https://znetwork.org/category/topic/politics-gov/foreign-policy/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:49:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/category/topic/politics-gov/foreign-policy/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-europe-reassert-itself-after-ukraine/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-europe-reassert-itself-after-ukraine/#respond Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:14:26 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294688 Washington’s 2025 strike on Iran, the raid to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in early 2026, and its renewed interest in acquiring Greenland have clarified the country’s international priorities. Meanwhile, securing Ukraine’s independence, once a defining rallying cry of the liberal world order, has slipped to a second-tier concern, but remains central for Europe. Equally pressing for the continent is [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-europe-reassert-itself-after-ukraine/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/taco-time-or-wartime-examining-trumps-latest-threats/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/taco-time-or-wartime-examining-trumps-latest-threats/#respond Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:47:23 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294285 Donald Trump is on the warpath again, threatening Greenland, Iran, Canada, and Cuba. Will he be TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out—or will he carry through on the threats—seizing Greenland, seeking to overthrow the Iran and Cuba regimes, destabilizing Canada? Let’s take a look. Greenland: A “Core National Security Interest” Jeff Landry, the Trump administration’s envoy to [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/taco-time-or-wartime-examining-trumps-latest-threats/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-runaway-train-of-state-sanctioned-murder/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-runaway-train-of-state-sanctioned-murder/#respond Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:45:00 +0000 So it has come to this: ICE Gestapo agents claim, without a judge’s order, they are permitted to enter houses at their fascist whim. Are they taking lessons from the Israeli Defense Forces now? Moreover, the present criminal class of MAGA authoritarians are at liberty to transport the officialdom killer out the reach of accountability [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-runaway-train-of-state-sanctioned-murder/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-biggest-threats-the-iranian-people-face-are-america-and-israel/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-biggest-threats-the-iranian-people-face-are-america-and-israel/#respond Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:45:00 +0000 Israel’s longstanding campaign to lure Washington into war with Iran seems to have fizzled once again—for now, anyway. But in their attempt to invent a casus belli, their spy agencies employ tactics—disinformation, infiltration, and incitement of rioting—that help sustain the patently false impression that Tehran, not Tel Aviv, is home to the Middle East’s cruelest [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-biggest-threats-the-iranian-people-face-are-america-and-israel/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/despite-authoritarian-warnings-149-house-democrats-vote-to-hand-trump-840-billion-for-military/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/despite-authoritarian-warnings-149-house-democrats-vote-to-hand-trump-840-billion-for-military/#respond Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:07:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294000 Despite months of warnings from party members up and down the caucus that President Donald Trump has been “lawless,” “destructive, and ”authoritarian“ in his wielding of power both domestically and abroad, 149 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives on Thursday night joined with 192 Republicans to pass a sweeping military spending bill—a vote [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/despite-authoritarian-warnings-149-house-democrats-vote-to-hand-trump-840-billion-for-military/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/bringing-it-all-back-home/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/bringing-it-all-back-home/#respond Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:06:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294042 Before dawn on January 3, the United States launched a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela during which its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were kidnapped and flown out of the country. They were subsequently arraigned in a New York court on drug and weapons charges. Though there were no American deaths, at least [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/bringing-it-all-back-home/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/resisting-the-empire-next-door-protests-in-mexico-grow/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/resisting-the-empire-next-door-protests-in-mexico-grow/#respond Sun, 25 Jan 2026 16:32:04 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293971 An anti-imperialist movement is building in Mexico, where the U.S. invasion of Venezuela has been seen as an act of intimidation for all of Latin America. Protests are swelling in response to this latest blow after decades of political and economic subjugation by its neighbor to the north. Across the country, larger-than-usual marches on January [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/resisting-the-empire-next-door-protests-in-mexico-grow/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-trump-demilitarize-gaza-with-night-raids-and-death-squads/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-trump-demilitarize-gaza-with-night-raids-and-death-squads/#respond Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293844 At the opening ceremony for Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled glossy images of his vision for a “new Gaza”: shining apartment towers, luxury developments, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. There were no Palestinians at the ceremony—and none on the Board of Peace itself. In Kushner’s fantasy, Palestinians appear [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-trump-demilitarize-gaza-with-night-raids-and-death-squads/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-the-revival-of-regime-change/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-the-revival-of-regime-change/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293850 The Trump administration’s exercise in armed regime change in Venezuela should have come as no surprise. The U.S. naval buildup in the Caribbean and the attacks on defenseless boats off the Venezuelan coast — based on unproven allegations that they contained drug traffickers — had been underway for more than three months. By the end of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-the-revival-of-regime-change/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-does-trumps-monroe-moment-in-venezuela-reveal-about-brics-grouping/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-does-trumps-monroe-moment-in-venezuela-reveal-about-brics-grouping/#respond Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293836 Donald Trump’s Venezuela gambit signals far more than an isolated intervention. It followed the newly drafted