Democracy & Governance Archives

Support Schumer’s Anti-Corruption Bill; Reverse the Corrosion of American Politics

July 31, 2026 – In response to Sen. Schumer’s announcement of new legislation to create an Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Center for International Policy Senior Nonresident Fellow Casey Michel issued the following statement:

“We welcome Sen. Schumer’s push to place anti-corruption efforts front and center for Democratic reforms. We also commend the bill for taking aim far beyond just Trump himself. Corruption has seeped so far into American politics, especially into American elections, that a new bureau is sorely needed to combat it, and to reverse the corrosion of American politics. We look forward to working with anti-corruption advocates to continue the much-needed work to take back our democracy from wealthy, powerful and unaccountable interests”

Against those who sow fear: Europe and the end of American Dependability

In 2016, as the world reeled from the surprise election of Donald Trump to his first term as President of the United States, writers across Washington looked for signs they could have missed about how this real estate mogul turned reality star could become president. Writing in The Daily Beast, journalist Ronald Radosh recalled a conversation in the District three years prior. Trump’s campaign manager Steven Bannon, then just the director of far-right Breitbart.com, told Radosh that “I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Deep into Trump’s second term, Bannon’ s invocation of the destruction of an ancien régime reads less like a provocation and more like a statement of intent. Despite the fluctuating relationship between Bannon and the U.S. president, the disruptive, quasi‑revolutionary authoritarian rationale he articulated has become increasingly visible in the trajectory of U.S. politics.

This development is hardly confined to the domestic sphere. The U.S. foreign policy characterized by the erosion of bilateral and multilateral agreements in favour of unilateral arrangements has generated growing concern among the United States’ partners, particularly in Europe. While the rise of reactionary politics is a global phenomenon, the democratic regression of a country with the structural influence of the United States carries disproportionate consequences. Should this trajectory consolidate, it risks accelerating similar dynamics elsewhere, including in Europe, where such tendencies have already taken hold.

Europe should mobilize an additional €10 trillion in investment in sustainable energy sources by 2050, alongside green and technological reindustrialization.

To foster a knowledge-based digital economy built on research and technology transfer, promoting digital humanism and environmental sustainability, and strengthening low-emission technological solutions.

Member States should allocate at least 1% of their GDP to renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Before increasing defence spending, existing resources must be shared more effectively to prevent duplication and address the inefficiencies present in many national armed forces.

The EU and member states should increase foreign aid funding for democracy work, to fill gaps caused by a decline in US spending and ensure that pro-democracy activists are not abandoned in their aspirations.

This transformation is already reshaping the strategic environment. As uncertainty surrounding U.S. commitments deepens, states and regions that remain invested in a rules-based international order are increasingly compelled to reassess their partnerships and seek more stable and predictable counterparts.

In this context, democratic actors within the United States retain a central role in reversing institutional erosion. Their efforts will likely continue to find resonance among European counterparts. Yet if current trends persist, Europe will be forced to adapt to a more inward-looking United States, recalibrating its alliances in response to a more fragmented and volatile global landscape.

Regardless of the path Washington ultimately takes, the European Union faces an urgent imperative: to address its own structural vulnerabilities by deepening unity and strengthening sovereignty. Should democratic backsliding in the United States intensify, Europe may find itself assuming a more central role in upholding democratic norms at the global level. The geopolitical void created by a retreating United States offers such a possibility, provided Europe is willing to reduce long-standing dependencies and act with strategic coherence, and stand as a bastion for pro-democracy forces globally.

Democratic Backsliding and its Transnational Effects

The assault on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, marked a watershed in contemporary U.S. politics. Initially perceived by some as an isolated rupture, it increasingly appears as a precursor to a broader and more sustained process of institutional erosion. Trumpism has evolved into a political phenomenon with clear affinities to contemporary far-right movements, reflecting deeper structural tensions within the United States democracy.

In the years since, this regression has not abated. Developments associated with Trumpism, particularly during the president’s second term, pose a systemic challenge to democratic resilience in the United States. For Europe, this evolution is significant for both normative and strategic reasons.

First, the United States is falling short on the expectations that the western and liberal world had placed in it as a central pillar of the liberal democratic order, even though such expectations may have been somewhat unwarranted and even exaggerated. Its current trajectory raises fundamental questions about the durability of democratic institutions, even in what some consider to be historically consolidated systems. Second, Trumpism has demonstrated a capacity to project itself beyond U.S. borders, leveraging transatlantic networks to influence political dynamics in Europe. Initiatives linked to figures such as Bannon, including attempts to establish far-right training centers and think tanks across the continent, illustrate the increasingly transnational character of these movements.

Europe’s dependence on the United States spans multiple domains, but it has not, and should not, do so when it comes to the sphere of ideas. Indeed, the United States is no longer simply affected by global democratic backsliding; it has become one of its principal laboratories. The implication is clear: if institutional erosion can occur in a system as established as that of the United States, it can occur elsewhere.

The Strategic Logic Behind Trump’s “Peace” Agenda

During his second term, Donald Trump has increasingly framed himself as a promoter of peace. This positioning, often interpreted as linked to his stated ambition of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, has nonetheless produced uncertain and, at times, contradictory outcomes.

Beyond its personal dimension, this posture reflects a broader structural logic associated with relative decline. Historically, declining empires facing economic strain—characterized by rising debt and inflation—have sought to secure access to strategic resources and maintain influence through coercive or violent means, frequently under the rhetorical cover of stability or peace. The United States and Donald Trump have in fact taken the concept of peace and turned it into subjugation, the notion that under the direction of the President the country is entitled to rob, exploit, dominate, and undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privileges—by being an empire—are maintained and protected.

