The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes.
In contrast to U.S. actions, in nearly every speech or interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the “rules-based order.” But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law, or some other set of rules he has yet to define. What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?
We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force, and we have always insisted that the U.S. government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.
But even as the United States’ illegal wars and support for allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have reduced cities to rubble and left country after country mired in intractable violence and chaos, U.S. leaders have refused to even acknowledge that aggressive and destructive U.S. and allied military operations violate the rules-based order of the United Nations Charter and international law.
President Trump was clear that he was not interested in following any “global rules,” only supporting U.S. national interests. His National Security Advisor John Bolton explicitly prohibited National Security Council staff attending the 2018 G20 Summit in Argentina from even uttering the words “rules-based order.”
So you might expect us to welcome Blinken’s stated commitment to the “rules-based order” as a long-overdue reversal in U.S. policy. But when it comes to a vital principle like this, it is actions that count, and the Biden administration has yet to take any decisive action to bring U.S. foreign policy into compliance with the UN Charter or international law.
For Secretary Blinken, the concept of a “rules-based order” seems to serve mainly as a cudgel with which to attack China and Russia. At a May 7 UN Security Council meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that instead of accepting the already existing rules of international law, the United States and its allies are trying to come up with “other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else.”
The UN Charter and the rules of international law were developed in the 20th century precisely to codify the unwritten and endlessly contested rules of customary international law with explicit, written rules that would be binding on all nations.
The United States played a leading role in this legalist movement in international relations, from the Hague Peace Conferences at the turn of the 20th century to the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945 and the revised Geneva Conventions in 1949, including the new Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians, like the countless numbers killed by American weapons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.
As President Franklin Roosevelt described the plan for the United Nations to a joint session of Congress on his return from Yalta in 1945:
“It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries – and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join. I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the results of this conference as the beginning of a permanent structure of peace.”
But America’s post-Cold War triumphalism eroded U.S. leaders’ already half-hearted commitment to those rules. The neocons argued that they were no longer relevant and that the United States must be ready to impose order on the world by the unilateral threat and use of military force, exactly what the UN Charter prohibits. Madeleine Albright and other Democratic leaders embraced new doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and a “responsibility to protect” to try to carve out politically persuasive exceptions to the explicit rules of the UN Charter.
America’s “endless wars,” its revived Cold War on Russia and China, its blank check for the Israeli occupation and the political obstacles to crafting a more peaceful and sustainable future are some of the fruits of these bipartisan efforts to challenge and weaken the rules-based order.
Today, far from being a leader of the international rules-based system, the United States is an outlier. It has failed to sign or ratify about fifty important and widely accepted multilateral treaties on everything from children’s rights to arms control. Its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and other countries are themselves violations of international law, and the new Biden administration has shamefully failed to lift these illegal sanctions, ignoring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ request to suspend such unilateral coercive measures during the pandemic.
So is Blinken’s “rules-based order” a recommitment to President Roosevelt’s “permanent structure of peace,” or is it in fact a renunciation of the United Nations Charter and its purpose, which is peace and security for all of humanity?
In the light of Biden’s first few months in power, it appears to be the latter. Instead of designing a foreign policy based on the principles and rules of the UN Charter and the goal of a peaceful world, Biden’s policy seems to start from the premises of a $753 billion U.S. military budget, 800 overseas military bases, endless U.S. and allied wars and massacres, and massive weapons sales to repressive regimes. Then it works backward to formulate a policy framework to somehow justify all that.
Once a “war on terror” that only fuels terrorism, violence and chaos was no longer politically viable, hawkish U.S. leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—seem to have concluded that a return to the Cold War was the only plausible way to perpetuate America’s militarist foreign policy and multi-trillion-dollar war machine.
But that raised a new set of contradictions. For 40 years, the Cold War was justified by the ideological struggle between the capitalist and communist economic systems. But the U.S.S.R. disintegrated and Russia is now a capitalist country. China is still governed by its Communist Party, but has a managed, mixed economy similar to that of Western Europe in the years after the Second World War – an efficient and dynamic economic system that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in both cases.
