https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/business/media/campus-protests-russia-china-iran-us.html
With campuses’ across the United States protesting the United States’ stance in the Israel-Palestine war, China, Russia, Iran have the capability to add to the United States’ pressure. Since much of the world, including the majority of these protests, is online it makes it exponentially easier for the United States’ rivals to get involved in domestic affairs and add on to the pressure that the United States government feels by it’s own protesting citizens. A newspaper controlled by the Chinese government has fueled the fire by reasoning that recent police crackdowns in the United States has side effects of threatening free speech, hypocrisy, and enforced a double standard. Iran’s ministry of foreign affairs has also posted a cartoon of the police arresting a protester in front of the statue of liberty. On top of this cartoon, they also posted a caption that reads “Imprisonment of #freedom in the U.S.A.” There is little evidence to support Russia had any involvement in the protests’ but Russia is also known for their ability to spread propaganda to cover up the real story, so citizens should be weary that Russia is almost certainly involved in the pressure the protests feed into the american government.
I think that international involvement in domestic affairs in the United States is completely to be expected by Russia, China, and Iran. Anyway that they can pressure the United States, especially using it’s own citizens which makes the discontent even worse than prior. I think that China, Russia, and Iran will continue to ride this wave until the protests die down, and once another protest starts back up they’ll do the same thing.
In class we talk about how foreign involvements in domestic affairs can get unnerving, as one wrong step, or a step too far, by a foreign rival can end up in war or extremely tense trade relations, or otherwise retaliation by the country that was a rival was aggressive towards.