The federal government and U.S. taxpayers are effectively underwriting massive returns for Lockheed Martin shareholders, returns so impressive that the weapons firm’s CEO, James Taiclet, boasted about how the company handed $11 billion over to shareholders in 2022 via share repurchases and dividend payments, creating “significant value for our shareholders.”
Taiclet, speaking on a January 24 earnings call, said that Lockheed, the world’s largest weapons firm, was “ending the year with a total shareholder return of 40 percent.”
Lockheed may be a for-profit, publicly traded, company but those stock buybacks, dividends and appreciated stock value are largely underwritten by U.S. taxpayers. The company’s 2021 annual report acknowledged that, “…71% of our $67.0 billion in net sales were from the U.S. Government.”
Weapons companies often boast about the jobs they create and how their products are vital tools for U.S. national security. But in this case Lockheed is effectively acknowledging that billions of dollars of profit, overwhelmingly driven by U.S. government contracts, are being handed over to investors. In other words, $7.8 billion of the $11 billion transferred to shareholders in 2022 was effectively funded by the U.S. government and Americans who thought their tax dollars went to providing public services and keeping the country safe.
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.
Top image credit: U.S. Marines with Force Reconnaissance Platoon, Maritime Raid Force, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, prepare to clear a room during a limited scale raid exercise at Sam Hill Airfield, Queensland, Australia, June 21, 2025. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Alora Finigan)
There is a dangerous pattern on display by the Trump administration. The president and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to hold the threat and use of military force as their go-to method of solving America’s problems and asserting state power.
The president’s reported authorization for the Pentagon to use U.S. military warfighting capacity to combat drug cartels — a domain that should remain within the realm of law enforcement — represents a significant escalation. This presents a concerning evolution and has serious implications for civil liberties — especially given the administration’s parallel moves with the deployment of troops to the southern border, the use of federal forces to quell protests in California, and the recent deployment of armed National Guard to the streets of our nation’s capital.
Last week, the Pentagon sent three guided-missile destroyers to interdict drug cartel operations off the coast of South America, giving the U.S. Navy unprecedented counternarcotics authority and foreshadowing a potential military stand-off against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is wanted by the United States on charges of narco-terrorism. This development is echoed by President Trump reportedly seeking authorization to deploy U.S. military forces on the ground against drug cartels in Mexico.
These efforts are not new. Trump and the GOP have increasingly called for U.S. military interdiction against Mexican drug cartels under the banner of counterterrorism. During his first administration, Trump seriously considered launching strikes at drug labs in Mexico in an effort that was successfully shut down by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
But there are no such guardrails in the new Trump administration, and the rhetoric has progressively crept toward the use of U.S. special operations, specifically. During an interview on Fox News in November, incoming Border Czar Tom Homan announced that, “[President Trump] will use the full might of the United States special operations to take [the cartels] out.”
If that is indeed the direction the administration wants to go, it appears to be taking action to set plans into motion, starting with an executive order on day one that designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations — thus opening a Pandora’s box of potential legal authority to use military force. On signing the order, President Trump acknowledged, “People have been wanting to do this for years.” And when asked if he would be ordering U.S. special forces into Mexico to “take out” the cartels, Trump replied enigmatically, “Could happen … stranger things have happened.”
The executive order upholds that drug cartels “operate both within and outside the United States … [and] present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” It declares a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The specificity of both “within and outside” the U.S. combined with the declaration of a national emergency is perhaps the first step toward the broader use of executive power to deploy military forces in counternarcotics operations not only within Mexico, but potentially the United States too.
To be sure, the Trump administration is already testing the limits of Posse Comitatus — the law that prevents presidents from using the military as a domestic police force — by invoking questionable authorities to use National Guard and active duty troops during the counter-ICE protests in California and, most recently, to declare a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C. federalizing the police force and deploying troops to patrol the district’s streets. Reports this week suggest the administration is preparing to do the same in Chicago.
