Expert Analyst: International Politics, Middle East & Nonviolent Action
Truthout, Feb. 27, 2022 and Tikkun March 10, 2022 [source] Part of the decades-long tradition of the U.S. propping up Arab dictatorships that suppress pro-democracy struggles while justifying support for Israel, calling it the region’s “sole democracy.”
Truthout, February 10, 2022: This is indicative of the Democratic Party’s shift to the right on foreign policy in recent decades…
The United States and Russia are heading toward a dangerous showdown over Ukraine, as the U.S. has 8,500 troops on high alert, ready to deploy to Eastern Europe should Russia invade Ukraine, and a new round of arms shipments have begun arriving in Ukraine.
In his final weeks in office, President Donald Trump stunned the international community in formally recognizing Western Sahara as part of Morocco. Morocco has occupied much of its southern neighbor since 1975, when it invaded and annexed the former Spanish colony in defiance of the United Nations Security Council and a landmark ruling of the International Court of Justice.
The threat of further Russian aggression against Ukraine is very real. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is in a weak position to lead an international response.
The death of former Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada has brought forth praise for his parliamentary skills, which helped make possible some critically important legislation, as well as preventing the passage of a number of seriously problematic bills. However, on the foreign policy front, it should be noted that Reid not only failed to challenge dangerous Republican initiatives that violated fundamental principles of international law and human rights, he was often among their most prominent supporters.
In August 2019, thousands of refugees, prisoners, and families of ISIS fighters crowded into an encampment in the border town of Baghuz in eastern Syria, one of the last territories controlled by the so-called Islamic State. The United States, supported on the ground by an allied Kurdish and Arab militia, launched a massive air assault on the enclave.
Truthout, Oct. 19, 2021, by Stephen Zunes [source] While the death of former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell has elicited praise-filled eulogies in the mainstream media and officials in Washington, many Americans still carry bitter feelings over…
We must not allow the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan to be used to rewrite history and teach the wrong lessons.
photos of dead Palestinian children on the front page of The New York Times to gripping accounts of people digging through the wreckage of high-rise apartment complexes and office buildings, evidence of last month’s horrific death toll from Israel’s eleven-day bombing campaign was hard to deny.
Jacobin June 14, 2021: The US military spends trillions on death abroad that could be spent on improving life back home…
Tikkun: “The extreme disproportionate firepower of the Israelis is really staggering. We’re looking at a 20:1 ratio just in terms of casualties… the U.S. bears special responsibility…”
The Californian: Commentary: As the ceasefire takes hold ending the fighting between Hamas and Israel, central coast voters are raising questions over controversial statements he made.
Foreign Policy In Focus May 26, 2021: The U.S. strident defense of Israel’s recent military onslaught on the Gaza Strip… sounds remarkably similar to that to defend the Assad regime in Syria during their bloody attacks on Aleppo, Idlib, and…
Truthout, May 3, 2021, by Stephen Zunes [ source] In an apparent response to growing calls for making US aid to the Netanyahu government conditional on Israeli adherence to human rights law, 330 members of the US House of Representatives…
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…
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.
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.