Good morning.
As mentioned, my name is James Corbett. I
have a website called "The Corbett Report" at
corbettreport.com. So, if you're interested in more
information, it will be there.
First of all, I'd like to thank the Perdana
Global Peace Foundation and its trustees, and of course Tun Dr.
Mahathir for the invitation to speak to you today.
As you know, we're gathered here today to
discuss the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War and its
20th anniversary.
But if we're going to reevaluate that document
and its significance from our standpoint here in 2025, then it's
worth our time to remember the context in which that initial
declaration was made.
Let's cast our minds back to 2005 for a
moment and ponder the fact that that 2005 declaration was forged
in the crucible of war. Not the War on Terror as the
spinmeisters and PR salesman of the Western warmongers put it,
but in the war of terror.
A war on an abstract noun, which, we were
told, was meant to bring "Freedom" and "Democracy" to the Middle
East, but was really about reshaping the Middle East in the
interest of the strategists in Washington and Brussels and Tel
Aviv.
That 2005 declaration came in the wake of
America's invasion of Afghanistan - a war which, as my reporting
on "The
Secret Lie That Started the Afghan War" has conclusively
demonstrated, was waged under false pretenses, and as my
reporting on "False
Flags: The Secret History of Al Qaeda" conclusively
demonstrated, was waged largely against a mythologized (and
secretly supported) enemy.
That 2005 declaration came in the wake of the
invasion of Iraq - a war perhaps even more egregious in its brazen
illegality and wanton disregard for human life.
And that 2005 declaration came in the light
of the specter of an invasion of Iran casting the
shadow of World War III across the globe
And so perhaps in that context, in the wake
of such madness, we can truly appreciate the moral clarity - the
moral sanity - found in the Kuala Lumpur Initiative's
common sense declaration that "UNITED in the belief that peace
is an essential condition for the survival and well being of the
human race" we must affirm that,
"Since killings in peace time
are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must
likewise be subject to the international law of crimes" and that
"This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war
are authorized or permitted by domestic law"?
Imagine that:
Murder is wrong.
Murder in
uniform no less so.
A consistent moral principle, consistently
applied.
Who could possibly argue against that?
But, as you may have noticed, as difficult as
it is to believe, that incredibly important ethical framework
has not been adopted in the past 20 years.
In fact, if
anything, the initiative's simple ideas are probably even
more needed today than they were when they were first
formulated.
Since that time we've seen:
...and, of course, the ongoing
genocide in Palestine
But I have been asked here today to talk
specifically about the role of the current American
administration in promoting peace around the world.
Hmmm. That's an interesting topic.
"The role
of the current administration in promoting peace around
the world."
If we're going to talk about the Trump
administration and its efforts to promote peace, perhaps we
should start by remembering how it was that Trump was swept into
office this year.
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump claimed
that he would be able to end the conflict between Russia and
Ukraine on "day one" of his presidency.
He
claimed, for example:
"Before I even arrive at the Oval Office,
shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible
war between Russia and Ukraine settled."
In fact, he didn't claim this once or twice.
He claimed it
at least 53 times.
And throughout his campaign, he promised a
quick end to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
"Get it over with and let's get back to peace
and stop killing people," he
said in April 2024.
And candidate Trump even
put himself up for the Nobel Peace Prize throughout the 2024
campaign.
"They gave Obama the Nobel Prize...
He got
elected and they announced he's getting the Nobel Prize.
I got
elected in a much bigger, better, crazier election, but they
gave him the Nobel Prize" he complained at one campaign event in
Las Vegas.
And in November, shortly after winning the
election, it was confirmed that at least one Ukrainian lawmaker
had indeed
voted for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
"It is my belief that Trump has made
considerable contributions to world peace, and that he can make
more in the future," wrote Oleksandr Merezhko, a leading member
of the Ukrainian parliament in his letter to the Norwegian Nobel
Committee.
So, since taking office, has Trump made good
on these promises?
Well, he obviously has not ended the
Ukraine-Russia conflict on "day one" as he promised at least 53
times as a presidential candidate.
He now claims that was said "in
jest" and wasn't meant to be taken literally.
And he hasn't overseen an end to the Gaza
genocide. As we know all too well, the slaughter of Palestinians
continues and Netanyahu's government is preparing its invasion
of Gaza.
But, to be fair, we have witnessed
some attempts at mediation and peace brokering since President
Trump came into office in January.
