Foreign Policy Category Archive

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The Arab Spring Failed But Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues

Patrick Cockburn • February 13, 2021

• 1,200 Words • 9 Comments • Reply

Ten years ago, people across the Middle East and North Africa rose up in protest against their rulers, demanding freedom and democracy. Despotic rulers were toppled or feared that power was being torn from their grasp in countries across the region, as millions of demonstrators surged through the streets, chanting that “the people demand the... Read More

The ‘humanitarian’ Left Still Ignores the Lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria to Cheer on More War

Jonathan Cook • January 22, 2021

• 1,900 Words • 19 Comments • Reply

The instinct among parts of the left to cheerlead the right’s war crimes, so long as they are dressed up as liberal “humanitarianism”, is alive and kicking, as Owen Jones reveals in a column today on the plight of the Uighurs at China’s hands. The “humanitarian war” instinct persists even after two decades of the... Read More

Soleimani Geopolitics, One Year On

Pepe Escobar • January 4, 2021

• 2,000 Words • 84 Comments • Reply

One year ago, the Raging Twenties started with a murder. The assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi militia, by laser-guided Hellfire missiles launched from two MQ-9 Reaper drones, was an act of... Read More

National Justice Investigates: American Tax Payers Spend At Least $23 Billion On Israel Every Year

Eric Striker • January 1, 2021

• 3,000 Words • 136 Comments • Reply

Last September, Donald Trump accidentally upended an entire generation of myths invented by the left and right that purport to explain America's costly and unpopular military adventures in the Middle East: As Mondoweiss pointed out at the time, the explosive admission went completely unmentioned in the mainstream media, which traditionally hangs on every one of... Read More

Robert Fisk, 2010. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Mohamed Nanabhay. CC BY 2.0.

Establishment Journalists Are Piling on to Smear Robert Fisk Now He Cannot Answer Back

Jonathan Cook • November 30, 2020

• 3,000 Words • 113 Comments • Reply

Something remarkable even by the usually dismal standards of the stenographic media blue-tick brigade has been happening in the past few days. Leading journalists in the corporate media have suddenly felt the urgent need not only to criticise the late, much-respected foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, but to pile in against him, using the most outrageous... Read More

Hezbollah the Beautiful

Taxi • November 24, 2020

• 3,800 Words • 579 Comments • Reply

A warrior’s soul sleeps in his fist. Wakes in his fist. Till his dying breath, will exist in his fist. No gun and no mortal danger can unfold this fist. A warrior will live and die with his fist clenched. This is not for love of violence nor for the thrills of war. Not because... Read More

Fisk Had Independence of Mind – Which Is Why He Angered Governments

Patrick Cockburn • November 14, 2020

• 1,200 Words • 11 Comments • Reply

Robert Fisk and I often used to discuss the merits and demerits of responding in print to personal attacks on us filled with provable falsehoods. The temptation to refute such falsehood is hard to resist, but we recognised that therein lies a trap because even the most persuasive refutation of a gross lie necessitates repeating... Read More

Destroyed Jewish tank in Mleeta, Lebanon, 2020

Lebanese Snippets

Linh Dinh • November 7, 2020

• 2,100 Words • 254 Comments • Reply

Every village has its idiot, but in Sidon, they're all idiots, Ali informed me as we drove, again, through this gorgeous and mellow city. And they're cowards too, Ali added, chuckling. "They do not like to fight." "Maybe they're like that because this city is so beautiful." I wanted to say soft, but when speaking... Read More

Fisk Was a ‘historian of the Present’ Who Illuminated the World

Patrick Cockburn • November 3, 2020

• 1,200 Words • 11 Comments • Reply

I first met Robert in Belfast in 1972 at the height of the Troubles when he was the correspondent for The Times and I was writing a PhD on Irish history at Queen’s University. I was also taking my first tentative steps as a journalist, while he was swiftly establishing a reputation as a meticulous... Read More

Neocons Flock to Biden: It’s All About Jewish Values

Kevin MacDonald • October 30, 2020

• 1,300 Words • 26 Comments • Reply

Probably the least surprising news you will hear in this election season, from Philip Weiss, “Neoconservatives are flocking to Biden (and let’s forget about the Iran deal.” Neoconservatives are flocking to the Biden campaign. The DC braintrust that believes in using US military power to aid Israel in the Middle East has jumped parties before–... Read More