The naval operations in South America are likely just the beginning. If the U.S. military were to engage in Mexico, the most likely forces to execute an operation would be a task force under the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group, whose area of responsibility includes Central and South America, or a specialized task force under the Joint Special Operations Command.
Historically, along with past administrations, Trump has been inclined toward the use of special operations forces as his default problem-solver. Hegseth has amplified the same proclivity, noting at an industry forum in May that the presidentially-directed use of special operations forces has increased exponentially in the past three years and will only continue, pledging a significant increase in funding for the U.S. Special Operations Command.
Under both Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (2001, 2002) to counter global terrorism, recent presidents, including Trump, have enjoyed an incredible level of authority to unilaterally deploy U.S. military forces for crises or other contingencies without congressional approval. Because of their relatively low troop footprints and the ability to accomplish targeted and short-duration missions (creating a convenient perception of limited military involvement) special operations forces are often preferred.
However, the prospect of using military force in counterdrug operations under the banner of counterterrorism is not only legally debated, it is doctrinally unsound. The Department of Defense defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of violence, or threat of violence, often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs, to instill fear and coerce governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are usually political.” This is paralleled by the FBI’s definition of terrorism. However, there is no evidence that America’s illicit drug problem is driven by anything other than the pursuit of profit on part of disparate criminal organizations and individuals — fueled by the desire and demand for illicit drugs on part of the millions of Americans consuming them. Therefore, America’s drug problem, as concerning as it is, does not meet the United States’ own definition of terrorism.
While there are malign actions on part of the cartels that parallel activities committed by terrorist organizations — such as the use of violence and intimidation against the civilian populace, government officials, and military and law enforcement — the overriding motivation of drug cartels is not inherently political, or religious, or ideological in nature. Rather, it is largely financial. As with many other categories of criminal activity, illicit drug activity must remain within the domain of law enforcement, and any undermining of government authority by drug cartels is done mainly in the interest of securing profit.
This is a very important delineation when contemplating the use of American warfighters. During the “war on terror,” U.S. forces conducted counterdrug operations across the Middle East. I was directly involved in counternarcotics activities against ISIS-K as a part of the Special Operations Task Force - Afghanistan. However, ISIS was carrying out these operations to directly fund terrorist activities toward the deliberate, ideologically- and politically-driven aim of overthrowing state governments.
Equally important, the Mexican government has made it clear that the deployment of U.S. military forces within Mexico is neither desired nor welcomed and would be considered a violation of Mexico’s sovereignty. Mexico already collaborates with U.S. federal law enforcement in its fight against the drug cartels.
Rather than deploying special operations forces to conduct the kind of activities that would likely lead Mexico into full-scale counterinsurgency conflict — with U.S. forces directly entangled — we should instead nourish long-standing law enforcement partnerships. This would be the most legally appropriate and strategically sound course of action both diplomatically and in interest of regional security.
As President Trump’s second term kicked off, all signs pointed to a continued upswing in U.S.-India relations. At a White House press conference in February, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of his vision to “Make India Great Again” and how the United States under Trump would play a central role. “When it’s MAGA plus MIGA, it becomes a mega partnership for prosperity,” Modi said.
During Trump’s first term, the two populist leaders hosted rallies for each other in their respective countries and cultivated close personal ties. Aside from the Trump-Modi bromance, U.S.-Indian relations have been on a positive trajectory for over two decades, driven in part by mutual suspicion of China. But six months into his second term, Trump has taken several actions that have led to a dramatic downturn in U.S.-India relations, with India-China relations suddenly on the rise.
While the India-China thaw has received much hype, less attention has been paid to what this might mean for U.S. relations with the Global South and a more united BRICS bloc.
How did we get here?
Since the Obama era, India has played a central role in U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. Both sides’ desire to balance against China and prevent its ascendancy as a regional hegemon has underpinned the relationship.
