The Senate on Thursday smacked down two measures sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that were intended to block the sale of some offensive weapons to Israel.
The first, a resolution to end the sale of certain bomb components and warheads, S.J. Res. 33, had 15 votes in favor and 82 against. The second, a resolution to end the sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions and some guidance kits, S.J. Res. 26, failed 15 - 83. All votes in favor were from Democrats.
His previous attempt at passing joint resolutions of disapproval for the sale of weapons to Israel in November 2024 also failed. Last time, he brought three JRDs forward, and they garnered slightly more support. A resolution to block the sale of some tank rounds received 21 votes in favor, and resolutions to block mortar rounds and guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions received 22 and 20 aye votes, respectively.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, with over 112,000 wounded, or 7% of the total population. Israel officially broke the January ceasefire and resumed military activity last week, killing at least 700 since.
Sen. Sanders noted during his remarks that all humanitarian aid had been blocked from entering Israel for over 30 days. He called what Israel is doing a violation of the Geneva Convention and the United States’ Foreign Assistance Act.
“It is no secret how these weapons have been used,” Sanders said. Strikes against civilian targets “have been painstakingly documented by human rights groups.”
Sanders pointed to a recent Economist-YouGov poll that showed only 15% of Americans support increasing military aid to Israel, while 35% supported ending or decreasing military support. Additionally, a J Street poll found that 62% of Jewish Americans supported the withholding of offensive weapons to Israel until Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to an immediate ceasefire.
Aaron is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft and a contributor to the Mises Institute. He received both his undergraduate and masters degrees in international relations from Liberty University.
Top Photo: Committee Chairman U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Julie Su's nomination to be Labor Secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 20, 2023. REUTERS/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
Committee Chairman U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Julie Su's nomination to be Labor Secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 20, 2023. REUTERS/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
Top photo credit: A vessel, which U.S. President Donald Trump said was transporting illegal narcotics and heading to the U.S., is struck by the U.S. military as it navigates in the southern Caribbean, in this still image obtained from video posted by U.S. President Donald Trump on Truth Social and released September 2, 2025. DONALD TRUMP VIA TRUTH SOCIAL/Handout via REUTERS
Military tensions in the southern Caribbean have rapidly grown following President Trump’s decision to launch an airstrike on a boat allegedly smuggling drugs near Venezuela. As the U.S. announced the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to bolster its forces in the region, a pair of Venezuelan planes flew over an American warship in a move that the Pentagon described as “highly provocative.”
All evidence suggests that a broader military operation could be in the offing. Last Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged to continue the attacks and said regional governments “will help us find these people and blow them up.”
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asked whether the end goal is regime change in Venezuela, told Fox and Friends that the Pentagon is “prepared with every asset that the American military has” should Trump choose to move forward with such an operation.
The rapid escalation seems to have put Congress on the back foot. While many lawmakers moved quickly to condemn Trump’s attacks on Iran earlier this year, strikingly few members of Congress have shown the same level of enthusiasm when it comes to Venezuela.
Responsible Statecraft reached out to 19 congressional offices about the campaign but only heard back from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who simply shared a statement asking a series of questions about the goals and legality of the strike. (Smith later used stronger language, accusing Trump Thursday of trying to start “a war with Venezuela.”)
A smattering of other lawmakers have put outstatements condemning the strikes. Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) lamented that Trump launched the campaign without congressional authorization and called on Congress to act in order to avoid a new “forever war.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for his part, told Newsmax that “it isn’t our policy just to blow people up.” But Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—all of whom often rail against presidents for starting conflicts without consulting Congress—have so far stayed silent on the issue.
This relative quiet contrasts sharply with the outrage expressed by legal experts, who have loudly rejected Trump’s claim that he has the right to blow up alleged drug traffickers in order to defend the United States from “narco-terrorists.” As Andy McCarthy of the National Review noted, Trump is taking the position that a boat operated by a designated terror group is “functionally the same as a hostile foreign naval force that is in the act of conducting an armed attack against the United States”—a “controversial claim, to put it mildly.”
“When you see the premeditated killing of another person outside of an armed conflict, there’s a term for that, and that term is murder,” former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told NPR, noting that the administration has failed to establish that the U.S. is at war with the organizations it is now bombing. “This is not an appropriate use of lethal military force.”
The Trump administrationsought to legally justify the strikes in a notification to Congress in which it argued that the threat from drug trafficking has reached a “critical point” that can only be resolved using “military force in self-defense.” But the brazen nature of the strikes has even drawn some criticism from within the Trump administration. An anonymous senior Pentagon official told the Intercept that the attack amounted to an illegal execution of civilians. “The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians,” the official said. “Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants.”
