Michael Paarlberg is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at CIP
On September 2, the House Oversight Committee released documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in an attempt to defuse public pressure over the sex trafficking case, and President Trump decided to blow up a boat.
The boat was somewhere in the Caribbean Sea, and according to the Trump administration, was a drug smuggling vessel containing cocaine bound for the United States and crewed by 11 people who died in the airstrike. This strike followed weeks of a large US military buildup close to Venezuelan waters that included eight warships, an attack submarine, a Marine Expeditionary Unit, and air support. Assuming the official narrative is true, it took one of the largest naval deployments in the history of the Caribbean to take out a single four engine go-fast boat with a cargo hold of 3 tons.
Was this a counter-narcotics operation? If it was, it wouldn’t have taken an entire fleet and millions of dollars a day to carry it out. Taking out drug vessels is something the US Coast Guard does regularly. They track boats bound for US waters, intercept them, board them – using lethal force if necessary – arrest crews and seize drugs. This is their job and they are good at it. In comparison to the perhaps 3 tons sunk last week, a single US Coast Guard vessel, CGC Hamilton, interdicted and seized 38 tons of drugs in the last two months alone. If the idea was to impose a cost, it is the US that is on the losing end of this equation, not the cartel.
But many things about this operation don’t add up. What cartel was this anyway? The Trump administration claims the vessel and alleged traffickers belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. On the face of it, this makes little sense, as TdA is not a cartel as we understand the term. It is not a transnational drug trafficking organization: members engage in street-level dealing, mostly in cities in South America, but they are not known to engage in smuggling shipments of drugs across borders or oceans. They are, fundamentally, a street gang, whose business model is human trafficking and extortion rackets targeting Venezuelan refugees who fled that country’s economic collapse to Colombia, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere, with only a minor presence in the US at best. Indeed, eleven people is a suspiciously large number for smuggling vessels of this size which are normally crewed by three or four because the more people, the more weight and the fewer drugs you can smuggle in one shipment. If it was TdA, they would be more likely to be smuggling migrants, not drugs, making the death count significantly higher. It’s also possible it was just eleven people on a boat.
Blow This Joint
Was this a pretext for regime change? In its naval mobilization, the Trump administration has made reference to another alleged cartel, the Cartel of the Suns. Unlike Tren de Aragua, which is at least a real gang, this isn’t even a formal organization at all, but rather a term used to describe various Venezuelan political and military officials who profit from money laundering and other illicit rackets – much of which are designed to get around US sanctions. Insofar as there is corruption within the Venezuelan regime, this is well known. President Nicolas Maduro has made a show of arresting one of the key figures in this network, former vice president and oil minister Tareck El Aissami, as a means of distracting from the endemic corruption throughout his regime. Most of it is pedestrian in nature: Maduro allegedly got $35 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to win Venezuelan public works contracts. Most public corruption looks like Odebrecht, not Tren de Aragua, but procurement fraud isn’t a useful pretext for military action.
But military action doesn’t serve either purpose. If you want to break up a drug cartel, blowing up a boat does little to accomplish that, unless you believe cartels only own one boat. You arrest traffickers, seize evidence, and build cases against them. If you are targeting government officials, you flip your perpetrators to get to the bigger fish at the top. This is what federal prosecutors do, and they are also good at it. The Department of Justice succeeded in putting the former president of Honduras in prison by doing exactly this.
As for stopping drugs, as I and other authors write in a new edited volume on the global cocaine trade, it makes little sense to focus on boats coming from Venezuela at all. Cocaine, famously, comes from just three countries, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, none of which are Venezuela. Most of it goes through Mexico, or maritime routes in the Pacific Ocean. The largest quantities are smuggled on container ships, not speedboats. Venezuela serves as a pass-through for a minor corridor in the Caribbean, but it is one of a number of way-stations starting in Colombia and continuing on to the Dominican Republic and then to Puerto Rico, from which drugs are more easily smuggled into the mainland US. It’s not even certain that the crew of the vessel were Venezuelan at all, as Dominican drug trafficking organizations partner with Colombian and Venezuelan counterparts in this supply chain. And while cocaine production is currently booming, this is being driven by a surge in demand from Europe, not the US. Today, the drug of choice for American consumers is not cocaine but fentanyl, a synthetic drug that doesn’t come from Venezuela, but largely Mexico using precursors from China, and is increasingly produced in the US.
Assassin’s Screed
The reason we don’t conduct airstrikes on China or Puerto Rico is, presumably, extrajudicially assassinating Chinese or US citizens would be a bigger deal than killing Venezuelans. To be clear, this was an illegal act, under US and international law. Assassination is against the law according to the War Crimes Act, Uniform Code of Military Justice, and Executive Order 12333, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Not that those have stopped the US in the past, or other countries for that matter. Past administrations, Democrat and Republican, have assassinated individuals deemed national security threats, famously Osama bin Laden but also US citizens such as Anwar Al-Awlaki, both ordered by President Obama. Thus there is a precedent, legal or not, for killing accused terrorists in other countries without trial, one which President Trump put into process earlier by designating Tren de Aragua and other criminal gangs to be Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Other countries have adopted similar rationales, including Colombia, which in 2008 killed FARC commander Raul Reyes in neighboring Ecuador.
But as with the US raids in Pakistan and Yemen, and Colombia’s in Ecuador, these had severe political blowbacks that hobbled counter-terrorism efforts afterwards. Pakistan exposed the CIA station chief, and doubled down on backing the Taliban in Afghanistan as insurance. Yemen came to be dominated by the Houthis, a US opponent. Multiple countries cut ties with Colombia. One could argue, as Obama did, that assassinating key terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden was worth the blowback.
We may never know who these eleven people were, but it is highly doubtful that any of them were top leaders in either Tren de Aragua or the Maduro regime. Cartel bosses do not sit on boats personally escorting drug shipments, nor do government officials. So the payoff may be low, but the cost may also be low, as the Trump administration sees it: Venezuela is a pariah state already under crippling US sanctions, and Maduro is a corrupt autocrat who stole the last election. But such a strike can only be a blessing for Maduro. It turns what should be a criminal matter into a matter of national sovereignty, something he can use to rally support from neighbors who don’t like him. And those neighbors matter more to the US than Venezuela, such as Brazil. Last year, Lula had been a cautious critic of Maduro, blocking Venezuela’s accession to BRICS in response to the stolen election. It is hard to imagine him taking such a stance today.
The Big Stick-Up
The boat strike will only hasten the decline of US influence in Latin America, where China has already replaced the US as the top trade partner in most of the region even before the Trump tariffs. Countries will have few reasons to cooperate with the US on pressuring rogue actors like Maduro to respect elections or stop jailing opponents. Even Maduro had been playing ball with the US on the issue that matters to Trump the most, immigration, accepting deportation flights from the US. And despite the hostilities, the Trump administration has been quietly making deals with Maduro as well. In July of this year, Trump issued an oil license for Chevron to resume doing business in Venezuela, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Venezuelan government. It’s not hard to guess what Maduro cares about more, upwards of a billion dollars in oil revenues, or eleven guys in a boat.
In this context then, the boat strike looks more like a negotiating ploy by the Trump administration to put pressure on Maduro to continue making deals, whether to do with deportations, oil, or murkier interests represented by grifters and internet personalities. It’s beneficial to both figures: Maduro rallies his neighbors against a shared threat to the north, and Trump rallies his base with a foreign bogeyman, and shifts the media narrative away from his old friend Epstein. And with other legal cases, such as with MS-13, it’s more convenient for the Trump administration to not have them go through the courts, for fear of what corrupt deals may come out at trial. Of all the defenses of the boat strike on social media, the oddest was the refrain that due process is “woke.” Is it woke to break up cartels and put drug traffickers in prison? The enthusiasm for performative military action betrays a deep distrust in the police, prosecutors, and justice system as a whole. This is the kind of thing that leads to vigilantism, the breakdown of state institutions, and the rise of autocratic regimes like Maduro’s.
Sina Toossi is a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy.
Shahed Ghoreishi was a career‑level press officer who drafted a single, straightforward line for the State Department press office: “We do not support forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.” A short time later his proposed language was cut, and days after that he was fired — an action colleagues told reporters sent a “chilling message” through the building that veering from the administration’s framing could threaten a person’s job.
