Author: Conflicts of Interest

On COI #117, Kyle Anzalone breaks down Biden’s Pentagon budget proposal for FY 2022. The president is asking Congress to give $715 billion in tax dollars to the military-industrial complex. The proposal calls for tens of billions to be spent on weapons systems with legacies of failure, like the F-35 and Ford-class aircraft carrier. Most of the money will be used to maintain the American Empire, not defend the homeland. While Congress has the power to alter the Pentagon budget, Kyle argues we should expect they will only increase spending.

The budget also further highlights the foreign policy establishment’s growing fixation on China. Biden wants to spend $5 billion on the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and billions more on weapons systems that will be deployed to waters off China’s coast. Kyle explains the danger of shifting so much military spending towards confronting Beijing.

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On COI #116, Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter cover a new round of US sanctions imposed on officials in Ethiopia, where fighting with rebels has killed thousands and displaced millions more in the country’s Tigray region. Cutting off foreign aid and slapping visa restrictions on officials, Washington is pressuring the central government to make efforts to end the fighting.

Legendary whistleblower and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg has disclosed yet another series of classified documents from a 1966 Rand Corporation study. The files reveal that, during a round of fighting between China and Taiwan in 1958, the United States came much closer to dropping nuclear weapons on China than was previously known, with American military leaders pushing aggressively for the authority to do so.

After updating the progress of talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal, Will and Kyle also mark Memorial Day, discussing the ways our soldiers are used up and discarded by the very leaders who claim to champion them most.

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Patrick MacFarlane, host of Liberty Weekly and a featured writer at the Libertarian Institute, joins Kyle Anzalone to discuss the new cold war with Russia and China. Pat describes the role of foreign policy thinkers in pushing for a return to ‘great power competition.’ While the central planners believe they are developing strategies to protect America, more often they push fabricated ‘adversaries’ into closer cooperation. Pat and Kyle discuss the repeated failures of hawks who think they can manage the affairs of the entire planet from Washington, DC.

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On Conflicts of Interest #113, Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter cover the ceasefire deal reached between the Israeli government and armed groups in Gaza. The agreement has held over several days and appears to have brought the eruption of violence to an end. All said and done, at least 248 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed throughout 11 days of fighting, which flattened residential areas across Gaza and saw thousands of rockets fired into Israeli cities. Under tight blockade, Gaza now returns to its status as the world’s largest open-air prison as Tel Aviv continues to expand Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.

US lawmakers have introduced a series of bills looking to repeal several Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) still on the books, including those passed in 1957, 1991 and 2002. While a promising development, the much more open-ended 2001 AUMF – which has been invoked for Terror War military action in at least 14 countries – has been left out of the recent push to rescind the authorizations.

Yemen’s Houthis have maintained their offensive into Marib province, the last major piece of territory in the country’s north controlled by the Saudi-backed government. Though fighting has reached a stalemate, the Biden administration continues to place all blame on the Houthis for the ongoing violence, ignoring their pleas to end their support for a Saudi blockade on Yemen’s ports.

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On Conflicts of Interest #110, Will Porter and Kyle Anzalone update the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces targeted a number of civilian structures in recent days, including the crowded al-Shati refugee camp – one of the most densely populated places on Earth – killing 10 people, eight of them children. Al-Jalaa Tower, a high-rise building containing offices for the Associated Press and a number of other major media outlets, was also brought down by IDF strikes, making it even harder for the international press to report from the ground in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

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From Conflicts of Interest with Kyle Anzalone:

Dave DeCamp, News Editor at Antiwar.com, returns to Conflicts of Interest to discuss Biden’s foreign policy through his first 100 days in office. As a candidate, Biden pledged to end the forever wars and scale back tensions with Iran. While he has reduced some US support for the Saudi-US war in Yemen, Biden has continued to provide Riyadh with the support needed to wage its lethal bombing campaign. In Afghanistan, Biden announced the withdrawal of US forces, though statements from administration officials reveal plans to continue the war through less transparent methods.

On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to save his former boss’s agreement with Iran. As president, he has dragged his feet and refused to undo Trump’s disastrous policies. Biden has kept his pledge for an aggressive China policy, however, increasing hostile US war games in the South China Sea and American support for Taiwan. Dave warns this path could lead to war.