By Medea Benjamin
Co-Founder, Code Pink
Editors: We find ourselves at the same point again, four years later, where we are considering horrible options—at least from a foreign policy and militarism perspective. When you look at the world today, particularly the places in which the Biden administration has invested a lot in assuming leadership for the rest of the world, where do things fall? How does it stack up?
Medea Benjamin: Well, given that we’re in the middle of right now of a genocide, it’s hard for me to put anything else at the top of the list but that. And I’m just so disgusted with the Biden administration’s policies that I couldn’t in good conscience vote for him given the support that he has been giving to Israel. Of course, there are many other issues, but that’s the one that is at the very top of the list.
Editors: It is hard to shift from Gaza as a lens for other policies. And yet, there have been the slow deaths of sanctions in the other parts of the world. What have been your concerns before October 7, 2023?
Medea: I was not really thrilled by Obama’s foreign policy, but there were two signature achievements: the Iran nuclear deal and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. I just assumed that Biden would go back on Trump’s policies on those issues to follow Obama’s path. Certainly, in the case of the Iran nuclear deal, he could have done it by executive order. Just reversing Trump’s withdrawal from that deal and putting the US on a path to negotiations. Not only the nuclear deal, but on other important issues that might give more breathing space to the people inside Iran who have been fighting for reforms, and might help stabilize some of the Middle East.
But he didn’t do that. A lot of what is going on in the Middle East is the consequences of that.
And then there is Cuba. It was such a win-win for the United States and Cuba when Obama reestablished relations. He travelled to the island. He was treated like a hero. There was an opening in Cuba for more small businesses. The economy started to really pick up. US businesses had more opportunities.
This was a path that Biden could have taken, by executive order. Instead, he maintained the Trump administration’s cruel policy. Not only is that a continuation of the sanctions, it is an implementation of those sanctions by having large fines against a number of companies that have been doing business with Cuba. He also continued Trump’s worst policy: placing Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
This was always a false claim, politically motivated to buy support from the right-wing Cuban Americans in Southern Florida. And when Biden came in, his administration, instead of just lifting those, slow walked it saying that he was conducting a review. Well, he never conducted the review. And in fact, recently admitted that that was never done by the State Department.
Instead, they have watched as Cubans’ lifestyles have deteriorated considerably since COVID. Some reasons for this deterioration are not related to US policies – such as COVID and resources the Cubans put into developing a vaccine and distribution effort. Nonetheless, a lot of the problems in Cuba are a result of those sanctions and of having Cuba on the state sponsor of terrorism list.
It makes it difficult for Cuba to have trade with any country because the banks don’t want to touch Cuba. It makes it difficult for farmers to get spare parts for their tractors, for doctors to get cancer medicine. It has led to an increase in infant mortality, a decrease in life expectancy, and a massive flood of migrants to the United States that has created a border problem for the Biden administration.
And when the Biden administration talks about getting to the roots of the immigration crisis, he does not talk about the US sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Those indeed are US-made crises. The administration has played politics with the lives of 11 million Cubans, hoping to gain more support in South Florida, and regain a couple of the seats there. It’s not a plan that is going to work, and it is a plan that is extremely cruel towards the Cuban people.
Editors: When we look at the discontinuity between the Obama policy and the Biden policy, you are explaining it in terms of an attempt, the strategic calculation about a certain number of seats. When we look at the continuity between Trump and Biden with respect to Iran and the sanctions there, how are we to understand the reasons for it?
Medea: We have to consider Biden’s decades-long support for Israel and his close ties with the pro-Israel lobby like AIPAC. While on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was extremely close to Israel.
He was extremely close to Israel, and the pro-Israel lobby groups have been pushing hard against the Iran nuclear deal and have been pushing the Biden administration not to go back into that nuclear deal. And the pro-Israel lobby groups have labeled Iran as the center of the problems in the Middle East. They say that Iran is responsible for the actions of Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. And Biden seems to accept this, and he has not done anything to try to improve relations in the region that would improve stability. Instead, he has followed the pro-Israel lobby line of blaming Iran for all of the ills in the Middle East.
