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foreign policy
8 Reasons Why Marco Rubio Would Be a Disastrous Secretary of State
In most hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.
Nov 18, 2024
Of all U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China.
The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly “stalemate war” that needs to be “brought to a conclusion.”
But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.
1. His Obsession With Regime Change in Cuba Will Sink any Chance of Better Relations With the Island
Like other Cuban-American politicians, Marco Rubio has built his career on vilifying the Cuban Revolution and trying to economically strangle and starve into submission the people of his parents’ homeland.
It is ironic, therefore, that his parents left Cuba before the revolution, during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose executioners, secret police, and death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people, according to the CIA, leading to a wildly popular revolution in 1959.
While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.
When former President Barack Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, Rubio swore to do “everything possible” to obstruct and reverse that policy. In May 2024, Rubio reiterated his zero tolerance for any kind of social or economic contacts between the U.S. and Cuba, claiming that any easing of the U.S. blockade will only “strengthen the oppressive regime and undermine the opposition... Until there is freedom in Cuba, the United States must maintain a firm stance.”
In 2024 Rubio also introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. “State Sponsor of Terrorism List,” imposing sanctions that cut Cuba off from the U.S.-dominated Western banking system.
These measures to destroy the Cuban economy have led to a massive wave of migration in the past two years. But when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to coordinate with their Cuban counterparts, Rubio introduced legislation to prohibit such interaction. While Trump has vowed to stem immigration, his secretary of state wants to crush Cuba’s economy, forcing people to abandon the island and set sail for the United States.
2. Applying His Anti-Cuba Template to the Rest of Latin America Will Make Enemies of More of Our Neighbors
Rubio’s disdain for his ancestral home in Cuba has served him so well as an American politician that he has extended it to the rest of Latin America. He has sided with extreme right-wing politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina, and rails against progressive ones, from Brazil’s Ignacio Lula da Silva to Mexico’s popular former President Lopez Obrador, whom he called “an apologist for tyranny” for supporting other leftist governments.
In Venezuela, he has promoted brutal sanctions and regime change plots to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro. In 2019 he was one of the architects of Trump’s failed policy of recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as president. He has also advocated for sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua.
In March 2023, Rubio urged President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Bolivia for prosecuting leaders of a 2019 U.S.-backed coup that led to massacres that killed at least 21 people.
Rubio also condemned the government of Honduras for withdrawing from an extradition treaty with the United States this past August, in response to decades of U.S. interference that had turned Honduras into a narco-state riven by poverty, gang violence, and mass emigration, until the election of democratic socialist President Xiomara Castro in 2022.
Rubio’s major concern about Latin America now seems to be the influence of China, which has become the leading trade partner of most Latin American countries. Unlike the U.S., China focuses on economic benefits and not internal politics, while American politicians like Marco Rubio still see Latin America as the U.S. “backyard.”
While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.
3. He Believes the U.S. and Israel Can Do No Wrong, and That God Has Given Palestine to Israel
Despite the massive death toll in Gaza and global condemnation of Israel’s genocide, Rubio still perpetuates the myth that “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses” and that innocent people die in Gaza because Hamas has deliberated placed them in the way and used them as human shields. The problem, he says, is “an enemy that doesn’t value human life.”
When asked by CODEPINK in November 2024 if he would support a cease-fire, Rubio replied, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”
There are few times in this past year that the Biden administration has tried to restrain Israel, but when Biden begged Israel not to send troops into the southern city of Rafah, Rubio said that was like telling the Allied forces in World War II not to attack Berlin to get Hitler.
Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order.
In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August 2024, Rubio criticized the Biden administration’s decision to sanction Israeli settlers linked to anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.
“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organisations] such as Hamas, have rejected such overtures,” Rubio wrote. “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he added.
No country besides Israel subscribes to the idea that its borders should be based on 2,000-year-old religious scriptures, and that it has a God-given right to displace or exterminate people who have lived there since then to reconquer its ancient homeland. The United States will find itself extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the world if Rubio tries to assert that as a matter of U.S. policy.
4. His Deep-Seated Enmity Toward Iran Will Fuel Israel’s War on Its Neighbors, and May Lead to a U.S. War With Iran
Rubio is obsessed with Iran. He claims that the central cause of violence and suffering in the Middle East is not Israeli policy but “Iran’s ambition to be a regional hegemonic power.” He says that Iran’s goal in the Middle East is to “seek to drive America out of the region and then destroy Israel.”
