Month: September 2024

Ivanti fixed a maximum severity flaw in its Endpoint Management software (EPM) that can let attackers achieve remote code execution on the core server

Ivanti Endpoint Management (EPM) software is a comprehensive solution designed to help organizations manage and secure their endpoint devices across various platforms, including Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, and IoT systems.

The software firm released security updates to address a maximum security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-29847, in its Endpoint Management software (EPM).

The vulnerability is a deserialization of untrusted data issue that resides in the agent portal, attackers can exploit the flaw to achieve remote code execution on the core server.

“Deserialization of untrusted data in the agent portal of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution.” reads the advisory published by the company.

Ivanti also fixed multiple critical, medium and high-severity vulnerabilities that can be exploited to achieve unauthorized access to the EPM core server. 

Critical SQL injection vulnerabilities CVE-2024-32840, CVE-2024-32842, CVE-2024-32843, CVE-2024-32845, CVE-2024-32846, CVE-2024-32848, CVE-2024-34779, CVE-2024-34783, CVE-2024-34785 (CVSS scores of 9.1) could allow a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to execute arbitrary code on the core server.

The flaws impact Ivanti Endpoint Manager  versions 2024 and 2022 SU5 and earlier, the versions 2024 with Security Patch,  (Need to apply both July and September)2024 SU1 (To be released) and 2022 SU6 fixed the problems

The company is not aware of attacks in the wild exploiting the vulnerabilities in the advisory.

“We are not aware of any customers being exploited by these vulnerabilities at the time of disclosure.” concludes the advisory.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, SQL injection) 

On the presidential debate stage Tuesday, former President Donald Trump spewed reliably racist and lie-riddled diatribes about towns being taken over by “millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, didn’t bother to counter the sentiment, the central ideological violence at the heart of Trump’s message. Harris, albeit in the predictably moderated tones of a Democratic border authoritarian, upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is — should be stopped.

Both candidates purported to offer diametrically opposed visions for the country’s future. When it came to immigration and the U.S. border, however, only one narrative was available throughout the night: Immigration is a social ill, if not a criminal endeavor, to be deterred as much as possible.

Harris upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is — should be stopped.

David Muir, the ABC news anchor and debate moderator, set the bleak, hyper-nationalist tone. He opened the discussion on immigration with a lengthy question posed to Harris.

“We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration,” he said, noting that, since President Joe Biden “imposed tough asylum restrictions” last June, the numbers are down.

“Why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act?” he asked Harris. “And would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?”

This narrative of a “border crisis” was taken for granted from the jump — specifically, that it is a “crisis” for the U.S., not the desperate people who have fled their homes and must face brutal, unforgiving barriers to seek refuge here. Harris answered Muir accordingly, treating migration as a problem of criminality to be policed and fought.

“I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings,” she said. “The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported.” The bill, she noted, “would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border” and “allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl.”

The border bill in question was indeed one of the most draconian in recent memory. Harris’s only problem with the legislation, she said on Tuesday, was that Trump had allies in Congress kill it. Meanwhile, Biden’s executive order, cited approvingly by Muir, lowered crossing numbers because it effectively shuttered the southern border, even to asylum-seekers — an affront to international humanitarian law and, more to the point, an echo of Trump’s ban on asylum.

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Floaters: Our Reflection in the Rio Grande

The only characters in current migration narratives mentioned by the cable news host and the Democratic nominee were gang members, traffickers, fentanyl pushers, and “illegal” border crossers. Obscured totally from view: the hundreds of thousands of people risking their lives to cross the border to find safety and better lives in the wealthiest nation on Earth — a nation that bears significant historic responsibility for much of the political turmoil that has driven millions of people to flee violence, repression, economic devastation, and climate catastrophe in Northern Triangle countries, Haiti, and elsewhere in the first place.