A Peace Deal Like No Other

Much ado about nothing, but Act 2 is coming up

Philip Giraldi • September 22, 2020

• 1,400 Words • 135 Comments • Reply

It is odd that the White House is gloating over its claimed peace agreement in the Middle East at the same time as one of the signatories is bombing Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. It all suggests that peace in the region will exclude designated enemies and the friends of those enemies, since the ties among... Read More

Trump's Mideast Mirage

Eric Margolis • September 20, 2020

• 600 Words • 17 Comments • Reply

The Trump administration, desperate for some good news, just manufactured its own news by confecting a ‘peace’ deal between Israel and a bunch of pipsqueak Arab monarchies - just in time for November US elections. The Gulf monarchies – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain - that signed this agreement are so frightened of neighboring... Read More

Is Peace at Hand in the Middle East?

Pat Buchanan • September 18, 2020

• 800 Words • 54 Comments • Reply

Having presided over the recognition of Israel by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, President Donald Trump has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize amid talk of peace breaking out across the region. Assuredly, this is a major diplomatic breakthrough, and Nancy's Pelosi's sour-grapes dismissal of the deal as a "distraction" testifies to that... Read More

There Is a Historic Change Taking Place in the Middle East

Patrick Cockburn • August 14, 2020

• 1,100 Words • 39 Comments • Reply

President Donald Trump is cock-a-hoop over the United Arab Emirates becoming the first Arab Gulf state to normalise its relations with Israel. He needs all the good news he can get in the months before the US presidential election. “HUGE breakthrough today! Historic Peace Agreement between our two GREAT friends, Israel and the United Arab... Read More

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America Chooses a New Mideast Policeman

Taxi • July 31, 2020

• 1,300 Words • 123 Comments • Reply

Running out of time, and desperate to gather focus and forces to fast pivot east to confront a rapidly rising Chinese superpower, America is currently arranging for its exit from the Middle East in a way that militarily secures its allies and proxies there, especially that of Israel. Naturally, it has to pick a top... Read More

People march as they take part in an anti-war protest amid increased tensions between the United States and Iran at Times Square in New York, U.S., January 4, 2020. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz - RC279E94TY3V

Leading Neocon Directs Pentagon Middle East Planning

Philip Giraldi • May 21, 2020

• 1,700 Words • 130 Comments • Reply

The Global War on Terror or GWOT was declared in the wake of 9/11 by President George W. Bush. It basically committed the United States to work to eliminate all “terrorist” groups worldwide, whether or not the countries being targeted agreed that they were beset by terrorists and whether or not they welcomed U.S. “help.”... Read More

Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the F-35I

What Does the Empire's Agony Mean for the "Jewish State of Israel"?

The Saker • May 13, 2020

• 2,100 Words • 338 Comments • Reply

First, let's begin with a few (apparently unrelated) recent news items: The latest US PR disaster in Venezuela shows that the AngloZionist Empire truly is agonizing. While this is hardly the first that that a US "special operation" goes down in an embarrassing failure, but even by US standards this latest disaster in Venezuela is... Read More

In Oman the Old Monarch Passed Away, But the New One Will Guarantee Continuity

Andre Vltchek • February 9, 2020

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

The Sultan of Oman – Qaboos bin Said Al Said - passed away at the age of 79. He was the longest serving monarch in the Gulf. Within 24 hours, an envelope with his will got opened, and the new ruler was announced and sworn in before the governing family council. His name is Haitham... Read More

U.S in the Middle-East: Preparing for Disaster

The Saker • January 30, 2020

• 3,200 Words • 275 Comments • Reply

Lies, damn lies and statistics Turns out that Trump and the Pentagon were lying. Again. This time about the true impact of the Iranian counter-strike on US forces in Syria. First they claimed that there were no injured U.S. personnel, only to eventually have to fess up that 34 soldiers had suffered traumatic brain injury... Read More

Why the New Silk Roads Are a ‘threat’ to US Bloc

The Middle East is the key to wide-ranging, economic, interlinked integration, and peace