Recent U.S. actions can be interpreted within this framework. Trump’s threats against Greenland’s sovereignty marked a significant rupture in transatlantic relations. For many European governments, it challenged a longstanding assumption: that the United States would not question the territorial integrity of allied nations. The episode has accelerated debates across Europe regarding strategic autonomy, particularly in defense, technology, industry, and energy.

Economic relations have also come under strain. Tariff measures targeting key European sectors, including automobiles, agri-food products, steel, and aluminum, have been widely interpreted as a direct challenge to the transatlantic economic partnership. As a result, confidence in the United States as a stable and predictable partner has been significantly weakened.

At the same time, in conflicts such as Ukraine, Palestine, and Iran, U.S. positioning has often appeared misaligned with that of its traditional allies. At the same time, Trump has shown greater synergy with the aggressors, like Putin and Netanyahu, than with the victims, like Zelenskyy, who have suffered public and televised humiliations coming from the U.S. president. This perception has contributed to a growing sense of strategic divergence across the Atlantic.

Public opinion reflects this shift. Survey data in recent years indicates a decline in European trust toward the United States, with increasing skepticism regarding its role as a security guarantor. Longstanding alliances, especially NATO, are being reconsidered amid growing doubts.

Europe in an Age of Strategic Reassessment

For decades, Europe, like much of the Western world, outsourced key dimensions of its sovereignty. Industrial production shifted to Asia, energy dependencies formed with Russia and North Africa, and responsibility for defense was largely delegated to the United States. This model has created the structural vulnerabilities that today undermine Europe’s position on the global playing field.

In a global environment increasingly defined by geopolitical competition and authoritarian tendencies, such dependencies are no longer tenable. Yet this moment of disruption also presents an opportunity. The European Union has the capacity to redefine its role, positioning itself as a central actor in the defense of democratic governance without replicating the coercive dynamics of traditional great powers.

Strategic autonomy, however, should not be equated with disengagement. Europe faces a strategic inflection point: adapt to instability and redefine its role in international order. This includes strengthening multilateral frameworks, investing in international institutions, and building coalitions with like-minded democracies.

To translate potential into capacity, structural adjustments are required. Reindustrialization and the revitalization of the primary sector are essential to reduce dependency on external supply chains. Equally critical is the development of an autonomous energy strategy centered on renewable sources. In parallel, advancing a coordinated European defense framework would allow for more efficient use of resources while reducing reliance on external actors.

Therefore, and willing to synthesize the lines of action that the European Union should adopt in order to move towards a strategic reassessment that brings more sovereignty, the following recommendations should be applied:

To mobilize an additional €10 trillion in investment in sustainable energy sources by 2050, ensuring a green transition that allows us to achieve climate neutrality objectives while maintaining a competitive industrial base.
A European plan of public social and ecological investments designed to reindustrialise Europe, with a focus on the new economy and the green and technological industries, while also strengthening our autonomy and sovereignty.
To foster a knowledge-based digital economy built on research and technology transfer, promoting digital humanism and environmental sustainability, and strengthening low-emission technological solutions.
Investing in the energy transition: Member States should allocate at least 1% of their GDP to renewable energy and energy efficiency. The European Commission should present a multiannual investment strategy to plan the investment needs for the EU’s energy transition. We estimate that public and private investment needs in energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable technologies across the EU amount to €1.7 trillion by 2030.
A common European security and defence policy, based on genuine cooperation in security matters across the EU. Before increasing defence spending, existing resources must be shared more effectively to prevent duplication and address the inefficiencies present in many national armed forces.
The EU and member states should increase foreign aid funding for democracy work, to fill gaps caused by a decline in US spending and ensure that pro-democracy activists are not abandoned in their aspirations.

Conclusion: From Dependency to Agency

As the United States becomes increasingly inward-looking and more authoritarian, Europe faces a decisive strategic moment. The erosion of U.S. position within the democratic international order does not automatically produce a successor, but it does create an opening.

Whether the European Union can assume a more central role will depend on its willingness to act collectively, invest in its own capabilities, and articulate a coherent vision for its place in the world. This is not simply a matter of geopolitical positioning; it is a question of political responsibility.

If the United States no longer defends the democratic order, the question is no longer whether Europe should act, but whether it can afford not to.

Oriol Junqueras i Vies is the leader of the Catalan party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. He was the Minister of Economy and Finance of the Government of Catalonia from 2016 to 2017. He also served as a Member of the European Parliament (2009–2011 and 2019–2020), as a member of the Spanish Congress (2019), as a Member of the Parliament of Catalonia (2012–2019), and as the mayor of Sant Vicenç dels Horts, near Barcelona, from 2011 to 2015. He holds a degree in Modern and Contemporary History and a PhD in History of Economic Thought from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

From the Sahel to Saint Paul, Curtailing Security Force Abuse Prevents Violence

In January, Americans became immediately and tragically familiar with the spectacle of masked and armed agents of Federal security forces shooting civilians in broad daylight. The horrific violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) against people in Minnesota, particularly the killings of protestors Renee Good and Alex Pretti, match the threat to everyday society seen in places abroad where security forces operate with reckless impunity. Immediate deescalation is necessary in Minneapolis, along with a commitment to avoid similar violence in other cities, but we must acknowledge that it is unlikely this administration will end their campaign to remove undocumented immigrants through seemingly any means. The systemic security force abuse that is accompanying ICE’s presence across American cities and hidden in detention centers will have lasting damage, particularly on already vulnerable immigrant communities and requires comprehensive prevention efforts by civil society and local government.

