A coalition of 167 leading Asian progressive intellectuals, including figures such as former Seoul Education Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon and Shanghai University Professor Wang Xiaoming, has issued a joint statement decrying the military interventions initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump. The statement highlights Trump’s actions in Iran and Venezuela, condemning them as aggressive and warning that the current trend threatens both international law and the future of state sovereignty. It marks the first time such a prominent statement has surfaced from Asian scholars opposing Trump's policies, with plans to gather more signatures until the 26th, increasing the voice of academic dissent against intrusive foreign policy.

In their declaration, the scholars articulated the dangers of the U.S. consistently subordinating international law and multilateralism to its own national interests under the guise of military force. They drew attention to incidents such as the attempted abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and military operations in Iran, labeling these actions as part of a broader pattern of coercive diplomacy that disrespects both sovereignty and international norms. They warned that if the principle of forbidding the use of force, as outlined by the UN Charter, is violated, it could revert world order to a pre-modern state based solely on power dynamics.

The statement also underscores that solutions to the political dilemmas in countries like Venezuela and Iran should be led by their own people, not imposed through foreign intervention. The intellectual coalition emphasized that opposing U.S. interventionist policies does not equate to supporting the current regimes in those nations. Instead, they called for genuine reform based on popular demand to restore human rights and freedoms, advocating for reflective change rather than external imposition of political ideologies.