“No Extermination without Representation,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

TFF Associate & former Board member

On November 5, the American people go to the polls in one of the most consequential elections for the United States and the world. Normally, outsiders should not interfere in other countries’ elections, although the United States has a habit of interfering in other countries’ elections, often overtly and sometimes with the use of coups, plots, subversion, etc.

However, as the Americans chanted “no taxation without representation” when they were fighting for their independence and tried to shake off the yoke of a foreign power over their lives, it is now appropriate for the people of the world to say “no extermination without representation.” If the rest of the world cannot have representation in US elections, at least we are entitled to express a view about it, especially when it affects the well-being or even the continued existence of the rest of the world.

This article was initially published by Informed Comment/Juan Cole here

I am writing this not as an enemy of the United States, but as a long-time friend and admirer. From my childhood, I heard glowing praise of America and its history from my father who had spent many years of his life as a young man in New York and who was a great lover of that country. I wrote a PhD thesis on Oriental Influences on the Work of Ralph Waldo Emerson when I came to study in England, and spent a wonderful summer in the United States visiting Emerson’s house in Concorde and doing research on his work at the Weidner Library at Harvard. Later on, I spent a year at Harvard as a Senior Fulbright visiting scholar teaching courses on Persian and American literature.

I also established the first Department of American Studies in Iran when I served as professor and Dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan. I also helped arrange the conference on the 200th anniversary of American Independence at the University of Shiraz, which served as the main anniversary conference in the Middle East and Asia. So, I have many reasons to be interested in the outcome of the US election.

The United States continues to be the most consequential country in the world. By nominal GDP, the United States is still the biggest economy in the world, and even by PPP, it is the second richest country. However, from a military point of view, it is by far the most powerful country compared to all its rivals. Never in world history has a country possessed such overwhelming power in all the corners of the world. While Russia and China can be regarded as regional superpowers, the United States is the only hyperpower with global reach and can even be regarded as the sole world hegemon.

As American generals are fond of repeating, the United States enjoys “full spectrum dominance” on land, on sea and in the air, and they are not reluctant to use America’s awesome military power. There are more than 750 U.S. military bases in at least 80 countries. They are spread from Europe to the Middle East to the Far East, right up to Japan, Australia, South Korea, and many offshore bases all over the world. NATO, which the United States leads, has 32 members and constitutes by far the biggest military alliance, surrounding Russia.

In addition to NATO in the West (which has also taken part in US wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East), there are a number of US-led alliances aimed at containing China. Following the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) and Japan-U.S.-South Korea trilaterals, and the U.S.-Japan-India-Australia Quad, the latest US-Japan-Philippines military alliance is yet another initiative to isolate China and enhance the US’s position in the Asia-Pacific.

Since the Second World War when, on the ruins of European and Asian empires, the United States became the richest and strongest country in the world, it tried to extend its power and became a virtual empire. Although many justifications have been put forward for the use of nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the available evidence shows that one of the main reasons for their use was a demonstration of US power to Russia, which was emerging as the main US rival in the form of the former Soviet Union.

Shortly after the Second World War, the United States tried to stop the communist advance in the Far East with the invasions of Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, killing many millions of people in those countries. Those wars were really proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union and China. While during the Cold War, there existed some military balance between the Western and Soviet blocs, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States felt that all restrictions on her had been lifted and she could act as the sole superpower in a unipolar world. That gave rise to the US’s Operation Desert Shield to expel the Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which killed tens of thousands of Iraqi forces.

The war was followed by the invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist outrage, and later Iraq, and different military campaigns in Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Those wars killed a few million people and cost a few trillion dollars to US taxpayers. Following the expansion of NATO to nearly all former Warsaw Pact member states, and plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, President Putin felt he had no alternative but to invade Ukraine to prevent the establishment of NATO bases in the country that he regarded as Russia’s backyard.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Congress has provided Ukraine with at least $175b of military and humanitarian assistance. This is in addition to billions of dollars of military and economic aid given to Ukraine by Europe and other NATO members.

Since the horrendous HAMAS attack on Israel on 7 October, the Israeli government has conducted a merciless war and massacre on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and lately on Lebanon, which has killed at least 44,000, most of them women and children, 134-146 journalists, 120 academics, over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA, and has injured hundreds of thousands of civilians. Most people in the Global South and even in Europe and the United States cannot understand how a Democratic administration can so blindly support a regime which according to ICJ, the world’s highest judicial authority, is engaged in “plausible genocide” and whose leaders are accused by the ICC of war crimes.

Although the Biden administration carries the major responsibility for arming Israel and becoming complicit in its war crimes, the decision of the Trump administration to grant Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to Israel, contrary to international law, and bribe some subservient Arab regimes to normalise relations with Israel in some phoney deals, known as the Abraham Accords, created a feeling of impunity among Israeli leaders who feel they can commit any crime and violate any international law without any sanctions or punishments. As a result, Israel has been acting as though it is above the law and can openly challenge and ignore numerous UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. This blatant lawlessness and impunity endangers the entire international order and bodes ill for the future of the so-called “rules-based international order”.

In a landmark ruling on 19 July 2024, the ICJ “declared that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources.” It called on Israel to immediately withdraw its forces and settlements from the occupied territories and pay reparation to the Palestinians. Not only has the US not implemented that resolution, but it has continued to deliver the most-deadly weapons to Israel enabling its genocide in Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank and Lebanon.

The scope of the war on Gaza has now expanded to neighbouring countries with dangerous confrontations between Israel and Iran, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Far from punishing Israel for those war crimes, the United States has imposed further sanctions on Iran and several other Middle Eastern countries. Iran and Russia are two of the most sanctioned countries in the world. Not only have those unilateral sanctions not forced those countries to surrender to US demands, but they have also pushed Iran closer to Russia and Russia closer to China.

The recent BRICS summit in Kazan, held from 22-24 October, was convened with the participation of five new members, namely Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The new Nine-member BRICS partnership accounts for 45% of the world’s population and 30% of the world’s land surface. Its combined GDP of around US$65 trillion (35% of global GDP PPP) and an estimated US$5.2 trillion in combined foreign reserves are larger than that of the G7 bloc.

The wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East and growing conflict with China have brought the world to the brink of a devastating world war with unimaginable consequences. The planet is now in a more dangerous position than at any time since the Second World War. At the same time, the United States is now more isolated than ever. A good example of US isolation can be seen in the vote at the United Nations General Assembly on 30th October 2024, demanding an end to the US embargo on Cuba. Only the United States and Israel voted against the resolution, Moldova abstained, and 187 countries, including all European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada, voted for it. This level of isolation, the whole world against the United States and Israel, is unprecedented.

Most American voters do not usually pay much attention to foreign affairs, but as can be seen from the above examples, in the current interconnected world no country can keep itself immune to international developments. What the United States does in its foreign policy matters and will boomerang back to itself. Without presuming to tell the Americans how to vote in the forthcoming election, I only wish to urge them to pay more attention to the US’s foreign policies and to American values that must govern those relations.