US-led geopolitical interventions in Gaza and beyond: Structural violence, proxy conflicts, and the illusion of unilateral peacebuilding
Original framing: “Trump: ‘My honour to settle eight wars’ including ‘war in Gaza’” — Al Jazeera
The ‘war in Gaza’ is the latest chapter in a century-long conflict shaped by British and later US imperial interests, including the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Six-Day War. Each of these events was enabled by Western powers, with the US playing a pivotal role in normalizing Israeli occupation through military aid and diplomatic support. The 2008–2009 Gaza War, for instance, followed a decade of US-backed Israeli blockades and settlements, creating a cycle of retaliation that the US framed as ‘counterterrorism’ while ignoring its role in deepening instability. Without this historical context, Trump’s claim to have ‘settled’ the conflict appears as a personal triumph rather than the latest iteration of a long-standing geopolitical strategy.
The narrative of Trump ‘settling wars’ is a classic example of how Western powers individualize responsibility for conflict while obscuring the systemic structures that perpetuate it.
The US’s interventions in Gaza are not isolated events but part of a century-long pattern of imperialism, where military force is used to stabilize regimes aligned with Western interests, even at the cost of humanitarian crises. Historical precedents, from the Balfour Declaration to the 2008–2009 Gaza War, reveal how US-backed policies have consistently deepened cycles of violence rather than resolving them. Marginalized voices—whether Palestinian activists, Indigenous scholars, or global South critics—have long warned that lasting peace requires addressing occupation, economic inequality, and colonial legacies, not just imposing external solutions. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of framing individual leaders as peacemakers while the institutions they serve continue to fuel conflict. To break this cycle, the US must shift from militarized diplomacy to nonviolent conflict resolution, reform its military-industrial complex, amplify marginalized perspectives, and invest in climate and economic resilience—lessons that history and global South traditions have repeatedly demonstrated.