NICOLAI N. PETRO – The United States insists on seeing Ukraine through the prism of Russia, rather than through the complex realities of Ukraine.
Category: Analysis
Getting Back to Basics in Policy on Israel
MEL GURTOV – “The problem with the Middle East is that you can try to turn your back on it, but it won’t turn its back on you,†said Martin S. Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel. And it hasn’t: once again, Israelis and Palestinians are at war.
How a Hearing on Nuclear Weapons Shows All that’s Wrong with US Foreign Policy Making
JOE CIRINCIONE – The panel with no diversity of views was meant to reinforce a forgone conclusion: more money for more weapons.
SOS: Will the World Answer the Calls for Help?
WIM LAVEN – We can speak out against oppression, we can demand assistance for those in need, and we can strive to do better. The world depends on our collective action and commitment.
Amid Widespread Disease, Death, and Poverty, the Major Powers Increased Their Military Spending in 2020
LAWRENCE WITTNER – Last year was a terrible time for vast numbers of people around the globe, who experienced not only a terrible disease pandemic, accompanied by widespread sickness and death, but severe economic hardship. Even so, the disasters of 2020 were not shocking enough to jolt the world’s most powerful nations out of their traditional preoccupation with enhancing their armed might, for once again they raised their military spending to new heights.
Biden Needs to Replace Saber-Rattling STRATCOM Head
JOHN LAFORGE – Joe Biden has his own Douglas MacArthur moment, and should replace the head of US Strategic Command, Adm. Charles A. Richard, just as Harry Truman fired the insubordinate commander of the US war in Korea.
Transcending ‘the Religion of Whiteness’
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – Are we transcending the religion that gave us slavery?
The Biden Administration Needs A Kinder, Gentler Foreign Policy
DR. MARC PILISUK – In a world increasingly threatened by nuclear annihilation, there is need for a new vision in which adherence to the values of peace with justice and environmental sustainability are prominent. This goes with support for the international institutions supporting them like the World Health Organization, UNESCO and the International Criminal Court. The outmoded world of aggressive gamesmanship will need dramatic U.S. reformist initiatives if it is ever to change.
Ten Reasons to Oppose Militarism & War on Earth Day
JOHN MIKSAD – Earth Day has meant many things to us since its inaugural year, 1970. Now, more than ever, its legacy must include opposition to militarism and war.
Contrary to What Biden Said, U.S. Warfare in Afghanistan Is Set to Continue
NORMAN SOLOMON – The U.S. war in Afghanistan won’t end just because President Biden and U.S. news media tell us so. As countless Afghan people have experienced, troops on the ground aren’t the only measure of horrific warfare.
Again, Washington Jumps to Conclusions over Ukraine-Russia Skirmish
ANATOL LIEVEN – The initial reaction of Biden administration officials to the latest clash between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian militia (or Russian soldiers serving as militia) in eastern Ukraine exemplifies a very dangerous pattern in U.S. and Western behavior: to believe whatever “our†side in a given crisis tells us, automatically, and without checking facts.
There’s Another Pandemic under Our Noses, and It Kills 8.7m People a Year
REBECCA SOLNIT – While Covid ravaged across the world, air pollution killed about three times as many people. We must fight the climate crisis with the same urgency with which we confronted coronavirus.
Trapped at the Border: Their Fate is our Fate – The Immigration Issue is Complex
ROBERT KOEHLER – It’s far too easy to envision the chaos of emigration getting worse, with the world’s poorest (and most deserving) people trapped in ever-intensifying violence and desperation, increasingly walled off from hope by racist ignorance. Something else becomes possible when we begin to realize that unless we change the world, their fate is our fate.
Selective Service Registration Deserves a Full Hearing in Congress
EDWARD HASBROUCK – The real choice Congress faces regarding draft registration is whether to expand registration to women or to end it entirely. Bills for each of those options were introduced in the last session of Congress, and are likely to be reintroduced within the next few months as part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act. This is a choice about militarism, not a choice about gender equality.
Big Chickens in Georgia Suppress Liberal Voters
WIM LAVEN – Repeated efforts to undermine black votes and black voices is disgusting and we need to make sure the racist strategies are punished, but, sadly, for the moment Georgia’s Republicans are getting away with it.
Opposition to Abolishing Nuclear Weapons—and What Could Help to Overcome It
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Large numbers of people remain unready to take the step necessary to prevent the launching of a war that would turn the world into a charred, smoking, radioactive wasteland. Why?
The Urgent Need for a Biden-Putin Summit
NORMAN SOLOMON – The outbreak of rhetorical hostilities between the White House and the Kremlin has heightened the urgent need for a summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. The spate of mutual denunciations is catnip for mass media and fuel for hardliners in both countries. But for the world at large, under the doomsday shadow of nuclear arsenals brandished by the United States and Russia, the latest developments are terribly ominous.
