5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Opinion
No Matter Who Wins the Iran War, the Global Economy Is Losing
The most vulnerable populations of the Global South are suffering ever-increasing distress, while most of the world has been experiencing rising inflationary pressures and increasing interest rates on government bonds.
May 26, 2026
For all the uncertainty about what will happen next on the military and diplomatic front in the Iran war, there is certainty about what has already happened on the economic front. And it is not good.
The world has seen a spike in oil prices that has been moderated so far by large drawdowns in global oil reserves. In addition, the most vulnerable populations of the Global South are suffering ever-increasing distress, while most of the world has been experiencing rising inflationary pressures and increasing interest rates on government bonds. And even if the US stock market appears relatively unperturbed, a version of this unpleasant mix has also hit the United States.
Global oil prices are much higher than they were before the war, with the financial market benchmark price of Brent crude late last week (down to $91 on weekend news of a possible deal), well above the $60 per barrel of early January. That said, crude prices have been relatively stable within a broad range over the last two months despite a dramatic drop in energy shipments out of the Persian Gulf since the war began.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as of May 13, the cumulative shortfall in global oil deliveries from the Gulf was roughly 1 billion barrels. This shortfall has been absorbed by reduced oil demand (a consequence of higher prices); increased production outside the Gulf; and by a drop in global oil inventories of roughly 250 million barrels, as these were released to hold down prices in the absence of new production from the Gulf coming to the market. However IEA head Fatih Birol warned last week that inventories were dropping at an unsustainable pace, particularly with summer driving season approaching in the Northern Hemisphere.
For all that US energy exporters might benefit from higher global oil prices, US consumers do not.
The biggest shock from the higher cost (and outright shortage) of fuel, petrochemicals, and fertilizers is being felt by the poorest in the Global South. A recent story in The New York Times described how the price for transporting corn into refugee camps in Somalia had doubled or even tripled, as had the price of water at diesel-powered public tubewells. Meanwhile, protests this week in Kenya against fuel price hikes have led to four deaths, and political and financial stresses are mounting across the continent.
In India, sharp jumps in the price of Liquid Petroleum Gas have hit urban households hard, particularly those whose breadwinners work in small-scale industrial establishments. Many such enterprises rely on LPG as fuel and have shut down, displacing a workforce composed of recent migrants from the countryside. And because informal migrant workers in the city do not have access to India’s price-controlled public distribution systems, they have been forced to purchase cooking fuel on the black market at exorbitant rates. The combination has sparked fears of a repeat of a mass return to the countryside, as happened in the Covid-19 summer of 2020.
Stories like these abound across the Global South. A report from the World Food Program (WFP) two months ago (when the war was two weeks old) projected that 45 million more people could be thrust into acute hunger if the war persisted. And a panel of global officials had already warned the world at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington in mid-April that even an immediate cessation of the war would require at least two months before global shipping approached a semblance of normalcy.
Weakness in the real economy of many developing countries has been compounded by financial pressures in the form of larger trade deficits driven by the jump in oil prices, higher inflation, depreciating currencies, drawdowns in central bank reserves, and the threat of central bank rate hikes to keep inflation in check even if the economy is weakening.
In the face of such pressures, many countries were forced to sell foreign exchange or gold reserves to defend their currencies from further depreciation. According to Bloomberg, losses in the Philippines amounted to 8.1% of all reserves, in India to 5.1%, and in Indonesia to 3.8%. India has also imposed stiff tariffs and other restrictions on gold imports, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged Indians to avoid “unnecessary foreign travel,” in additional efforts to limit further pressure on the Rupee from non-energy imports or tourism. And Malawi is reportedly selling not just gold reserves but also semi-processed gold bars bought from local miners.
Europe is less dependent on Persian Gulf oil, with only 7% of it sourced there, as opposed to Asia, which draws roughly 60% of its oil from the region. Even so, it is not immune to the impact of higher prices, with the European Commission’s economic czar warning that the continent faces a stagflationary shock. As a relatively wealthy continent, the EU (and the UK) can afford to grant fiscal subsidies to affected businesses, thus reducing the pain there. However, such measures also force the need to reduce oil demand on the poorest countries that are unable to afford such backstops.
Latin America has proven more resilient to the shocks from the Iran war, helped by the fact that Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador are all net energy exporters, while Mexico runs a small energy deficit but buys most of its natural gas from the US. Chile is the sole large outlier on the front. Still, the energy trade might cushion most major Latin American currencies from sharp depreciation and financial stress, but as an agricultural exporter, the region is vulnerable to higher fertilizer prices and to inflation that could force central banks to raise interest rates.
