It worked so well last time, why not give it another go? The Democrat imperial advocacy group National Security Action (NSA) ran point on the party’s foreign policy messaging for the 2020 election and went on to staff much of President Biden’s national security team. They helped bring us a new hot phase of Project Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza.
According to Axios, the NSA team is now reassembling in preparation for the 2028 election. And while we’re a little ways away from any specific policy recommendations, there are plenty of hints that the group is being tasked with crafting a repackaged message that sells the same old imperial violence to the metropole.
Let’s start with the people behind NSA before turning to some of the literature on the group’s site and in reports.
What Is NSA?
It was established in February 2017 by Ben Rhodes, a former national security advisor in the Obama White House, and Jake Sullivan, a national security advisor to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Those are the two front men (and more on them in a minute), but what about the money behind the scenes? From Puck:
A month ago, a couple dozen Democratic foreign policy hands gathered for what is now fashionably called a “convening” inside the Manhattan offices of Soros Fund Management…Since its inception, the organization has been funded largely by Alex Soros, scion of the Soros empire and husband of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s right-hand woman.
Good to know.
Ben Rhodes, inhabits some fantasy world where America is a source of light for the world—as long as people from his side of the aisle are in charge. Some wars and droning people around the world into pink mist is apparently fine as long as it’s done with grace like by his former boss, Obama. And while Rhodes might be mildly critical of the US complicity in the Gaza genocide, he is still a believer in American supremacy and empire.
Jake Sullivan was the chief architect behind Biden’s “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class” (FPMC)— and some argue the presidency itself as Biden was largely incapacitated.
The narrative sold to the American people was that a more assertive foreign policy would help rebuild the US middle class. That term “middle class” was a red flag from the start, as it has always been part of a project of making the working class disappear.
And so it did.
While Biden pushed the Ukraine/NATO-Russia conflict and supported a genocide in Gaza, nearly all economic indicators for the working class — from credit card and medical debt to homelessness and economic inequality — continued their downward spirals under the “new FDR”.
Sanders said today again that Biden is the “most progressive president since FDR.”
This is a total lie. The workers’ share of national income has plunged to its lowest level on record under the Biden administration.
Biden was a bonanza for Wall Street. pic.twitter.com/NDjrk7JUWY
— Joseph Kishore (@jkishore) October 27, 2024
Thanks, Jake!
Similar to the way Trump’s MAGA demonizes immigrants, Sullivan’s FPMC relied on blaming nations resisting control by the empire’s capital class as the cause of the US working class’ demise.Here’s Politico way back in 2020 describing Sullivan’s pitch:
…the strength of U.S. foreign policy and national security lies primarily in a thriving American middle class, whose prosperity is endangered by the very transnational threats the Trump administration has sought to downplay or ignore.
He never really explains how and that’s probably because it’s a nonsensical argument.
As their FPMC turned to ash, Collective Biden was also busy redistributing an historic amount of wealth from the public to weapons companies — $1.3 trillion over four years — which Biden bragged about in his farewell address (military spending is set to soar higher under Trump). They resurrected talk of the “arsenal of democracy” to defend this. Probably best summed up here by former Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland:
“Vemember, zee bulk of zis money goez vight back into zee economy.”
— Herr Nuland explains self-licking ice cream cone theory to CNN’s last remaining 500 subscribers.
The neocons made a stupid, clumsy play for imperial conquest over Russia, now the whole world is witnessing… pic.twitter.com/diHiE1pGhZ
— Chebureki Man (@CheburekiMan) February 25, 2024
Can we look forward to a Nuland return in 2029? No doubt she’s coming up with big plans during her time on the National Endowment for Democracy Board of Directors. But back to NSA.
Some Democrats are complaining (off the record, of course) that “the idea that the same foreign policy leadership that brought us the Afghanistan withdrawal and the cover-up of Biden’s decline should be in charge of staffing the next Democratic administration and determining its foreign policy is tone deaf at best.”
Sullivan, in particular, has come under pillow fight fire for crafting US policy alongside Israel during its extermination campaign of Palestinians in Gaza. According to Puck, at the Soros Fund Management Meeting Rhodes told Sullivan that he “needed to reckon with the stain of that policy.” How? By confessing to war crimes and checking himself into a cell at The Hague?
No, nothing like that. Again from Puck:
The room was full of old friends committed to working out their differences respectfully—and out of the public eye.
How wholesome. The NSA board’s answer to the above criticisms of tone deafness is to bring in a new executive director to make NSA “less opaque, less elite, more engaging,” a person close to the organization told Puck. So old chums are going to move past the minor personal squabble over genocide in private but appoint a fresh face to make the group appear “less opaque.” It surely doesn’t hurt that the new director is a Palestinian-American, either, but what if we look past the identity politics?
