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Helena Cobban, President of Just World Educational, looks at the coming session of the UN General Assembly and how it should deal with Israel’s genocide in Gaza – including the issue of invoking the UN’s rarely used emergency ‘Uniting for Peace’ procedure.

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For many decades now, Israel has acted as the tip of the spear for “White”, Western colonial domination of West Asia and much of North Africa. Through prodigious and focused efforts, Israel’s leaders so successfully meshed their military and technological elites with those of the United States that they achieved a large degree of control over U.S. actions in countries from Iran to Libya– including, of course, U.S. policy on the crucial Palestine Question.

The fully U.S.-backed genocide that Israel has pursued for the past two years in Gaza has echoed a lengthy string of similar actions that “White” colonial powers– including the United States–have enacted against Indigenous peoples on all continents for the past five centuries. In today’s largely post-colonial world, this genocide has thus provoked a tsunami of revulsion across (and beyond) the whole of the Global South. This has greatly reduced the appeal and “soft power” that, before October 2023, Washington was able to deploy in its conduct of world affairs. It has also thrust the 30-year-long, de-facto hegemony that Washington has exercised over the UN’s global-level decision-making into ever sharper question.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the international reaction to it are now seen by many as marking the beginning of the end of the lengthy domination that “White”, European-origined governments have exercised for many centuries over much of the Global South.

We should note, too, that during this genocide Israel’s leaders have harshly attacked not only the steps that various bodies of the now 80-year-old United Nations have taken to end or temper the genocide, but also the foundations of UN legitimacy itself. They have thus presented the post-1945 world system with the greatest challenge it has ever seen.

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Last June saw the 80th anniversary of the signing in San Francisco of the UN Charter by the leaders of all 51 of the world’s then-recognized independent governments. (That was before the dismantling of the large, globe-girdling European empires. Today, the UN has 193 members.) This September will see the opening of the 80th annual session of the UN General Assembly (GA). At this year’s GA more questions than ever before will be raised about the dysfunctionality of the UN rule that has allowed Washington to repeatedly wield its veto in the UN Security Council to block the Council from acting to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza, or to end Israel’s many other gross violations of international law across West Asia.

The organization I head, Just World Educational, has been among many citizen groups around the world that have called for the GA to take the rarely-used step of passing a “Uniting for Peace” (UfP) resolution, which provides a politically powerful (though still only hortatory) way for the GA to confront the veto power that Washington has wielded in the Security Council on the Gaza issue. There is, however, nothing that even the smartest citizen-based groups can do to effect direct change in the GA. For that, we need to rely on visionary and committed governmental bodies.

Luckily for our brothers and sisters in Gaza– and for the integrity of our current international system– a number of governmental bodies have stepped forward. At the forefront has been the de-facto government in Yemen headed by the Ansarullah movement (the “Houthis”), which has acted to block all shipping heading to or from Israel from transiting the strategic Bab el-Mandeb straits, and also to launch sporadic long-distance missiles at military targets in Israel.

In addition, there is now also a growing coalition of other world governments committed to taking concrete action to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This is the Hague Group of 13 mid-size governments from the Global South. At a high-level gathering in Bogotá, Colombia last month, the Hague Group governments vowed to:

• ban the transfer of any military equipment from their countries or their ports to Israel;
• end any investments their national bodies might have in Israeli state-related funds; and
• take other (sadly, non-specific) steps to persuade the UN to help the people of Gaza.

Recently, Norway announced that its largest-in-the-world sovereign wealth fund would divest from 11 Israeli companies and review the investments it continues to hold in further 50 Israeli companies.

Elsewhere in Europe, the governments of France and Britain have announced moves towards granting a formal “recognition” to the “State of Palestine.” That step has almost zero practical weight, and is also (as I shall explain below) quite possibly harmful to the push for Palestinian rights. But the fact that even those veteran colonial powers in London and Paris have felt obliged to take it is another marker of how unpopular the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza has become worldwide.

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The global momentum to take action to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza has clearly been growing in recent months. But it is still nowhere near enough. Back in July of 2024, remember, the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stated in Art. 261 of a key advisory opinion (PDF here), that Israel’s entire, continued presence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem was, quite simply, “unlawful” and needs to be ended.

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Two notes on the current prospects for global action

A. Diplomatic victories alone are not enough

The GA has invoked the UfP mechanism a dozen times over the years. Most notably (and most successfully), in October 1956 U.S. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower invoked it to side-step the vetoes that Britain and France have always had in the Security Council, and to win effective UN action to reverse the aggression those two powers and Israel had just undertaken against Egypt.