We've seen Trump personally attempting to
broker a deal in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, for example, and
we've seen Trump coordinating a peace deal between Armenia and
Azerbaijan.
And, as his supporters argue, he is turning
US policy away from an expansion of wars and conflict and toward
using deterrence as a method for preventing war.
For example,
PolicyEast.com writes:
In his 2nd term as President,
[Trump] is committed to ending the Russia-Ukraine war and
the Israel-Gaza war.
The recent NATO summit 2025 signaled a
shift in the US policy from escalation towards sustaining
the deterrence.
It reflects the realization under the
Trump
era that the continuous escalation is not a solution.
Diplomatic off-ramp would be facilitated by the US in
the
Russia-Ukraine war as a last resort to end the war as it did
in the recent Israeli-Iranian war.
The war lasted for twelve days and ended
with the US intervention. Though the analysts were skeptical
of the US role, as it might expand the conflict.
However, in
the aftermath of Iran's retaliatory strikes on a US base in
Qatar, President Trump announced the ceasefire deal between
Iran and Israel, lessening the severity of the escalation.
In the post-conflict scenario, Pakistan's premier
Shahbaz
Sharif lauded the decisive efforts put in by the US
president in reaching a ceasefire deal between Iran and
Israel.
This is... something...
But, given the US participation in the
bombing of Iran this year, given the US' months-long bombardment
of Yemen, given the US brokering of billions of dollars in fresh
weapons contracts for the Ukrainian conflict, given the US'
continued support for Israel in its waging of genocide against
the Palestinians, I think it's safe to say that the current
American government has not shown itself as a staunch supporter
of peace or a reliable ally in the effort to criminalize war.
But maybe that's the point.
The American government
may not be an ally in the quest for peace, but the American people do not want war.
Indeed, in February 2024, at the height of
the then-Biden administration's push to arm and equip Ukraine
for its war with Russia, a
poll found that the overwhelming majority - a full 70% of
Americans - wanted their government to push for peace talks
between the two countries, not to support more war.
The BDS movement continues to reflect the
American public's (and the people's of the world's) anger at the
ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.
It has pressured Chevron
into
halting expansion of its Israeli-claimed "Leviathan" gas
field in the Mediterranean.
It has caused AXA insurers to
completely divest from Israeli banks. It has prompted Puma
to
drop its sponsorship of the Israeli football association.
And when Trump bombed Iran, even prominent
members of the MAGA movement were quick to decry the move.
It's important to consider that point a
moment. Why would cap-wearing, flag-waving members of
Trump's political movement be so openly critical of the Trump
administration's warmongering?
It's precisely because they did
not want MAGA to result in another warmongering
administration like the neoliberal Biden or Obama
administrations or the neocon Bush administration before them.
They thought they were voting for peace.
But
they got more war.
Trump has bombed Yemen.
Trump has bombed Iran.
Trump has been oddly unsuccessful at
brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, but he's been
remarkably successful at brokering weapons contracts for
American military contractors to supply weapons to Europe so
they can continue to arm Ukraine.
And of course Trump is still supporting his
good friend Netanyahu in his quest to invade Gaza and dispel the
Palestinians.
None of this is new, of course.
We've seen
this exact phenomenon play itself out before.
In 2008, just 3 years after the Kuala Lumpur
Initiative was signed, the American people overwhelmingly voted
Barack Obama into office in the hopes that he would not
be
George W. Bush.
Obama even won the Nobel "Peace" Prize in the
mere hope that he would not be George W. Bush.
But, immediately upon taking office, what
happened?
Not only did Obama dismiss the possibility of
war crimes prosecutions for the war crimes that demonstrably
occurred in the Bush-era
War of Terror,
-
he committed to an expansion of the
war in Afghanistan
-
he expanded the war of terror into
Pakistan with drone bombings,
-
he spearheaded NATO's illegal
invasion of Libya
-
he oversaw the years-long insurgency
that tore Syria apart
-
he presided over the rise of ISIS
...and in an egregious assault against that
commonsense ethical framework embedded in the Kuala Lumpur
Initiative, he created a so-called "disposition
matrix," i.e., a presidential kill list that presumed to
grant authority to the president of the United States to kill
anyone he wants anywhere on the planet, including even American
citizens.
Murder is wrong... unless you're the
president, according to the President of the United States.
So, in short, in 2008, too, the people voted
for peace. But they got war.
So, what is the disconnect?
