COLD WAR 2.0

PRC Espionage: Are Chinese Americans Their Top Recruitment Targets?

by Patrick Eddington 

Posted onNovember  21, 2024

On November 1, 2018 then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the launch of the “China Initiative” – a whole-of-government effort ostensibly designed to thwart espionage and technology theft by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Chinese American groups and activists immediately denounced the program as racially biased and its investigations improperly predicated, and in 2021 two studies provided them with ample proof that their allegations were correct.

The first was a study showing how rare it was for Chinese Americans to actually engage in espionage on behalf of the PRC. The second study chronicled the extremely high number of “China Initiative” cases that resulted in acquittals or dismissed cases. In late February 2022, the Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen announced the Department was ending the program, with Olsen telling a George Mason University crowd that he had “concluded that this initiative was not the right approach” to combatting PRC espionage and technology theft.

Three months later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a report that dealt in part with the question of whether or not PRC intelligence organizations prioritized the recruitment of Chinese Americans for spying or tech theft. That report, which was mandated by Congress, made a categorical statement about PRC intelligence asset targeting and recruitment strategy:

“It is the IC’s assessment that while the PRC promotes the false narrative that individuals of Chinese descent owe some allegiance to the PRC, neither race nor ethnicity is the primary criterion utilized by the PRC’s intelligence services in their recruitment of intelligence assets.”

But is this true? A recent trove of documents released to the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request leaves the question of whether the PRC targets Chinese Americans as potential agents.

In the world of the American Intelligence Community (IC), the phrase “IC assessment” generally has a very specific meaning: that the conclusions offered in a given IC report were those of the 17 agencies that make up the IC and that the assessment was based on the evaluation of multiple sources of information, including information provided by human sources and “technical intelligence” (usually electronic communications, satellite imagery, or other technological means).

In fact, in April 2020, the Cato Institute filed a FOIA request with the ODNI seeking, among other things, “Any finish[ed] intelligence products regarding Chinese government intellectual property (IP) or technology theft efforts targeting American individuals, businesses or other organizations, including American universities and colleges.”

Thirteen months later, the ODNI responded by revealing that “…a record responsive to your request was located…” but the ODNI needed to be withheld for security reasons. Yet the ODNI cited a specific FOIA exemption (known as Exemption 5) that is often used to withhold information that may be embarrassing to the agency or department in question.

You can then imagine my surprise when I read the May 2022 ODNI report referenced above. Accordingly, in June 2022, I filed a new FOIA seeking the alleged IC assessment on PRC intelligence allegedly not prioritizing Chinese Americans for recruitment as spies.

Over two years later, the ODNI finally responded to the request, providing a series of emails that revealed the IC assessment cited in the May 2022 ODNI report did not, in fact, exist.

It was, according to the emails released to Cato, a conclusion reached through “an iterative process.” But there was no actual hard intelligence – human or technical – to back it up.

Interestingly, the ODNI email release originally sent to Cato was completely unredacted – their FOIA office had sent the unredacted versions by mistake. Two weeks later, they sent the redacted versions and asked that “…if you plan to disseminate the documents further, you consider using the attached versions.”

Cato has elected to partially honor that request by redacting the names, phone numbers, email addresses, and office/building identifiers on the original, unredacted versions the ODNI sent to us.

However, we are leaving unredacted the full text of the original emails and also posting the redacted versions so you can see for yourself how the ODNI FOIA office has attempted to withhold , via Exemption 5, information that confirms that the May 2022 ODNI report with the IC assessment claiming that PRC intelligence agents do not systematically target Chinese Americans for espionage recruitment does not in fact exist.

So, does that mean that Chinese Communist agents do, in fact, make a special effort to target Chinese Americans as spies or to help facilitate theft of critical, proprietary American technologies?

We don’t know.

What we do know is that in May 2021, the ODNI withheld from Cato on “national security” grounds an actual document dealing with that very question, then a year later published a Congressionally mandated report citing a nonexistent IC assessment claiming that the PRC does not put Chinese Americans at the top of their list of preferred spy candidates.

No matter how you look at it, this is not a “good news” story–not just for the ODNI, but for Chinese Americans working inside or outside of government who perhaps thought that the ODNI’s May 2022 report would finally take the “might-be-a-spy” target off their backs. And with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency on January 20, 2025, I would not be surprised if we see a return of the infamous prior Trump era Justice Department “China Initiative” racially-based “counterintelligence” program.