But it was not simply the two-thirds majority that Eisenhower won for his project in the GA that ended that Tripartite Aggression. The stark threat that he also delivered to the French, British, and Israeli leaders that he would end U.S. support for their currencies and their economies if they did not comply with the UN’s order to withdraw from Egypt (and Gaza) in a timely way was, by all accounts, far more persuasive in forcing their withdrawal than the mere existence of the UN resolution itself.

In 1956, Washington’s economic power was at its peak. Britain, France, and Israel were all deeply dependent on U.S. economic support. Today, if the Hague Group or any other group of anti-genocide governments succeed in winning a UfP-derived resolution that demands an end to the Gaza genocide (or, more broadly, the speedy implementation of the whole of the ICJ’s July 2024 ruling), then that diplomatic victory would have zero effect unless it is backed up by concerted action in other spheres, including the economic. It is true that the U.S. power in the world economy is considerably smaller today than it was in 1956, and that the many governments against whom Washington has deployed tough economic measures have developed increasingly effective and powerful ways to work around Washington’s power within the world economic system. Nonetheless, it is still hard to conclude that the governments representing the Global Majority of nations are yet ready to use against Washington the same degree of economic steadfastness with which Eisenhower confronted London and Paris back in 1956.

B. The political underpinnings of any diplomatic action are crucial

Several of the citizen initiatives calling for UN action to end the genocide in Gaza call for the UN to deploy an “armed protection force” in Gaza, tasked with pushing back Israel’s occupation forces from zones in part or all of Gaza sufficient to allow the distribution of aid to the population there. But in locations like Haiti, the deployment of an “armed UN protection force” in the absence of any clearly stated plan for the post-conflict governance of that country has proved disastrous.

In any future UN challenge to Israel’s occupation rule in Gaza, the global stakes would be many times higher than they have been regarding the UN’s chronic governance failures in Haiti. Therefore, if a UN force is to be deployed to Gaza, similar to how a UN force was deployed to Suez and Sinai in 1956-57 to replace the Tripartite occupiers in those areas, the political/governance horizon within which this force operates needs to be clearly stated in the UN’s authorizing resolution. The ICJ’s July 2024 ruling provides one necessary, but still far from sufficient, basis for such a horizon: namely, the urgent need, as stated in that ruling, to completely end Israel’s illegal occupation rule over Gaza (and also, at some point soon thereafter, the West Bank.)

Another key dimension of any effective UN action to end Israel’s genocide and occupation in Gaza that needs to be successfully resolved is the intra-Palestinian political dimension. It is in this arena that the focus that some Western governments have recently placed on “recognizing the State of Palestine” poses a potentially dangerous distraction. Back in 1988, the Palestinians’ then-widely recognized liberation coalition the PLO won UN recognition as a (still only aspirational) entity called the State of Palestine. Five years later, though, that same PLO entered into a very damaging interim arrangement, concluded directly with the State of Israel, under which a new body called the Palestinian Interim Self-Governance Authority (PA) would have limited powers of civil self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Over the decades since 1993, the PA and also the PLO have increasingly come to function as Quisling forces under Israeli-US control, including by acting alongside Israeli forces to suppress and oppress those Palestinian movements that remain committed to resisting Israel’s illegal rule of the West Bank and Gaza.

In that context, international moves to strengthen the hand of a “State of Palestine” that today represents only a small, and clearly Israel-allied, portion of the Palestinian movement can be seen as very dangerous. What is needed, instead, are effective moves to bring about a reconciliation of all the Palestinian factions on the basis of an unequivocal commitment to national liberation. Algeria and China are among the states that have worked hard to achieve this, but the needed intra-Palestinian reconciliation has not yet been won.

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What is to be done?