In the United States, the administration has downplayed the impact of the war on the American people and emphasized how the dramatic increase in US oil production has led to a substantially lower reliance on imported energy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the administration's policies of “energy abundance” have helped the country withstand the shocks from the Iran War. And President Donald Trump said in April that “the United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future…We don’t need it.”
In his recent remarks, Bessent observed that the war had also allowed the US to “focus on the opportunity at hand” as global demand for US energy surged. And, indeed the war has led to a dramatic increase in US exports of crude oil and downstream products. A recent piece in The New York Times noted that the US has exported an additional 145 million barrels of oil since the war began, leading to an increase in revenues of roughly $50 billion.
However, the flip side to this is that US consumers have reportedly spent an extra $40 billion on gasoline prices since the war began. For all that US energy exporters might benefit from higher global oil prices, US consumers do not. And research from the New York Fed suggests that lower-income households were hit much harder by higher energy prices, changing travel patterns in order to keep their gasoline budgets from getting out of hand.
American agriculture, meanwhile, has been hit with a double whammy as two major operating costs, fertilizer and diesel, have both seen sharp price increases. A report last month by the Farm Bureau suggested that 70% of all farmers say they are unable to afford all the fertilizer they need. This in turn could translate into lower crop yields and higher food prices—a worry that is even more pronounced among smallholders in the Global South, underlying the global effects of this war.
And while the US stock market has remained relatively buoyant through all this, boosted primarily by Artificial Intelligence and Semiconductor stocks, there are signs of deeper worries in global bond markets, including in the United States. Concerns over inflationary pressures driven by rising energy and food prices have combined with worries over the rising fiscal costs associated with increased defense budgets, fuel subsidies, and massive reconstruction needs to push global bond yields up significantly.
After annual consumer price inflation in the US jumped to 3.8% (far above the Federal Reserve’s 2.0% inflation target), the US Treasury’s 30-year bond hit its highest yield in 30 years last week. And while that might be good news for those who own newly issued bonds and will receive the interest paid on them, it is less favorable for those looking to buy or refinance a home as mortgage rates rise alongside US government bond yields.
Thus, the impact of this war within the US might not be as severe as that in large parts of the Global South, but even within America, there will be many more who lose than gain from the economic consequences of this war.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Trump's New Green Card Application Policy Is Unlawful, Immoral, and Xenophobic
The policy effectively redesigns the system such that for some nationalities—predominantly those from African, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American countries—no realistic legal pathway to obtain a green card exists.
May 26, 2026
On May 22, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a policy memo announcing a major shift in immigration policy. As USCIS Spokesperson Zach Kahler explains: “From now on, an alien who is in the US temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances. This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes.”
This new policy is unlawful, immoral, and xenophobic. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as well as the LIFE Act, Congress created various pathways for immigrants to apply for “adjustment of status.” This allows a temporary legal resident to apply for legal permanent resident (LPR) status without having to leave the US.
Such adjustments are not limited to “extraordinary circumstances.” As the USCIS Policy Manual makes clear:
Aliens who are present in the United States and who are beneficiaries of approved immigrant petitions may generally file an application with USCIS to adjust their status to that of an LPR, or they may depart the United States and apply for an immigrant visa abroad. One reason Congress created the adjustment of status provision was to enable certain aliens physically present in the United States to become LPRs without incurring the expense and inconvenience of traveling abroad to obtain an immigrant visa. Congress has added additional adjustment of status provisions to: Ensure national security and public safety; Advance economic growth and a robust immigrant labor force; Promote family unity; and Accommodate humanitarian resettlement.
If Congress intended “adjustment of status” to be limited to “extraordinary circumstances,” then they would have made that clear. What’s more, if that was their intention, then they would not have consistently added more adjustment provisions. The fact of the matter is that neither the plain language of the relevant statutes nor the history of “adjustment of status” guidelines justify this policy revision. Rather than “returning to the original intent of the law” as USCIS Director Joseph Edlow claims, the agency is twisting the law to satisfy President Donald Trump’s desires.
That USCIS had the audacity to even release such an obviously politically motivated and illegal policy speaks to the broader decline in the integrity of American institutions.
