In today's episode
- US is the only country to vote against Gaza ceasefire resolution
- US Congress debates USD 886 billion defense bill
Source: People Dispatch
- US is the only country to vote against Gaza ceasefire resolution
- US Congress debates USD 886 billion defense bill
Source: People Dispatch
Category
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NewsTranscript
00:00 The United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire.
00:04 Now let's say that again, the US was the only country to object to calling for an end
00:10 to the brutal Israeli bombing of Gaza.
00:13 Now this bombing has killed over 17,000 people including thousands of children.
00:18 In this week and episode of Daily Debrief, we take a look at what happened at the UN
00:22 Security Council on Friday and what is a connected issue, the US proposal for a military budget.
00:27 On Friday, the UN Security Council debated the situation in Gaza where brutal Israeli
00:47 attacks have led to over 17,000 deaths.
00:50 The discussion came about as a result of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres invoking
00:54 Article 99 of the UN Charter, bringing the matter to the Council's notice.
00:59 A resolution for a ceasefire was voted on.
01:01 Thirteen countries backed it.
01:03 One country, the United Kingdom, abstained.
01:06 One country, that is a permanent member of the Council, that's the United States, exercised
01:10 its veto power blocking the resolution.
01:13 Of the many moments in the past two months that have revealed the truth about the US
01:17 position and its backing of Israel, this is perhaps the most stark.
01:21 We go to Abdul for more on what happened.
01:23 Abdul, thank you so much for joining us.
01:25 Security Council discussion and a resolution which I think really provided a clarity on
01:30 where the world stands at this point.
01:32 Thirteen countries voting in support of an immediate ceasefire.
01:35 The UK, a long close ally of the United States, of course, abstaining, and the US being the
01:41 sole country exercising its veto power against.
01:44 But could you maybe take us through what happened during these proceedings?
01:48 The UN Secretary General also making some very powerful remarks.
01:51 Could you maybe take us through all of that?
01:53 Well, Prashant, yet again on Friday, United Nations Security Council failed to adopt a
01:59 resolution demanding immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, despite the fact that most
02:08 of the United Nations Security Council permanent members voted in favor.
02:14 This was not adopted primarily because the US vetoed the resolution claiming that the
02:21 language of it is not balanced.
02:25 It basically does not criticize Hamas and only talks about ceasefire and return of all
02:33 the hostages.
02:34 Apparently, this was not enough for the United States to support the resolution.
02:42 The meeting of the United Nations Security Council was held primarily on the invocation
02:48 of Article 99 of the United Nations Charter by the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio
02:55 Guterres, last week.
02:58 It was considered to be a very rare move considering the overall situation in Gaza, which is becoming
03:07 bad towards every day.
03:09 More than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed and around 47,000 Palestinians have been injured,
03:19 apart from the overall destruction of the besieged Palestinian territory.
03:24 This is not sustainable.
03:26 On basis of that, Guterres had basically asked the Security Council to basically take a decisive
03:36 step and ask Israel to stop its aggression in Gaza.
03:42 But of course, US, which is considered to be supporting the Israeli aggression, decided
03:48 not to go ahead with the rest of the world community and that was obvious because except
03:56 for the UK, which abstained, rest of all the 13 countries in the Security Council voted
04:02 in favor of the resolution.
04:06 Following the failure of the United Nations Security Council, and this is not the first
04:10 time, this is the fourth or fifth time since the war began on October 7, when the United
04:19 Nations Security Council has failed and primarily because the US has been adamant to not vote
04:27 in support of any such resolution, finding one excuse or another.
04:36 The failure of the Security Council to adopt the resolution and the US veto invited, of
04:42 course, strong reactions from the permanent members like Russia and China, China calling
04:49 it hypocrisy, particularly invoking the fact that the US is repeatedly saying that Israel
04:58 should avoid killing civilians in its operation, in its war in Gaza, saying that this particular
05:06 statement is hypocritical when you do not support a ceasefire resolution in the Security
05:13 Council.
