On the same day dust was settling was from President Trump’s decision to assassinate Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani, a striking news story largely went unnoticed as pundits, experts, and analysts attempted to explain Trump’s potentially region destabilizing action.
Bloomberg reported last week that Richard Goldberg — one of the National Security Council's (NSC) most outspoken Iran hawks, and a close ally of former National Security Advisor John Bolton — was departing the council “for personal reasons.” However, the Bloomberg story didn’t deliver its real bombshell until the last sentence: “Goldberg will return to [the Foundation for Defense of Democracies], which continued to pay his salary during his time on the National Security Council.”Like Goldberg, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) regularly promotes regime change and war with Iran. It also prominently disseminated false assertions about Saddam Hussein’s development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the lead-up to the Iraq War, and its initial mission statement includes a pledge to provide “education meant to enhance Israel’s image in North America.”Responsible Statecraft reviewed U.S. Office of Government Ethics filings and found FDD’s financial support of Goldberg’s work also extended to subsidizing Goldberg’s travels. FDD paid for Goldberg’s $7,865 airfare and $380 in hotel expenses for a May 19 -22 trip to Jerusalem. The group also paid for Goldberg’s $3,977 airfare, $645 hotel expenses, and $63 meal costs, for a trip to Vienna from September 8-12.In both instances the trips were described as “[U.S. Government] Delegation” and the “event sponsor” was listed as “Foundation for Defense of Democracies.” It’s unclear at this point just why FDD was paying Goldberg a salary, or whether he was also concurrently being paid by the U.S. government. Either way, the news adds to a widespread pattern of corruption throughout the Trump administration. “Corruption and conflicts of interest have been at the heart of even this administration’s most profound decisions,” Ned Price, former special assistant to President Obama on national security, told Responsible Statecraft. “And that extends to Iran, where we now know a White House point person on Iran policy was receiving a salary from and remained employed by an organization that has put forward some of the most extreme and dangerous pro-regime change policies.” Price added that FDD has “made no secret of its continued lobbying of the White House, while keeping secret that it had planted one of its employees within the inner sanctum of administration policy making. It’s the type of corruption and conflict of interest that can spell the loss of life and even the march to war, as we’ve seen.”Indeed, as Bloomberg points out,FDD consistently pushes for increasingly hawkish strategies against Iran. FDD experts have repeatedly advocatedforbombingIran and ratcheting up punishing economic sanctions, all under the promise that “maximum pressure,” as the groupoftencalls for, will eventuallylead toregimechange in Tehran orsubmission by the Iranian government to awide-ranging list of demands by Secretary of StateMike Pompeo.Anarchived, February 16, 2003, version of the website contained a Frequently Asked Questions Section about FDD. In response to the question, “Should the war expand beyond Afghanistan?” FDD, as an institution, responded: “President Bush said he’s going after not only the terrorists but also the regimes that harbor the terrorists.” It added, “We know Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction — biological, chemical and nuclear — and remains a serious threat. But other nations that harbor or sponsor terrorists — Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, North Korea, Cuba — also must change their behavior. If we don’t insist on that, we won’t win this war.” A 2004 CIA report concluded Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons, his WMD program was destroyed in 1991, and Iraq’s nuclear program ended after the 1991 Gulf War.FDD is widely cited in the media, but its role in spreading falsehoods about Saddam Hussein’s WMD program and constant push for war with Iran are rarely mentioned, nor is the fact that several of the group’s top donors are also Trump’s biggest campaign supporters. Since the Soleimani assassination last week, the Washington Post, for example, quoted FDD staff on two occasions,neverproviding any context about the organization or its background.The New York Times published six articles citing FDD staff or otherwise mentioning the group over the past week. Three of the articles gave no context about FDD, while three others described the organization merely as, “an organization that has rallied opposition to Iran’s government,” “a group that has led opposition to the Tehran government,” and “a hawkish Washington think tank that consults closely with the Trump administration on Iran policy.”None of them make any mention of the group’s two-decades long drive for expansive U.S.-led wars in the Middle East, nor do they note that part of FDD’s mission, as stated in its incorporation application, is to advance the interests of a foreign country.“Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Inc. (‘FDD’) was incorporated in New York on April 24, 2001 as EMET: An Educational Initiative, Inc. (‘EMET’),” FDD’s April, 2001, IRS application for non-profit status reads. “The initial purpose of EMET was to provide education meant to enhance Israel's image in North America and the public's understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations. The attached brochure illustrates EMET's initial purposes, and the methods by which EMET was to attain such goals. These goals continue as part of FDD's purpose.”The application explained that FDD was expanding its mission to include “develop[ing] educational materials on the eradication of terrorism everywhere in the world.”FDD has indeed considerably expanded its mission, but the original goal of “promoting Israel’s image in North America” is completely missing from its website and in almost all media mentions of the group, its staff, and its positions."When you're a National Security Council employee, you're supposed to advance the interests of the U.S. government and only those interests,” Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council spokesman under President Obama, told Responsible Statecraft. “The fact that an outside group with murky funding sources and hawkish leanings could place an individual at NSC is fucking crazy."Vietor pointed to FDD's hosting of a conference critical of Qatar, paid for by the UAE via an intermediary, and raised questions about whether Goldberg could have had part of his salary paid for by a foreign source.Indeed, the new information that a prominent Iran hawk at the National Security Council was paid by FDD should raise serious questions about FDD’s influence over the administration’s Iran policy, especially as Trump’s assassination of Soleimani, a movecheered by FDD’s experts, brings the U.S. closer to a dangerous military confrontation with Iran.FDD did not respond to questions about why they were paying Goldberg’s salary and whether the group pays the salaries for any other federal employees.
Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and Investigative Journalist at Large at Responsible Statecraft. He reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken performs "Rockin' in the Free World" with members of The 1999 band at the Barman Dictat bar as he visits Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 14, 2024. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Pool via REUTERS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Last night Secretary of State Blinken played Neil Young’s bitterly ironic protest song, “Rockin' in the Free World” in a Kyiv bar. His speech Tuesday laying out the U.S. plan for a “Free, Secure, and Prosperous Future for Ukraine” was full of ironies as well, although he’d prefer that we be oblivious to those too.
After almost two and a half years of war, the speech announced a “stay the course” approach for Washington’s Ukraine policy. Rather than use the recent $60 billion aid package to lay the groundwork for a feasible plan to end the conflict, the speech promised continued U.S. support for unconditional victory and continued efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO, one of the issues that helped to trigger the war in the first place.
One irony is that Ukraine won’t be permitted to join NATO as long as the war continues. The U.S. and other NATO countries — which could bring Ukraine into the alliance today if they wanted to — won’t make a defense commitment that requires them to risk nuclear conflict by putting their own troops on the Ukrainian front lines and fighting Russia directly. President Biden began his State of the Union speech a few months ago by comparing the war in Ukraine to World War II and calling it critical to the future of freedom, but immediately afterward hastened to assure the public that “there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. And I am determined to keep it that way.”
Without a massive and risky escalation by outside powers, the best case scenario for Ukraine seems to be a bloody stalemate into the foreseeable future. Ukrainian territorial control has barely budged since their initial advances against the Russian invasion almost two years ago in summer 2022, even as hundreds of thousands of casualties have been incurred by both sides. U.S. officials admit that it won’t be possible for Ukraine to even attempt offensive operations until 2025, and even then, there is no guarantee that a new offensive won’t just repeat the bloody debacle of Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive.
Blinken tried to paint the picture of a thriving and prosperous Ukraine even as the war continued. But he had to distort the tragic situation on the ground to do it. He touted a 5% growth in Ukraine’s economy in 2023, but without mentioning that the Ukrainian economy is still 25% smaller than it was before the war, when it was already one of the poorest countries in Europe. And this economic growth is only achieved by massive infusions of foreign aid — the $115 billion committed by the EU and U.S. to Ukraine so far this year is more than two thirds the size of Ukraine’s own GDP.
Blinken’s speech claimed a sustainable Ukrainian prosperity could be achieved by “the growth of Ukraine’s burgeoning defense industry.” But Russia is hardly likely to permit Ukraine to become a defense production superpower while the two countries remain at war. Whatever you think of arms sales as the foundation for national prosperity, Ukraine can hardly build a globally competitive arms production industry under the disadvantage of having to shoot down a constant rain of Russian missiles aimed at its industrial plants.
The reality is that as long as the war continues Ukraine’s future is as a heavily subsidized battleground for a proxy conflict between the U.S. and EU and Russia. The kind of economic opportunities created by that future are grim at best. In a press conference later in the day, Blinken touted his visit to a Ukrainian “company producing world-leading prosthetics.” No doubt the company is world class, since it has to supply the demand from fifty thousand Ukrainian amputees (and counting) created by the ongoing conflict.
The $60 billion in aid offered by the U.S. is expensive in an absolute sense, but Americans barely notice it against the background of a $27 trillion economy. It’s Ukraine that bears the true cost of the war. With elections in Ukraine canceled for the foreseeable future as the conflict continues there are few mechanisms for the Ukrainian public to call for an alternative path.
