Arms and Security Initiative: Latest Articles

Time To End Waste At the Pentagon

Ron Tang — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:54:00 -0400

As Congress prepares to consider the annual Department of Defense authorization bill and other military spending legislation totaling more than $700 billion, the need for more aggressive scrutiny is abundantly clear. At a time when we have a $9.3 trillion national debt and large unmet social needs, oversight of these enormous and ever-increasing sums has failed to keep up.

The Pentagon’s procurement and budgeting processes are rife with problems. For example, the Government Accountability Office has identified $295 billion in cost overruns on 72 major weapons systems, even as the Pentagon can’t balance its books or keep track of its vast… more

Trouble at the Pentagon

Ron Tang — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:03:00 -0400

The Pentagon is in crisis: The war in Iraq is entering its fifth hot summer. And while U.S. troop casualties are down, the light at the end of the occupation tunnel is no closer and no brighter.

Headaches mount on the home front as well. The head of the Air Force was recently embarrassed and forced from the cockpit. Billions of dollars have been misplaced or misspent. Huge cost overruns bedevil weapons contractors. And, private contractors have formed a cubicle mercenary force, outnumbering uniformed personnel and federal employees in many DoD agencies.

The Government Accountability Office has issued… more

Invitation To Steal

Ron Tang — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:39:00 -0400

This article is drawn from Lessons From Iraq: Avoiding the Next War edited by William D. Hartung and Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at Institute for Policy Studies.

The heavy reliance on private contractors to do everything from serving meals and doing laundry to protecting oil pipelines and interrogating prisoners has been a major factor in the immense costs of the Iraq war. By one measure, there may be more employees of private firms and their subcontractors on the ground in Iraq than there are U.S. military personnel.

One of the main rationales for using private companies to carry… more

Entrenched, Embedded, And Here To Stay

Ron Tang — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:20:00 -0400

A full-fledged cottage industry is already focused on those who eagerly await the end of the Bush administration, offering calendars, magnets, and t-shirts for sale as well as counters and graphics to download onto blogs and websites. But when the countdown ends and George W. Bush vacates the Oval Office, he will leave a legacy to contend with. Certainly, he wills to his successor a world marred by war and battered by deprivation, but perhaps his most enduring legacy is now deeply embedded in Washington-area politics -- a Pentagon metastasized almost beyond recognition.

The Pentagon's massive bulk-up… more

The U.S. Senate: Stalling Hemispheric Arms Control

Ron Tang — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:31:00 -0400

In 1997, President Bill Clinton, standing beside Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo in the Organization of American States’ flag-bedecked Hall of the Americas, declared: “Gun trafficking is an issue of national security for our governments, and a matter of neighborhood security for all of us in the Americas.” The presidents had joined together to sign an OAS treaty known as the Firearms Convention, or by its Spanish initials as CIFTA, designed to end the illicit manufacture and trafficking of guns, ammunition, explosives, and related materials. It requires that ratifying nations create laws (if they do not already exist) that establish procedures… more

Bush Woos Europe

Ron Tang — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:10:00 -0400

The big news of President George W. Bush’s trip to Europe last week was not the multiple agendas that he juggled or the feathers he ruffled. It was the news he left behind. President Bush tried to set the domestic agenda for the week, with a pre-dawn press conference on his way to the airport last Monday. The sleepy First Couple stood side-by-side, as Bush told Congress they had “a lot of work” while he was gone. He even left a to-do list: pass Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, act on his Federal Housing Administration reform proposals, and agree to the… more

Guantanamo: The Bigger Picture

Ron Tang — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 04:50:00 -0400

The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The "gulag of our time" (Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). "The key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror" (Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The "legal equivalent of outer space" (unnamed Administration official). The right place for "the worst of a very bad lot" (Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and for the "most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth" (former Defense Secretary Donald… more

War is Hell, But What the Hell Does it Cost?

Ron Tang — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This article also appears in Star-Telegram.

War is hell -- deadly, dangerous, and expensive. But just how expensive is it?

In a recent interview, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz asserted that the costs of the Iraq war -- budgetary, economic, and societal -- could reach $5 trillion.

That's a hard number to comprehend. Figuring out how many times $5 trillion would circle the globe (if we took it all in one dollar bills) doesn't really help matters much, nor does estimating how many times we could paper over every square inch of Rhode Island with it.… more

The Commander-in-Chef Cooks Up a Storm

Ron Tang — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This article also appears in The Baltimore Sun.

In the week that oil prices once again crested above $100 a barrel and more Americans than at any time since the Great Depression owed more on their homes than the homes were worth; in the year that the subprime market crashed, global markets shuddered, the previously unnoticed credit-default swap market threatened to go into the tank, stagflation returned, unemployment rose, the "R" word (for recession) hit the headlines (while the "D" word lurked), within weeks of the fifth… more

Indonesia's Arms Appetite

Ron Tang — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Jakarta wants weapons. Lots of them.

Right after Valentine’s Day, Indonesian Air Force officials met with their U.S. counterparts to discuss “bilateral defense cooperation.” On their wish list were Lockheed Martin’s F-16 fighters and C-130 Hercules tactical transport planes. There will be more defense talks in April between the two countries as they step up military cooperation.

The United States and Indonesia “normalized” military relations in 2005, ending a 10-year period during which Jakarta was essentially barred from receiving most forms of U.S. weapons sales and military aid and training because of its military’s human rights abuses and corruption. Jakarta… more

Dems: What About the Military Budget?