He has been a proponent of maximum pressure on Iran, including a call for more and more sanctions. He believes the U.S. should not reenter the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”
Rubio calls Lebanon’s Hezbollah a “full-blown agent of Iran right on Israel’s border” and that wiping out Hezbollah’s leadership, along with entire neighborhoods full of civilians, is a “service to humanity.” He alleges that Iran has control over Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and is a threat to Jordan. He claims that “Iran has put a noose around Israel,” and says that the goal of U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, which would set the stage for war.
While there will hopefully be leaders in the Pentagon who will caution Donald Trump about the perils of a war with Iran, Rubio will not be a voice of reason.
5. He Is Beholden to Big Money, From the Weapons Industry to the Israel Lobby
Open Secrets reports that Rubio has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups during his career. The Pro-Israel America PAC was his single largest campaign contributor over the last five years. When he last ran for reelection in 2022, he was the third largest recipient of funding by pro-Israel groups in the Senate, taking in $367,000 from them for that campaign.
Rubio was also the fourth largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his congressional career.
Rubio is clearly beholden to the U.S. arms industry, and even more so to the Israel lobby, which has been one of his largest sources of campaign funding. This has placed him in the vanguard of Congress’s blind, unconditional support for Israel and subservience to Israeli narratives and propaganda, making it unlikely that he will ever challenge the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people or their expulsion from their homeland.
6. He’s so Antagonistic Toward China That China Has Sanctioned Him—Twice!
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2022, Rubio said: “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left's version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China."
It will be hard for our nation’s “top diplomat” to ease tensions with a country he has so maligned. He antagonized China by co-sponsoring the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which allows the U.S. to bar Chinese imports over alleged Uyghur rights abuses, abuses that China denies and independent researchers question. In fact, Rubio has gone so far as to accuse China of a “grotesque campaign of genocide” against the Uyghurs.
His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded.
On Taiwan, he has not only introduced legislation to increase military aid to the island, but actually supports Taiwanese independence—a dangerous deviation from the U.S. government's long-standing One China approach.
The Chinese responded to Rubio by sanctioning him, not once but twice—once regarding the Uyghurs and once for his support of Hong Kong protests. Unless China lifts the sanctions, he would be the first U.S. secretary of state to be banned from even visiting China.
Analysts expect China to try to sidestep Rubio and engage directly with Trump and other senior officials. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told Reuters, “If that doesn't work, then I think we're going to get into a much more regular escalation of a bad relationship.”
7. Rubio Knows Sanctions Are a Trap, But He Doesn’t Know How to Escape
Rubio is a leading advocate of unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under international law, and which the United Nations and other countries refer to as “unilateral economic coercive measures.”
The United States has used these measures so widely and wildly that they now impact a third of the world’s population. U.S. officials, from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Rubio himself, have warned that using the U.S. financial system and the dollar’s reserve currency status as weapons against other countries is driving the rest of the world to conduct trade in other currencies and develop alternative financial systems.
In March 2023, Rubio complained on Fox News, “We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”
And yet Rubio has continued to be a leading sponsor of sanctions bills in the Senate, including new sanctions on Iran in January 2024 and a bill in July to sanction foreign banks that participate in alternative financial systems.
So, while other countries develop new financial and trading systems to escape abusive, illegal U.S. sanctions, the nominee for secretary of state remains caught in the same sanctions trap that he complained about on Fox.
8. He Wants to Crack Down on U.S. Free Speech
Rubio wants to curtail the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In May, he described campus protests against Israel as a “complete breakdown of law and order.”
Rubio claimed to be speaking up for other students at American universities. “[They] paid a lot of money to go to these schools, [but are being disrupted by] a few thousand antisemitic zombies who have been brainwashed by two decades of indoctrination in the belief that the world is divided between victimizers and victims, and that the victimizers in this particular case, the ones that are oppressing people, are Jews in Israel,” said Rubio.
The Florida senator has said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April, he called for punishing supporters of the Israel boycott movement as part of efforts to counter antisemitism, falsely equating any attempt to respond to Israel’s international crimes with antisemitism.