Editors: Does this argument extend to the case of Afghanistan?
Medea: Well, in Afghanistan, I was happy that Biden did fulfill his promise, and it was a negotiation done under the Trump administration to pull the US out of Afghanistan. I think the way that he did it was tragic and could have avoided many deaths had it been done in a more measured way.
But what really disappointed me about the Biden policy towards Afghanistan is that he immediately took the $7 billion that belonged to the Afghan Central Bank, meaning it belonged to the Afghan people, and froze that money that was being held in the US Reserve Bank in New York. Let’s remember that Afghanistan is an extremely poor country, and that this money was very important to Afghan businesses. Freezing it meant that the economic situation became even more dire.
I went to Afghanistan after the Taliban took over again and met with members of the central bank, with the business community, including the Afghan Women’s Chamber of Commerce. They all told us how devastating the freezing of this money was to them. It wasn’t the US money to freeze. It did not belong to the Taliban. It belonged to people in Afghanistan. To this day, now three years later, the Afghan people still don’t have access to that money.
Editors: In thinking about this series of foreign policy measures taken by the Biden administration, we’ve explained it in terms of strategic calculation, also in terms of longstanding beliefs that Biden has had and evidenced in his consistent voting record. But we also see something else – that is a strong sense of economic nationalism. Not only is he ready to write checks out of Afghan people’s monies, or now the Russian money as well, but he’s ready to spend serious money toward an industrial policy. The question I have is, do you see a fundamental restructuring of the Democratic Party along the lines of economic nationalism, which will aggravate the foreign policy disasters? Or perhaps there is room for intervention by activists like ourselves to reshape the dialogue and the discourse.
Medea: Well, what I see is the increasing global community opposition to the US hegemony both politically and economically. We see it in UN votes. And the fact that the Biden administration has vetoed three votes in the UN to hold Israel accountable and finally just abstained is an example of how out of touch the United States is. And the sanctions we talked about were on small countries, but let’s remember the US is sanctioning Russia, China, Iran – big countries with big economies. These countries, as well as others, have been finding ways around that, either trading oil in local currencies or forming their own economic blocs like the BRICs. So I put it more in terms of the global opposition to the US than I do put it in terms of changes internally in the United States of becoming more nationalistic.
We haven’t talked about Ukraine, but I think it is important to talk about US policy towards Russia because the US thought that it could sanction Russia and that the economy would just collapse. And I think there was a real intention there to benefit the US oil and gas sectors. They were able to step in and provide the oil and gas to Western Europe and other areas that Russia had been providing previously. We see that backfiring, the sanctions have not had the intended effect. Russia’s economy is remarkably resilient. And we also see that the Russian oil and gas has found buyers in other parts of the world, particularly in China. The US is losing its ability to sanction large countries. It still can sanction and make life miserable for the people in smaller countries, but it doesn’t have the same hegemonic reach economically that it had before.
I should add that Biden’s policy towards Ukraine has been shameful; the US has not done anything to try to find a solution. There have been numerous times that the administration has actually sabotaged peace talks, starting with the first negotiations that were going on just weeks after the Russian invasion. And then, throughout the entire two years, they have been sabotaging efforts by others to promote a ceasefire and negotiations. This is another example of where the administration has preferred to use a militaristic response to keep fueling the war instead of seeking a solution – its goal is to weaken Russia at the Ukrainian people’s expense.
Editors: Given your own history of organizing, we’re a little bit taken aback by your argument here. We can agree that the US is out of step with global public opinion and that it is misreading its capacity or its own power relative to other blocs. But we were also hoping to learn more about what kind of interventions we would be able to undertake within the United, but also reach out to new allies and Arab voting bloc, say, in Michigan and other places like that? Would you say that there are opportunities?
Medea: Yes, there are huge opportunities. Efforts that have been made to show the administration’s unwillingness to accept its policies towards Israel have been very effective. That’s why we see a change, at least, in the rhetoric of the administration. That’s why we see an abstention at the UN instead of another veto. That’s why we see the administration talking about wanting to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. These are all efforts to win back parts of the voters who have indicated their objection to Biden’s policies, and that is certainly Muslim voters, progressive Jewish voters, and young voters.
