Can the Blue Wave Become an Antiwar Tsunami?

Nov 8

*Iranian girls’ school bombed by U.S.* *February 28, 2026. Polls suggest opposition to the war contributed to the “blue wave.”*

HOBOKEN, NOVEMBER 8, 2026. I’m getting my hopes up again.

Americans struggling to pay their bills don’t like their tax dollars spent on arms and armies. Americans think war is stupid and wasteful, and it inevitably hurts innocent people, like kids.

That’s what I hope Americans think, anyway. War aversion, I’ve convinced myself, propelled Democrats to victory Tuesday. Trump promised he wouldn’t start wars, then last February he started bombing Iran. An attack on an Iranian school killed at least 175 people, mostly girls between 7 and 12 years old.

The Iran war was a “crucial or major factor” for 74 percent of voters, according to NBC exit polls. 79 percent of self-identified Democrats say U.S. support of Israel is “too strong.”

When Hamas slaughtered 1,139 Israelis, most of them civilians, on October 7, 2023, Americans were appalled. Many are also appalled that since then Israel, aided by the U.S., has slaughtered 74,000 Palestinians, including 20,000 children.

One huge story of the midterm elections is wins by candidates linked to Democratic Socialists of America. This political organization, which is well to the left of the Democratic party, calls for ending military aid to Israel and Ukraine and defunding “the U.S. war machine.”

Tuesday’s “blue wave” consisted of lots of voters under 30. Youthful uprisings are roiling many other countries, The Guardian reports. Young citizens are “pushing back against authoritarianism and reshaping political landscapes” in India, Bangladesh, France, Serbia, Brazil and elsewhere.

This youthful unrest inspires me. I envision young folk rising to form an antiwar tsunami, a global movement opposed to all wars. The young recognize that war is the meta-problem that exacerbates other problems. They see that a demilitarized world would be fairer and freer, healthier and greener, than our world.

One obstacle to ending war is the widespread conviction that it cannot be done, war is too deeply rooted in our nature, or culture, or both. Those who share this fatalistic belief should take a look at my book The End of War.

Or check out World Beyond War, an international nonprofit that seeks “to end all war and preparations for war and to create a sustainable and just peace.” The World Beyond War website debunks the “myth” that war is inevitable and a “necessary evil.”

The website details how war impoverishes us, erodes civil rights, promotes bigotry and harms the environment. World Beyond War proposes how we can make the transition to a war-less world, in which disputes are resolved nonviolently.

World Beyond War spells out what we could do with the trillions of dollars spent globally on “war and preparations for war.” The U.S. alone, according to this analysis, now spends more than $2 trillion a year on its gigantic military empire. Imagine what we could do with that money!

Questions come to mind: How can nations downsize their militaries safely, so no nation is tempted to take advantage of disarmed adversaries? How can disarmament treaties be verified? How can nuclear weapons be eradicated?

Would individual nations, or perhaps the United Nations, maintain a minimal military force as protection against, say, violent apocalyptic cults? These problems are hard, but we can solve them if we have the will to do so.

I’ve heard social-justice activists chant: No justice, no peace. I think the inverse is true: No peace, no justice. We can only create a just world if we abolish institutionalized mass murder once and for all. And research has shown that nonviolent movements, while not always successful, fare better than violent ones.

My hopes for peace have been dashed before. One of my happiest moments as an American citizen was November 4, 2008. Barack Obama campaigned on his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He had called for banning nuclear weapons since he was in college.

The Nobel Foundation cited Obama’s “vision of a world free from nuclear weapons” when it awarded him the Peace Prize in 2009. Just before he received the prize, Obama sent 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Obama oversaw an upgrade of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and increased drone assassinations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In his Nobel acceptance speech, Obama said, “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict on our lifetimes.” Obama seemed to excuse his hawkish actions by dismissing peace as unrealistic. This isn’t realism, it’s self-fulfilling fatalism.

I imagine an antiwar tsunami consisting of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and libertarians, socialists and capitalists, rich and poor, Muslims and Jews and Christians and atheists, people of all races and ages and genders. Everyone! Who doesn’t want peace?

Fascists, maybe. Fascists sneer at the idea of world peace. They think we live in a world that, as one prominent fascist put it, “is governed by force, that is governed by power.” The antiwar tsunami will probably also get pushback from war profiteers, including tech moguls. But the tsunami will sweep aside the fascists and profiteers.

This is the fantasy, the hope, aroused in me by America’s blue wave.

Further Reading:

See the website of World Beyond War, my book The End of War and the following columns:

Is Peace a Pipe Dream?

Visiting the UN as Bombs Fall on Iran

Truman, The Bomb and Free Will

To Abolish Nukes, We Must Abolish War

Dear Student Protesters, Please Oppose All War

Judith Butler on Nonviolence: A Critique

Dear Feminists, Please Help End War!

Is Killing Children Ever Justified?

The Statistics of Lovers’ Quarrels