We now know that there were serious Russian-Ukrainian peace talks taking place two years ago, soon after the Russian invasion, when Putin realized that his attempt at regime change in Ukraine had been thwarted. Those talks failed in part because Western powers refused to support the combination of compromises and practical security guarantees that Ukraine needed to make a peace agreement work. If the U.S. truly wants to support Ukraine’s future, we need to break from our current policies and champion a practical path to peace today.
keep readingShow less
US military releases photos of pier to deliver aid to Gaza (Reuters)
UPDATE, 5/17: As of early Friday, the U.S. military said the first shipments of aid have been delivered onto the Gaza beach via the new pier project. The initial delivery included food bars for 11,000 people, therapeutic food for 7,200 malnourished children, and hygiene kits for 30,000 people, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The British government said it had sent 8,400 temporary shelters made up of plastic sheeting. Officials did not say how or when it would be delivered by World Food Program and aid partners into the strip.
The fact that the U.S. military pier project off the coast of Gaza was temporarily stalled last week due to high swells and winds is symbolic of the challenges it now faces as it is reportedly opening for business within the next 24 hours.
So what do we know? A trident pier the length of five football fields is being anchored to the Gaza coast. Humanitarian aid will be dropped off there via ships from the floating pier, also built by the U.S. military, two miles off the coast. According to the Pentagon, two Navy warships will be protecting the floating pier and the sea bound transfer of the aid. Some 1,000 U.S. service members are engaged in the project, which is costing an estimated $320 million for the first three months. U.S. personnel are not supposed to be going "on the ground" in Gaza at any time.
The military will be working with the World Food Program to deliver the aid into Gaza once it hits the beach. DOD officials say they hope to surge some 90 trucks of assistance into Gaza at first, ramping up to 150 trucks a day.
It's what we don't know that should have DOD officials and other interested parties — including military families and the American people — quite concerned.
— The DOD is still not clear as to who will be providing security for this massive operation on the beach. When asked at the daily Pentagon briefing Tuesday, this is what Air Force Gen. Pat Ryder, spokesman, had to say:
"So as you know, U.S. Central Command has been working very closely with USAID, Israelis, other partners in the region on putting together a comprehensive security plan for this temporary pier and the aid distribution routes.
And so a lot of work has gone into that, and of course as we've said all along, force protection is going to continue to be of paramount concern. All that to say we do believe that we have the — the pieces and parts in place so that when we do begin operations, we're confident that — that we'll have the security in place that we need."
Two weeks ago, in a exchange with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in a House hearing, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin admitted there is a "possibility" that U.S. military on the trident pier could be attacked. In fact, U.N. representatives on the beach came under mortar fire earlier in May.
“Hamas is already reconstituting cells in the north and elsewhere in Gaza. There are intelligence gaps on the ground that could allow for a surprise attack,” Michael DiMino, a former CIA military analyst and counterterrorism officer now serving as public policy manager and fellow at the Defense Priorities, tells RS.
“As the pier prepares to begin operations, maintaining security both around the pier itself and at the point where aid is transferred to civilians ashore remains a top concern,” DiMino added.
— We don't know if aid can safely get into Gaza. The Israelis say they are on board with the project, but their track record includes backed-up trucks at every crossing, and continued attacks on aid workers (including a U.N. representative, who came under tank fire this week). Israel just took over the Rafah crossing and shut down all aid from coming in, and anyone who was scheduled for critical medical attention, from getting out. Even if the Israelis were to let the World Food Program workers through to deliver the assistance they would be traveling into a war zone in which the chances they would come under direct fire or crossfire are pretty great.
— We don't know where the trident pier is. Earlier reports have pegged it somewhere north of the "humanitarian zone" at Al-Mawasi on the beach and south of the Israeli controlled corridor splitting the Gaza strip in two. As experts have said, the trident pier must be aggressively maintained with military engineers. It is not clear how that is going to happen, or whether the Pentagon is hiring contractors do do that work.
— Finally, how long will this pier be in operation? When asked, the DOD won't say.
To ask "why" wouldn't hurt either. Ryder said yesterday, "as, you know, we continue to see challenges in terms of getting aid in via ground, we're going to continue to employ this method to work with the international community to get aid in to the people of Gaza." Wouldn't using U.S. leverage to ensure land routes were opened, rather than spending millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars and putting U.S. service members at risk be a better option?
keep readingShow less
Soldiers stand outside the Altiplano high security prison where Mexican drug gang leader Ovidio Guzman, the 32-year-old son of jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, is imprisoned in Almoloya de Juarez, State of Mexico, Mexico January 7, 2023. REUTERS/Luis Cortes
The opioid crisis in the United States shows no sign of abating. Mexican drug cartels are making more money than ever before while fueling the deaths of more than a hundred thousand Americans every year. Overdose deaths in the United States quadrupled between 2002 and 2022. Law enforcement appears overwhelmed and helpless.