As former USCIS senior adviser Doug Rand noted, “Trump has banned people from over 100 countries from returning to the US, so forcing them to go abroad for consular processing is no pathway at all.” This includes nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen—countries that Trump has bombed in his second term; as well as Cuba, which is still suffering under a US oil blockade and sanctions.
For those from countries not included in one of Trump’s travel bans, the new process will be significantly more expensive, time-consuming, and complicated. Applicants will be forced to leave their loved ones and wait months or years before they can return to the US.
Now, the memo does acknowledge “limited exceptions” to this new requirement. This includes people on “dual intent” visas such as the H-1B (for specialized workers) or O-1 (for those with “extraordinary ability or achievement”), as well as “immigrant categories where only adjustment of status provides a pathway to permanent resident status.” While the memo fails to specify, the latter may include refugees and asylum-seekers.
Two points are worth emphasizing here: First, the policy memo states that “adjustment under most provisions is granted only as ‘a matter of discretion and administrative grace.’” Maintaining lawful status under a H-1B or O-1 visa “is not sufficient, on its own, to warrant a favorable exercise of discretion.” As Kahler further clarified in an email to Newsweek on May 24, “People who present applications that provide an economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest will likely be able to continue on their current path.” He added, others “may be asked to apply abroad depending on individualized circumstances.”
Ultimately, however, as the memorandum makes clear, USCIS officers are advised to consider “if approval of the alien’s adjustment of status application is in the best interest of the United States.” This means weighing multiple factors, including “the applicant’s moral character.”
Second, even if one of the “limited exceptions” applies to refugees, it may amount to very little given the Trump administration’s concerted efforts to weaken the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).
In October 2025, the Trump administration lowered the cap on the number of refugees the US will admit to 7,500. Between October 2025 and April 2026, the US only admitted 4,499 refugees. All, except three from Afghanistan, were South African.
In November 2025, USCIS issued a memo ordering the review of about 233,000 refugees who entered the US between January 20, 2021 and February 20, 2025. It also halted all processing of green card applications for refugees who entered during that period.
As part of their operations in Minnesota in January 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS launched a sweeping initiative to re-review and potentially terminate the protective status of refugees who had not yet obtained permanent resident status. This led to more than 100 refugees with no criminal records being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on allegations of fraud, transferred to detention centers in Texas, and threatened with deportation.
The USCIS policy effectively redesigns the system such that for some nationalities—predominantly those from African, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American countries—no realistic legal pathway to obtain a green card exists. For all others, it becomes a matter of administrative discretion—or more precisely, Trump’s discretion. The true dividing line here is not whether one contributes economically to the US or follows its laws, but rather whether Trump believes a person comes from a “shithole” country or a “nice” country.
This divide has a further implication: Under Trump’s birthright ban, only children born of US citizens and lawful permanent residents automatically acquire citizenship. If the Supreme Court upholds his order, and if this policy revision survives its inevitable lawsuit, then it would dramatically alter who could become a citizen. This has been an underlying goal of Trump’s immigration agenda from the start.
Kahler insists that this policy is necessary to close a dangerous loophole that immigrants exploit to stay in the US indefinitely. He remarks, “When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the US illegally after being denied residency.”
This is bullshit, plain and simple. US Customs and Border Protection calculated that in 2024 the US visa overstay rate was 1.15%. “In other words, 98.85% of the in-scope nonimmigrant visitors departed the United States on-time and in accordance with the terms of their admissions.”
The true goal rather is to force people to leave the US and have consular officers abroad quickly and quietly reject their applications without any consideration for due process or the applicant’s legal rights. As the CATO Institute reports, even prior to this new policy, DHS had already cut green card approvals by roughly half.
Hopefully, the courts or Congress will intervene and put an end to this policy. However, that USCIS had the audacity to even release such an obviously politically motivated and illegal policy speaks to the broader decline in the integrity of American institutions. Even if this attempt fails, the Trump administration will continue to go after immigrants. They will not stop; so, neither can we. We must remain vigilant and continue to keep our communities safe.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Trump and the Supreme Court Try to Return the US to the 19th Century
With the Supreme Court’s rulings against the Voting Rights Act and the Trump administration’s refusal to enforce the Civil Rights Act, they are trying to repeal the legacy of the civil rights movement.
