Even as the war in Gaza rages on and the death toll surpasses 35,000, the Biden administration appears set on pursuing its vision of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that it sees as the path to peace in the Middle East.
But, the agreement that the administration is selling as a peace agreement that will put Palestine on the path to statehood and fundamentally transform the region ultimately amounts to a U.S. war obligation for Saudi Arabia that would also give Mohammed bin Salman nuclear technology.
As the Gaza War demonstrates, the Abraham Accords — which normalized relations between Israel and other Arab states — did not help bring peace to the Middle East. But instead of pushing for a ceasefire that could end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and limit the chances of a wider regional conflagration, Biden is pushing to continue the legacy of the Abraham Accords in a move that only increases the likelihood of American troops being sent to fight another war.
Learn more in this new video by the Quincy Institute’s Khody Akhavi:
Blaise Malley is a former reporter for Responsible Statecraft. He is also a former associate editor at The National Interest and reporter-researcher at The New Republic. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, The American Prospect, The American Conservative, and elsewhere.
Khody Akhavi is Senior Video Producer at the Quincy Institute. Previously he was Head of Video for Al-Monitor and covered the White House for Al Jazeera English, as well as produced films for the network’s flagship investigative unit.
Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the people in Vietnam and Laos are still cleaning up unexploded U.S. landmines left behind from our war. That is, until Donald Trump's foreign aid freeze.
Shortly after the Trump administration announced its 90-day freeze on foreign aid on January 20, U.S.-funded programs were issued a stop work order, including demining initiatives in Laos. Since the halt, there have been four accidents resulting in six injuries and three deaths, including that of a 15-year-old girl, casualties of a war that ended over 50 years ago.
On February 13, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze foreign aid spending. Despite this ruling, local officials say that deminers in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are still prevented from going back to work in order to comply with the administration’s orders.
While a waiver was issued this month for Cambodia to allow $6.36 million to resume flowing through to November 2025, we are already witnessing the damage from the halt in the pause in clearance efforts and in an accident that claimed the lives of two toddlers.
U.S.-supported demining teams have been forced to stand down and are barred from operating equipment or vehicles funded by U.S. grants. This stop-work order impacts 1,000 demining operators in Vietnam. In Laos, over the past two weeks, local authorities say that more than 100 calls have come into the clearance hotline. Despite having nearly 4,000 deminers in Laos, none of them are allowed to respond due to the executive order. It is only a matter of time before desperate, untrained villagers attempt to handle the explosives on their own.
Children in Vietnam with disabilities — including those suffering from exposure to the U.S. military’s use of the chemical Agent Orange — who were receiving daily rehabilitation services funded by USAID have had their care suspended. Without continued therapy, muscles will stiffen, developmental progress will stall, and some may never regain mobility.
For decades, U.S. programs have addressed the lasting legacies of war. These efforts have not only saved lives and supported vulnerable communities but have also bolstered years of diplomatic progress. Foreign aid is not charity — it's a strategic investment for our country. U.S. assistance in Southeast Asia has consistently garnered bipartisan support due to its clear, tangible benefits: enhanced safety, economic stability, and strengthened bilateral cooperation.
The first priority for the U.S. was the recovery of Americans missing in action (MIA). This effort began in 1985, when the U.S. sent its first investigative team to Pakse, Laos, to recover remains of 13 servicemen from a military plane crash in 1972. Over the years, these recovery missions expanded, and to date, the U.S. has recovered 1,046 of the 2,634 MIAs in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
This collaboration on MIAs laid the foundation for addressing the more complex challenges of unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange. This has not been an easy process but great strides have been made to address the impacts of at least 13 million tons of explosive remnants of war that littered the countryside resulting in nearly 200,000 casualties since the end of the war in all three countries.
In Laos, over 2.5 million tons of ordnance were dropped, surpassing the combined total of bombs dropped on Germany and Japan throughout all of World War II. This staggering amount makes Laos the most bombed country per capita in the world. Yet, to this day, less than 10% of these deadly remnants have been cleared.