It is little wonder, then, that extreme measures are being contemplated to ease the suffering. Planning for the most extreme of measures — use of military force to combat the flow of drugs — is apparently moving forward and evolving. It is an idea that has wedged itself into former President Trump’s head, and now he’s reportedly fine-tuning the idea toward possibly sending kill teams into Mexico to take out drug lords..
Invading Mexico, which think tanks close to the former president have recommended, is a spectacularlybadidea for many reasons. Employing special forces to do the job, like Trump is apparently contemplating, may seem like a middle ground, an alternative that carries less risk and lower costs. While not as insane as an invasion, it would still be a dangerous, counterproductive and ultimately pointless endeavor.
The first problem would be tactical. While U.S. Special Forces would have little trouble killing drug kingpins, they may well have a tough time findingthem. Since Trump has telegraphed the operation, cartel leaders — who are, as a rule, ardent self-preservationists — would go underground (or, more accurately, even more underground) immediately upon his election. Gathering intelligence on their whereabouts would prove difficult, since Mexican authorities would be unlikely to help. Security services generally object to having their sovereignty trampled.
Close coordination with those security services would be rather unwise anyway, since many Mexican officials are on the cartel payroll in one form or another. Four years ago, General Salvador Cienfuegos, who was Mexico’s Secretary of National Defense, was arrested in Los Angeles on drug trafficking charges. Under intense diplomatic pressure from a humiliated Mexico City, the United States dropped the charges and released him. In October of last year, he was given an honorary military decoration by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who himself has been the subject of much speculation about drug-related corruption.
Even if it proved possible to track down the kingpins, killing them would have little effect on the drug trade. Those proposing the special forces “solution” to the fentanyl crisis do not appear to grasp the basic economics: Supply will always find its way to high demand, and new narcotics entrepreneurs will always arise. When the Colombian cartels waned in the 1990s, one may recall, other suppliers quickly emerged in Mexico. If the current moles in Mexico are whacked, new ones will soon pop up elsewhere. Killing the middlemen of the drug trade never solves the problem.
The long, sad history of drug interdiction should teach us all a lesson: The drugs always find a way.
Sending teams of special forces southward on shoot-to-kill missions would also threaten to undo the tenuous rules by which Mexican narcotics trade operates today. The cartels, as violent and barbarous as they are to each other — and to incorruptable Mexican leaders — generally avoid targeting U.S. law enforcement. But if the United States treats this crisis like a war, then so too will the cartels, and they have non-trivial lethal capabilities. Their violence would get worse, and it might well begin targeting U.S. drug-enforcement agents.
If we stop following the law, they will stop following the rules.
There are better ways to address the fentanyl epidemic. For instance, the United States could take what might be called the “quaalude approach.” Some of us are old enough to remember that oddly named illegal depressant, which was popular in the 1970s but had essentially disappeared by the late 1980s. The United States did not militarize the issue but led an effort to eliminate, or at least control, the manufacture of the precursor chemicals for quaaludes around the world. Without those chemicals, the drug dealers could not create their poisons.
Fentanyl is also the product of complex chemical engineering, unlike cocaine or opium. Attacking its manufacturers, rather than its salesmen, contains the only possibility to control the epidemic. This would involve negotiation with China, which is the main supplier of fentanyl’s precursor chemicals today. Some progress has been made in this direction under President Biden, but not enough to make a substantial difference.
If revenge is the goal, then perhaps U.S. Special Forces are the best tool. But revenge very rarely makes for a sound basis for policy. Killing kingpins might make us feel good, and it might burnish presidential reputations, but it will not save vulnerable young people. Other options exist, ones that are far less risky, and that offer more hope for success.
Nonetheless, if Trump wins the presidency in November, deadly attacks on the cartels will be a serious possibility. It would be a perfect Trump policy, one that grabs headlines and makes him look tough yet do little good and even backfire. He has ordered assassinations before, after all. If our warriors kill cartel leaders, it will allow us to bask temporarily in the glow of national vengeance. But such actions will have no effect on the drug trade, and Americans will still die by the tens of thousands. Like so many Trump policies, targeting drug kingpins would provide distractions and illusions, all to no purpose.
We call our struggle against drugs a “war,” but it is fundamentally a law-enforcement problem. Changing that by militarizing the issue will just make the violence worse. And it will not change the fundamental fact that drugs, given high demand, will always find a way.