Portside

American foreign policy is at the root of forced migration from different parts of the world, and human rights advocates must address the problem at its heart.

If there is something like a “Trump Doctrine,” it lies in two developments: the boldness with which a declared reliance on coercion and conquest now sits uncomfortably beside America’s professed moral authority; and the implications of Trump’s ethno-nationalism for how global allies and enemies are conceived.

In November 1917, British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour declared British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”; in December, Jerusalem fell to British troops, and the effects of these events continue to reverberate. The Balfour Centennial should be a time of somber reflection about global responsibility for the tragedy in Palestine, which is more than a local record of colonial crimes, severe as these have been.

Here’s the truth of it, if you just stop to think about America’s wars for a moment: it’s only going to get harder to look a widow or mother in the eye and justify them in the years to come.

“The current American president is ignorant of the region,” said Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif, speaking to reporters in a cave until recently occupied by Nusra. “We are the force that fights terrorism while the United States continues to support terrorism in many forms.”

Trump seems determined to go forward with a very hostile program toward Iran, and, although a baseless U.S. pullout from the nuclear deal seems unlikely, even the so-called ‘adults in the room’ are looking for a pretext. The White House is committed to finding a way to claim Iran has violated the nuclear deal, regardless of the facts — just as George W. Bush did with Iraq.

Saudi Arabia's puzzling effort to blacklist its tiny neighbor Qatar begs the question of who's really isolated in the Gulf. The attack on Qatar is part of Saudi Arabia’s aggressive new foreign policy that is being led by Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman. As Saudi Arabia’s “monarch in waiting,” Mohammed has launched a disastrous war in Yemen that’s killed more than 10,000 civilians and sparked a country-wide cholera epidemic there.

It is too early to provide a reliable analysis of the Persian Gulf crisis sparked by the abrupt decision of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies to break diplomatic and economic relations with Qatar. There are too many actors, conflicts, mixed and hidden motives and contradictions at play. Yet, one can clearly assert that it has nothing to do with strengthening the anti-ISIS, anti-extremist coalition of Arab forces, and that it is directed as much at Iran as Qatar.

Millions are threatened by famine, as Riyadh prepares an assault on the country’s key port.

The peace movement is where realism about U.S. military madness lives. The movement is the main challenger to nationalism and xenophobia, and the main force for internationalism in an interconnected world. It abides in the best political instincts in every other progressive social movement. Restoring it is a collective responsibility for the entire range of forces shocked into motion by the 2016 election.