Why does a
country that prides itself on its "democracy" continue to engage
in wanton warmongering against the wishes of its own
people?
Why has a "Make America Great Again" movement that was
supposedly interested in stopping America from acting as the
policeman of the world and sending troops abroad for foreign
wars of aggression turned into a "Make Israel Great Again"
movement that is fostering wars abroad?
More to the point, why does seemingly EVERY
American administration pursue a remarkably similar foreign
policy no matter who is voted into office?
There can be only two possible answers to
that question:
either by some remarkable coincidence everyone
who is voted in as president of the united states is a secret
warmonger who never reveals their true nature until they're
sitting in the Oval Office, or it isn't the president who is
really calling the shots.
Assuming the latter possibility is the more
likely answer, then if the president isn't calling the shots,
who is in charge?
Well, we've known since President Dwight D.
Eisenhower warned in his
farewell address in 1961 that the military-industrial
complex has,
"unwarranted influence" over the politicians and
that the rise of this sinister lobby will lead to the
"disastrous rise of misplaced power."
And beyond the direct corporate
military-industrial interests, there are of course financial
interests. There's always plenty of money to be made by
unscrupulous financiers in times of war.
So, that leaves us with the question:
if we
want an administration that conforms to the will of the people
and pursues peace, how do we counter these entrenched interests?
It's tempting to say that in order to retake
the government of America (or any other country) back away from
these special interests and deliver it to the people, we will
need a supra-national body to steward over these nations.
After all, if a powerful, centralized control
structure has been taken over and used contrary to the wishes of
the people, then,
how else can that structure be put back into
line than by the authority of an even greater, more powerful,
more centralized control structure?
But if that is what we are
advocating, we must ponder whether we have really learned the
lessons of the last 20 years of bloodshed and war.
Have we learned the lesson that any
institution with the power to enforce a regime of international
law will be the very first institution that the warmongers will
seek to subvert, subsume or eliminate?
Let's never forget that the United States
used the various
United Nations resolutions against Iraq and against Saddam
Hussein as pretext for its sanctions, bombing and eventual
invasion of that country
Let us never forget that the path to NATO's
bombing of Libya was paved by the UN Human Rights Council in a
special session in February 2011 where they invoked the
"responsibility to protect" and adopted a resolution without a
vote
Let us not forget that the International
Criminal Court has almost exclusively dealt in indicting African
leaders, with the exception of its arrest warrant for Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
And let us not forget that the ICC's
attempts to bring justice for the genocide of the Palestinians
has been so far successfully thwarted and suppressed by Israel
and its ally on the UN Security Council.
Perhaps, then, when we are looking for the
fundamental shift in society that is going to have to take place
if we ever want to criminalize war, we are looking in the wrong
place if we're looking to the ballot box - voting in Barack Obama
or Donald Trump or whatever politician comes along promising
peace.
And perhaps we're also looking in the wrong place if
we're looking to these supranational entities to bring about
peace.
The real criminalization of war will almost
certainly not take place as a top-down movement. It will not
result from the conspiracy of high-level political leaders
behind closed doors.
It will not happen at a large scale
institution.
It will happen when the bottom-up movement of
people crying out "Enough!" becomes unstoppable.
When the people
realize that the power to direct humanity's fate lies not
in the hands of the bureaucrats, the warmongers, the
politicians, the financiers and the military-industrial
contractors but in our hands.
In a strange way, perhaps the Trump
administration has actually contributed to the
promotion of peace in the world by helping to remove the scales
from the eyes of those voters who have up to this point still
believed in the power of voting or in the power of international
institutions to achieve peace.
By continuing the war agenda, he has
demonstrated once again that the idea of waiting for a political
savior to end the wars is a failed strategy.
It is now time to organize as citizens. To
boycott. To protest. To refuse to fight. To make it impossible
for the war machine to function.
Once we realize that the war machine runs on
the fuel of our participation, we start to recognize that our
withdrawal of support for that war machine will be the only
thing to stop the machine from functioning.
Such a goal may seem far off from today, but
until we start conceptualizing it, until we start cheerleading
for it, until there is support for this idea from the
grassroots, it will never happen.
On the contrary, when this idea has been
promoted and it has caught on with the public and there is a
groundswell of support for it, nothing will be able to stop it.
Victor Hugo famously observed:
"No army can stop an idea whose time has
come."
But when the initiative to criminalize
war has prepared the way for global peace,
there will be no army left to try to stop it.
Let us pray that that day comes sooner than
later.
