The European and Citizens’ Conference for Peace: Key Messages (2) 

Introduction

Professor Jean Bricmont is among the 62 founding signatories who initiated the call for the European and Citizens’ Conference for Peace in Ukraine, Russia and Europe. This event is scheduled to be held on 22 November 2025 in Lisbon and aims to address pressing issues concerning peace and conflict in the region.

Messages to Conference Participants and Readers

Although Jean Bricmont is unable to attend the conference in person, he remains committed to the cause and the objectives of the gathering. To ensure his thoughts and perspectives contribute to the ongoing discussions, he has sent a written statement to the participants. His text ⎼ as well as those by Pascal Lottaz and Robert Skidelsky, already published on this site [see https://citizenpeaceineurope2025.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-european-and-citizens-conference.html] ⎼ serves as his active contribution, providing insight and fostering dialogue among attendees and readers.

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IS WORLD WAR III

ALREADY GOING ON?

Jean Bricmont

15 November 2025

When did World War II start?

If you ask the Chinese, they will say in 1937, with the Japanese invasion or even in 1931 with the annexation of Manchuria. But in Europe? In 1936 in Spain, in 1938 with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, in 1939 in Poland, in 1940 with the German invasion of the rest of Europe or in 1941 with the onslaught against the Soviet Union that led to the final defeat of the Nazis?

The beginning of World War II was an ongoing process. But one may argue that we are facing a similar process now, which may later be considered as being the beginning of World War III.

We have three major actors in this proto-war: the United States and its “allies” (its satellites would be a better term), Russia-China and its allies and Israel.

The US “allies” include most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Latin America (Argentina, Equator etc.). The Russia-China allies include Iran, North Korea, Vietnam, parts of Africa (mostly the Alliance of Sahel States: Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso), and parts of Latin America (mostly Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua).

The goal of the United States is to maintain its world domination which it thought would be eternal, or at least very long, after the fall of the USSR. The Russia-China alliance challenges that hegemony both militarily in Ukraine, where Russia was dragged into a long war by US provocations, and economically by China who is slowly but surely becoming the dominant economic superpower.

Europe and the other United States “allies” are simply going along with whatever the United States does, totally disregarding  their own national interests: they apply endless sanctions to Russia that mostly hurt their own economies and lecture China on human rights, lectures that fall on deaf ears (understandably so, given the long colonial relations between Europe and China). When the Netherlands thought it was clever to seize a Chinese company (the chipmaker company Nexperia), at the instigation of the United States, it had quickly to backtrack and to give it back to China. For the first time, after a mere five centuries, it is a country of the South that imposes its will on one of the North.

It is remarkable that, although most Europeans do not like Trump, because of his manners and his rather explicit way to want to impose the United States will on the rest of the world (including on Europe), not much has changed in their submissiveness with respect to the United States since his election.

The Russia-China alliance tries to gather the Global South against the hegemon, with some degree of success; in fact countries of the Global South do not necessarily like the present-day Russia but see it as the successor of the USSR and, whatever they think of the political-economic system of that country, they remember the firm Soviet support for decolonization and the national sovereignty of countries attacked by the United States [1]. It is somewhat ironical that, while the Russian leadership tend to reject its Soviet past, it is largely thanks to that past that it maintains its influence abroad. As for China, it may be less revolutionary and less vocal than at the time of Mao, but its diplomacy has always been firmly on the side of the Third World and against American supremacy.

There is a third actor: Israel. Contrary to what many people believe Israel is not an outpost of the West or even of the United States in the Middle East. It does exactly what it wants, namely make Palestine a “land without a people”, in order to “redeem” it for its own population. For that, it needs to regularly bomb, invade and kill people all around the Middle East. That serves no purpose whatsoever for American hegemony, never brought a drop of oil to the United States and in fact creates a lot of hostility worldwide towards the United States because of the latter unflinching support for Israeli policies. And the way this support is obtained is simply through the actions of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States (and elsewhere in the West). Congress is essentially bought by it and dissident voices are silenced under the accusation of antisemitism.

So, what is the situation now in the multi-front proto-war?