This kind of violence is not new, even in the United States where police abuse has resulted in numerous deaths, though its deliberate provocation by a Presidency against the people of a US state is unique. In the past protecting civilians from such violence was seen as a crucial part of US foreign policy, as part of a holistic effort to combat the conditions that foster violent extremism.

I have spent my career designing and managing conflict prevention, counterterrorism and security assistance policy and programs in Africa. I am not the first to remark on the striking similarities occurring on American streets with what I witnessed in multiple authoritarian African countries. I’ve sat in traffic, protected by diplomatic plates, eyes down and afraid to truly look, as police officers beat a man who was refusing, or couldn’t pay a bribe. I’ve designed security assistance programs across the Sahel that have been canceled due to massive military attacks against unarmed civilians in the name of counterterrorism. I’ve interviewed young people who defected from Boko Haram to learn why they joined, and personal or family abuse by security officials was often a primary reason.

Strengthen hyper-local resilience networks
Rebuild trust in security forces through community-engaged policing at the state and local level
Ensure a gender-sensitive approach
Provide psychosocial support and counseling to those that have suffered or witnessed security force abuses

I live in Washington DC, one of the first cities to be targeted by the Trump administration’s campaign to round up immigrants without regard for accepted standards of engagement. Like many in the community who pulled together through a patchwork system of signal chats, I drove kids to school who no longer felt comfortable walking or taking the metro. On our drives, we frequently witnessed masked agents pulling people, mostly men, from their cars and violently pressing them against the doors or shoving them to the ground, instantly handcuffed behind their back. Sometimes we drove past in silence, avoiding eye contact because it was too difficult. Other times they chatted in Spanish, identifying friends who lived in nearby buildings and texting them to make sure they knew to stay home. One day, the dreaded news came through: one of their fathers had been abducted on the street on his way to work. After being transferred from one detention facility to another, he told his family that the conditions were so terrible that he felt he had no choice but to self deport.

Although media attention is focused intently on Minneapolis now, ICE is still present in Washington and many other cities around the country, and their violent tactics have become emboldened and sanctioned by political officials. In fact, rather than simply being a tactic, ICE violence has become a policy, and a means to promote and enforce power.

Decades of research in Africa has shown that lack of trust in government, security force impunity, and general perception of marginalization are factors that can lead to recruitment by violent extremist organizations, especially when triggered by a “tipping point” event such as violent abuse by security forces. While there is no indication of increased violence among communities targeted by ICE, American civil society, and eventually the American government, should be attentive to these risks and take steps to prevent increased marginalization and risk of violent non-state groups forming in response to the abuses they have faced.

As the large-scale public response in Minneapolis and micro-level networks to protect and support neighbors across the country have shown, communities are resilient in the face of state sponsored violence. I’ve seen this personally through hundreds of community-based organizations I’ve worked with across Africa that have developed with limited resources to protect their people who face violence from both the government and non-state armed groups.

Federally sanctioned security force violence has harmed a sacred social contract between Americans and the government, but there are ways to prevent longer term damage. Although the context between the African countries where I have worked and the United States is very different, international experience and evidence suggest that states, cities and civil society could focus on the following actions to mitigate the risks of continued state violence and repression:

Strengthen hyper-local resilience networks: Protection and support that occurs closest to home such as Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs), neighborhood committees, or churches/houses of worship can provide a sense of belonging that reduces real or perceived marginalization. These frontline groups may be able to help develop strategies and capacities to resist violence. Many of these networks exist organically but can be strengthened with external financial or organizational support, however it’s important not to overwhelm their authenticity.
Rebuild trust in security forces through community-engaged policing at the state and local level: This approach is not new to the American context where some law enforcement entities have spent decades building relationships and trust within immigrant communities. Rebuilding or developing positive relationships that effectively address non-immigration related crime will require redoubling these efforts and focusing on transparency and independence from immigration enforcement. Lessons can be drawn from Kenya, for example, where there has been significant challenges of police misconduct and political interference.
Ensure a gender-sensitive approach: Although many of the people impacted directly by ICE’s violence are adult men, women’s lives are also changed particularly if they must take on additional roles to support their family financially to compensate for the loss of one income if a spouse is detained or deported. A gender sensitive approach should also consider the impact on boys and young men, whose role in the family and society may also be shifting.
Provide psychosocial support and counseling to those that have suffered or witnessed security force abuses: Given the risk that security force abuses can be a tipping point towards violence, it is critical to address this trauma early and provide ongoing counseling particularly for youth. Psychosocial support has been identified as a critical aspect of peacebuilding, reintegration of former fighters, and post conflict reconstruction following many types of violent conflict in Africa.

In the near term, these actions will fall to civil society, state and local government, and private citizens. The Trump administration has decimated many federal government services that address community violence prevention and detection domestically and abroad in the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) Justice, and State, as well as the FBI, including funding for NGOs. But beyond that, as was the case in many other countries I have worked in, the use of sanctioned state sponsored violence is intentional. As opposed to many countries, where political leadership acknowledges the need to address systemic security force abuses but fails to control it in practice, in the United States, such abuse continues to be promoted as acceptable. The tragic deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as well as the deaths of at least 53 people held in detention by DHS, are a direct result of the consistent sanctioned violence by security forces. This violence continues around the country, in neighborhoods where national media has gathered to witness it and in others where the harm is documented only by bystanders, and it is causing both short- and long-term damage to this country, and requires a holistic response.

Margot Shorey is an expert on counterterrorism and conflict prevention and previously served in the Department of State Bureaus of African Affairs and Conflict and Stabilization Operations.