May 26, 2026
On December 18 1865, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Republican from Pennsylvania, during debate on how to treat the traitorous Confederate states and on support for newly freed people who had been enslaved in the United States and in British North America for almost 250 years, warned, “If we fail in this great duty now, when we have the power, we shall deserve and receive the execration of history and of all future ages." The United States failed to rectify injustice in the past, and it is failing once again.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a key contributor to The New York Times’ award winning The 1619 Project, recently wrote that “The Civil Rights Era Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes.” In Tennessee, the white-dominated Republican controlled state legislature eliminated the state’s only Black majority congressional district after the MAGA-dominated Supreme Court ruled that congressional maps that ensured political representation for African Americans and other racial minorities now violated the Constitution. Other white-dominated, Republican-controlled states are racing to make similar changes. It is as if the Republican Party, with the aid of the Supreme Court, is trying to return the United States to the level of racism that dominated the country in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.
After the Civil War, Congress passed and the states ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution. The 13th Amendment ended chattel slavery in the United States. The 14th Amendment defined citizenship to include people born in the United States with very limited exceptions and ensured that all persons, whether citizens or not, were entitled to legal due process. The 15th Amendment prevented states and localities from denying Black men the right to vote. Each amendment included a clause that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Rebelling Confederate states were required to approve the 14th and 15th Amendments to fully reenter the Union.
A right-wing dominated Supreme Court then proceeded to systematically emasculate the amendments and supporting legislation including the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The first Civil Rights Act enforced the 13th Amendment after a number of Southern states passed "Black Codes" to limit the rights of freedmen, and the Reconstruction Acts required the former Confederate states to accept the 14th Amendment. The Enforcement Acts provided federal protection for voting rights that were being interfered with by organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 targeted racial segregation and guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations including hotels and theaters and transportation and prohibited attempts to exclude them from juries. To put teeth in enforcement, violations were tried in federal, not state courts.
The Trump administration has launched a systematic campaign to undermine civil rights protections passed into law and approved by the Supreme Court in the 1950s and I960s.
In 1873, in the Slaughter-House Cases, the Supreme Court limited the ability of African Americans to sue in federal courts against discriminatory state laws. In 1876, in the United States v. Cruikshank, the court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not apply to private acts of violence, preventing federal authorities from prosecuting hate crimes, and in the 1883 United States v. Harris case the Court threw out the Enforcement Acts because Congress did not have the authority to punish private groups like the Ku Klux Klan for conspiring to violate the civil rights of African Americans.
The most damaging court decision was in a consolidated case known as the Civil Rights Cases. In 1883, by an 8-to-1 majority, the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. The majority ruled that the 14th Amendment only applied to discrimination by state or local governments and did not permit the federal government to prohibit discrimination by private individuals. The only dissenting justice was John Harlan, who argued that government and individual actions often overlapped and the court was interpreting the 14th Amendment too narrowly. Harlan was also the only justice to vote against the majority decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that established that the Constitution permitted racially segregated “separate-but-equal” facilities.
It was not until the 1950s and 1960s, in what has been called the Second Reconstruction, that Supreme Court decisions and federal legislation, under intense pressure from the African-American civil rights movement, restored civil rights for African Americans stolen by a conservative Supreme Court in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. The best known Supreme Court decision was in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. Brown combined five cases challenging the legality of school segregation pursued by the NAACP and the legal team headed by Thurgood Marshall. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that segregated schools established a racial caste system and violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In other decisions, the Warren Court ruled that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups had equal protection under the 14th Amendment (Hernandez v.Texas, 1954); that segregation in facilities serving interstate transport was illegal (Boynton v. Virginia, 1960); that election districts intended to prevent the election of Black representatives violated the 15th Amendment by disenfranchising Black voters (Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 1960); against segregation in public accommodations overturning the 1883 Civil Rights Cases decision (Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 1964); the federal government had the authority to abolish discriminatory literacy testing for voter registration (South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 1966); state laws banning interracial marriages were unconstitutional (Loving v. Virginia, 1967); and that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banning discrimination in the sale of rent of housing was constitutional (Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 1968).
Federal civil rights legislation passed in the Second Reconstruction included the Civil Rights Act of 1957. It was the first federal civil rights law passed by Congress since 1875. This law established the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a Justice Department Civil Rights division to investigate charges of racial discrimination. A 1960 law established federal penalties for interfering with someone’s ability to vote. Federal courts were authorized to appoint officials to assist African Americans in registering to vote in states and localities with a documented history of discrimination, and the 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed poll taxes.