That is far more than a personnel dispute. It is a window into a deeper pathology in U.S. foreign policy: a system — inside government and across its think tanks, media, and political circles — that too often punishes facts, rewards conformity, and makes it perilous for professionals to tell leaders what they need to hear.
Social scientists have a name for this dynamic: groupthink. Far from being an abstract academic idea, it describes what happens when teams value unity over truth. Psychologist Irving Janis, who coined the term, defined it as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”
In other words, the stronger the pull of conformity, the weaker the capacity for independent judgment. The result, Janis warned, is a deterioration of decision-making: mental efficiency declines, reality testing erodes, and moral judgement falters.
The process is easy to spot: decisions made within small, insulated circles create pressure to conform. Those who disagree either stay silent or are pushed aside, a false sense of consensus emerges, and what Irving Janis called “mindguards” step in—members who shield leaders from uncomfortable information and preserve the illusion of unanimity. The consequences are serious. Scholars of U.S. foreign policy have linked this very pattern to disastrous mistakes, from fatally flawed contingency planning to the manipulation and misuse of intelligence that paved the way for war.
That explains why Ghoreishi’s firing should make us uneasy. It communicates to tens of thousands of public servants that nuance can be dangerous, that raising inconvenient facts is a political liability, and that professional judgment may be judged less on merit than on loyalty to a preferred frame.
Protect honest debate
Public debate only works when people are willing to risk being unpopular in order to correct mistakes. As legal scholar Cass Sunstein has noted, dissenters who bring forward inconvenient facts are “to be prized,” because even one honest voice can puncture a false consensus. But when criticism is immediately treated as a political attack, the cost of speaking rises too high, and people choose silence instead.
When organizations go after people’s motives instead of addressing their arguments, real debate is replaced by character assassination. The Ghoreishi case was not just a routine decision by a manager; it was driven by a political appointee with an ideological agenda, and it was followed by a vicious smear campaign from far-right activist Laura Loomer. The message to career officials was unmistakable: even language consistent with long-standing U.S. policy could end a career. Such a culture silences public servants and leaves leaders deaf to the truth.
The consequences of manufactured consensus are not hypothetical. They were on full display in the run-up to the Iraq war, when insulated teams, reinforced by pressure from the top, narrowed intelligence assessments and sidelined skeptics. It was a textbook case of groupthink. Iraq proved that when dissent is punished, institutions lose the very safeguards that can prevent catastrophe.
Re‑center evidence over ideology
Good foreign policy begins with clear-eyed diagnosis and an honest weighing of costs and alternatives. Too often, though, the language of government cables and committee deliberations favors a politically convenient frame over a messy truth. The result is policy built on selective intelligence, comforting assumptions, and incomplete evidence.
Research on group decision-making shows why this happens. Some cohesion can help teams move faster, but only if dissent is protected and confirmation bias kept low. Once conformity takes hold and critics are silenced, decision quality quickly collapses. As Cass Sunstein warns, that fragile balance breaks down when powerful voices dominate, turning healthy teamwork into conformity, self-censorship, and collective error.
That is why reforming how decisions are made is urgent. Leaders should be required to hear out alternative analyses, include minority views in the record, and respond directly to objections from skeptics. These are not box-checking exercises. They are simple guardrails that make it harder for institutions to ignore inconvenient evidence before locking in a course of action.
Safeguard public servants
If we want honest debate, we must make dissent less costly. The scholarship is blunt: dissent must be rewarded or at least protected, especially when it benefits the public interest. That requires stronger safeguards for career staff and whistleblowers, real channels for internal disagreement, and institutional incentives that value critical review over blind loyalty.
But rules on paper only go so far. Culture ultimately decides whether people speak up or stay silent. In today’s climate, self-censorship is rising. Fear of reputational damage leads many to hold their tongue, and that instinct seeps into elite institutions where insiders are reluctant to challenge prevailing narratives. The Ghoreishi case makes the point: it taught public servants not just what language is permitted, but what truths are too dangerous to even raise.
Ultimately, even the healthiest institutions need outside pressure to stay honest. That is why external checks are indispensable. A free press and a Congress willing to investigate provide the counterweights to executive overreach and groupthink. These mechanisms are not partisan weapons; they are structural safeguards. By forcing leaders to explain their decisions, confront inconvenient facts, and stay accountable, they keep the system honest, and the country safer.
Why defending dissent is patriotic and vital for national security
Dissent is often painted as disloyalty. In reality, the opposite is true: telling leaders uncomfortable truths is a patriotic duty. When analysts, diplomats, or generals speak up, they reduce the chances that the nation will stumble into unnecessary wars, misjudge adversaries, or ignore the human costs of reckless policies.
That is why Shahed Ghoreishi’s firing should alarm anyone who cares about sound statecraft. It signals a climate where loyalty to the script outweighs telling the truth. And when silence becomes the safer career path, the nation loses its best safeguard against small mistakes growing into strategic disasters.
The fixes are not complicated. Institutions can create formal channels for dissent, assign rotating devil’s advocates, test plans against adversarial analysis, and shield career professionals from political retribution. These steps will not prevent every mistake, but they will make policy sturdier and leaders better informed.
History shows that even a single dissenter can break a false consensus and steer a group back toward sound judgment. Protecting those voices is not weakness; it is prudence. It is how democracies learn, adapt, and survive.
Kate Hixon is the Advocacy Director for Africa at Amnesty International USA and Kehinde Togun is the Managing Director for Public Engagement & Partnerships at Humanity United and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for International Policy.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the Trump administration’s vision for foreign policy, he said every decision must answer three questions: does it make the U.S. safer; does it make the U.S. stronger; does it make the U.S. more prosperous? The administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) quickly decided that many existing policies and agencies failed to affirmatively answer these three questions. As a result, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was rapidly dismantled; attacks were launched against any program or policy that focused on human rights or good governance; and defenestration began of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. All these actions signaled to the private sector that the U.S. is open for business, no matter the human rights cost.
At the same time, these and other measures taken against supporting good governance and human rights create a contradictory environment for the administration’s stated goals: they do not make the U.S. safer, or stronger, or more prosperous.
Bad Deals
Most visibly, the Trump administration made a brazen play for critical mineral assets in Ukraine by attempting to browbeat the Ukrainian government for exploratory rights in exchange for ongoing security support. Other countries quickly took notice. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Felix Tshisekedi quickly offered mineral deals in exchange for assistance fighting the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group in eastern DRC, and dozens of lobbyists descended on Washington in “support” of the Congolese government to try and secure a deal. On June 27, the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington – the first step for both to also secure tentative mineral deals with the U.S. The administration’s Senior Advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos, acknowledged that in order for the mineral deals to work, the signatories needed “a more stable environment.”
The Trump administration is not unique in its desire to prioritize U.S. interests or to seek to give the U.S. private sector a leg up in access to natural resources. However, unlike previous U.S. administrations, resource extraction appears to be the sole goal of the Trump administration when engaging with African countries. Nonetheless, both the administration and U.S. companies, regardless of sector, are constrained by externalities. Markets rely on stability that comes not only from inking deals between countries or their entrepreneurs, but also from ensuring that agreements are honored, processes are in place, and that people in those countries have their rights respected and benefit from those deals.
Good governance is good for business
For U.S. companies to succeed in African markets, they need to trust the rule of law. That principle — that business can only flourish amid reliable governance structures — is why the Millenium Challenge Corporation placed so much emphasis on governance. It’s also why the Development Finance Corporation and USAID partnered so closely to ensure an enabling legal environment existed for successful investments across the globe. When a U.S. company is assessing a country’s investment profile, it will investigate a number of legitimate questions, including if fair arbitration can be expected in the national courts, whether there is risk of being overtaken by the state or being impacted by conflict, and whether there will be a struggle with recruitment because the population lacks basic health care.
Without the rule of law, good governance and stability that comes from it, many U.S. companies will simply deem mineral-rich sub-Saharan African countries far too risky for investment.