We need accountability from Venezuela to Minnesota

The first year of the second Trump administration can best be surmised as a series of crimes for which accountability remains nonexistent. His administration forcibly disappeared approximately 250 Venezuelan migrant men, rendered them to El Salvador, and detained them in a prison notorious for its brutality. Unauthorized lethal airstrikes targeted alleged drug trafficking vessels off the coast of Venezuela as a prelude to removing the country’s leader, all under the threat of further military intrusion. Masked federal agents abducted people off the streets and bundled them into unmarked cars.

These made-for-TV displays of state violence define the second Trump administration. While certainly shocking in their brazen, even gleeful disregard for the rule of law and democratic norms, the abuses unfolding across the United States and beyond do not lack precedent. Instead, emboldened by the lack of comprehensive, meaningful accountability for similar conduct over the past decades, the Trump administration has chosen to escalate and expand preexisting abusive practices in pursuit of its authoritarian aims—with grave consequences for ordinary people and U.S. democracy.

Unaccountability as permission

Two years ago, I led a research study with the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) and the Stimson Center that investigated how the U.S. approaches accountability for civilian harm and law enforcement misconduct. The study found significant shortcomings in accountability across the U.S. security sector. In addition, the study warned that continued unaccountability risked creating a permissive environment for abuse while undermining democratic governance.

The Trump administration has repeatedly taken advantage of this permissive environment, from extraordinary renditions to illegal airstrikes to secret policing.

Extraordinary Renditions

In the spring of 2025, the Trump administration removed some 250 Venezuelan men from the United States to El Salvador. When relatives and lawyers sought to locate their loved ones and clients, U.S. officials refused to provide information. The U.S. and Salvadoran governments claimed the men were members of Tren de Agua, a Venezuelan organized crime group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration. However, the U.S. government appears to have alleged Tren de Agua membership based on inaccurate and unreliable methods.

Salvadoran authorities detained the Venezuelans incommunicado in the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), a facility notorious for inhumane conditions and violence. Men interviewed by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal following their release from CECOT and return to Venezuela described frequent beatings, sexual assault, and the denial of basic hygiene, sanitation, and medical care.

Possibly fearing international consequences for this detention, officials in El Salvador wrote to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, trying to “assign the US government sole responsibility under international law for migrants detained in CECOT.”

The extrajudicial transfer of these men to torture in a third country closely mirrors the Bush administration’s post-9/11 extraordinary rendition program. Following the attacks, the CIA transferred terrorism suspects for interrogation to countries known to practice torture. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria was one such destination. Others included Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt. As in the case of CECOT, the rendition program ensnared individuals who had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or terrorism. The CIA refused to allow the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate renditions, precluding any meaningful accountability.

Illegal Airstrikes, signature precedents

Prior to January’s invasion, the U.S. conducted a series of airstrikes off the coast of Venezuela, targeting vessels allegedly involved in drug smuggling. Thirty-five strikes have killed over 100 people. The U.S. has claimed these strikes constitute part of a non-international armed conflict against drug cartels. External legal experts, however, have concluded that the strikes not only lack a legal basis, but amount to extrajudicial executions. The Pentagon has also asserted that it does not consider it important for the military to know the identities of the people killed—or even whether they had been trafficking drugs. Fishermen from Trinidad, Colombia, and likely beyond have paid the price.

Self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised to treat maritime drug traffickers, in his own words, “EXACTLY how we treated Al-Qaeda.” In fact, the administration does appear to be treating its targets exactly how the United States approached War on Terror “signature strikes.” Like their fishermen counterparts in 2025, ordinary Somalis, Yemenis, Pakistanis, and others were targeted and killed based on observed “patterns of life” thought to resemble those of terrorist operatives. With accountability for these incidents of civilian harm largely absent, the recycling and escalation of signature strikes unfortunately cannot come as a surprise.

Secret Police

Perhaps the most emblematic visual of the second Trump administration is that of masked federal agents, often not wearing insignia or refusing to identify themselves, emerging from unmarked cars to snatch immigrants—or anyone determined to “look like an immigrant”—off the streets. Excessive force is standard. In addition, agents have tear gassed, manhandled, and pointed weapons at ordinary Americans and elected representatives seeking to protect immigrant community members and constituents. On January 7, an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, a mother of three, as she sought to protest for the rights of her immigrant neighbors.

Trump’s embrace of these tactics began during his first administration. At the height of the 2020 racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, protesters in Washington, D.C. encountered federal agents who wore no uniforms, badges, or formal insignia and refused to identify their department. In Portland, Oregon, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) previewed their 2025 practices by dispatching anonymous agents in tactical gear to abduct racial justice protesters into unmarked vans.

Congress attempted to curtail the use of unmarked agents in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which required federal law enforcement officers to wear visible identification when policing protests. However, the migration of tactics used against protesters to immigration raids and the continued deployment of masked and militarized agents at protests highlights the lack of political will to enforce non-repetition.

Envisioning Accountability

Accountable government institutions are critical to a functioning democracy. Because security agencies are uniquely empowered by the state to deprive people of their lives and liberty, ensuring they remain accountable carries heightened significance. Americans, at least as of two years ago, agreed. A joint CIVIC/YouGov poll conducted in conjunction with CIVIC and the Stimson Center’s 2023 study found that 73% of Americans agreed that the strength of our democracy depended on holding law enforcement agents accountable for their actions.

Further, participants in CIVIC and Stimson’s research emphasized the need for a comprehensive approach to accountability extending beyond a narrow focus on legal liability. Alongside legal liability, this comprehensive approach encompasses acknowledgment, explanation, and apologies; taking responsibility and making amends; disciplinary action; and non-repetition. Participants additionally made clear that any approach to accountability should be grounded in the needs and perspectives of the communities harmed by security activities.

