US Foreign Policy

Make Normalizing Relations With Cuba A Priority

June 16, 2021 Medea Benjamin, Foreign Policy In Focus. Create! Blockade, Cuba, Diplomacy, US Foreign Policy

Silvia from Miami, Eduardo from Hialeah, Abel from Lakeland. The names pour in on the donations page for “Syringes to Cuba” as Carlos Lazo promotes the campaign on his popular Facebook livestream. An energetic Cuban-American high school teacher in Seattle, Lazo created a group called Puentes de Amor, Bridges of Love, to unite Cuban Americans who want to lift the searing U.S. blockade that is immiserating their loved ones on the island. Puentes de Amor is the latest addition to the Syringes to Cuba initiative, which was started by the Saving Lives Campaign and the humanitarian organization Global Health Partners to help Cuba vaccinate its people against COVID-19.

It’s Time To Change Liberal Discourse About Hamas

June 11, 2021 Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada. Educate! Israel, Palestine, US Foreign Policy, Wars and Militarism

Representative Ilhan Omar may have thought she was doing Palestinians a favor when she challenged Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a congressional hearing on Monday. But her comments about Hamas only reinforce Israeli propaganda delegitmizing Palestinian resistance. Sadly Omar’s both-sidesism is a common feature of discourse even among ostensibly pro-Palestinian liberals. Omar posted this video clip of her exchange with Blinken. In her tweet she wrote that “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity.” She claimed, “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan and the Taliban.” Omar rightly challenges Blinken over US opposition to the International Criminal Court investigation of these alleged “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

In 2018, The US Was At War With Uyghur Terrorists

May 2, 2021 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Afghanistan War, Terrorists, US Foreign Policy, Uyghurs

Washington, DC - In the dying months of his administration, President Donald Trump removed from the United States terrorist list a little-known paramilitary organization called ETIM, an acronym that stands for either the East Turkestan Independence Movement or the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, depending on whom one asks. The group is also sometimes known as the [East] Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP or ETIP). Explaining the decision, the State Department said that “ETIM was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.” The move was hailed by a wide range of Uyghur groups in the United States, who saw it as a step towards blocking China’s actions against Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province.

When Regime Change Does Not Change A Thing

April 25, 2021 Moon of Alabama. Educate! Joe Biden, State Department, Trump, US Foreign Policy

Some people think that a change in government actually changes things. Not so. Moon of Alabma demonstrates through a series of tweets, the striking consistency of US foreign policy from one administration to the next regardless of whether it is Democratic or Republican.

Biden’s Appeasement Of Hawks And Neocons Is Crippling His Diplomacy

April 24, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. Educate! Joe Biden, Pentagon, US Foreign Policy, Wars and Militarism

President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war. Biden’s failure to quickly recommit to the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as Senator Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, provided a critical delay that has been used by opponents to undermine the difficult shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna to restore the agreement. The attempts to derail talks range from the introduction of the Maximum Pressure Act on April 21 to codify the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran to Israel’s cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

Why Xinjiang Is Emerging As The Epicenter Of The US Cold War On China

April 18, 2021 Vijay Prashad and Jie Xiong, People's Dispatch. Educate! China, New Cold War, US Foreign Policy, Xinjiang

On March 22, 2021, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken authorized sanctions against Wang Junzheng, the secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Committee of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (XPSB). These sanctions, Blinken said, have been put in place against Wang Junzheng and Chen Mingguo because they are accused of being party to “genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.” The US Treasury Department followed suit with its own sanctions. Both Wang Junzheng and Chen Mingguo responded by condemning these sanctions that were not only imposed by the US but also by Canada, the UK and the EU.

Pentagon Campaign To Recruit Vietnam Against China Exposes Delusions Of War Strategy

April 10, 2021 Gareth Porter, The Grayzone. Educate! China, New Cold War, US Foreign Policy, Vietnam

When the Pentagon began gearing up for a future war with China in 2018, Defense Department officials quickly realized that they needed access to Vietnamese territory for troops armed with missiles to hit Chinese ships in a US-China conflict. So they initiated an aggressive campaign to lobby the Vietnamese government, and even Communist Party officials, in the hope that they would eventually support an agreement to provide them the permission. But a Grayzone investigation of the Pentagon’s lobbying push in Vietnam shows what a delusional exercise it was from its inception. In a fit of self-deception that highlighted the desperation behind the bid, the US military ignored abundant evidence that Vietnam had no intention of giving up its longstanding, firmly grounded policy of equidistance between the United States and China.