Yet, when Elon Musk’s DOGE put USAID through the woodchipper, it simultaneously halted Washington’s ability to bolster civil society and support good governance programs overseas. It also eliminated the agency’s investment support via the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), making the investment climate harder for U.S. companies.
In the vacuum left by a retreating U.S., other governments will fill the void. Chinese parastatal companies will have a greater advantage, as their government’s support allows much higher risk tolerance, and fewer human rights safeguards, than many U.S. companies are willing to stomach.
Great prosperity through human dignity
If the Trump administration wants to make the U.S. safer, stronger and more prosperous, it must emphasize its comparative advantage, not eliminate it. While previous U.S. administrations didn’t do enough, they understood that U.S. companies required some semblance of good governance and respect for human rights to invest.
The DRC recently offered its critical minerals to the U.S. in exchange for the Trump administration supporting Tshekedi’s government. Eastern Congo is home to vast resources of gold, diamonds and the three Ts (tin, tungsten and tantalum). Further south is the world’s largest cobalt reserve — crucial for batteries and electric vehicles. Eastern Congo has a long history of instability, despite regional and international players seeking to cash in on these rich mineral reserves. However, very few U.S. companies have operated in eastern DRC, in part because of Chinese dominance but more broadly because of the high risk associated with operating in the region. Pervasive armed group activity in the area presents a real risk that a company’s mine could be taken over, as happened with the Rubaya mine captured by the M23. Amid a nearly five-year state of siege in eastern DRC, all civilian courts have been replaced with military courts, leaving doubt to companies about the independence of other courts in Congo should they need arbitration.
The DRC also ranks incredibly high on Transparency International’s corruption index, making it more expensive for U.S. companies to operate, especially without the protection of a robust enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
While USAID would not have been a panacea, in countries like DRC and around the world USAID and the State Department were focused on working to improve security, ensure transparency and support people to seek accountability from their governments. Behind the scenes, the private sector is raising candid concern that the closure of USAID and downsizing of State Department agencies will make investing in African countries even more expensive for U.S. companies.
If the Trump administration wishes to make the U.S. safer, stronger, and more prosperous through U.S. investment in critical mineral sectors abroad, it has to grapple with the loss of that expertise housed at USAID and begin ideating how it will help strengthen independent judiciaries and give companies more confidence in fair arbitration, support peacebuilding projects to help reduce levels of conflict, make a safer security environment for private sector investment, and simultaneously support investigative journalism as an external anti-corruption and accountability mechanism. It might also support health programs in mining communities that fill gaps where government services for critical healthcare were unavailable, and have an agency that works closely with the DRC de-risk investments for U.S. companies.
Companies also can’t sit it out while the administration dismantles the work and programs they need to invest responsibly and sustainably in the region. They need to speak not only to the ability of U.S. businesses to contribute materially to one of the fastest growing economic environments, but also to the value of programs that support rule of law, human rights and labor for their intrinsic good.
Michael Paarlberg is an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Follow him on X: @MPaarlberg
The United States and El Salvador are both ruled by leaders who have explicitly declared they are not beholden to the law. Their justifications vary, though the throughline is the same: there is some crisis facing the nation, thus it is imperative to grant the president extraordinary powers to address it. This is not a novel idea.
“Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception” These are the words of Nazi legal philosopher Carl Schmitt, the “crown jurist of the Third Reich.” His point was that to fully grasp political power, one must look not to the rule but to the exception: not what the law says but who has the power to defy it; to be above the law; to determine when it applies and when it does not, and to whom.
There have been few governments willing to invoke Schmitt’s concept since the Second World War, for understandable reasons. But the state of exception – ausnahmezustand in German, régimen de excepción in Spanish – has made a comeback in El Salvador, under the personalist authoritarian state of President Nayib Bukele. As Schmitt recommended, it was a declared emergency, of public safety, that justified this break with the rule of law. The powers that a state of exception grants rulers, and the vagueness of the crisis they need to invoke it, makes the Bukele model an attractive one to other presidents bogged down by such inconveniences as due process and separation of powers. Thus Trump and his surrogates have floated ideas such as suspending habeas corpus, or running for another term in defiance of the Constitution – both of which Bukele has done. Today, we are seeing not just an export of this model, but a transnationalization of El Salvador’s State of Exception itself to the US.
As in El Salvador, it is a pretext to expand executive power; for President Trump, this is done through deportations. Under a deal with Bukele, the Trump administration has deported over 200 people to El Salvador: mostly Venezuelans, as well as some Salvadorans. Though said to be dangerous gangsters, this rationale has fallen apart under scrutiny. Bloomberg News found that 90% of those had no criminal record at all, and those who did were mostly for immigration related crimes. The Washington Post found “many entered the United States legally and were actively complying with US immigration rules.” Much attention has been paid to the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been given protection by an immigration judge but was deported in defiance of a court order. But many of the 200 deportees had open asylum claims and were awaiting their day in court. Under US immigration law, only a judge can order someone deportable, and so their deportations were equally illegal.
The point of these deportations was not to set a legal precedent. It was the opposite: to flout the law, to create the exception. Trump’s deportations, as with Bukele’s State of Exception, are a show of force: meant to create an aura of absolute power, to cow the opposition, to effectively make the judiciary an unequal branch of government, and ultimately to make it easier for them to rule.
For its part, the Bukele government has made no attempt to offer a legal rationale for receiving and then jailing deportees. Even for the few who did commit crimes, they committed them in the US. They broke no law in El Salvador, were never tried or sentenced there, yet are held without charge: effectively disappeared. The place where they are detained is CECOT, the famous mega-prison built for hardened gangsters, which serves both governments to imply that those deportees are gangsters as well. Even the prison itself is a smoke and mirrors show by Bukele, who began his career as a publicist. His press office has released photos of inmates with full body tattoos, including on their faces, stacked on top of one another. Look closely and you will see that these are mostly middle aged men in their 40s and 50s, not the teenagers Bukele is actually arresting (median age for gang membership is about 15). It is the face tattoos that give it away: by the time I conducted research in gang territories in El Salvador 10 years ago, the gangs had actively stopped their members from getting tattoos at all in an effort to blend in to society. Thus the scary inmates displayed in the CECOT photos are not people Bukele arrested. They are gangsters arrested in the 90s and 2000s, whom Bukele transferred to his new prison to justify the State of Exception. But these pictures play well to a foreign audience – Bukele often tweets in English – who are unaware of these evolving gang practices, and especially to the Salvadoran diaspora, a key sources of Bukele’s support, many of whom fled the gangs decades ago, for whom the face tattoos are a familiar image.
El Salvador’s State of Exception
It is helpful to understand what El Salvador’s State of Exception is and what it is not. Often described inaccurately as an anti-crime measure or gang crackdown, it is much more than that. There have been many anti-gang crackdowns in El Salvador over many administrations, usually called some variation of mano dura or iron fist policing (which, when it did not produce desired results, was rebranded super mano dura). Bukele had his own anti-gang policing program before the State of Exception, which he called the Plan Control Territorial. In totality, the State of Exception is not a policing measure aimed at gangs; it is a political measure, a general suspension of civil liberties aimed at the entire population. Past mano dura regimes did not involve purging judges, spying on journalists and business owners, nor jailing political opposition figures, NGO leaders, and public servants. This is not a crime policy, but a use of the crime issue to concentrate power in the executive and transform the country into a one party state.
President Bukele has touted his State of Exception as a success story, pointing to his high approval ratings and low homicide rates, both of which are basically true while also subject to manipulation. Polls show over 80% of respondents say they support him, although the same polls show the proportion of respondents who say they are scared to voice opinions contrary to the government is also over 80%. And there is ample evidence of the government cooking crime statistics: leaked police emails from the Guacamaya leaks indicate the government is hiding about half of the murders in the country, and the discovery of clandestine mass graves and interviews with gang leaders suggest something more sinister: that under a pact between Bukele and the gangs early in his presidency, his administration encouraged gangs to hide their victims’ bodies better. One gang leader claims a Bukele official – sanctioned by the US Treasury for corruption – told him, “No body, no crime.”