Securing comprehensive accountability, whether for present abuses under the current Trump administration or for the past abuses that enabled them will not be an easy task. The destruction and devaluing of existing safeguards and accountability mechanisms since last January only compounds the challenge. At the same time, the past year has also demonstrated the power of creative and relentless organizing to defend democracy and protect targeted communities. With a commitment to sustaining this energy across what was already a protracted and grueling fight, genuine accountability—and the benefits it provides—might just be achievable.

Rosie Berman is a researcher and writer based in Washington, D.C.

Trump’s Wag The Dog Moment

Michael Paarlberg is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at CIP

On September 2, the House Oversight Committee released documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in an attempt to defuse public pressure over the sex trafficking case, and President Trump decided to blow up a boat.

The boat was somewhere in the Caribbean Sea, and according to the Trump administration, was a drug smuggling vessel containing cocaine bound for the United States and crewed by 11 people who died in the airstrike. This strike followed weeks of a large US military buildup close to Venezuelan waters that included eight warships, an attack submarine, a Marine Expeditionary Unit, and air support. Assuming the official narrative is true, it took one of the largest naval deployments in the history of the Caribbean to take out a single four engine go-fast boat with a cargo hold of 3 tons.

Was this a counter-narcotics operation? If it was, it wouldn’t have taken an entire fleet and millions of dollars a day to carry it out. Taking out drug vessels is something the US Coast Guard does regularly. They track boats bound for US waters, intercept them, board them – using lethal force if necessary – arrest crews and seize drugs. This is their job and they are good at it. In comparison to the perhaps 3 tons sunk last week, a single US Coast Guard vessel, CGC Hamilton, interdicted and seized 38 tons of drugs in the last two months alone. If the idea was to impose a cost, it is the US that is on the losing end of this equation, not the cartel.

Refocus Coast Guard resources toward shore defense and drug interdiction and away from personal use of Gulfstream aircraft and Coast Guard Commandant housing by DHS Secretary Noem.

Direct diplomatic efforts at agreements with allied governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to coordinate drug interdiction efforts.

Capture traffickers and build criminal cases against cartels and corrupt government officials in Venezuela and elsewhere.

A holistic drug enforcement policy that takes consumer demand into account.

Release the Epstein files, full and unredacted.

But many things about this operation don’t add up. What cartel was this anyway? The Trump administration claims the vessel and alleged traffickers belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. On the face of it, this makes little sense, as TdA is not a cartel as we understand the term. It is not a transnational drug trafficking organization: members engage in street-level dealing, mostly in cities in South America, but they are not known to engage in smuggling shipments of drugs across borders or oceans. They are, fundamentally, a street gang, whose business model is human trafficking and extortion rackets targeting Venezuelan refugees who fled that country’s economic collapse to Colombia, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere, with only a minor presence in the US at best. Indeed, eleven people is a suspiciously large number for smuggling vessels of this size which are normally crewed by three or four because the more people, the more weight and the fewer drugs you can smuggle in one shipment. If it was TdA, they would be more likely to be smuggling migrants, not drugs, making the death count significantly higher. It’s also possible it was just eleven people on a boat.

Blow This Joint

Was this a pretext for regime change? In its naval mobilization, the Trump administration has made reference to another alleged cartel, the Cartel of the Suns. Unlike Tren de Aragua, which is at least a real gang, this isn’t even a formal organization at all, but rather a term used to describe various Venezuelan political and military officials who profit from money laundering and other illicit rackets – much of which are designed to get around US sanctions. Insofar as there is corruption within the Venezuelan regime, this is well known. President Nicolas Maduro has made a show of arresting one of the key figures in this network, former vice president and oil minister Tareck El Aissami, as a means of distracting from the endemic corruption throughout his regime. Most of it is pedestrian in nature: Maduro allegedly got $35 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to win Venezuelan public works contracts. Most public corruption looks like Odebrecht, not Tren de Aragua, but procurement fraud isn’t a useful pretext for military action.

But military action doesn’t serve either purpose. If you want to break up a drug cartel, blowing up a boat does little to accomplish that, unless you believe cartels only own one boat. You arrest traffickers, seize evidence, and build cases against them. If you are targeting government officials, you flip your perpetrators to get to the bigger fish at the top. This is what federal prosecutors do, and they are also good at it. The Department of Justice succeeded in putting the former president of Honduras in prison by doing exactly this.

As for stopping drugs, as I and other authors write in a new edited volume on the global cocaine trade, it makes little sense to focus on boats coming from Venezuela at all. Cocaine, famously, comes from just three countries, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, none of which are Venezuela. Most of it goes through Mexico, or maritime routes in the Pacific Ocean. The largest quantities are smuggled on container ships, not speedboats. Venezuela serves as a pass-through for a minor corridor in the Caribbean, but it is one of a number of way-stations starting in Colombia and continuing on to the Dominican Republic and then to Puerto Rico, from which drugs are more easily smuggled into the mainland US. It’s not even certain that the crew of the vessel were Venezuelan at all, as Dominican drug trafficking organizations partner with Colombian and Venezuelan counterparts in this supply chain. And while cocaine production is currently booming, this is being driven by a surge in demand from Europe, not the US. Today, the drug of choice for American consumers is not cocaine but fentanyl, a synthetic drug that doesn’t come from Venezuela, but largely Mexico using precursors from China, and is increasingly produced in the US.