And what about those crimes, which the students are protesting? After visiting Israel in May, Rubio wrote an article for National Review, in which he never mentioned the thousands of civilians Israel has killed, and instead blamed Iran, Biden, and “morally corrupt international institutions” for the crisis.
Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order. He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.
Students are not Rubio’s only target. In August 2023, he alleged that certain “far-left and antisemitic entities” may have violated the Foreign Assistance Registration Act by their ties to China. He called for a Justice Department investigation into 18 groups, starting with CODEPINK. These unfounded claims of China connections are only meant to intimidate legitimate groups that are exercising their free speech rights.
Conclusion
On each of these issues, Rubio has shown no sign of understanding the difference between domestic politics and diplomacy. Whether he’s talking about Cuba, Palestine, Iran, or China, or even about CODEPINK, all his supposedly tough positions are based on cynically mischaracterizing the actions and motivations of his enemies and then attacking the “straw man” he has falsely set up.
Unscrupulous politicians often get away with that, and Rubio has made it his signature tactic because it works so well for him in American politics. But that will not work if and when he sits down to negotiate with other world leaders as U.S. secretary of state.
His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded. This makes Rubio just as ill-equipped as Antony Blinken to conduct diplomacy, improve U.S. relations with other countries, or resolve disputes and conflicts peacefully, as the U.N. Charter requires.
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What to Expect From Trump’s Foreign and Military Policies: Old and New Dangers
What do we really know about Trump’s foreign and military commitments, about his acolytes who are jostling for position and influence, and what do we think the tyrant will actually do?
Nov 11, 2024
On the morning of November 6, many of us woke to the reality that what we thought of as our nation was even more corrupt and dangerous than we had realized. Manipulated by oligarchs and frustrated by status quo Democrats, a majority of the U.S. electorate embraced and voted for a fascist, racist, rapist, convicted felon, compulsive liar, insurrectionist, would-be dictator.
Understandably, in the first days after the election of a man who pledged retribution against his enemies, promised the deportation of undocumented immigrants, and who told supporters that this was the last time they would need to vote, discourse and debate focused on a postmortem of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat. Yet, as we debate how best to protect people threatened by deportation and racist attacks, democratic values, culture, and institutions, Donald Trump’s return to power has enormous global ramifications. There are the not so small questions about how to keep the narcissist’s finger off the nuclear button? How best to win cease-fires and just peace negotiations in Gaza and Ukraine? And how to prevent avoidable wars with China, Russia, and North Korea?
Fears abound. Trump’s admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Xiaoping have Ukraine, Europe, and people across the Indo-Pacific region facing an uncertain future. Trump will not be able to end the Ukraine War within 24 hours as he promised, but under Putin’s escalating attacks, now augmented by fresh if ill-trained North Korean troops and swarms of attack drones, we again face the question of how much of Ukraine he will seize? Will Trump’s expressed doubts about the U.S. commitment to NATO and his threatened tariffs lead to a profound disruption in U.S.-European relations and renewed European commitments to create a fourth military superpower? Will Trump’s embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s racist Gaza genocide facilitate complete ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank and join attacks on Iran’s nuclear and oil production infrastructures? Will the killing of North Korean forces with U.S. weapons in Kursk reignite the Korean War? And could a Russian victory in Ukraine lead China, in time, to invade or blockade Taiwan?
With such an escalation in U.S. military spending, we can forget financing climate resilience, or the housing needed by Trump’s working-class base.
In this uncertain time, what do we really know about Trump’s foreign and military commitments, about his acolytes who are jostling for position and influence, and what do we think the tyrant will actually do? An August 2024 Foreign Policy article named contending voices among Trump’s key “national security” advisers along with thumbnail sketches of their backgrounds and policy commitments. The article began with Elbridge Colby, an arrogant hardline deputy assistant secretary of defense in the last Trump administration. Colby is perhaps the “loudest” voice seeking “a complete shift from Europe, NATO, and Russia and toward the growing challenge from China.” Fred Fleitz, once a protégé of the notorious John Bolton, is among the most ideologically right-wing MAGA figures in Trump’s national security orbit. Ric Grenell was Trump’s ambassador to Germany and was closely aligned with neo-fascist European leaders including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Marine Le Pen, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He once threatened to withdraw all U.S. forces from Germany (something that many in the German peace movement would applaud), and as special envoy to the Balkans he was accused of engineering the collapse of the Kosovo government. Robert Lighthizer and Peter Navarro (the latter just released from prison) are the leading trade war and tariff advocates, with China their number one, but not only, target.
