Tag Archives: US foreign politics
| The Wars Abroad and the Wars at Home—and the Work of Putting an End to Them
By Labor Fightback Network
Of the many injustices to which working people are subjected day after day, generation after generation, the worst is war. Young working-class people are handed weapons and ordered into battle to kill—or be killed by—other young working-class people. Those who are not directly involved in combat face death by bombs falling from the sky, missiles and drones sent and controlled from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and from starvation and disease as the necessary social infrastructures are destroyed. Behind all of it is the threat that the ultimate weapons, thermonuclear bombs and missile warheads, could destroy all society in minutes and with it nearly all life on the planet.
| Deep State Restrained Obama. Will It Restrain Trump? Time to Abandon Mere Hope For Action
by Bruce A.Dixon
The only good thing I can think to say about the Obama presidency is really kind of negative too, a monstrous crime he almost committed, but backed away from at the last minute. It was the only time in Obama’s political career that I’ve seen him take what might remotely be described as a risk. It was the the aftermath of the August 2013 chemical weapons attack on Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus which killed 1,300 people. While all the TV talking heads and publicly visible admirals and generals blamed the nerve gas attack on the Syrian government, Obama bucked the warmongering tide which he himself had helped raise, opting NOT to escalate the US war in Syria with carpet bombings of its infrastructure and a no-fly zone, the prelude to an inevitable invasion.
| US holds key to inter-Korean peace
By Kim Bo-eun
The prospect of dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea is looming larger following two days of inter-Korean talks in Pyongyang. In a meeting with envoys from South Korea led by National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong, Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed a willingness to talk with Washington about denuclearization.
| A President Held Hostage: They’ve got him surrounded
As Vice President Mike Pence made a fool both of himself and the country he is supposed to be representing at the Olympic Games by refusing to stand for the athletes of any nation other than the US, back at home the Washington Post was reporting on a President Trump who appears to have nothing in common either with Pence or with the White House staff. The piece, entitled “Trump’s favorite general: Can Mattis check an impulsive president and still retain his trust?” tells a story that pits a President inclined to challenge the War Party against a Praetorian Guard determined to nullify his electoral mandate to keep out of foreign wars and put “America first”:
| Can South Korea’s Leader End Trump’s North Korea Crisis?
The agreement for cooperation between North and South Korea on the Olympics provides a pause in the drumbeat of war threats by postponing joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises until after the Winter Games are finished. But the real payoff from the Olympics détente is the possibility that the governments of South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un could reach agreement on modifying joint U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises in return for a North Korean nuclear and missile testing freeze.
