Blessed Are the Piecemakers as Children of God?

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 8 Sep 2025

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service

Piecekeeping Disguised as Peacekeeping in a Pieceful World

Introduction

4 Sep 2025 – The world’s rhetoric is saturated with “peace“, but the experiential reality is saturated with “pieces“. In an era routinely described as a polycrisis, political leaders and institutions invoke peace while manufacturing, managing, and hoarding fragments — territorial, doctrinal, disciplinary, and intellectual. The following exploration names those dynamics as “piecemaking“ (the creation of new fragments) and “piecekeeping” (their custody), and contrasts them with “peacekeeping“ (containment) and “peacemaking“ (integration). The distinction matters: if the primary process is piecekeeping, when calling it peacekeeping obscures accountability for who get to keep which pieces — and at whose expense.

There is little question that the world is experiencing multiple conflicts, with more variously anticipated — even the much discussed possibility of World War III. In this context, and acclaimed as leader of the free world, there is extensive media coverage of the obsession of Donald Trump with ensuring that he is awarded the Noble Peace Prize — for which he has been nominated by various countries (Tyler Pager, Trump’s Nobel Prize Obsession Is About More Than World Peace, The New York Times, 24 March 2025).

However it is also the case that the USA is both an active participant in many of the ongoing conflicts or complicit in them — as well as exerting pressure on its NATO allies to increase defence spending dramatically, as discussed separately (Enabling Government Bipartisanship through Dual-Use Budget Items, 2025). The USA is itself one of the principal manufacturers of weaponry with a share of some 42% of global arms exports in the period 2019-2023. It is then of interest how these contrasting threads might be meaningfully reconciled.

Of curious relevance is the fact that the funding for the Nobel Peace Prize derived originally from the manufacture of the weaponry by which people are appropriately described as being “blown to pieces”. Ironically weapons have been described as “pieces” for centuries and the term now features notably in urban slang reference to the hand guns of gangs. Possibly more curious is the fact that “peace” and “piece” are homophones in a society in which many are insensitive to the spelling which can be claimed to make the distinction. More curious again, as with the “Nobel” and “Noble”, search engines now tend to automatically correct any use of “piece” and “noble” to “peace” and “Nobel” under certain conditions — if care is not taken to circumvent this.

This confusion was one inspiration for the promotion of a Noble Piece Prize as a design award (William Crozer, The Power of a Great Piece of Work, Noble Studios, 19 August 2025). It also justified exploration of the relevance of reframing the preoccupation of President Trump (Awarding Noble Piece Prize to Trump and Netanyahu Jointly? 2025). The implication of creative fabrication and design also associates the “piece making” (so central to the arms industry) with the “peacemaking” claimed by Trump — as variously assessed by experts (Rachael Jolley and Sam Phelps, Did Trump really resolve six conflicts in a matter of months? The Conversation, 22 August 2025; Emma Shortis, et al, Does Trump deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? The Independent, 10 July 2025).

The inquiry can be taken further in that the sense of “peacemaker” is central to the faith of the USA, variously acclaimed as a Christian country, and most vigorously by Trump’s evangelical supporters. This is affirmed in the Biblical reference: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9). A particular bond with God also features in the nation of Israel, variously held to be the primary ally of the USA. Both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have substantial groups of supporters who openly describe their political leadership as divinely guided, and this has been traced in their rhetoric and in the framing of their roles by religious movements and media.

Netanyahu has linked the roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition to modern democracy, describing the alliance between Israel and the United States as a partnership “bonded in faith, in history, in tradition,” highlighting the biblical foundations shared by both nations. “We live the Bible“, he has said (28 July 2025). Their collective role is most notably acclaimed by Christian Zionists. Given the role of both Israel and the USA in the manufacture, sale and use of weapons, it is then appropriate to recognize the ambiguity they share with respect to any role as “peacemakers” with that of “piecemakers” — with no conflict with any belief that they are the “children of God”.

Inspired in this way, it is then appropriate to recognize how their efforts are framed by many as “peace work” — if not the “work of God” — in a period in which this can be paired with “piece work” as a related homophone. The contrast is similarly dramatic in that piece work can be perceived and experienced as a modern form of slavery — wage slavery. Whether as “work” or as a “piece of work”, such understandings call for further reflection to transcend potentially outdated framings which are no longer “fit for purpose” in a society challenged by the assumptions imposed by economics (Unproductive Interpretation of Work and Employment as Misinformation? 2025).

Given the celebration by which peace negotiations of questionable outcome are typically accompanied, there is also a case for recognizing the “piecemeal” dimensions of “peacemeal” (Piecemeal Peace; Peace-Meal Peacebuilding). The problematic nuance has been highlighted in a poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins: That piecemeal peace is poor peace. From that perspective, is any acclaimed “peace deal” more realistically understood as a “piece deal” in a transactional world — even though search engines automatically convert the second into the first?

Of particular relevance to the semantic complex evoked by the entangled threads above are the acclaimed aspirations of leaders for a “peaceful” global society in a period in which its “piecefulness” is unprecedented — as enabled by the “piecemakers”. As of 2017, the world is estimated to contain over one billion small arms — including handguns (Global Firearms Holdings, Small Arms Survey). There are an estimated 12,241 nuclear warheads, with millions of other missiles, rockets, and military weapons also deployed globally. There are approximately 1.15 billion small arms in global circulation, with over 393 million civilian-owned guns in the United States alone — a number greater than the population of that country.

Curiously an ambiguity, resonating with the claim of Donald Trump, is that “Peacemaker” is an iconic feature central to the mythology of the USA (Colt Peacemaker was the most popular gun in the Wild West, from Billy the Kid to Wyatt Earp, Vintage News, 25 February 2018). In that mode, a key intercontinental ballistic missile from 1986 to 2005 was named by the US as the “Peacekeeper“. Trump as contemporary peacemaker and peacekeeper of the West?

Strangely the concept of “piecefulness” is also rejected as unacceptable by search engines — in favour of “peacefulness”. This calls into question the framing of “peace research“, when “piece research” might be far more pertinent to the reality of the world condition. The argument also suggests a review of the blue-helmeted “peacekeepers” when new insights might be offered by the hidden implications of “piecekeepers” — perhaps as “red helmets”. The distinction recalls the appreciation of the value of both a “blue team” and a “red team” in exploring strategic options (Sandeep Rajan, Red Team vs. Blue Team: Understanding the Difference, Value Mentor, 12 January 2024). How problematic is the absence of a recognized “red team” and the insights it might offer?

Whilst there has long been concern about the principles essential to any understanding of peace — as with The Principles for Peace — little attention is given to any complementary focus on “piece principles” — on “piecebuilding” in contrast to “peacebuilding” (Using Disagreements for Superordinate Frame Configuration, 1992). The following argument concludes with an effort to reconcile theoretical arguments in that regard.

This exploration continues previous experiments in making extensive use of AI to clarify the themes evoked. For comparative purposes, responses are presented by different AIs (ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Perplexity) to the same questions. The responses have been framed as optionally visible grayed areas — with that form of presentation itself treated as an experiment, in anticipation of the future implication of AI into research documents and debate. The AI responses are hidden unless specifically requested by the reader (a facility not operational in PDF variants of the page, in contrast with the original). Clearly, the questions can be asked of other AIs — and framed otherwise — whether at the present time or in the future, when more sophisticated large language models become available.

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