Crime had, in fact, been going down since 2015, when El Salvador was notoriously the murder capital of the world (and when I lived there, across the street from then businessman-turned-mayor Bukele’s Yamaha dealership), four years before Bukele became president. Nevertheless, crime rates have fallen more sharply under Bukele, given that in the past three years, the Bukele government has arrested 85,000 people. This has given El Salvador an incarceration rate of 2% of the population, the highest in the world – higher even than the US. Most are charged with the catch-all crime of agrupación ilícita: membership in an illegal group, i.e. a gang, which are designated as terrorist organizations. It is highly doubtful that all, or even most of these, actually are. One former police inspector estimated only 30% of those arrested are gang members. Almost none are convicted and sentenced; the vast majority are held in indefinite pretrial detention, for months or even years. The minority who are tried are given mass trials, with dozens of defendants at once and no right to see evidence against them. Often this evidence can be simply being accused by neighbors wishing to settle scores, dressing a certain way, or having tattoos. Police officers have been given arrest quotas to make, according to the police union.
All of this points to profiling by social class: under the State of Exception, anyone can be arrested, but most of those who are are young men from poor neighborhoods. Like Trump’s deportees, the fact that most are innocent isn’t a liability, it’s a feature: a demonstration to the public that justice is arbitrary, and no one is safe.
In the prisons where these mostly young men (as well as politicians and activists) end up, conditions are tantamount to torture. The government tightly controls access to these prisons, famously denying access to a US Senator while granting staged tours to Youtubers and social media influencers. But the government has let out 7,000 detainees on house arrest, an implicit admission of wrongful arrests. Most are scared to talk, as the government reserves the right to jail them again, but some have spoken to the press and human rights organizations, and what we know comes from their testimony. Groups such as Cristosal and Socorro Jurídico Humanitario have registered nearly 400 inmate deaths, including women and minors, as a result of beatings and asphyxiation by prison guards. This number is certainly a gross undercount, given the non-representative sample of ex-detainees, and is likely in the thousands; there have been efforts to find satellite imagery of mass graves at prisons. Other practices include electroshock and the denial of food and medicine, which Bukele has tweeted is a deliberate tactic to enforce discipline.
Indeed, the government does not guarantee enough food for prisoners, and so inmates rely on family members to send care packages, as well as bribes to prison officials to secure slightly better conditions. Due to a lack of communication, however, they have no way of knowing if the food is reaching their relatives, or if they are even alive. And without transparency, temptation for theft is great. Many families are taking extra jobs, or being financially ruined in order to pay for food and medicine, at a cost equal to what they used to pay the gangs in extortions. Thus for those who know someone wrongfully arrested – nearly one-third of the country – the government has effectively taken the place of the gangs.
A gang state protects its own
Hidden from public view, but increasingly apparent, is the carrot side to Bukele’s carrot and stick approach. Reporting by news outlets like El Faro, and testimony by former officials and gang leaders point to a long history of negotiations and deals between the gangs and the Bukele government, a practice that traces back to governments prior to Bukele’s. President Bukele came into office in 2019 already with a longstanding relationship with one gang, Barrio 18, which he paid to allow him to refurbish a downtown shopping district when he was mayor of San Salvador. Upon entering office, he had a deal with the other principal gang, MS-13, to make cash payments in exchange for suppressing murders. According to the US Department of Justice, the deal extended to the gangs giving exclusive access to their neighborhoods to Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party, doing voter turnout for them, and intimidating rival parties. Gang leaders were also given better prison conditions – which fueled resentment by lower level gang members, part of a divide and conquer strategy by the government.
When Bukele suspended payments in 2022, MS-13 reacted by killing 87 people in one weekend in an attempt to force the government back to the negotiating table. Instead, the police crackdown that ensued signaled the deal was off. But some parts remain. Despite its apparent partnership with the US, the Bukele government denied extradition requests for gang leaders wanted by the DEA and FBI for transnational drug trafficking. Some were even freed from prison. In one notorious case, the abovementioned Bukele official gave an MS-13 leader a gun and personally drove him to the Guatemalan border to escape extradition. All were documented in DOJ indictments of those gang leaders who were later captured by Mexican authorities and turned over to the US.
Some of those gang leaders did end up in US custody, after they were allowed to flee El Salvador. In negotiating the deportation deal with the US, Bukele’s brother – who holds no official position – sent the State Department a list of names of nine of them whom they want back. These include individuals charged and indicted with terrorism-related crimes, some facing the death penalty. In the case of one, a member of MS-13’s ruling council with the street name Greñas de Stoners, the DOJ dropped all charges and deported him back to El Salvador. Bukele fears what they will say if they are allowed to stand trial, as they all have knowledge of his pact with MS-13, and two of them directly negotiated with his government. The fact that the Trump administration is dropping charges for gang leaders who committed crimes against the US, and instead handing them to El Salvador to be disappeared into the prison system, amounts to collusion between two governments to cover up a gang pact by disappearing witnesses.
Thus the Bukele model is really one of arbitrarily jailing teenagers – by all accounts largely innocent – while protecting actual gang leaders, by a government with ties to organized crime – from cabinetministers who represented gangs, to officials sanctioned by the US for gang involvement, to corrupt police chiefs, and even to diplomats such as a consul general in New York and admitted “former” member of MS-13 – none of whom have been sent to CECOT. These connections are not only to gangs but also money laundering rings such as the Texis Cartel as well as Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA – a strange bedfellow for a president popular with the CPAC crowd. But Bukele was not always on the right. His political career began with the avowedly left-wing FMLN, and one can find his old tweets in which he eulogized Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez and posted pictures of Che Guevara. But Bukele was never an ideologue. What he admired in those figures was not their Marxism but their authoritarianism.
Bukele’s political evolution is thus helpful for seeing the logical outcome of his model. When I give lectures on the Bukele model, I ask the audience, what is the safest country in Latin America? Some guess Uruguay, or Panama, or Costa Rica. The answer is Cuba. Another one party state, Cuba does not have a problem with gangs. It does not have a problem with drug trafficking, because it executes drug traffickers. Police states are usually pretty safe. But one might ask if this is the model Bukele’s fans in the US and elsewhere really want in their countries. Or if safer streets are enough to sustain a country with bigger problems than gangs.
Today, as El Salvador’s prisons swell, the government is deeply in debt, reliant on foreign loans to cover its operating budget. Meanwhile, Bukele is in the process of raiding its workers’ pension funds. Unemployment and inflation are high, and foreign investment is dropping, as investors are realizing a government that can arrest anyone on a whim is not the most reliable business partner. Bukele’s unwavering loyalty to Trump, including his mass deportation agenda, is another liability: El Salvador’s economy is deeply dependent on remittances from Salvadorans living in the US, which make up nearly 25% of its GDP. Should millions be sent back, as Trump has promised, the loss of remittances would likely be a fatal blow – and fuel a new wave of migration north. And in El Salvador, Cuba and now the US, faltering economies are a reminder that it is easy for a strongman to lock people up; it’s harder to keep them fed.
Omar Hamed Beato is a visual journalist from Spain based in the Middle East covering conflict, climate change, migration, and social issues. You can find him onInstagram and follow his workhere.
As night falls over Qaboun, one of the many shattered neighborhoods on the outskirts of Syria’s capital Damascus, it almost becomes impossible to witness the devastation left by over thirteen years of civil war. What was once a bustling area with cars weaving through streets and vendors hawking their goods amid the rubble has now transformed into a ghost town, deserted streets dark except for the far in-between pockets of light from those wealthy enough to afford electricity generators. Rania Laila, a 38-year-old mother of four, lives in a small rental house that has recently been rebuilt surrounded by half-collapsed buildings. In their dimly lit living room, the family relies on candles and a small rechargeable lamp, charged during the single hour each day when the government briefly activates the neighborhood’s electrical grid.
”I hope for the electricity situation to get better because it’s the most important thing, we just want to be able to live our lives,” says Laila, in her living room surrounded by her family.
Unlike many others who managed to flee during the war, Laila and her family had to stay in Qaboun during the war as they had no means to move elsewhere. Most of the electrical infrastructure in the area has either been destroyed or looted, and they count themselves among the fortunate few who can at least recharge their phones. Not having electricity means the family has to shower in icy water during the cold winter months where it is not uncommon to reach freezing temperatures in their unheated home. At night, the entire family huddles together in the living room, wrapped in layers of thick blankets to stay warm.