There is a host of other America Firsters who may be visited upon the world, including a raft of nuclear weapons and war planners in the nation’s think tanks who have been competing with one another to publish the most hawkish revisions of U.S. nuclear war planning.
That said, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, may prove to be the most influential of Trump’s foreign and military policy advisers. There is a tradition of senior advisers to presidential aspirants outlining their foreign and military policy commitments in the pages of Foreign Affairs, and this year that honor fell to O’Brien.
In the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, O’Brien published an article titled “The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy.” Having been tapped, but not yet confirmed, to become either Trump’s next national security adviser or secretary of state, we would do well to take O’Brien’s observations and commitments seriously. Here is a summary of what O’Brien tells us.
First and foremost, O’Brien reports that “Trump adheres not to dogma but to his own instincts.” Trump is given to whims, and his transactional approach to deal making, which makes it impossible to precisely predict what Trump will do. As The New York Times also reported, “He has often said that keeping the world guessing is his ideal foreign policy.”
Even as Trump has denigrated U.S. alliances, O’Brien reminds us that “Trump never canceled or postponed a single deployment to NATO. His pressure on NATO governments to spend more on defense made the alliance stronger.”
Trump’s goal in the Middle East may be the same as Biden’s: a Saudi-Israel entente, targeted against Iran, and backed by a new U.S.-Saudi military alliance complimenting the one already in place with Jerusalem.
Further O’Brien asserts that “Ameria first is not America alone.” From this perspective, Trump’s threat to “encourage” the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to nations that fail to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP military spending goal can be read as simply a coercive fundraising strategy. Worth noting too is that under pressure from a second Trump administration, 2% could become a very taxing 3%, resulting in still greater reductions in spending on essential social services.
Addressing the Ukraine War, O’Brien pledges that Trump will continue to support lethal aid but insists that it must be paid for by Europeans, while keeping the door open for diplomacy with Russia. Out-manned and out-gunned, European support may enable Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold out against Russian advances for up to a year, but the longer Zelensky holds out with his overly ambitious demands before initiating a cease-fire and returning to peace negotiations, the greater the danger for all Ukrainians. Trump will not have Zelensky’s back, even as conservative Poles warn Trump that Warsaw is next on the Kremlin’s menu.
O’Brien’s answer: NATO will rotate ground and air forces to Poland, and “the alliance will defend all its territory from foreign aggression.”
Contrary to the ostensible U.S. tradition of valuing human rights, and with little regard for the company the United States keeps, O’Brien advises that “the administration undermines its own putative mission when it questions the democratic bona fides of conservative elected leaders in countries allied with the United States.” For example: Jair Bolsonaro (formerly of Brazil), Orban (Hungary), Netanyahu (Israel) and Andrzej Duda (Poland.) By this same logic, Vladimir Putin can point to his election as Russia’s president, even if it came by way of assassinations and rigged national polls. And Xi Xiaoping can point to his apparent, if enforced, national popularity.
Consistent with all of Trump’s foreign and military advisers, President Joe Biden’s national security strategy, and congressional China hawks, is O’Brien’s warning that China is “a formidable military and economic adversary.” Xi, O’Brien believes, “is China’s most dangerous leader since the murderous Mao Zedong. And China has yet to be held to account for the Covid-19 pandemic.” It is “pablum,” O’Brien states “to believe that China is not truly an adversary.” Therefore, the United States should “focus its Pacific diplomacy on allies such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea... [and] traditional partners such as Singapore and emerging ones such as Indonesia and Vietnam.” Washington, O’Brien urges should also “seek to decouple its economy from China’s” with a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and tougher export controls on technology. Since the publication of O’Brien’s article, Trump has threatened tariffs of up to 200%, which would punish U.S. consumers far more than China’s economy.