So how can these U.S. leaders justify their renewed Cold War? They have floated the notion of a struggle between “democracy and authoritarianism.” But the United States supports too many horrific dictatorships around the world, especially in the Middle East, to make that a convincing pretext for a Cold War against Russia and China.
A U.S. “global war on authoritarianism” would require confronting repressive U.S. allies like Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, not arming them to the teeth and shielding them from international accountability as the United States is doing.
So, just as American and British leaders settled on non-existent “WMD”s as the pretext they could all agree on to justify their war on Iraq, the U.S. and its allies have settled on defending a vague, undefined “rules-based order” as the justification for their revived Cold War on Russia and China.
But like the emperor’s new clothes in the fable and the WMDs in Iraq, the United States’ new rules don’t really exist. They are just its latest smokescreen for a foreign policy based on illegal threats and uses of force and a doctrine of “might makes right.”
We challenge President Biden and Secretary Blinken to prove us wrong by actually joining the rules-based order of the UN Charter and international law. That would require a genuine commitment to a very different and more peaceful future, with appropriate contrition and accountability for the United States’ and its allies’ systematic violations of the UN Charter and international law, and the countless violent deaths, ruined societies and widespread chaos they have caused.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and 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 with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
These monstrous acts come hard on the heels of a ceasefire on May 21, 2021, which put a halt to an intensification of colonial aggressions in Gaza. In response to the attempted ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah and murderous assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque, Hamas, which came to power in Gaza through the 2006 elections, responded with a warning to the Israeli government: either stop the attacks or face armed resistance.
Israel’s attacks did not cease, so on May 10, a few days after issuing its warning on May 4, Hamas launched its crude unguided rockets into Israel. While its Iron Dome defense system repelled most of these rockets, Israel pounded Gaza with its advance weapons technology. By the time a ceasefire took hold on May 20, Israel had killed at least 243 Palestinians, including 66 children. Israeli violence has also injured approximately 1,900 Palestinians and displaced 90,000 residents of Gaza; Hamas rockets killed 12 Israelis, including 2 children.
Zionist Settler-Colonialism
The continued subjugation of Palestinians drives home a crucial point: Zionist settler-colonialism needs to be comprehensively dismantled. A mere ceasefire is not enough. A lasting solution to the plight of Palestinians requires a comprehensive consideration of the structural roots of the present-day situation. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was declared. West Bank was annexed by Jordan. Gaza strip came under Egyptian military control, and formally Palestine ceased to exist except in the hearts and minds of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who became refugees. In 1967, Israel expanded its frontiers, occupying West Bank and Gaza.
Two broad patterns can be identified in the illegal occupation of Palestine. Firstly, Israel uses tactics of dehumanization to create a background of permanent death. Palestinians live in inhuman conditions, in brutal Bantustans, where they are subjected to collective punishments, 24-hour curfews, where they are humiliated and dehumanized on a daily basis. They never know when their homes will be demolished, when their children will be shot, when their valued trees will be cut, when their roads will be closed, when they will be allowed to walk down to the market to buy food and medicine, and when they will not. They live with no semblance of dignity. They have no control over their lands, their security, their movement, their communication, their water supply.
Secondly, Israel deploys fragmentation to weaken Palestinian anti-colonialism. The settler state has long separated Palestinians from each other physically, symbolically, and experientially. Scattered and contained within easily controllable splinters in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, ’48 Palestine (the lands within what became Israel, where Palestinians managed to remain), refugee camps, or in exile across the world, Israel felt assured that Palestinians would no longer be able to resist in a collective manner.
However, Israel’s expectations of an acquiescent colonized population have remained a dream. Palestinians have steadfastly confronted the dehumanization and fragmentation promoted by settler-colonialism. Over its long history, Palestinian resistance practices have included labor strikes, boycotts, marches, demonstrations, general strikes, popular commemorations, sit-ins, resistance art etc. It is a struggle full of creativity, courage, and humanity. Year after year, these practices have stood and continue to stand in the face of Israeli violence, which seeks to annihilate and replace the native Palestinians.
