In his 2024 presidential campaign and in recent months, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly cast himself as a peacemaker—while simultaneously escalating threats, normalizing coercion, and deepening fear within the United States and internationally. In Venezuela, Trump welcomed an offer from government opposition leader María Corina Machado to symbolically share her Nobel Peace Prize as an “honor,” before sidelining her in favor of a more pliable interim authority tied to the previous regime. On Greenland, he has insisted that US ownership of the island is necessary for “psychological” and strategic reasons, refusing to rule out military force against a NATO ally and entertaining inducement and disinformation campaigns to sway a referendum. On Iran, Trump has urged protesters to “take over” their institutions, promising that “help is on its way,” even as death tolls rise, executions loom, and the nature of that help remains ominously undefined. (Reuters)

In the US, Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy federal troops against protesters in Minneapolis, following weeks of unrest sparked by a fatal shooting during immigration enforcement operations. Framing demonstrators as “insurrectionists” and federal officers as “patriots,” Trump has presented military force as a pathway to restoring order and peace—over the objections of state officials and amid lawsuits alleging racial profiling and warrantless arrests. The result is a familiar pattern: a rhetoric of peace as a promised outcome while force, intimidation, and spectacle are normalized as the means.

Across these disparate contexts—Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, and Minneapolis—the throughline is both unpredictability and the repeated substitution of personal authority for ethical restraint. Peace, here, simply means compliance with power. Buddhist history offers a striking analogue in the figure of Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin, whose reformist rhetoric and charismatic certainty nearly tore the early sangha apart.

In early Buddhist texts, Devadatta is not a simple villain. He is disciplined, eloquent, and persuasive; someone whose moral seriousness appears, at least initially, beyond reproach. He proposes stricter ascetic rules for the sangha, presenting them as necessary to preserve the purity of the Dharma amid rapid growth and increasing royal patronage. To many monks who were no doubt anxious about decline and eager for clarity, his message resonates. He offers certainty where there is ambiguity, discipline instead of compromise, decisive leadership where restraint seems slow.

Yet Devadatta’s reforms are inseparable from his ambition to rule. When the Buddha declines to impose these rules universally, Devadatta frames this restraint as moral weakness and positions himself as the true guardian of the Buddhist community. He cultivates alliances with political power, seeks to split the sangha, and ultimately escalates to violence, including attempts on the Buddha’s life. What he offers as peace through purity reveals itself as attempted control through coercion.

This dynamic—moral language leveraged to justify domination—reappears often when leaders promise peace while threatening force. In Greenland, Trump’s insistence that only American ownership can ensure Arctic stability has been paired with rhetoric that Greenlanders describe as disrespectful and colonial, producing fear and anger rather than trust. In Venezuela, praise for “peace, freedom, and democracy” quickly gave way to backing an interim leader acceptable to Washington, despite her deep ties to a discredited regime. In Iran, exhortations to protest are issued from afar, without accountability for the lives placed at risk or clarity about what “help” entails. And in Minneapolis, the promise to “quickly put an end to the travesty” by deploying troops recasts rising militarization as peacemaking, even as it risks further violence and erosion of civil trust.

The Buddha’s sangha was not insulated from politics. It relied on public trust and royal patronage. A schism threatened not only spiritual cohesion but material survival. Devadatta understood this well. By aligning himself with rulers and mobilizing grievances among monks, he sought to replace the Buddha’s authority with his own. Had he succeeded, the sangha would likely have become an instrument of state power, enforcing conformity rather than cultivating liberation.

The Buddha’s response is telling. He does not counter Devadatta with force or propaganda. He refuses to collapse discernment into decree. Instead, he trusts practice over performance and restraint over reaction, allowing Devadatta’s ambitions to reveal themselves through their consequences. The sangha survives because leadership is measured in the depth of moral character, not by charisma or rhetorical certainty.

This stands in sharp contrast to contemporary politics, where peace is often equated with compliance and stability with silence. In Minneapolis, federal raids, tear gas, and the threat of troops have deepened fear among immigrant communities and fueled protests, prompting school closures and emergency measures. State officials have pleaded for de-escalation, warning that campaigns of retribution erode trust and make genuine safety harder to achieve. The specter of the Insurrection Act—historically invoked at the request of local authorities—now hangs over the city as a unilateral threat, transforming a legal instrument into a symbol of domination.