Ron Tang — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

One issue that will not be discussed in tonight's presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is our nation's burgeoning military budget. Earlier this month, the Bush administration announced a proposed military budget of $614 billion, not counting the full cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This represents the highest level of spending since World War II, even though our most dangerous adversary is a dispersed terrorist network measured in the tens of thousands, not a nuclear-armed Soviet Union whose armed forces were measured in the millions.

If Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of… more

Surge in Spending on Nukes a Grave Error

Ron Tang — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

For many Americans, nuclear weapons bring up old memories and forgotten associations -- the duck and cover drills of the 1950s, President Reagan's exhortations against the "evil empire," and the plot lines of countless straight-to-video political thrillers. It may then come as a surprise that in 2008 the United States is considering a huge new investment in nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration is pushing for an estimated $150 billion to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons and a more "responsive" production network. The centerpiece of this move is called Complex Transformation, a multi-year plan… more

The Fog of War Crimes

adminn — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:00:00 -0500

A Marine squad was on a dusty road in Iraq, far from home. Suddenly, a deadly roadside bomb explodes the early morning calm and kills a lance corporal and wounds two other Marines. The mission: tend to the wounded and find those who were responsible … Or make someone pay? Three sleeping families awaken to the sound of grenades and guns.

By the end of the "operation," 24 people were dead, including three women and six children. Bullets, fired at close range, tore through bodies and lodged deep in walls. A one-legged elderly man was shot nine times in the chest… more

Nukes and the Elections

adminn — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:20:00 -0500

In this extra-long (and far from finished) campaign season, we have heard a lot from the candidates. We have seen them in many debates and public forums -- engaging with one another and with the animated snowmen and gun-toting hunters that populated the YouTube debates.

But all this exposure has not resulted in an abundance of substance. Hot issues like immigration and gun control provide juicy sound bites and smoking zingers on both sides but fail to inform voters on the candidates' stances on looming and critical foreign policy issues. Perhaps even more importantly, this flavor-of-the-week approach fails to engage or… more

Best of Bush 2007

adminn — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:14:00 -0500

Sure, there were some downsides to the Bush administration foreign policy in 2007 such as [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE EXAMPLE HERE]. But what about the good news?

No New Wars: Iraq and Afghanistan haven't quite reached the "pace of success" (Bush's phrase) that the president would like to see. But give him some credit: he didn't start any new wars in 2007. No "Nucular" attacks: since Dubya can't pronounce the word "nuclear" and can't locate most countries on a map, it's hard for him to push the button: he doesn't know where to aim. No War With Iran: That damned… more

More Oil Money, Less Democracy?

adminn — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:29:00 -0500

This article was published in El Comercio, a leading Ecuadorian daily paper, under the headline of ‘Democracia y crudo no se llevan bien...’ The text as published in Spanish is available on the ElComercio.com; the English version is posted below in its entirety.

Long before he became Vice President of the United States, back when he was just the CEO of a company called Halliburton, Dick Cheney was asked about oil and democracy. He famously quipped: “The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments.”

Blaming the… more

Plan for a New Missouri Nuclear Weapons Plant is Premature

adminn — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:23:00 -0500

Late in October, plans by the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a new, $500 million nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City came closer to fruition: The White House Office of Management and Budget signed off on a novel private financing arrangement for the deal.

The plant would replace an existing facility, known as the Kansas City Plant, that makes roughly 85 percent of the components that go into building a nuclear warhead. Key members of the Missouri congressional delegation -- from Sens. Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill to Rep. Ike Skelton -- applauded the decision on the grounds… more

Avoiding the Toughness Trap

Articles — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:23:00 -0500

There is a surreal quality to many of the foreign policy arguments being put forward in the 2008 presidential campaign, particularly among Republican presidential hopefuls. The Bush Administration’s fiasco in Iraq is a transformative event that calls for a fundamental re-thinking of US security strategy. The policies of "preventive" war, forward basing of US troops aimed at intimidating designated adversaries and unbridled support for missile defense and new nuclear weapons should all be cast aside in search of a new approach.

While scrupulously avoiding reference to George W. Bush by name, the top Republican candidates have embraced the worst aspects… more

Don't Militarize U.S.-Africa Ties

Articles — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:05:00 -0400

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left little room for news coverage or informed discussion of what is going on in the rest of the world and how it relates to U.S. security interests. This goes double for Africa, which was largely ignored in policymaking circles even before Iraq and 9/11 began to dominate the foreign policy agenda.

Thus, few Americans are likely aware that the U.S. relationship with Africa has become increasingly militarized. In the long run, such a focus is not beneficial for either Africa or the United States.

When most Americans think of U.S. relations with… more

Exporting Instability

Articles — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 08:44:00 -0400

Under the guise of promoting a "security dialogue" in the Persian Gulf, the Bush Administration has proposed $63 billion in arms transfers to the Middle East over the next ten years. As is so often the case, team Bush seems to prefer to let the weapons do the talking, even when it claims to be engaging in diplomacy. The foundation of the deal is a pledge to sell $20 billion worth of high-tech arms to Saudi Arabia and the other oil-producing states in the Gulf. Items in the package reportedly include upgrades to Riyadh’s US-supplied fighter planes, satellite-guided bombs and… more