At the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War on September 3, Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that today, humanity again has to choose between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, win-win cooperation and zero-sum game. He stressed that the Chinese people firmly stand on the right side of history and the progress of human civilization. China will remain committed to the path of peaceful development, and join hands with all peoples around the world in building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Just three days later, on September 6, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming the Department of Defense back to the Department of War. At the signing ceremony, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth addressed Trump with these words: "The War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It is going to fight to win, not not to lose. We are going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders." 

The two quotations provide a stark summation of the divergent paths that China and the U.S. are on. While China's military parade on its Victory Day deeply impressed the world, it also sent a clear message of China's commitment to peace. Xi repeated the word peace seven times in his brief eight-minute address. As the parade kicked off, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Democratic People's Republic of Korea head of state Kim Jong Un and Xi entered the parade side by side with dozens of Global South leaders behind them. This sent a powerful message; not of war, but of the deep support that China's commitment to peace carries among the peoples and nations of the Global Majority.

Western media and political commentators expressed shock and fear at the level of precision and discipline of China's military choreography and the power of its military arsenal. But what they missed completely was how the powerful symbolism of both Xi's speech and the parade reflect the true direction of the Chinese nation. China's military parade was not a war game, but an expression of a deep commitment to ensuring the horrors inflicted on the Chinese people during the period of Japanese aggression never happen again. 

Xi remarked during his commemoration speech that a primary duty of the armed services is to safeguard China's sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity. China on September 1 unveiled the Global Governance Initiative to coincide with Victory Day, a framework for a more just global governance system which specifically outlines a commitment to sovereign equality as its bedrock. Such a commitment was expressed in China's participation in an emergency BRICS virtual summit and is a hallmark of its win-win cooperation model in all spheres of development. (BRICS is the acronym for an emerging-market cooperative mechanism that initially comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—Ed.) 

The Trump administration, on the other hand, has not only changed the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War, but has also put the name change into practice. According to Politico, the U.S. national "defense" strategy on Hegseth's desk will take the Pentagon's "maximum lethality" to the homefront and the Western hemisphere. In many ways, it already has. The U.S. military killed 11 people in a strike on a speed boat off the coast of Venezuela and has deployed fighter jets and other assets to the Caribbean under the pretext of fighting "drug cartels." And Trump has declared war on American cities, writing in a post on Truth Social "Chicago is about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR."

The U.S. and China's divergent paths are clear: Washington is committing to war, China is committing to peace. But why? The simple answer resides in the respective political economies of each country. U.S. hegemony is dependent on wars of aggression. Wars of aggression satisfy the need for profits for private monopolies in the military industrial complex. They also ensure private Wall Street investors possess the political and economic conditions required for speculation and market expansion.

So Venezuela's government must be overthrown, a project of the U.S. going decades back, because it doesn't comply with U.S. dictates. The same goes for the dozens of nations in the Global South under U.S. sanctions or the threat of war. Even Gaza, of which the humanitarian catastrophe is now labeled a "genocide" by many, is viewed by the Trump administration as a possible source of profitable development once cleared of the Palestinian population militarily. Militarized city streets in the U.S. serve a similar function of keeping people afraid of their government and boosting police and border enforcement budgets.

China's system of development, on the contrary, depends on peace. War won't win China friends; and China's military, no matter how advanced, is not built to project dominance. Rather, China's power resides in its capacity to attract nations to come toward economic and political arrangements that work for both sides. In Laos, this has led to the development of the China-Laos high-speed rail to boost investment, tourism and development for both countries. In Pakistan, this has led to the country's first metro system in the city of Lahore. And there are thousands of such examples across the world as part of China's massive Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to boost connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. More than 140 countries worldwide have joined the initiative.

War brings chaos and instability. It also brings pain and humanitarian catastrophe. China's Century of Humiliation, ending with the victory against brutal Japanese aggression, remains etched in the collective memories of the Chinese people. China has chosen the path of "never again" when it comes to war. It is widely understood in China that without peace, none of China's achievements in poverty alleviation, high-technology, infrastructure development, ecological restoration, global cooperation and modernization would have been possible.

But for the world to truly know peace, the U.S. must get off the path of endless war. The threat of nuclear war is closer than ever as arms-control treaties erode and the U.S. pushes toward conflict with nuclear powers it deems rivals. U.S.-backed and driven conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine alone have led to massive human loss and disrupted development and stability worldwide. They've also exacerbated the overall neglect of the needs of people in the U.S., and sown distrust and declining legitimacy for an ever-growing number of people. Despite Trump's campaign promise to conduct himself as the "peace president," endless war remains a staple of U.S. foreign policy that presents a burning question for both Americans and the world: which way to true world peace? BR

The author is a geopolitical analyst and independent journalist based in the U.S.