Diana Ohlbaum
Board Chair
Diana Ohlbaum is a lifelong advocate for peace and justice. Most recently, she served as Senior Strategist and Legislative Director for Foreign Policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker peace lobby. In that role, she directed FCNL’s foreign policy lobbying team and led an effort to replace the current U.S. foreign policy paradigm of military domination and national superiority with a more ethical and effective one based on cooperation and mutual respect.
From 2013-2018, Dr. Ohlbaum ran an independent consulting firm specializing in advocacy, political strategy, and legislative impact. For nearly 20 years before that, as a Senior Professional Staff Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, she conducted oversight of foreign assistance programs and coordinated efforts to overhaul the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. During the Clinton administration, she served as Deputy Director of USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, a cutting-edge unit designed to advance peace and democracy in priority conflict-prone countries, and after that, as Director of Public Policy for InterAction, an alliance of NGOs engaged in humanitarian relief and international development.
In addition to the CIP Board, Dr. Ohlbaum serves on the Advisory Council of the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Russian Studies from Amherst College.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
REPORT
September 17, 2021
Dismantling Racism and Militarism in U.S. Foreign Policy
by Salih Booker and Diana Ohlbaum
The current U.S. national security paradigm robs us of economic resources, corrupts our political system,
endangers our lives, and offends our most fundamental moral values.
It perpetuates a system that discriminates against, disempowers, disrespects, dehumanizes, and brutalizes Black and brown people and other communities of color. It is an extension of systemic white supremacy at home that relies upon the threat and use of force abroad.
Continuing the U.S. quest for global military domination harms not only the people of other countries and the earth we share, but the vast majority of Americans. The Racism-Militarism Paradigm, moreover, harms all of our social, political, and economic institutions, including our democratic institutions, thus weakening our entire society.
To peacefully and democratically dismantle this paradigm, we must offer a compelling alternative vision of the U.S. role in the world.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
September 17, 2021
Executive Summary — Dismantling Racism and Militarism in U.S. Foreign Policy
by Salih Booker and Diana Ohlbaum
The major challenges facing Americans today—pandemic disease, climate change, economic inequality, racial and gender injustice—cannot be solved without international solidarity and human compassion.
LATEST NEWS
May 21, 2022
Time for a strategic pause on NATO expansion
By Board Chair Diana Ohlbaum
Europeans and Americans should begin thinking about what kind of cooperative security arrangements would be most likely to deter violent conflict, build positive peace, and promote human development inside and beyond their borders.
April 23, 2021
The Bloated Pentagon Budget Isn’t Just Wasteful. It’s Racist
by Diana Ohlbaum
Americans can no longer pretend that the size of the Pentagon budget is a measure of national security, or that spending more on the military will keep us safer. Instead, we must recognize the Pentagon budget for what it is: a monument to white supremacy. And like Confederate statues, it needs to be removed from its pedestal.
July 2, 2021
The Willful Self-Delusion of American Independence Day
by Salih Booker and Diana Ohlbaum
On Independence Day, many Americans celebrate throwing off the yoke of oppression by a distant power. They recall the unfairness and indignity of life under colonial rule. What too many Americans haven’t done is reckon with the fact that the founders of our nation were colonizers, not colonized, and that in the 245 years since declaring its independence, the United States has only expanded the scope of its imperial domination.
February 9, 2019
The trouble with all that spending on national defense
by Diana Ohlbaum
In rejecting one statistic regarding the size of the U.S. defense budget, Robert J. Samuelson missed the point and undermined his own argument in his Jan. 28 op-ed, “The truth about defense spending.” The United States now spends more on the military, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it did at the height of the Korean War, the Vietnam War or the Cold War...