In light of the above, here are the actions that supporters of Palestinian rights everywhere could most effectively be undertaking:

1. Work to broaden and deepen the important campaign of the Hague Group. Broaden, in terms of working to win support for the Hague Group’s campaign from additional governments, and also to publicize it in areas in which little is known about it. Deepen, by working with Hague Group members to persuade them to pursue plans for completely ending Israel’s occupation rule of Gaza, in addition to their present commitments.
2. Advocacy that clearly links the goal of ending the Israeli-US genocide in Gaza with that of ending the Israeli-US occupation of Gaza in its entirety, on the basis of international law and the ICJ’s July 2024 ruling. After such a genocide, how can the Israeli-US axis ever again be trusted to rule over Gaza (or indeed, over the West Bank?)
3. Calling on national governments to push the UN– using the UfP mechanism as necessary– to despatch to Gaza an armed force capable of rolling back the Israeli-US occupation on the basis of international law, with the goals not just of protecting the delivery of humanitarian aid but also of supporting the Strip’s residents and their Palestinian compatriots everywhere in their long-denied exercise of sovereignty over this portion of their homeland.
4. Work to support all efforts to reconcile internal differences among the Palestinian movements on the basis of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Document of 2006, which specified the entry of Hamas and its allies into the PLO on a mutually agreed basis.
5. Continuing political work to reveal the hegemony that Washington has exercised over Arab-Israeli diplomacy since the 1970s, most often in close linkage with Israel’s colonial plans; to understand the many arenas and ways in which that hegemony has inflicted harm on the peoples of West Asia; and to challenge that hegemony at every level.

End the genocide! End Israel’s illegal occupation! Palestinian survival and Palestinian rights now!

The above article was originally published here by Globalities.

By John Ross

Trump is attempting to impose an international trade system arbitrarily dictated by the U.S.

The tariffs adopted by the U.S. to meet Trump’s August 1 deadline fully confirm just how dangerous the new trade system Trump is attempting to impose on the world is for all countries, both in the Global South and the Global North.

Beyond even arbitrary economic decisions, Trump’s actions make it clear that under this system, unilateral U.S. tariff dictats will be used against countries that adopt political policies the U.S. opposes. Thus:

• Trump has imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil because it is trying Bolsonaro for attempting a coup d’état.
• A 25% tariff has been imposed on India after Trump criticized it for importing Russian oil.
• A 35% tariff has been imposed on Canada after Trump stated that reaching a trade deal was difficult because Canada had decided to recognise a Palestinian state.

Furthermore, as Trump has confirmed through his frequent changes in rates, he intends to introduce a system in which the U.S. can alter its policy at any time to promote its interests against those of any other country.

The WTO system was very far from perfect; it had a systematic bias against developing countries. However, the world trade system that Trump is attempting to introduce eliminates even the elements of multilateralism and the rules established in WTO agreements, making it a far more dangerous system for every country.

It is also clear that if the major economies had decided to act jointly, Trump could not have imposed this new system. The U.S. only accounts for 11% of world merchandise trade. If other countries, representing 89% of world merchandise trade, had united against Trump, they could have easily defeated his attempt to reorganise world trade. But Trump, rightly, calculated that the leadership of most Global North states, such as Britain and the EU, would capitulate to him and act even against both their national interests and the interests of their peoples.

The EU’s capitulation to Trump

In particular, the EU-U.S. trade deal represents another severe blow inflicted by the U.S. on Europe’s economy and its people. This follows on from the vast economic cost of the Ukraine war caused by NATO expansion, the U.S. blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline, the forcing of the EU to buy expensive U.S. LNG to replace much cheaper Russian gas, and the enormous cost to Europe of rearmament in line with the U.S. demands to increase military spending to 3.5% of GDP, among other blows.

The cumulative effect of these blows is that Europe’s economy has been deeply damaged, and its people have suffered a severe economic assault.

The new agreement’s key terms all damage Europe’s economy and its people.

• The 15% tariff imposed by the U.S. on imports from the EU, compared to the current average of 4.8%, has not been met with an equivalent tariff increase by the EU on U.S. goods. This 15% tariff will exert downward pressure on EU exports to the U.S., which in turn will negatively affect EU production and employment.
• The EU agreed to purchase $750 billion worth of U.S. LNG over three years. There is doubt about the EU’s physical capacity to import that volume of LNG within this period. However, this commitment will lead to further investment aimed at moving closer to the target. Consequently, the EU will be further locked into expensive U.S. LNG rather than the significantly cheaper Russian gas — achieving this was one of the U.S.’s key objectives in Europe.
• The EU agreed to purchase “hundreds of billions of dollars” worth of U.S. military equipment, meaning that reductions in social spending in Europe to finance rearmament will be paid to U.S. companies.