The opposition to fragmentation has been most visible in recent acts of resistance to Israel’s tightening of the garrote around Palestinians’ neck. When Israeli mobs, supported and protected by Israeli soldiers, attacked Palestinians in Lydd, Palestinians from Jerusalem and the Naqab drove there in buses to protect them by sheer numbers. From Lebanon and Jordan, children of Palestinian refugees who were displaced in 1948 managed to temporarily cross back into their historic lands. Palestinians also went on a historic general strike on May 18, 2021, widely observed by Palestinians, and serving as a remarkable show of unity and strength against decades of settler colonialism and military occupation that has structured every aspect of Palestinian life.
“To the End I Shall Fight”
In “A Letter from a Bankrupt”, Samih al-Qasim wrote:
“I may lose my daily bread, if you wish
I may hawk my clothes and bed
I may become a stone cutter, or a porter
Or a street sweeper
I may search in animal dung for food
I may collapse, naked and starved
Enemy of light
I will not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight.
You may rob me of the last span of my land
You may ditch my youth in prison holes
Steal what my grandfather left me behind:
Some furniture or clothes and jars,
You may burn my poems and books
You may feed your dog on my flesh
You may impose a nightmare of your terror
On my village
Enemy of light
I shall not compromise
And to the end I shall fight.”
The poem captures the essence of the current conjuncture in which Palestine’s anti-colonial movement finds itself. In spite of the cessation of Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, unconscionable cruelty against Palestinians persists. This can only be put to an end if the world acknowledges the fundamental role of Zionist settler-colonialism in the persecution of Palestinians and demands the dismantlement of the ethno-racist state of Israel.
Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com.
Written by Anandi Pandey and Sandeep Pandey
Without consulting anybody from the Arab population, which outnumbered the Jews by about ten times, the British made public their intent to create a national home for Jewish people in Palestine on 2 November, 1917 through the Balfour declaration. Then on 29 November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recommending creation of independent Arab and Jewish states with a special status for Jerusalem. The UN Partition Plan for Palestine was opposed by the Arab world. Today whereas Israel, after being admitted to the UN as a member state in 1949, enjoys recognition as a country by 164 of the 193 member states of UN, Palestine has got a non-member observer status at UN in 2012. The demographics changed dramatically in 1948 during what is termed by Palestinians as Nakba (catastrophe) and since then Jews have been dominating the Arabs in all respects including population. Most of the Arab population was killed or made to flee. There are more Palestinians in refugee camps than outside. The people of Palestine do not enjoy basic human rights or the recognition of a free statehood.
For 73 years Palestinians have been fighting for their survival and Israel has been trying to bomb them out of existence, with the implicit help of the United States of America. An independent state of Palestine becomes a distant reality with every attack by Israel. The change in demographics and policy of expansionism narrates a continuous story of hegemony and domination by Israel. The picture is lucid if one just looks at changing areas under control of Israel and those inhabited by Palestinians on the Israel-Palestine map over the years since 1948. While the world sympathises with Jews for the Holocaust they faced during World War II, that cannot become an excuse for putting the Palestinian-Arab population through a similar experience. When will the Israeli cruelty on Palestinians end? All Israel-Palestine conflicts since 1948 have been lopsided with Palestinians facing heavy casualties. With the economic blockade by Israel, Palestine has become a huge open prison where citizens are denied basic human rights.
As Israel’s response remains insensitive and it thwarts all attempts towards any peaceful resolution of the issue, the Palestinians have also become hardened. From a secular Palestine Liberation Organisation led by Yasser Arafat being the sole representative of Palestinians on World fora, today the Palestinian politics is dominated by groups such as Hamas which controls Gaza and believes in militarily countering the might of Israel. Undeterred by continuous air strikes from Israel aimed at ensuring total and long term quiet, Hamas recently fired thousands of rockets at Israel. The casualties on Palestinian side were about twenty times including many children and women dead, but the spirit of resistance is reflectd in the retaliation by Hamas. No wonder, the ceasefire is being celebrated in Gaza as victory. Israel claims that it had attacked Hamas military infrastructure in Gaza but how does that explain attacks on 18 hospitals and 50 schools? Essential supplies of medicines, water and electricity have been disrupted by Israeli air raids and over 50 thousand Palestinians have been rendered homeless.