In 1989, USAID launched its first post-war humanitarian initiative through the Leahy War Victims Fund, providing prosthetics to former veterans of the South Vietnam Army and civilians who had been injured. In 1993, the U.S. expanded its efforts, funding clearance teams for humanitarian demining to remove landmines and unexploded ordnance from villages in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This cleared land for essential infrastructure such as farmland, schools, homes, and hospitals.
Upon learning that nearly half of the casualties were children, USAID and the State Department also began funding educational programs in schools, teaching children not to touch these deadly remnants of war and to alert an adult to notify mine clearance experts. These mine action efforts have led to a dramatic reduction in the number of casualties. In Laos, casualties went from 300 from before 2008 to 60 or fewer over the past decade. Recognizing the benefit of investments, the U.S. has funded programs in more than 125 countries and has been the largest provider of humanitarian demining investing worldwide.
Once a deeply contentious issue between the U.S. and Vietnam, the topic of Agent Orange has evolved into a shared collaboration over the past two decades. The U.S. has, via USAID and other agencies like the Pentagon, invested in dioxin remediation at former military bases in Da Nang and Bien Hoa, as well as funded medical care and rehabilitation for tens of thousands of Vietnamese with severe disabilities living in areas where the dioxin contaminated herbicides were used. Similar initiatives had begun in Laos, but, with the aid freeze, these efforts were halted — which would likely leave a generation of children with birth defects and disabilities without the critical support they desperately need.
As the examples of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia demonstrate, strategic use of foreign aid can not only save lives, but can foster reconciliation so that the U.S. can work with new partners to expand its collaboration on many other fronts, including defense, economics,and people-to-people exchanges. Eliminating our USAID specialists with decades of expertise is destroying invaluable institutional knowledge. Stripping services from the most vulnerable doesn’t show care, it puts lives at risk.
Since 1989, the U.S. has invested just over $1.5 billion in addressing UXO, Agent Orange, and war-related disabilities in Southeast Asia. To put that in perspective, in today’s dollars, that is roughly the cost of six days of fighting during the Vietnam War.
This year is not only the 50th anniversary of the end of the American War in Vietnam. It also marks 30 years since the normalization of bilateral relations between the two countries.This year is also the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-Laos collaboration in recovering U.S. MIAs and the 75th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations. Our ties with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia have been built through healing the wounds of war together and hopes for a new era of peace and prosperity. These gains can be lost overnight. Washington risks sending a chilling message to the world: that America’s word is worthless, its commitments fleeting, and its moral leadership for sale.
Secretary Rubio should immediately ensure that the already-committed foreign aid is reinstated before the U.S. loses decades of progress and trust.
Several members of Trump’s own party in Congress have expressed frustration with his language and tactics surrounding the Ukraine-Russia peace process.
The president was elected with a mandate to end the conflict, and he repeatedly promised to do so, even initially promising an end it within “24 hours.” However, some of his comments on Ukraine’s role in the conflict, calling President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator" who started the war, and musing whether the United States will continue to support Ukraine, has emboldened critics, including Republicans who were already skeptical of Trump’s insistence on moving quickly to a diplomatic strategy to end the war.
Republican senators also became outspoken after the United States voted against a United Nations resolution this week to condemn Russian aggression.
“Yesterday’s vote by the U.S. against the U.N. resolution was shameful,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), referring to the United States’ vote against the U.N. resolution condemning Russian aggression.
“We all want this senseless war to end, but ending it on Russia’s terms would be a devastating mistake that plays right into Putin’s bloody hands,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) piled on. “I can imagine this was a strategic vote in order to negotiate a hasty and expeditious outcome to a horrible war,” he said. “I agree that Russia is the aggressor. I’m acknowledging it, and so many members of Congress are acknowledging that.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has traveled extensively to Ukraine and has been in support of prolonging the fighting to ensure Ukrainian victory over Russia, said the U.N. vote had gone too far. “I think Russia is the aggressor. I don't care about the U.N. resolution,” he said.
Over in the House, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) criticized the vote. “An independent Ukraine aligned with the West is a game changer for the United States and Europe, so it is in our interest to ensure that Ukraine prevails,” he told C-SPAN on Thursday. “It’s a black-and-white issue: Putin invaded, he wants to restore his old borders from the Soviet Union.”