Pepe Escobar • January 23, 2020

• 1,700 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

Under the cascading roar of the 24/7 news cycle cum Twitter eruptions, it’s easy for most of the West, especially the US, to forget the basics about the interaction of Eurasia with its western peninsula, Europe. Asia and Europe have been trading goods and ideas since at least 3,500 BC. Historically, the flux may have... Read More

How the US Runs Iraq

Eric Margolis • January 11, 2020

• 700 Words • 12 Comments • Reply

What ever happened to Iraq? Is it not an independent country with a democratic government thanks to the 2003 US invasion? So says Washington. The murder of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani suddenly shone a strobe light on ‘independent’ Iraq, and what we saw was not pretty. Welcome to the new Imperialism 101. Iraq’s... Read More

America Escalates Its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East

Michael Hudson • January 5, 2020

• 3,700 Words • 188 Comments • Reply

The mainstream media are carefully sidestepping the method behind America’s seeming madness in assassinating Islamic Revolutionary Guard general Qassim Suleimani to start the New Year. The logic behind the assassination this was a long-standing application of U.S. global policy, not just a personality quirk of Donald Trump’s impulsive action. His assassination of Iranian military leader... Read More

Imperial Capital But America-First Nation

Pat Buchanan • October 25, 2019

• 900 Words • 54 Comments • Reply

"Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand," said President Donald Trump in an impassioned defense of his decision to cut ties to the Syrian Kurds, withdraw and end these "endless wars." Are our troops in Syria, then, on their way home? Well, not exactly. Those leaving northern Syria went into Iraq. Other U.S.... Read More

Mostafa Afzalzadeh Interviews Andre Vltchek for Farhikhtegan

Is it the US that has weakened or have countries that resist become stronger?

Andre Vltchek • October 19, 2019

• 1,200 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

Q: Do we see an increase in the number of countries resisting the bullying of the United States and its allies? What makes this resistance happen? A: I believe that there are two main factors. The first one is the ‘moral one’: People are more and more aware of the brutality of the Western colonialism,... Read More

‘We Are Waiting for War’: Lebanese Say Israel Has Gone Too Far

Andre Vltchek • August 28, 2019

• 1,500 Words • 40 Comments • Reply

After the recent Israeli attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, the Middle East has found itself in the midst of undeclared war. Almost everyone in Lebanon appears to agree. “This time Israel went too far. In just two days, it bombed three countries,” I am told by a local UN staffer based in Beirut. The... Read More

The Saker Interviews Professor Marandi

The Saker • August 22, 2019

• 4,000 Words • 182 Comments • Reply

The Saker: It is often said that there is an “axis of resistance” which comprises Syrian, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia and China. Sometimes, Venezuela, Cuba or the DPRK are added to this list. Do you believe that there is such an “axis of resistance” and, if yes, how would you characterize the nature of this informal... Read More

Hidden Hands in the Middle East

Exploring Geopolitical Trends in the Region

Charlie O'Neill • August 12, 2019

• 2,200 Words • 84 Comments • Reply

The Western public has been so poorly served, in recent years, by its supposed world-class media organisations that any semblance of a coherent narrative explaining world events and tying together their deeper, underlying, causes to one another, has almost completely disappeared from the programming of the major networks. More often than not, international affairs are... Read More

Is a New US Mideast War Inevitable?

Pat Buchanan • July 19, 2019

• 900 Words • 80 Comments • Reply

In October 1950, as U.S. forces were reeling from hordes of Chinese troops who had intervened massively in the Korean War, a 5,000-man Turkish brigade arrived to halt an onslaught by six Chinese divisions. Said supreme commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur: "The Turks are the hero of heroes. There is no impossibility for the Turkish Brigade."... Read More

Kushner’s Debacle: “Deal” Fizzles, Conference Implodes

Kevin Barrett • July 17, 2019

• 2,700 Words • 327 Comments • Reply

Deal of the Century is a 1983 Hollywood comedy about crooked arms dealers conspiring to peddle new weapons that “allow for localized and conventional wars that will keep (the global arms industry’s) business viable into the next century.” Thirty-five years later, a non-fictional crooked businessman, Jared Kushner, has borrowed the title for his so-called Middle... Read More

The Ongoing Restructuring of the Greater Middle East

C.J. Hopkins • June 25, 2019

• 1,500 Words • 65 Comments • Reply

So, according to the corporate media, and to President Literally Hitler, himself, while America was sleeping last Friday morning, the U.S. Air Force was just minutes away from bombing the bejesus out of some desolate outposts somewhere in the Iranian desert and launching another catastrophic military blunder in the Middle East. At approximately 0400 Zulu... Read More

Is the Saudi Crown Price the Kind of Ally We Need Against Iran?