There is a feeling among the Palestinians that Israel is not honest about peace. The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 and the Camp David Summit, 2000, all raised hopes that peace would be achieved based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, but Israel was never ready to withdraw its forces from territories occupied in 1967 nor was it ready to fold up the settlements established on Palestinian land. Question of an independent state of Palestine always remained elusive.
With United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco according recognition to Israel in 2020 it appears that the idea of an independent Palestine is a lost cause but knowing Palestinians they are not going to give up easily. They’ll fight to the bitter end. There is probably hardly any family, including those of leaders of Hamas, which have not lost their members in Israeli attacks. With no economy to support them and completely dependent on outside support, like that from Qatar, channelizing essential materials to sustain their society through illegal tunnels built under the Rafah border with not so friendly Egypt, they have hardly anything going for them. Surviving in such adverse conditions it is a surprise that Hamas has been able to put up such counter-offensive. Moreover, unlike some previous skirmishes this time it was not a direct fight between Hamas and Israeli forces. As the trigger incident was attempt by Israeli authorities to evict some Palestinians from East Jerusalem followed by attack by Israeli police on Arabs gathered in al-Aqsa mosque, this time the resentment against Israel spread among all Palestinians, in Gaza, West Bank and within Israel.
Palestinians have shown tremendous resilience over the years. They are known to rebuild structures devastated by Israeli attacks within days. Even under attack they pretend as if life is normal by continuing to carry on with all necessary activities of day-to-day life. They know there is no alternative for them, as they refuse subjugation by Israelis. But as Israel declines to accept the reality, the suffering of Palestinians continues.
US and some European countries supported the Israeli right to defend itself. It is ponderable as to which country kills 65 children in self defense? The fact is that Israel is the encroacher and aggressor since 1948. If anybody is defending themselves it is that Palestinians all the way, sometimes using peaceful means but using violence in other instances. Thankfully, US President Joe Biden who talked to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu six times to impress upon Israel to de-escalate the conflict, even though US refused to support a French sponsored UNSC proposed resolution calling for immediate ceasefire, has with the help of Egypt been able to achieve a ceasefire and now promised to support reconstruction efforts in Gaza. US says it will help only Palestinian Authority in this reconstruction effort as it views Hamas as a terrorist organization. Poignantly it doesn’t see the folly of its actions as it considers another round of military aid to Israel which is already one of the most militarized states in the world. Ironically, while Biden has promised rapid humanitarian assistance to Gaza, he has in the same breath also promised to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missle defense system. The Palestinians will once again be left to fend for themselves.
Anandi Pandey is a B.A. student at Ashoka University and Sandeep Pandey is Vice President, Socialist Party (India).
e-mail ids: anandipandey99@gmail.com, ashaashram@yahoo.com
“The public opinion in the US has also been steadily becoming favourable to the Palestinians…But although Americans are warming to the Palestinians, they still favour Israel by wide margins…Western politicians obviously believe that the Palestinians should accept apartheid quietly, and should have the good grace silently to wither away…
“Even if the Israeli military objective is realised, it can only be a Pyrrhic victory insofar as it is the Iran-led resistance movement that eventually stands to gain.”
***
Egypt has once again been thrust onto the forefront of brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi remarked on Monday that a ceasefire might still be within reach.
As he put it, “Egypt is going to great lengths to reach a ceasefire between the Israelis and Palestinians — and hope still exists.” A report in the right-wing Jewish paper Algemeiner also shares this opinion.
The paper said there is “growing pressure” on Israel from the Biden Administration, and it is “mulling the terms of a ceasefire agreement… A halt could be forthcoming in the near future now that the IDF (armed forces) and Israel’s security cabinet have completed a number of objectives, including destroying a Hamas tunnel network and eliminating senior members of the organisation.”
Equally, the White House readouts of President Joe Biden’s successive calls with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday hinted that Washington is seeking a swift end to the conflict.
While repeating the old cliche “Israel-has- the-right-to-defend-itself”, Biden ended the conversation with Netanyahu voicing his “support for steps to enable the Palestinian people to enjoy the dignity, security, freedom, and economic opportunity that they deserve and affirmed his support for a two-state solution.”