05:14 Russia also had a similar thing to say and apart from that, of course, the overall mood
05:24 across the members in the United Nations Security Council was, of course, against this particular
05:30 veto.
05:31 Right.
05:32 In the aftermath of the veto, we have seen, I think, a wide variety of responses of condemnation,
05:36 of course, from across the globe, aid agencies on one hand, many, many countries also taking
05:41 a strong position.
05:42 Can you maybe also detail what some of the positions and responses to this veto have
05:47 been?
05:48 Well, Prashant, the failure of the United Nations Security Council to adopt the permanent
05:54 ceasefire resolution on Friday and the US veto, which was primarily responsible for
06:00 this failure, have invited strong reactions from all across the world.
06:07 US human rights organizations, including the Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International,
06:14 Human Rights Watch and others have called it a US, basically US defense of something
06:25 which cannot be morally defensible.
06:31 Doctors Without Borders has called it a kind of US double standards, primarily in the context
06:40 that it talks about human rights, it talks about peace, it talks about avoiding the killing
06:45 of civilians on various platforms and often has been seen championing the cause of civilian
06:55 casualties all across the world.
06:58 But when it comes to Palestine, when it comes to Israel, US basically completely goes opposite
07:05 to its stance in the global fora and defends the killing of innocent civilians, children,
07:14 women and elderly.
07:17 And that is exactly what the veto means.
07:20 Doctors Without Borders has said this.
07:24 Human Rights Watch says that US move to basically veto the UN resolution basically amounts to
07:32 complicity in the war crimes which Israel is committing inside Gaza Strip.
07:39 Apart from these human rights groups, there are various other countries, including Palestinians,
07:45 who have condemned the US veto, calling it, for example, Russia calling it signing a death
07:52 warrant for thousands of more Palestinians in the coming days.
07:57 US has done it.
07:59 China called it hypocrisy, particularly in underlining the fact that US has been stating
08:07 that it is concerned about the death of civilians in Gaza and asking Israel to avoid the death
08:13 of civilians.
08:15 Chinese ambassador in the United Nations Security Council said, on one side you are talking
08:22 about avoiding the death of civilians, but on the other side, vetoing the resolution
08:27 which talks about ceasefire in Gaza, this stand is contradictory and this basically
08:37 amounts to hypocrisy.
08:38 That is exactly those were the words by Chinese.
08:44 Apart from that, for example, Iran saying that this act again provokes regional escalation
08:53 and that is not good for the peace of the region and peace in the world.
09:02 Apart from that, several other countries, including some of the close allies of the
09:06 United States have condemned its veto to the UN resolution asking for ceasefire on Friday.
09:16 And finally, Abdul, of course, another week of relentless bombing, atrocities of various
09:21 kinds.
09:22 Maybe could you also take us through what the situation on the ground is, especially
09:24 the humanitarian situation and what is happening as far as the war is concerned or rather the
09:30 genocidal war is concerned, what is the nature of Israel's attacks like at this point?
09:35 Well, Prashant, the overall situation in Gaza has further deteriorated since we last talked
09:43 about it.
09:46 The overall number of Palestinians killed since the war began on October 7 is about
09:53 to reach 18,000.
09:56 The figure is around 17,700, including the murder of Palestinian civilians in occupied
10:07 West Bank.
10:09 The number of Palestinians injured is reaching 47,000.
10:15 And if you see, almost entire Gaza Strip can be called displaced because none of the residential
10:26 areas, all across the Gaza Strip, none of the shelters are safe and people, wherever
10:33 they are, they have been targeted.
10:35 So most of the people are living in tents or in the open air or in UNRWA schools.
10:46 Most of the hospitals, when it comes to the health situation in Gaza, are shut.
10:52 Whatever hospitals are operating, they are operating with a very limited resource, very
11:00 limited supply of medicines.
11:04 Most of the medical staff is also under stress, working more than their capacity.
11:14 The aid situation is also not improving.
11:18 In fact, it has deteriorated ever since the ceasefire, the humanitarian pause, the truce,
11:26 which was there for a week, almost a week, was basically violated by Israel.