Even typical liberal shibboleths about our “nation of immigrants” were absent on Tuesday night. So, too, was any reckoning with the deadly consequences of hardened border policy. As many as 80,000 people have reportedly died trying to cross into the U.S. through the Southern border in the last decade.

The reality in which a Democratic candidate would advocate for opening borders is, of course, a distant cry from our current cruel and nationalist political quagmire. Harris, the centrist Democratic candidate, does not even mention the economic and social interests served by welcoming migrant workers into the U.S., as the existing population ages and the need for workers, particularly in the care sector, only grows.

From an electoral point of view, too, centrists bending rightward — appealing to white resentment — has in the last decade only served to strengthen far-right leaders and parties, from Italy to France to Germany.

Immigrants, of course, should be welcomed as a point of ethical and humanitarian necessity — of global justice — not only in service of the U.S. economy or electoral maneuvering. As Tuesday’s debate made clear, however, that when it comes to border politics, inhumanity is a point of bipartisan agreement.

Border Rule Race to the Bottom

This race to the bottom on “law and order” border rule is not new. As I’ve previously noted, the Biden–Harris administration is not simply borrowing Republican talking points to appeal to disaffected conservatives. Harsh border policies have been the standard of Democratic administrations for three decades, dating back at least to Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House.

Clinton’s 1996 immigration laws significantly expanded the United States’ ability to detain and deport migrants with even minor criminal convictions. President Barak Obama relied, like Harris since, on the racist, classist narrative of only targeting “criminal” migrants and deported some 3 million people — earning the moniker “deporter in chief.”

Biden’s administration followed suit, shuttering the border this year; introducing a policy in early 2023 to immediately eject asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua who cross the border without having previously applied for asylum in a third country; and overseeing the increased use of solitary confinement for thousands of detained migrants.

While Democrats will participate in this bigoted race to the bottom, it should not be lost on us that Republicans — especially Trump and his allies — will always win. Harris’s grim picture of gangs and trafficking was met by Trump’s obscene, unfounded repetition of the lie that immigrants from Haiti are stealing and eating people’s pets.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said, parroting a lie posted by vice presidential candidate JD Vance and other right-wing online grifters like Elon Musk about immigrants in Ohio. On the debate stage, Trump grew ever more outlandish: “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

The racist myth sits within a legacy of vile slander faced by Haitians in the West, ever since Haitians liberated themselves from the yoke of French colonialism in the world’s most renown successful revolt by enslaved people. Trump and his followers need not know the specific history of racist backlash to play into its violent afterlives.

Muir, the host, did note — in one of only a few mealy-mouthed fact checks — that, no, there were no credible reports of any such incident in Springfield. Yet when the stage is set to treat Black and other migrants of color as de facto criminals, neither Muir nor Harris, nor anyone involved in Tuesday’s performance — or in this entire election — is a bulwark to the dehumanization to which immigrants are subjected.

The rhetoric around the “border crisis,” from the far right to the liberal center, suggests that the pressure of global migration is bearing down on the U.S. This is hardly the case.

The overwhelming majority of displaced people in the world are internally displaced or in refugee camps near their countries of origin. By comparison to the United States’ so-called crisis, around 1.5 million Syrian refugees currently reside in Lebanon, where the total population is only 5.5 million.

I’m not suggesting that, even for a global superpower, it does not take resources and work to settle millions of newcomers into a country, but these are questions of resource distribution priorities. Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent an estimated $409 billion on immigration enforcement agencies alone, and tens of billions more on deterrence strategies like barriers and walls.

Prioritizing the economic security of our collective lives, and the lives of those who enter the country, rather than “securing the border” through militarized violence, would see such sums better spent.

Correction: September 11, 2024, 11:57 a.m. ET
An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of ABC news anchor and moderator David Muir.

The post Kamala Harris Accepted Trump’s Racist Lie That Immigration Is Bad appeared first on The Intercept.

Today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that Iran has delivered close range ballistic missiles (CRBMs) to Russia, which he expects Russian forces will use against Ukraine within a matter of weeks.

