No to War, Yes to Peace: A Global Call to End Wars and Militarism

MILITARISM, 27 Apr 2026

Vijay Mehta – TRANSCEND Media Service

25 Apr 2026 – The defining crisis of the twenty-first century is not climate change alone, not inequality alone, not the rise of the far right alone — though all of these are real, all of these are deadly. The defining crisis of our age is war. Endless, permanent, profitable war. War that has become not an aberration, not a last resort, but the very engine of a global economic system that cannot function without it.

We talk endlessly about the cost of living. We debate housing, healthcare, wages, migration. These are vital debates. But we cannot afford to keep ignoring the elephant in the room. We cannot keep building our politics around the edges while at the centre of everything lies the catastrophic reality of militarism — the single greatest destroyer of human life, human dignity, and human potential on the planet today.

A World on Fire

The catastrophic war on Iran — prosecuted with US firepower and Israeli strategy — has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and destabilised an entire region. The genocide in Gaza, watched live on our screens by the entire planet, has exposed the moral bankruptcy of Western governments who speak of human rights while signing arms deals and vetoing ceasefire resolutions.

World War III is looming on the horizon. I say to you today: it is not looming. It is here. It has been here for some time. It simply is not being called by its name because the dying, so far, has been concentrated among people whose deaths the Western media does not count in the same way.

The Business of War

The United States of America — the self-proclaimed leader of the free world — is, above all else, an arms dealer. Weapons are the number one export of the United States economy. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a fact, documented in trade figures, confirmed by congressional records, visible in the share prices of defence contractors on any given day of conflict.

For the capitalist economy to continue functioning in the way it currently does, there must be markets for weapons. And for there to be markets for weapons, there must be wars. This is not paranoia. This is political economy. When you build an entire industrial complex around the manufacture and sale of instruments of death, you have a structural incentive to ensure those instruments are used. USA with 250 years of history had 16 years of peace and as a war monger is a global threat to the world.

History bears this out with terrible clarity. Hundreds of millions perished in the First and Second World Wars. The slaughter in Vietnam — which continued into the 1990s in its aftermath of landmines, Agent Orange, and destroyed generations. The bombing and occupation of Iraq in 2003, based on the deliberate lie of weapons of mass destruction, resulted in the deaths of approximately two million people. Two million. And what followed? Not justice. Not accountability. Not a single war crimes trial for those who ordered the invasion. Instead, the arms manufacturers who supplied that war posted record profits.

Now, as the Iran war grinds on, we are told once again that this is about security. About freedom. About democracy. It is nothing of the sort. President Trump has convened meetings of the wealthiest defence industry CEOs in the country — the heads of BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, and others — and instructed them to quadruple their production capacity. He has handed out contracts worth billions of dollars. Billions. While nurses strike for a living wage. While children go to school hungry. While the homeless sleep on the streets of every major Western city.

This is not a coincidence. This is a choice. And we must name it as such.

The Human Cost

Statistics can numb us. Two million dead in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands in Iran. Tens of thousands in Gaza. The numbers become abstract. So let me ask you to think instead about one person. One family. Perhaps a mother in Tehran who has lost two sons. Perhaps a child in Gaza who no longer has a home, a school, a parent.

The human cost of these conflicts are staggering. Wars do not only kill on the battlefield. They kill in refugee camps. They kill in hospitals that have run out of medicine.

And wars displace people. The very migration crisis that right-wing governments exploit to whip up fear and division — that crisis has a cause. People do not leave their homes, their cultures, their languages, their families, unless they have no choice. When we bomb countries, when we sanction economies into collapse, when we arm one faction against another and then walk away from the rubble — we create refugees.

We will not get to peace through politics as mainstream political parties of centre or centre-left have no answers to conflicts. We will not get there by voting for the lesser evil and hoping for the best. We will only get there by building a politics of principle — a politics that starts from the lives of ordinary people, not from the demands of arms manufacturers, not from the interests of oil companies, not from the strategic calculations of imperial powers.

What We Stand For

We are against all imperialist wars. We are against the occupation of Palestine. We are against the bombing of Iran. We are against every instance of military aggression dressed up as liberation or democracy or security. We are against the arms trade. We are against the use of public money to fund private profit through the manufacture of death.

We stand for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank. We stand for a political settlement in Iran based on diplomacy, not military force. We stand for the right of all peoples to self-determination, free from external interference. We stand for the redirection of military budgets towards housing, healthcare, education, and the transition to a sustainable economy. We stand for a world in which disputes between nations are resolved through international law and genuine multilateral institutions — not through the military supremacy of the most heavily armed power.

Tens of millions of people across the world who have marched against these wars, who have organised in their communities, who have sat in front of arms factories, who have refused to be silent. The anti-war movement is not a footnote in political history. It is one of the most important moral forces of our time.

A Call to Act

Peace is the most radical and the most necessary demand of our time. The power to end these wars does not rest only with governments. It rests with workers who refuse to manufacture weapons. It rests with soldiers who refuse illegal orders. It rests with journalists who refuse to launder propaganda. It rests with voters who refuse to support parties that fund war. It rests with each one of us who refuses to be complicit in our own silence.

Conclusion: The World We Choose to Build is Possible

History is not inevitable. It is made by people — by choices, by courage, by collective action. The wars of the past century were not inevitable. They were the product of decisions made by leaders who chose empire over equality, profit over peace, power over people. And they can be unmade. A different set of decisions is possible.

The world we want is not a utopia. It is not a world without disagreement or without difficulty. It is a world in which disagreements are resolved without mass slaughter. A world in which the resources we have — and we have extraordinary resources — are directed towards meeting human need rather than feeding the military-industrial complex. A world in which no mother has to bury a child killed by a bomb manufactured in a factory in Sheffield or Seattle.

That world will not build itself. It will be built by us, or it will not be built at all. Organise. Agitate. Build coalitions. Support the strikes. Join the marches. Knock on doors. Write to your representatives. Refuse to give comfort to those who profit from war.

The time for words alone is over — here is what each of us must do:

• Sign and share every petition demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, Ukraine and Sudan.
• Join or form a local peace group and make your presence felt on the streets.
• Follow Uniting for Peace and join our conferences – https://unitingforpeace.com
• Write to your MP, your senator, your representative — repeatedly, persistently, until they cannot ignore you.
• Boycott the companies that profit from war: don’t buy their products, don’t invest in their shares, don’t give them your silence.
• Support humanitarian organisations working on the ground in conflict zones with whatever you can spare.
• Challenge war propaganda when you see it — in your newspaper, workplace, in your family, on your social media.
• Demand that your trade union, your place of worship, your community organisation takes a public stand against these conflicts.
• Vote out every politician who has voted for arms deals, who has abstained on ceasefire motions, who has chosen the arms manufacturer.
• Do not stop. Peace is not won in a single march or a single election. It is won by people who refuse, day after day, to accept that this is simply how the world must be.

A different world, a safer and peaceful world is possible. Let’s build it.

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Vijay Mehta is an author and peace activist. He is chair of Uniting for Peace, founding trustee of Fortune Forum charity, and board member of GAMIP-Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures for Peace. His books include: The Economics of Killing (Pluto Press, 2012); Peace Beyond Borders (New Internationalist, 2016; and the most recent How Not To Go To War (New Internationalist, 2019) where he proposes that in countries and communities, in governments, private institutions and media, Peace Departments and Peace Centres be established to report on and promote peace.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 27 Apr 2026.

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