In Greenland, residents have spoken plainly, telling the world that they cannot be bought. The administration’s belief that incentives, pressure, or intimidation can secure alignment has hardened opposition and revived memories of colonial domination. Even those open to independence report being repelled by rhetoric that treats them as assets rather than people. Peace, here, is framed as ownership and control—an end to be achieved, as Trump says, “whether they like it or not.” (Politico)

In Iran, the logic is inverted but no less troubling. Protesters are encouraged to escalate, to “take over,” while Trump retains plausible deniability about what follows. Peace is promised as a future reward, but the immediate costs are borne by those facing bullets, prisons, and gallows. Buddhism would recognize this as a profound ethical failure: inciting action without sharing risk, speaking of justice while refusing responsibility for harm. Even if tensions calm in Iran or certain Venezuelans celebrate the arrest of their leader, which they might, what is the cost in terms of moral order?

In Minneapolis, the pattern returns to domestic soil. Protests born of people caring for their neighbors are met with the language of insurrection and the threat of overwhelming force. The distinction between maintaining order and imposing submission blurs. When peace is defined as the absence of visible dissent—secured by troops rather than trust—it becomes indistinguishable from repression.

Devadatta’s certainty operated in much the same way. Convinced of his righteousness, he felt authorized to coerce, divide, and ultimately to kill. His tragedy—and the lesson it carries—is that moral language, when severed from compassion and restraint, becomes a weapon.

Buddhism repeatedly urges communities to judge leaders not by eloquence, confidence, or symbolic gestures, but by the effects of their actions. Do they reduce greed, hatred, and delusion? Or do they inflame them while speaking noble words?

False peacemakers thrive when discernment is outsourced, when communities mistake decisiveness for wisdom and charisma for care. Peace prizes, reformist slogans, and promises of “help” are no substitute for ethical practice. The Buddha’s counsel is demanding but clear: peace is not claimed, transferred, or imposed; it is practiced—patiently, accountably, and with reverence for those whose lives bear its costs.

From Devadatta’s failed attempt to take over the sangha to contemporary interventions abroad and militarized responses at home, the pattern endures. The gravest dangers often arrive speaking the language of peace. The work of discernment—then as now—belongs to us all.

In a time of rising global tensions, deepening division, and widespread mistrust, the Dharma offers steadiness, dispassion, and moral clarity. Buddhism has never promised that we can extinguish every fire that arises in the world, nor that awakening insulates us from danger or loss. Yet it has always insisted that the vow to alleviate suffering requires our attention and, at times, our embodied presence.

This truth was articulated with stark honesty this week by an Episcopal bishop from New Hampshire, Robert Hirschfeld, who invoked the memory of Jonathan Daniels, the seminary student killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Alabama during the US civil rights movement. Addressing fellow clergy, Hirschfeld warned that, “. . . we may be entering into that same witness. And I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.” (NHPR)

For Buddhists, such words resonate uncomfortably but clearly. The Middle Way is not neutrality in the face of harm or an excuse for disengagement. The story of Devadatta reminds us that action severed from wisdom quickly curdles into coercion and that moral urgency untethered from compassion becomes yet another form of violence. As we respond to this moment—whether through protest, presence, speech, or service—let us do so grounded in the Dharma’s deepest teachings. And let us act from love rather than hate, from clarity rather than confusion, and from wisdom that refuses both despair and domination.

See more

Iran protests: Trump stalls on US intervention leaving an uncertain future for a bitterly divided nation – expert Q&A (The Conversation)
She’s offered to share her Nobel with Trump. But what might Machado ask for in return? (BBC News)
Trump wants Greenlanders to join the US. His comments are making that harder. (Politico)
Trump urges Iranians to keep protesting, saying ‘help is on its way’ (Reuters)
Trump threatens to use Insurrection Act to put down protests in Minneapolis (PBS)
NH bishop urges clergy to meet the political moment, and ‘make sure they have their wills written’ (NHPR)

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