There’s no question that the Armed Services and Intelligence committees in the House and Senate that directed the production of the ODNI report discussed in this piece should hold public hearings on this issue. And the House and Senate Judiciary committees should investigate the misuse of FOIA exemptions to withhold from public release things federal agencies and departments don’t want you and I to know. It’s a flagrant subversion of the FOIA statute that needs to be punished and ended.

Former CIA analyst and ex-House senior policy advisor Patrick G. Eddington is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

ANTIWAR.COM

Could Trump 2.0 End the American Century?

ITS ALREADY ENDED

IT WAS LAST CENTURY 

Trump’s second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership.



Alfred W. Mccoy
Nov 20, 2024

TomDispatch

Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come... in 2025, just 15 years from now.”

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But, that historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Now that a “far-right patriot,” one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.
Making the Original Prediction

Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth—the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.

Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance”—but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While America’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”

Writing in a similar vein in The New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, dismissed the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the—or perhaps even an—“exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries.

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming—all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.

Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident, according to two Beltway insiders, that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment—think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I—fully expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”

Just a year after that, China’s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called “the Belt and Road Initiative,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.

In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned: “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”
The Global Rise of the Strongman

Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy—forming the World Trade Organization in 1995, pressing open-market “reforms” on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s industrial output soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections—in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024).

Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis, while jailing 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000 suspected drug users and courted China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office and stay out of prison.
Prospects for Donald Trump’s Second Term

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the—or perhaps even an—“exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.

In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy.

Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to 1.5°C until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent months of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term.

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, telling a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also block wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive.

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad.

Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has proposed slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending.

Reflecting his aversion to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he added: “I would tell [Ukraine’s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”

Just two days after the November election, according toThe Washington Post, Trump reputedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, The Wall Street Journalreported that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a significant role. But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.
America’s Allies

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history.

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, claiming even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.

Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst called “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region.

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said last June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he toldThe Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China’s President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.
A Silent U.S. Recessional

Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Alfred W. Mccoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the author of "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power". Previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (American Empire Project)", "Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State", and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade".
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USA Tries to Pound Lebanon Into Submission

By Craig Murray

November 19, 2024

Source: Craig Murray

Image by Craig Murray

Israel has intensified its air strikes on Lebanon and in particular on Beirut, ahead of a visit on Tuesday or Wednesday by US envoy Hochstein, at which he will press Lebanon to accept a US/Israeli ceasefire plan.

This plan is touted as being based on UNSCR 1701, but in fact represents its abnegation.

You may have noted that neoliberal politicians and media pundits, who ignore and denigrate every other UN Resolution on the Middle East, are suddenly very enthusiastic about UNSCR 1701. This is because it mandates withdrawal of Hezbollah forces to the north of the river Litani.

But it also mandates, at operative paragraph 3, that the Government of Lebanon must have full sovereignty over Southern Lebanon and that only the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL might operate there.


3. Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon;

The US/Israeli ceasefire proposal directly contradicts this, by giving Israel the right to invade Southern Lebanon with ground forces whenever Israel considers it necessary, and by giving Israel permanent military overflight rights.

The US/Israeli proposal is therefore incompatible with UNSCR 1701.

These are direct intrusions on the sovereignty emphasised by UNSCR 1701. They are of course terms no self-respecting nation could possibly accept.

In order to try to force Lebanon to accept these humiliating terms, Israel has substantially intensified its bombing campaign throughout Lebanon these last two days. Yesterday in Beirut alone there were nineteen waves of airstrikes, in addition to airstrikes in Tyre, Baalbek and throughout the South.

A new development in Beirut today was a definite move to bomb in Christian, as well as Muslim, areas. If you take one thing away from this article today, I want you to understand this.

The narrative portrayed in Western media, that Lebanese Christians support Israel and are egging on the destruction of the Shia community, is completely false. Only a very small and unrepresentative minority of Christians, related to the thankfully declined fascist movement, think in this way.

The large majority of Christians, including the major Christian political parties and politicians, are as horrified as the rest of the world by the genocide in Gaza and still more horrified by Israel’s genocidal attack on Lebanon.