In Ukraine, Russia is winning slowly but probably irreversibly. This creates great concerns in Natoland, whose countries however do not dare send their armies fight the Russians directly and, instead, send loads of weapons and money that, so far, have been strategically useless, although they led many Ukrainians (and Russians in lesser numbers) to their death.

In the China-US conflict, there are a great deal of American gestures about Taiwan and the South China sea but, so far, nothing dramatic happened. China is very patient and expects that Taiwan will eventually become effectively (and not only legally, which it is already) part of China. Just wait and see.

Israel has won some victories, against Hamas and Hezbollah but, given the relationship of forces, the mere survival of these organizations (and they did survive) is already a victory for them. The biggest Israeli victory has been the regime change in Syria. As with all the submissive Arab regimes, it remains to be seen how long this submission will last.

The main problem for Israel is the revulsion that its policies have provoked throughout the world, even in its main benefactor, the United States. There, not only the progressive youth is revolting against zionism, as shown by the election of Mamdani as mayor of New York, but there is also a split in the MAGA movement with people like Tucker Carlson (or more radical ones like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens) insisting that MAGA means America First and not MIGA or Israel First. That double revolt, from the left and from the right, does not bode well for the future of the United States support for their "only ally in the Middle East", which, in reality, isn’t their ally at all.

In fact, the main purpose of the present cease-fire (which is mainly interpreted by the Israelis as “you cease, we fire”), together with massive efforts at censorship (extensive buying of US media by pro-Israel billionaires) is to prevent anti-Israel sentiments from rising even further.

What should the anti-war movement do?

It depends a little bit on where one lives, but for Europeans it is quite clear:

― First of all, be as independent as possible from the United States, irrespective of whether its administration is democrat or republican. And that means being as independent as possible from the European Union, whose bureaucratic apparatus is committed to an endless subservience to the United States. The goal would be to develop relations with the rest of the world based on our own interests and not on those of the United States.

 ― Concerning the Middle East, cut all ties with Israel, and defend our freedom of speech about that state and its supporters here. In particular, we should reject the legal condemnation of “hate speech” as another word for censorship.

Unfortunately, our leaders are very far from following that course and they hardly face any organized political opposition. What we see is an incessant deluge of war propaganda against Russia, China, Iran or Palestine. We are even told that we must engage in a massive military buildup in order be ready for war with Russia in a few years. 

But why? Are we seriously thinking of attacking Russia and risk our own nuclear annihilation? Do we really fear an attack of Russia against a NATO country? But why would they do that? Unlike in Ukraine, there is no NATO country with millions of people fighting for several years against a central government originating from a coup d'état, sponsored by the United States, and deeply hostile to them. Indeed, as shown in part by their pro-2014 votes, the Eastern Ukrainians have always felt Russian and were incorporated into Ukraine at the time of the formation of the Soviet Union (1922), without anybody asking them what they wanted. Whether one thinks that this justifies the Russian intervention or not, the fact is that there is no remotely similar situation elsewhere in Europe.

There is also no doubt that the European populations (as opposed to most of their leaders) are massively opposed to the notion of a war with Russia. But even if there is no real reason for a war between NATO and Russia to occur, the combination of military buildup and war propaganda may lead to an accident, like what happened in Sarajevo in 1914.

― And therefore, it is vital to change course if we do not want the present situation as being viewed in the history books of the future as the beginning of World War III. Assuming that there will be such books.

 On August 9, 1945, the American B-29 bomber, Bocks Car, left Tinian carrying Fat Man, a plutonium implosion-type bomb. The primary target was the Kokura Arsenal at Nagasaki, but upon reaching the target, they found that it was covered by a heavy ground haze and smoke, pilot Charles Sweeney turned to the secondary target of the Mitsubishi Torpedo Plant at Nagasaki. Of the 286,00 people living in Nagasaki at the time of the blast, 74,000 were killed and another 75,000 sustained severe injuries. Source: National Archives USA. [Photo and caption added by the Editor of this Conference site]

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Note

[1] See for example htps://www.rosbalt.ru/news/2025-11-07/gleb-kuznetsov-rf-nikak-ne-mozhet-prisvoit-sovetskoe-nasledie-5503301