This week could offer an indication of whether lawmakers are willing to take steps to rein in the rapidly escalating standoff in the southern Caribbean. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) has introduced an amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act that would block funds for any use of military force “in or against Venezuela.” In a statement on X, Casar emphasized that “Only Congress has the power to declare war.”
If the proposal makes it through the Rules Committee, then lawmakers will be forced to take a side on the issue. In the meantime, most members of Congress appear content to take a back seat as Trump tests his ability to bring the war on terror to the Western Hemisphere.
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Top photo credit: Pacific Island Forum, Special Forum Economic Ministers Meeting, March 2025 (Flickr/Pacific Island Forum)
Pacific Island leaders are pushing back against the rising geopolitical jousting between big powers in their region by barring international development partners, including the U.S. and China, from their annual summit this week.
Beginning Monday, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele will host this year’s five-day meeting of leaders from the 18 Pacific Island Forum member countries, including Australia and New Zealand, in his country’s capital, Honiara. On the agenda will be topics of regional concern, from development and security to climate change and governance.
Twenty-one global partners, including the U.S., United Kingdom, European Union, Canada, China and Japan, will be absent, although the World Bank and United Nations agencies will attend as observers. The move is designed to prevent interference by external players intent on bolstering their broader geopolitical ambitions.
"It is necessary to ensure engagement is conducted through a robust, transparent and strategic mechanism that reflects our priorities, protects our sovereignty and strengthens our collective voice globally,” Manele explained in a recent press briefing.
There has been a lot of media speculation about what exactly triggered the sudden announcement, given that international partners have attended leaders’ summits since the 1990s, with attention focused on the diplomatic tussle between China and Taiwan for standing in the region. Last month media reports alleged that Chinese officials had pushed for the Solomon Islands government to exclude Taiwan, which is diplomatically aligned with Tuvalu, Palau and Marshall Islands, from the Forum summit.
At last year’s leaders’ meeting in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, Chinese diplomats pressed for removing all references to Taiwan in the summit’s final communique. And, while denying their intent to interfere in this year’s summit, Chinese embassy officials declared that Taiwan is not a country and has “no qualification or right to participate in Forum activities whatsoever.”
Yet, while Manele’s announcement last month was made with a united Forum front, public statements subsequently suggested that not everyone necessarily agreed. The partner ban was supported by Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Junior and Samoa’s leader, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa. In concurring, Crown Prince Tupouto’a ‘Ulukalala’ claimed the outcome followed “a rich and robust discussion and was reflective of our collective maturity and solidarity as a region.”
Yet Papua New Guinea and New Zealand expressed misgivings, while the United States and Australia voiced support for the participation of all global partners. Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, wrote to Manele encouraging him to rethink the move to “avoid the unintended consequence of distancing partners at a pivotal time” of development needs.
Yet the Pacific leaders’ concerns are not unfounded. The intensifying war of one-upmanship between the U.S. and its allies on the one hand and China on the other for strategic control in the Pacific is growing. It was accelerated by the extensive China-Solomon Islands security pact announced in 2022, which includes a provision for the Pacific nation to call on Chinese police and military forces to maintain social order.
It was a development that provoked the U.S., Australia and New Zealand to launch myriad aid and security countermoves. The Biden administration invited Pacific leaders to Washington summits in 2022 and 2023, where promises were made to strengthen economic and climate change assistance and provide more than $1 billion in additional aid funding. Some U.S. embassies were reopened in Pacific Island countries, augmented last month by the opening of a new FBI office in Wellington, New Zealand.
But the rash of executive orders issued by Trump this year dealt a blow to U.S. soft-power relations to the Pacific Islands. His hefty new trade tariffs on developing Pacific Island countries — 32% imposed on Fiji, 22% on Vanuatu and 10% on Papua New Guinea — generated less than favorable reactions.
“If the U.S. market becomes more difficult due to this tariff, we will simply redirect our goods to markets where there is mutual respect and no artificial barriers,” PNG’s Prime Minister James Marape warned in April.
“The U.S.’ seeming erosion of the international rules-based order and the multilateral system will be of concern to Pacific Island leaders who rely on and invest heavily in the multilateral system to advance their key interests,” Joel Nilon, Senior Pacific Fellow at the Pacific Security College at the Australian National University, told RS. Leaders of Tonga, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands and Palau wrote a letter to Trump expressing their concerns about his policy turns in April.
Before USAID was drastically downsized in January, Washington spent $3.4 billion on aid assistance to the region annually. Even then, it has trailed behind Australia, New Zealand and Japan in the magnitude of development assistance it provided to the region.
At the same time, however, the U.S. has retained the Biden administration’s rhetoric about the region’s geopolitical importance. “America, as the leader of the free world defending American interests, is going to need to make sure we’re focused properly on the Communist Chinese and their ambitions in the Indo-Pacific and around the world,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared in February, as Admiral Samuel Paparo of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command visited Australia to strengthen defense ties.