I have spent the last three weeks living among the Christian communities here and I have found this same view, from wealthy businessmen, to students, to shopkeepers, to the families of very senior politicians.

I should acknowledge that I have met a couple of young men in a bar who were pro-Israel, but that really is it. It is also the case that, certainly in Beirut, the large majority of Sunni Muslims, including the large Syrian refugee population, are extremely horrified by the genocide mostly of their fellow Sunni Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank, and they are very anti-Zionist indeed.

I understand that in the far northern areas and along the Jordanian border there are pockets of Saudi-influenced Salafist anti-Shia sectarians who do support Israel against Hezbollah, but I am happy to say I have not come across them and it is not an important viewpoint in Beirut. These are the ISIS/Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda/FSA crowd of CIA puppets.

Extreme fringes aside, the overwhelming majority of the people of Lebanon are no different to the majority of people the world over, horrified by the scale and depravity of the Israeli assaults.

In attacking Lebanon, far from reigniting civil war as they intended, Israel and the US have helped to forge a strengthened multicultural Lebanese identity.

Israel is simply unable to make meaningful progress on the ground against Hezbollah or to hold border villages for longer than a brief orgy of looting and destruction. In consequence we will see a repeat of the genocide in Gaza, with the great bulk of massacres carried out by bombs and long-range artillery.

Plainly the Gaza template is already being followed. Over 220 medics and paramedics have been killed in Lebanon – a deliberate massacre of healthcare providers that repeats Israeli actions in Gaza and testifies to genocidal intention.

The United States has a huge amount of influence within Lebanon. The economy is thoroughly dollarised; there are McDonalds, Dominos and Dunkin’ Donuts everywhere you go; there is a massive General Motors dealership, and indeed the Lebanese seem to have a higher propensity to buy US vehicles and other US-manufactured goods, than Americans themselves do.

The United States is building its second-largest Embassy complex in the world in Lebanon, a country of only 5 million people. Plainly that is not what is seems – why does Lebanon need a much bigger US Embassy than Germany or Japan or Russia?

It is due to US influence that the Lebanese army remains neutral as its own country is both bombed and invaded, which is a unique way for an army to behave. The bombs falling today on Lebanese children are not only US-manufactured, but the US has paid for those bombs and given them to the Israelis to kill Lebanese with.

Hochstein arrives here as his country carries out mass killing of civilians through its colonial settler proxy. The Lebanese should throw shoes at him en masse.

I hope and trust that the dignity of Lebanon is to be upheld by its politicians and outweighs personal corruption, and that a sharp answer is given to this vicious charlatan Hochstein pretending to talk peace.

US Congressional Leadership Remains United in Devotion to Israel After Selection of New Senate Republican Leader

by Adam Dick  Posted onNovember  20, 2024

Some things changed in politics in Washington, DC last week when Republican United States senators via a secret ballot vote selected Sen John Thune (R-SD) to become Senate Republican leader, replacing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the position. One of the things that remained the same, though, was that the Senate Republican leader position, along with the other three top leadership positions — Republican and Democrat — in the Senate and House of Representatives, remains held by a politician espousing devotion to the government of Israel and its war effort.

In July of 2022, I wrote about the peculiar situation where these top congressional leaders were then as well lined up in adamant support for the Israel government despite the fact that Americans’ views regarding the Middle East nation were roughly evenly divided between favorable and negative views. Of the people then holding the four top Republican and Democratic leadership positions in Congress, only Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) remains in the group. Nonetheless, the unanimity in over-the-top support for Israel persists, irrespective of how out of step it is with the thinking of the American people, even as over the last year Americans have increasingly opposed the US government’s unwavering supplying of military and intelligence support for Israel waging its expanding war with catastrophic consequences.

In January of 2023, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), a die-hard supporter of the Israel government, became the top Democratic leader in the House. Then, when Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted from the House speaker position in the fall of 2023, something astounding happened: All 11 candidates to succeed him as speaker — including ultimate winner Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) — had expressed both their devotion to Israel and their devotion to the US supporting Israel in Israel’s war.

Continuing the trend, all three Senate majority leader candidates — Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), and Sen. John Thune (R-SD) — competing last week were express devotees of the US government supporting Israel generally, as well as supporting Israel’s war effort.

