U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Trump administration’s foreign policy is based on restraint and realism. But U.S. foreign policy actions across the world suggest a lack of understanding for what the concept means in practice. Restraint values diplomatic engagement over military coercion and domination. so don’t be fooled by Pompeo’s hollow language. The latest video from the Quincy Institute explains:
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.
Serious accidents involving U.S. military aircraft soared 55% between 2020 and 2024, according to newly released Pentagon numbers. “These accident rates are incredibly troubling and demand action,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a member of the armed services committee, said November 19 after the Defense Department provided her with the data. Such Class A mishaps (those that destroy aircraft or cause more than $2.5 million in damage, and/or those that kill or permanently disable personnel), killed 90 people, destroyed 89 aircraft, and cost the military $9.4 billion. Warren said her push for more Pentagon transparency into its crash probes is “desperately needed…to save service member lives.”
Good luck with that, senator. The Bunker has tracked military-aviation accidents for nearly 50 years. They frustratingly rise and fall like unscheduled tides. Searching for a common cause is like trying to nail napalm to the wall. Among other elements, crashes can be rooted in wholesale dereliction of duty by the military-industrial complex, retail (i.e., smaller-scale) dereliction of duty, jet-jockey jerks, trying to do too much, or inadequate training. Sometimes, the cause remains unknown.
Every deadly accident is a tragedy for the family, the service, and the nation. These aviators, among the best in the world, often must make split-second decisions while going very fast. There are safeguards and redundancies built into warplanes, which help pilots avoid danger. But a U.S. military aircraft accident usually is triggered by a “perfect storm,” where several things have to go wrong at the same time, or in a cascading chain, for disaster to strike. Therefore there are, alas, an infinite number of causes.
Yet there is a relationship between crashes and training, flying hours, and spare parts — they tend to rise when those three items fall. As The Bunker recently noted, for example, the average number of hours flown each month by Air Force fighter pilots has dropped from 16 in the 1990s, to 10 in the mid-2010s, to about five today. Rusty pilots crash more.
The Pentagon often tends to blame pilots, especially if they are no longer around to defend themselves, for accidents. Beyond that, more money — for better training, and more flying hours and spare parts — is the Pentagon’s familiar refrain following crashes. But military aviation is incredibly complex, and money can only do so much. “The emergencies you train for almost never happen,” World War II pilot Ernest Gunn famously said. “It’s the one you can’t train for that kills you.”
Blueprints are valuable. Blueprints for weapons — including the intellectual property associated with their repair and maintenance — are Fort Knox for defense contractors. For example, while the Pentagon plans to pay $485 billion for 2,470 Lockheed-built F-35 fighters, it’s also projecting that it will spend $1.58 trillion (PDF) more to keep them flying. In other words, the sticker shock associated with actually buying the plane is less than a quarter of the total cost of owning it. It’s the armed and supersonic variant of safety-razor inventor King Camp Gillette’s adage to “give ’em the razor; sell ’em the blades.”
That’s why defense contractors are fighting a Senate proposal in next year’s defense authorization bill that would pick the “vendor lock” they’ve long enjoyed. The provision would force them to hand over to the Defense Department the data that would let the Pentagon, instead of the contractors, fix what taxpayers have bought.
But that, the military’s sky-is-falling suppliers maintain, will imperil national security. “America’s military advantage depends on cutting-edge technology and a strong, resilient industrial base,” argues Eric Fanning, head of the Aerospace Industries Association (and ex-Army secretary). “If we want to keep America safe, we need policies that protect and empower our innovators, not put them in jeopardy.” AIA endorses the “data as a service” model contained in the House version of the defense bill. That would maintain the status quo unless the Pentagon negotiated — paid for, in taxpayer terms — the information it wants for each contract.
Virginia Burger, a Marine veteran and The Bunker’s colleague here at the Project On Government Oversight, is leery of such a deal. “‘Data-as-a-service’ too often demands Internet links likely to be MIA on the battlefield,” she says. “If that’s adopted, I foresee printouts of screenshots stuffed in binders being a checklist item in a maintainer’s deployer bag.” Not a way to wage war.
