 Welcome to News Clicks Show, Mapping Foto Lines, where we take a look at major geopolitical developments from across the world. In this episode, we are going to be taking a look at the Donald Trump administration's last days as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. establishment impose a wide variety of sanctions and punitive measures on countries which they deem detrimental to U.S. interests. To talk more about this, we have with us Praveep Rukhaisa. Praveep, so a lot of issues today to take a look at. We have Cuba and Venezuela on one hand, West Asia. And of course, there's China with, yesterday, Xiaomi, a major Chinese company being put in the list of companies which have links with Chinese military, which means U.S. firms need to divest from it quite soon. And this is part of a pattern over the past few days. We saw recent incidents about, say, the U.S. allowing its diplomats to interact with Taiwanese diplomats. Other Chinese companies also facing sanctions we've seen Huawei over the past many years as well. So what we're seeing is, in the run-up, the Trump administration really intensifying the assault on China and making things very difficult for any kind of restoration of normalcy, so to speak, whatever the old normal was. But this is really taking things to the brink. Well, I don't know whether you should consider taking these things to the brink. The things have been on the brink for a long time. I think it's important to take a step back and look at what these sanctions really mean. In global trading terms, the World Trading Organization being the bedrock, supposedly global trade, these are all what are called nuclear measures, which is that you are using military, the national security exception in the World Trade Organization's global trading network architecture, to pronounce sanctions, which means they're out of the trade negotiations or trade. You can't go and appeal to WTO saying these are illegal and so on. Of course, you can, but this is the option which countries in the World Trade Organization had decided not to use under their exceptional circumstances. Now, this has become the norm, the de facto norm for the United States. Whenever they have a trade issue, which I think there is a trade issue, they are actually extending sanctions. If we look at the larger picture, what they're doing is to protect Apple's market share, which has now slipped to the fourth in the mobile sphere. And Samsung, of course, being South Korean, also comes under the US umbrella in some sense. So essentially trying to protect these two companies from the greater market share the Chinese mobile manufacturers are gaining. Now, there are two parts to this sanction. I'm talking about economically, I'm not talking about the political part of it, which is that they then get de-linked from the Google Play Store. So that is what they can't access and therefore they lose market share. And the second is, of course, chips. The chip sets, then that they can access, which is the latest generation of chip sets, then also get denied to them, which is what you see with Huawei as well. And Huawei still is a major manufacturer and supplier because they have at least in the huge Chinese market, but they have slipped in terms of the numbers from what it was before the sanctions. And Xiaomi, since it's emerged as a new player, which has taken over the slot, the third slot displacing Apple, now has come again under US sanctions. So this is the continuation of trade war that the US has been waging against the Chinese. Now, if one day we must take a look at how has this larger trade war, a trade war, fared. But today, if we look at what else the US has done, or Pence has, sorry, Pompeo has, if we look at what the US, Pompeo has done, and this has been going on for the last 25, 30 days. Spate of sanctions being launched one after another is to basically try and make the Biden administration's task difficult. And then, of course, the chorus will be that they are soft on the Chinese. They've also sanctioned the oil companies, the major Chinese oil company, targeting it on the South China Sea. Well, the Southeast Asian countries are quite happy to get new trade agreement with China. So they are not the ones protesting at the moment. And coupling the issue of South China Sea, which is a, there is a diplomatic differences that the literal countries have. And trying to convert it to a trade come strategic issue, which as I said, the Southeast Asian countries are not willing to go along with. But the point here is I think the target is not so much China as the Biden administration. So that is one. And secondly, if we talk about military sanctions, sanctions connected to military and so on. Now, you must see that what they want is essentially a upsurge against the countries they don't like. This is China being one of them. But also a whole bunch of other countries including Iran, including Venezuela, what they're fomenting what I will call extra constitutional forces to come and take over the countries more in line with the American geostrategic interests. And therefore it is in line with what the Trump administration tried to do in the Capitol Hill, which is to essentially ask for an internal coup against the incoming administration. This is what is being talked about in the United States. That this was essentially an attempt to reverse by virtue of force what was the mandate of the electorate or by using judicial measures both have failed. But nevertheless, if the US really believes that this is unconstitutional, not correct, why is the US supporting this everywhere else in the world? And that's a question which the US population has to answer. That if you think these are not right, why does the US policy everywhere in the world supports this kind of so-called color revolutions and so on, which all of them could be argued an extra constitutional? Absolutely right. And probably moving on to Yemen, we have a situation which is quiet disastrous to say the least because what Pompeo announced was that Ansar Allah or the Houthis as they're commonly known, they're going to be designated as a terrorist organization. This prompted a huge amount of outrage across the world, humanitarian organizations asking even the UN humanitarian organization asking for the reversal of that in the US refused. And what we see is that now with this move, hundreds and thousands of Yemenis of course facing a very dire famine, they may facing diseases as well. But also the larger regional politics has also been complicated because they didn't go to war with Iran of course, but they went to, they launched a major assault in this way against the close ally of Iran. So how do we see a situation in West Asia right now? Well, this has been an ongoing problem that essentially they have taken the Saudi Arabian side in the war against the Yemenis. And I would prefer to call them Yemenis rather than Houthis. And of course this ties in to their attack on Iran itself. Now the Houthis or the Yemenis are the soft target