Assassin’s Screed

The reason we don’t conduct airstrikes on China or Puerto Rico is, presumably, extrajudicially assassinating Chinese or US citizens would be a bigger deal than killing Venezuelans. To be clear, this was an illegal act, under US and international law. Assassination is against the law according to the War Crimes Act, Uniform Code of Military Justice, and Executive Order 12333, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Not that those have stopped the US in the past, or other countries for that matter. Past administrations, Democrat and Republican, have assassinated individuals deemed national security threats, famously Osama bin Laden but also US citizens such as Anwar Al-Awlaki, both ordered by President Obama. Thus there is a precedent, legal or not, for killing accused terrorists in other countries without trial, one which President Trump put into process earlier by designating Tren de Aragua and other criminal gangs to be Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Other countries have adopted similar rationales, including Colombia, which in 2008 killed FARC commander Raul Reyes in neighboring Ecuador.

But as with the US raids in Pakistan and Yemen, and Colombia’s in Ecuador, these had severe political blowbacks that hobbled counter-terrorism efforts afterwards. Pakistan exposed the CIA station chief, and doubled down on backing the Taliban in Afghanistan as insurance. Yemen came to be dominated by the Houthis, a US opponent. Multiple countries cut ties with Colombia. One could argue, as Obama did, that assassinating key terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden was worth the blowback.

We may never know who these eleven people were, but it is highly doubtful that any of them were top leaders in either Tren de Aragua or the Maduro regime. Cartel bosses do not sit on boats personally escorting drug shipments, nor do government officials. So the payoff may be low, but the cost may also be low, as the Trump administration sees it: Venezuela is a pariah state already under crippling US sanctions, and Maduro is a corrupt autocrat who stole the last election. But such a strike can only be a blessing for Maduro. It turns what should be a criminal matter into a matter of national sovereignty, something he can use to rally support from neighbors who don’t like him. And those neighbors matter more to the US than Venezuela, such as Brazil. Last year, Lula had been a cautious critic of Maduro, blocking Venezuela’s accession to BRICS in response to the stolen election. It is hard to imagine him taking such a stance today.

The Big Stick-Up

The boat strike will only hasten the decline of US influence in Latin America, where China has already replaced the US as the top trade partner in most of the region even before the Trump tariffs. Countries will have few reasons to cooperate with the US on pressuring rogue actors like Maduro to respect elections or stop jailing opponents. Even Maduro had been playing ball with the US on the issue that matters to Trump the most, immigration, accepting deportation flights from the US. And despite the hostilities, the Trump administration has been quietly making deals with Maduro as well. In July of this year, Trump issued an oil license for Chevron to resume doing business in Venezuela, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Venezuelan government. It’s not hard to guess what Maduro cares about more, upwards of a billion dollars in oil revenues, or eleven guys in a boat.

In this context then, the boat strike looks more like a negotiating ploy by the Trump administration to put pressure on Maduro to continue making deals, whether to do with deportations, oil, or murkier interests represented by grifters and internet personalities. It’s beneficial to both figures: Maduro rallies his neighbors against a shared threat to the north, and Trump rallies his base with a foreign bogeyman, and shifts the media narrative away from his old friend Epstein. And with other legal cases, such as with MS-13, it’s more convenient for the Trump administration to not have them go through the courts, for fear of what corrupt deals may come out at trial. Of all the defenses of the boat strike on social media, the oddest was the refrain that due process is “woke.” Is it woke to break up cartels and put drug traffickers in prison? The enthusiasm for performative military action betrays a deep distrust in the police, prosecutors, and justice system as a whole. This is the kind of thing that leads to vigilantism, the breakdown of state institutions, and the rise of autocratic regimes like Maduro’s.

Trump’s War on Crime Is a War on Democracy

In Foreign Policy, Executive Vice-President Matthew Duss and Win Without War’s Harrison Mann wrote why Democrats must abandon the logic of militarization before they become its next victims.

Trump has declared a “crime emergency,” deployed thousands of troops and federal agents to the nation’s capital, and proudly posted footage of the U.S. military carrying out the apparent extrajudicial execution of 11 unidentified men on a boat in the Caribbean. Now even Trump himself is toying with the title of “dictator.” This looks an awful lot like the arrival of the authoritarianism that many Democrats have been warning about for the better part of the past decade. So why are so few Democratic leaders sounding the alarm?

Duss and Mann warn that Democrats chasing right-wing positions on security issues has left them with little room for disagreement when the national security state is employed in illegal or illiberal ways. Time is running out. Democratic leaders must face reality, fight back, and abandon the logic of militarization before they become its next victims.

Click here to read the FULL ARTICLE

The Danger of Loyalty Tests in U.S. Foreign Policy

Sina Toossi is a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy.

Shahed Ghoreishi was a career‑level press officer who drafted a single, straightforward line for the State Department press office: “We do not support forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.” A short time later his proposed language was cut, and days after that he was fired — an action colleagues told reporters sent a “chilling message” through the building that veering from the administration’s framing could threaten a person’s job.

That is far more than a personnel dispute. It is a window into a deeper pathology in U.S. foreign policy: a system — inside government and across its think tanks, media, and political circles — that too often punishes facts, rewards conformity, and makes it perilous for professionals to tell leaders what they need to hear.

Social scientists have a name for this dynamic: groupthink. Far from being an abstract academic idea, it describes what happens when teams value unity over truth. Psychologist Irving Janis, who coined the term, defined it as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”

In other words, the stronger the pull of conformity, the weaker the capacity for independent judgment. The result, Janis warned, is a deterioration of decision-making: mental efficiency declines, reality testing erodes, and moral judgement falters.

