As U.S. hegemony continues to dwindle, Donald Trump and his international allies are making preparations to maintain some grip on world power. One of these methods includes the “Board of Peace,” which was ostensibly created to reconstruct Gaza, but has demonstrated yet another attempt by Trump to undermine international law.

Yanis Varoufakis, the Secretary-General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), the former Finance Minister of Greece and author of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism joins host Chris Hedges to discuss what the Board of Peace really means and how it relates to Trump’s larger geopolitical goals, including one seeking to curb China’s rising influence on the world stage.

When it comes to the European Union, Varoufakis explains that European nations are “freaking out about the Board of Peace not only replacing the United Nations, but also targeting them. And this is what they get for ignoring the very clear signs that Trump was sending their way, that he’s out to get them, that he’s no longer interested in having vassals that think that they are part of a Western multilateral design… it seems to me that the Donald Trump policy is forcing his allies, so to speak, firstly to accept that the genocide will continue. Secondly, not to dare say anything about it. And third, go into these spasms of quasi-autonomy.”

As for China, Varoufakis says that Trump understands that the U.S. will have to coexist with the East Asian nation but must also to rein in the Europeans while maintaining control of the Western hemisphere, likening the tentacles of the American empire to a bicycle wheel. “The bicycle wheel has a hub in the middle and it’s got spokes… you can break one or two or three spokes and the wheel still works,” Varoufakis says. “As long as you are the hub and you negotiate with each spoke separately, you keep them separate and you don’t allow them to get together and negotiate with you collectively, then you can extend your hegemony and make a lot of money in the process.”

While the context Trump faces with China rising on the world stage has pushed the United States into a new paradigm, Varoufakis casts doubt on the idea that Trump’s colonialism is much different than that conducted within the liberal international world order. “Well, I don’t want to mythologize the world we’re exiting,” he says. “Because you see, this is what liberal centrists do, radical centrists. They say, everything was so good until this man [Trump] came and destroyed it. I’m sorry, it wasn’t good. You know…I grew up in a NATO country that was a fascist dictatorship. So when people say, NATO is democracy. No, I’m sorry. It’s not for me.”

Palestinian professor and activist Amin Husain knows what Western settler colonialism looks, sounds and feels like. Growing up in Palestine, Husain experienced the iron grip of Israeli force and came to understand how important it was to struggle against such a powerful imperial entity, even in the face of defeat.

In the United States, Husain applied his learned experience to organize and educate about how colonialism and imperialism not only exists in the modern world, but is intertwined in the economy and culture of the global capitalist world order. Husain joins host Chris Hedges to chronicle his story and his approach to fighting settler colonialism, which, after October 7th, led to his firing from New York University.

“A lot of people exceptionalize Palestine, but what Palestine does is clarify what is happening in the world. It’s one type of future,” Husain explains.

Some of Husain’s activism work involved organizing alternative tours in museums such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where the very layout and structure of the museum was challenged in a way that brought material change.

“You go into a museum and you think that that’s neutral but this is how the nation state narrative gets perpetuated from a very young age so that you think it’s normal. There’s nothing normal about a 36-foot monument that’s about imperialism and white supremacy,” Husain says of the infamous Teddy Roosevelt statue depicting the president riding on horseback accompanied by a colonized Native American and African, each wielding guns.

Husain’s work, which has been censored by the military-contracting Big Tech companies, demonstrates a model of resilience and education that can challenge power and cultivate community.

Lawlessness has been a common theme characterizing the events of the first weeks of the year. The kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the murder of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, the threat of bombing Iran by the Trump administration. Perhaps one of the worst violations of the law has slipped under the radar amidst the chaos — the continued genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the United Nations’ abetting of Israel and the U.S.’s efforts to ethnically cleanse the region.

Professor Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar of the Middle East, knows better than anyone how to interpret international action at the hands of the United Nations in relation to Palestine and Israel. As for the adoption of Resolution 2803 (2025) in November, Finkelstein tells host Chris Hedges, “[The resolution] abolished 70 years of UN history… [It] gave Gaza to Donald J. Trump.”

The resolution, Finkelstein points out, legitimizes Israel and the U.S.’s ethnonationalist and imperialist goals and delegitimizes the sanctity of international law. He explains, “there was a robust consensus on how to resolve the conflict, which means that Israel didn’t have a leg to stand on. But guess what? It now has a leg to stand on. It has you right here.”