Patrick Cockburn • June 20, 2019

• 800 Words • 20 Comments • Reply

There is “sufficient credible evidence” that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, was responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and that he should be investigated according to a UN special rapporteur. Saudi Arabia first denied government involvement in the murder of Khashoggi after he entered the Saudi... Read More

Jared Packs Unicorns and Rainbows for Mideast Trip

Ilana Mercer • May 30, 2019

• 1,200 Words • 115 Comments • Reply

JARED KUSHNER couldn’t stare down an uncompromising foe if his wife, Ivanka Trump, held his soft, lily-white hand throughout the ordeal. Yet ridiculously, a May 22, McClatchy article claimed Mr. Kushner was fixing to “stare down uncompromising foes in fights over immigration and Middle East peace.” Let us begin with our debutant’s Middle East peace... Read More

We Can Finish ISIS - But Only if the West Winds Down Its Proxy Wars

Patrick Cockburn • April 26, 2019

• 1,200 Words • 22 Comments • Reply

Western governments have been swift to pledge action to strike at Isis, as it becomes clear that the organisation was behind the suicide bombings that killed 253 people in Sri Lanka. A video released by Isis after the attacks shows Zahran Hashim, an Islamic preacher and alleged leader of the bombers, pledging allegiance together with... Read More

Ben Freeman: How to Buy Foreign-Policy Expertise

Tom Engelhardt • February 21, 2019

• 300 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

Former Obama speechwriter, confidant, and deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes had an all-encompassing label for the wonks, experts, think tankers, cable news talking heads, and former or future officials, always ready to spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door, who make up the capital’s “foreign policy community.” He called them “the Blob,” a crew, as... Read More

Why Trump Doesn't Always Get It Wrong on the Middle East

Patrick Cockburn • January 24, 2019

• 600 Words • 25 Comments • Reply

Must one talk of Donald Trump? One must and not just because of the power of his position as US president, but because the nature of his foreign policy is misunderstood. I was answering questions about the future of the Middle East at a meeting of Independent subscribers on Tuesday evening when there was a... Read More

Trump Foreign Policy for 2019

Is it for real or more bait and switch?

Philip Giraldi • January 8, 2019

• 1,400 Words • 294 Comments • Reply

Never before has any presidential administration been as all over the place in terms of national security and foreign policy as is that of Donald J. Trump. Indeed, one might well argue that there is no overriding policy at all in terms of a rational doctrine arrived at through risk versus gain analysis of developing... Read More

Israel Is Bad for America

A New York Times Columnist explains why

Philip Giraldi • January 1, 2019

• 1,700 Words • 608 Comments • Reply

American journalism has become in its mainstream exponents a compendium of half-truths and out-and-out lies. The public, though poorly informed on most issues as a result, has generally figured out that it is being hoodwinked and trust in the Fourth Estate has plummeted over the past twenty years. The skepticism about what is being reported... Read More

Andrew Bacevich: Rule Number One in Warfare: Know Your Enemy

Tom Engelhardt • November 27, 2018

• 400 Words • 10 Comments • Reply

It’s now more than 17 years later, years in which American commanding generals in Afghanistan repeatedly hailed the U.S. military’s “progress” there and regularly applauded the way we had finally “turned a corner” in the Afghan War -- only to find more Taliban fighters armed with RPGs around that very corner. Finally, in the 18th... Read More

Our Man in Riyadh

Abizaid of Arabia

Andrew J. Bacevich • November 27, 2018

• 2,000 Words • 36 Comments • Reply

What does President Trump’s recent nomination of retired Army General John Abizaid to become the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia signify? Next to nothing -- and arguably quite a lot. Abizaid’s proposed appointment is both a non-event and an opportunity not to be wasted. It means next to nothing in this sense: while once... Read More

Are the Saudi Princes True Friends?