Both the Defense Department and White House have voiced support for giving the Pentagon more access to contractors’ intellectual property. Members from both houses are expected to resolve the difference next month in the final version of the bill. It could end up being a holiday gift for taxpayers, and a lump of coal for contractors.
Or the other way ’round.
Last week, the Pentagon whittled down its list of key technologies from 14 to six. The half-dozen survivors are “applied AI, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technology, quantum battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy, and scaled hypersonics,” the Defense Department said.
But 48 hours later and half-a-world away, the Army unveiled what many grunts would say is a far more critical technology: how they chow down. That’s because the service has established its first “autonomous dining facility,” in South Korea, to see if machines can feed more soldiers more quickly than humans alone.
“An army marches on its stomach,” Napoleon reportedly said. If the U.S. military can develop drones and uncrewed tanks to wage war without risking American lives on and above the battlefield, shouldn’t it be able to build robots to flip burgers and operate Frialators to make freedom fries safely behind enemy lines?
“The autonomous kitchen uses robotic cooking modules programmed to prepare meals from fresh ingredients following standard Army recipes,” explains Chief Warrant Officer River Mitchell, an Army “food adviser.” Hungry troops simply tap a touchscreen menu “and the system automatically portions, cooks and plates each meal,” says an Army press release, sounding like something out of Drone Appétit magazine.
Just like on the battlefield — where the U.S. military insists humans will always be “in the loop” when it comes to launching weapons — humans will always be “in the food” when it comes to launching lunch. “Human oversight remains critical,” Mitchell said. “Our culinary specialists still handle food safety, ingredient prep and quality control.”
This new robo-cooking is rooted in the possibility of war with China. But the Army is too polite to say that out loud. It prefers to describe it as a pilot program ordered up by its Pacific Multi-Domain Training and Experimentation Capability program (love that snappy Army nomenclature!). The goal is to develop “new technologies to enhance sustainment and readiness across the Indo-Pacific region.”
In other words, to make General Tso’s troops chicken.
→ The terrorism-industrial complex
The Trump administration has branded more groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” in 2025 than the U.S. did over the prior decade, Patty Nieberg and Jeff Schogol reported November 18 at Task & Purpose.
Marine veteran Virginia Burger here at the Project On Government Oversight waded into the hurricane triggered by six Democratic lawmakers telling U.S. troops they don’t have to obey unlawful military orders, and President Trump’s resulting bonkerish call for them to be tried for treason (“Aye-aye sir,” Defense Secretary Pete “Hands-Off” Hegseth salivated), November 21 on POGO’s website.
The key military lawyer overseeing the U.S. attacks on suspected drug-smuggling boats from Venezuela concluded the strikes were illegal, but higher-ups in the U.S. chain-of-command dismissed his concerns, NBC’s Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, and Dan De Luce reported November 19.
Thanks for not overruling The Bunker this week, which is thankful for our readers and lots of other things, too. Happy Thanksgiving! Consider forwarding this on to friends and/or foes so they can subscribe here.
President Donald Trump declared in his second inaugural address, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
But he may be trying to get into a war in Venezuela. A chorus of voices on both sides of the political aisle are urging him to stick to his better instincts. Perhaps news this week that the president is now willing to talk to Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro is a sign they are having some impact. Or not.
The New York Times reported last week that, according to its anonymous sources, President Trump had “signed off on CIA plans for covert measures inside Venezuela, operations that could be meant to prepare a battlefield for further action.” This comes after continuing U.S. strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats off the coast and the administration designation of Venezuela’s "Cartel de los Soles" as a foreign terrorist organization — of which we are to believe President Nicolas Maduro is the leader, therefore making him a terrorist threat to the United States.
The Pentagon is reportedly reviving old bases in Latin America too.
