Tag: perpetual war

Democratic Party’s Corollary to the Donroe Doctrine

Donald Trump’s second term has precipitated a tsunami of criticism from Democrats over his foreign policy. Yet when it comes to Washington’s efforts to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean, the substantive dispute – if there is any substance remaining, once stripped of partisan bickering – is less about ends than means.

Beneath the rhetoric of inter-party conflict lies a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of promoting US hemispheric hegemony and crushing governments that resist it – with Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua at the forefront. While Democrats frequently portray Trump as reckless, they generally accept the underlying premises of economic coercion, political intervention, and regime-change pressure. Their objections mainly focus on the execution of policy rather than its legitimacy.

The central role of sanctions in projecting imperial coercive power

Under Democratic administrations, the US forged and institutionalized what may be its most effective instrument of hegemony. Coercive economic measures, commonly called “sanctions,” were first deployed by Franklin D. Roosevelt against Mexico in the 1930s. They were used by Dwight D. Eisenhower to pressure Guatemala in 1954 and then – most drastically – against Cuba by both Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy in 1960. Today, one-third of the world’s nations are under US sanctions.

Sanctions – a form of collective punishment – are held by legal experts to be contrary to international law. Paradoxically, not only does Washington disregard international law in imposing sanctions, but the US then behaves as if they are applying the law when, for example, they pirate a ship delivering humanitarian supplies to a sanctioned country.

Use of sanctions has accelerated because successive administrations have seen their unique advantages. Compared with “forever wars,” they are more easily justified to US voters as cost-free and as not imperiling US lives. If sanctions are the precursor to military intervention – as in Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989 and, of course, Venezuela in 2026 – the interventions have usually been limited, with few US casualties.

Yet sanctions are very potent: between 2010 and 2021, they caused around 560,000 deaths globally each year – more than five times the number of people killed annually in direct armed combat.

While sanctions are made more palatable by being described as “targeted” at governments or individuals seen as undesirable by Washington, in practice the “targeting” is deliberately far wider. Sanctions do most damage to the poorest sectors of societies – the sectors most likely to support progressive governments. The barely veiled message is that only by withdrawing this support will such communities be able to prosper and avoid the threat of even greater US intervention.

The frequent description of sanctions as “targeted” carries another implication – that they are intended to have a precise and conclusive effect. However, while sanctions cause severe economic damage, there is little evidence that they achieve intended regime change. Even so, sanctions on countries which refuse to change are maintained and – very frequently – intensified. Democrats are as guilty of this folly as Republicans.

Indeed, US sanctions have imperial utility through their “demonstration effect”: attempting to cripple progressive alternatives to the neoliberal world order. Recently subjected to draconian sanctions, Cuban President Díaz-Canel proclaimed: “Cuba is not a failed state; Cuba is a besieged state.” Still, infant mortality in Cuba is lower than among African Americans.

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The World Government That Wasn’t

There are certain episodes in Cold War history that modern conservatives are expected to treat as either sinister fantasy or liberal delusion. The McCloy–Zorin Accords of 1961 occupy a curious place. Explain the concept today and half of the audience assumes you are describing a proto-globalist fever dream hatched in Manhattan conference rooms full of Scandinavian furniture and earnest men in rimless spectacles.

Yet for a brief moment — and this is the part that ought to unsettle both the utopians and the cynics — the United States and the Soviet Union formally agreed that the ultimate goal of international politics should be the abolition of war itself.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

The “Joint Statement of Agreed Principles for Disarmament Negotiations,” better known as the McCloy–Zorin Accords, was negotiated between American statesman John J. McCloy and Soviet diplomat Valerian Zorin in September 1961 and endorsed unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1961. It envisioned phased and verified general disarmament under international control, including the eventual elimination of national military establishments and the creation of a United Nations peace force.

This was not drafted by Woodstock pacifists smoking hashish in Vermont. McCloy was the very model of the American establishment insider: Wall Street lawyer, banker, Assistant Secretary of War, and one of the founding grandees of the postwar Atlantic order. Zorin, meanwhile, was a hard Soviet apparatchik who had spent decades navigating the darker corridors of Kremlin diplomacy.

And yet there they were, at the height of the Berlin Crisis and only a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, jointly sketching a roadmap toward “general and complete disarmament.”

The irony is that the men closest to this project were not starry-eyed internationalists in the modern sense. They were realists in the older and more serious tradition. They had lived through industrial slaughter on a civilizational scale. Twenty-seven million Russians had died in World War Two. They understood that thermonuclear war was not a talking point but an extinction event. The generation that built the United Nations had watched Europe commit suicide twice in thirty years and concluded, however imperfectly, that sovereign states armed to the teeth and gripped by ideological hysteria might not indefinitely coexist.

Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish Secretary-General of the UN, became the moral and administrative face of this ambition. Today he is remembered, if at all, as the Nordic bureaucrat whose name adorns the plaza outside the UN building by the East River in New York and the library inside that skyscraper. In his own time he was treated almost as a secular pope. The press followed him obsessively. In the newsreels, he emerged from turboprop airliners with a mysterious Swedish smile. A new conflict, a new day for Dag. For a few years from the mid-fifties to very early sixties, the UN became a repository for a tired planet’s hopes. Diplomats regarded him with awe, irritation, or both. He believed the UN could become not merely a debating chamber but an actual mechanism for preventing great-power war.

This is the part modern conservatives are supposed to laugh at.

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Israel And Hezbollah Trade Fire In Southern Lebanon, Deaths On Both Sides, Israeli Media Goes After Trump, Vance Cancels Swiss Iranian Negotiation Trip As Violence Rages, Iran Says Deal In Jeopardy

Hezbollah fired missiles into Northern Israel yesterday, which were intercepted by Israeli missile systems. Israeli leadership responded angrily to the U.S.-Iran peace deal as the IDF continued operations in Southern Lebanon. Multiple Israeli soldiers were killed south of Beirut as Israeli forces continue to consolidate positions and go after Shia proxy army targets in the south. The IDF continues to be challenged by FPV drones, which are effective against armor and infantry in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz rages on Israeli TV:

“Nobody can tell us what to do, and we’ve proven it. The entire first line of Lebanese villages has been destroyed.  We are destroying all the houses. The residents will never see them standing before their eyes again.

“In Lebanon, the 200,000 residents who lived in the “security zone” are not returning.  Not one of them is returning.

“We are fighting there. We do not need al-Julani. Al-Julani, the terrorist in a suit, does not need to come and help us. We know Syria well. He is not going to help us in Lebanon. He should stay in Syria, not interfere with us, and not make us interfere with him.

“Do you know what really hurts the jihadists? Maybe it hurts them when you kill them personally, but they don’t care as much about that.  What really hurts them is when you take territory from them and destroy their homes—and that’s what we did.

“You remember the raids? They would go in and come out.  We go in, destroy, and do not leave. That’s what we’re doing now in Lebanon

“The IDF must be on the other side of the border, beyond the border, defending the State of Israel against jihadist organizations in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Gaza. We will not move from the “security zones”—not in Syria, not in Gaza, and not in Lebanon.

“Why are we on the other side in Syria?  Because we need to be there to protect ourselves against what we see in Syria.

“We are already in more than 60% of Gaza, and all of it is destroyed. It is destroyed above ground and underground. That is the difference in the approach we introduced.”

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Trump says oil reserves would run out in 4 weeks without Iran deal, risking ‘bedlam’

President Trump said Wednesday that oil reserves could have run out in four weeks if the Strait of Hormuz were not opened.

“We run out of reserves at about four weeks,” Trump said in France while at the Group of Seven summit, discussing the recent memorandum of understanding with Iran. “You know, there are reserves all over the world, and we would really run out, and there’ll be a time when you wouldn’t be able to get it.”

He said it would be “bedlam” if the oil ran out.

“What this does is it allows the ships to go,” he said of the Iran deal. “If we keep bombing, those ships won’t be going.”

It’s not entirely clear whether Trump was referring to U.S. or global oil inventories. The White House declined to elaborate, referring The Hill back to Trump’s original remarks.

In recent weeks, the International Energy Agency (IEA), an organization of oil consuming countries, has warned of declining oil reserves.

IEA head Fatih Birol said last month that oil reserve releases were helping to keep up the market supply, but he warned the reserves “are not endless.”

He indicated at the time that because of the war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz, only a few weeks of commercial inventories were remaining. 

The IEA also warned in May that oil demand would exceed supply this year.

At the start of the war, both the U.S. and other IEA countries announced they would release oil from their strategic reserves, putting 400 million additional barrels onto the market.

As part of the announcement, the Trump administration said it would release 172 million barrels from its strategic reserve. The releases were set to occur over a 120-day period.

At the time, the U.S. strategic reserve comprised about 415 million barrels of oil, meaning the release of an additional 172 million would eventually bring the reserve down to about 243 million unless barrels were added or subtracted for other reasons.

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‘Slash the Pentagon Act’ Would Cap Trump’s Military Budget To Fund Healthcare, Education, and More

Democratic US Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts took aim Monday at President Donald Trump’s illegal war of choice on Iran and request for a record $1.5 trillion in total military-related spending authorization by introducing legislation that would cap the Pentagon budget at half that amount.