National Security Strategy, 2025, which explicitly calls on the United States to reassert and reinforce the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine—once again treating Latin America as an unparalleled and uncontested US geopolitical sphere of influence and restoring American preeminence in the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-does-trumps-monroe-moment-in-venezuela-reveal-about-brics-grouping/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/after-bondi-australia-faces-a-foreign-policy-choice/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/after-bondi-australia-faces-a-foreign-policy-choice/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293724 Australia has entered one of those rare diplomatic moments when grief at home collides with moral judgment abroad, and when a single invitation carries meanings far beyond the bounds of protocol. The decision to host Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre has become more than an act of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/after-bondi-australia-faces-a-foreign-policy-choice/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dear-america-keep-your-republic-and-let-all-others-keep-theirs/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dear-america-keep-your-republic-and-let-all-others-keep-theirs/#respond Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293707 It is not easy to play poker with Washington these days. It holds a trump card never seen in the deck before. It is now an ace, a king, a jack, and a joker with very dark intent. For example, just when we were being schooled to believe that Russia and China could be gunning for [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dear-america-keep-your-republic-and-let-all-others-keep-theirs/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/right-message-wrong-messengers-a-brief-history-of-oil-and-u-s-empire-in-iran/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/right-message-wrong-messengers-a-brief-history-of-oil-and-u-s-empire-in-iran/#respond Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293437 Multiple things can be true at once. The Iranian people are engaged in a legitimate popular struggle against an entrenched political elite that has failed to meet their material needs and has answered demands for freedom and dignity with unconscionable violence and repression. At the same time, the U.S. has no political, legal, or moral [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/right-message-wrong-messengers-a-brief-history-of-oil-and-u-s-empire-in-iran/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-where-the-politics-of-drugs-oil-and-war-intersect/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-where-the-politics-of-drugs-oil-and-war-intersect/#respond Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293439 In the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, lawyer Celia Flores, neither the ‘rule of law’ (if ever relevant to the United States), nor Venezuelan oil is the key issue. Rather, it is a desperate act on the part of a declining power in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and an [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-where-the-politics-of-drugs-oil-and-war-intersect/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-its-much-more-than-oil/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-its-much-more-than-oil/#respond Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293441 As the US openly discussed schemes to add Greenland to its list of conquered territories, it became abundantly clear that “Alternative Energy” (AltE, solar, wind, hydro power) joined fossil fuels at center stage. [1]  Corporations which pull the puppet strings of governments are well aware that oil production will cease long before none remains in [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-its-much-more-than-oil/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-is-the-us-left-so-chickensh_t/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-is-the-us-left-so-chickensh_t/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:59:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293426 January 3, 2026, should be the date to end all discussion:  Trump’s raid on Venezuela should have clarified reality even to the most obtuse:  the US is not an “ordinary” country, as is claimed by observers all around, but is the center of the US Empire.  Its “leaders” seek to dominate the world.  Those of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-is-the-us-left-so-chickensh_t/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-vs-the-empire/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-vs-the-empire/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293163 The USA is descending into a state of general lawlessness, at home and abroad. From using domestic special ops paramilitary units (ICE) to kidnap people off the streets of America and send them abroad, the US government is now deploying secret special ops military units (Delta Force) to snatch foreign heads of governments from their [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-vs-the-empire/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-the-u-s-national-security-strategy-and-the-crisis-of-responsible-statehood/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-the-u-s-national-security-strategy-and-the-crisis-of-responsible-statehood/#respond Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 When does permissible strategic competition become illegitimate coercion, and when does state power begin to resemble organised crime? What is the Trump administration’s logic in pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández while indicting the sitting Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro on similar allegations of drug trafficking? This article examines the recent U.S. escalation from maritime [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-the-u-s-national-security-strategy-and-the-crisis-of-responsible-statehood/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-will-try-to-defend-aggression-toward-venezuela-its-still-illegal/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-will-try-to-defend-aggression-toward-venezuela-its-still-illegal/#respond Tue, 06 Jan 2026 16:59:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293165 The Trump administration’s massive military attack on Venezuela, launched with 150 aircraft, reportedly killed upwards of 80 people, including civilians. In utter defiance of the mandates of the United Nations Charter, U.S. forces launched the attack as they kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, who have been transported to New York, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-will-try-to-defend-aggression-toward-venezuela-its-still-illegal/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/claudia-sheinbaum-i-love-you/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/claudia-sheinbaum-i-love-you/#respond Fri, 02 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293032 I have a crush on Claudia Sheinbaum, who has been president of Mexico since October 2024. Foreign leaders usually strike me as more intelligent and accomplished than the ones we produce in the US. President Sheinbaum, a climate change scientist with a doctorate in energy engineering, is no exception. I wish we had someone like [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/claudia-sheinbaum-i-love-you/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/u-s-strikes-against-venezuela/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/u-s-strikes-against-venezuela/#respond