The process is easy to spot: decisions made within small, insulated circles create pressure to conform. Those who disagree either stay silent or are pushed aside, a false sense of consensus emerges, and what Irving Janis called “mindguards” step in—members who shield leaders from uncomfortable information and preserve the illusion of unanimity. The consequences are serious. Scholars of U.S. foreign policy have linked this very pattern to disastrous mistakes, from fatally flawed contingency planning to the manipulation and misuse of intelligence that paved the way for war.

That explains why Ghoreishi’s firing should make us uneasy. It communicates to tens of thousands of public servants that nuance can be dangerous, that raising inconvenient facts is a political liability, and that professional judgment may be judged less on merit than on loyalty to a preferred frame.

Protect honest debate

Public debate only works when people are willing to risk being unpopular in order to correct mistakes. As legal scholar Cass Sunstein has noted, dissenters who bring forward inconvenient facts are “to be prized,” because even one honest voice can puncture a false consensus. But when criticism is immediately treated as a political attack, the cost of speaking rises too high, and people choose silence instead.

When organizations go after people’s motives instead of addressing their arguments, real debate is replaced by character assassination. The Ghoreishi case was not just a routine decision by a manager; it was driven by a political appointee with an ideological agenda, and it was followed by a vicious smear campaign from far-right activist Laura Loomer. The message to career officials was unmistakable: even language consistent with long-standing U.S. policy could end a career. Such a culture silences public servants and leaves leaders deaf to the truth.

The consequences of manufactured consensus are not hypothetical. They were on full display in the run-up to the Iraq war, when insulated teams, reinforced by pressure from the top, narrowed intelligence assessments and sidelined skeptics. It was a textbook case of groupthink. Iraq proved that when dissent is punished, institutions lose the very safeguards that can prevent catastrophe.

Re‑center evidence over ideology

Good foreign policy begins with clear-eyed diagnosis and an honest weighing of costs and alternatives. Too often, though, the language of government cables and committee deliberations favors a politically convenient frame over a messy truth. The result is policy built on selective intelligence, comforting assumptions, and incomplete evidence.

Research on group decision-making shows why this happens. Some cohesion can help teams move faster, but only if dissent is protected and confirmation bias kept low. Once conformity takes hold and critics are silenced, decision quality quickly collapses. As Cass Sunstein warns, that fragile balance breaks down when powerful voices dominate, turning healthy teamwork into conformity, self-censorship, and collective error.

That is why reforming how decisions are made is urgent. Leaders should be required to hear out alternative analyses, include minority views in the record, and respond directly to objections from skeptics. These are not box-checking exercises. They are simple guardrails that make it harder for institutions to ignore inconvenient evidence before locking in a course of action.

Safeguard public servants

If we want honest debate, we must make dissent less costly. The scholarship is blunt: dissent must be rewarded or at least protected, especially when it benefits the public interest. That requires stronger safeguards for career staff and whistleblowers, real channels for internal disagreement, and institutional incentives that value critical review over blind loyalty.

But rules on paper only go so far. Culture ultimately decides whether people speak up or stay silent. In today’s climate, self-censorship is rising. Fear of reputational damage leads many to hold their tongue, and that instinct seeps into elite institutions where insiders are reluctant to challenge prevailing narratives. The Ghoreishi case makes the point: it taught public servants not just what language is permitted, but what truths are too dangerous to even raise.

Ultimately, even the healthiest institutions need outside pressure to stay honest. That is why external checks are indispensable. A free press and a Congress willing to investigate provide the counterweights to executive overreach and groupthink. These mechanisms are not partisan weapons; they are structural safeguards. By forcing leaders to explain their decisions, confront inconvenient facts, and stay accountable, they keep the system honest, and the country safer.

Why defending dissent is patriotic and vital for national security

Dissent is often painted as disloyalty. In reality, the opposite is true: telling leaders uncomfortable truths is a patriotic duty. When analysts, diplomats, or generals speak up, they reduce the chances that the nation will stumble into unnecessary wars, misjudge adversaries, or ignore the human costs of reckless policies.

That is why Shahed Ghoreishi’s firing should alarm anyone who cares about sound statecraft. It signals a climate where loyalty to the script outweighs telling the truth. And when silence becomes the safer career path, the nation loses its best safeguard against small mistakes growing into strategic disasters.

The fixes are not complicated. Institutions can create formal channels for dissent, assign rotating devil’s advocates, test plans against adversarial analysis, and shield career professionals from political retribution. These steps will not prevent every mistake, but they will make policy sturdier and leaders better informed.

History shows that even a single dissenter can break a false consensus and steer a group back toward sound judgment. Protecting those voices is not weakness; it is prudence. It is how democracies learn, adapt, and survive.

Israel Is Not an Ally—It’s a Liability

In a new article, Senior Non Resident Fellow Sina Toossi examines how Israel’s actions in Gaza and against Iran are undermining U.S. interests and exposing the limits of American support.

Is Israel truly an ally or a strategic liability for the United States? How have recent strikes on Iran and continued settlement expansion affected American resources and credibility? In this article, Sina Toossi explains the growing costs of unconditional U.S. backing for Israel. The analysis comes as global public opinion shifts and prominent voices, from Steve Bannon to Tucker Carlson, begin questioning the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Toossi shows how Israel’s actions, including attacks on Iran and plans in Gaza and the West Bank, have repeatedly placed the United States in difficult positions. These operations have drained missile defenses, stretched military resources, and entangled America in conflicts that do not advance core national interests. Israel’s behavior reflects a pattern where Washington absorbs political, financial, and military costs while Israeli leaders act with impunity.

