As Lebanon - Israel War is Imminent, DC Feels OK for Hawkish Foreign Policy

[Jennifer Koonings from

CODEPINK Alert

CODEPINK’s Newsletter

CODEPINK]

only between 6am - 5.40pm Beirut/Gaza/West Bank/Tel Aviv, September 23rd: 274 killed

about torture, rape in inside Israel prison

Reflecting On My Hunger Strike for Gaza

When history looks back at Gaza savagery, the silence, sniggers, justifications from those who identify as guardians of 'civilised values' are on record. With only a few months to go until Election Day, Joe Biden's official website still lacks a policy page. It raises a pretty big question: what, exactly, does Biden want to do with a second term?

The US public allows the Israel army to do things it would never allow its own army to do. What is going on here? What logic does that have. It does have a hidden logic I would argue. Let’s see how it works: Doing something oneself carries responsibility, and sometimes guilt. Doing it through another is vicarious, secret, somewhat deniable, like a trip to Westworld Hemisphere, led by America.

“America is back.” In the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden repeated those words as a starting point for his foreign policy. The phrase offered a bumper-sticker slogan to pivot away from Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership. It also suggested that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again.

Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times.

Primaries are over, with both winners having easily dispatched their competition. We have a new Speaker of the House, a new war overseas, and an entirely new political environment: one where Biden is trailing, not leading, Trump, and his approval rating is below, not above, where it was in 2022. The general election campaign is fully underway, with tens of millions of dollars already spent, both tickets nearly set, and a head-to-head debate only a week away. But one thing is still the same: Joe Biden dot com does not have a single policy listed on it. It still has all of the same donation links, of course, as well as an expanded merch page that seemingly has a rapid response team for everything Trump says. But there’s still nothing on policy. The closest thing they have to it on the entire page is an “accomplishments” page that goes over the bills they’ve passed over, complete with a link to a YouTube video from two years ago.

An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored to a world that has moved on from American primacy and the eccentricities of American politics—is necessary to minimize enormous risks and pursue new opportunities.

Biden hasn’t upheld the same principles in the wars on Ukraine and Gaza, vulgar, crystal clear. An overwhelming majority of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. It’s not mere disapproval. It’s a loss of legitimacy as Israelis reject his malfeasance & attacks on democracy. US lawmakers who validate his speech to Congress won’t be helping Israelis—they’ll be undermining them.

Biden administration’s control shadowed the message of superpower restoration. First was the specter of Trump’s return. Allies watched nervously as the former president maintained his grip on the Republican Party and Washington remained mired in dysfunction.

[It’s still by] Jennifer Koonings, brightest member of CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter

Refaat Alareer IF I MUST DIE [350 Languages]. His final tweet before killed by Israel, is about Kamala Harris

Autocratic adversaries, most notably Russian President Vladimir Putin, bet on Washington’s lack of staying power. New multilateral agreements akin to the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris agreement on climate change, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership were impossible, given the vertiginous swings in U.S. foreign policy.

Second, the old rules-based international order doesn’t really exist anymore. Sure, the laws, structures, and summits remain in place. But core institutions such as the UN Security Council and the World Trade Organization are tied in knots by disagreements among their members. Russia is committed to disrupting U.S.-fortified norms. China is committed to building its own alternative order. On trade and industrial policy, even Washington is moving away from core tenets of post–Cold War globalization. Regional powers such as Brazil, India, Turkey, and the Gulf states pick and choose which partner to plug into depending on the issue. Even the high-water mark for multilateral action in the Biden years—support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia—remains a largely Western initiative. As the old order unravels, these overlapping blocs are competing over what will replace it.

A Biden victory in this fall’s election would offer reassurance that the particular risk of another Trump presidency has passed, but that will not vanquish the forces of disorder. To date, Washington has failed to do the necessary audit of the ways its post–Cold War foreign policy discredited U.S. leadership.

The “war on terror” emboldened autocrats, misallocated resources, fueled a global migration crisis, and contributed to an arc of instability from South Asia through North Africa. The free-market prescriptions of the so-called Washington consensus ended in a financial crisis that opened the door to populists railing against out-of-touch elites. The overuse of sanctions led to increased workarounds and global fatigue with Washington’s weaponization of the dollar’s dominance. Over the last two decades, American lectures on democracy have increasingly been tuned out.

Indeed, after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, American rhetoric about the rules-based international order has been seen around the world on a split screen of hypocrisy, as Washington has supplied the Israeli government with weapons used to bombard Palestinian civilians with impunity.