Indeed, Anatol Lieven, Director of the Quincy Institute’s Eurasia Program, wrote in an RS piece this week that Trump’s rhetoric this week might be unhelpful because “it allows opponents of Trump and enemies of the peace process to denounce (process) as ‘surrender’ to Russia motivated by personal and ideological amity between Trump and Putin, rather than a necessary step to end a destructive war, eliminate grave dangers to the world and costs to the U.S., and respect the will of a large majority of the international community.”
Zelenskyy and Trump are meeting Friday reportedly to sign a deal granting the United States access to Ukraine’s mineral mining market. It is unknown whether the deal will include explicit security guarantees.
The New York Times reports that North Korea is sending an additional 3,000 troops to fight for Moscow in Ukraine. According to the Times, close to 11,000 North Koreans were previously fighting in Ukraine and Ukrainian-controlled Kursk, but they were withdrawn after suffering heavy losses.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with President Trump in the White House on Thursday. The Guardian reports that Starmer promised to raise the UK’s defense spending to 2.5% of its GDP by 2027 and 3% by 2030. President Trump also indicated that American troops likely wouldn’t be needed as part of a security deal in Ukraine but that the United States would “help” the UK if its forces were attacked during a peacekeeping mission.
According to Bloomberg, Turkey has indicated it is open to providing peacekeeping troops if needed in Ukraine. Anonymous sources indicated that Turkish President Recep Erdogan agreed to lend soldiers from his army in separate meetings with Zelenskyy and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. France and the United Kingdom have also said they would provide Ukraine troops as part of a security package.
The Washington Postreports on Ukraine’s increasingly dire birth rates and population loss, with the population dropping from around 50 million in 1991 to around 36 million (including Russian-occupied territory) today.
The decrease is primarily due to a low birth rate, war casualties, and Ukrainians fleeing the country. The U.N. Population Fund reported in 2024 that the Ukrainian birth rate had dipped below 1.0 from 2.1 in 2001. The Post says that if these trends aren't reversed, Ukraine’s population will drop to around 25 million by 2050 and 15 million by 2100.
There were no State Department press briefings this week
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Top photo credit: Producers of best picture winner "Argo" (L-R) Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck and George Clooney arrive to pose with their Oscars at the 85th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 24, 2013 REUTERS/ Mike Blake (UNITED STATES TAGS:ENTERTAINMENT) (OSCARS-BACKSTAGE)
This Sunday millions will tune in to watch Hollywood’s premier awards ceremony, the Oscars. All eyes will be on the red carpet to see who is wearing what and viewers will be anxiously waiting to see if any drama unfolds–like a Will Smith slap or accidentally awarding the Best Picture Oscar to the wrong film. What won’t be mentioned is the fact that many of the movies vying for Oscar wins wouldn’t have made it to the big screen without help from the U.S. military.
From Goldfinger (1964) to Captain Marvel (2019), the Pentagon has assisted in the making of more than 2,500 war-themed movies and television series and continues to contribute to an average of seven feature film projects and over 90 smaller film and TV projects every year.
Roger Stahl, who heads University of Georgia’s Communications Studies Department and author of Militainment Inc. and the documentary “Theaters of War,” suspects that a third to a half of all blockbuster films substantially featuring the military have received military support. “The Oscars have honored a few security state-sponsored productions over the years,” he wrote in an email exchange with Responsible Statecraft.
As reported by Stahl, The Hurt Locker, which won Best Picture in 2010, had DoD help for half of its production before the relationship soured. Argo and its CIA “co-producers” won Best Picture in 2013, and the Navy’sTop Gun: Maverick boasted nine nominations in 2023.
Documents pertaining to the production of this year's films aren’t available yet, as they are often only accessible through time-intensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. But, according to Stahl, “if there was an Oscar category for most likely to do business with the security state, the nominees would be the new offerings in franchises that have done it before: Godzilla, Mission: Impossible, Planet of the Apes, and Captain America.”
