PRESS ROOM

Meanwhile, the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force—composed of former government budget analysts, retired military leaders, and other experts—determined that the United States could save at least $1.25 trillion over the next decade by trimming the size of the military by 10 percent, eliminating waste and redundant positions, and halting the Trump administration’s massive investment in nuclear weapons.

As William D. Hartung wrote in Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, seeking to write your own rules and enjoy an endless win-win situation in the defense industry is nothing new. As early as World War One, the defense industry benefited from “cost-plus contracts” where expenses were paid back by the government and automatic profit minimums were established.
As Hartung writes, “these generous deals were compounded by a lack of effective oversight and minimal accountability for any malfeasance or misfeasance carried out with the taxpayers’ money.”

The campaign against government Inspector Generals (IG) is merely the latest phase of a war against governance that has been waged for the past three years.

As the international community is consumed by the impact of Covid-19, there are signs of the impact of the pandemic on the body politic. There is change throughout the international community, particularly the decline of the influence and power of the United States; the fragmentation of the European Community; the weakening of the transatlantic system; the increased influence of China; and the dire impact on Third World countries and their refugee problems.

Ghanaian feminist activist, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah said, “the reasons why women aren’t motivated to speak up…is because the cost of doing so is too high…when it brings no justice.” This may help explain why the #MeToo movement hasn’t had the same viral reach in African countries as it did in the US.

“The Center for International Policy is out with a special report on the military’s response to the coronavirus that warns against relying too heavily on the armed forces while also making a new appeal for reassessing national security priorities.

“While the Pentagon may have some relevant resources to add to the fight against COVID-19, it is not a public health agency, and is far from the ideal tool for addressing the current crisis,” said the nonprofit research center. “What is needed in the long-term is a sustained and growing investment in public health resources, from research and public outreach funding for key agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, to a large uptick in funding for national, state, and local health agencies.”

Even before the global crisis provoked by COVID-19, there were solid reasons to believe that the United States could be made safer at lower levels of Pentagon spending. Now that the pandemic has underscored the urgent need to address non-military challenges as part of any viable security policy, the argument for shifting Pentagon funding to other priorities is even stronger.

"This refrain had been growing even before the pandemic hit. 'National strategy involves assessing all of the major challenges facing the United States, providing the resources needed to address them, and setting priorities among competing demands' the Sustainable Defense Task Force, issued by the nonprofit Center for International Policy, reported last June. 'Many of these challenges—from climate change to economic inequality to epidemics of disease—are not military in nature.'"

If New START expires, or either party withdraws without a replacement treaty, America and Russia would be free to build up their nuclear arsenals. There would be nothing left to restrain the new nuclear arms race, and both countries would lose insight into the other’s nuclear arsenals. This move would reverse decades of bipartisan and international cooperation to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons.

The leaders of the House Armed Services Committee just announced that they are postponing the scheduled markup of the National Defense Authorization Act to “a later time.” Good. It gives policymakers time to rethink their assumptions about what constitutes national security and how much money America should be spending on the military threats that have dominated traditional thinking.

Ben Freeman, the Director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center For International Policy and FARA expert said, “That’s so interesting, because none of that, reading their exact words, actually would require FARA registration. Where it could cross over, say, if they’re at a congressional briefing, telling a Congressman to do something to benefit their foreign client, that would trigger FARA, but it based on what they put here, this is just information collection”.

Five years ago this month, a Saudi-led coalition began a bombing campaign in Yemen that was designed to defeat Houthi rebels and their allies and restore the government of Abd-Rubba Mansour Hadi, which the Houthis had overthrown. The Saudis and their backers naively assumed that it would be a short war – perhaps a matter of a few months at most. Five years and tens of thousands of lives later, the war has spiraled into the world’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe. With the likely spread of COVID-19 in a country whose health care system has already been devastated by the war, the situation is poised to get even worse.