In the same month, Chinese naval vessels conducted unprecedented maneuvers in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.
The decline of U.S. assistance and its relative disinterest in Pacific perspectives, particularly regarding climate change, could have long-term implications for its assumptions about the region’s support for its plans to counter China’s own ambitions. Its diminished status as a development partner is already giving China plenty of gaps to fill. In May, China hosted its annual China-Pacific Islands Foreign Ministers Meeting for the first time in China, where it showcased a swathe of climate-related projects for Pacific countries.
A preoccupation with beefing up U.S. military and intelligence presence in the region will not by itself build strong, trust-based bilateral relationships with the region’s key players. This obsession has minimal currency with Pacific Islanders and “is very much perceived by leaders as a major distraction from their real security concerns,” Nilon emphasised, notably climate change, the risks of natural disasters, and development challenges, as well as transnational crime, border and cybersecurity.
Over the next year, the Pacific Islands Forum will review and redraft its future engagement strategy with donor countries. And before the 2026 leaders’ summit takes place in Palau, when partner dialogue meetings are expected to resume, there is an opportunity for the U.S. administration to also rethink its strategic approach. Ultimately Pacific Islanders desire a new script with America listening and consulting in a genuine, reciprocal and consistent long-term partnership.
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Top image credit: BEIJING, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 03: The airborne unmanned warfare formation attends V-Day military parade to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War on September 3, 2025 in Beijing, China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via REUTERS)
Yet this interpretation is both misleading and unhelpful. The parade did not mark the transfer of unipolar dominance from Washington to Beijing. Rather, it highlighted how China seeks to consolidate its position as a central pole in a world that is already multipolar.
To understand why, it helps to recall the categories outlined by Amitav Acharya, professor of international relations at American University, in “The End of American World Order” — regional powers, great powers, and superpowers. The United States after 1945 reached the level of a superpower not simply because of its vast economy but because economic power was combined with military might, technological superiority, political legitimacy, and a dense alliance system. It had the dollar as a convertible global currency, forward basing across multiple continents, and an architecture of institutions that embedded its primacy. America’s rise was comprehensive.
China’s military parade this week was an acknowledgment of this reality. It was not only a show of missiles, drones, and precision weapons but also a statement that Beijing understands that sustained global influence requires more than GDP. It requires the ability to defend trade routes, project power, and demonstrate resilience in the face of coercion. In other words, China knows that economic growth must be backed by military and political capability if it is to be translated into long-term status. The parade was therefore a performance of China’s determination to link its economic trajectory to credible hard power.
But the conclusion that China is therefore the next hegemon is premature. China still lacks many of the systemic features that underpinned U.S. primacy. The renminbi — China’s currency — is not yet fully convertible and cannot anchor the global financial system in the way the dollar has. Beijing has partners and organizations like the SCO and BRICS, but it does not possess an alliance system comparable to NATO or America’s treaty network in Asia. Its overseas basing is minimal. Its ability to project force globally is limited compared to Washington’s naval and air dominance. What the parade demonstrated was progress and intent, not the arrival of unipolarity.
This is why it is more accurate to see the current moment as the consolidation of multipolarity. The United States still retains key advantages: technological leadership, alliance density, and the institutional depth of the liberal order. But it no longer enjoys uncontested primacy, as recent wars and crises have made clear. China, Russia, India, and other major states each have capacities to shape the system but none can impose rules alone. The Global South, too, is asserting agency, diversifying partnerships, and resisting being folded into a binary competition. The world looks less like the dominance of one and more like what Acharya calls an “archipelago of powers.”
The parade in Beijing, then, should not be read as the curtain-raiser for a Chinese century. It should be seen as part of a larger process in which China is moving to solidify its role as one pole in a plural order. This is consistent with its economic strategy of building connectivity projects through the Belt and Road, its political diplomacy within the SCO and BRICS, and its growing military modernization. Yet it is not evidence of a coming unipole. It is evidence of Beijing’s understanding that status in the 21st century comes from integration of multiple dimensions of power.
What emerges from this perspective is a sobering but also stabilizing lesson: the age of single superpowers is over. The United States is not disappearing, but it is no longer unrivaled. China is rising, but it will not enjoy hegemonic dominance. Instead, the near future will be shaped by several major powers whose interactions, rivalries, and limited cooperation will form the texture of world politics. Recognizing this reality can help prevent the false expectations that fuel confrontation. The real challenge is to build mechanisms for coexistence among poles rather than to seek another unipolar order that will never come.
China’s parade was a symbol of ambition, confidence, and intent. But it was not a coronation. It was a reminder that multipolarity is here to stay, and that the future will be decided not by a single superpower but by how the great powers manage to live together in an archipelago of power.
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