At the same time, the US Department of the Treasury announced the imposition of additional sanctions on Iranian and Russian individuals and entities, including Iran Air. These moves can hardly come as a surprise to Moscow and Tehran and will not serve to get either to change course. The real question is how the Iranian transfer of CRBMs to Russia will affect the Russia-Iran relationship. Specifically: Does Russia’s dependence on Iran, first for armed drones and now for CRBMs, give Tehran a degree of leverage over Moscow? And what would Tehran want to get from Moscow with that leverage?

Iran has long sought Su-35 fighter aircraft and S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia, according to reports, but Moscow has not yet delivered them. As Hanna Notte and Jim Lamson noted in a study published in August, there are many other Russian weapons systems and technologies that Tehran would like to receive. If any of these turn up in Iran, this will be seen as evidence that the transfer of CRBMs to Moscow is indeed a sign of increased Iranian leverage over Russia.

Moscow, though, will be loath to transfer weapons to Iran that would upset its ability to maintain good relations with Iran’s rivals, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which could in turn result in their turning closer to the United States and even Israel for support. Indeed, Iran itself might not want this to happen. Saudi-Russian cooperation in the OPEC+ format, which keeps world oil prices relatively higher, serves Iranian interests too. Both Russia and Iran have to sell their oil at a discount due to Western sanctions, but if the Saudis conclude that Russia has become Iran’s firm ally and so decide to increase oil production, the resulting lower oil prices would hurt both Moscow and Tehran. And they know that Riyadh has in the past been willing to flood the market and accept lower oil prices in order to hurt its rivals.

Further, while Tehran may want Moscow to transfer Su-35s, S-400s, and other weapons systems and technologies, receiving them immediately may not be the Iranian leadership’s primary goal. The Islamic Republic often does not take direct military action itself, but prefers to act through proxies, such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi and other Shia militia forces.

Tehran, then, may see Russia not so much as a great power but as another proxy, whose willingness to fight against a common enemy benefits Iran but allows it to avoid the costs of fighting that common enemy itself. Ukraine, of course, does not pose a threat to Iran. But to the extent that the United States and other Western countries devote attention and resources to supporting Ukraine, then they have less of these available for dealing with Iran.

Indeed, Tehran’s one great worry might be that Russia will lose its war with Ukraine, thus allowing the United States and its Western allies (as Tehran might fear) to concentrate on Iran. Transferring first armed drones and now CRBMs to Russia, then, may be seen as a good investment by Tehran whether it receives Russian weapons systems in return or not. This attitude would also be very much in keeping with how Iran prefers to support proxies that are fighting a common adversary rather than take on the fight itself.

Mark N. Katz is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and professor emeritus of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government.

The post What does Iran get for sending ballistic missiles to Russia? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presided over his government’s largest wartime reshuffle in early September, with nine ministries getting new permanent leadership. As the news filtered into Western capitals, media and experts alike scrambled to make sense of the changes. Back in Kyiv, many lawmakers and analysts appeared relatively unmoved by the announcements, in contrast to the cheers and jeers that have come with previous shifts in Zelenskyy’s government.

Perhaps the most notable figure to resign was Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who had been a steady, passionate voice as Ukraine’s top diplomat for the last four years. Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Olha Stefanishyna, another longtime minister, resigned from her post only to be quickly named as the new Justice Minister, replacing Denys Maliuska.

Oleksandr Kamyshin’s swift rise in government looks set to continue as he takes up a post as presidential advisor for strategic issues after resigning as Minister of Strategic Industries. He joins former Deputy Prime Minister for the Reintegration of Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk, who will be a new deputy in the Office of the President.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The somewhat muted reaction in Ukraine to such a significant government shakeup reflects a number of factors. First, none of the cabinet changes came in the wake of a scandal or amid whispers of corruption. They appear to be purely a shift in personnel.