Rania’s family and neighbors visit her home after sunset.Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
”We would like to go somewhere where there is electricity because electricity is everything in life,” she says. ”We are here without water, we wait for the electricity to come so we are able to shower. Yesterday was a tragedy. We all needed to shower but we couldn’t. Some days we get electricity for one hour, some days it is just from five to fifteen minutes and some days it turns on while we are asleep so we miss it. We have to be careful about using the phone’s battery because it is the only way we can know what time of day it is.”
Laila’s situation, while difficult, is not exclusive to her family. The entirety of the country lives with two hours or less of electricity a day — even in major cities like Damascus. Rural areas, meanwhile, are often left with no electricity at all. After more than thirteen years of civil war, Syria bears the scars of conflict, with 6.2 million people seeking asylum abroad and 7.2 million internally displaced. Combined, the displaced population amounts to more than five times the population of the city of Chicago. For those who have remained in the country, the situation is even worse —nine out of ten live below the poverty line, or on less than $2.15 per day.
Rania uses her smartphone to light up the kitchen and do the dishes.Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
The lack of electricity is a significant factor contributing to the hardships faced by Syrians. Electricity is essential for performing basic household chores, powering hospital operating rooms, and sustaining the production processes of countless businesses. Without it, leaving poverty behind seems like an impossible task. This is the case of Mohammed Kamal Kashef, a 51-year-old carpenter working in Yarmouk, Syria’s largest informal Palestinian refugee camp —an area that witnessed some of the darkest chapters of the war. The camp endured a nearly five-year siege by pro-Assad forces, three of which while it was under the control of the Islamic State, until 2018. Kashef fled to Sudan during the war and returned to Syria in 2019, when the frontlines stabilized and Damascus became a relatively safer zone. Six months ago, he opened his business on the camp’s main street, using a small generator to power the machinery needed for cutting and treating wood.
”This is the third or fourth time I’ve started [my life] from zero,” recalls Kashef from inside his shop. ”We have no services in Yarmouk. I have a generator, it is enough for my work. I pay for fuel depending on the amount of work I have.”
He says he could produce more stocks if he had cheaper access to electricity. ”Right now, I can’t use the generator unless a client asks for something specific. If I had electricity, I would have pre-made some sets to sell like tables, closets or even kitchens that would save me some time. Life needs fighting and in the end, God will help us. If we work, we eat, if we don’t, we starve.”
A long way towards reconstruction.
Years of war decimated Syria’s power plants and infrastructure, leaving half of the country’s electricity grid out of service. Power stations in Aleppo, Mahardah, and Zayzoun were destroyed and energy substations —in charge of distributing electricity coming from the main power station to different areas across population centers— have lost most of their transformers. As a result, even when electricity is available, it can only be supplied to limited areas at any given time. According to information obtained by the International Policy Journal (IPJ) from the Syrian Ministry of Electricity, which has recently been merged with the Ministry of Energy after the formation of the new transitional government, it will take $40 billion to rebuild the electricity grid alone. Some estimates put the total cost of reconstruction of Syria at $250 billion, a figure comparable to New Zealand’s annual GDP.
Fuel shortages have further worsened Syria’s electricity crisis. Before the Arab Spring in 2011, Syria produced over 330,000 barrels of oil per day; by 2014, three years into civil war, that figure had plummeted to just 20,000 barrels. To compensate for this decrease in production, a sizable quantity of fuel began to be supplied by the Iranian government.
“[We want] to live life with dignity.” Portrait of Mohammed at his shop.Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
“We used to get fuel from Iran. The supplies were cut off and we are facing [international] sanctions,” says Omar Shakrouk, the appointed minister of electricity after Assad’s fall, speaking from his office at the Ministry in Damascus. To compensate for the shortage of electricity, the Qatari and Turkish governments are set to send electricity-generating ships to Syria that can produce 800 megawatts (MW). However, the ministry has not been able to confirm the arrival date of these ships.
”As you know the electricity situation is very bad in Syria, there’s a shortage in generation and the energy supply. The situation is bad in general,” continues Shakrouk. According to him, the country can currently produce 1,700 MW of electricity; that figure will have to be increased seven-fold to meet the 12,000 MW country-wide demand over the next five years. To bridge the gap, the government will have to repair the damaged infrastructure. However, a shortage of spare parts and oil, as well as a lack of skilled labour make it increasingly challenging.
With Assad now in Russia and Iranian troops withdrawn from Syria, Western sanctions enacted against the now-absent regime present a major hurdle for the new government’s reconstruction efforts. These sanctions not only block the government’s purchase of essential spare parts but also limit the import of the oil needed to run the remaining infrastructure at full capacity.
Although the U.S. has removed the $10 million bounty on Interim President Ahmed Al-Shaara, the rebel group he led towards Damascus last December, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is still classified as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council, the European Union, and the U.S., with its former ties to Al-Qaeda remaining a point of concern.
Despite this, Western nations have adopted a cautious “wait-and-see” approach, signaling a readiness to lift sanctions if the new Syrian administration enacts meaningful reforms, such as protecting the rights of minorities and women. For instance, in January, the former Biden administration issued a six-month waiver of sanctions, and, at the end of February, the EU lifted sanctions targeting key sectors such as energy and banking.
Hired workers removing rubble. Removing the rubble created by years of war will be one of the most challenging tasks of the new government –without international help, qualified civil engineers, and heavy machinery, this task will likely take decades before neighborhoods resemble some normalcy.Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
However, even after repeated visits by Western diplomats to Damascus following the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime last December, and Ahmed Al-Shaara’s ongoing efforts to build relationships with the West, many of the sanctions imposed on Assad’s regime for its oppressive actions remain largely intact.
”If you want big investments in Syria, you need to stop sanctions indefinitely, not only temporarily. If the EU lifts sanctions while the US keeps them in place, it won’t make any effect because companies have a much bigger stake in the US than in Syria,” explains Joseph Daher, a Syrian political economist and author of the book Syria after the uprisings: the political economy of state resilience, via phone call from Switzerland.
”The power plants need complete maintenance, we could not secure the needed parts. Buying fuel from other countries is complicated. We are struggling to secure flows of funding and the international currency that we need, ”continues Shakrouk. ”The sanctions impact every area, for example securing spare parts and [bringing foreign] companies. With the European sanctions lifted there is more space to have international companies, but the U.S. sanctions have a bigger impact especially because of the currency exchange and [lack of] funding. The removal of the U.S. sanctions is the most important step toward reconstructing Syria. If it doesn’t happen, the rebuilding will be impacted and much harm will be done.”
It’s not only the sanctions, it’s also the aid
The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle USAID and halt foreign aid, followed by significant aid cuts from the British government, means the funding for Syria’s reconstruction remains uncertain. The U.S. has historically been Syria’s top aid donor contributing to a quarter of all foreign aid going into the country —that compromised almost $390 million in 2024 alone. This will only exacerbate the strain on Syria’s chronically underfunded programs. In 2024, the UN inter-agency funding plan for Syria had a 64 percent funding shortfall.
At a video appearance at the Ninth Annual Brussels Conference ‘Standing with Syria: meeting the needs for a successful transition’ on March 17, Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, urged countries to reconsider funding cuts. ”Syria [is] one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, but funding for the humanitarian response continues to fall short. The international community must move with urgency to invest in Syria’s future, By expanding humanitarian support and reconsidering any cuts to funding at this critical time. By investing in Syria’s recovery, including addressing sanctions and other restrictions.”
A barber shop at night. The government plans to improve electricity in stages with big cities as the main priority before that is extended to rural areas. Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
On the same day, the EU pledged $6.5 billion in grants and low-interest loans towards the reconstruction. Natasha Franceschi, US deputy assistant secretary for the Levant and Syria, who was also present during the meeting, did not disclose any further aid assistance to Syria on behalf of the U.S. government as they ”expect that other nations are going to help shoulder the financial burden.”
”You need international assistance to rebuild the main cities of Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs. All assistance is needed and it should not be conditional. Aid [and sanctions] are a tool of the U.S. government to have leverage with the new government –this is the problem,” says Daher.