Pat Buchanan • November 22, 2018

• 800 Words • 38 Comments • Reply

The 633-word statement of President Donald Trump on the Saudi royals' role in the grisly murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi is a remarkable document, not only for its ice-cold candor. The president re-raises a question that has roiled the nation since Jimmy Carter: To what degree should we allow idealistic values trump vital... Read More

Rebecca Gordon: Making Sense of U.S. Moves in the Middle East

Tom Engelhardt • July 19, 2018

• 500 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

The report was devastating -- or would have been, if anyone here had noticed it. "Between 2001 and 2017," it concluded, "U.S. government efforts to stabilize insecure and contested areas in Afghanistan mostly failed." I’m thinking of “Stabilization: Lessons From the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan” put out by the office of the special inspector general... Read More

Middle East Alliances, Old and New

Confronting “That Part of the World”

Rebecca Gordon • July 19, 2018

• 2,800 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

My father and I always had a tacit agreement: “We will never speak of That Part of the World.” He’d grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Norfolk, Virginia. His own father, a refugee from early-twentieth-century pogroms in what is now Ukraine, had been the president of his local Zionist organization. A liberal in... Read More

Mapping Trump’s Empire: Assets and Liabilities

James Petras • February 19, 2018

• 2,000 Words • 20 Comments • Reply

The US empire spans the globe; it expands and contracts, according to its ability to secure strategic assets, willing and able to further military and economic power to counter emerging adversaries. The map of empire is a shorthand measure of the vectors, reach and durability of global power and wealth. The map of empire is... Read More

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Let's Keep Donald Trump

True believer Mike Pence could be a whole lot worse

Philip Giraldi • January 30, 2018

• 2,000 Words • 550 Comments • Reply

When President Donald Trump traveled to Davos last week, the second foreign head of government he met with was Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. When the expected groveling before Bibi was concluded the rest of the world learned that Trump is right on board the Netanyahu bandwagon when it comes to making sure that the Palestinians somehow... Read More

The Good News About the Trump Presidency: Stupid Can be Good!

The Saker • January 11, 2018

• 1,500 Words • 199 Comments • Reply

Just a few days shy of the first year since the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States I think that it would be reasonable to say that pretty much everybody, besides the Neocons and a few unconditional supporters, is now feeling quite appalled at what the past year brought to the... Read More

Air Raids and Missile Attacks Show Israel Flexing Its Muscles in Syria

Patrick Cockburn • January 9, 2018

• 700 Words • 29 Comments • Reply

Israeli jets and ground-to-ground missile attacks on targets in the outskirts of Damascus are a mark of Israel’s heightened concern as President Bashar al-Assad comes close to winning the civil war in Syria. Israel’s security cabinet has held meetings several times in recent days to discuss how it should respond to the “day-after” the war... Read More

How President Trump Normalized Neoconservatism

Ilana Mercer • January 4, 2018

• 1,100 Words • 123 Comments • Reply

It's fact: Neoconservatives are pleased with President Trump’s foreign policy. A couple of months back, Bloomberg’s Eli Lake let it know he was in neoconservative nirvana: "… for Venezuela, [Donald Trump] came very close to calling for regime change. 'The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable,' Trump said. 'We are... Read More

Who Wants War with Iran -- and Why?

Pat Buchanan • December 19, 2017

• 800 Words • 92 Comments • Reply

In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprisingly good news and glad tidings. Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Monday found polls showing Trump... Read More

Jerusalem in My Heart

Israel Shamir • December 16, 2017

• 2,800 Words • 285 Comments • Reply

Jerusalem is first of all a symbol, and a potent one; the American recognition of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy City is a sign of the final Jewish victory over Christianity, and it is to be deeply regretted. Richard Coeur de Lion and Tancred would not understand this surrender of the city they fought for,... Read More

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Mohammed Bin Salman's Ill-Advised Ventures Have Weakened Saudi Arabia

Patrick Cockburn • December 15, 2017

• 1,200 Words • 46 Comments • Reply

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia is the undoubted Middle East man of the year, but his great impact stems more from his failures than his successes. He is accused of being Machiavellian in clearing his way to the throne by the elimination of opponents inside and outside the royal family. But,... Read More

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"Middle East" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback?

Ron Unz

• 1,638 Comments • Reply

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 444 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.