because they cannot retaliate against Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia is militarily much more powerful. Though the Yemenis have shown they have the ability to hit within Saudi Arabia itself. But nevertheless, it's a more difficult target. So therefore they have effectively, the United States has really attacked people who are least able to defend themselves. And what is the consequence of this is all the international organizations who are there supporting the Yemeni population. There is today, as you know, there is colored outbreaks there. There are various other disease outbreaks. There is really starvation among the people, particularly the children. So all of these things which are a social disaster, socioeconomic disaster in Yemen. It is one of the most heartrending stories of our times where the West is really not covering this in any major sense. They're more worried about all these things happening in Venezuela or in all those places where they have what they consider strategic interest. The issue of Uighurs in China. So all of these are regular stories which appear in Western media, but not Yemen, where you have the ancient old civilization attacked brutally and the major centers of population under dire straits. So the minimum support that was being offered was really the UN agencies were working there. International agencies were working there, basically providing medicine and other help. Now that has to be pulled out because once they are designated as terrorism, once they're designated as terrorist organizations, then UN and other agencies cannot collaborate or cooperate with them. The minimum of which is to being able to work in places like Sanaa and so on. So I think this is a measure that you can't hit at Iran. You accept that and therefore you hit at the people who are least able to retaliate. So that seems to be the logic with which this has been done. Again, it has been done at the behest of those who do not want any re-approachment in West Asia, want the United States to be firmly on the side of Saudi Arabia and the monarchies West Asia. As you know, the ring of monarchies in that region along with Saudi Arabia who are firm allies now of Israel, till now they were hidden allies. Now the Trump administration, they have become open allies. So I think that is also what the Trump administration would like to set in stone. So that it's much more difficult for Biden administration to do anything else. Not that Biden administration would be particularly favorable to Iran or they would be playing a more neutral stance between the Palestinian people. And they're the one who are taking the brunt of the occupation. Today, the new settlements being declared every morning and evening, also Netanyahu whose own grip on power is slipping. Also trying to play a more aggressive role. All of this is trying to set a process in West Asia by which reversal for Biden administration to something which can be a normal country to country relationship will be much more difficult to establish. And finally, our final question is around Cuba of course. And Cuba facing imperial onslaughts for the longest time. And we see that the recent announcement that they've started the process to put Cuba on the list of countries supporting terrorism. And this had been removed earlier during the Obama administration. Now the attempt to bring it back, whether it will actually happen or not is a different question because the procedures might take some time. But more importantly, what we see again is that despite Cuba's amazing service to the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, nonetheless the US strategy over the decades is still being intensified right now. Well, Cuba is of course has always been in the crosses of the United States. Because it's a holdout, it represents a kind of history which the Latin Americans respect, rever, and that reverence that you can stand up as a small country. You can stand up to the might of the United States, which has a number of new colonies and has had the mandro doctrine earlier. A whole set of things which reduced Latin America to near colonial status. That Cuba could break from it and chart a new course. So that is the attraction that Cuba has for Latin America. So it's not Cuba so much as the fact what it represents that is under attack. So if they can overthrow Cuba, then they think they will have removed that center of dissent to American dominance of the South Americas, which is what all the Central Americas for that matters. So this is really the reason why Cuba has always been under attack and it's been intensified with Trump administration because they don't want any normalcy in this part of the world. But more than that, they want essentially the Bolivarian revolution to fail and that is the other part of it. The Cuba is an ideological guarantee of some sort against the kind of ideological onslaught that has been lodged by the United States. And it's allies and you have a whole bunch of them in Latin America, which are trying to turn the wheel of history in the opposite direction. Now Venezuela is of course a classic issue. Ecuador is another, but you have also Argentina, you have also Chile. So there is a whole bunch of countries where the right versus left issue is coming up. And knocking Cuba out in the Cuban doctors and nurses, as you talked about the COVID-19 help that Cuba provided to different parts of the world. This is something that they need to dislodge because you see this is one picture. What is the other picture? The American vaccine nationalism at its worst. We will take care of ourselves. The devil take the hindmost. And if any vaccine is left over, we will charge exorbitant amounts of money for delivering it to the next to other parts of the world. This is the philosophy with which it is developing. And you can see Cuba is at the moment. It has four vaccines that it is testing out. Unfortunately, Cuba doesn't have the COVID-19 pandemic, unlike the United States and the UK and parts of Europe. So they have a difficult task where to actually test it out. The same problem that Chinese also had. But you can see that the approach of the Cubans has been, this is for the world, this is not for us. Unlike the United States, which is really, we will have it first and then we will see how much we can fleece the rest of the world. And I think that is the kind of ideological issue which really accentuates what the Cubans stand for and what the US stands for. And of course, again, trying to clear the pitch in any thought in Latin America by targeting Cuba. And they have now seven more days to target further Venezuela. They've already targeted enough. They might still target it a little more if they can do it. All of this, I think, is to try to clear the pitch as much as they can for the Biden administration that attack it for being soft on XYZ. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Praveer, for talking to us. That's all your time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.