In short, I think it’s very, very important to use these elections as a way to send a message.
One way to send the message is not to vote for Biden and to vote for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein or Cornell West. But I do think it’s important to get involved in other campaigns that are not the presidential ones because we see the tremendous amounts of money that the pro-Israel lobby is pouring into these elections to get rid of some of the most progressives that we have in Congress. Not just the Squad, but other members like Jamaal Bowman, like Summer Lee, people who have been taking very logical, humane positions of calling for a ceasefire are being attacked. It’s important to look at who AIPAC is going after as well as who AIPAC is supporting and get involved in those races.
Some of the most courageous members of Congress, like Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Ayanna Presley, and even AOC, who has now become very strong on the Gaza issue, are in the crosshairs, but so are some of these other progressives. And as I said, it would be a shame if we allowed AIPAC to take out people. For example, there have only been 18 members of Congress who signed on to the original Cori Bush ceasefire resolution. We should be doing everything we can to make sure that those 18 members remain in Congress. So yes, I do think the elections are important. I do not see any Republicans who have been good on these foreign policy issues.
I think it’s about 350 members of Congress out of 535 of both houses that are getting some kind of contribution from AIPAC. That’s why we see this tremendous disconnect between what polls show that the American people want, which is a ceasefire and actually no more money to Israel, and what the politicians are voting for.
Editors: Apart from that strategic goal, is this also a measure of the strength of the weapons manufacturers and the oil and gas industry and their grip over the Biden administration? And what’s the actual nexus of these different forces within the administration?
Medea: Yes, I think that’s a very important issue to bring up. We see perhaps the most egregious symbol of that is the Secretary of Defense himself, Lloyd Austin, who, before becoming the Secretary of Defense, was on the board of Raytheon. The Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, was part of a lobby group that helped win enormous defense contracts. Throughout this administration, we have a revolving door from the weapons industry into high positions in power. Biden himself, in his many years in the Senate, had a close relationship to the oil and gas companies, to the weapons industry, as well as what we’ve said before, the pro-Israel lobby.
It’s a mindset that Biden has, as well as a concrete connection to large industries that profit from war, that profit from US sanctions, and that profit from the enormous amounts of money that taxpayers are putting into the Pentagon. Instead of reducing that budget, Biden has increased it by 3%. We’re spending now almost a trillion dollars on the military when there are so many needs that the people have at home.
Editors: Where do you see the strategic openings for people mobilizing from below? Unfortunately, the counter pressures from abroad often add to the crisis in a way because it provides another rationale for increased interventionism. Unless there’s a decisive defeat abroad, only domestic forces may pull us out of the dangerous trajectory that the US ruling class has defined.
Medea: Well, I actually see it as a combination of both. If there is a global movement out there that doesn’t want to be under the thumb of the United States, that forces change here at home. Could be negative changes, and it could be positive changes. That depends a lot on us and the grassroots mobilizing. What I see happening now around Gaza, for example, is the coming together of many different movements. The Black Lives Matter movement have become very involved. Many of the most active and creative of the environmental movements have become involved in this as well. The activity that we see in opposition to the US policy on Israel is bubbling up from below. We see it in the resolutions being passed in city by city. We see it now in new interest in divestment movements that are calling for city divestments as well as university divestments from not just companies dealing with Israel but also working together with the environmental movement that has been very successful over the years in calling for divestment from fossil fuel companies.
Social media is important – especially when we talk about the transformation of so many young people who don’t get their news from corporate media. They have an ability to filter through the news and get a much more diverse view of what’s going on both domestically and in the world. I think that is very hopeful.
I see a merging of movements, and I see a much, much larger portion of the population getting involved in these issues, especially at the university level on campuses, among youth. That’s where we see the awakening of the next generation who are not just looking at one issue but are seeing the connection between these issues and are bringing it back locally to their towns, to their universities, to their elected officials.