But as Trump ramped up efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict, he slapped India with a 50% tariff for its Russian oil purchases, which a top U.S. official has said bankrolls Putin’s war machine. Indian officials immediately expressed outrage, with a Ministry of External Affairs statement calling the tariff “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable.”
For India, this isn’t just about the steep tariff rate; it sees these moves as coercive meddling in Indian foreign policy and as hypocritical given Europe’s continued purchases of Russian energy. Washington’s warming ties with India’s archrival, Pakistan, and a disagreement between Trump and Modi over Trump’s role in mediating the recent India-Pakistan conflict, have also contributed to the U.S.-India rift.
India looks east
These developments have compelled India to rethink its relationships with the world’s two major powers. In rapid fashion, India has deepened a détente with China that began last year following five years of tensions stemming from a deadly 2020 border clash.
The very day that Trump announced 50% tariffs on India, Modi said he would travel to China for the first time in seven years to attend the late August summit of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Shortly thereafter, India and China announced the resumption of direct flights between the two countries for the first time in five years.
Last week, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi traveled to New Delhi, where he met with top Indian officials, including Modi. The two sides announced deals to address ongoing border concerns, lift curbs on Chinese exports of rare earths to India, and increase trade and investment flows.
Geopolitical implications
India and China still have many disputes that they won’t resolve overnight.
“No one in Beijing or New Delhi sees their re-energized diplomacy as a fundamental strategic shift,” Daniel Markey, a China and South Asia expert at the Stimson Center, told RS. “There’s still too much distrust.”
Still, progress in the India-China bilateral relationship will likely continue if U.S.-India estrangement drags on. However, the real realignment that this slide in U.S.-India relations could impel is almost certainly to take place among Global South countries.
India has long prized its strategic autonomy, walking a thin line as it maintains close ties with both Russia and the United States and participates in Chinese-led groups like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The more Washington pressures India to make moves that New Delhi sees as against its national interest, the more India will find common cause with China and Russia, who are building Global South platforms like BRICS to resist U.S. pressure and coercion.
“Sustained U.S. pressure will indeed drive deeper [Indian] BRICS participation,” said Sushant Singh, a lecturer on South Asian studies at Yale University and a former Indian military officer. “India increasingly sees Chinese-led frameworks as necessary alternatives to unpredictable American coercion.”
BRICS was formed in the late 2000s, in part, to push back against U.S. sanctions and economic coercion. But the group has not been explicitly anti-Western, and divides between Russia and China, on the one hand, and India and Brazil, on the other, have limited BRICS cohesion. As Washington’s chief geopolitical rivals, it’s no surprise that Beijing and Moscow see BRICS as an important component of their efforts to subvert and ultimately replace the U.S.-led international order. India and Brazil, however, have shown more interest in BRICS as a mechanism to reform and democratize the international system.
“BRICS cooperation has evolved despite the China-India conflict,” but “rising U.S.-India frictions are now shifting the boundaries of what India is prepared to pursue with China and within BRICS,” said Mihaela Papa, who leads the BRICS lab at MIT’s Center for International Studies.
Washington’s treatment of a close partner like India reinforces the concerns of many Global South countries, who see the international system as a rigged game, where the United States uses economic coercion and hypocrisy to pursue American interests to their detriment. Although Trump’s bullying has been blunter amid his tariff war, U.S. peremptory behavior is a longstanding concern.
After all, BRICS saw its first real expansion during the Biden administration, when many Global South countries pointed out Western double standards over the Ukraine and Gaza wars. BRICS membership has expanded dramatically in recent years, with the bloc now accounting for 56% of the world’s population and 44% of global GDP.
If the first six months of the Trump administration are any sign of what’s to come in the years ahead, we can expect increasing Global South solidarity. Trump has also hit Brazil with 50% tariffs in response to the prosecution of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro. Moreover, the U.S. president has threatened an additional 10% tariff for participation in BRICS, which he says is “anti-American.” The irony, of course, is that actions like these could be the catalyst for BRICS to take a more explicitly anti-American posture.
