PRESS ROOM

“When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual Analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the U S of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for 37 percent of total international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than six times that of Washington’s threat du jour, China.”

The breadth of support for blocking the bomb sale shows that opposition to uncritical military support for Israel is growing. Now is the time to change course on U.S. military assistance to Israel in response to its ongoing repression of Palestinians. Stopping the bomb sale would be a good place to start.

The contradiction between the goals of warfighting and institution-building is just one of many factors in the failures of the United States and NATO countries to build up capable security forces in Afghanistan, but it is one of the most important, most ignored, and unfortunately, likely to be repeated.

Warning that the GOP's recent obstruction and attacks on voting rights have ushered in a "perilous new moment for our democracy," a coalition of more than 100 progressive advocacy groups demanded Thursday that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democratic caucus immediately abolish the legislative filibuster.

Matt Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Until his resignation five years ago, he was a board member of Council for a Livable World, one of the larger national security/arms control organizations in the PSFG. Hoh says that while he has no inside information about the funding policies of the funding consortium or its members, "The assumption that the big peace and national security funding groups are taming the peace movement is a correct one."

A new report out today on the international security assistance effort offers a detailed rundown of lessons learned. “The scale, scope, and ambitions for security assistance often failed to consider what was actually achievable and the staggering resources that would be required to achieve them,” said the report from the Center for International Policy. “In the end, a striking asymmetry between the expectations of nations providing security assistance, especially the United States, put upon Afghanistan, regardless of its size and abilities, raised expectations for maximalist achievements and laid the groundwork for strategic failures.”

Our Ben Freeman talks about "reputation laundering" in relation to Saudi Arabia's lobbying efforts in this article from Bloomberg.

Our William Hartung was recently featured in a Japanese newspaper article about the exaggeration of the Chinese threat. "I think if there's an arms race with China, which is unnecessary but possible, it could increase the risk of conflict and it could provoke a larger Chinese build up than there is already. So, I think it could be counterproductive."

Israel is the most significant recipient of total US foreign military financing (FMF) – a programme that provides grants and loans to US allies to acquire “US defense equipment, services and training”. During the past two decades, 55 percent of all US FMF was dedicated to Israel, more than the rest of the world combined, according to Security Assistance Monitor, part of the Center for International Policy, a Washington DC-based think-tank.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that a former member of Congress is going to brag to their grandkids that they are now lobbying for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but on the flip side you see the value of some of these contracts,” Freeman said. “Especially the contracts they are getting to work for dictators and authoritarian regimes. This is really big money. So for these former members of Congress, they’re really cashing out. It’s kind of a retirement plan for them”

After providing a background to FARA, this Article studies this issue first, by seeking to draw out the background, development, and surprisingly ambiguous legal standards that disclosures of agents’ “political activities” must adhere to. Second, based on an survey of a sample set of filings made under FARA, it analyzes if these standards are adhered to in practice. Learnings from this exercise are then used to evolve recommendations to strengthen the capacity of FARA to counter foreign influence operations.

As the industry has expanded, as society around it has become more polarized, and as the competition for funding has grown ever fiercer, some think tanks have become advocacy groups, or even lobbyists, by another name.” Their solutions for these problems echo a recent Quincy Institute report that promotes radical transparency in funding.