Markey introduced the Slash the Pentagon Act at a Capitol Hill press conference that took place “as Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, rent, electricity, groceries, and gas, while Trump has spent over $100 billion on his expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary war with Iran.”

“Instead of funding Medicaid and education or investing in veterans’ care, Republicans want to pad the pockets of gold-plated defense contractors with billions more dollars for weapons and wars we do not need,” Markey said at the press conference.

“Just before SpaceX’s IPO made Elon Musk a trillionaire, Trump gave SpaceX billions in contracts for his expensive and ineffective ‘Golden Dome’ system,” Markey continued. “Coincidence? No, corruption.”

“It’s time to put people before the Pentagon and make major cuts to Trump’s bloated and wasteful defense spending,” the senator added. “We should invest in our hospitals, schools, affordable housing, and the real security American families need right now – not expensive wars and weapons that make us less safe.”

Markey’s bill comes just days after the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 18-9 to advance the $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2027, and the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee approved the Fiscal Year 2027 Defense Appropriations Bill during a closed-door markup. The House bill provides $1.072 trillion for the Pentagon and other military-related activities, a $234 billion increase from this year’s enacted level.

The Trump administration’s broader national security proposal requests nearly $1.5 trillion in total defense-related spending for 2027, which includes $350 billion in supplemental funding for munitions production, shipbuilding, missile defense, drones, artificial intelligence, and other long-term military programs.

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Israeli Desperation Leading to Enormous Sums for Lobbying, Media Manipulation

Things aren’t going so well these days for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. While his partner President Trump is working actively to end the war with Iran by inking a memorandum of understanding to halt the fighting, American public opinion of Israel continues to plummet. That is no surprise — Israel’s war on Gaza has now killed over 73,000 Palestinians (at least), the Gaza Strip is largely rubble, and Israel has moved to do the same in south Lebanon.

Netanyahu blames the loss of support on TikTok and social media writ large (not his government’s own policies) and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue media management and pro-Israel advocacy in the U.S. On a parallel track, Israel is seeking unprecedented integration with the U.S. military and its intelligence agencies — which would mean co-production on weapons, technology and sharing of sensitive intel. Experts say this is why Israel has been insisting it doesn’t “need” the 10-year agreement that provides Israel $3.8 billion annually in military aid. This would shift that aid to the places that don’t require the same oversight and overt American buy-in.

My colleagues Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout, who form up the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute, have been digging away at these Israel efforts on myriad fronts. Ben has been writing about the integration legislation on both the military and intel sides, now making their way through Congress. Nick has been sifting through Foreign Agent Registration Act and other public efforts to expose the millions that have been going to former Trump campaign guy Brad Parscale to push pro-Israel messaging through conservative media platforms, text campaigns, manipulating ChatGPT, and more.

Both talk to me this week about how all of these efforts have ramped up as Israel is more keenly aware that it has lost the thread with the American people and that powerful lobbying forces like AIPAC are not enough.

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The US-Israel Wars on Iran: Follow the Money

Like most of America’s wars in West Asia, the current joint U.S.-Israel attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran is about securing control over the region’s energy resources and preserving oil currency policies; practices that have fueled its expansive economy since the end of the Second World War.

Ultimately, this conflict, which has sent shockwaves through the global economy, boils down to who will reign in West Asia, control the world’s energy lifeline, and dictate the rules of global finance.

Beneath the veneer of geopolitical diplomacy and rhetoric about global order, the true catalyst for U.S. wars in the Persian Gulf – from the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to the current Iran war – has always been monetary supremacy, “money.” They have been rooted in oil revenue, debt leverage, and the staggering economic stakes of global energy and currency dominance.

Washington’s hardline stance, economic strangulation and military interventions  have been designed to enforce compliance. Countries, like Iran, that resist U.S. hegemony face severe financial and military pressures, because their defiance challenges America’s regional security architecture and unipolar dominance over the global financial system.

Since the 1970s, the “petrodollar system” has been the invisible engine of American prosperity and power.  However, the economic scaffolding that has buoyed its global hegemony is fraying, as geopolitical shifts and de-dollarization trends gradually erode the U.S. dollar’s absolute grip on global energy markets.

To make sense of how we reached this point, it is important to consider how the U.S. dollar achieved its global dominance and shaped our current economic reality.

In June 1974, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a landmark economic and military cooperation agreement, establishing what has come to be known as the “petrodollar system.”

This consequential bargain was born in an era of political and economic uncertainty – inflation, Vietnam War and the 1973 Arab oil embargo. With the U.S. economy in a nosedive, then-President Richard Nixon, anxious to maintain the global demand for dollars, persuaded the Saudi government to finance America’s debt with its petroleum wealth.  He convinced them to price their oil exclusively in U.S. dollars and to invest their surplus oil profits in U.S. Treasury bonds.  In exchange, Washington agreed to provide the Saudis with weapons and protection.  By 1975, all Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries were pricing their oil in dollars.