In the conversation with Abbas, Biden “highlighted the recent U.S. decision to resume assistance to the Palestinian people, including economic and humanitarian assistance to benefit Palestinians in the West bank and Gaza. The President also underscored his strong commitment to a negotiated two-state solution as the best path to reach a just and lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
These were calming words. What takes the breath away is the statement made by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Representative to the United Nations at the UN Security Council Briefing on Sunday regarding the Situation in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
The ambassador, a former career diplomat, holds a Cabinet-level position and her statement, as delivered, would carry the imprimatur of the White House. The salience of the statement lies in its marked shift away from any unilateral, unequivocal expressions of US support for Israel. Arguably, it spoke disapprovingly of Israel’s behaviour in the current conflict situation.
Specifically, it urged Israel to avoid “evictions – including in East Jerusalem – demolitions, and settlement construction east of the 1967 lines. And critically, all parties need to uphold and respect the historic status quo at the holy sites”.
However, when the crunch time came at the United Nations Security Council, the United States once more blocked even a statement calling for a ceasefire.
On the other hand, Netanyahu struck a defiant stance in a televised address on Sunday saying, “Our campaign against the terrorist organisations is continuing with full force. We are acting now, for as long as necessary, to restore calm and quiet to you, Israel’s citizens. It will take time.”
Indeed, it was a Bloody Sunday in Gaza, with “the highest number of victims” in just one day since the start of conflict. The updated toll is 218 Palestinian victims, including 58 minors and 34 women, more than 1230 injured. The toll in West Bank is at least 21 Palestinians killed. Clearly, The UN Security Council meeting has ended with nothing.
Evidently, Netanyahu remains confident that Israel still holds the diplomatic blank check that the US gave it all through past decades to pursue its policies of occupation and repression and continue with the steady annexation of Palestinian territory and expansion of Israeli settlements that brings it closer to the one-state reality — that is, a Jewish state.
The Council on Foreign Relations president and former State Department director of policy planning, Richard Haass said Monday, “Netanyahu has come to believe that he can ignore Joe Biden, he can ignore any president of the United States, because, at the end of the day, he has Congress, he has Orthodox Jews, he has evangelical Christians and they can box in a president of the United States.”
But this is also applicable to Europe. The British historian and former ambassador Craig Murray framed the paradigm in this stark way: “Western politicians obviously believe that the Palestinians should accept apartheid quietly, and should have the good grace silently to wither away… It is absolutely plain there is no political process of any kind in train to alleviate the Palestinian plight, that even those “liberal” western politicians who floated the idea of a “two state solution” meant, at best, internationally recognised apartheid and bantustans.”
Yet, from all indications, this is not a preplanned conflict by either Israel or Hamas. Neither side wants a full-fledged war. At the end of the day, the Biden Administration too may not want the clashes to continue as it could have ramifications for its larger regional strategies, especially the negotiations over Iran nuclear deal.
What emerges is that Israel is pressing ahead with its objective to weaken the Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But Hamas is showing that it still retains the capability to retaliate. Hamas announced today a new wave of massive rocket bombardments of Israeli cities and army bases in response to Israel’s strikes. Overall, 3200 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza in the past 8-day period.
Even if the Israeli military objective is realised, it can only be a Pyrrhic victory insofar as it is the Iran-led resistance movement that eventually stands to gain. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh has turned toward the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — its Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani — and Ali Akbar Velayati, advisor to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Surely, Hamas will further boost its deterrent capability. In political terms too, Hamas has broken the glass ceiling. Its appeal is expanding among Palestinians in Jerusalem, West Bank and elsewhere within Israel. The moment is arriving where Hamas becomes the voice of all Palestinians, not simply the Palestinians in Gaza. The international community will have to gradually deal with the consequences of that eventuality.
For Israel, on the other hand, the current clashes highlight that there is no “peace” and no “new Middle East.” It would now be inconceivable that the Saudi leadership could contemplate normalising ties with Israel in the near term. Again, the Abraham Accords did nothing to resolve underlying conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Libya — or the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The region “remains the same blood-soaked mess as ever”, as Washington Post columnist Max Boot put it.
