Antiwar.com Weekly Newsletter for May, 4 2021

Your source for foreign policy news. 

May 4th, 2021

Asking and Analyzing Questions Others Won't: Support Antiwar.com in Forever War Year 20

Joseph Biden has now been president just two shy of the vaunted "100 days." However arbitrary the designation, that's a perhaps more fitting benchmark than most for Biden, since he and his biggest fans have not-so-subtly styled this commander-in-chief as a new FDR - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, after all, being the first to use the phrase. For the most part, such glowing analogies refer to domestic agendas - infrastructure, healthcare, and jobs - plus both presidents' presumably paradigmatic pivot from unseemly predecessors, be they a Herbert Hoover or Donald Trump. But what of foreign policy - what's done in and to the world by select Americans and in We the People's name? Well, that's rather more complicated.

Spend much time on the pages of America's self-styled "paper," or papers, "of record," and one quickly learns the permissibility ropes - Biden-era edition: what is and isn't covered, questions asked or not, answers offered and analyzed�or not.

By Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

SecDef Austin Says Next Major War Will Be 'Very Different'

In a speech on Friday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the next "major war" the US military fights will look "very different" from recent conflicts.

Austin made the comments at a change of command ceremony for US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), which oversees US military operations to confront China in the region. While China was not mentioned in Austin's speech, the Pentagon recently cited Beijing as the top "threat" facing the US to justify the $715 billion budget it is requesting for 2022.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy outlined the US military's shift in focus away from counterterrorism in the Middle East towards so-called "great power competition" with Russia and China. Austin echoed in his speech, calling his time as the head of US Central Command as his service in the "old wars."

By Dave DeCamp

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War Is Peace, Peace Is War

Here's the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up to that moment, given the sweet code names "Little Boy" and "Fat Man."

I was the littlest of boys at the time. More than three-quarters of a century has passed since, on September 2, 1945, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro Umezu signed the Instrument of Surrender on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, officially ending World War II. That was V-J (for Victory over Japan) Day, but in a sense for me, my whole generation, and this country, war never really ended.

By Tom Englehardt

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Report: US and Taliban in Talks Over Full Withdrawal By July

Sources told Afghanistan's Tolo News that the US and the Taliban are currently discussing the possibility of finishing the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan by early July instead of the September 11th deadline set by President Biden.

Because Biden broke the US-Taliban peace deal by pushing back the original May 1st withdrawal deadline, the Taliban has said it will not attend an upcoming Afghanistan peace summit in Istanbul. Tolo's sources said if the US agrees to pull out by early July, the Taliban will attend the Istanbul conference.

"The US has set a deadline for itself and it is possible that the Taliban will not agree to it and then a deadline in the middle will be agreed upon," said former Taliban commander Sayed Akbar Agha in comments to Tolo.

By Dave DeCamp

US Military Intelligence Chief: Russia Poses Existential Threat From North to South Pole

Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, presented his agency's annual World Threat Assessment before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on April 29.

The transcript of his testimony runs to fifty-seven pages and is broad in its scope and often detailed in its descriptions, so what follows is a precis and one that dwells on the overarching theme of his presentation, leaving aside, for example, his discussion of the threats posed by what were formerly termed terrorist organizations and are now called violent extremist organizations (VEOs).

By Rick Rozoff

Sullivan: Iran Talks in an 'Unclear Place'

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Friday that the indirect talks between the US and Iran that are ongoing in Vienna are in an "unclear place." The two sides are trying to negotiate a revival of the Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

"I�m not going to characterize the substance of the negotiations at this point because they are in � an unclear place," Sullivan said at an Aspen Security Forum webinar.

"We�ve seen willingness of all sides, including the Iranians, to talk seriously about sanctions relief restrictions and a pathway back into the JCPOA," he said. "But it is still uncertain as to whether this will culminate in a deal in Vienna."

By Dave DeCamp

Washington War Party Creates Another Organization to Promote Endless Wars

Andy Worthington on the Shameful Human Cost of Joe Biden's Guantanamo Inertia

The Fateful Choice: Nuclear Arms Race or Nuclear Weapons-Free World

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