The war has created a policy challenge for an administration that criticizes Russia for the same indiscriminate tactics that Israel has used in Gaza, a political challenge for a Democratic Party with core constituencies who don’t understand why the president has supported a far-right government that ignores the United States’ advice, and a moral crisis for a country whose foreign policy purports to be driven by universal values. Put simply: Gaza should shock Washington out of the muscle memory that guides too many of its actions.

Whoever is president in the coming years will have to avoid global war, respond to the escalating climate crisis, and grapple with the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Meeting the moment requires abandoning a mindset of American primacy and recognizing that the world will be a turbulent place for years to come. Above all, it requires building a bridge to the future—not the past.

One of Biden’s mantras is “Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.” As the presidential campaign heats up, it is worth heeding this advice. But to properly outline the dangers of a second Trump term, it is necessary to take Trump’s arguments seriously, despite the unserious form they often take. Much of what Trump says resonates broadly. Americans are tired of wars; indeed, his takeover of the Republican Party would have been impossible without the Iraq war, which discredited the GOP establishment. Americans also no longer trust their elites. Although Trump’s rhetoric about a “deep state” moves quickly into baseless conspiracy theory, it strikes a chord with voters who wonder why so many of the politicians who promised victories in Afghanistan and Iraq were never held to account. And although Trump’s willingness to cut off assistance to Ukraine is abhorrent to many, there is a potent populism to it. How long will the United States spend tens of billions of dollars helping a country whose stated aim—the recapture of all Ukrainian territory—seems unachievable?

Trump has also harnessed a populist backlash to globalization from both the right and the left. Particularly since the 2008 financial crisis, large swaths of the public in democracies have simmered with discontent over widening inequality, deindustrialization, and a perceived loss of control and lack of meaning. It is no wonder that the exemplars of post–Cold War globalization—free trade agreements, the U.S.-Chinese relationship, and the instruments of international economic cooperation itself—have become ripe targets for Trump. When Trump’s more punitive approaches to rivals, such as his trade war with China, didn’t precipitate all the calamities that some had predicted, his taboo-breaking approach appeared to be validated. The United States, it turned out, did have leverage.

But offering a potent critique of problems should not be confused with having the right solutions to them. To begin with, Trump’s own presidency seeded much of the chaos that Biden has faced. Time and again, Trump pursued politically motivated shortcuts that made things worse. To end the war in Afghanistan, he cut a deal with the Taliban over the heads of the Afghan people, setting a timeline for withdrawal that was shorter than the one Biden eventually adopted. Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal despite Iranian compliance, unshackling the country’s nuclear program, escalating a proxy war across the Middle East, and sowing doubt across the world about whether the United States keeps its word. By moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights, and pursuing the Abraham Accords, he cut the Palestinians out of Arab-Israeli normalization and emboldened Israel’s far right, lighting a fuse that detonated in the current war.

Although Trump’s tougher line with China demonstrated the United States’ leverage, it was episodic and uncoordinated with allies. As a result, Beijing was able to cast itself as a more predictable partner to much of the world, while the supply chain disruptions caused by trade disputes and decoupling created new inefficiencies—and drove up costs—in the global economy. Trump’s lurch from confronting to embracing Kim Jong Un enabled the North Korean leader to advance his nuclear and missile programs under reduced pressure. Closer to home, Trump’s recognition of an alternative Venezuelan government under the opposition leader Juan Guaidó managed to strengthen the incumbent Nicolás Maduro’s hold on power. The “maximum pressure” policy toward Venezuela and Cuba, which sought to promote regime change through crippling sanctions and diplomatic isolation, fueled humanitarian crises that have sent hundreds of thousands of people to the United States’ southern border.

A second Trump term would start amid a more volatile global environment than his first if the better choice outside Trump and Biden failed to get a more voters, and there would be fewer guardrails constraining a president who would be in command of his party, surrounded by loyalists, and freed from ever having to face voters again. Although there are many risks, three stand out. First, Trump’s blend of strongman nationalism and isolationism could create a permission structure for aggression. A withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine—and, perhaps, for NATO itself—would embolden Putin to push deeper into the country. Were Washington to abandon its European allies and promote right-wing nationalism, it could exacerbate political fissures within Europe, emboldening Russian-aligned nationalists in such places as Hungary and Serbia who have echoed Putin in seeking to reunite ethnic populations in neighboring states.

Despite U.S.-Chinese tensions, East Asia has avoided the outright conflict of Europe and the Middle East. But consider the opportunity that a Trump victory would present to North Korea. Fortified by increased Russian technological assistance, Kim could ratchet up military provocations on the Korean Peninsula, believing that he has a friend in the White House. Meanwhile, according to U.S. assessments, China’s military will be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027. If Chinese leader Xi Jinping truly wishes to forcibly bring Taiwan under Beijing’s sovereignty, the twilight of a Trump presidency—by which point the United States would likely be alienated from its traditional allies—could present an opening.