Above all, in the court of world opinion, sympathy tips in favour of the Palestinians. Unsurprisingly, Hamas is portrayed as the guardian of Palestinians, whereas, Israel with its indiscriminate missile attacks against civilian targets in Gaza is perceived as the aggressor.
Meanwhile, the public opinion in the US has also been steadily becoming favourable to the Palestinians. A Gallup poll published in March found that 30 percent of Americans held a favorable opinion of Palestinians, up from 21 percent in 2018. Among Democrats, 53 percent want the US to pressure Israel more — the first time a majority has taken that position. Substantial pressure on Biden to act is coming also from the progressive Democrats who strive to elevate support for the Palestinian cause from the fringes to the mainstream.
But although Americans are warming to the Palestinians, they still favour Israel by wide margins. Evidently, Biden is walking a fine line. It goes to the credit of Biden that he did not exacerbate the conflict, as Donald Trump might have done. But call it inertia or passivity or low-key approach, Biden may also have exposed that the US has become an ineffectual power in the Middle East and that its influence is rapidly waning. This will have consequences.
To be sure, Netanyahu is the winner. The escalation of violence with the Palestinians has stoked nationalist passions inside Israel, which virtually shuts the door on an opposition coalition replacing him. Netanyahu gains immunity from prosecution on corruption charges so long as he remains prime minister.
The right-wing lawmaker and a key figure in the negotiations between the opposition factions, Naftali Bennett, who heads the pro-settler Yamina party, seems to be already moving toward resuming negotiations with Netanyahu to form the next coalition government.
***
Posted in his blog, indianpunchline, on May 17, 2021,by the author.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. He introduces about himself thus: “Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Other overseas postings included South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey. I write mainly on Indian foreign policy and the affairs of the Middle East, Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific…”
His mail ID : indianpunchline@gmail.com
When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America.
In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for 37% of total international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than six times that of Washington’s threat du jour, China.
Sadly, this was no surprise to arms-trade analysts. The U.S. has held that top spot for 28 of the past 30 years, posting massive sales numbers regardless of which party held power in the White House or Congress. This is, of course, the definition of good news for weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, even if it’s bad news for so many of the rest of us, especially those who suffer from the use of those arms by militaries in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates. The recent bombing and leveling of Gaza by the U.S.-financed and supplied Israeli military is just the latest example of the devastating toll exacted by American weapons transfers in these years.
While it is well known that the United States provides substantial aid to Israel, the degree to which the Israeli military relies on U.S. planes, bombs, and missiles is not fully appreciated. According to statistics compiled by the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, the United States has provided Israel with $63 billion in security assistance over the past two decades, more than 90% of it through the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing, which provides funds to buy U.S. weaponry. But Washington’s support for the Israeli state goes back much further. Total U.S. military and economic aid to Israel exceeds $236 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2018 dollars) since its founding — nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars.
King of the Arms Dealers
Donald Trump, sometimes referred to by President Joe Biden as “the other guy,” warmly embraced the role of arms-dealer-in-chief and not just by sustaining massive U.S. arms aid for Israel, but throughout the Middle East and beyond. In a May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia — his first foreign trip — Trump would tout a mammoth (if, as it turned out, highly exaggerated) $110-billion arms deal with that kingdom.
On one level, the Saudi deal was a publicity stunt meant to show that President Trump could, in his own words, negotiate agreements that would benefit the U.S. economy. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a pal of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the architect of Saudi Arabia’s devastating intervention in Yemen, even put in a call to then-Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson. His desire: to get a better deal for the Saudi regime on a multibillion-dollar missile defense system that Lockheed was planning to sell it. The point of the call was to put together the biggest arms package imaginable in advance of his father-in-law’s trip to Riyadh.
When Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia to immense local fanfare, he milked the deal for all it was worth. Calling the future Saudi sales “tremendous,” he assured the world that they would create “jobs, jobs, jobs” in the United States.
That arms package, however, did far more than burnish Trump’s reputation as a deal maker and jobs creator. It represented an endorsement of the Saudi-led coalition’s brutal war in Yemen, which has now resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter of a million people and put millions of others on the brink of famine.