Maher Bitar is who NSA chose to lead the group going into the 2028 primary season. Who is Bitar?
He was most recently chief counsel to Senator Adam Schiff. Naturally with his attachment to Schiff, he played a key role in Russiagate, joining the House Intelligence Committee as general counsel for the Democrats and played a role in the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
Bitar is one of at least a few clues that the NSA crowd wants Russia to regain the top spot on the imperial enemy list. In the “Issue Papers” section of NSA’s website is a long list of articles that are (justifiably) critical of Trump’s foreign policy on everything from Greenland to Iran to the Korean Peninsula.
Buried toward the bottom are two that show a desire for a renewed commitment to Project Ukraine. There’s just one problem with NSA’s focus here: will there even be a Project Ukraine to recommit to come 2029?
Nevertheless, in “Why the United States Should Not Give Up on Ukraine” NSA (no author is listed) argues the following points:
1. Vladimir Putin is not interested in peace – he’s buying time and playing Donald Trump.
2. The best path to a lasting peace is strengthening Ukraine’s leverage to force Putin to the negotiating table.
3. Putin only responds to strength.
4. Putin won’t stop at Ukraine.
5. Supporting Ukraine is good for our own economy, military, and security.
6. Preventing Putin from succeeding in Ukraine is the best way to deter our adversaries.
Noticeably absent is any “issue paper” that is critical of the US partnership with Israel cutting a wide swath of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and destruction across West Asia.
On Palestine, Zionism, and Genocide
Bitar’s leadership of NSA is causing consternation among some Zionists who argue he’s not pro-Israel enough and point to his involvement with Students for Justice in Palestine while attending Georgetown University and his past work with the with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Jerusalem.
This is, of course, ridiculous. Bitar was on the National Security Council throughout the Biden administration when, let us not forget, the genocide of Palestinians began in earnest. At first he was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the NSC, and for Biden’s final year in office during that genocide Bitar was elevated to Deputy Assistant to the President and coordinator for intelligence and defense policy.
He did not resign over the genocide. He got a promotion. I cannot find any public comments made by Bitar critical of the US and Israel for said genocide nor can I find any afterwards expressing regret for his silence nor has he offered a word about Trump’s doubling down on such monstrous policies.
Bitar looks to be a classic case of Democrat identity deception. The fact Obama was the first black president and worked as a community organizer helped provide cover for his stomping on the throats of working class Americans, even disproportionately hurting black Americans. Bitar, with his Palestinian heritage and work with the UNRWA, cloaks his servitude to empire and its genocides.
Bitar is being chosen as part of an attempt to deceive voters who disapprove of Israel’s genocide, general war crimes, and embedding within the US government.
Bitar told Axios the group will host retreats, conduct polling, and be a “hub” to think through the party’s foreign policy “to be ready for 2028 and beyond.”
It doesn’t take too many retreats and polls to understand that genocide and war are unpopular, but NSA seems determined to have another go at convincing the American people otherwise. From Axios:
NSA’s challenge will be navigating the divides on foreign policy in the Democratic Party that are much deeper than they were during President Trump’s first term.
80% of Democrats now view Israel unfavorably, up from 53% in 2022, before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, per Pew.
“Navigating the divides” is an interesting way of putting it. With 80% viewing a state committing genocide unfavorably, that doesn’t seem like such a divide. But note it does not say respond to voters’ wishes as a real democratic party would. So the way I read that is NSA needs to keep the Zionists and their Silicon Valley accelerationist partners happy while still finding a way to collect votes. That will probably lead to some catchier version of “Democrat Candidate 2028: The gentler genocidaire.”
***
And so we don’t end on too much of a down note, let’s remember that there are plenty of other ways to organize outside of electoral politics. And plenty of people are. From a Working Class Stories piece titled ‘Stick With the Doers’:
As a gas station attendant, Casey Tobias saw community members who were broke and struggling come through her line. She began serving meals to people right there in the parking lot and, over time, grew it into a huge volunteer program where her neighbors can get meals, rides, and all kinds of support…She is watching systems and support crumble in her town and figures she can’t wait for someone else to come in and fix it. She thinks she and her neighbors have the know-how and capability to get started, so they did.
The piece provides other similar examples, and here’s the takeaway:
We are mostly a petitioning country, sometimes a protesting country. We spend a lot of time asking people in power to do what we want them to do– it’s how our government is supposed to work, after all. But as our federal government turns its back on working people and towards billionaires, it seems like we need a different plan. The stories I’ve been finding in small, working-class towns across the country are action-oriented. Instead of making requests of those in power, these projects and people are using power.