Cornyn made his devotion to Israel and its war crystal clear in an October 3 Dallas Morning News editorial titled “America’s Next Commander in Chief Must Unapologetically Support Israel.” In the editorial, he declared:

Support for Israel ought to transcend party lines, religion, race and ethnicity. This is not an issue of opinion; this is a battle of right and wrong, of good and evil. Israel is our most steadfast ally in the Middle East, and it deserves our full support, both in words and action.

I was honored to visit Israel earlier this year, and I was also extremely proud to have voted for widely-supported legislation that sent critical aid and military resources to Israel.

Scott in, of all places, his America First plank of his Rescue America plan put succinctly his dedication to supporting Israel. “We will always defend our allies, starting with Israel,” Scott’s plan declares. Further, Scott made this promise in a September speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Summit: “And, as Senate leader, you can count on support for Israel and protection for our Jewish communities being top priorities.” In the speech, Scott also declared:

We need to show up for our friends and family in Israel right now. We need them to know we are with them, we will show up and we will fight with them.

Thune, the winner of the Senate Republican leader race, is on the same page as his Senate Republican leader race opponents in regard to Israel. Thune wrote an editorial last month titled “America Must Support Israeli Victory.” In the editorial, the senator criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough for Israel. This is the administration that has been pumping out weapons, intelligence, and military support to Israel at an incredible pace to aid Israel’s pursuit of its expanding war. After criticizing what he refers to as the Biden administration’s “tepid support for Israel at a time when it needs a strong ally in the United States,” Thune declared the US “needs to stand strongly with Israel as it faces enemies from every side that threaten its very existence.” And what did Thune do upon winning the leadership race? Thune called the prime minister of Israel, posting at Twitter for all to see a picture of Thune on the phone along with this message: “Spoke with Prime Minister @netanyahu and reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to standing with Israel, our closest friend and ally.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Adam Dick is a senior fellow at The Ron Paul Institute.  He worked from 2003 through 2013 as a legislative aide for Rep. Ron Paul. Previously, he was a member of the Wisconsin State Board of Elections, a co-manager of Ed Thompson’s 2002 Wisconsin governor campaign, and a lawyer in New York and Connecticut.  Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute with permission.

The Winner of the US Presidential Elections? Prime Minister Netanyahu

Melvin Goodman

 November 18, 2024
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Photograph Source: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain

The results are in and the clear winner of the 2024 U.S. presidential election is undeniably Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  Netanyahu is now freer than ever to pursue his genocidal campaign against Palestinians; demolish Lebanon; create more illegal settlements on the West Bank; and even annex the West Bank itself if he chooses to do so.

There is no better indication of the close relations between Donald Trump and Netanyahu than the recent announcement of the exchange of ambassadors to their two capitals.  Netanyahu has named Yechiel Leiter, a settler activist and a former aide who was Netanyahu’s chief of staff when the prime minister served as finance minister years ago.  They are very close.  Leiter was also an aide to the late war hawk Ariel Sharon, when Prime Minister Sharon served in the Knesset.

As a young man, Leiter was a member of the Jewish Defense League, which was formed by right-wing rabbi, Meir Kahane.  The group was designated a terrorist organization following the discovery of its plan to bomb a mosque in Los Angeles.  Leiter himself founded a U.S.-based fund (the One Israel Fund) that supplies security equipment and financial assistance to the illegal settlements on the West Bank.  Leiter is doing his best to expand the West Bank settlements, and he and his family currently live in one of them.  At a funeral for one of his sons, Leiter crudely denounced President Joe Biden for pursuing a cease-fire.

Following the Leiter appointment, Trump announced that former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, would be his ambassador to Israel.  Huckabee opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and claims that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”  Like Leiter, he favors permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, a term he will not use, preferring the Israeli terms “Judea” and “Samaria.”

During a visit to Israel, Huckabee said that “there is no such thing as a West Bank.”  As for the illegal settlements, Huckabee similarly says that “there is no such thing as a settlement.”  He calls them “communities…cities…neighborhoods.”  To cap it all off, Huckabee emphasizes “there’s no such thing as an occupation.”  Huckabee, moreover, is a Christian evangelical, and Trump is a hero to conservative Christians for ending Roe vs. Wade.  Trump often referred to “my beautiful Christians” at campaign rallies.

