that.
So, obviously one explanation for the coverage is that the protests, marches, demonstrations, rallies, and disputes have been too big, widespread, and persistent to ignore, but it’s not that simple. (It never is, is it?)
We in the United States are, in some sense, close enough to the war in Gaza to make protest a reasonable response — thanks to the military funding provided to Israel, the historical relationship between the two countries, blood ties and friendships between many Americans and Israelis and/or Palestinians, and vivid parallels between the mistreatment of people of color in the U.S. and of Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, and on the West Bank. Yet the U.S. is also nearly 7,000 miles away and none of our own military is (at least as yet) on the ground there. Even with alarming upsurges in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, life in America is, for most of us, still comparatively safe. So is most political action.
Over the past decade or so, we’ve also become increasingly accustomed to such concerted political actions — Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, student walkouts for climate change, and picket lines for industrial strikes (often led by young activists). And despite the difficulties and dangers of reporting from Gaza — at least 63 journalists and media workers have been killed in the war so far — an established press corps in Israel and surrounding countries has made both the nightmare of the October 7th attacks and the increasingly horrific war conditions in Gaza all too vivid to Americans.
Inside/Outside the Frame
There’s a journalistic adage that goes: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. A corollary might be: If your mother says you’re perfect, consider the source. Good journalism, in other words, involves constant verification and an instinct for skepticism.
But journalism isn’t stenography and journalists tip their hands all the time. They make choices about what’s news and how to frame it; what to include, emphasize, or omit; who gets quoted and who’s considered a reliable source or expert. It’s clearly their job to inform us as fully, honestly, and fairly as possible so we can make our own moral decisions, including about whether and what to protest.
“The only way to tell this story is to tell it truthfully,” wrote David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, as he began his multifaceted report on a trip to Israel shortly after October 7th, “and to know that you will fail.” You can watch journalists trying to get it right — the protests, the war, the horrors, the consequences — to do justice to the story and the people at its heart. And yet they fail for many reasons. (How could they not?)
Sometimes, it’s the pressure of social media and the 24/7 news cycle, which promotes a rush to publish before necessary information is in. Sometimes, it’s because the topic is complex and requires a backstory and context most Americans (even journalists) don’t already know. Worse yet, it’s hard to fit such complexity into short paragraphs, concise lead sentences, and even more concise headlines, which are often all the news that its consumers have the time to take in.
Sometimes it’s that word-packages — displaced, surgical strikes, humanitarian crisis — become so routine we essentially stop noticing. The camera, too, can be an aid or a weapon, and even grammar comes into play, as in the difference between Israeli civilians were killed (by stated or implied actors), while Palestinians civilians died, as if by some unknown force or their folly in being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’ve been hung up lately on the word horrors and its variations: horrible, horrific, horrifying. Examples of their use in such media coverage are legion. The writer in me wants to come up with a fresh word that would really allow us to absorb and truly consider the — yes! — horrors of what’s now happening in Gaza. Then I recall these two lines from Pablo Neruda’s searing poem about the Spanish civil war:
“and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.”
This war, like all war, is indeed horrible.
Sometimes the coverage problem is what’s pejoratively called bothsideism or, more generously, balance. But assuming there are only two sides to every story misses the reality that most stories have many sides. The protesters in recent demonstrations, for instance, embraced a remarkable range of demands, intentions, and sympathies, but reporting was so much easier if positions were clear-cut and uniform. So, coverage has tended toward a Manichaean view of the hostilities and those demonstrating about them: pro or con, allies or enemies, Zionist or anti-Semite, good for America and Joe Biden or a blow to democracy everywhere and the Democratic Party in particular. Such a way of reporting, however, closes down so many other possibilities.
This is particularly apparent when political demonstrations against atrocities like those committed in Israel on October 7th and in Gaza (and the West Bank) thereafter are seen mainly as a spectacle in which reporters count the numbers, repeat the slogans, and focus on a random few who supposedly represent the whole. Individual stories may humanize an issue and draw eyes to an article. Such reporting, however, can also play into a particularly American version of dissent in which the individual resister becomes the story, not the resistance movement. Such a skew can make political protests seem more like a series of individual temper tantrums, at best tolerable outlets for sometimes justified anger, and not much more.
What doesn’t make it inside such a news-media framework is revealing. In this country, as an issue, peace itself has been ceded to the left, which effectively means banished. But imagine, for a moment, what a different world we might be in if our news platforms were to set up peace beats alongside their war beats. What if the opinions of peace workers were as routinely sought out as retired generals and politicians in the pockets of arms manufacturers? What if it was considered a crucial part of the news to explore the complexities of, possible conditions for, and likelihood of peace, rather than presenting it as just the absence of war or a zero-sum game? What if our reporting explored moral issues along with economic and political ones and maybe even figured out how to make peace seem as exciting and newsworthy as war?