Second, if given the chance, Trump has made it clear that he would almost certainly roll back American democracy, a move that would reverberate globally. If his first election represented a one-off disruption to the democratic world, his second would more definitively validate an international trend toward ethnonationalism and authoritarian populism. Momentum could swing further in the direction of far-right parties in Europe, performative populists in the Americas, and nepotistic and transactional corruption in Asia and Africa. Consider for a moment the aging roster of strongmen who will likely still be leading other powers—not just Xi and Putin but also Narendra Modi in India, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Ali Khamenei in Iran, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. To say the least, this cast of characters is unlikely to promote respect for democratic norms within borders or conciliation beyond them.

This leads to the third danger. In the coming years, leaders will increasingly be confronted with global problems that can be managed or solved only through cooperation. As the climate crisis worsens, a Trump presidency would make a coordinated international response much harder and validate the backlash against environmental policies that has been building within advanced economies. At the same time, artificial intelligence is poised to take off, creating both valuable opportunities and enormous risks. At a moment when the United States should be turning to diplomacy to avoid wars, establish new norms, and promote greater international cooperation, the country would be led by an “America first” strongman.

At least 17 people, civilian and army or soldier, resign because Biden [in vulgar] complicit with genocide in Gaza. Whatever prompted their resignations must not be swept under the rug. In any administration, national security policy is a peculiar mix of long-standing commitments, old political interests, new presidential initiatives, and improvised responses to sudden crises. Navigating the rough currents of the world, the Biden administration has often seemed to embody the contradictions of this dynamic, with one foot in the past, yearning nostalgically for American primacy, and one foot in the future, adjusting to the emerging world as it is.

Through its affirmative agenda, the administration has reacted well to changing realities. Biden linked domestic and foreign policy through his legislative agenda. The CHIPS Act made substantial investments in science and innovation, including the domestic manufacturing of semiconductors. The act worked in parallel with ramped-up export and investment controls on China’s high-tech sector, which have buttressed the United States’ lead in the development of new technologies such as AI and quantum computing. Although this story is more complicated to tell than one about a tariff-based trade war, Biden’s policy is in fact more coherent: revitalize U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing, disentangle critical supply chains from China, and maintain a lead for U.S. companies in developing new and potentially transformative technologies.

Gaza should shock Washington out of the muscle memory that guides too many of its actions.

Biden’s most significant piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, made enormous investments in clean energy technology. These investments will allow the United States to raise its ambition in meeting climate goals by pushing domestic industry and global markets to shift away from fossil fuels faster. Although this breakthrough enhanced U.S. credibility on climate change, it also created new challenges, as even allies have complained that Washington resorted to subsidies instead of pursuing coordinated cross-border approaches to reduce emissions. In this respect, however, the Biden administration was dealing with the world as it is. Congress cannot pass complex reforms such as putting a price on carbon; what it can do is pass large spending bills that invest in the United States.

Despite tensions over U.S. industrial policy, the Biden administration has effectively reinvested in alliances that frayed under Trump. That effort has tacitly acknowledged that the world now features competing blocs, which makes it harder for the United States to pursue major initiatives by working through large international institutions or with other members of the great-power club. Instead, Washington has prioritized groupings of like-minded countries that are, to use a catch phrase, “fit for purpose.” Collaboration with the United Kingdom and Australia on nuclear submarine technology. New infrastructure and AI initiatives through the G-7. Structured efforts to create more consultation among U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. This approach involves a dizzying number of parts; one can lose track of the number of regional consultative groups that now exist. But in the context of an unraveled international order, it makes sense to thread together cooperation where possible, while trying to turn new habits of cooperation into enduring arrangements.

Most notably, Biden’s reinvestment in European alliances paid off when Washington was able to swiftly mobilize support for Ukraine in 2022. This task was made easier by the administration’s innovative release of intelligence on Russia’s intentions to invade, an overdue reform of the way that Washington manages information. Although the war has reached a tenuous stalemate, the effort to fortify transatlantic institutions continues to advance. NATO has grown in size, relevance, and resourcing. European Union institutions have taken a more proactive role in foreign policy, most notably in coordinating support for Ukraine and accelerating its candidacy for EU membership. For all the understandable consternation about Washington’s struggle to pass a recent aid bill for Ukraine, Europe’s focus on its own institutions and capabilities was long overdue.