Why the EU capitulated

As U.S. and European commentators analysed this deal was a capitulation by the EU and a huge victory for Trump. France’s Prime Minister François Bayrou stated that the bloc had “resigned itself into submission”. Germany’s largest industry association, the Federation of German Industries, warned that the agreement was “an inadequate compromise” that would harm the country’s “export-oriented industry”– although German Chancellor Merz and Italian Prime Minister Meloni welcomed the deal and had played key roles in pushing the EU to make this agreement. Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia group, the leading U.S. public geopolitical analysis firm, described it as the “biggest win of second trump administration to date

The Financial Times conducted a detailed analysis of the process and forces leading to the deal: “In the face of Donald Trump’s trade blitz, the EU began its path to capitulation on April 10… On April 10 it suspended its retaliatory tariffs… [r]ather than join Canada and China with instant retaliation… Under the framework deal struck by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Trump… the EU has swallowed a broad-based “baseline” US tariff of 15 per cent.…

“could the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc and supposedly an economic heavyweight, have extracted better terms had it not pulled its punches early on?

“’He’s the bully in the schoolyard and we didn’t join others in standing up to him,’ said one diplomat. ‘Those who don’t hang together get hanged separately.’

“Georg Riekeles, a former commission official who helped negotiate the UK’s exit from the bloc, said the EU’s most recent threat to apply €93bn of retaliatory tariffs against US goods came far too late.

“’With the benefit of hindsight, the EU would have been better off answering the US vigorously in April in a one-two combo with China’s retaliation against the US tariff hikes, which left markets and Trump reeling,’ said Riekeles…

“There is no hiding the fact the EU was rolled over by…Trump… said one ambassador”

A decisive factor in the EU’s capitulation was its support for NATO. As the Financial Times noted: “Europe’s dependency on America’s security guarantee was a further argument against trade confrontation… Fears that Trump would cut off weapons supplies to Ukraine, pull troops out of Europe, or even quit NATO overshadowed the talks, diplomats said.”

Within Europe, faced with the capitulation of the EU leadership, and that by figures such as Merz and Meloni, the far right has capitalised on this opportunity to gain further popularity by attacking the deal. Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany, stated that the deal was “not an agreement, but a slap in the face to European consumers and producers!”

Trump’s “divide and rule” tactic

Throughout his tariff war Trump has used a “pick them off one by one” tactic. The Financial Times noted that Britain, as usual, was the first to capitulate to the U.S. This was then used by Trump to pressure the EU: “When the UK struck a trade deal with Washington in May, accepting Trump’s 10 per cent baseline tariff, it encouraged those EU member states seeking a settlement, especially Berlin.”

What is to be done?

It is therefore crucial for all countries to oppose Trump’s attempt to impose a unilateral, arbitrary U.S.-controlled trading system on the world. This means

• That the WTO has to be defended against Trump’s attempts to completely overturn its framework, despite the WTO’s enormous biases and imperfections. However, this is likely to be extremely difficult given U.S. actions, such as sabotaging the disputes mechanism by since 2017 refusing to appoint judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body, rendering it inquorate and non-operational.
• For numerous Global South countries, the U.S. is not their main trading partner, China is. Global South regions are attempting to create or strengthen regional trade agreements. Therefore, strengthening South-South cooperation and trade is crucial to bypassing U.S. attempts to impose its arbitrary, unilateral trading system on the world.
• The deeply damaging trade agreement made by the EU with Trump is the main card used by the U.S. to attempt to impose its new trade system. The agreement again demonstrates that the traditional centre right and social democratic parties, and the dominant sectors of the European capitalist class, are unwilling and unable to defend the interests of Europe’s people and economies. This result is in line with the analysis of “Hyperimperialism,” published by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, which argues that the previous state of inter-imperialist competition has been replaced by one in which European capital capitulates to the U.S. on all major issues. Currently, Europe’s extreme right is gaining strongly from this situation. Both because of the importance of trade for economic development, and to prevent the extreme right from benefiting, it is crucial that progressive forces and the left in Europe firmly oppose the EU trade agreement with the U.S..

Success in defeating the new trading system arbitrarily controlled by the U.S., will require a long and hard struggle, but it is vital for international development and for all countries for the reasons outlined. Strategically, over time, this effort will become progressively easier as the U.S., due to its own tariffs, becomes a smaller part of the international trade system.

The U.S. and Israel failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program or achieve regime change in the first round of attacks. It is only a question of time before they attempt a second. Whether, and when, they will achieve this depends not only on Iran’s resistance but also on the solidarity and support in other countries against the U.S. and Israel. It is therefore vital that the stakes involved are understood.

