New Foreign Policy Direction

 #Davud Klion, "End the Forever Wars," The New Yorker, December 28, 2020. - "Foreign policy is a space where many Americans across party lines are demanding a new direction with clear support for withdrawing forces from Afghanistan and shifting resources from the Pentagon budget into domestic priorities." [This new direction] "calls for ending the US-backed war in Yemen, a humanitarian catastrophe, and for reversing Trump's curtailment of travel and remittances to Cuba, a major positive legacy of Obama's second term. But it doesn't necessarily reflect how Biden's team sees the world. So far, there is little indication of genuine soul-searching over Obama-era policies like the troop surge in Afghanistan, the expansion of George W. Bush's targeted assassination program, the authoritarian [nature] of regime change in Libya, or the war in Yemen." 

"China's initial mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the growing US-China trade's deleterious effect on American's economic and political health, and the ongoing cultural genocide in Xinjiany, and the repression of civil liberties in Hong Kong are all legitimate reasons for this shift."

My Comment: While I agree with David Klion's assessment of Obama-era foreign policies, and how the Biden team sees the world is yet to be determined, the Pentagon budget has increased significantly since Donald Trump became president, and the FY 2021 budget in the $740 billion range is still sky-high, especially considering the fact that the U.S doesn't have a peer enemy; also, the Space Force has been added as a component of the U.S. armed forces. There are only about 2,500 U.S troops in Afghanistan, and the U.S.-backed war in Yemen is still going on. The U.S. public's reaction to Trump's changes in Cuba policy is too recent to be fully assessed.

#Jillian Steinhauer, "The Outsider," The New Yorker, December 28, 2020. - "As part of the operation, Israeli security forces invaded the Gaza Strip on their way to Sinai, in an effort to root out armed Palestinian militants, who were supported by Egyptian President Abdel Nasser's government. In the process, they rounded up and killed hundreds of civilians. Israeli leaders downplayed and tried to justify the massacre, claiming that the Palestinians had been noncompliant and 'unruly,' that some had been armed and rioted, and that there had been Egyptian instigators among them."

#Richard J. Evans, "Spread Far and Fast," The New Yorker, December 28, 2020. - "In Germany, for example, more than half a million people died of malnutrition and associated diseases, as a consequence of nearly five years of the Allied blockade, and food supplies in other countries were interrupted by submarine warfare and the disruption of peacetime trade patterns." 

#Rachal Shabi, "British Labour's Jewish Problem," The Nation, January 2021. - "While noting there had been improvements in processing complaints, the reports [from] the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), concluded that anti-Semitism in the [Labour Party] could have been tackled more effectively if the leadership had chosen to do so. It described a culture in Labour that at best did not do enough to prevent anti-Semitism, and, at worst could be seen to accept it." "There is something particularly noxious about a nativist-right government denouncing the very idea of structural racism -- and then gleefully attacking Labor over anti-Semitism."

Labour Party's leader, Corbyn's ideas for economic redistribution, public ownership of utilities and railways, and a green industrial revolution were relentlessly ridiculed. "A recent study showed that over half of Labour's Muslim members did not trust the party to tackle Islamophobia. This year Labour was also reported to be losing members over anti-Black racism, some of it revealed in those leaked Labour documents that cataloged insults privately made by party officials, and directed at its Black MPs." "And more evidence accumulated each day of the terrible impact of structural racism and racist government policies on all areas of life -- including health, education, and employment -- for British people of color."