Yet there are three important ways in which the Biden administration has yet to recalibrate its approach to the world of post-American primacy. The first has to do with American politics. On several issues that engender controversy in Congress, the administration has constrained or distorted its options by preemptively deferring to outdated hard-liners. Even as Trump has demonstrated how the left-right axis has been scrambled on foreign policy, Biden at times feels trapped in the national security politics of the immediate post-9/11 era. Yet what once allowed a politician to appear tough to appease hawks in Washington was rarely good policy; now, it is no longer necessarily good politics.

In Latin America, the Biden administration was slow to pivot away from Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaigns on Venezuela and Cuba. Biden maintained, for example, the avalanche of sanctions that Trump imposed on Cuba, including the cynical return of that country to the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism just before leaving office, in January 2021. The result has been an acute humanitarian crisis in which U.S. sanctions exacerbated shortages of basic staples such as food and fuel, contributing to widespread suffering and migration. In the Middle East, the administration failed to move swiftly to reenter the politically contested Iran nuclear deal, opting instead to pursue what Biden called a “longer and stronger” agreement, even though Trump was the one who violated the deal’s terms. Instead, the administration embraced Trump’s Abraham Accords as central to its Middle East policy while reverting to confrontation with Iran. This effectively embraced Netanyahu’s preferred course: a shift away from pursuing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and toward an open-ended proxy war with Tehran.

Anyone who has worked at the nexus of U.S. politics and national security knows that avoiding friction with anti-Cuban and pro-Israeli hard-liners in Congress can feel like the path of least resistance. But that logic has turned into a trap. After October 7, Biden decided to pursue a strategy of fully embracing Netanyahu—insisting (for a time) that any criticism would be issued in private and that U.S. military assistance would not be conditioned on the actions of the Israeli government.

This engendered immediate goodwill in Israel, but it preemptively eliminated U.S. leverage. It also overlooked the far-right nature of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which offered warning signs about the indiscriminate way in which it planned to prosecute its military campaign, as Israeli officials cut off food and water flowing into Gaza within days of Hamas’s attack. In the months that followed, the administration has been trying to catch up to a deteriorating situation, evolving from a strategy of embracing Netanyahu, to one of issuing rhetorical demands that were largely ignored, to one of partial restrictions on offensive military assistance. Ironically, by being mindful of the political risks of breaking with Netanyahu, Biden invited greater political risks from within the Democratic coalition and around the world.

The temptation to succumb to Washington’s outdated instincts has contributed to a second liability: the pursuit of maximalist objectives. The administration has shown some prudence in this area. Even as competition ramped up with China, Biden has worked over the last year to rebuild lines of communication with Beijing and has largely avoided provocative pronouncements on Taiwan. And even as he committed the United States to helping Ukraine defend itself, Biden set the objective of avoiding a direct war between the United States and Russia (although his rhetoric did drift into endorsing regime change in Moscow). The bigger challenge has at times come from outside the administration, as some supporters of Ukraine indulged in a premature triumphalism that raised impossible expectations for last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive. Paradoxically, this impulse ended up hurting Ukraine: when the campaign inevitably came up short, it made the broader U.S. policy toward Ukraine look like a failure. Sustaining support for Ukraine will require greater transparency about what is achievable in the near term and an openness to negotiations in the medium term.

Gaza also showcases the danger of maximalist aims. Israel’s stated objective of destroying Hamas has never been achievable. Since Hamas would never announce its own surrender, pursuing this goal would require a perpetual Israeli occupation of Gaza or the mass displacement of its people. That outcome may be what some Israeli officials really want, as evidenced by right-wing ministers’ own statements. It is certainly what many people around the world, horrified by the campaign in Gaza, believe the Israeli government really wants. These critics wonder why Washington would support such a campaign, even as its own rhetoric opposes it. Instead of seeking to moderate Israel’s unsustainable course, Washington needs to use its leverage to press for negotiated agreements, Palestinian state building, and a conception of Israeli security that is not beholden to expansionism or permanent occupation.

Indeed, too many prescriptions sound good in Washington but fail to account for simple realities. Even with the United States’ military advantage, China will develop advanced technologies and maintain its claim over Taiwan. Even with sustained U.S. support, Ukraine will have to live next to a large, nationalist, nuclear-armed Russia. Even with its military dominance, Israel cannot eliminate the Palestinian demand for self-determination. If Washington allows foreign policy to be driven by zero-sum maximalist demands, it risks a choice between open-ended conflict and embarrassment.