It certainly looks and feels like the road to war, including the propaganda: Maduro is illegitimate, a dictator, a trafficker and a terrorist, and the region would be much better off without him.
Members of Congress in both parties are questioning the authority and wisdom of Trump potentially dragging the U.S. into yet another regime change war. The question is whether, collectively, their voices are making a difference.
In early November, outspoken progressive Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna challenged the administration, specifically the defense secretary and the vice president, on X: “(Pete Hegseth) and (JD Vance) you were sent to fight a war that was based on a lie.”
He was referencing the U.S. war in Iraq and the fact both men are veterans of that conflict.
“Now you are asking Americans to trust intelligence for a war in Venezuela… What happened to you?” Khanna charged.
“It’s long past time for Congress to finally get substantive and complete answers to the questions Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been asking for months, and for the Administration to be transparent about its strategic intentions in the region,” Senator Time Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said on Nov. 20 in a statement.
“The American people have no interest in stumbling into an illegal new war that would place the lives of our servicemembers at risk," he added.
On Monday, NPR reported that “a group of mostly Democratic senators is urging Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to declassify and release the legal opinion underpinning the Trump administration’s airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific.”
Democrats are expressing frustration over being kept in the dark on how these decisions are made, but so are some Republicans.
Sen. Rand Paul called out Trump on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday for seemingly dragging the U.S. into war with Venezuela without consulting Congress. “The Admin is pretending we’re “at war” with Venezuela to justify blowing up boats all without a vote, without transparency, and without answering to Congress,” he shared on X,
“If it’s war, declare it,” Paul added. “If it’s not, stop acting like it is.”
Paul said that Trump risks appearing to betray his antiwar posturing during the campaign in a way that threatens his own MAGA Republican coalition. "If he invades Venezuela or gives more money to Ukraine, his movement will dissolve," he told Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie,
Marjorie Taylor Greene, arguably the most MAGA member of Congress (she announced her January resignation last Friday) recently shared her opposition with “The View.” “I don't believe in regime change. I don't believe that we should be engaging in war,” she told the daytime talk show. “I don't think that we need to go out and attack other countries."
Trump’s least favorite Republican, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, asked during the government shutdown two weeks ago when air traffic controllers were at risk of not getting paid: “How is it that we have money for regime change in Venezuela but not money to pay air traffic controllers in our country?”
Trump now routinely attacks Paul, Greene, and Massie. But which Republicans are on Trump’s good side these days? Habitually hawkish Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, an avid interventionist whether in Venezuela or anywhere else, appears to be the president’s best friend, and some wonder whether Marco Rubio, who Trump calls the best Secretary of State in U.S. history, has been the primary guiding force in pushing the U.S. to attack Venezuela.
While polls show a strong majority of Americans do not want a U.S. war with Venezuela, old guard Republicans are quite comfortable with the leader of their party getting back to the good old days of neocon regime change.
Republicans and the majority of Democrats 23 years ago went all-in on regime change in Iraq to root out that country’s WMDs, which did not exist. Will the U.S. commit to the same kind of mistake in Venezuela over concerns about drug trafficking that may or may not originate in that country?
“The simple fact is we are headed to a regime change efforts in Venezuela based entirely on a false pretense (flimsier than WMD),” right-leaning Breaking Points host Saagar Enjeti observed in late October. “Even more concerning is the anti-war right is silent and seems to believe the government claims about drug trafficking.”
Thankfully, not everyone has been silent. Bipartisan members of Congress demanding that the president come to them first before committing the country to war is commendable, even if they were unable to make those demands official through recent war powers votes.
Since World War II, both Republican and Democratic presidents have carried out acts of war unilaterally, and as many would argue, unconstitutionally. It’s good that some in both parties now think that presidents shouldn’t be allowed to do that anymore.
In Venezuela, and hopefully, anywhere else.
November 30 marks the International Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare. Established by the United Nations in 2015, the day honors those who have suffered from chemical weapons and reaffirms our collective commitment to ensure these horrors never happen again.