How to Finally End ‘Forever Wars’
JACK GOLDSMITH and SAMUEL MOYN – If President Biden really wants to end the ‘forever wars’, he must work with Congress and go well beyond narrowing old permission slips for conflict.
Will the Democrats Renew Their Membership in the War Party?
DAVID BROMWICH – Regardless of which party is in power, US foreign policy since 9/11 has meant a unified government under the masters of war.
Perfidy Meets Putty—Congressional Democrats Betray Voters
RALPH NADER – Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the corporate takeover of Medicare?
Rahm Emanuel is in the Running for a Top Ambassador Post. The Prospect is Appalling.
JEFF COHEN and NORMAN SOLOMON – Rahm Emanuel has never been associated with the word “diplomatic,†but news reports say that President Biden is seriously considering him for a top position as U.S. ambassador to Japan or China. Naming Emanuel to such a post would be an affront to many of the constituencies that got Biden elected. The saga of Emanuel’s three decades in politics is an epic tale of methodical contempt for progressive values.
The Fake Healing of Trump’s Impeachment Trial
REV. DR. EMMA JORDAN-SIMPSON – There is no healing without first acknowledging the sickness, and even then, healing requires truth and work. Everything else is fake.
Where We Are and Where We’re Headed
MEL GURTOV – As the Biden administration settles in, let’s pause to take stock of where American politics now stands. It’s not a pretty picture, but it has the potential for improvement.
Could the Left Withstand a Coup Attempt if it Ever Won the Presidency?
EILEEN FLANAGAN and GEORGE LAKEY – Two of the organizers who trained Americans to defend against a Trump-led coup explain how to minimize the threats to democracy going forward.
A Rapidly-Globalizing World Needs Strengthened Global Governance
LAWRENCE WITTNER – The world is currently engulfed in crises—most prominently, a disease pandemic, a climate catastrophe, and the prevalence of war—while individual nations are encountering enormous difficulties in coping with them. These difficulties result from the global nature of the problems.
Act Boldly – for the Good of the Planet and for Your Own Mental Health
SASKIA HOSTETLER LIPPY MD – Increasingly my work in mental health brings me up against this fundamental moral and existential crisis. How can humanity go on in a world so in denial about the facts which confront us? Our tendency to compartmentalize bad things works against us in the most urgent of ways now.
Crises Challenge Us to Rise to Our Best
RIVERA SUN – The content of our national character is found in how we take care of one another. Especially in times of crisis. This spirit of neighborly caring is a widely-shared value, stretching from rural communities to urban neighborhoods, encompassing everything from faith-based relief efforts to mutual aid networks.
Our Many Differences Are Not Worth a Second Civil War
WINSLOW MYERS – Are we wholly defined merely by our opinions? The great Sufic poet Rumi said: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.†Kate Johnson, a Buddhist teacher, writes: “The Buddha said that friendship is the whole of holy life. To accomplish it, we need only overcome our fear of reaching out to one another.â€
Ending the Other War in Yemen
BRIAN TERRELL – It is refreshing to hear a U.S. president at least recognize that the Yemeni people are suffering an “unendurable devastation†and this is due to the hard work of grassroots peace activists around the world. Whether President Biden’s proclamation will mean much in the real world beyond a temporary hold on the weapons deals Trump made just before leaving office is yet to be seen.
In Promoting New Nuclear Power, Biden-Harris Back Fiction Over Science
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER – Biden-Harris must look at empirical data, not listen to spin doctors and establishment cronies who will keep them anchored to the status quo, thus deferring the very energy revolution they claim they will lead. If Biden-Harris remain in favor of action on climate AND for nuclear power, then they are part of the problem, not the solution.
Rethinking US security
DONNA PARK – Most Americans who either support or accept the large amount of money spent on the U.S. military probably do so because they think it makes our nation secure. But does it really?
Anti-Protest Laws Threaten Civil Liberties
LAURA FINLEY – No state should welcome laws that criminalize free speech and introduce bias against nonviolent dissent or free assembly.
A Progressive Agenda for Biden’s Foreign Policy
MEL GURTOV – The predominant direction of a progressive US president should be toward “Making America Safe for the World.†That means focusing on domestic problems rather than on foreign policy crusading, relying on diplomacy before making threats and imposing sanctions, redefining the national interest with an eye toward real friends and urgent issues, and finding common ground with adversaries, starting with China, while remaining faithful to our ideals.
Democrats, Here’s How to Lose in 2022. And Deserve It.