The U.S. support for Israeli domination of West Asia

In their actions in Gaza and West Asia, Israel and the U.S. have shown the world their real character and plans for the region, in open contempt for the overwhelming majority of world opinion as evidenced by votes in the UN, international opinion polls, and massive international protests. Israel has carried out an openly genocidal attempt to destroy Gaza’s society, with fascist slaughter of children, women, and anyone else it chooses. These Israeli public massacres were enabled by U.S. military support.

The U.S. plan is that the tiny Israeli state—of less than 10 million, widely delegitimized around the world, and which rules by fascist methods— should be dominant in a West Asian and North African region of almost 600 million people. To achieve this, the U.S. and its Israeli client regime aims not only to massacre Palestinians but to fragment an increasing number of states in the region as carried out against Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Given Iran’s large size and population of over 90 million, Israel and the U.S. would also like to achieve this with Iran. Iran is also seen by both the U.S. and Israel as an important part of the BRICS alliance in West Asia — which the U.S. wants to weaken or demolish.

Israel and the U.S. failed in their strategic goals against Iran

Iran has been the most powerful state supporter for the Palestinian people. After the blows that Israel and the U.S. delivered against the resistance in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, they inevitably turned to Iran. But this attack did not succeed in gaining the U.S. and Israel’s strategic objectives.

The degree of damage to Iran’s nuclear programme from U.S. attacks will not become clear for some time — estimates range from relatively small to serious. But as long as Iran’s present government remains in place, this nuclear programme cannot be considered destroyed and can be rebuilt from any starting level.

The attempt by the U.S. and Israel to achieve “regime change” in Iran, with Netanyahu’s farcical attempts to present himself as a friend of the Iranian people, was a complete failure. All reports, including in the Westen media, show that Iran’s population, whatever their differences on other issues, responded to the U.S. Israeli attack with hostility and rallying around the defence of the country.

Furthermore, Iran’s missile counter-strikes on Irael did serious damage. Whatever the claimed effectiveness of Israel’s “Iron Dome” against rockets from Hamas and others, it was incapable of stopping Iran’s strategic missiles. Despite strict Israeli censorship, images from Israel, including on Western media such as CNN, revealed serious missile hits on its cities – the first time Israel’s cities have ever suffered serious damage in a war. There was no evidence that Iran’s ability to hit Israel declined during the war – Iran’s missiles were still hitting Israel on the last day of the war. Whether or not Israel was running short of defensive missiles was accurate (as claimed by U.S. pro-Israeli figures like Steve Bannon), the U.S. and Israel both clearly wanted to rapidly halt the war after the U.S. bombing attack.

The U.S. and Israel will prepare a second attack on Iran

Because the U.S. and Israel failed in their strategic objectives in the war, which they consider essential to dominating West Asia, and because of Iran’s role in BRICS, the U.S. and Israel will attack Iran again. The timing will simply be decided by the level of damage inside Israel and that done to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Victory of such a second U.S. and Israel attack would strengthen the genocidal Israeli regime, threaten all countries and forces resisting this in West Asia, and deal a major blow to BRICS. All forces in solidarity with Palestine, opposing the Israeli regime, and generally supporting progress should oppose the U.S. and Israeli preparations for a second attack on Iran.

The necessity of a nuclear free West Asia

Finally, the present situation shows the danger presented to the world by Israel’s nuclear weapons. Faced with a threat from a genocidal Israeli regime, using fascist methods in Gaza and elsewhere, countries in West Asia will inevitably conclude that the only way to deter Israel is by obtaining nuclear weapons. These countries are perfectly capable of seeing that countries which abandoned nuclear weapons programmes, such as Libya and Iraq, were attacked while those that successfully developed nuclear weapons, such as North Korea, were not. Faced with both a conventional and nuclear threat by Israel, other countries understand Israel is tiny and could be destroyed by two or three nuclear bombs. Thus, as long as Israel possesses nuclear weapons, it is only a matter of time before other West Asian countries acquire them. Thus, the only way forward is either, the preferred one, of a nuclear free West Asia and North Africa, or nuclear proliferation across West Asia and the great threat this presents to humanity in one of the world’s most war-torn regions.