As a new multipolar world takes shape, U.S influence will necessarily diminish. But BRICS isn’t going to usher in the United States’ imminent decline on the world stage. Still, that doesn’t mean Washington shouldn’t consider how to address its declining influence in the Global South or those countries’ desire to find alternatives to a global economic and financial system that the United States often weaponizes against them. As Ernest Hemingway once described the descent into bankruptcy, the United States’ global influence can diminish gradually, and then suddenly.
Bullying close partners like India with no regard for its national interests is sure to hasten that decline and limit the United States’ ability to address major transnational threats — like climate change, terrorism, and the challenges posed by AI. The United States could be left behind as BRICS and other Global South coalitions see Washington as nothing more than an erratic bully.
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Top photo credit: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Joe Mabel/Creative Commons), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen ((NASA/Bill Ingalls), Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons), Sen. Angus King (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Wyatt L. Anthony)
U.S. lawmakers who may have been silent for the last 22 months are now speaking out publicly and blaming Israel for the starvation and famine conditions in the Gaza Strip.
On CBS’s Face the Nation this Sunday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and long-time Israel supporter, slammed Jerusalem for Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis, declaring that "Israel is starving Palestinians with impunity.” Gazans are “systematically being starved to death because Israel is refusing to allow in the humanitarian aid that people need to keep alive,” Shaheen said.
When Brennan asked whether Shaheen should have spoken out earlier she replied, “We should be doing more and we should have done more… not just democrats, but also Republicans.”
Going further than Shaheen, 14 U.S. lawmakers have called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide to date, including 13 Democrats and one Republican.
To that end, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — the first Republican to do so — has been front and center.
"I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with," Greene said on X on Saturday. "And I will not be silent about it."
While stopping short of calling Israel’s actions a “genocide,” others have also turned up the heat and have called for halting U.S. weapons aid to Jerusalem until it reverses course.
“Israel’s actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency,” Rep. Angus King (I-Maine) declared in a statement at the end of last month. He said he would no longer support aid to Israel, “until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.”
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) wrote on X back in May: “Since the limited ceasefire ended in March, Israel has blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel must restart the flow of humanitarian aid into the region.” On Monday, is office released a lengthy statement that demanded Israel release more aid and stop the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He also suggested that he would support some ban on U.S. weapons to Israel if these things are not done.
"I urge President Trump to directly appeal to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government to take these steps. If Israel does not take these steps, I believe it is time for the United States government to stop the sale of some offensive weapons systems to Israel as leverage to pressure Israel into taking these actions," he said.
Around the same time in May, 30 Democratic lawmakers signed a letter in May calling on President Trump to ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, specifically, to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
“It is critical that Israel enables entry of lifesaving humanitarian aid into Gaza. We respectfully urge [Trump] to call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to immediately address this humanitarian crisis and promote lasting peace,” they wrote.
But other lawmakers continue to toe the line. Along these lines, Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) have expressed concerns for Gaza’s hunger crisis, but stopped short of blaming Israel for it.
And although Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Minority Whip and No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, had called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide earlier this month, she walked back that statement in a subsequent interview, prompting AIPAC to reaffirm its support for her.
Time will tell whether changing attitudes will meaningfully impact the U.S. approach to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. For now, that issue is the focus of ongoing party and policy debates as Americans become increasingly critical of the offensive. For example, recent Gallup polling found only 8% of Democrats support the war, perhaps prompting the Democrats’ political shift. Another found that only 22% — both Republicans and Democrats — believe what Israel is doing in Gaza can be justified as "self defense."
Indeed, more Democrats than before voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent round of Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) to block arms sales to Israel, although the measures ultimately failed. And the Democratic National Convention (DNC) is expected to vote Tuesday on two key Gaza-related resolutions, where one calls for a ceasefire and for Hamas to return hostages, while the second calls for a commitment to suspending aid to Israel, and for supporting a Palestinian state.
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