11:34 And since then, the number of trucks which basically carry the essential items for the
11:40 Palestinians affected by war in Gaza have gone down tremendously.
11:46 So the overall situation, when it comes to the supply of food, medicine, fuel, basic
11:53 clothing, drinking water, everything is becoming back to worse.
12:00 And the situation, of course, has been alarming for a very long time now.
12:06 And gradually there is a scene of collapse in humanitarian operations also.
12:14 So for example, the aid workers are also overworked.
12:19 And since this war is now reaching almost two and a half months, this basically creates
12:26 a situation where no system can be sustained any longer.
12:32 And that basically means a total collapse of all kind of order and system in the occupied
12:40 Gaza.
12:42 And that is the overall situation at this moment.
12:45 And since the bombing continues, ground offensive continues in south and in north, more and
12:53 more people are basically forced to evacuate by the Israeli ground forces.
12:59 When they bomb their houses, they bomb their shelters and moved to temporary shelters.
13:06 So overall, the situation in occupied Gaza is completely out of hand, out of control
13:12 at this moment.
13:14 And this is going, after a point we will not have words to describe it if this continues
13:20 for any longer.
13:22 Thank you, Abdul, for joining us.
13:23 We will come back to you next week.
13:24 Continuing with the US, every year Congress debates what is called the National Defense
13:28 Authorization Act, which sanctions money for the Pentagon in the coming year.
13:32 Every year we see how the US spends more than the next five to seven countries combined
13:36 in military expenditure.
13:38 This year the number is at 886 billion and more could have been sanctioned were it not
13:42 for internal political squabbles.
13:44 We go to Anish for details on the US defense budget.
13:47 Defense bill is something we often talk about mainly because of the fact that every year
13:51 the numbers seem to keep increasing.
13:53 So what is this proposal, what does this bill look like this year?
13:57 Well, a couple of things actually, it's a mixed package in many ways.
14:03 One thing that is quite obvious is the fact that it has a significant increase.
14:08 Again, we are now closing to about $900 billion of annual funding.
14:14 It's something that no other country, in fact, the next couple of countries that actually
14:19 spend on military defense would not be able to catch up with that kind of budget anytime
14:25 soon.
14:26 So this is something that is going to continue at a time when the US has other priorities
14:31 as well.
14:32 Something that a few very rare legislators in the Congress have talked about, but nevertheless
14:38 all of that has fallen to death years.
14:41 On the other hand, what we are seeing is the reinforcement of the AUKUS alliance, which
14:48 is pretty much the key part of the key victory that the Democrats are now claiming for themselves.
14:56 Basically going against all the warnings from Australian activists or even US activists
15:05 have been talking about how this is going to just militarize a region that doesn't require
15:10 a militarization, that has been known for being peaceful for more than a decade, for
15:15 nearly a century now.
15:17 And this is something that is going to aggravate and escalate tensions that is not going to
15:23 be very good for anybody in the world.
15:27 And on top of that, you have an expansion of military aid to Taiwan.
15:35 Now there is a separate sort of budget being earmarked for training the Taiwanese forces
15:41 and supposedly upgrading their defense capabilities.
15:45 Now that is again going to just put every kind of talks about going for peace or reconciliation
15:53 that we spoke about actually with the previous Biden-Xi meeting in San Francisco completely
15:59 out of the window.
16:02 That is going to just jeopardize the entire thing altogether.
16:06 And nevertheless, tensions are going to keep rising.
16:08 So what we're looking at is like militarization of newer regions.
16:13 But in some ways, the right-wing Republicans are the ones that are now responsible for
16:19 scuttling a supplemental bill of about $100, $106 billion for Ukraine and Israel, something
16:27 that would have actually brought the budget close to about a trillion dollars, which would
16:32 have been a record-breaking thing, obviously.
16:35 But definitely the fact that the US and the Biden administration and the Democrats, obviously,
16:40 by and large, were advocating for it, and you only had like one lone senator among the
16:46 Democrats or the Democratic bloc, which is Bernie Sanders, voting against it, clearly
16:51 shows that all this lesser evilism is really not about lesser evil.
