Ending sanctions on Syria is a very rare positive for Trump

If he doesn't change his addled "mind," that is. Undoubtedly the neocowards are trying to get him to do so.

Syrians are rejoicing at the announcement on Tuesday by President Donald J. Trump that he will lift U.S. economic sanctions on Syria, at the advice of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, among others. Saudi Arabia gave Trump the quid pro quos he wanted for such a favor, including a pledge of $600 billion in investments in the US and the purchase of military equipment worth over $100 billion.

Regardless of why Trump is taking the step, it is a welcome one, though it is attended by dangers. Economic sanctions have not been demonstrated to have any significant success in overthrowing governments or substantially changing their behavior. They have been shown, however, to drive ordinary civilians in the sanctioned country into poverty and to worsen their health. Since middle-income countries (and above) are more likely to be democracies, crashing a country’s economy probably dooms it to dictatorship. The US government is obsessed with sanctions, having slapped them on fully one third of the world’s population. Sanctions creep is driven in part by politicians who want to be seen as doing something dramatic about some problematic government but who do not wish to actually do anything. Sanctions are the bravado of the pusillanimous. - Informed Comment

More proof that US pressure and sanctions are failed BS

Unfortunately the people in charge just will not learn. Too cowardly to personally face the realities of stupidity and failure, among other things.

This time around, the U.S. had been cut out of the picture, a sea change reflecting not just Chinese initiatives but Washington’s incompetence, arrogance, and double-dealing in the subsequent three decades in the Middle East. An aftershock came in early May as concerns gripped Congress about the covert construction of a Chinese naval base in the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. ally hosting thousands of American troops. The Abu Dhabi facility would be an add-on to the small base at Djibouti on the east coast of Africa used by the People’s Liberation Army-Navy for combating piracy, evacuating noncombatants from conflict zones, and perhaps regional espionage...

China’s interest in bringing to an end the Iranian-Saudi cold war, which constantly threatened to turn hotter, is clear enough, but why did those two countries choose such a diplomatic channel? After all, the United States still styles itself the “indispensable nation.” If that phrase ever had much meaning, however, American indispensability is now visibly in decline, thanks to blunders like allowing Israeli right-wingers to cancel the Oslo peace process, the launching of an illegal invasion of and war in Iraq in 2003, and the grotesque Trumpian mishandling of Iran. - Informed Comment

Biden's Middle East policy shows little, if any, improvement

The demonizing of China is really bad, too. But this is even worse, for now.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is shaping up to be as much of a disaster as secretary of state as Mike Pompeo. He appears to have nothing to say about Israel’s outrageous new plans to steal more Palestinian land and to further divide Palestinians into Bantustans as was done by Apartheid South Africa to the Bantu population.

He is hobnobbing with the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Israel, celebrating the “Abraham Accords” that marginalized the Palestinians, and rattling sabers against Iran. He won’t give Iran guarantees of an end to the crippling US financial and trade blockade on Tehran, then blames Iran for declining to give up its civilian nuclear enrichment program in return for nothing. As for Israel’s nuclear arsenal, that bit of proliferation goes unmentioned and never has attracted any sanctions. - Informed Comment