And don’t for a second think that Trump was alone in enabling that intervention. The kingdom had received a record $115 billion in arms offers — notifications to Congress that don’t always result in final sales — over the eight years of the Obama administration, including for combat aircraft, bombs, missiles, tanks, and attack helicopters, many of which have since been used in Yemen. After repeated Saudi air strikes on civilian targets, the Obama foreign-policy team finally decided to slow Washington’s support for that war effort, moving in December 2016 to stop a multibillion-dollar bomb sale. Upon taking office, however, Trump reversed course and pushed that deal forward, despite Saudi actions that Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) said “look like war crimes to me.”
Trump made it abundantly clear, in fact, that his reasons for arming Saudi Arabia were anything but strategic. In an infamous March 2018 White House meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, he even brandished a map of the United States to show which places were likely to benefit most from those Saudi arms deals, including election swing states Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He doubled down on that economic argument after the October 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at that country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, even as calls to cut off sales to the regime mounted in Congress. The president made it clear then that jobs and profits, not human rights, were paramount to him, stating:
“$110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries — and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!”
And so it went. In the summer of 2019 Trump vetoed an effort by Congress to block an $8.1-billion arms package that included bombs and support for the Royal Saudi Air Force and he continued to back the kingdom even in his final weeks in office. In December 2020, he offered more than $500 million worth of bombs to that regime on the heels of a $23-billion package to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its partner-in-crime in the Yemen war.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE weren’t the only beneficiaries of Trump’s penchant for selling weapons. According to a report by the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, his administration made arms sales offers of more than $110 billion to customers all over the world in 2020, a 75% increase over the yearly averages reached during the Obama administration, as well as in the first three years of his tenure.
Will Biden Be Different?
Advocates of reining in U.S. weapons trafficking took note of Joe Biden’s campaign-trail pledge that, if elected, he would not “check our values at the door” in deciding whether to continue arming the Saudi regime. Hopes were further raised when, in his first foreign policy speech as president, he announced that his administration would end “support for offensive operations in Yemen” along with “relevant arms sales.”
That statement, of course, left a potentially giant loophole on the question of which weapons would be considered in support of “offensive operations,” but it did at least appear to mark a sharp departure from the Trump era. In the wake of Biden’s statement, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE were indeed put on hold, pending a review of their potential consequences.
Three months into Biden’s term, however, the president’s early pledge to rein in damaging arms deals are already eroding. The first blow was the news that the administration would indeed move forward with a $23-billion arms package to the UAE, including F-35 combat aircraft, armed drones, and a staggering $10 billion worth of bombs and missiles. The decision was ill-advised on several fronts, most notably because of that country’s role in Yemen’s brutal civil war. There, despite scaling back its troops on the ground, it continues to arm, train, and finance 90,000 militia members, including extremist groups with links to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The UAE has also backed armed opposition forces in Libya in violation of a United Nations embargo, launched drone strikes there that killed scores of civilians, and cracked down on dissidents at home and abroad. It regularly makes arbitrary arrests and uses torture. If arming the UAE isn’t a case of “checking our values at the door,” it’s not clear what is.
To its credit, the Biden administration committed to suspending two Trump bomb deals with Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, it’s not clear what (if any) other pending Saudi sales will be deemed “offensive” and blocked. Certainly, the new administration has allowed U.S. government personnel and contractors to help maintain the effectiveness of the Saudi Air Force and so has continued to enable ongoing air strikes in Yemen that are notorious for killing civilians. The Biden team has also failed to forcefully pressure the Saudis to end their blockade of that country, which United Nations agencies have determined could put 400,000 Yemeni children at risk of death by starvation in the next year.
In addition, the Biden administration has cleared a sale of anti-ship missiles to the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the most repressive government in that nation’s history, helmed by the man Donald Trump referred to as “my favorite dictator.” The missiles themselves are in no way useful for either internal repression or that country’s scorched-earth anti-terror campaign against rebels in its part of the Sinai peninsula — where civilians have been tortured and killed, and tens of thousands displaced from their homes — but the sale does represent a tacit endorsement of the regime’s repressive activities.
Guns, Anyone?
