By Robert C. Koehler, World BEYOND War, April 15, 2026

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Let’s listen again to these viral words, as they hover over the planet . . . as they hover over, good God, the future. Finally, finally, the time has come for every last one of us to release the question these words force on us, from the privacy, from the cynicism, of our hearts, and collectively scream it until it begins to orbit Planet Earth: How do we transcend war?

The words, of course, are those of Donald Trump, U.S. president and perhaps the most powerful and troubled human being on the planet, whose finger has access to the “nuclear button.” The words are part of several social media posts he let loose last week, as his pointless war on Iran continued spiraling out of control. Iran was fighting back. It closed the Strait of Hormuz, creating financial chaos around the world.

This was his post on Easter Sunday (April 5): “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Yes, I know, almost everyone has read these posts, mostly in shock and outrage, but I plunk them into this column in order to keep them connected to the enormous question they open. On Monday he wrote:

“Their infrastructure could be taken out in one night. I’m telling you, no bridges, no power plants. I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”

And on Tuesday he announced that Iran’s entire civilization would die that night. This sounded, of course, like a lunatic threat to nuke the country, possibly triggering God-knows-what. Maybe nuclear retaliation – from China? Who knows? And no, he didn’t carry out that threat last week. Iran still exists, the war goes on, the Strait of Hormuz is now double-blockaded. But Trump shared with the world the utter lunacy that possesses him. And he still has the power to launch a nuclear war.

Maybe this won’t happen. Maybe this war will end. Maybe we’ll survive the Trump presidency. But maybe we won’t! Trump has made the treacherous insanity of the global political structure as clear as it has ever been. Mutually Assured Destruction (a.k.a., MADness)– as long as you don’t nuke me, I won’t nuke you – is absolutely flawed. Nuclear weapons won’t go away. And humanity’s future is not secure, certainly not as long as waging war and dominating (killing) “the enemy” remains at the core of global politics.

But Trump is the most obvious threat of the moment, and recently, four psychiatric experts along with public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs sent a letter to the leaders of Congress (both Republican and Democrat) warning them that the president has crossed a psychological threshold and is exhibiting in his behavior what is called “the Dark Triad” of personality traits: Machiavellianism (lack of empathy), narcissism (self-absorption) and psychopathy (anti-social behavior). The letter urges Congress to reclaim its constitutional authority over the waging of war and look into the evocation of the 25th Amendment, which could remove the president from office.

But even if this actually happens, it only addresses part of the planet’s nuclear endangerment. As Jonathan Grannoff and Steven Hendrix wrote recently at Foreign Policy in Focus:

“Whether or not the ceasefire with Iran holds, and whether or not Iran keeps its uranium stockpile and enrichment program, one thing is clear: nuclear dangers are growing.”

For instance, they note: “The war in Iran has made nuclear proliferation more likely, not less. Clearly, if Iran had nuclear weapons, it would not have been attacked. That’s a powerful object lesson for other countries in why they might want to pursue nuclear weapons themselves.”

And who knows how many countries, especially Third World countries, may suddenly start considering the value of having a nuclear arsenal? When you actually possess some nukes, the big countries will leave you alone. The Iran war has almost certainly opened up this awareness, adding further irony to its alleged goal of keeping us safe.

“This is beyond farcical and dangerously misguided,” Grannoff and Hendrix write. “It is strategic amnesia at best, sleepwalking into Armageddon at worst. . . .

“The problem is not just who possesses them; it’s the inherent complexity and fragility of nuclear systems themselves. The greatest danger may not be irrational leaders or unstable regimes, but compressed decision timelines, imperfect information, technological vulnerabilities, and the ever-present risk of human error in all nuclear systems.”

And nuclear weapons, as I say, are not going away. Even if they did, humanity is still capable of inflicting endless harm on its enemies and, indeed, on people who are simply in the way. So what has to go away – what we have to evolve beyond – is war itself. By no means am I saying this simplistically. Conflict, disagreement, rage, hatred will always be with us, but they can be addressed, indeed, healed – certainly at the personal level. Conflict resolution is a learning process for all sides. It’s definitely a creative process.

When we go to war, people’s deaths become abstractions. This is what allows war to remain embedded in global politics, with, of course, the help of the mainstream media. And thus we remain locked in the inevitability of war. Trump, in his psychopathic honesty, is shattering that inevitability; even America’s military is backing away from him.

Perhaps the “peace president” has created a starting point . . . for transcending war.

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