Fri, 02 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1293034 As the Trump administration escalates its military campaign against Venezuela, we speak to Venezuelan journalist Andreína Chávez about the latest developments. Responding to the U.S. military’s drone strikes on small boats and seizures of oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, Chávez says U.S. claims of pursuing fentanyl traffickers lack evidence and are “pretext” for [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/u-s-strikes-against-venezuela/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-venezuela-escalation-ignores-a-long-history-of-u-s-hypocrisy-on-drugs/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-venezuela-escalation-ignores-a-long-history-of-u-s-hypocrisy-on-drugs/#comments Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292907 Every accusation is a confession. This is clearly true of the Trump administration’s insistence that Venezuela operates as a “narco-state,” exporting terrorism to the U.S. via fentanyl, now labeled as a “weapon of mass destruction.” The charge is not only false, given that virtually no fentanyl enters the country from Venezuela, but transparently political and [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-venezuela-escalation-ignores-a-long-history-of-u-s-hypocrisy-on-drugs/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/manufacturing-global-crises-wont-give-u-s-foreign-policy-legitimacy/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/manufacturing-global-crises-wont-give-u-s-foreign-policy-legitimacy/#respond Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:28:45 +0000 For anyone paying even modest attention to the current administration’s foreign policy posture, a Christmas Day bombing justified as “protecting Christians from ISIS” in Nigeria was neither shocking nor clarifying. It fits a familiar rhetorical script. What it did not fit was reality. Nigeria’s violence is real, devastating, and long-standing, but it is not best [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/manufacturing-global-crises-wont-give-u-s-foreign-policy-legitimacy/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-president-of-peace-prepares-for-war/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-president-of-peace-prepares-for-war/#respond Mon, 22 Dec 2025 15:53:55 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292621 Earlier this month, the Trump administration released its new National Security Strategy, or NSS. Normally, such documents are poor predictors of what’s likely to happen in the real world. They are more like branding tools that communicate the attitudes of a given administration while rarely offering a detailed or accurate picture of its likely policies. The [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-president-of-peace-prepares-for-war/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-under-siege/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-under-siege/#respond Sun, 21 Dec 2025 12:33:06 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292591 US President Donald Trump has announced a “total and complete blockade” of all US-sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela — an escalation that amounts to economic warfare against an entire nation. The White House now couples this measure with a reckless designation of the Venezuelan state as a “foreign terrorist organization,” boasting of a [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-under-siege/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumpist-geopolitics-in-western-balkans-how-a-heritage-ideologue-sells-third-entity-in-bosnia/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumpist-geopolitics-in-western-balkans-how-a-heritage-ideologue-sells-third-entity-in-bosnia/#respond Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292432 Bosnia and Herzegovina is usually introduced to foreign readers as a “post-war success story” held together by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement — a fragile compromise that ended the bloodshed by freezing the country into a constitutional maze. Two entities, three “constituent peoples,” a rotating tripartite Presidency, layers of vetoes and international supervision: Dayton didn’t [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumpist-geopolitics-in-western-balkans-how-a-heritage-ideologue-sells-third-entity-in-bosnia/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-did-trump-send-his-warships-to-venezuela/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-did-trump-send-his-warships-to-venezuela/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:05:13 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292335 Ever since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, the United States has attempted  to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. They have tried everything short of a full-scale military invasion: a military coup, selecting a substitute president, cutting off access to the global financial system, imposing layers of sanctions, sabotaging the electricity grid, sending in mercenaries, and attempting [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-did-trump-send-his-warships-to-venezuela/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-next-wars-were-always-here-how-post-9-11-law-and-the-monroe-doctrine-converged-in-the-caribbean/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-next-wars-were-always-here-how-post-9-11-law-and-the-monroe-doctrine-converged-in-the-caribbean/#respond Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:44:24 +0000 The first U.S. missiles that struck the boats in the Caribbean in early September 2025 were described by Washington as a “counter-narcotics operation,” a sterile phrase meant to dull the violence of incinerating human beings in an instant. Then came the second strike, this time on survivors already struggling to stay afloat. Once the details [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-next-wars-were-always-here-how-post-9-11-law-and-the-monroe-doctrine-converged-in-the-caribbean/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/new-national-security-strategy-is-a-renewed-plan-for-global-hegemony/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/new-national-security-strategy-is-a-renewed-plan-for-global-hegemony/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:20:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1292213 The Donald Trump administration revealed the US empire’s new plan for global dominance in the 2025 National Security Strategy. The goal is to impose hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, reviving the colonial Monroe Doctrine, to move supply chains out of Asia and bring manufacturing into Latin America via “nearshoring”, in order to economically decouple from [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/new-national-security-strategy-is-a-renewed-plan-for-global-hegemony/feed/ 3 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/new-us-national-security-strategy-is-repackaged-wolfowitz-doctrine/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/new-us-national-security-strategy-is-repackaged-wolfowitz-doctrine/#respond Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:18:35 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1292201 ]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/new-us-national-security-strategy-is-repackaged-wolfowitz-doctrine/feed/ 0