According to Reuters, during the donor conference in Brussels, the U.S. gave the new Syrian government a list of demands to partially lift some sanctions. These include the destruction of remaining chemical weapon stockpiles, collaboration on counter-terrorism efforts, creating a liaison office to help on the search of Austin Tice, the U.S journalist who disappeared in Syria over a decade ago, and barring foreign fighters to take on senior government roles among others.
Aerial view of Yarmouk. Many of its inhabitants live in destroyed buildings with no services.Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
Given that the EU is hosting millions of Syrian refugees who fled the country in the 2010s, it has an interest in stabilizing Syria so member states can legally begin returning refugees. On the other hand, the U.S., which only accepted 18,000 Syrian refugees during the height of the war, has its sights on accomplishing Israel’s policy goals on Syria. Both blocs have different policy interests when it comes to the future of Syria.
”There are contradictions [between the U.S and] the EU when it comes to Syria. The EU sees the lifting of sanctions will allow the return of Syrian refugees,” states Daher. On the other hand, he believes that ”the US government is pressuring Syria to make a deal with Israel and to weaken the region to seek normalization between the region and Israel.”
It’s not all about the money
Ahmed Al-Shaara is confronted with the nearly-impossible task of reuniting a country where social divisions run deep after fourteen years of brutal civil war. Alawites, Kurds, Christians, and Druze are some of the minorities inhabiting Syria, all wary of the steps Al-Shaara’s government may follow. In February, the government launched the ‘national dialogue conference,’ in which roughly 600 people from across the country, including minorities and women, were invited to the presidential palace in Damascus to discuss the political reconstruction of the country.Furthermore, after a delay of one month, on March 29, Al-Shaara unveiled the new transitional government, which includes a Christian woman, an Alawite, and a member of the Druze community. It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to bring different sects onboard the new government’s vision for Syria.
In the meantime, Al-Shaara has reached a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who control the north east part of the country —where most of the country’s oil reserves are located and the majority of Kurds live, to integrate the group under the Syrian Ministry of Defence and achieve a ceasefire in the east side of the country, where there have been clashes between the SDF and armed groups loyal to the government in Damascus. Shortly after, the interim President signed the draft of a new constitution which, in theory, will saveguard freedom of expression, press, or minorities, and women rights, with Islamic law as the base of Syria’s legal system. Additionally, he has established five-year presidential terms with promises of elections within the next five years. He stated he hoped the constitution would open a new era in Syria ”where we replace oppression with justice.”
In central Damascus, largely spared of the war, relatively wealthy people have bought their own generators and solar panels to have an independent electricity supply. Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
Yet, the path towards reconciliation will be anything but straightforward. Already there is internal conflict along sectarian lines. The Assads came from and privileged the Alawite community during their rule, but are no longer in power. At the beginning of March, after weeks of revenge killings and kidnappings targeting the Alawite community, Alawite armed groups loyal to Assad ambushed HTS-led security forces in the coastal regions, home to many Alawite communities. This sparked a brutal counter insurgency operation in which HTS, foreign mercenaries, and other armed groups from all over the country with resentment towards the Alawite community rushed in to fight the remnant of the regime. This resulted in over 803 extrajudicial killings and mass executions between March 6 and March 10, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a human rights organization documenting human rights abuses in Syria. Motivated by revenge and sectarianism, the killings also claimed the lives of non-combatants, including women, children, medical personnel, humanitarian workers, and journalists.
”You have remnants of the regime that create instability, especially in rural areas. HTS is also responsible because of their policies: lack of inclusivity in consolidating their power and not tackling sectarian issues, there hasn’t been transitional justice because they have no interest in that because [HTS] should also be prosecuted for their crimes, especially Ahmed Al-Shaara and other commanders,” says Daher.
These killings have fueled skepticism about Al-Shaara’s true intentions among various groups that have yet to align themselves with Damascus. This has been the case of the Druze community, who has historically enjoyed some level of autonomy from Damascus, in the southern province of Sweida bordering Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri, the spiritual leader of the Druze community, has so far rejected unifying the Druze community with the central government in Damascus calling the new constitution ”dictatorial.”
Protesters in Sweida demand justice for the Alawite minority who have been massacred in the coastal areas in recent weeks. Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
In the city of Sweida, home to the Druze community, after a minute of silence held at a student-led protest against the indiscriminate killings of Alawites, Shaza al-Khatib, a 22-year-old medical student said “[Alawites] were killed in the worst possible ways, and sadly the bloodshed is still happening even after the old regime fell. I have no trust right now. I’ll criminalize the defense ministry now just like I [criminalized] the old regime. This ministry doesn’t represent us, they killed people who trusted them and surrendered their weapons. As a Syrian, I am scared we will be killed just because we are Druze.”
Despite my meeting with Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri at his residence in Sweida, he refused to provide any on-the-record comments on his views regarding the role of the Druze community in post-Assad Syria.
Israel has joined the game
Since the fall of Bashar, tensions between the Druze, who enjoyed certain privileges under the regime, and HTS, in the role of Syria’s transitional government, have been on the rise. At the beginning of March, there were four days of clashes between Druze armed groups and HTS in Jaramana, a suburb of the capital majorly inhabited by the Druze community. Israel, which illegally occupies the Golan Heights (where a sizeable Druze community lives), claimed it would intervene to ”prevent harm to their Druze brothers in Syria.”
Since the fall of Assad, Israel has seized more territory adjacent to the illegally-occupied Golan Heights, striked different military sites across Syria, and declared a non-militarized zone between Damascus and its border under the pretext of ‘security concerns.’
”Conflict with Israel is not only slowing down the reconstruction of Syria but destroying more of it”, continues Daher. ”The Israeli government is trying to destabilize the new Syrian government. There is a long history of Israel trying to instrumentalize sectarian differences —it is not new at all. Israel is opposed to democratization of the region and this has been done with support of the U.S..”
He further emphasized that “If you democratize the region, you have[more] solidarity with Palestine. The day they announced a ceasefire in Gaza, you had demonstrations in Syria in favour of Palestine. The Assad regime had a policy of stopping any group from stating they want to liberate the Golan Heights. If you democratize the Middle East, that would force governments to have a more radical opinion of Israel. When people protest in favour of Palestine, they also protest against their country’s complicity with Israel and the U.S.. Israel knows that if you have more democracy, you have more opposition.”
In Sweida, Amer Alba, a commander of the Sweida Military Council —a Druze armed group formed last February by former soldiers and officials of Assad’s regime to protect the Druze community— welcomed me at one of their sites. The setting is stark, with assault rifles, .50 caliber machine guns, and rocket launchers surrounding him. The group has been accused of having pro-Israeli views.
Alba (right) at a garrison in the outskirts of Sweida. “We don’t want our weapons, we love peace but they made us keep them because of the massacres that are happening in the coast.”Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
”[HTS] didn’t respect its people, not a child, not a woman, it’s like they’re slaughtering sheep. Al-Shaara is not different from the old regime,” says Alba. ”We will never surrender our weapons to killers and mafia like HTS. I refuse dealing with them or their existence in Sweida. There will be a waterfall of blood in the governorate [if government forces arrive]. If Israel had not intervened in Jaramana, it would’ve been a massacre just like in the coast —we will collaborate with any state that will protect our people. Sadly HTS are rejecting our existence in this country.”
The International Policy Journal has not been able to independently verify how Israel intervened in Jaramana beyond statements given by government officials.
At the local market, Marwan al-Srekhy, a 58-year-old vendor believes that the Druze community has majoritarily rejected Israel’s interference in Syria. ”The people of Sweida in general are with the government. [We support] unifying all of Syria’s groups —every citizen wants this. We want to be a part of the government and under the same flag, but [they] need to give citizens their rights,” the 58-year-old explains.
He continues, ”We don’t have anything against the current president but the people around him are bad. The government should include every group of people, but this government does not. Religion is for God and the homeland is for everyone.”
An unexploded mortar shell next to a destroyed power station in Qaboun. The manager at the only remaining power station in the area says only two out of eight of the transformers are operational. Omar Hamed Beato for Center for International Policy.