Second, Zelenskyy had long telegraphed plans for a major government shakeup. Speaking to Italian media in February 2024, he said “a reset” was necessary. “I have something serious in mind, which is not about a single person but about the direction of the country’s leadership,” he commented. At the time, observers fixated on the “single person” reference, assuming he was talking about Ukraine’s highly regarded military commander Valeriy Zaluzhny, who was subsequently removed and appointed Ukrainian ambassador to Great Britain.

Crucially, none of the changes in the recent reshuffle directly involve the military or the economy. Replacing the minister of defense or economy would have set off alarm bells among Ukraine’s Western partners, but those positions look stable. The closest person to the battlefield was Kamyshin, who leaves Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries with a revamped and highly effective drone program in place.

The new blood leading these ministries is not all that new, either. Instead, Zelenskyy appears to be promoting trusted cadres, assigning others new or enhanced portfolios, offering acting ministers permanent gigs, and, in the case of former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, giving some a deserved break after years of strenuous work.

Publicly at least, Ukraine’s Western partners took the personnel changes in stride. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and many other foreign ministers thanked Kuleba for his work and dedication. The European Union offered a suitably bland reaction, calling the shakeup Ukraine’s “internal matter” and expressing hopes to “continue very good cooperation” with Kyiv.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event
Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict
Russia
Security & Defense
Ukraine

The two most interesting newcomers are new Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha and Oleksiy Kuleba, the incoming Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine and Minister for Communities and Territories Development.

Sybiha moves from the Office of the President back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he has spent much of his government career. He previously served as Ukraine’s ambassador to Türkiye and at the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland, both senior diplomatic posts working with two of Ukraine’s most important neighbors. Zelenskyy will be hoping Sybiha’s experience and strong relationship with presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak make him an efficient liaison between Kyiv and its many partners.

Kuleba takes over a large ministry formed by the merger of the Ministry for the Reintegration of Occupied Territories and the Ministry of Community Development, Territories, and Infrastructure, which had been led by Oleksandr Kubrakov until his dismissal in May. Some outlets reported that Kuleba’s ministry will soon be split in two, with one ministry set to focus on reconstruction and development, while the other concentrates on infrastructure. That may be a sensible move ahead of what could be another harsh winter of Russian assaults on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. Kuleba’s previous job was head of regional policy in the Office of the President, working closely with Yermak.

The most controversial personnel decision to emerge from the recent flurry of changes in Kyiv was the firing of Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyi. He is widely credited with having worked miracles as head of Ukraine’s state-owned electrical grid operator, most significantly leading the country’s disconnection from the Russian grid in February 2022, months ahead of schedule. Kudrytskyi was seen as a real reformer in Western capitals, leading to significant alarm over his dismissal. Two members of Ukrenergo’s supervisory board resigned in protest, calling Kudrytskyi’s firing “politically motivated.”

Overall, Zelenskyy appears to be shuffling the deck rather than choosing a new set of cards. It is unlikely the nine new ministers will produce dramatic changes in government policy, but they may offer new impetus as Ukraine heads toward its third winter of full-scale war. Kyiv’s whole-of-government approach to the country’s defense has been largely effective so far; Zelenskyy may be betting these tweaks will maintain Ukraine’s edge.

Andrew D’Anieri is a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert
Sep 5, 2024

Too many still view Ukraine through the prism of Russian imperialism

By
Olesya Khromeychuk

Far too many Western newspaper editors, academics, and cultural commentators continue to view Ukraine through the distorting lens of Russian imperialism, writes Olesya Khromeychuk.

Civil Society
Conflict

UkraineAlert
Sep 1, 2024

Key Ukrainian front line city evacuates as Russian offensive gains pace

By
Maria Avdeeva

Evacuation efforts are accelerating in Pokrovsk as Russian troops draw closer amid fears the city will soon become the latest in a growing list of Ukrainian urban centers reduced to rubble by Putin’s invading army, writes Maria Avdeeva.

