Between the Covid-19 pandemic and the civil unrest here at home, even fewer eyes are on U.S. foreign policy than before. Unfortunately the Empire never sleeps.
The wars continue, from the new Cold War with China to the shadow war in Somalia, and Antiwar.com is here to cover them all.
The War Party never lets a good crisis go to waste, and the Covid-19 pandemic has served as a useful tool to ramp up tensions with Beijing. Besides the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration, the US has increased its military presence in the Indo-Pacific, with massive Navy drills in the South China Sea and US spy planes buzzing near China’s coast. While only the fiercest hawks in Washington want a hot war with China, the increased US presence in the region makes a military confrontation more likely.
The US maintains crippling economic sanctions on countries like Venezuela, Iran, and Syria. History shows that economic warfare does nothing to depose the governments the US wants to overthrow and only hurts the civilian populations. In the early days of the pandemic, there were international calls for the US to lift sanctions to help the world fight Covid-19. But Washington did not comply. Instead, it has increased sanctions, most notably on Syria where new measures were put in place to prevent the Arab country from rebuilding after nine years of brutal war.
Hopes of a global ceasefire to combat the pandemic are long gone, and bombs from the US and its allies continue to fall across the Middle East. The most dire situation is in Yemen, where the U.S.-Saudi coalition have recently ramped up airstrikes. In recent weeks, bombs have obliterated civilian homes, killing men, women, and children. The humanitarian situation on the ground in Yemen is dire, with millions facing famine.
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