Recalling Trump’s infamous meeting with major oil companies to discuss Venezuela on January 9 of this year, the strategy to allay their concerns and guarantee long-term investments becomes clearer: to entrench and secure the mortgage of an entire country for decades to come. Only in this way could that guarantee of stable, reliable, and cheap energy eventually materialize in times of “emergencies” and geopolitical confrontation.
The US is now trying to squeeze Iran with still harsher economic sanctions. These, together with the bombing and the blockade of its oil exports, are having an effect. But Tehran will not easily succumb to pressure.
The U.S. deferred all its ostensible reasons for the war— “regime change,” Iran’s nuclear program or Iran’s support of regional allies—to an undetermined future, if they are considered all. In diplomatic practice, deferring “hard questions” to future negotiations is often a way of never resolving them.
The United States has grown wary of long-term occupations. Abandoning the pretense of exporting democracy, the Trump administration has chosen to force existing powers to comply with its rule.
At its core, this is a crisis of the existing social order—one that is not temporary or accidental, but historical and structural in nature, and which manifests itself across all spheres, including the economy and politics. Figures such as Donald Trump are not the cause of this crisis, but rather its symptoms.
The Trump administration is betting that overwhelming military pressure, combined with the elimination of several leaders—including the head of state—will tip the balance in favor of pragmatic, non-ideological “moderates”.
Despite the defensive nature of Trump’s plans for the Americas, the current campaign of murder on the high seas and saber-rattling against long-time U.S. ally Denmark to pressure it will give up Greenland, should be warnings that the U.S. will do a lot of damage along the way.
What do socialists have to say about the administration’s threats against Venezuela? Our starting point is opposition to U.S. intervention in whatever form—from sanctions to war. The U.S. has no right to determine the Venezuelan people’s future. Only Venezuelans can do that.
Much of it hidden behind opaque appropriations and congressional loopholes!
For 80 years, the existing alliances and institutions of global politics have served U.S. imperial policy well. Now we are faced with what appears to be the unprecedented situation in which the “hegemonic power” has become the main “revisionist power,” in the world system…
“Make America Great Again” is a program to prepare the US to fight and win a war with China. It is not only that; there are plenty of right-wing causes to be pursued, such as hostility to vaccinations, that do not have a direct or necessary military connection, but the overall direction is clear.
Actual American occupation of Gaza is extraordinarily unlikely. It would clearly demand serious deployment of US troops and would destabilize the entire world situation. The real purpose of the speech was something else. It was to show the world the absolute and complete support of the US administration for the Netanyahu government and whatever actions that government takes.
As U.S officials laud an “elder statesman” and “erudite strategist,” the rest of us, and surely millions of brown-skinned people, celebrate the end of an “iconic napalm rights advocate” whose lies, hubris, towering inhumanity and many blood-soaked foreign policy follies left a legacy – in Vietnam, Chile, Cambodia, Argentina – of an “enormous pile of corpses” that may number four million.
The Democrats campaigned against Trump’s cruelty and capitalized on outrage towards his racist policies to win elections in 2018 and 2020. But once in office, the Democrats deliver not the sharp break with these policies their supporters expect, but a “lesser evil” that shaves off the roughest edges, applies some liberal rhetoric, and ends up normalizing the policies it claimed to oppose.
Risch’s position threatens the health and well being of Palestinian children who are refugees while disregarding the misdeeds of the apartheid state next door that denies Palestinians their fundamental rights, including the right of UNRWA-assisted children to return to homes and lands from which their families were expelled.