The US Can’t Control The World

April 8, 2021 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Joe Biden, Media, US Foreign Policy, US Hegemony

As this columnist has pointed out, Joe Biden’s foreign policy differs little from that of his predecessor Donald Trump. The imperatives of the United States hegemon require treating the rest of the world as either willing vassals or as sworn enemies. Any nation that threatens economic supremacy or the ability to thwart foreign policy directives is labeled an adversary and faces an onslaught of governmental and corporate media attacks. This dynamic remains unchanged and the Biden administration has only worsened an already bad situation. The troubles start at the top with the president himself. When asked by George Stephanopoulos in an ABC news interview if Vladimir Putin is “a killer” Biden answered in the affirmative.

Meeting To Revive Iran Nuclear Deal Begins In Vienna

April 7, 2021 Telesur English. Educate! Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy

The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the Iran nuclear deal—resumed talks in Vienna on Tuesday, with the lifting of sanctions on Iran and nuclear implementation measures at the center of the agenda. Representatives from Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union met for an hour. Although not at the session, the US envoy remained a few meters away from the venue, which was understood as a gesture of willingness to rescue the agreement. Several participants qualified the meeting as positive, including Russia's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, who stressed the "success" of the meeting.

The Necessity Of Dismantling The US

April 6, 2021 Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Hampton Think. Strategize! Military Budget, Neoliberalism, United States, US Foreign Policy

On February 26th, I interviewed Ajamu Baraka for my podcast. Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles. He is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. He is a National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, whose activities we discussed. Baraka has taught political science at various universities and has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

Is The Long War Finally Ending?

April 3, 2021 John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus. Educate! Afghanistan War, Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy, Wars and Militarism

In October 1944, with the end of World War II in sight, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin passed a note back and forth to each other at a conference in Moscow. On the piece of paper, Churchill had assigned percentages to several Eastern European countries. Stalin amended the numbers, and Churchill agreed. The deal remained secret for nearly a decade. The percentages on the piece of paper referred to the amount of influence that the Soviet Union and the West would wield in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece, with the first three countries falling in the Soviet sphere, control divided evenly in Yugoslavia, and Greece staying in the Western camp. It was the first major articulation of the geopolitical “spheres of influence” that would characterize the Cold War era.

Will Biden’s Central American Plan Slow Migration?

March 31, 2021 Aviva Chomsky, Tom Dispatch. Educate! Border, Immigration, Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy

Joe Biden entered the White House with some inspiring yet contradictory positions on immigration and Central America. He promised to reverse Donald Trump’s draconian anti-immigrant policies while, through his “Plan to Build Security and Prosperity in Partnership with the People of Central America,” restoring “U.S. leadership in the region” that he claimed Trump had abandoned. For Central Americans, though, such “leadership” has an ominous ring. Although the second half of his plan’s name does, in fact, echo that of left-wing, grassroots organizations like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), its content highlights a version of security and prosperity in that region that’s more Cold War-like than CISPES-like. Instead of solidarity (or even partnership) with Central America, Biden’s plan actually...

Biden’s Venezuela Policy: Continuity With Trump

March 29, 2021 Steve Ellner, The Analysis. Educate! Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy, US Sanctions, Venezuela

Welcome to theAnalysis, I’m Greg Wilpert. Recently, the Biden administration announced that Venezuelans living in the United States would be able to qualify for temporary protected status or TPS. This means that about 300,000 Venezuelans could remain in the U.S. for another 18 months or longer if the program is extended. Also recently, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had a phone call with so-called interim president and hard-line opposition leader Juan Guaidó, where Blinken reaffirmed that the United States continues to recognize Ecuador as the legitimate president of Venezuela, even though he no longer leads Venezuela’s national assembly and was never elected. The European Union, in contrast, withdrew its recognition of Guaidó following last December’s legislative elections in Venezuela.

Washington’s Delusion Of Endless World Dominion

March 24, 2021 Alfred McCoy, Tom Dispatch. Educate! China, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy

Empires live and die by their illusions. Visions of empowerment can inspire nations to scale the heights of global hegemony. Similarly, however, illusions of omnipotence can send fading empires crashing into oblivion. So it was with Great Britain in the 1950s and so it may be with the United States today. By 1956, Britain had exploited its global empire shamelessly for a decade in an effort to lift its domestic economy out of the rubble of World War II. It was looking forward to doing so for many decades to come. Then an obscure Egyptian army colonel named Gamal Abdel Nasser seized the Suez Canal and Britain’s establishment erupted in a paroxysm of racist outrage.

Ten Problems With Biden’s Foreign Policy And One Solution

March 15, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. Create! Joe Biden, Peace, US Foreign Policy, Wars and Militarism

The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed--or even infuriated. There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama's New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires. By and large though, Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy.

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