Civil Society
Conflict

UkraineAlert
Aug 21, 2024

Invasion? What invasion? Putin is downplaying Ukraine’s Kursk offensive

By
Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to downplay Ukraine’s invasion of Russia have severely dented his strongman image and make a mockery of the West’s escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict
Defense Policy

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Ukraine’s biggest wartime government shakeup prompts muted reaction in Kyiv appeared first on Atlantic Council.

When Vladimir Putin first began the invasion of Ukraine with the seizure of Crimea, he did so using troops without identifying insignia and was careful to hide his attack behind a veil of deniability, however implausible. Ten years later, the Russian dictator now routinely threatens Western leaders with nuclear apocalypse if they dare to disrupt his methodical destruction of Europe’s largest nation. This dramatic escalation in Russian aggression is the bitter fruit of a decade spent trying to avoid provoking Putin rather than confronting the Kremlin.

In 2014, the West chose not to impose any significant costs on Russia for the occupation of Crimea and the subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. At the time, many preferred to pursue a business as usual approach, strengthening trade ties with Moscow and constructing new gas pipelines to deepen Europe’s energy dependence on the Kremlin. Unsurprisingly, Putin interpreted this timidity as a tacit green light to continue, safe in the knowledge that performative Western outrage was unlikely to translate into action. The stage was thus set for the largest European invasion since World War II.

Since February 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has transformed the geopolitical landscape, but it has so far failed to convince Western leaders of the need to abandon their failed policies of escalation management. Instead, the international response to Russia’s invasion has been hampered at every turn by delays and indecisiveness, with Kyiv’s partners denying the country vital weapons and imposing absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. As a result, the Ukrainian military currently finds itself forced to fight an existential war with one hand tied behind its back.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

We have been here before, of course. In the 1930s, Western leaders responded to the challenge of an increasingly aggressive Nazi Germany by seeking to appease Adolf Hitler with a series of concessions. The architects of appeasement have come to be viewed as fools and cowards, but in fact they were mostly honorable men who believed it was their sacred duty to prevent another world war. The majority of today’s escalation managers are doubtless driven by similarly noble intentions. However, it should be painfully clear to them by now that escalation management is the appeasement of the modern era and is steadily creating the conditions for the global conflict they aim to avert.

Like Hitler before him, Putin makes no secret of his expansionist goals and imperial ambitions. Indeed, the Kremlin dictator likes nothing better than discussing his sense of historical mission. He is notorious for delivering rambling lectures on Russian history, and has often delved into the distant past to justify his contemporary geopolitical grievances. Ukraine is a favorite topic, with Putin frequently questioning the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood and referring to entire regions of Ukraine as “historically Russian lands.” Few were surprised in summer 2022 when he compared the current invasion of Ukraine to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great.

Nor is Putin’s historical revisionism limited to the reconquest of Ukraine. He has often lamented modern Russia’s retreat from empire and has referred to the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union as the “disintegration of historical Russia.” At its greatest extent, the Russian Empire stretched far beyond today’s Ukrainian borders and featured a long list of additional countries including Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the whole of Central Asia. Many of these states could be at risk of suffering Ukraine’s fate if the current invasion is allowed to succeed.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event
Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict
Russia
Security & Defense
Ukraine

While there can be little doubt regarding the scale of Putin’s revisionist ambitions, some skeptics still question whether he possesses the military capabilities to achieve his goals. This is shortsighted. The invasion of Ukraine may have exposed the limitations of the Russian army, but it has also revealed the weakness of the West. This disastrous lack of Western resolve is visibly emboldening the Kremlin and may yet persuade Putin that he can risk going further without triggering an overwhelming Western response.

In recent months, Putin has begun testing NATO with occasional drone incursions across the border into Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states. So far, he has received minimal push back. This gray zone aggression is just one small part of an escalating Russian hybrid war being waged throughout the Western world that includes a dizzying array of disinformation operations, cyber attacks, weaponized corruption, sabotage, and support for extremist political movements of all kinds. Although many policymakers in Western capitals are still reluctant to admit it, Russia evidently believes it is already at war with the West and is acting accordingly.

Back in the Russian Federation itself, there are ample indications that Putin is preparing the domestic front for a long war. He has placed the entire Russian economy on a wartime footing, and has instructed his vast propaganda apparatus to preach holy war against the West. On the international stage, he is consolidating an authoritarian axis of like-minded nations such as China, Iran, and North Korea, all of whom share his stated goal of overturning the current world order. While it is impossible to anticipate exactly what Putin might do next if he succeeds in Ukraine, the idea that he will simply stop is dangerously delusional.

There was a time when such delusions regarding the revanchist nature of Putin’s Russia could be excused. Not anymore. Since 2022, the Kremlin has embarked on a path of open hostility toward the entire Western world, with each successive attempt to appease Putin merely serving to encourage bolder acts of aggression. In this climate of confrontation, compromising with the Kremlin will not bring peace. On the contrary, any territorial concessions in Ukraine would be viewed by Moscow as a victory and used to justify more war.

Before it is too late, the West must recognize the necessity of speaking to Putin in the only language he understands: The language of strength. This means committing fully and unambiguously to Ukrainian victory. More specifically, it means lifting the restrictions that currently protect Russia from attack, and supplying Ukraine with enough weapons to actually win. Putin sees international relations as a zero sum game and believes he has the upper hand over opponents who have revealed their fundamental weakness. By continuing to signal their fear of escalation, Western leaders now risk repeating the mistakes of the 1930s and provoking the wider war they so desperately seek to prevent.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert
Sep 1, 2024

Key Ukrainian front line city evacuates as Russian offensive gains pace

By
Maria Avdeeva

Evacuation efforts are accelerating in Pokrovsk as Russian troops draw closer amid fears the city will soon become the latest in a growing list of Ukrainian urban centers reduced to rubble by Putin’s invading army, writes Maria Avdeeva.

Civil Society
Conflict

UkraineAlert
Aug 21, 2024

Invasion? What invasion? Putin is downplaying Ukraine’s Kursk offensive

By
Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to downplay Ukraine’s invasion of Russia have severely dented his strongman image and make a mockery of the West’s escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict
Defense Policy

UkraineAlert
Sep 5, 2024

Too many still view Ukraine through the prism of Russian imperialism

By
Olesya Khromeychuk

Far too many Western newspaper editors, academics, and cultural commentators continue to view Ukraine through the distorting lens of Russian imperialism, writes Olesya Khromeychuk.

Civil Society
Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Escalation management is the appeasement of the 21st century appeared first on Atlantic Council.

When Kamala Harris sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash last month, Bash asked a question: “Would you withhold some U.S. weapons shipments to Israel? That’s what a lot of people on the progressive left want you to do.” 

Harris sidestepped the question, talked about a ceasefire, and ultimately said that she would not change course from the Biden administration’s policy of arming Israel as its war on Gaza enters its 11th month. 

But polls of the American voting population show that she’s ignoring more than just the “progressive left”: A majority of voters support ending arms transfers to Israel, and support for an arms embargo is growing.

“The reality is that the public is far more in favor of stopping arms sales to Israel than opposed,” Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington D.C., told The Intercept. He pointed to a June poll from CBS that showed 61 percent of all Americans said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats and nearly 40 percent of Republicans. 

Poll results have been consistent for months. 

Since the start of the war in Gaza, a majority of Americans have expressed support for some form of restrictions on the U.S. sending weapons to Israel in repeated public surveys. Americans are even more overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire.