Bolstering these alliances, which may be tested by “America First” arrogance, values, and financial burden-sharing demands, O’Brien argues that the Navy should move an aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and move the “entire Marine Corps to the Pacific” (later clarified to be operational troops, not administrative forces). The Navy should increase its ambitions to creating a 355-ship fleet, adding more stealthy nuclear armed Virginia class submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. Congress should fund all 100 planned B-21s, as well as 256 strategic bombers he believes are needed to continue containing China. With such an escalation in U.S. military spending, we can forget financing climate resilience, or the housing needed by Trump’s working-class base.
Over the next two-and-a-half months, Biden could, but will not, do much to limit the damage Trump will wreak.
Not to be forgotten is Trump’s urging of Netanyahu to finish the job in Gaza. So too the Trump family ties to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and Trump’s hatred of Iran that led to his sabotaging the JCPOA nuclear deal with Teheran. O’Brien writes that in the Middle East, the U.S. should exert “maximum pressure” on Iran. “The truest source of the Palestine-Israel conflict” he argues is not the dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, but Iran. He informs us that the Trump administration will “[b]ack Israel to eliminate Hamas, not pressure Israel to return to negotiations for a long-term solution.” Trump’s goal in the Middle East may be the same as Biden’s: a Saudi-Israel entente, targeted against Iran, and backed by a new U.S.-Saudi military alliance complimenting the one already in place with Jerusalem. But as Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken learned, this agenda has its contradictions. The vast majority of the Arabian people identify with and support Palestinian resistance to the genocide. And the Saudi monarchy believes that it could be overthrown if it officially recognizes Israel before credible processes are in place for a two-state solution to the century-old conflict.
If there was little discussion about foreign and military policies during the election campaign, there was even less said about their nuclear dimensions. The reality is that we are facing the greatest danger of nuclear war since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Leading the way has been the Kremlin’s nuclear saber rattling and its reduction of its threshold for nuclear weapons use. The past few weeks have seen back-to-back U.S. and Russian nuclear war games and a demonstration North Korean ICBM missile test. The U.S., its allies, China, and Russia are continuing provocative and confrontational military exercises in the South and East China Seas and around Taiwan in which an accident or miscalculation could easily escalate to the unthinkable. If this weren’t sufficient reason for concern, all of the nuclear weapons states are upgrading their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems—the U.S. at a cost of $1.7 trillion. And militarist forces in Iran, Japan, and South Korea are all pressing for their nations to become nuclear powers.
The Trump response? Pour more oil on the fire. O’Brien says that the U.S. should be “test[Ing] new nuclear weapons for reliability... in the real world” and resuming “production of uranium 235 and plutonium 239.” O’Brien also reminds readers that we came much closer to nuclear war during Trump’s 2017 Fire and Fury Korean threats than most people understand.
And then there is the climate emergency. Trump will further endanger this and future generations by again withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, burning fossil fuel regulations, and defunding green energy initiatives. This will further isolate the United States from the civilized world while it will ironically provide a powerful boost to China’s soft power diplomacy.
Over the next two-and-a-half months, Biden could, but will not, do much to limit the damage Trump will wreak: He could order revision of the U.S. nuclear weapons and war doctrine by ordering a No First Use doctrine. He could halt weapons deliveries to Israel unless Netanyahu agrees to cease-fires and negotiations for Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. He could insist that Ukraine revise the legitimate but unachievable demands it makes of Russia before reengaging in cease-fire and peace negotiations. A neutral Ukraine with credible international security guarantees and putting resolution of the territorial disputes on the diplomatic shelf for future resolution remains possible. And like President George H.W. Bush did with the Soviets at the end of the last Cold War, he could take limited unilateral actions like reducing the almost daily provocative military exercises in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and in relation to North Korea to engender common security reciprocal actions.
Of course, Donald Trump and his minions could reverse any such initiatives, but the geopolitical landscape would be transformed, with heavy political and diplomatic lifting required to put Trump’s foreign and military ambitions back on track.
In this new time, we will need to be thoughtful, and much more strategic—thinking more critically about our assumptions and campaigning—and we must keep our eyes on the proverbial prize as we create new ways to defend people, the climate, and democratic values and culture.
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Disaffected Voters May Want to Consider What Decades of Right-Wing Minority Rule Could Bring
Donald Trump will not last forever, but if he wins his far-right Republican Party’s system of minority rule could be here for decades. The damage they would inflict on the people of this nation—and the world—is horrifying to contemplate.