EZRA KLEIN – Democrates have two years to prove that the American political system can work. Two years to show Trumpism was an experiment that need not be repeated. Two years. This is the responsibility the Democratic majority must bear: If they fail or falter, they will open the door for Trumpism or something like it to return, and there is every reason to believe it will be far worse next time. To stop it, Democrats need to reimagine their role. They cannot merely defend the political system. They must rebuild it.
Don’t Let President Biden ‘Make Us the Dupes of Our Hopes’
NORMAN SOLOMON – The best way to not become disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place. And the best way to win economic and social justice is to keep organizing and keep pushing. What can happen during the Biden presidency is up for grabs.
Countering The Fascism To Come
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – The questions, as President Biden takes office, turn increasingly paradoxical: Is a coup, and resulting fascism, the nation’s biggest worry? What about the return to normalcy? I fear the latter as much as I fear the former.
Celebrate MLK’s Legacy: Bring US Into the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
GERRY CONDON – As a veteran concerned about issues of war and peace, I am happy to celebrate the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the important new international peace initiative. The “Nuclear Ban Treaty,†as it is also known, was approved 122-1 by the UN General Assembly in July 2017, a clear expression of the will of the world’s people. On October 24, 2020, Honduras became the 50th nation to ratify the TPNW, triggering a 90-day period before it goes into force, on January 22.
Healing Our Country Requires Justice
REV. DR. EMMA JORDAN-SIMPSON – Doing the difficult work of determining the truth and demanding accountability for Donald Trump and the insurrectionists he incited is a small down payment on the truth required for democracy.
25 Organizations: Victoria Nuland’s Nomination Should Be Rejected
WORLD BEYOND WAR – Victoria Nuland, former foreign policy adviser to vice president Dick Cheney, should not be nominated for Undersecretary of State, and if nominated should be rejected by the Senate.
Don’t Just Denounce Trump. Demand Progressive Policies from Biden Too.
NORMAN SOLOMON – The Republican plunge into Trumpism has made the party especially unhinged and dangerous, but its basic ideology has long been a shameless assault on minimal standards of human decency. Now — while Democratic leaders and most corporate media outlets are suitably condemning the fascist tendencies of Trump and his followers — deeper analysis and stepped-up progressive organizing are urgently needed.
Lies, Betrayal and the Storming of the Capitol
EMMA JORDAN-SIMPSON – We must face the truth: This is America, and this is who we will always be until we can tell ourselves the truth about the lies we keep alive.
What Happened On Capitol Hill Was Predictable. Now What?
STEVE KILLELEA – We need to view our societies as systems, applying the principles of systems thinking. Once a system is moving in a positive direction it is self-reinforcing; it creates a virtuous cycle and Positive Peace provides a lens through which to view a system.
An Open Letter on DAPL
JOHN EAGLE SR. – “Our experience is that the U.S. does not honor the treaties of their grandfathers,†writes the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s historic preservation officer.
Justice for All Essential Workers
ANDREW MOSS – One of the most pronounced areas of inequity of the pandemic involves frontline essential workers in such fields as public transport, food manufacturing, health care, postal work, retail, and grocery work. There are necessary and feasible ways of mitigating such inequalities in the short-term, but, as with any injustice, achieving short-term mitigations doesn’t come without struggle.
How Secular Power is Changing America
JAMES A. HAUGHT – Churchless Americans began soaring in the 1990s and climbed past one-fourth of the population. They tend to hold compassionate social views, making them the biggest faith group in the Democratic Party base.
Yes, It’s Time to Come Home—Now
ANDREW BACEVICH – As Americans learned in Vietnam, the only way to end a war gone wrong is to leave the field of battle. If that describes Trump’s intentions in Afghanistan, then we may finally have some reason to be grateful for his service to our nation. With time, Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell might even come to see the wisdom of doing so.
Some Liberals and Arms-Control Experts Are Cheering for War Profiteers to Be in Biden’s Cabinet
NORMAN SOLOMON – Some foreign-policy specialists with progressive reputations now extol potential Cabinet picks who’ve combined pushing for continuous war and hugely expensive new weapons systems with getting rich as dealmakers for the military-industrial complex.
Restoring Democracy, Strengthening the Right to Vote
MEL GURTOV – A complete overhaul of the political system is impossible because the system itself is rotting at the foundations and immune to fundamental change. Addressing the structural problems has to begin somewhere, and the voting system seems like that place.
Biden’s Hawkish Foreign Policy Picks Are a Very Bad Sign | Common Dreams Views
SARAH LAZARE – Biden’s incoming team helped shape some of the most militaristic policies of the Obama administration.
Trump’s Massive, Lawless, and Immoral Legacy to Our Country Will Continue Unless…
RALPH NADER – It is difficult to overestimate the continuing harm to our beleaguered democracy and its people, should Trump and his cohorts not be brought to justice.