In his first term, Trump’s ambassador to Israel was David Friedman, who infamously referred to a liberal Jewish organization as “worse than kapos,” meaning Nazi collaborators.  Like Leiter, Friedman wanted Israel to annex the West Bank.  In his second term, Trump will have real estate developer Steven Witkoff as a special envoy to the Middle East.  Witkoff was a key fund raiser for the Trump campaign, raising “six-figure and seven-figure donations” from Jewish donors.

With Trump in the White House, Netanyahu will no longer have to worry about U.S. efforts to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza.  The Biden administration sent a warning letter to Israel in October to ensure the opening of more aid channels into Gaza, but the thirty-day deadline was ignored, and humanitarian aid is at its lowest levels since the start of the war.  At the same time, the bombing of civilian communities and civilian shelters has gotten worse.  Israel has simply refused to comply with the requests that were contained in the letter signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

In addition to ignoring the U.S. demarche, the Netanyahu government went out of its way to embarrass the Biden administration once again.  Netanyahu sent a special envoy, Ron Dermer, to the United States with a plan for a ceasefire in Lebanon.  Before going to Washington, however, Dermer flew to Mar-a-Lago to brief Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on the details of the plan.  Netanyahu has described the plan as a “gift” to Donald Trump.  Trump, for his part, has already told Netanyahu that he can “do what you have to do” against Hezbollah and Hamas.

The discussions in Mar-a-Lago appear to be a violation of the 1799 Logan Act, which criminalizes negotiations between the United States and a foreign government by an unauthorized American citizen.  But no one seems to care about the law these days.  Dermer, who like Leiter was born in the United States, has a very close relationship with Kushner.  Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Forces appear to be making plans to ramp up ground operations in Lebanon.

The White House and the Congress over the years have played to the worse sides of  Israeli prime ministers, but Netanyahu has always gotten the best treatment that Washington has to offer.  The catering to his militarism must stop, but there is simply no chance of this as long as Trump and his acolytes form the national security team in the White House.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

A Common Thread Runs Through Trump Appointments: Look Out Iran!

by Ted Snider Posted onNovember 18, 2024

Former President and President-elect Donald Trump has been tarred, inconsistently with his actual record, with the charge of being soft on Russia. He has never been charged with being soft on Iran.

Trump unilaterally and illegally pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran. He imposed devastating sanctions on Iran. He ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. General Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the last Trump administration, says he feared that Trump would launch missile strikes on Iran that could trigger an all out war. “If you do this,” Milley told him, “you’re gonna have a fucking war.”

Trump’s transition team is already working on plans to “drastically increase sanctions on Iran and throttle its oil sales.” According to a former Trump official, “Tightening the economic noose around Iran is going to be a day one foreign policy priority to start cleaning up Biden’s Middle East mess.”

Trump has tapped Brian Hook to lead his State Department transition team. Hook was Special Representative for Iranian Affairs at the State Department in Trump’s first term. He was an architect of the sanction and maximum pressure policy on Iran. Hook recently told CNN that the Trump administration “would isolate Iran diplomatically and weaken them economically.” He stressed that to deter Iran, they have to believe that the U.S. has “a credible threat of military force.”

As Secretary of State, Trump has appointed Senator Mark Rubio. Rubio has been hawkish on almost everything. His appointment could be dangerous for Cuba and Venezuela. But it could also be very dangerous for Iran. Rubio favored illegally pulling out of the JCPOA. He advocated the authorization of force without limits against Iran, including sending U.S. forces. In 2015, Rubio said that the U.S. “should never, ever take off the table the notion that it may be necessary to conduct some sort of nucle – uh, military strike against their nuclear ambition.”

As his National Security Advisor, Trump has appointed Representative Mike Waltz. Waltz is a China hawk. He may simply be a war hawk, having supported wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

Waltz once demanded that President Biden “punch Iran in the nose.” He supports threatening to attack Iran. Waltz has suggested that Israel should have bombed Iran’s oil export sites and its Natanz nuclear facilities. He advocates for the U.S. showing Iran “that our military capabilities are such that we could indeed severely damage their [nuclear] program.” Days before the election, on November 2, Waltz promised that a Trump administration would “return to maximum pressure to bring Iran back to the table for a better deal!” On the same day, Waltz co-authored a piece for The Economist in which he argued that the Biden-Harris administration “should put a credible military option on the table to make clear to the Iranians that America would stop them building nuclear weapons.”