Nov 04, 2024
It is widely believed, including by experts, that this presidential election could be one of the most important in U.S. history. And polling data still marks it as too close to call. Various groups of voters who might normally vote, but decide to sit this one out, could decide the outcome.
On the Democratic side that includes a significant number of people who will not vote for the party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, because of the support that the Biden administration has given to Israel’s current military campaign. This support includes about $18 billion in weapons shipments from the United States to Israel.
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military operations in the Gaza Strip on October 7, following a Hamas attack from there that killed about 1200 people, mostly Israeli citizens. Public health experts have stated that the Palestinian death toll is likely considerably higher.
The majority of Palestinians killed have been women and children, often in Israeli bombings of civilian areas which include hospitals, schools, aid distribution points, emergency services, residential buildings and tents. American surgeons working in Gaza have documented multiple cases of pre-teen children killed with a single bullet to the head. The World Food Program warns that just 20 percent of the required basic food aid is being let in by Israel. The food situation is so bad that the Biden administration issued a complaint to Israel over the issue; Israel responded by banning UNRWA, the main source of humanitarian aid in the strip.
“Israel’s Imposed Starvation Deadly for Children” is the headline for a report from Human Rights Watch, one the most prominent human rights organizations in the United States.
Israel has banned foreign media from entering Gaza and has killed so many local reporters that the Committee to Protect Journalists has called it the “deadliest period ever for journalists.”
For those who believe in the sanctity of human life and our shared humanity with people of different nationalities, religions, and ethnicity, it is clear that we have a big stake in tomorrow’s election. We have a dire need for a new foreign policy that shares these basic human values.
One place where there is a large number of voters who feel strongly about this is Michigan. It has more than 300,000 people of Middle Eastern or North African descent. It is one of the three swing states (along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) that together would provide Harris with the most likely path to winning the electoral vote and therefore the presidency.
Current polling shows Michigan too close to call right now, so the Arab-American vote could make the difference; NBC Newsnotes that recent polls show this vote “breaking roughly evenly between Harris and Trump, while they have typically broken closer to 2-to-1 for Democrats in recent elections.” And more than 100,000 voters in Michigan last year voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary, protesting Biden’s support for Israel’s military in Gaza.
It is not only Michigan where Democratic voters are horrified by the mass killing they see in Gaza and now Lebanon, where at least 1800 people have been killed by Israeli forces in the past five weeks. There are millions of people throughout the United States who feel the same moral revulsion. And it could cost a close election in another swing state.
But Trump would be worse. Most importantly he has a Congressional and powerful funding base—including a billionaire who has contributed hundreds of millions to him and the Republican Party—that would continue to push him to support violent extremism. His political base would put much less, if any, pressure on him to end the war; or even to stop it from expanding. And his likely cabinet choices would also be less willing to bring about a negotiated solution to the conflict.
Trump’s return to the presidency would also consolidate and allow for the expansion of minority rule in the United States. Under this system, Democrats need more than 40 million more votes to get the same 50 seats as Republicans in the Senate. And then the filibuster means they need 10 more for most legislation.
Our system of minority rule has also allowed two presidents since 2000 (George W. Bush and Trump) to take office after losing the popular vote. The election of 2000 brought us the Iraq War, which was found to be based on lies, took the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and led to further avoidable violence in the region.
Trump and his Senators abused their power to get a 6-3, hard right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. A Court with unprecedented corruption. And a court that took from women their right to control their own bodies.
Trump will not last forever, but his party’s system of minority rule could be here for decades, as the Republicans continue to use their control of the Supreme Court and much of the judiciary, state legislatures, and the executive branch to tilt the electoral playing field further—through voting restrictions, gerry-mandering, and attacks on organized labor, with a focus on swing states.
All this does not diminish this urgent moral imperative of putting an end to the mass killing of innocent civilians in the Middle East, and our own government’s support for the attacks. But our ability to stop this and other crimes in which U.S. foreign policy is involved, is being eroded every day as the United States becomes less of a democracy.
So, for those who believe in the sanctity of human life and our shared humanity with people of different nationalities, religions, and ethnicity, it is clear that we have a big stake in tomorrow’s election. We have a dire need for a new foreign policy that shares these basic human values. This election may well determine how much we can make progress towards this goal—immediately as needed in the Middle East—and in the foreseeable future.
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