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Critiquing War Through a Life-Value Onto-Axiological Lens
A White Paper on Iraq, Ukraine, and Gaza
Summary
This white paper offers a rigorous, systemic critique of war by applying the Life-Value Onto-Axiological (LVOA) framework, which holds that all legitimate value is grounded in what sustains and develops life-capacities across individuals, societies, and ecosystems. Through this lens, war is diagnosed not as a tragic necessity or moral dilemma, but as a structural expression of systemic life-incoherence.
Focusing on three major contemporary conflicts — Iraq, Ukraine, and Gaza — the paper reveals how each war is underpinned by:
- Ontological violations (destruction of the foundations of life),
- Epistemological distortions (disinformation and narrative manipulation), and
- Axiological inversions (misframing violence as virtue).
Each case study is examined in detail:
- The Iraq War is shown to be an imperial war of aggression, justified through false narratives and resulting in the collapse of a sovereign nation’s civil commons and future potential.
- The Ukraine conflict is framed as a geopolitical proxy war between imperial blocs (NATO and Russia), instrumentalizing populations and foreclosing diplomatic alternatives.
- The Gaza crisis is analyzed as a case of structural genocide, settler-colonial apartheid, and systemic dehumanization, where the international community enables mass civilian annihilation through complicity and silence.
Despite differing contexts, the three cases reveal common patterns:
- Militarization of public life and discourse,
- Collapse of civil commons infrastructure,
- Long-term trauma and intergenerational suffering,
- Suppression of truth and life-based value systems,
- Reinforcement of elite power through a “Ruling Group Mind” (RGM).
In response, the paper proposes a Regenerative Peace Paradigm grounded in LVOA, which redefines peace not as the absence of conflict but as the presence of systemic coherence that enables life-capacities to flourish. It outlines five foundational pillars for such a peace:
- Ontological grounding in the sacredness of life,
- Epistemological clarity rooted in lived truth,
- Axiological coherence through the Primary Axiom of Value,
- Institutionalization of civil commons as the infrastructure of peace,
- Regenerative healing mechanisms and self-corrective feedback loops.
The paper concludes with a call to action for policymakers, activists, and global citizens to divest from war systems and reinvest in life-coherent governance, justice, and regeneration. It asserts that the future of peace lies not in military dominance but in the restoration of universal life-value recognition, across all borders and belief systems.