While Biden’s early actions have undermined promises to take a different approach to arms sales, the story isn’t over. Key members of Congress are planning to closely monitor the UAE sale and perhaps intervene to prevent the delivery of the weapons. Questions have been raised about what arms should go to Saudi Arabia and reforms that would strengthen Congress’s role in blocking objectionable arms transfers are being pressed by at least some members of the House and the Senate.
One area where President Biden could readily begin to fulfill his campaign pledge to reduce the harm to civilians from U.S. arms sales would be firearms exports. The Trump administration significantly loosened restrictions and regulations on the export of a wide range of guns, including semi-automatic firearms and sniper rifles. As a result, such exports surged in 2020, with record sales of more than 175,000 military rifles and shotguns.
In a distinctly deregulatory mood, Trump’s team moved sales of deadly firearms from the jurisdiction of the State Department, which had a mandate to vet any such deals for possible human-rights abuses, to the Commerce Department, whose main mission was simply to promote the export of just about anything. Trump’s “reforms” also eliminated the need to pre-notify Congress on any major firearms sales, making it far harder to stop deals with repressive regimes.
As he pledged to do during his presidential campaign, President Biden could reverse Trump’s approach without even seeking Congressional approval. The time to do so is now, given the damage such gun exports cause in places like the Philippines and Mexico, where U.S.-supplied firearms have been used to kill thousands of civilians, while repressing democratic movements and human-rights defenders.
Who Benefits?
Beyond the slightest doubt, a major — or perhaps even the major — obstacle to reforming arms sales policies and practices is the weapons industry itself. That includes major contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, and General Dynamics that produce fighter planes, bombs, armored vehicles, and other major weapons systems, as well as firearms makers like Sig Sauer.
Raytheon stands out in this crowd because of its determined efforts to push through bomb sales to Saudi Arabia and the deep involvement of its former (or future) employees with the U.S. government. A former Raytheon lobbyist, Charles Faulkner, worked in the Trump State Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and was involved in deciding that Saudi Arabia was not — it was! — intentionally bombing civilians in Yemen. He then supported declaring a bogus “emergency” to ram through the sale of bombs and of aircraft support to Saudi Arabia.
Raytheon has indeed insinuated itself in the halls of government in a fashion that should be deeply troubling even by the minimalist standards of the twenty-first-century military-industrial complex. Former Trump defense secretary Mark Esper was Raytheon’s chief in-house lobbyist before joining the administration, while current Biden defense secretary Lloyd Austin served on Raytheon’s board of directors. While Austin has pledged to recuse himself from decisions involving the company, it’s a pledge that will prove difficult to verify.
Arms sales are Big Business — the caps are a must! — for the top weapons makers. Lockheed Martin gets roughly one-quarter of its sales from foreign governments and Raytheon five percent of its revenue from Saudi sales. American jobs allegedly tied to weapons exports are always the selling point for such dealings, but in reality, they’ve been greatly exaggerated.
At most, arms sales account for just more than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. Many such sales, in fact, involve outsourcing production, in whole or in part, to recipient nations, reducing the jobs impact here significantly. Though it’s seldom noted, virtually any other form of spending creates more jobs than weapons production. In addition, exporting green-technology products would create far larger global markets for U.S. goods, should the government ever decide to support them in anything like the way it supports the arms industry.
Given what’s at stake for them economically, Raytheon and its cohorts spend vast sums attempting to influence both parties in Congress and any administration. In the past two decades, defense companies, led by the major arms exporting firms, spent $285 million in campaign contributions alone and $2.5 billion on lobbying, according to statistics gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics. Any changes in arms export policy will mean forcefully taking on the arms lobby and generating enough citizen pressure to overcome its considerable influence in Washington.
Given the political will to do so, there are many steps the Biden administration and Congress could take to rein in runaway arms exports, especially since such deals are uniquely unpopular with the public. A September 2019 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, for example, found that 70% of Americans think arms sales make the country less safe.
The question is: Can such public sentiment be mobilized in favor of actions to stop at least the most egregious cases of U.S. weapons trafficking, even as the global arms trade rolls on? Selling death should be no joy for any country, so halting it is a goal well worth fighting for. Still, it remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will ever limit weapons sales or if it will simply continue to promote this country as the world’s top arms exporter of all time.
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