We are in a situation where there are more and more potential and active wars and conflicts emerging around the world. We have actual wars in Palestine and Ukraine, and a real possibility of another breaking out in Venezuela, as well as the threat of a further war being waged by the US against Nigeria.
The possibility of course remains for future conflict with Iran, while no doubt Greenland and Panama are still on alert for invasion. There’s also escalating tension in the Far East.
Against all this, Donald Trump has claimed to have resolved several wars, including one between Azerbaijan and Albania, which no one, not least those two countries, knew had even started.
There are a bewildering array of conflicts and it’s important that we in the anti-war movement step back to try to get an understanding both of what is happening and of the role the British government is playing. We can then look at where our campaigning efforts should be directed.
Although many of these conflicts and potential conflicts, including the ones in Palestine and Ukraine, predate the Trump administration, since Trump became president it has not been business as usual for the big imperialist powers. Trump has aggressively tried via means of threats and bullying, interventions and tariffs, to reorder as much of the world as he can in the interest of US imperialism and US business. Trump is trying to strengthen America regardless of the expense to US allies.
The only negotiations he seems to take seriously are perhaps those with China, which is a power that he’s clearly unable to boss around.
Stop the War clearly welcomes the ceasefire in Gaza, which brings some relief to the suffering in the Strip, be it temporary and limited. But we’ve also been clear, this is not peace in any real sense and it’s a long way from anything that might look like justice for Palestinians.
Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza. It is still camped on roughly half of Gaza’s territory and Palestinians are being killed every day as a result of Israeli military action. There is no process in play leading to genuine peace, and the plans for some technocratic government under Arab supervision ludicrously include a role for Tony Blair – though even Trump has acknowledged the Arab regimes are finding this a bit hard to swallow given Blair’s historic record in the region.
Trump’s priorities undoubtedly lie with strengthening the business and strategic ties with the Gulf states – Saudi Arabia in the first instance, but with the UAE and others as well, trying to loop Israel into a reactionary alliance with those states. But that requires at least an end to the daily massacre of Palestinians because, as corrupt and pro-imperialist as the Gulf regimes are, they do have to pay some notional heed to mass Arab opinion.
Together with our partners in the Palestine coalition, we have to consider our immediate response to this new situation. We have a further national demonstration planned for 29 November, and clearly, while we will not be demonstrating as frequently as over the last two years, we do have to be ready for a breakdown or deterioration in the situation at any time.
We also have to give some thought to how we maintain the momentum of this extraordinary movement. The movement has seen an unprecedented number of people show solidarity with the Palestinian people over a sustained period. We need to take this opportunity to both deepen political understanding around British foreign policy and to deepen the movement, even if mass mobilisations are less frequent.
Trump’s push for a ceasefire in Ukraine was conditioned in large part by his desire to seize control of as much of the country’s resources as he could – this was the basis for the agreement he imposed on Zelensky. But to effectively exploit Ukraine’s resources requires a cessation of hostilities. Putin hasn’t agreed to a ceasefire and it seems he wants to carry on fighting, at least until Russia controls all of Donetsk province, the main part of the Donbas which Russia does not already control.
Trump has no intention of bringing a real peace to either Palestine or Ukraine. He simply wants to advance the interests of the US. If that includes imposing a ceasefire, which he’s found easier to do on Israel than he has on Russia, then that’s what he’ll try to do.
The British government remains subordinate to Trump, even to the extent that Trump and his acolytes are directly pressuring the British political system to adapt itself to MAGA ideology. Starmer remains completely supine, accommodating Trump to the point where it’s difficult to differentiate any policy differences at all.
The one exception is over Ukraine. Starmer has been lukewarm on Trump’s attempts to bring hostilities to at least a temporary halt. The British government remains in the vanguard of keeping the Ukraine war going. It appears to be British policy to use Ukraine to bleed Russia, while European NATO states embark on a huge rearmament programme to the point where they could directly confront Russia, even if the US isn’t entirely supportive.
They are not there yet. For now they cannot even deploy the ‘coalition of the willing’ without American support, but given time and more Ukrainian and Russian blood, they hope that they will.
We should also note the continued escalation in the nuclear arms race and US talk of resuming nuclear testing, and the fact that America has approved proceeding with the AUKUS pact in the Far East, a pact designed to counter China’s influence and ensure a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’.
Note also that defence secretary John Healey was in Japan recently talking up the Japanese-British alliance, historically against Russian imperialism, today against China. Healey said that while Britain has always been “NATO first, it’s not NATO only”. We must continue to pay attention to Britain’s nefarious role in the Pacific region.
Welfare not Warfare is one of our main slogans. It draws attention to the economic consequences for the British people of the UK’s vast programme of rearmament.
The economic argument alone does not carry the case against war. If people are convinced a war is just or that another power poses a real threat, they will put up with a certain amount of increased defence spending. But in driving forward Welfare not Warfare, and to embed the anti-war politics in the trade union movement, we do have to build on the economic argument. This year we’ve made big advances with the reversal of TUC policy on campaigning for increased military spending .
StW must highlight the gargantuan increases in military spending when talk, for example around the budget, focusses on income tax rises or welfare cuts or the balance between new taxes on working people and austerity. We must continue to put that at the core of our campaigning.
Our focus on Palestine must of course continue. This remains the issue where British foreign policy is most vulnerable, where the government is most anxious about public opinion and the dissent of its own backbenches.
People are also very alarmed by the conduct of Donald Trump towards Britain and British institutions. We must use this unease to strengthen the case for breaking with decades of subordination to US foreign policy.
With these campaigning priorities in mind we must entrench and extend our local network of groups and carry our message into as many communities around the country as we can.
On 20 June 2026 we are holding an international conference in London as a follow up to the recent Paris peace conference where over 4,000 people took part, with delegates from 18 European countries and a huge trade union contingent. We need to make the London conference as broad as possible, bringing in a range of forces from the trade union and solidarity movements. Let’s get organising.