PRESS ROOM

Something stands out in recent U.S. and most Western reporting on the ongoing bloodletting in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK). Well, two things actually: ignorance and hypocrisy. Having shuttered most of their foreign bureaus long ago, there’s a distinct lack of expertise in the mainstream press on this – and many other – regional hot spots. That’s translated to a series of Nagorno-Karabakh "explainers” that read like Wikipedia-ripoffs hastily filtered through Washington’s built-in "blame Russia” conflict-colander.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration made a series of blunders that have created havoc in U.S. governance. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the worst of these decisions, but not far behind was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Trump’s threats regarding the November election, threatening to throw the results of the election into the Supreme Court, or the House of Representatives, or even the “street,” warns us that our nation has reached a dangerous juncture. The president has instructed the Proud Boys, a right-wing gang of thugs, to “Stand back and stand by.” On November 3rd, we will learn whether the United States decides to bolster its democratic republic or take the road to authoritarian fascism.

Come December 2020, the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS) will have been in force for two years in Australia. Since its enactment in late 2018, FITS has courted significant controversy – including questions of its evenhanded application, collateral effects on rights, and constitutional validity. Despite this attention, however, the most important question has largely remained unaddressed: has it worked?

Danny Sjursen explains the complicated situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, a piece of Azerbaijani territory that has been under de facto Armenian control since the 1990s. Nagorno-Karabakh is the result of Stalin’s territorial divisions, which very often failed to conform to ethnic lines, leaving an ethnic Armenian supermajority in what had become a foreign country. In the last few days, violence has broken out again, and Sjursen fears that war hawks in the U.S. will call for American intervention. He is adamant that America has no dog in this fight, and as with most conflicts this far from home, we should do the sensible thing and just stay out of it.

Two years have passed since the grisly murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. It is widely believed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s killing. Both the CIA and the United Nations have concluded as much. Prince Salman himself acknowledged that the murder took place, as he put it, “under my watch.” Yet the United States continues to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, supplying Prince Salman’s regime not only with the means to continue pursuing violence at home and abroad, most notably in Yemen, but also with an implicit endorsement of its autocratic agenda.

As the war dragged on, casualties mounted, and many veteran troops began to realize the inherent cruelty of the U.S. invasion and more political dissent infused the military ranks.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is one of the most repressive leaders in the world. In the midst of a pandemic, a severe economic recession and a bruising presidential race, there is a danger that crucial issues like the need to stop arming the Duterte regime will get lost in the shuffle. But Congress needs to make time to consider and pass the Philippine Human Rights Act, and the sooner the better, both for the Filipino people and to set the stage for a more effective, morally defensible arms sales policy on the part of the United States.

The normalization agreement between Israel and the UAE, dubbed formally as the "Abraham Accords," could potentially spark a new Middle East arms race. With all the other urgent needs we face, from dealing with pandemics and climate change to bringing the economy back from the brink of depression, is it really the time to be funneling billions in new arms assistance to the Middle East?

Journalists and geo-strategists call it a "frozen conflict” – one of several such deadlocked disputes under tenuous ceasefire in the post-Soviet states. Only now, the long-standing battle between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) is anything but. This outbreak feels different, far bigger, with an ambitious Azerbaijan seemingly intent on cracking the whole stalemate wide open.

I wrote with my colleague, budget expert William Hartung at the Center for International Policy, at the beginning of the pandemic: “...Counting veterans’ benefits, debt payments and other indirect costs, the United States has spent $6.4 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, with little to show for it. Yet at a time when Washington should be doing everything in our power to stop the global pandemic and prevent future outbreaks, the U.S. budget for global public health is just $11 billion per year.”

The Trump Administration is lowering the “Barr” on justice and decency. Attorney General William Barr, who virtually serves as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has made unprecedented interventions in cases at the Department of Justice (DoJ) on behalf of his leading client. He intervened in the sentencing of the president’s long-time friend Roger Stone and former national security adviser General Michael Flynn, and misled the country on the meaning of the Mueller Report that made a compelling case for Trump’s obstruction of justice.