Since the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) entered into force in 1997, 197 nations have ratified it.Israel signed but never ratified; Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan have not signed. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced in July 2023 that all chemical weapons stockpiles reported by member nations, including those in the United States, have been destroyed. It is one of the greatest disarmament achievements in modern history.
And yet, for many, the scars of chemical warfare are still fresh.
When most people think of chemical weapons, they recall images of gas masks, sarin attacks, or mustard gas — tools of modern barbarity. For countless families in the United States, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the legacy of chemical warfare is bound to a different name: Agent Orange.
Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides over southern Vietnam, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, and parts of Cambodia. Nearly two-thirds was Agent Orange, later discovered to be contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) — a potent, long-lasting dioxin. TCDD is a known human carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor, linked to cancers, reproductive disorders, and birth defects that can span generations.
By the letter of the CWC, Agent Orange is not classified as a “chemical weapon.” If you ask a Vietnam veteran suffering from Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease, or any of the 19 types of conditions the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) associates with Agent Orange exposure, you’ll hear a very different story. To them, it was every bit a weapon designed to destroy life and health.
The numbers tell a sobering tale. The 1991 Agent Orange Act allowed the VA to presume that all veterans who served in Vietnam were exposed, qualifying them for care and compensation. A 2018 Government Accountability Office report found that over 757,000 veterans — about one in four who served — were receiving benefits linked to Agent Orange.
The 2022 PACT Act broadened that circle to veterans who served in other areas where Agent Orange was used. By 2024, more than 84,000 new Vietnam-era veterans were granted compensation, many due to exposure. However, the VA still excludes most of their children from benefits for birth defects or disabilities — unless their mother, not their father, served in Vietnam. This injustice persists even as evidence grows of intergenerational impacts.
For years, the U.S. government avoided addressing the damage overseas as well. It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the United States and Vietnam began working together to clean up the lingering dioxin contamination. Thanks largely to the tireless advocacy of former Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and his team, the U.S. has since provided over $333 million for environmental cleanup at Da Nang and Bien Hoa air bases, and $139 million for health and disability programs in affected Vietnamese communities. During his trip to Hanoi earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to these cooperation and to strengthen defense ties.
This vital cooperation, however, stops at Vietnam’s borders.
In neighboring Laos, families endure the same suffering without support. The War Legacies Project has documented hundreds of children born with severe birth defects in the sprayed regions of Laos — eerily similar to those seen in Vietnam. Before his retirement in 2023, Senator Leahy secured $1.5 million for disability programs in Laos, followed by another $3 million over the next two years. Yet earlier this year, the OKARD (“Opportunity” in Lao) project — one of the few programs supporting people with disabilities along the Ho Chi Minh Trail — was quietly eliminated. Those families have once again been left to fend for themselves.
Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, the toxic legacy of Agent Orange and other dioxins lingers on. The CWC may not list it among banned weapons, but its effects — decades of suffering, intergenerational illness, and ecological ruin — make that a distinction without a difference.
As we remember victims of chemical warfare, we should also remember those whose suffering falls outside the neat lines of international definitions. Agent Orange was intended to strip away jungle cover, but what it truly laid bare is the long shadow of chemical warfare on human lives.
The United States has taken commendable steps to make amends in Vietnam. True reconciliation and moral leadership require going further. This means expanding support for communities in Laos and Cambodia who were also victims of undeniable actions by our country. It means ensuring that veterans and their families here at home receive the validation and care they deserve, including children born with disabilities that may be linked to their parents’ exposure. It also means continuing the scientific research needed to understand these generational effects fully.
Chemical weapons may no longer sit in our arsenals, but their ghosts persist in the soil of Southeast Asia, in the bodies of our veterans, and in the DNA of their children. To honor the victims of chemical warfare, we must not only remember those felled by sarin or mustard gas, but also those still living with the hidden wounds of Agent Orange.
As long as those wounds remain untreated, our work to end chemical warfare remains unfinished.
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