Both arguments made that day are strikingly uninformed and unnecessarily provocative. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has already stated that Iran is “ready to engage with JCPOA participants” and that “[i]f JCPOA commitments are implemented fully and in good faith, dialogue on other issues can follow.” He has even made the bold move of calling for bypassing intermediaries in favor of direct negotiations with the United States. As for stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons, as CIA Director William Burns said in October, “[W]e do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program. We don’t see evidence today that such a decision [to build a bomb] has been made. We watch it very carefully.” In 2022, the  U.S. Department of Defense’s Nuclear Posture Review concluded that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.”

Trumps intelligence appointments include Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and John Ratcliffe as Director of the CIA. Gabbard was a Democratic congresswoman and a candidate, against Joe Biden, in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary before becoming a Republican. Like her political allegiance, her policy on Iran has been mixed. In 2013, she supported sanctioning Iran. A year later, she called Iran the “world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism.” Later, though, she supported the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran and criticized Trump for pulling out of it and for escalating tension. She would also come to call for ending sanctions.

Ratcliffe is a China hawk, but he has also called for a harder line against Iran. In June, Ratcliffe argued that the Biden administration had not been tough enough on Iran.

Trump’s policy decisions, though, are as unpredictable as his appointments. After speaking three times since Trump’s election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he and Trump “see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its components, and the danger posed by it.” At the same time, there has reportedly been some talk in the Russian media of hope that the Trump administration could reach out to Iran to reduce tension.

Though the roll call of appointments leaves no doubt that Trump has selected a foreign policy team that is hawkish on Iran, The New York Times reports that on November 11, Elon Musk met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations. Musk is an important Trump advisor who joined Trump in some of his phone calls with world leaders since being elected, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and, perhaps, Turkish President Recep Erdogan. He is reportedly scheduled to meet Argentina’s President Javier Milei in the coming days when Milei comes to the U.S. to meet with Trump.

Iranian officials say the meeting between Musk and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani focussed on ways to reduce tension between the U.S. and Iran. They said that the meeting was “good news” and that it was “positive.” Trita Parsi, and expert on Iran’s foreign policy and on American-Iranian relations, says that Trump ultimately may have wanted a deal with Iran in his first term but was misdirected by Iran hawks in his administration, including Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. He reports that Iranian officials recognize Trump’s desire for a deal, but calculate that his ability to pull it off will be determined by whom he appoints to influential positions.

And that’s the question. The appointments are certainly not laden with promise. But, perhaps, the early meeting with Iran is. If Trump’s chosen circle leans once again to hawkishness on Iran, the tragedy of his selections will be that Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected on a platform that included improving relations with the United States. There is a possible path to peace if Trump is not, once again, pushed by those he appointed down the path of animosity.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

ANTIWAR.COM

Eight Reasons Why Marco Rubio Would Be a Disastrous Secretary of State

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / November 18th, 2024

Rubio and Trump during a break in the 2016 presidential debate. AP photo.

Of all Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China.

The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Donald Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly “stalemate war” that needs to be “brought to a conclusion.”

But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.

1. His obsession with regime change in Cuba will sink any chance of better relations with the island.

Like other Cuban-American politicians, Marco Rubio has built his career on vilifying the Cuban Revolution and trying to economically strangle and starve into submission the people of his parents’ homeland.

It is ironic, therefore, that his parents left Cuba before the Revolution, during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose executioners, secret police and death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people, according to the CIA, leading to a wildly popular revolution in 1959.

When President Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, Rubio swore to do “everything possible” to obstruct and reverse that policy. In May 2024, Rubio reiterated his zero tolerance for any kind of social or economic contacts between the U.S. and Cuba, claiming that any easing of the U.S. blockade will only “strengthen the oppressive regime and undermine the opposition… Until there is freedom in Cuba, the United States must maintain a firm stance.”

In 2024 Rubio also introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. “State Sponsor of Terrorism List,” imposing sanctions that cut Cuba off from the U.S.-dominated Western banking system.

These measures to destroy the Cuban economy have led to a massive wave of migration in the past two years. But when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to coordinate with their Cuban counterparts, Rubio introduced legislation to prohibit such interaction. While Trump has vowed to stem immigration, his Secretary of State wants to crush Cuba’s economy, forcing people to abandon the island and set sail for the United States.

