Dr. Stephen Zunes, on "U.S. Middle East Policy Under Trump: How it Will Differ from Biden"

Dr. Stephen Zunes on "U.S. Middle East Policy Under Trump: How it Will Differ (and How it Won't) from Biden" (Green Sunday program)

** A second Trump administration will push U.S. policy in the Middle East in a very dangerous direction. Already, Trump has thrown his weight behind the most extremist elements in Israel while effectively renouncing international legal precedence, embracing Arab dictatorships, and making the U.S. very much of an outlier even among our pro-Western allies. However, the Biden administration pursued many of these dangerous policies as well. As a result, supporters of Palestinian rights--and proponents of human rights and international law in general--must be willing to challenge the leadership of both political parties in the coming months and years.

** Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he served as founding director of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. Recognized as one the country’s leading scholars of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, Zunes has served as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and a contributing editor of Tikkun.

He is also the principal editor of “Nonviolent Social Movements” (1999), author of the highly acclaimed “Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism” (2003) and co-author (with Jacob Mundy) of “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution” (second revised expanded edition, 2022.)

Zunes was the recipient of the 2015 Dean’s Scholar Award from USF’s College of Arts and Sciences and, in 2002, he won recognition from the Peace and Justice Studies Association as their first Peace Scholar of the Year. He is also a frequent contributor to periodicals and major daily newspapers on four continents and has also served as a consultant and board member for a number of peace and human rights organizations in both the United States and overseas.

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