PRESS ROOM

Pompeo said State would be “mindful” of foreign funding for U.S. think tanks and namechecked China and Russia as “seek[ing] to exert influence” over U.S. foreign policy. But neither country cracks the top 20 foreign funders of American think tanks, according to a January report by the Center for International Policy, and Pompeo’s statement, again, has no legal force behind it.

The U.S. State Department wants think tanks to disclose any funding from foreign governments "prominently on their websites" if they wish to engage with the agency, ostensibly in an effort to counter influence from China and Russia. But neither country is among the top 20 foreign donors to American think tanks, according to a Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative report published in January by the Center for International Policy.

With national polls showing Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in key battleground states, the president is acting irrationally and deploying his cabinet secretaries and departments to influence next month’s election. It couldn’t be more worrisome to have every principal of the national security team willing to follow the dictates and commands from someone as unhinged as Donald Trump.

It is often said that military leaders tend to train and prepare for the last war. Thus, when the next conflict comes, mistakes are made, early engagements bloody, and sometimes whole wars lost. Each and every time, the past-war preparers styled themselves more forward-thinking than their stale forebears. Yet clinging to the comfort of dogma, doctrine, and experience, these would-be dynamos usually blew it when their generation beat the war drums.

Foreign funders have emerged as leading donors to prominent think tanks in recent years. More than $174 million of foreign funding went to 50 top U.S. think tanks, according to a Center for International Policy a study published earlier this year.

While some research suggests that members of Congress with military experience may be more likely to restrain presidential use of force, recent behavior by post-9/11 congressional combat veterans belies the scholarly postulate. In fact, the preponderance of these warriors-cum-legislators have proved as pro-war as their “chickenhawk” civilian colleagues. This, in spite of rising public and veteran, opposition to America’s military adventures.

The top recipients of [government and defense contractor] funding were the RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security, and the New America Foundation, according to analysis by the Center for International Policy. “Think tanks should be required, by law, to publicly disclose their funders,” said Ben Freeman.

For example, the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force—a collection of former White House, congressional and Pentagon budget officials, ex-military officers, and think tank experts—published a report detailing how the Defense Department could cut $1.2 trillion in waste and inefficiency over the next decade.

The prospect of domination by the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded” warned President Eisenhower in his farewell address. The President’s warning against the consequences of institutionalized government funded research is often lost among his grander criticism of a military industrial complex. But, as prescient as Eisenhower was, even he might be awed by the gargantuan flows of money from the Department of Defense into the “independent” research community. Since Eisenhower’s time, this system has grown immensely.

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 United States controls nearly half the arms market.

Danny Sjursen recalls September 14th 2001 the day congress decided to have endless wars. Since then countless people have died and our aggressive foreign policy has produced no positive results. Danny shares his personal 9/11 story and his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We take a pause from the insanity of the election and a commander in chief with COVID-19 (remind me to thank him for endangering the staff at Walter Reed, as well as the permanent staff at the WH!) to discuss the recent explosion in Lebanon and America’s long intervention history there. We break down some of the myths from Danny’s series and give everyone a good picture of where Lebanon is today and how American foreign policy took it there.