Rui Zhong is a writer and researcher living in the Washington D.C. metro area. She studies China, censorship, and technology’s role in nationalism and foreign policy
Donald Trump began his second Administration allowing Elon Musk to spearhead a sweeping ransacking of the federal workforce, beginning with foreign policy. Tasked with overseeing the rapidly dissolving network of embassies and formerly independent USAID offices is Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime Republican fixture within American foreign policy. Rubio is working with colleagues within the Trump administration to renege, avoid or otherwise thwart attempts to make good on financial and policy commitments in the international space. In conjunction with the Department of Justice, Rubio argued (in his secondary role as the terminal Administrator of USAID) that the United States had no obligation to pay out frozen aid contracts already committed to ongoing projects – and then declared the overwhelming bulk of them terminated
The thorough complicity of Marco Rubio and other institutional Republican stalwarts goes far deeper than mere verbal hypocrisy. Within Trump’s first administration, Rubio identified the problem of Trump’s conduct against Ukraine following impeachment by the House of Representatives, but ultimately declined to convict him.
“Can anyone doubt that at least half of the country would view his removal as illegitimate — as nothing short of a coup d’état?” Rubio wrote at the time in a blog post justifying his decision. “It is difficult to conceive of any scheme Putin could undertake that would undermine confidence in our democracy more than removal would.”
Five years later, Rubio’s entry and active participation in the second Trump Administration reflects a shift in conventional Republican culture, a highly visible reminder of the party’s transformation from one that first mocked, then reluctantly welcomed Trump, to one that is fundamentally about Trump. On international relations in particular, mainstream Republicans have changed to accommodate Trump, with Rubio only the latest member of the cadre to bend the knee.
Of all the selections by Donald Trump for the Cabinet of his second administration, Rubio has the longest tenure within Republican politics and conservative spaces. Foreign policy was one of the ways Rubio had appealed to moderates and even liberals, taking photo opportunities with Hong Kong dissenters and through his service on the human rights-centric Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
During his confirmation hearings, Democratic Senators praised the cordial lines of communication they maintained over the course of his fourteen-year Senate career. “You and I have also had a good working relationship for many years,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). “I believe you have the skills and are well qualified to serve as secretary of State.” The Senate voted to confirm Rubio 99 in favor with no dissents, greeting Rubio’s nomination to Secretary of State as the promise of a steady hand to steer foreign policy.
Most of his former Democratic colleagues likely did not envision Rubio rushing to sign off on decisions such as abruptly ending funding the Fulbright Program, nor his sullen silence as Trump and Vance berated Ukrainian President for lack of deference during a March 1st Oval Office Meeting. When asked about his opinion of the meeting by CNN, Rubio said: “I think he should apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was gonna [sic] end the way it did.” Putin’s schemes were not mentioned. Likely, such topics are not encouraged under the Trump administration.
It is easy to understand why Democratic Senators might have expected Rubio to continue the hawkish but structurally normative habits of his Senate career. During Trump’s First Administration, then-Senator Rubio and most Republicans stuck to a baseline level of support for American soft power institutions and foreign policy practices. Non-political staffers were not subject to executive office oversight, and the Hill mostly consulted agencies for technical information in a neutral relationship. The second Trump administration began instead with a bombastic declaration to cut departments, a process rhetorically and explicitly guided by Elon Musk, through his role in the new Department of Government Efficiency.
Elevated to Secretary of State, Rubio capitulated to these cuts almost immediately, discarding the values-based steps he took to secure the cabinet nomination in the first place. As the White House cut State Department offices like the office of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, he accepted such closures as collateral damage in service of the same fictional concept of cutting government to efficiency pursued by Musk and his hit team of hired henchmen. At the time of the writing of this piece, Rubio also allegedly pursued the usage of AI to deport students that appeared “pro-Hamas.” He also moved to exempt a wide swath of policies from public commentary during draft phases, removing a mechanism that allowed for democratic input on policies under consideration. And he has, the New Republic reports, “terminated a contract that was in the process of transferring evidence of alleged Russian abductions of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime—to law enforcement officials in Europe.”
Rubio’s foreign policy doctrine and its wide-ranging surveillance and policy process changes would not look out of place in the authoritarian regimes he’d pursued hawkishly as a Senator.It is not unheard of for politicians to change opinions or policy positions as they rise in power and prominence, nor is it unorthodox practice for them to discard previously-held values at the apex of that political climb. Rubio’s opportunism, however, stands out because he presides over a particularly monumental and irreversible demolition project. If Rubio took the position under the hopes that he would guide foreign policy as he had from the Senate, he has instead been tasked with dismantling the very institutions needed to execute US diplomacy in the world. Partners, contractors and grantees in the United States and abroad cannot forget or experience in reverse the betrayal they feel at getting abandoned. Because Rubio put his face and name to the abandonment, there can be no lifeline offered from any other mainstream Republicans, unless an unforeseen sea change occurs.
Immediate monetary disbursement and assurance given to grantees, allies and partners are the absolute minimum of what would be needed to restore this historic crisis of confidence in the U.S. foreign policy institutions. Money obligated to agreements are a cornerstone of maintaining the reputation of the United States as an implementation partner on the most fundamental diplomatic, consular and development policies. Based on current trajectories of agencies and programs being cut, frozen or suspended, Rubio and the purportedly “stabilizing” element of the Republican party can be written off as uninterested, unwilling or unable to curb the impulses of Musk and Trump.
In a provocative new essay published by Foreign Affairs, Nancy Okail, President and CEO of the Center for International Policy, and Matt Duss, the organization’s Executive Vice President, present a sweeping critique of the entrenched U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy and lay out a bold blueprint for reform. The essay, “America Is Cursed by a Foreign Policy of Nostalgia,” challenges decades of militarism and neoliberal economic policies that have prioritized corporate and elite interests over the well-being of most Americans and people worldwide.
With the 2024 election confirming the collapse of Washington’s traditional foreign policy consensus, Okail and Duss argue that neither “America First” unilateralism nor liberal internationalism can address the urgent needs of a world grappling with climate change, economic inequality, and political instability. Instead, they call for a transformative foreign policy rooted in shared global challenges, equitable economic reform, and principled international cooperation.
“The United States must choose between advancing a genuinely equitable global order or clinging to an undemocratic and unsustainable quest for global primacy,” said Okail. “Our current trajectory not only fails to meet the needs of working Americans but also alienates nations and peoples worldwide that are calling for a more just and inclusive international system.”
Key recommendations in the essay include:
Ending Failed Militarism: Shifting from prioritizing global military hegemony at any cost to a foreign policy that prioritizes human security, accountability, conflict prevention, and consistent application of international laws and norms.
Breaking from Neoliberal Economics: Ensuring prosperity is more widely shared among US communities, while reducing global inequality and economic precarity through equitable trade, labor, and investment rules, including by reforming global institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to support low- and middle-income countries, enabling sustainable development and debt relief.
Redefining Relations with China: Moving beyond Great Power Competition and zero-sum strategic thinking to focus on collaborative solutions for climate change, public health, technological innovation, and a more inclusive global economic and political system.
“Decades of militarized foreign policy and economic systems designed to benefit corporations and the wealthy have left working-class Americans—and communities around the world—paying the price,” added Duss. “The 2024 election put a decisive stamp on what has long been clear: the Washington foreign policy consensus is not only intellectually bankrupt but also increasingly alienating to the American people. It’s time for a new approach that breaks from the false choice between ‘America First’ unilateralism and ‘America is Back’ nostalgia, focusing instead on the needs of everyday people and a future built on common good, human rights, and shared prosperity.”
This essay is a call to action for policymakers, thought leaders, and citizens who recognize that the challenges of the 21st century require a fundamentally new approach to U.S. leadership.
The full essay is available in Foreign Affairs and can be read here.
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The Center for International Policy (CIP) is a woman-led, progressive, independent nonprofit center for research, education, and advocacy working to advance a more peaceful, just, and sustainable U.S. approach to foreign policy.
The upcoming second Trump term will not be a mere retread of his first, post-Obama and pre-pandemic administration. Instead, Trump will return to power in a changed landscape, with new billionaire backers like Elon Musk and new conflicts that will shape his terms and choices. As Nancy Okail explains in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, this second Trump era will defined by new depths of corruption, Trump’s personal self-interest, a backdrop of “Great Power Competition” with Russia and China, and a global justice system on life support.
