Expert Analyst: International Politics, Middle East & Nonviolent Action
Truthout, April 17, 2026: Democrats share responsibility with the GOP for creating the climate that made such a war possible. Unlike the invasion of Iraq, which received the support of a sizable minority of congressional Democrats, Donald Trump’s war on…
Counterpunch, May 26, 2025, by Daniel Falcone [source]. Quotes Zunes on Trump’s dangerous militarism, despite isolationist rhetoric
The Progressive September 28, 2016: Despite Hillary Clinton’s shellacking of Donald Trump in Monday’s debate, polls show the presidential race remains disturbingly close.
In their remarks to the nation following the Orlando massacre, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump made their differences—and disturbing similarities—crystal clear.
President Abdelaziz was not a defining figure in the revolution. I mean, he was not the equivalent of Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro or Mao Zedong. The Polisario has traditionally practiced more of a collective leadership. At the same time, he played a very important role in terms of holding the movement together through a long and arduous struggle. Unlike many liberation struggles, it did not split into factions. They were able to keep a cohesive unit, both during the armed struggle against Morocco and subsequently in the diplomatic efforts to win recognition of so many countries, to keep the issue, if not on the front pages here in the United States, at least in the United Nations and various regional organizations. And we’re seeing the beginnings of an international solidarity movement, as well.
A fight is brewing as Democrats prepare to debate U.S. policy on Israel at their national convention in July. Bernie Sanders’ appointees to the platform committee Cornel West and James Zogby plan to challenge the party establishment’s uncritical support for an increasingly aggressive, right wing Israeli government.
Turkey’s march towards authoritarianism took another dangerous turn this past week with the forced resignation of moderate Islamist Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, apparently at the insistence of President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.
The foreign policy divide between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders could not have been more obvious than in last week’s debate in Brooklyn when the moderator brought forward the issue of Israel and Palestine. The answers they gave not only revealed differing emphases among two politicians who both strongly identify as being “pro-Israel,” it revealed a striking contrast regarding the role the United States should play as a mediator in international conflicts and attitudes towards international humanitarian law.
In 2002, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York voted to authorize the Iraq War; her rival for the Democratic nomination for president, Bernie Sanders, opposed it. Clinton’s vote continues to haunt her on the campaign trail – and for good reason.
During the 1980s, the United States was seriously divided over U.S. policy toward Central America. The Reagan administration was propping up a brutal military-backed regime in El Salvador that was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including priests, nuns and catechists, along with labor, student and human rights leaders, as well as peasants who happened to live in areas supporting the opposition.
On March 3, Berta Cáceres, a brave and outspoken indigenous Honduran environmental activist and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize [1], was gunned down in her hometown of La Esperanza. Erika Guevara-Rosas [2], Americas director for Amnesty International, noted how “For years, she had been the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment and threats to stop her from defending the rights of indigenous communities.”
Despite Hillary Clinton’s reputation as a liberal, the record suggests her presidency would push America toward a more militaristic approach to the region.
Feminists who oppose Hillary Clinton’s imperialism can’t just challenge her foreign policy. We have to challenge the sexist attacks against her, too.
Clinton supporters want Democratic voters to forgive their candidate’s support for the most disastrous foreign policy decision in decades. They shouldn’t.
Supporters of international law have expressed consternation that the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president — like most of her potential Republican rivals — strongly supported the illegal U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Hillary Clinton’s support for the Bush administration’s request for war authorization effectively placed her in opposition to the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles forbidding such wars of aggression. Ironically, these important international legal standards were in large part designed by officials from administrations of the very political party she hopes to represent in the contest for the White House.
Supporters of the international legal framework – which has, with mixed success, governed international affairs since the end of World War II – have long expressed concerns over the prospect of former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton becoming president. Her support for the US invasion of Iraq (a flagrant violation of the UN Charter), as well as her hostility toward the International Criminal Court, her support for international recognition of Morocco’s illegal annexation of occupied Western Sahara, and her attacks against the United Nations and a number of its key agencies raise concerns that her election would bring a return to the Bush administration’s neoconservative rejection of longstanding international legal principles.
More than a dozen years later, Hillary Clinton is still being haunted by her decision to break with the majority of her Congressional Democratic colleagues and vote in favor of President George W. Bush’s call to authorize the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s position on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank does not bode well for her future foreign policy.
For more than a half-century, a series of United Nations resolutions and rulings by the International Court of Justice have underscored the rights of inhabitants of countries under colonial rule or foreign military occupation. Among these is the right to “freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources,” which “must be based on the principles of equality and of the right of peoples and nations to self-determination.”
Hillary Clinton leaves her position as Secretary of State with a legacy of supporting autocratic regimes and occupation armies, opposing enforcement of international humanitarian law, undermining arms control and defending military solutions to complex political problems. She was appointed to her position following eight years in the US Senate, during which she became an outspoken supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, lied about Iraq’s military capabilities to frighten the public into supporting the illegal war, unleashed repeated attacks against the United Nations, opposed restrictions on land mines and cluster bombs, defended war crimes by allied right-wing governments and largely embraced Bush’s unilateralist agenda.