16:57 It's pretty much just coming together in favor of imperialism.
17:01 And so the scuttling of that doesn't necessarily mean that the US is going to stop funding
17:06 the military programs, you know, or all sorts of reactionary movements in Ukraine, or the
17:13 genocidal war in Israel.
17:15 They might find other ways to fund it or other ways to aid these wars.
17:21 But it can actually, it is a setback that they'd never expected to happen, because even
17:27 the Republicans, by and large, not just right-wing Republicans, but Republicans entirely were
17:31 against it.
17:33 So that is the only, you know, decently good thing that happened of the compromise that
17:38 actually, but nevertheless, it actually gave, what I said, it gave an expanded budget.
17:43 In fact, $32 billion extra was given, handed to the president by this compromise than what
17:50 was asked for even.
17:51 So that clearly shows that US is in no way close to any kind of attempt to bring down
17:58 its militarization programs.
17:59 It is going to continue its new Cold War against the world, essentially.
18:04 Right, Anish.
18:05 Also, ironic, because it's taking place during COP 28 at a time when the US military is,
18:09 of course, one of the largest institutional polluters.
18:12 But also looking at it, what does it mean in terms of, you know, deployments, in terms
18:16 of weapons systems?
18:18 What does it really mean for world peace, actually?
18:22 It is not good news, definitely.
18:25 What we're looking at, as I pointed out, the tensions are going to aggravate because newer
18:29 deployments are going to happen, more modern weaponry.
18:33 And that will also put a strain on budgets around the world, including Australia, which
18:38 is, you know, the submarine, nuclear submarine deals have been taken up, has been passed
18:45 by the Congress right now, despite dissent within the Congress, even within the Republican
18:51 Party.
18:52 But in general, what we're looking at is an expanded set of deployments on a more spread
18:59 out basis around the world.
19:01 And that is going to be a bigger problem than, you know, even just targeted deployments at
19:07 some level.
19:08 Because what we're looking at is that they are trying to open fronts in different parts
19:13 of the world.
19:14 Obviously, and we have talked about these fronts, the kind of hotlines that they are
19:18 trying to exploit for their geopolitical aims.
19:23 One thing that I want to add about is also a very significantly very clear targeting
19:28 of China again.
19:30 And it's not just through Taiwan, they're going to cut down or phase out or completely
19:36 end battery imports from China for different purposes, saying that it somehow poses cyber
19:44 threats against the US military.
19:47 And on top of that, there is going to be a funding criteria for films or any kind of
19:54 production that Pentagon will be spending money on, which will include that there should
20:00 be no censorship from China, or that the said work should not censor anything at the behest
20:05 of China.
20:06 So this kind of anti-China drivel, obviously, is just magnified.
20:12 And this is supposedly the more level-headed president that we are supposed to be having
20:18 right now.
20:19 But obviously, that is something that is quite clear.
20:23 It pretty much shows that target is China, who it sees as a threat.
20:27 It very clearly sees a threat, even with the discourse that we have seen over the past
20:32 few weeks over the budget.
20:35 And that is now becoming more and more apparent, even in different spending bills now.
20:40 And that is going to clearly show that peace is not something that the US is really aiming
20:45 for right now.
20:46 If it's the only reason why the supplemental bill was scuttled is because it is going to
20:50 put an extra strain on the country's budget and nothing else.
20:55 And it's just the fact that if only they go bankrupt, that they're going to start scaling
20:59 down their military spending clearly shows that their priorities are far, has no scope
21:06 for peace at any point in time.
21:07 Manish, thank you so much for that analysis, not to mention that, like you said, a very
21:11 important point about other NATO countries also ramping up their military expenditures.
21:16 So overall, I think the next CIPRI report might have a lot to say about what is happening
21:20 in the world right now.
21:21 We'll come back to you when more such details come out.
21:24 That's all we have in this episode of Daily Debrief.
21:26 We'll be back on Monday with a fresh episode.
21:28 In the meanwhile, do visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on all the social media platforms.
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