Among the most consistent string of polls on the issue of weapons transfers to Israel has come from CBS News, which partnered with YouGov to carry out its survey. About two weeks after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, as Israel’s bombardment had already killed more than 2,000 civilians in Gaza, a CBS poll of more than 1,800 Americans found that 52 percent of American adults said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel. The totals included large majorities among both Democrats and independents, and 43 percent of Republicans. 

In April, CBS News/YouGov asked the same question in a new poll and found that an even larger number of Americans (60 percent), including 68 percent of Democrats, said they felt the U.S. should not send arms to Israel. The poll was conducted days after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers in a clearly marked World Central Kitchen convoy. 

And in June, when more than 30,000 Palestinians were killed and as Israel continued its operations in Rafah where many of Gaza civilians had been sheltering, spurring the “All Eyes on Rafah” social media campaign, a third CBS News poll seemingly solidified Americans’ opposition to military aid to Israel with 61 percent of American adults calling for a halt on weapons transfers to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats.

Stopping arms transfers also polls highly in key swing states, according to recent polls.

A poll published this week by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute found that the majority of likely voters in some Rust Belt swing states are in favor of conditioning military aid to Israel or are against sending aid altogether. The tallies showed 61 percent in Wisconsin expressing support, along with 56 percent in Michigan and 51 percent in Pennsylvania.

Another poll from August, commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project and conducted by YouGov, showed that a majority of voters in Pennsylvania (57 percent), and a significant share of voters in swing states Arizona (44 percent) and Georgia (34 percent), said they would more likely vote for Harris if the U.S. withholds arms to Israel. 

An additional swing-state focused poll earlier this year, commissioned by Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and conducted by YouGov in May, also found 2 in 5 Democrats and independents in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota said that an immediate and permanent ceasefire and conditioning of aid to Israel would make them more likely to vote for then-candidate Joe Biden.

“This is not a ‘progressive left’ issue — the vast majority of Democrats support ending arms sales to Israel,” Munayyer said. “This is a mainstream position, as I think it should be for any sensible person watching what is happening in Gaza, that we should not continue funding this, we should not continue supporting this.”

Related

“I Have Lost Everything”: In Federal Court, Palestinians Accuse Biden of Complicity in Genocide

Despite the popularity of cutting Israel off from American weapons, the Biden administration has continued to pump billions in military aid, including thousands of 2,000-pound bombs, to Israel, approving a $20 billion weapons package just last month. His administration has ignored calls from Democratic senators to halt aid, as well as credible evidence of human rights violations committed by the Israeli military. Biden briefly halted transfer of munitions in May as Israel prepared for an offensive in Rafah where 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge, but later reversed his position after pressure from the pro-Israel lobby within the party. At the Democratic National Convention, party officials denied a main-stage speaker slot from more than 200 “Uncommitted” delegates and ceasefire delegates committed to Harris who are in favor of an arms embargo. Harris’s CNN interview seemingly dampened the cautious optimism of those who hoped for her to depart from her boss’s policies. 

Even with the renewed energy from across the Democratic party since Biden dropped out of the race, Harris continues to be in a dead heat with former President Donald Trump. This week’s New York Times and Siena College national poll had 47 percent of likely voters supporting Harris, with Trump garnering 48. Both candidates are expected to be asked about their approach on the war in Gaza during Tuesday’s highly anticipated debate on ABC.

The most commonly cited U.S. law by proponents of an arms embargo has been the Leahy law, enacted in 1997, which prohibits the State Department from sending military aid to any foreign security force that is found to violate human rights law. Also, in March, a group of Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., cited the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid. They were responding to evidence and allegations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet had been interrupting U.S. humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. 

The polling data has accumulated for many months. A poll from left-wing think tank Data for Progress, showed in December that 63 percent of voters agreed that military aid should be conditioned on whether Israel meets the U.S. standard for human rights. In March, 52 percent of Americans said that Biden should halt weapons transfers to Israel, according to a poll by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

In June, another Data for Progress poll found that a majority of Americans (53 percent) supported withdrawing military aid from Israel if the country does not accept a ceasefire deal. Seventy percent of Democrats and 53 percent of swing voters supported the measure. The poll was conducted about one month after Netanyahu had rejected a ceasefire deal, even after Hamas had accepted its terms. 