The Saudi policy of pricing crude exclusively in U.S. dollars compelled all purchasing nations to convert their native currencies before making purchases.  Increased international demand for the dollar made it the world’s singular reserve currency and preferred medium of exchange.  To meet the increased need, Washington simply fired up the printing presses.

Over the years, Washington’s staunch support of the repressive Saudi regime has been driven by a strategic imperative: to ensure that its client state remains committed to the 1974 bargain.

This favorable pricing and trading arrangement has allowed Washington to entail massive deficits, to borrow and spend with abandon without triggering financial collapse. It has financed America’s numerous military adventures and provided the tools to wield economic sanctions and enforce its foreign policy.

Although a web of motives have fueled Washington’s interventions in West Asia, punishing currency dissenters was prominent in its past wars in Iraq and Libya.

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Ukraine Hits Moscow Oil Refinery Causing Black Skies, But Kremlin Continues Advancing In Donbass-Kostiantynivka Falls, Ukrainian Drones Specifically Targeting Civilians In Russia Areas

Ukraine scored a public relations and tactical win this morning with strikes on the Moscow oil refinery, hitting a storage tank and causing black smoke to drift over the entire city.

Oil-like residue is falling over Moscow and the surrounding region, leaving marks on cars, windowsills, benches, and other surfaces.

The development caused Ukrainian President Zelenskiy to declare, “If Ukraine burns, your Moscow will burn too.If Putin does not want to end this war and wants to continue it, we will not sit quietly. We will respond.”

What Zelenskiy is not telling the world is that the city of Kostiantynivka in Donbass has recently fallen under the Russian advance. Russian forces are now focusing on Sloviansk, which once taken, will open the door to Kramatorsk in one or two months.

A situation is developing where a massive cauldron is forming, encircling thousands of Ukrainian troops and the Zelenskiy government will not order the withdrawal to save the soldiers.

“It is a deliberate slaughter of Ukrainian soldiers,” said a source in Kyiv. “It is intentionally losing a division.”

Russia has launched massive strikes on Kyiv as of late in response to Ukrainian attacks on civilian targets. Recently many attacks have been filmed of drones hitting civilian vehicles, such as buses and trucks carrying civilian personnel and cargo, raising Russian ire. One such video of a drone intentionally targeting a truck in the Belgorod region of Russia is below.

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US Official Says Striking Iran Was Intended to “Maintain The Ceasefire”

Shortly after midnight, the United States struck Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas, which is home to a naval base. A US official described the actions as “measured, purely defensive, and intended to maintain the ceasefire.”

In addition to the strikes, the US official told media outlets that American forces shot down four Iranian kamikaze drones that “posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz” and had also struck a ground control station in Bandar Abbas that “was about to launch a fifth drone.”

Previously, there had been reports of the US striking Iranian naval vessels with fighter jets. The US called these attacks “self-defense,” while Iran called them a ceasefire violation.

The IRGC later released a statement saying it targeted a US base involved in the earlier strike on a site near Bandar Abbas Airport. “The aggressor bears full responsibility for the consequences,” the statement said, putting the blame on the US.

The current ceasefire has held since April 8th, as the US and Iran continue negotiations to end the war.

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Sanders Says ‘We Must’ Strip Section on US-Israeli Military Integration From Pentagon Budget

US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday urged congressional lawmakers to strike a highly controversial provision from next year’s military spending authorization bill that is aimed at deepening integration of the US and Israeli armed forces under the guise of reducing aid.

A provision of the proposed $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2027 originally titled Section 224 but now renumbered Section 219 would establish a formal “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” requiring the US defense secretary to designate a Pentagon executive agent responsible for coordinating and expanding US-Israel defense technology collaboration.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza – has called the section his personal plan.

“Only 16% of Americans support arming Israel without restrictions. So what is Congress doing? Burying a provision in the defense bill that would give Israel more military integration than any NATO ally,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media. “We must strip Section 224 from the Pentagon budget.”

Earlier this month, members of the House Armed Services Committee from both parties rejected an amendment introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to remove the integration provision from the 2027 NDAA. The committee then advanced the broader defense package. The Senate Armed Services Committee subsequently voted to advance the proposed NDAA.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) – an anti-interventionist libertarian who recently lost his reelection primary to a challenger backed by President Donald Trump – said Sunday that he and Khanna have submitted an amendment to strip Section 219 from the proposed NDAA. Massie’s measure requires the assent of seven of the House Rules Committee’s 13 members to get a vote.

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