The two most important pieces of federal legislation during this period were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in public accommodations including hotels, restaurants, and theaters; ended discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce these regulations. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act established the “disparate impact” legal standard which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971). The disparate impact standard prohibits policies that disproportionately impact protected groups and does not require proof of discriminatory intent. It was later codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
The Voting Rights Act included a number of key provisions. It allowed people to sue to overturn discriminatory laws and voter registration and candidate nomination procedures and provided for federal legal assistance. It also required states and localities with histories of discrimination to obtain prior approval from the Department of Justice or a federal court before changing voting rules. As a result of the Voting Rights Act, the racial disparity in voting registration rates declined from about 30% to 8% 10 years later. As a result of the Voting Right Acts, In addition, the number of Blacks serving in Congress increased from four in 1960 to 62 in 2023. In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized by Congress with wide bipartisan support.
However, since 2013, the Supreme Court has whittled away at voter protection for minority groups. In a 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the court eliminated the pre-clearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2021 the Supreme Court made it more difficult to bring lawsuits challenging discriminatory voting rules, and in 2026, in Louisiana v. Callais, the court further gutted the Voting Rights Act, allowing state governments to redraw election districts dividing up Black communities so it would be more difficult to elect Black officials.
The Trump administration has launched a systematic campaign to undermine civil rights protections passed into law and approved by the Supreme Court in the 1950s and I960s. In an attack on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in April 2025 ordering federal agencies not to support or enforce disparate impact claims, arguing that it was discrimination against white people and violated its interpretation of the equal protection of the law. The administration has cut funding for enforcement of fair housing laws, equal employment opportunities, and environmental justice for minority communities disprotortionately impacted by climate change and pollution.
With the Supreme Court’s rulings against the Voting Rights Act and the Trump administration’s refusal to enforce the Civil Rights Act, they are trying to repeal the legacy of the Second Reconstruction and return the United States to the era of Jim Crow segregation and racism institutionalized in the 19th century.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Do US War Crimes Doom the World to Endless War and Chaos?
The supposedly unlimited freedom of action attained by disdaining and trampling international law and institutions has proved to be a double-edged sword.
May 26, 2026
On May 24, Iran rejected President Trump’s latest fake peace deal, confirming that he had misrepresented what Iran had agreed to and that the two sides are still very far apart, on nuclear enrichment, on control of the Strait of Hormuz, on peace in Palestine and Lebanon, and on lifting US sanctions, paying war reparations, and Iran’s $100 billion in frozen assets.
Iran’s conditions for a peace agreement are necessarily uncompromising, in response to the US record of using negotiations as cover for sneak attacks, and the charade of one-sided “ceasefires with Israeli characteristics,” in which the US and Israel routinely ignore and violate every ceasefire they agree to, including the present ones in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.
Since no agreement with the United States or Israel is worth the paper it’s written on, it’s hard to imagine an agreement that would really protect Iran from future attacks. Without a more radical change in US policy, the United States and Israel will keep attacking Iran, in open violation of the UN Charter, no matter what they all agree to.
The only effective ways Iran has found to protect its land and its people are to build strong military defenses, including the capacity for devastating retaliation, and to retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, regardless of the impact on the world’s oil and gas supply and the global economy. By attacking Iran, the United States and Israel forced it to defend itself and triggered a war that is reshaping the Middle East and possibly the world.
The final sinking of the neocon dream in the troubled waters of the Persian Gulf provides the US and the world with a historic chance to recommit to a more peaceful and democratic international order.
Losing this war is forcing the United States to finally start reevaluating the neoconservative tactics it has blindly substituted for a rational US foreign and military policy since the 1990s: sanction; threaten; bomb; kill; destroy; occupy; escalate; leave countries mired in violence and chaos—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine and Lebanon—never admit defeat; never question American exceptionalism or superiority.
The systematic US disdain for the rule of international law that undergirds this policy appears to make peace impossible in today’s world. But the final sinking of the neocon dream in the troubled waters of the Persian Gulf provides the US and the world with a historic chance to recommit to a more peaceful and democratic international order.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has effectively exempted itself from the entire system of treaties, international laws and agreements that are supposed to govern international affairs, starting with the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force between countries, and the Geneva Conventions, which protect civilians, prisoners-of-war and wounded soldiers and sailors from the impacts of war.
These treaties were drawn up and universally adopted in the wake of the Second World War, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” as the UN Charter says in its preamble. President Roosevelt returned from his Yalta conference with Churchill and Stalin in 1945 to tell a joint session of Congress that they were designing the United Nations as a “permanent structure of peace.”