By Vijay Prashad & Dae-Han Song

The atomic bomb has been humanity’s most dangerous creation; that the United States government used the atom bomb twice against Japan’s civilians in August 1945 can neither be forgiven nor forgotten. It is fitting that one of the first acts of the United Nations in January 1946 was establishing a commission to deal with the “Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy”. Yet, the resolution did not ban atomic weapons but simply sought to study its “problems”. Even after the grotesque demonstration in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States government was reluctant to permit the abolition of nuclear bombs. Having opened the doorway to Hell, there was no real desire to close it.

Creating the first major United Nations treaty to tackle atomic weapons took two decades. More importantly, the treaty did not ban nuclear weapons. While preventing further proliferation, it, nonetheless, allowed the then-nuclear powers – the United States (1945), the Soviet Union (1949), the United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), and China (1964) – to keep their nuclear arsenal. When the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) came into force in 1968, Israel likely had nuclear weapons (1967). Thereafter, despite the NPT, India (1974), Pakistan (1998), and North Korea (2006) developed and tested nuclear weapons. Of all these countries, only North Korea has been pressured to de-nuclearize by the United States and its allies. If it has refused, it is because denuclearizing would lead to its annihilation.

These facts and dynamics confirm that there are only two possible paths: the universal abolition of nuclear weapons and the threat of annihilation of countries by imperialism or the inevitable proliferation of nuclear weapons across the globe.

The attack on Iran by Israel and the United States

The Israeli and US attack on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities this June was illegal; it had neither a UN Security Council resolution nor approval from the US Congress. These two allies conducted their attack in the name of nuclear non-proliferation. They pummelled Iran’s nuclear energy enrichment sites and its research facilities to set back Iran’s nuclear energy program. In fact, the attack will have the opposite effect. From Iran’s point of view, the attacks by Israel and the US make the acquisition of nuclear weapons a rational and urgent choice.

There has been no verifiable evidence that Iran has been developing a nuclear weapon. It has been a member of the NPT since the day the treaty was opened for signatures on July 1, 1968. In 1996, Iran signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty, another indication of its lack of interest in the development of nuclear weapons. Despite the pressure campaign on Iran, it has cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – according to international law and norms – to have its nuclear energy sites inspected on a regular basis. There has been no report by an international agency that confirmed Iran having a nuclear weapons program. At most, in 2015, the IAEA suggested that Iran had shown some interest in nuclear weapons before 2003 but “did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities”. Yet, despite the lack of evidence, Iran was illegally attacked without UN Security Council approval.

After the Israeli attack on Iran, the Iranian Parliament voted to suspend all cooperation with the IAEA. Large crowds gathered across Iran to call upon their government to reject the pressure on Iran and to develop a nuclear bomb to protect the country from such wars of aggression. In other words, the tempo has begun to build up in Iran for the country to hastily develop a bomb and test it openly as immunity from a regime change war.

Logic of proliferation

Mainstream media portrays countries pursuing nuclear weapons as rogue states that threaten global stability. In this narrative, authoritarian leaders pursue nuclear weapons out of an inscrutable empty obsession for self-aggrandizement as a nuclear weapon state. Yet, recent history and the US war drive make a clear case that acquiring nuclear weapons is the most rational choice for states seeking any autonomy from US domination. This is illustrated by how Libya’s denuclearization was followed by its destruction while North Korea’s nuclearization has allowed its preservation.

In 2003, the Libyan government announced that it would no longer proceed with its nuclear weapons program. The Libyan government negotiated with Western powers to no longer be treated as a “rogue state”. Between 2004 and 2006, the IAEA came to Libya and dismantled its nuclear weapons project. But despite giving up its nuclear shield, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi continued speaking out. In 2009, he went to the United Nations and spoke openly about a private conversation in which the IAEA chief Mohamed el-Baradei had told him that the IAEA could not inspect the “super-powers”. “So, is the IAEA only inspecting us?” Gaddafi asked. “If so, it does not qualify as an international organization since it is selective, just like the Security Council and the International Court of Justice”. Two years later, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exceeded the UN Security Council mandate from resolution 1973 (2011) to create a “no-fly zone” over Libya and destroyed the Libyan state. The lesson was clear: if you give up your nuclear weapons program, you can be annihilated.

In 2006, after the US illegal war that overthrew the government of Iraq, the government of North Korea tested a nuclear weapon – the only government to do so in the 21st century. Since then, despite immense pressure, there has been reticence to openly overthrow the government in Pyongyang.

For any rational person, the example of Libya and North Korea sends a very clear message: developing nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them are the most effective deterrent. In fact, each stage in the development of North Korea’s nuclear program was precipitated by the US stalling in the peace process or failing to carry out its promises for peace and security made to North Korea. In effect, North Korea’s two-track process allowed it to pursue its security through the diplomatic path when possible and through nuclear deterrence when necessary.

Faced with existential crises, the world needs to shift its focus from war and destruction to healing the planet and taking care of its people. It cannot be dragged into an arms race. Thus, denuclearization is key. Yet, without the conditions for peace and disarmament, for some states, nuclear proliferation may be a matter of survival.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

Dae-Han Song is a part of the International Strategy Center and the No Cold War collective, and is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute.

This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War.

By Vijay Prashad

By the end of the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in The Hague in June 2025, it became clear that everything was about money. In fact, the final communiqué was perhaps the shortest of any NATO meeting – only five points, two about money and one to thank the Netherlands for hosting the summit. The Hague Declaration was only 427 words, whereas in the previous year, the Washington Declaration was 5,400 words and ran to 44 paragraphs. This time, there was not the granular detail about this or that threat, nor the long and detailed assessments of the war in Ukraine and how NATO supports that war without limit (“Ukraine’s future is in NATO”, the alliance said in 2024, a position no longer repeated in the brief statement of 2025). It was clear that the United States simply did not want to permit a laundry list of NATO’s obsessions. It was instead the US obsession that prevailed: that Europe increase its military spending to compensate for the US protective shield around the continent.

Having agreed to increase their military spending to 5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the European states have created a series of problems for themselves.

The first problem is that they would have to invent the money out of their tight budgets. To raise their military expenditure to 5% of GDP would require them to reduce their social spending – in other words, to deepen the austerity policies that are already in place. In Germany, for instance, 21.1% of the population faces the risk of poverty or social exclusion. The German government, led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has pledged €650 billion over the next five years to the military – an amount even the Financial Times finds to be “staggering”. To get to 5% of GDP, Germany, for instance, will have to raise about €144 billion per year out of reallocating budgets (austerity) and increased borrowing (debt); raising taxes is unlikely, even if these are regressive Value Added Taxes on consumption.

The second problem is that despite the disbursement of money to the military, Europe simply does not have the production lines ready to roll out tanks and missiles at the required pace. Unlike the United States, Europe began to deindustrialize its military sector after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It will now have to spend considerable sums of money just to recover its industrial potential. Over the past few years, European military industrial firms have struggled to meet the needs of Ukraine, with the European Union unable to meet the one million artillery shells requirement in 2024. Rheinmetall, meanwhile, is only able to produce 150 Leopard 2 tanks per year, far below what European companies built during the Cold War and far below the needs of a European army if it must be on the battlefield against Russia. Neither the Eurofighter Typhoon nor the Dassault Rafale fighter jets can be produced quickly. Procurement offices across Europe are slowed down by European Union regulations and customs requirements. No rapid growth of the military will be possible.

The 5% of GDP number is more public relations than reality.

Threats

The Hague Summit Declaration says that the Euro-Atlantic alliance faces “profound security threats and challenges”. Who threatens the Euro-Atlantic? The only adversary named in the Declaration is Russia. But around the time that the NATO members met in The Hague, US President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about de-escalation in Ukraine and ending the tensions around Europe, and the Istanbul Talks continued among the various parties involved in ending the war. If there is a ceasefire in Ukraine and if Russia and Europe agree on certain security guarantees, then what is the 5% of GDP increase in military spending about?

Even if Russia ends the war in Ukraine, there are several other concerns that the NATO members have insisted define their increase in military spending. For instance, the NATO member states in Europe have allowed their military facilities to deteriorate, which from a peace standpoint is acceptable but not from one that anticipates war (the military lobby in Europe has especially pointed to the continent’s laxity around cyberattacks and weaponized Artificial Intelligence – although how rebuilding barracks will help with this is unclear). The Baltic states have sounded the alarm against a potential Russian invasion, while the instability around Iran has alerted Europe to dangers near its borders. These are some of the reasons given by war intellectuals in Europe for the necessity of increased military spending.

