Expert Analyst: International Politics, Middle East & Nonviolent Action
Stephen Zunes’ April 2021 report* reviews the chronology of the resistance struggle in Sudan, the critical role of nonviolent discipline, other factors contributing to the movement’s success, and the current political situation. It seeks to explain how the movement was…
Truthout, March 2, 2021, by Stephen Zunes [source] The US has bombed Syria more than 20,000 times over the past eight years, so last week’s attack on a border post in northeastern Syria, which killed 22 militiamen and apparently no…
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DemocracyNow! Feb. 5, 2021, full transcript and video President Donald Trump broke with decades of U.S. foreign policy in the waning days of his administration and recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a territory the country has occupied since 1975…
Now with a working majority, the Democrats have named Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This has rung alarm bells for advocates of peace, human rights and international law, given that Menendez has opposed the Iran nuclear agreement, repeatedly attacked the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, supported unconditional military aid to governments that have used the weapons in the commission of war crimes, and taken other positions far closer to those of Republicans than rank-and-file Democrats.
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Activists prepared for months, expecting Trump to steal the election. They were right, and he failed.
Since President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive win in November, there has been understandable consternation at the efforts by President Trump and his supporters to steal the election. It is also important to understand why, so far, and despite the recent violence in Washington, his attempts have been unsuccessful.
THE WAR BETWEEN Armenia and Azerbaijan this past autumn was an avoidable tragedy.
The disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region has been populated since at least the second century B.C.E. by Armenians, one of the world’s oldest Christian civilizations. The Muslim Azeris and others have lived there and in neighboring areas for centuries as well, and the region was ethnically mixed (albeit majority Armenian) when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Last week, President Trump formally recognized Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara as part of a deal to get Morocco to normalize relations with Israel. But Morocco’s claim on Western Sahara is rejected by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union and a broad consensus of international legal scholars that consider the region a non-self-governing territory that must be allowed an act of self-determination. This is why no country had formally recognized Morocco’s takeover — until now.
On December 10, the United States became the only country to formally recognize Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony forcibly seized by Moroccan forces in 1975. Trump’s proclamation is directly counter to a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark World Court ruling calling for self-determination.
it’s not often that Western Sahara makes international headlines, but in mid November it did: Nov. 14 marked the tragic—if unsurprising—breakup of a tenuous, 29-year cease-fire in Western Sahara between the occupying Moroccan
government and pro-independence fighters. The outbreak of violence is concerning not only because it flew in the face of nearly three decades of relative stasis, but also because Western governments’ reflexive response to the resurgent conflict may be to upend—and thereby hamper and delegitimize for perpetuity—more than 75 years of established international legal principles. It is imperative that the global community realize that, in both Western Sahara and Morocco, the path forward lies in adhering to international law, not overriding it.
Late last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. government finds the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign to be inherently “anti-Semitic.” He pledged to “immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw U.S. government support for such groups” and urged all nations to “recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has faced widespread international condemnation for his recent assertions that illegal Israeli settlements constructed in the occupied West Bank are somehow legal and part of Israel, and that products from these colonies on confiscated Palestinian land should be labeled as “Made in Israel.” What fewer are discussing, however, is that while these proclamations are unprecedented in their scope, they are in fact the culmination of decades of bipartisan support for Israeli expansionism.
President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of Antony Blinken for secretary of state is a worrying sign. Despite Biden owing his election to the Democratic Party’s progressive base and left-leaning independents, he has nominated someone The Washington Post has described as having “a centrist view of the world” and who has “supported interventionist positions.”
While a likely Republican-controlled Senate could limit many of the progressive domestic policies President-elect Joe Biden has promised to enact, presidents have far more leeway to advance their agenda in the realm of foreign policy. As a result, Biden — who has perhaps the most extensive background in foreign affairs of any new president in U.S. history — has the ability to make a positive difference. While he will certainly be an improvement over Donald Trump, Biden’s record is well to the right of most Democratic voters.
President Donald Trump’s refusal to agree to a peaceful transfer of power has raised concerns that the Republicans may try to steal the 2020 Presidential Election. If Trump and his Republican allies attempt to invalidate the election results, would enough Americans be able to mobilize to stop it?
Discussion has grown for months about how the upcoming U.S. election results could be contested and possibly subverted.
No one knows for certain what will happen, but there are precedents we can learn from about how attempts to overturn election results have been stopped.
Nonviolence International, Beautiful Trouble, BlackOUT Collective, and OR Books present a webinar on: “Democracy Defense: Advice from Activists Around the World.”