Rethinking Global Security: A Conversation With Peace Expert Jan Oberg
Posted: 17th November 2025
This interview is conducted by Roughly Chinese Pod. I found it quite useful. I’ve copied a few excerpts below…but there’s so much more.
(Audio only)
“So what we are devoted to and have been devoted to actually, at New Year for 40 years, is to support academically and public education wise, the Article 1 of the United Nations Charter, which says that peace shall be established by peaceful means. That means basically all countries in the world, with the exclusion or the exception of, let’s say Iceland and Costa Rica, everybody’s violating the UN Charter because we are not prepared, we are not spending much money on preparing ourselves for peaceful ways of achieving peace. We are arming ourselves to death and that’s what we’re working against.”
“Now, I was there the days in which the Syrian government and the Russians liberated Eastern Aleppo from al-Nusra. That means America and Western supported terrorists who had occupied Eastern Aleppo for four and a half years. And I saw these children coming out after four and a half years. That means, in many cases, more than half of their lives, they had lived in warfare. And those eyes I will not forget because these children, let’s say five, ten years, they had seen more bad things that any human being should see in a whole lifetime.”
“So I have, intellectually, I knew violence was a bad idea because I read, basically, a lot of what Gandhi wrote, and I’ve studied nonviolence of other theoreticians and Gene Sharp and whatever. But seeing the reality, that convinced me 110% that there is the most useful, the most necessary, the most meaningful life you can live is to work for peace.”
“We are run by our leaders. Of course, there are exceptions, but now I’m taking it in grosser modo. We are run by people, led by people, misled by people who are elements of what I would call cacistocracy. And cacistocracy is the opposite, if you will, of aristocracy or meritocracy in the sense that it means governance by the least able and least good people. It’s a political science. Nobody knows the word cacistocracy, but that’s what it means.”
“Now on top of that, which many people don’t know, Sweden unilaterally was forced to accept or accepted 17 military bases on Swedish territory. The Finns got 15 American bases, the Norwegians got seven, eight bases, and Denmark got three. That means 42 military bases in Scandinavia. Now that was on top of the NATO membership. So these things happened and they happened in a completely undemocratic way because the Minister of Defense is sent over to Pentagon Science, a 10-year binding contract that we will accept 17 bases in Sweden. Half a year later, it comes up in the parliament and is passed through because the media has made it, you know, Russians are coming to eat our children tomorrow morning, so we better join and have NATO bases, right? There’s no analysis. It’s all emotionalism. People like me who say, hey, wait a minute, there could be some problems with joining NATO, do not have access to the media anymore.”
“That’s how it works. The question of US as a peacemaker is bizarre because the United States is a country that since 45 has murdered most people around the world. It’s the most armed country in human history.”
From Wave Media: Rethinking Global Security: A Conversation with Peace Expert Dr. Jan Oberg | Roughly Chinese Pod EP13, Oct 28, 2025