A poll of more than 2,000 Americans taken by the Arab American Institute in the period between the Republican and Democratic national conventions in late July and early August showed that support for Harris would grow from 44 to 49 percent if she were to suspend arms shipments and withhold diplomatic support for Israel until there was a ceasefire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza. 

More recently, an August poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that a majority (53 percent) of Americans, including 68 percent of Democrats, believe the U.S. should restrict military aid to Israel so it cannot use the aid in military operations against Palestinians. An earlier July poll from the Chicago-based think tank found that such support for restricting military aid was more favorable among people of color, including respondents who were Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. The August poll did however find that 60 percent of Americans would support military aid to Israel until the hostages taken by Hamas are freed. 

Support for a ceasefire was considered a controversial demand among U.S. lawmakers for months but has now become a regular talking point among Democratic leaders, though critics say it’s often used to deflect from U.S. responsibility for the ongoing war on Gaza. Since the beginning of the year, it has also been consistently popular among Americans. As early as January, an Associated Press poll found that half of Americans felt Israel had gone too far in its war, including 63 percent of Democrats. 

The June Data for Progress poll showed the majority of Americans (64 percent) supported a permanent ceasefire deal and an Economist/YouGov poll in May found that same number in support of a ceasefire. The August Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll said the majority of Americans should pressure Israel into a ceasefire deal, with a plurality of respondents saying the U.S. should reduce arms shipments to do so. 

A series of Gallup polls that showed Americans’ attitudes toward Israel’s military operations in Gaza also show a gradual progression toward disapproval for the war. While in November, 50 percent of Americans said they support Israel’s war in Gaza, among that total were 63 percent of Democrats who expressed disapproval. About four months later, Americans had shifted with the majority (55 percent) saying they disapproved of Israel’s operations, according to a March Gallup poll. Although a June Gallup poll showed disapproval dropping to 48 percent, opposition to the war stood firm among Democrats (77 percent) and independents (66 percent).

An outlier among polls that asked Americans about sending arms to Israel was a March survey from the Pew Research Center, which found that only 35 percent of Americans were opposed to military aid. However, the poll also showed a plurality of Democrats (44 percent) opposed military aid to Israel and a majority of liberals (54 percent). 

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom broke from the U.S. and announced it would ban some of its weapons transfers to Israel. However, the number is minimal, suspending 30 of its 350 arms licenses. Other countries to suspend military support to Israel include Italy, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain, which also banned ships from carrying weapons to Israel from docking in its ports. 

After Harris’s CNN interview, Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser for Sanders, told The Intercept that the issue of restricting arms to Israel did not begin with October 7 but has been a popular move within the party for much longer.

“This is not new, this is not a radical departure — this is a consistent trend we’ve seen for years among Democratic voters,” Duss said.

Before October 7, concerns largely centered around Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, continued settlement expansion, and evidence of human rights violations by the Israeli military in the occupied territory. In 2020, then candidates for president Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Julian Castro at least signaled support or interest in conditioning aid so that it wouldn’t support further annexation of land in the occupied West Bank.

And on the 2020 election night, J Street, a liberal Jewish lobbyist group, conducted a poll that showed 57 percent of American Jews would want to restrict military aid to ensure it cannot be spent on annexation. In 2021, J Street also backed a Democrat-backed bill that would have prevented aid to Israel to be used on human rights abuses of Palestinians, destruction of Palestinian property, or displacement of Palestinians from their land.

“I’m not saying everyone should just make their policy decisions based on what the polling says on any given date,” Duss said. “But this is a consistent trend, this is what Democrats clearly think.”

The post Most Americans Want to Stop Arming Israel. Politicians Don’t Care. appeared first on The Intercept.