“It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries—and have always failed,” FDR told Congress. “We propose to substitute for all these, a universal organization in which all peace-loving Nations will finally have a chance to join.”
The UN Charter codified and strengthened the age-old common law prohibition against international aggression, and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy in the 1928 Kellogg Briand Pact, which German leaders tried at Nuremberg were sentenced to death for violating.
However, amid overblown Western triumphalism after the end of the Cold War, a new generation of US leaders, like Madeleine Albright and Dick Cheney, came to see the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions as obstacles to their ambitions to further expand US global power by more widespread and unrestricted use of military force.
Believing that the new imbalance in military power freed them from compliance with post-1945 treaties and conventions based on the hard-earned wisdom of past leaders in two world wars, the US and its allies unleashed their armed forces to attack and invade other countries, torture, rape and kill prisoners, and massacre civilians.
US officials assumed that the new military imbalance so greatly favored the United States that neither the UN, international courts, other powerful countries, nor even the entire people of the world could enforce the rules of international law and the laws of armed conflict on the United States if it chose to ignore them.
It is ironic, and deeply frustrating and confusing to US officials, to find out that what they hailed as a position of overwhelming power and impunity has led them to squander America’s day in the sun and waste the chance that its great good fortune provided to improve the quality of life for Americans and their neighbors.
The supposedly unlimited freedom of action attained by disdaining and trampling international law and institutions has proved to be a double-edged sword. There is no such thing as unlimited military power, short of the mass suicide of nuclear war. The idea that America’s virtually unlimited investment in weapons and war would give it the final word in every dispute was a mirage, as even Trump is now finding out.
As Americans reexamine the state of the world and the conflicts by which warmongering US leaders have tried to define it, it is obvious that war and military power do not lead to peace or prosperity, for Americans or anyone else. The more countries the Pentagon and the CIA take aim at, the more people they kill, and the more resources our leaders throw at them, the more other people all over the world rightly come to see the United States as a threat to their own lives and futures.
Governments around the world face difficult choices between meeting the needs and aspirations of their own people or complying with the hegemonic and undemocratic demands of the United States.
After holding itself up as the champion of democracy and freedom for 250 years, the United States is only accelerating its own decline by wasting trillions of dollars, and what little is left of the world’s good will, on this failed, ill-fated bid for global imperial power.
When the United States rose to great power in the first half of the 20th century, its leaders were wise enough to recognize that exercising naked imperial power would not succeed in a world still fighting to free itself from the ravages of European colonialism. So FDR and his colleagues based the UN system on sovereign equality between nations, and created a framework for international relations that the whole world could agree to.
While the United States and Israel commit systematic and barbaric war crimes, presuming themselves immune from accountability, the world is slowly—too slowly—coming to grips with the international cooperation needed to enforce the “permanent structure of peace” that all countries have agreed to live by.
Like all legal and political systems, the success or failure of the UN system rests on whether the most powerful countries will agree to live by the same rules as the others. The veto is a poison pill that corrupts the system, as Albert Camus predicted when it was unveiled in 1945.
“If this report is accurate, … it would effectively put an end to any idea of international democracy,” Camus wrote in Combat, the underground French Resistance newspaper he edited. “The world would be ruled by a directorate of five powers… The Five would thus retain forever the freedom of maneuver that would be forever denied the others.”
However, the UN has developed the “Uniting For Peace” process, which allows the General Assembly to hold Emergency Special Sessions (ESS) on international problems when a veto prevents the Security Council from acting to resolve them. The General Assembly used that process to resolve the Suez Crisis in 1956, and it has been using it, albeit intermittently and inadequately, to address the crisis in Palestine since 1997.
In response to a request from the General Assembly in its Emergency Special Session on Palestine, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must end without delay. And so, the General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel must bring “to an end without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories… and do so no later than” September 2025.
Israel did not comply, so the General Assembly must take further steps, such as an arms embargo and an economic boycott. But it does have the means to do so and just needs to muster the political will.
While the United States and Israel commit systematic and barbaric war crimes, presuming themselves immune from accountability, the world is slowly—too slowly—coming to grips with the international cooperation needed to enforce the “permanent structure of peace” that all countries have agreed to live by, and on which the lives of millions of vulnerable people and the future of humanity depend.
While US leaders are finally realizing that they do not have the power to intimidate and conquer the whole world, the American people are gradually understanding that we have an even greater power, the power to refuse to fight their criminal wars, and to insist on making peace and cooperating with all our neighbors on this small planet that we all share.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular