PRESS ROOM

Saudi Arabia was the destination for Trump’s first trip overseas in May 2017, a visit that set the tone for the strong alliance that has persisted ever since. Photographs of Trump palming a glowing orb alongside Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman made headlines, as have his claims of the number of jobs the bumper deals he struck in the kingdom would create, ranging from 450,000 to “a million,” (the actual total is between 20,000 to 40,000, according to May report by the Center for International Policy.)

Daniel A. Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer, contributing editor at Antiwar.com, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy (CIP), and director of the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN). His work has appeared in the NY Times, LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, The American Conservative, Mother Jones, ScheerPost, and Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, "Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge" and "Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War." Along with fellow vet Chris "Henri" Henriksen, he co-hosts the podcast "Fortress on a Hill." Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet He lives with his two sons in Lawrence, KS.

The first presidential debate of 2020 is set for tomorrow night, and as usual, bread-and-butter domestic issues such as health care and economic security are likely to dominate the conversation — this year no doubt supplemented by discussions of racial justice and law and order (as defined by President Trump). This is understandable, but limiting the discussion to these admittedly crucial issues would leave an incomplete picture of the qualifications needed to lead the country. Many issues, from immigration to climate change to how to combat Covid-19, call for international cooperation. And adequately addressing them will call for a dramatic shift in public investment away from endless war and near-record Pentagon budgets towards coping with more immediate risks, which are not military in nature.

“I have referred to the Abraham Accords as the ‘Arms Sales Accords’ because they could yield tens of billions [of dollars in] new arms sales to the region,” William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, tells Responsible Statecraft. “They will do more for weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing and undemocratic regimes like the UAE than they will to promote peace in the region.”

“I know of no contract of this size applied to a weapons system, as opposed to routine goods and services that are needed on a recurring basis,” says William Hartung, arms-trade expert at the Center for International Policy. “In theory, sales against this contract will receive the usual vetting, but there is a danger that the sales will go on auto-pilot and be rushed through without proper scrutiny.”

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world's leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are playing a significant role in fueling some of the world's most devastating conflicts. But Donald Trump, even before he was felled by Covid-19 and sent to Walter Reed Medical Center, could not have cared less, as long as he thought such trafficking in the tools of death and destruction would help his political prospects.

Danny Sjursen, an antiwar activist who served Army tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, believes that while prominent military leaders may have abandoned Trump, the president’s pledge to end wars gave him enduring support among the rank and file.

“Veterans are generally tired of the wars,” Sjursen said. “But some them are the same guys who are very anti-PC, very anti-identity politics, and maybe have a sense of Trump as being the last line of defense to that.

“They see Trump as a protector,” he added. "So if someone who was, say, softer or more liberal would have talked about this, it wouldn’t necessarily have had the same impact.”

"Global Thunder: Bombers practice for nuclear war." – Air Force Times, five days ago. The headline itself, its casual yet confident language – and that it barely raises a collective eyebrow – desperately deserves deconstruction. But in practice, this madness involves the definitionally a-strategic U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) – in conjunction with British and Australian personnel – sending big bombers like B-52 Stratofortresses, out on an annual nuclear command and control exercise known, therefore, as Global Thunder 21. STRATCOM’s, news release said Global Thunder 21 provides "realistic training activities against simulated targets" to allow forces to train in "all" mission areas, but what they really mean – and admit – is on "nuclear readiness." Will we never learn?

The United States is far and away the world’s largest weapons trading nation, as it has been throughout the last three presidential administrations. As the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor noted in a May 2020 report, the Trump administration has made more arms offers on average per year than any administration since World War II, as measured by deals notified to Congress as part of the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The next largest arms exporter by yearly average was the Obama administration — an indication that pushing arms is a bipartisan affair with deep roots in the structure of U.S. society and foreign policy. And as two new reports demonstrate, this penchant for trading in weapons is both dangerous and counterproductive.

Who needs dystopian novelists or absurd satirists when otherwise banal bureaucrats of the U.S. national security state do the job for them? It’s an old story with a new tech-savvy twist. The late great Joseph Heller knew a thing or two about war’s foundational farce. He joined the army air corps at age 19 and flew 60 combat missions as a bombardier on World War II’s Italian front. In his classic 1961 novel Catch-22, his wounded protagonist lamented that "outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals." Yet in today’s confusing modern twist, with the citizenry and even soldiery now opposing America’s endless wars, the only men going mad are inside Washington. Even now they’re looking for reasons to keep awarding medals to overtaxed and unenthused overseas warriors.

In a series of interviews this month, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) expressed an openness to making modest reductions in the Pentagon’s near-record $740 billion budget, but he has also stated he is “unconvinced” by progressive calls for more substantial cuts. One of his key arguments has been that we can’t reduce Pentagon spending without a “conversation about what’s the strategy, what’s the plan going forward.” It’s long past time to have that conversation. One contribution has already been made by the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force (SDTF), a group of former White House, congressional and Pentagon budget officials, retired military officers and think tank experts from across the political spectrum that we co-chaired.

Scott talks to Danny Sjursen about the latest in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where Sjursen says about 5,000 people have likely been killed. The media narrative about this situation, explains Sjursen, has always been that Russia is providing material support to Armenia, and encourages the fighting for their own geopolitical purposes. In reality though, Russia supports both sides to some extent, and really only has an interest in peace, since these countries are so close to Russia’s own borders. Most of the existing peace talks during this decades-long conflict, in fact, have been brokered by the Russian government. Scott also asks about Sjursen’s time in Afghanistan, and the ineffective strategy the U.S. has tried to employ against the Taliban throughout the war, despite failure after failure.