2. Applying his anti-Cuba template to the rest of Latin America will make enemies of more of our neighbors.

Rubio’s disdain for his ancestral home in Cuba has served him so well as an American politician that he has extended it to the rest of Latin America. He has sided with extreme right-wing politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina, and rails against progressive ones, from Brazil’s Ignacio Lula da Silva to Mexico’s popular former President Lopez Obrador, whom he called “an apologist for tyranny” for supporting other leftist governments.

In Venezuela, he has promoted brutal sanctions and regime change plots to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro. In 2019 he was one of the architects of Trump’s failed policy of recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as president. He has also advocated for sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua.

In March 2023, Rubio urged President Biden to impose sanctions on Bolivia for prosecuting  leaders of a 2019 U.S.-backed coup that led to massacres that killed at least 21 people.

Rubio also condemned the government of Honduras for withdrawing from an extradition treaty with the United States this past August, in response to decades of U.S. interference that had turned Honduras into a narco-state riven by poverty, gang violence and mass emigration, until the election of democratic socialist President Xiomara Castro in 2022.

Rubio’s major concern about Latin America now seems to be the influence of China, which has become the leading trade partner of most Latin American countries. Unlike the U.S., China focuses on economic benefits and not internal politics, while American politicians like Marco Rubio still see Latin America as the U.S. “backyard.”

While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.

3. He believes the US and Israel can do no wrong, and that God has given Palestine to Israel.

Despite the massive death toll in Gaza and global condemnation of Israel’s genocide, Rubio still perpetuates the myth that “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses” and that innocent people die in Gaza because Hamas has deliberated placed them in the way and used them as human shields. The problem, he says, is “an enemy that doesn’t value human life.”

When asked by CODEPINK in November 2024 if he would support a ceasefire, Rubio replied, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”

There are few times in this past year that the Biden administration has tried to restrain Israel, but when Biden begged Israel not to send troops into the southern city of Rafah, Rubio said that was like telling the Allied forces in World War II not to attack Berlin to get Hitler.

In a letter to Secretary of State Blinken in August 2024, Rubio criticized the Biden administration’s decision to sanction Israeli settlers linked to anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.

“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organisations] such as Hamas, have rejected such overtures,” Rubio wrote. “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he added.

No country besides Israel subscribes to the idea that its borders should be based on 2,000-year-old religious scriptures, and that it has a God-given right to displace or exterminate people who have lived there since then to reconquer its ancient homeland. The United States will find itself  extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the world if Rubio tries to assert that as a matter of U.S. policy.

4. His deep-seated enmity toward Iran will fuel Israel’s war on its neighbors, and may lead to a U.S. war with Iran.

Rubio is obsessed with Iran. He claims that the central cause of violence and suffering in the Middle East is not Israeli policy but “Iran’s ambition to be a regional hegemonic power.” He says that Iran’s goal in the Middle East is to “seek to drive America out of the region and then destroy Israel.”

He has been a proponent of maximum pressure on Iran, including a call for more and more sanctions. He believes the U.S. should not re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”

Rubio calls Lebanon’s Hezbollah a “full blown agent of Iran right on Israel’s border” and that wiping out Hezbollah’s leadership, along with entire neighborhoods full of civilians, is a “service to humanity.” He alleges that Iran has control over Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen and is a threat to Jordan. He claims that “Iran has put a noose around Israel,” and says that the goal of U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, which would set the stage for war.

While there will hopefully be leaders in the Pentagon who will caution Donald Trump about the perils of a war with Iran, Rubio will not be a voice of reason.

5.  He is beholden to big money, from the weapons industry to the Israel lobby.

Open Secrets reports that Rubio has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups during his career. The Pro-Israel America PAC was his single largest campaign contributor over the last 5 years. When he last ran for reelection in 2022, he was the third largest recipient of funding by pro-Israel groups in the Senate, taking in $367,000 from them for that campaign.

Rubio was also the fourth largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his Congressional career.

Rubio is clearly beholden to the US arms industry, and even more so to the Israel lobby, which has been one of his largest sources of campaign funding. This has placed him in the vanguard of Congress’s blind, unconditional support for Israel and subservience to Israeli narratives and propaganda, making it unlikely that he will ever challenge the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people or their expulsion from their homeland.