Writes Okail:
By eroding domestic institutions and bankrupting international ones—such as the World Health Organization and the World Food Program—Trump will undermine the very mechanisms that are vital for addressing global crises. Climate change, geopolitical instability, and pandemics do not—and will never—respect borders. It is impossible to safeguard Americans, not to mention people around the world, from these and other threats without international collaboration. While there are rightful critiques of our domestic and international institutions, destroying them without well-thought-out replacements will make life worse, not better, including for Trump’s own constituencies.
As international progressives, we must not be deterred, and there are four key areas on which we must focus to go beyond resistance and build a better world.
Abdelhalim Abdelrahman is a Palestinian-American political analyst and writer advocating for a restrained U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East centered around American laws and respect for Palestinian human rights.
When Vice President Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump on November 5th, she did so without carrying any of the seven battleground states. Armchair post-mortems of her defeat by pundits across the nation have identified many issues as possible culprits for Harris’ defeat, from the disillusionment of working-class Americans after a period of inflation to lack of enthusiasm for both candidates, and of course ongoing support from the Biden-Harris administration for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Pundits have been quick to label Gaza, and especially the U.S. role in allowing Israel to facilitate likely war crimes with U.S.-made weapons, as a phenomenon that only impacted Michigan’s Arab American community. While Gaza was a significant factor in why Kamala Harris lost the state, labeling Gaza as a problem unique only to Michigan’s Arab American is disingenuous.
U.S. labor unions in swing states, working class Americans and younger voters all played a significant role in protesting the onslaught in Gaza, and they represent an overlooked demographic within the anti-war bloc over the last year. Gaza hit home with America’s labor unions and youth, marking foreign policy not as a separate issue from domestic issues but one intimately bound up in them. The inability of Democrats to enforce U.S. law, adopt a restrained foreign policy, and focus on working class issues at home contributed in overlapping ways to Kamala Harris’ defeat.
U.S. Labor Unions Spearheaded Anti-Genocide Protest Efforts
Early signs of this split could be seen in the organs of workplace democracy. Major labor unions across the United States threatened to withhold endorsing Kamala Harris unless she broke with President Biden and his unwavering commitment to Israeli security. Such a sentiment was widespread amongst local labor unions in key swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin–the proverbial “blue wall” that Democrats have heavily relied upon in past elections. However, this time around, the “blue wall,” containing nearly 1.5 million labor union workers (530,000 in Michigan, 730,000 in Pennsylvania, and 205,000 in Wisconsin), crumbled.
The National Labor Network for a Ceasefire spearheaded a campaign for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel. The seven unions in the network represent 9 million workers, and on July 23 they made public a letter to the Biden administration in which the labor network called for a ceasefire and a halt on military aid to Israel. While most major labor unions went on to endorse Kamala Harris, not all of them were quick to do so. Shawn Fein, president of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), held out on endorsing Ms. Harris initially. While Fein and the UAW did endorse Harris, he and the UAW remained relentless in calling for a ceasefire.
Throughout the last year, labor union workers across the United States told reporters how they saw themselves in Gaza, indicating that the issue impacted more Americans than pundits may have realized.“Workers are always being attacked by companies or being exploited,” said labor union worker Marcie Pedraza in an interview with The Nationback in December. Pedraza continued, “Why wouldn’t this same concept apply to people being targeted in a lethal military campaign in another part of the world, who are suffering unimaginable levels of persecution and loss?”
UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla similarly told In These Times, “The amount of political backing, arms resources we supply to the State of Israel is astronomical… we spend so much on defense, military spending in lieu of actually trying to solve deep social crisis in this country, of inequality of healthcare, of food access, education, the things you need to survive in this country.” UAW’s Region 9A encompasses 34 local unions across eastern all six New England states plus eastern New York and Puerto Rico. While Trump did not win any of these states, he improved on his 2020 performance in New York State, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
Pedraza and Mancilla’s comments highlight how as workers they’ve connected the struggle of working class Americans to the harms of spending money on the military of other nations, especially when that spending is accepted as an unquestioned part of bipartisan consensus politics.
It is clear to American workers that a foreign policy that runs counter to American interests has a detrimental impact on their living conditions. And while Gaza was not the sole reason for Kamala Harris’ failure earlier this month, it at least serves as a contributing factor as to Democrats’ loss of credibility amongst America’s working class.
Embargoing Arms To Israel Is A Popular Position Democrats Refused to Embrace
An arms embargo on Israel is not just a specific focus of the working class and labor unions, it was and remains a popular position for most Americans, again demonstrating that Gaza was not an issue relegated solely to Arab-Americans. According to the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, pledging to impose an arms embargo would have given Kamala Harris an edge in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, states Harris lost. The IMEU study found that 35% of Democrats and Independents polled in Arizona said they would be more likely to vote for Harris had she embraced an arms embargo, versus 5% who said they would be less likely. The figures were similar in Georgia (39% versus 5%) and Pennsylvania (34% versus 7%).
Polling in other groups paints a similar picture. A poll conducted by CBS in June 2024 showed that 61% of Americans (including 77% of Democrats) were against sending aid to Israel. Additionally, studies conducted by CIRCLE at Tufts University in January 2024 showed that 38% of youth ages 18-34, including 56% of those who identify as Democratic or lean Democratic, thought Israel’s military operation was going “too far.” CIRCLE also noted that that 49% of youth voters believed there was a genocide happening in Gaza.
Had Harris embraced this popular position with American voters, she would have been in a much better position to win the election. However, by ignoring calls for an arms embargo on Israel and a ceasefire in Gaza, Harris and the Democrats at large undermined the notion that American foreign policy is for the middle class. Instead, it signaled that the U.S. is perfectly willing to bend its own rules against arming human rights violaters, and will do it over the objections and needs of young voters and working class Americans.
Internationale Laws
Going forward, progressives must communicate effectively how recalibrating America’s foreign policy is beneficial to Americans, especially young people and union workers. For example, despite credible evidence from human rights observers indicating that Israel has U.S. weapons to facilitate war crimes in Gaza and block aid from coming into the enclave –both blatant violations of the United States’s Leahy Law and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act–, Biden and Harris continued to provide Israel with unconditional arm shipments.
To re-engage the youth, working class and labor union workers, the United States must demonstrate a commitment to enforcing U.S. laws against human rights violators. That starts with enforcing the Leahy Law and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act. Another crucial step is showing hard-working Americans that the United States is committed to a foreign policy rooted in restraint and rule of law.
In 2024, unions and workers showed politicians how they understand solidarity with workers across the world. Bringing them back into the “big tent” means treating their analysis as honest, their qualms as real, and their goals as legitimate aims. If the U.S. can carve out special rules for favored allies, what’s to stop presidents from playing favorites with bosses over workers? Either we have a system of international laws that applies to everybody, or we don’t. Workers saw that. Maybe by 2028, presidential candidates will too.
After Tuesday’s sweeping electoral victory by former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, Politico asked 10 thinkers about what the defeated Democratic party needs right now.
Matt Duss, CIP’s executive vice president, says to listen to voters when they say that they’re hurting. Writes Duss:
It’s clear that, whatever experts might tell them about how great the economy is doing, a huge number of Americans are not feeling it in their own lives and communities. Joe Biden successfully adopted a unifying economic populist message from the party’s left in 2020, and as president took important steps to start building a more worker-centered American economy. Democrats really need to lean into that work with a vision that meets Americans from across the political spectrum where they are, and helps them see how policies often labeled “progressive” actually address the needs of workers and communities, including from purple and deep-red areas that have been passed over by globalization and corporatization of our entire economy. In the absence of that vision of shared American prosperity and security, many voters will continue to respond to demagogues who claim to feel their pain and pin the blame for it on immigrants, minorities and foreign enemies while doing nothing to actually make their lives better.
!['[We want] to live life with dignity.'' Portrait of Mohammed at his shop.](https://internationalpolicy.org/wp-content/smush-webp/2025/04/DSF3865-2-1.jpg.webp)