But by far the most important reason has nothing to do with Europe’s borders or with threats to Europe: China. In NATO’s Strategic Concept 2022, it considered China to be “a systemic challenge to Euro-American security”. But in what way is China a threat to Europe? The United States sees China as its main rival, not in military terms, but in terms of the economic dominance of the US-based multinational corporations. Europe’s countries have only benefited from Chinese investments, such as through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Of the 44 countries in Europe, 29 have signed up to the BRI – most of these countries are in Europe’s east, and two-thirds of European countries have signed Memoranda of Understanding with China for trade and development. Italy departed from the BRI in December 2023, but the other countries remain committed to the BRI project. Of the thirty-two NATO member states, twelve have an agreement with China to be part of the BRI or some other major project (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, and Türkiye). That these states are reliant upon China’s economic buoyancy shows that they are not threatened by China, which begs the question of what threat NATO sees in China.

The habit of austerity and war grips the NATO governments, while the Global South has committed itself to peace and development. It is striking how anachronistic The Hague Declaration sounds when placed alongside the slogan of the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in July 2025: Inclusive and Sustainable Global South (Sul Global Inclusivo e Sustentável).

NATO has no real threats, only expensive hallucinations.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

U.S. bombing of Iran, following on from and inseparably linked to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, openly shows to the world its future if the U.S. war drive is not defeated.

A crushing majority of world public opinion, as shown in repeated votes at the United Nations and opinion polls, opposes Israel’s genocide in Gaza. An Economist/YouGov opinion poll, whose sponsors cannot be accused of the slightest bias in favour of Iran, showed Americans opposed the U.S. launching a military attack on Iran by 60% to 16%.

But the U.S and Israel, totally isolated both internationally, and in terms of U.S. public opinion, decided they would attempt to rely on pure military power. It is the image of the future for the world portrayed in Orwell’s 1984: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Needless to say, with this willingness to go against the overwhelming majority of world and even U.S. domestic opinion, the Trump administration was prepared to breach the U.S. constitution, which gives to the Congress the sole power to declare war, and to act in direct violation of international law – there has been no United Nations Security Council resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that allows the United States to attack Iran..

The U.S. attack is also based on straight forward and systematic lying and falsification. The U.S. claim that Iran s on the brink of producing nuclear weapons is shown to be false by both the International Atomic Energy Authority and US security agencies.

Therefore, the stakes in the outcome of this war launched by the U.S. and Israel against Iran could not be higher not only for the people of West Asia, Palestine, and Iran but for the world. If the U.S. and Israel succeeds in its genocide in Gaza, and it succeeds in its attack on Iran, a major state in the Global South and part of BRICS, the U.S. will be emboldened to extend its attacks to any country in the Global South and increasingly against major powers such as Russia and China. Every country pursuing a path of national independence and development will be under threat and the risk of a World War by a U.S. attack on a major power will be moved significantly closer.

But the U.S. and Israel cannot easily defeat Iran. The fascist genocidal attack of Israel in Gaza, which was solely made possible by the U.S., was carried out against a population of two million people. But Iran’s population is 90 million – for comparison Iraq’s was 45 million, and since the US could not subdue Iraq it is unlikely that it can subdue a population twice the size and one where invasion is impossible. The belief that the Iranian people, a country with a more than a 2,000 year civilisation, want a puppet regime installed by Israel and the U.S. is as far-fetched as the provenly false view that the people of Iraq, who did suffer invasion, wanted a U.S. puppet regime.

The World Values Survey shows us that Iranians respond clearly and in large numbers to the questions that reflect national pride: 83% said that they are proud of their country, and 72% said that they are ready to fight for their country. All evidence coming from Iran so far is that the country, whatever other differences may exist, is unifying around defence of Iran against the Israel/U.S. attack. Despite strict Israel censorship the images coming out Isreal show that Iran’s missiles are inflicting significant damage in that country.

The U.S. and Israel have the ability to impose suffering on the Iranian people and will not hesitate for a second to do so – as the U.S./Israel fascist genocide in Gaza already shows – and for which the entire world should, and most of it will, condemn U.S./Isreal actions. But that is a different issue to the ability to defeat Iran. There is, certainly, no possibility of the U.S./Israel imposing a rapid defeat on Iran and therefore a prolonged period of assault by the U.S. and Israel against Iran must be prepared for – whether or not any immediate ceasefire holds the U.S. and Israel will not abandon their strategic aggression against Iran.

Faced with this  it must be the task of the international anti-war movement, and in particular the anti-war movement in the U.S., to act to impose such political isolation and damage on the Trump administration that it is forced to stop this aggression and war.

This must be the top priority of the world to achieve human progress, not only in the interests of the Iranian and Palestinian people, but in humanity’s own self-interest if every country does not wish to have the jackboot of the U.S. and Israel descend upon themselves.