Manasi Pandit Long is an American-born physician whose great grandfather fought alongside Mahatma Gandhi in the successful struggle for India’s independence. She was raised in the United States but spent three formative years of her childhood in India. As a primary care physician for the underserved, she is interested in contributing to the development of a more peaceful world both here and abroad.  

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, in order to form a more perfect union, need a fresh approach to foreign policy; one that is neither isolationist nor interventionist, but rather internationally pacifist. Such a policy would promote peace by prioritizing diplomacy over military conflict and, in doing so, free up our national resources to address the more immediate problems that face the people of our nation — a faltering economy and growing wealth gap, widespread poverty and homelessness, lack of access to higher education, rising healthcare costs, and the worsening effects of climate change.

“Peace always starts from within … not out there.” 

The venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara’s words — spoken on February 10, 2026, after a grueling 108-day pilgrimage on foot from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, DC — are powerful. As the leader of the Walk of Peace, the 2,300-mile pilgrimage to DC designed to promote conversations centered on peace, kindness, and compassion to solve today’s problems, the Vietnamese-born Theravada Buddhist monk Pannakara has inspired millions with his message. While acknowledging that mankind will never be fully at peace in this world, he rejects the idea that violence and suffering are inevitable. Rather, he challenges us to look deeper into ourselves, and to learn how to simply peacefully exist; he challenges us as individuals, societies, and nations to learn the meaning of true strength. 

The United States’ foreign policy since the mid-20th century has been to exert strength and influence through an ever-growing military industrial complex. After dropping the world’s first nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and securing a decisive victory in World War II, the United States embarked on a violent counter-revolutionary agenda to reshape the world order. During the Cold War, nations in the Global South were pressured to pick a side; the choice was not between democracy and communism as many would later recount, but rather between capitalism led by the US and communism as modeled by the Soviet Union and China. Many nations rejected this pressure and instead chose a third path. They democratically elected socialist governments in an effort to enshrine their national sovereignty and protect their natural resources from foreign exploitation (Bevins 2021).  

Citing modest land reform and nationalism as a slippery slope to communism, the United States swiftly crushed virtually every such movement around the world to secure unrestricted access to strategic locations in places like Indonesia, agricultural produce in nations like Guatemala and Brazil, and precious metals in countries like Ghana (Bevins 2021). Starting with Indonesia, the largest democracy in the world at the time, the United States orchestrated military coups and provoked rebellions to overthrow democratically elected socialist and communist regimes in the Philippines, Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, Iraq, Congo, Ghana, and many other resource-rich nations across the globe (Parenti 1997). 

The economic benefits of this interventionist foreign policy are hard to ignore. From the 1930s to today, the US has experienced a historic rise in living standards that would not have occurred without the access to raw materials and natural resources gained through its often covert military campaigns to replace democratically elected communist and socialist governments with capitalist-friendly, often-fascist regimes. In other words, for the hierarchical capitalist system in the US to succeed, American leadership had to convince the world that communism and socialism were destined to fail — a goal repeatedly achieved decisively and with nonchalant brutality.   

Today, the United States “leads” the free world by holding the rest of it at gunpoint. While national leaders often claim that we intervene in conflict to “protect democracy,” “protect freedom,” or to “protect civilians,” a brief look at the history of US military intervention worldwide shows significant inconsistencies in application of these motives. Virtually nowhere are these idealistic goals more glaringly inconsistent than in the American responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to the Israeli invasion of Palestine, where civilians have borne the brunt of the war. The United States initially sent $10 billion of weaponry to Ukraine, citing the need to protect its civilian population and sovereignty against Russian aggression (ForeignAssistance.gov); since then, under the Trump administration, the withdrawal of such aid has kneecapped Ukrainian forces and further empowered Putin’s advances. In Palestine, instead of working to protect the victims of another nation’s military aggression, the United States’ official policy has been to turn a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza. The hypocrisy is painfully magnified by the billions of dollars the US provides in weaponry and other support to Israel’s most violent government to date under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Berg 2022).

As an American born from a long line of Mahatma Gandhi’s followers, it’s difficult to accept that my tax dollars are funding the death of innocent men, women, and children worldwide. From our shining beacon, we condemn violence in certain countries while actively funding it in others. As we unconvincingly advocate for world peace, our words are belied by the glorification of the military and an ever-growing stockpile of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, all in the name of “national defense.” 

Hypocrisy aside, a practical problem with the American militaristic approach to foreign policy is that it doesn’t work. When humans, especially children and adolescents, are brought up in a war zone surrounded by indiscriminate violence, they have an increased likelihood of becoming violent extremists in the future (Widom 2001). 

So what can be done? 

We can change our existing foreign policy agenda. We can treat our budget as the moral document that it is, and stop funding armed conflicts abroad — period. Freeing up billions of dollars in military appropriations would provide us the means to invest in the health of our communities at home. We would have the opportunity to directly support permanent solutions to political corruption, human rights abuses, unfair elections, and other root causes of instability and extremism worldwide, rather than continuing to fund the never-ending cycle of violence and extremism. We would finally start fighting fire with water.  

Under a pacifist international policy, we would amplify our budget for foreign aid, providing robust humanitarian support, supplies for infrastructure, and economic investment with partner nations as we see problems arising abroad. We would continue to support our allies, as we would supply them with all of these resources and more in response to an attack on their soil. Understanding that this precise rhetoric is often used to justify genocide and military aid, we would need to enshrine a clearly worded amendment to the United States Constitution stating that we would never send weapons or money to fund a foreign power’s military. We would continue to defend ourselves, maintaining a strong military for our domestic defense only — that is to say, if attacked on our soil, we would use whatever force necessary in defense, then swiftly engage diplomatically with our aggressor to seek lasting peace.

Contrary to popular belief, violence is not strength; it is the imposition of force and exploitation of others for one’s gain. It is parasitism. Strength is the ability to endure through hardship, resist destructive forces, and persevere in the face of obstacles. It is trekking thousands of miles on foot through rain, wind, snow, and rough terrain in the name of peace, as Bhikkhu Pannakara and his fellow monks did. It is the ability to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, as Jesus Christ espoused in Matthew 5:44. Strength is the ability to inspire a movement that would overthrow an empire without raising a single arm, as Mahatma Gandhi did. Unfortunately, the United States throughout its history has prioritized economic and military growth over true strength. Our overreliance on the military industrial complex has fueled a weak, parasitic economic system that benefits the few by sacrificing the many. 

There is a better, stronger way. First and foremost, we need to exercise our collective power and vote for leaders who understand these trade-offs and can act upon Pannakara’s call to action. These leaders must prioritize economic and infrastructure solutions for the everyday problems that face most Americans, for “a compassionate world does not abandon the weak and does not create more suffering” (Pannakara 2026). They also must be dedicated to domestic defense and international diplomacy, not interventionism, for “peace does not come from victory. Peace comes from the ability to live together” (Pannakara 2026).

The final step is one that is harder. For lasting change to truly occur, our shift from imperialist aggressor to a true global leader must be etched eternally in our country’s most sacred text. It is time to amend the Constitution.  

Citations

Bevins, Vincent. 2021. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. Public Affairs  

Parenti, Michael 1997. Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. City Lights Publishers. 

Berg, Raffi (22 December 2022). "Israel's most right-wing government agreed under Benjamin Netanyahu". BBC. Retrieved April 17, 2026.  

Office of Justice Programs, Widom, C. S., & Maxfield, M. G., An update on the “Cycle of violence” (2001). Washington, D.C; U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.