I’m not so naïve as to think that a shift in the business of news coverage here in America would end years of animosity and violence in the Middle East. Still, over time it could reorient our thinking about militarism and, given this embattled and battered planet of ours, that doesn’t seem — to me, as least — like such a bad idea.
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Only a First Step, Hostage Deal Shows Diplomacy Is Vital
It is crucial that this agreement is not treated by Biden as an alternative to a ceasefire. Rather, it must be treated as the first step towards it.
Nov 23, 2023
The agreement reached Wednesday between Israel and Hamas — and brokered by Qatar and Egypt — is an important first step that will hopefully give all sides an opportunity to step back from the precipice of a larger regional conflagration, and to consider options for ending this war other than by the military destruction of one another.
The return of the hostages to Israel in exchange for the return of Palestinian prisoners is welcome news and hopefully will proceed through subsequent cycles until all the hostages have been returned. The exchange proves that solutions can only be found through diplomacy through the help of actors in the region who can talk to all sides, in this case, Qatar and Egypt.
This agreement should also serve as a wake-up call to the United States about the viability of a ceasefire, in both policy and political terms. President Joe Biden could and should have used political leverage sooner to secure this deal. For the sake of the Israeli hostages, for the sake of the thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by this delay, and for the sake of the longer-term peace: Every Palestinian or Israeli child or civilian killed pushes peace further and further into the future.
And finally, for the sake of preventing a widening of the war that could drag the US into yet another military conflict in the Middle East.
It is crucial that this agreement is not treated by Biden as an alternative to a ceasefire. Rather, it must be treated as the first step towards it.
If it amounts to nothing more than a prelude to a resumption of the military campaign and a continuation of the siege, it will not make much of a difference in stemming the larger humanitarian crisis, preventing a regional war, or paving the way for real peace.
The U.S. has already lost significant international standing through its opposition to a ceasefire. If Biden fails to press all parties for a ceasefire after the prisoner swap, America’s global standing will plummet even further, which will have dire consequences for the U.S., including in Ukraine.
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Iceland Named Most Peaceful Country—Again—as US Ranking Steadily Declines
The United States has fallen 10 spots in the last three years in the Global Peace Index, driven by a high degree of militarization and a rising homicide rate.
Jul 05, 2023
Iceland was named the most peaceful country in the world for the 15th consecutive year in the annual ranking compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace on Wednesday, while the organization warned that militarization in the United States is steadily making the wealthiest country in the world less peaceful.
In its 2023 Global Peace Index, the group ranked 163 countries where 99.7% of the world's population lives, determining how countries compare based on the level of "societal safety and security," "ongoing domestic and international conflict," and the degree of "militarization."
Iceland had low rankings for each of the three categories and maintained its place at the top of the list, which it's held every year the IEP has released the index. An increase in the country's homicide rate and the arrest of four people last year over a plot to attack several Icelandic politicians resulted in a 4% decline in its overall score, but "Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the region and the world," according to the index.
The United States, on the other hand, has declined every year during the current decade, falling two places in the past year and 10 places since 2020.
The change from 2022's index was "was driven by a deterioration on the safety and security domain," reads the report, "particularly in the perceptions of criminality and homicide rate indicators."
The U.S. homicide rate is "now above six per 100,000 people and more than six times higher than most Western European countries," according to the IEP.
The nation's epidemic of gun violence—and policymakers' refusal to impose strict regulations on gun ownership—has become well-known throughout the world, with Amnesty International issuing a travel warning due to the crisis in 2019. Gun violence replaced vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death in children in the U.S. in 2022.
The U.S. ranked close to the middle of the 163 countries in terms of societal safety and security. Its lowest ranking was in the category of militarization, a pattern that has been evident in the IEP's previous Global Peace Indexes.
The country was behind only Russia and Israel in terms of its degree of militarization this year. In 2022 it also ranked just behind North Korea, but this year militarization trends in the United States were found to be intensifying more rapidly.
The index's militarization domain takes into consideration indicators including weapons imports, nuclear and heavy weapons, and military expenditures. The United States' absolute spending on its military increased by $70 billion over the past year, the IEP noted.
The U.S. ranked below numerous countries which have been subject to travel warnings from the U.S. State Department, with officials warning of terrorism and high crime rates.
Iceland does not maintain armed forces or have a military budget and—like other high-ranking countries on the peace index such as Denmark and New Zealand—it invests heavily in social services, education, and healthcare to benefit all residents.
The index notes that high-ranking countries tend to prioritize guaranteed human rights and freedoms for all residents, the free flow of information, and "equitable distribution of resources."
While ranking at the top of the list of countries that have maintained a peaceful environment, high-performing countries in the index have also been recognized in recent years for other successes.
Denmark was found to have the world's second-best public healthcare system by U.S. News and World Report in 2022, and Iceland was named the third-healthiest country in the world by the Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index in 2019.
Both countries were also ranked in the top three happiest countries last year by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
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