Stora tråden om amerikansk utrikespolitik

Brussels is preparing to retaliate against the US if Washington pushes ahead with far-reaching new sanctions on Russia that hit European companies. Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, has called for an urgent review of how Brussels should respond if Europe’s energy companies or other businesses are targeted by sanctions under discussion in the US Congress.According to a note prepared for a commission meeting on Wednesday, and seen by the Financial Times, Brussels “should stand ready to act within days” if the US measures were “adopted without EU concerns being taken into account”.

Trump refused to sign off on the plan they approved, the sources said, instead sending it back to his national security team demanding more work. And on Tuesday, the president made clear just how dissatisfied he was. In what were pretty much his first public comments on Afghanistan during his six months in office, he told reporters before a White House lunch, “I want to find out why we’ve been there for 17 years.” On Thursday, headed into a Pentagon meeting, he was similarly cagey. Asked about more troops for Afghanistan, he replied only, “We’ll see.”

Miller confirms in the interview that the State Department did in fact shut down the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (known as SRAP)—without telling anyone, including the staff—when her contract as its acting leader ended at the end of June. She portrays the move to fold the office back into State’s regional South Asia bureau as part of a general downgrading of Afghanistan despite the more than $25 billion the United States spends annually there.

While the big question of troop numbers remains unresolved, some things have started to move in the meantime. The State Department last week announced a new ambassador for Afghanistan, career Foreign Service official John Bass, and the Pentagon has indicated a new, tougher line on Pakistan – which several sources said was a top priority of McMaster’s during the Afghan strategy meetings – including just last Friday withholding a tranche of $350 million worth of aid, citing Pakistan’s failure to do enough to combat terrorism and support for militant groups in the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

/.../No matter what the problem, no matter where on earth it occurs, the answer from Washington is always sanctions. Sanctions are supposed to force governments to change policies and do what Washington tells them or face the wrath of their people. So the goal of sanctions is to make life as miserable as possible for civilians so they will try to overthrow their governments. Foreign leaders and the elites do not suffer under sanctions. This policy would be immoral even if it did work, but it does not.

Why is Congress so eager for more sanctions on Russia? The neocons and the media have designated Russia as the official enemy and the military industrial complex and other special interests want to continue getting rich terrifying Americans into believing the propaganda.
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Here’s an alternative to doing the same thing over and over: Let’s take US troops out of North Korea after 70 years. The new South Korean president has proposed military talks with North Korea to try and reduce tensions. We should get out of the way and let them solve their own problems. If Iran and Russia want to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda at the invitation of their ally, Syria, why stand in the way? We can’t run the world. We are out of money.

President Trump was elected to pursue a new kind of foreign policy. If he means what he said on the campaign trail, he will veto this foolish sanctions bill and begin dismantling neocon control of his Administration.