6. He’s so antagonistic towards China that China has sanctioned him–twice!

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2022, Rubio said: “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left’s version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China.”

It will be hard for our nation’s “top diplomat” to ease tensions with a country he has so maligned. He antagonized China by co-sponsoring the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which allows the U.S. to bar  Chinese imports over alleged Uyghur rights abuses, abuses that China denies and independent researchers question. In fact, Rubio has gone so far as to accuse China of a “grotesque campaign of genocide” against the Uyghurs.

On Taiwan, he has not only introduced legislation to increase military aid to the island, but actually supports Taiwanese independence — a dangerous deviation from the US government’s long-standing One China approach.

The Chinese responded to Rubio by sanctioning him, not once but twice–once regarding the Uyghurs and once for his support of Hong Kong protests. Unless China lifts the sanctions, he would be the first U.S. secretary of state to be banned from even visiting China.

Analysts expect China to try to sidestep Rubio and engage directly with Trump and other senior officials. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told Reuters, “If that doesn’t work, then I think we’re going to get into a much more regular escalation of a bad relationship.”

7. Rubio knows sanctions are a trap, but he doesn’t know how to escape.

Rubio is a leading advocate of unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under international law, and which the UN and other countries refer to as “unilateral economic coercive measures.”

The United States has used these measures so widely and wildly that they now impact a third of the world’s population. U.S. officials, from Treasury Secretary Yellen to Rubio himself, have warned that using the U.S. financial system and the dollar’s reserve currency status as weapons against other countries is driving the rest of the world to conduct trade in other currencies and develop alternative financial systems.

In March 2023, Rubio complained on Fox News, “We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

And yet Rubio has continued to be a leading sponsor of sanctions bills in the Senate, including new sanctions on Iran in January 2024 and a bill in July to sanction foreign banks that participate in alternative financial systems.

So, while other countries develop new financial and trading systems to escape abusive, illegal U.S. sanctions, the nominee for Secretary of State remains caught in the same sanctions trap that he complained about on Fox.

8. He wants to crack down on U.S. free speech.

Rubio wants to curtail the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In May, he described campus protests against Israel as a “complete breakdown of law and order.”

Rubio claimed to be speaking up for other students at American universities. “[They] paid a lot of money to go to these schools, [but are being disrupted by] a few thousand antisemitic zombies who have been brainwashed by two decades of indoctrination in the belief that the world is divided between victimizers and victims, and that the victimizers in this particular case, the ones that are oppressing people, are Jews in Israel,” said Rubio.

The Florida senator has said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April, he called for punishing supporters of the Israel boycott movement as part of efforts to counter antisemitism, falsely equating any attempt to respond to Israel’s international crimes with antisemitism.

And what about those crimes, which the students are protesting? After visiting Israel in May, Rubio wrote an article for National Review, in which he never mentioned the thousands of civilians Israel has killed, and instead blamed Iran, Biden and “morally corrupt international institutions” for the crisis.

Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order. He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.

Students are not Rubio’s only target. In August 2023, he alleged that certain “far-left and antisemitic entities” may have violated the Foreign Assistance Registration Act by their ties to China. He called for a Justice Department investigation into 18 groups, starting with CODEPINK. These unfounded claims of China connections are only meant to intimidate legitimate groups that are exercising their free speech rights.

Conclusion

On each of these issues, Rubio has shown no sign of understanding the difference between domestic politics and diplomacy. Whether he’s talking about Cuba, Palestine, Iran or China, or even about CODEPINK, all his supposedly tough positions are based on cynically mischaracterizing the actions and motivations of his enemies and then attacking the “straw man” he has falsely set up.

Unscrupulous politicians often get away with that, and Rubio has made it his signature tactic because it works so well for him in American politics. But that will not work if and when he sits down to negotiate with other world leaders as U.S. secretary of state.

His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed or invaded. This makes Rubio just as ill-equipped as Antony Blinken to conduct diplomacy, improve U.S. relations with other countries or resolve disputes and conflicts peacefully, as the UN Charter requires.Email

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, November 2022.  Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for PEACE, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran:  The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on our Hands:  The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Read other articles by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.