The Costs of War’s new Consuming War research series, unveiled earlier this week, highlights the many ways in which “Americans are inundated with cultural projects promoting militarism.” The series’s first paper, “The Militarization of Movies and Television,” provides a timely review of the Pentagon’s influence over the movie and television industry. And it turns out that U.S. taxpayer money is going directly to Hollywood subsidies.
Tanner Mirrlees, the author of the report and Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University, illustrates how Americans are unwittingly helping finance military propaganda disguised as commercial entertainment. A typical war movie budget may range between $50 million and $150 million.
Meanwhile, a single F-35 fighter costs over $80 million. Thus, the cost of acquiring and operating jets, tanks and aircraft carriers would make such weapons inaccessible to movie makers without extensive DoD subsidization. Partnering with the Pentagon gives studios access to technologies and the personnel to operate them, military locations to film at, and U.S. officers who can double as taxpayer-funded extras.
This partnership comes at a price. In exchange for the use of military personnel and equipment, movie producers must abide by the Pentagon’s strict entertainment policy that grants the DoD final say over a movie’s script. These collaborations frequently require changes to the screenplay that amount to historical revisionism. Spy Culture, the “world's leading resource on government involvement in Hollywood,” has utilized FOIA requests to collect tens of thousands of annotated drafts of film scripts which provide a firsthand glimpse at the breadth of the Pentagon’s influence over the movies we know and love.
The script for Godzilla (2014), for example, was dramatically transformed from a movie meant to criticize the U.S. military’s use of nuclear weapons into one in which Godzilla, a monstrous allegory for U.S. atomic bombing, is strengthened by a nuclear missile and later assisted in battle by the U.S. military. The original script’s references to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also removed by the producers after the Pentagon threatened to withdraw its assistance from the film.
Godzilla is one of many movies fashioned by the militainment industry in order to help the Pentagon procure a whitewashed, idealized image of itself. Both Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper exalt the military and U.S. intelligence agencies while stereotyping and minimizing the humanity of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples harmed by American black ops. As Mirlees puts it, these movies “frame U.S. wars as necessary and glorious, downplaying or ignoring the human, social and environmental devastation war causes, particularly for civilians.”
The Pentagon also has a habit of withholding assistance from movies that examine the human cost of U.S. warfare or depict war crimes committed by American military personnel, such as Jarhead, Platoon, Redacted and In the Valley of Elah, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2008.
“One of my main concerns with DoD-backed Hollywood entertainment” explained Mirlees in an email to Responsible Statecraft, “is its role in sustaining an ideological environment where a purposeful questioning of defense spending—and the interests served beyond just “defense” or “security”—is politically fraught, often framed as unpatriotic or un-American.”
With a proposed budget of $850 billion and a seventh failed audit, the Pentagon is in desperate need of public scrutiny. Yet the silver screen continues to paint a romanticized picture of the military and its equipment. The DoD’s lackluster F-35 fighter jet, which has enjoyed its fair share of the lime light in the Transformers, Superman, and Godzilla franchises, for example, is projected to cost taxpayers more than $1.7 trillion.
When it comes to its embedded role in feature films, the Pentagon does its best to keep its relationship with Hollywood off-screen. “The problem is lack of transparency," said Stahl. “As researchers file more information requests, we have seen the military become more protective and tight-lipped.” Filmmakers too, often obscure the full extent of their collaboration with the Pentagon while actively pitching movie concepts with the Pentagon’s values in mind.
The FCC mandates that all public broadcasts must include a notice of all commercial sponsorships and product usage, which could be used as a framework for legislation that would require a public disclosure of cooperation between the Pentagon and film studios, thus providing the American public with the transparency it deserves. As it stands now, however, any acknowledgement of military involvement with a Hollywood film is buried deep in the credits, only available to viewers after they’ve consumed a movie whose script has been approved by the Pentagon.
While a deeper understanding of the Pentagon’s behind-the-scenes influence on the film industry is needed, Hollywood is just the beginning of the Pentagon's efforts to win the hearts and minds of U.S. taxpayers. From videogames and music to fashion and toys, Consuming War reports will continue to investigate the military’s influence on American cultural life.
So, as you're watching the Oscars this Sunday, just remember that you're not only watching the stars; you're watching the militainment industry hard at work.
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