This leads to the third way in which Washington must change its approach. Too often, the United States has appeared unable or unwilling to see itself through the eyes of most of the world’s population, particularly people in the global South who feel that the international order is not designed for their benefit. The Biden administration has made laudable efforts to change this perception—for instance, delivering COVID-19 vaccines across the developing world, mediating conflicts from Ethiopia to Sudan, and sending food aid to places hit hard by shortages exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Yet the overuse of sanctions, along with the prioritization of Ukraine and other U.S. geopolitical interests, misreads the room. To build better ties with developing countries, Washington needs to consistently prioritize the issues they care about: investment, technology, and clean energy.

Once again, Gaza interacts with this challenge. To be blunt: for much of the world, it appears that Washington doesn’t value the lives of Palestinian children as much as it values the lives of Israelis or Ukrainians. Unconditional military aid to Israel, questioning the Palestinian death toll, vetoing cease-fire resolutions at the UN Security Council, and criticizing investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes may all feel like autopilot in Washington—but that’s precisely the problem. Much of the world now hears U.S. rhetoric about human rights and the rule of law as cynical rather than aspirational, particularly when it fails to wrestle with double standards. Total consistency is unattainable in foreign policy. But by listening and responding to more diverse voices from around the world, Washington could begin to build a reservoir of goodwill.

In its more affirmative agenda, the Biden administration is repositioning the United States for a hawkish point of view, changing world by focusing on the resilience of its own democracy and economy while rebooting alliances in Europe and Asia. To extend that regeneration into something more global and lasting, it should abandon the pursuit of primacy while embracing an agenda that can resonate with more of the world’s governments and people.

Quran Chapter 2, Verse 11

Kibbutz Blinken. Via Jennifer Koonings.

Reflecting On My Hunger Strike for Gaza

Read full story

At least 12-13 days Jennifer Koonings, PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE hunger strike outside White House in the wake US complicit Genocidal Gaza. This is [click link] her writing as member of CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter. Jennifer is Certified Forensic Examiner for Adults and Children, really full knowledge about sexual assault, such as sexual assault by Israel to every Palestinian, like NYT reporting [photo uploaded].

We as Muslim prohibited to fasting at least 6 days for entire year [365, or 366 in leap year]. 2 Days Eid Fitr / Eid el-Fitr [1 Shawwal and 2 Shawwal / Syawal Syawwal], Day of Eid Adha / Eid el-Adha [10 Dzulhijjah / Dhul-Hijjah - today], and days of Tashriq [11^th, 12^th and 13^th Dhul-Hijjah / Dzulhijjah, or in Gregorian Calendar 2024, the days of Tashriq means 17-19 June]. But doesn’t mean prohibited for ‘less eating or hunger strike.’ As sacrifice in DC at least 13 days by Jennifer Koonings just because her protest about Gaza, I keep ‘eating less’ not only for her but also for Palestine, at least until 19 June. And for June 20th, back again for nonmandatory fasting, normally 17-18 hours, as even Jennifer, with her gut, sacrifice herself for Gaza. Wisdom quote I hear since war [Israel - Gaza] nonstop ‘’...You can't make people care about a genocide happening right in front of their eyes. They either do immediately, or a chip is missing up there, and they never will.’

For solidarity, since she started to hunger strike, I put myself eat 1 very tiny plate/day for break the fasting and for entire day after, extreme fasting 16.5 hours [based on my location]. I’m still continued for hunger strike, because its very easy. In last 17 years, I already [minimum] 340 days / year to fasting [29 - 30 days for mandatory fasting for muslim, ramadan session, the rest is voluntary fasting / sunnah]. Photo Jennifer with ann Wright, retired retired US Army [like Leo M. Stolfi ] and also [Ann] retired State Department

Reflecting On My Hunger Strike for Gaza

Medea Benjamin Medea Benjamin Medea’s Substack and Jennifer Koonings

Medea Benjamin Medea Benjamin and Mary Ann Wright ann Wright

link GFM / GOFUNDME

footage by CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter, multiple nurses in DC, after humanitarian duty in Gaza.

PCRF

Please keep donating to [1] PCRF / Palestine Children’s Relief Fund or [2] Freedom Flotilla.

As PCRF pictures by Dr Rajha in Gaza, Ariana Grande - Butera, and CODEPINK Alert

Jennifer Koonings PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE part of CODEPINK AlertJen

·

Yellow Flower, Jennifer Koonings in Betlehem [around 3pm local time West Bank, 5 weeks ago], nearly same exact result voting UNGA [11.17am NYC - Rockefeller Building of United Nations], 143 votes in favor, nine against, and 25 abstentions for Palestinian membership.

Footage by mine. Minutes before Jennifer

Jennifer Koonings literally singing also for foundation - charity movement Sing for Hope. How golden heart.

Love you, Jennifer Koonings PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE. Dont know how deteriorated of you after Hunger Strike