“No serious partner would repeatedly push the U.S. to choose between its principles and another ruinous war.” From military entanglements and depleted defense resources to eroding global credibility, the piece lays out how unconditional backing may be undermining both U.S. strategy and moral authority in the Middle East.

Click here to read the FULL ARTICLE

The Anticorruption Angle – Democrats Should Build a Foreign Policy Around Fighting Graft

Executive Vice President Matthew Duss and Senior Nonresident Fellow Trevor Sutton joined Casey Michel in Foreign Affairs to examine the urgent consequences of corruption for American democracy and U.S. foreign policy.

In The Anticorruption Angle: Democrats Should Build a Foreign Policy Around Fighting Graft, Matt, Trevor and Casey make the case that U.S. foreign policy cannot succeed without confronting graft at its core. From weakened enforcement of anticorruption laws to growing global kleptocracy, the stakes are both domestic and international.

Rather than treating corruption as a secondary issue, they argue it should anchor a new foreign policy strategy, one that restores trust, counters authoritarian influence, and rebuilds U.S. credibility on the global stage.

Click here to read the FULL ARTICLE to see why fighting corruption may be the most effective, and politically viable, framework for U.S. engagement in a multipolar world.

Good Business Requires Better Governance

Kate Hixon is the Advocacy Director for Africa at Amnesty International USA and Kehinde Togun is the Managing Director for Public Engagement & Partnerships at Humanity United and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for International Policy.

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the Trump administration’s vision for foreign policy, he said every decision must answer three questions: does it make the U.S. safer; does it make the U.S. stronger; does it make the U.S. more prosperous? The administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) quickly decided that many existing policies and agencies failed to affirmatively answer these three questions. As a result, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was rapidly dismantled; attacks were launched against any program or policy that focused on human rights or good governance; and defenestration began of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. All these actions signaled to the private sector that the U.S. is open for business, no matter the human rights cost.

At the same time, these and other measures taken against supporting good governance and human rights create a contradictory environment for the administration’s stated goals: they do not make the U.S. safer, or stronger, or more prosperous.

Bad Deals

Most visibly, the Trump administration made a brazen play for critical mineral assets in Ukraine by attempting to browbeat the Ukrainian government for exploratory rights in exchange for ongoing security support. Other countries quickly took notice. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Felix Tshisekedi quickly offered mineral deals in exchange for assistance fighting the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group in eastern DRC, and dozens of lobbyists descended on Washington in “support” of the Congolese government to try and secure a deal. On June 27, the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington – the first step for both to also secure tentative mineral deals with the U.S. The administration’s Senior Advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos, acknowledged that in order for the mineral deals to work, the signatories needed “a more stable environment.”

Empower Department of State or other government bureaus to fund/implement human rights and good governance programs to increase confidence that private investments are viable;
Support projects that protect civilians from harm in conflict and disincentives conflict as a means to control natural resources;
Include and empower local civil society actors and journalists whose vital work helps create an enabling environment for responsible investment.

The Trump administration is not unique in its desire to prioritize U.S. interests or to seek to give the U.S. private sector a leg up in access to natural resources. However, unlike previous U.S. administrations, resource extraction appears to be the sole goal of the Trump administration when engaging with African countries. Nonetheless, both the administration and U.S. companies, regardless of sector, are constrained by externalities. Markets rely on stability that comes not only from inking deals between countries or their entrepreneurs, but also from ensuring that agreements are honored, processes are in place, and that people in those countries have their rights respected and benefit from those deals.

Good governance is good for business

For U.S. companies to succeed in African markets, they need to trust the rule of law. That principle — that business can only flourish amid reliable governance structures — is why the Millenium Challenge Corporation placed so much emphasis on governance. It’s also why the Development Finance Corporation and USAID partnered so closely to ensure an enabling legal environment existed for successful investments across the globe. When a U.S. company is assessing a country’s investment profile, it will investigate a number of legitimate questions, including if fair arbitration can be expected in the national courts, whether there is risk of being overtaken by the state or being impacted by conflict, and whether there will be a struggle with recruitment because the population lacks basic health care.

Without the rule of law, good governance and stability that comes from it, many U.S. companies will simply deem mineral-rich sub-Saharan African countries far too risky for investment.

Yet, when Elon Musk’s DOGE put USAID through the woodchipper, it simultaneously halted Washington’s ability to bolster civil society and support good governance programs overseas. It also eliminated the agency’s investment support via the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), making the investment climate harder for U.S. companies.

In the vacuum left by a retreating U.S., other governments will fill the void. Chinese parastatal companies will have a greater advantage, as their government’s support allows much higher risk tolerance, and fewer human rights safeguards, than many U.S. companies are willing to stomach.

Great prosperity through human dignity

If the Trump administration wants to make the U.S. safer, stronger and more prosperous, it must emphasize its comparative advantage, not eliminate it. While previous U.S. administrations didn’t do enough, they understood that U.S. companies required some semblance of good governance and respect for human rights to invest.

The DRC recently offered its critical minerals to the U.S. in exchange for the Trump administration supporting Tshekedi’s government. Eastern Congo is home to vast resources of gold, diamonds and the three Ts (tin, tungsten and tantalum). Further south is the world’s largest cobalt reserve — crucial for batteries and electric vehicles. Eastern Congo has a long history of instability, despite regional and international players seeking to cash in on these rich mineral reserves. However, very few U.S. companies have operated in eastern DRC, in part because of Chinese dominance but more broadly because of the high risk associated with operating in the region. Pervasive armed group activity in the area presents a real risk that a company’s mine could be taken over, as happened with the Rubaya mine captured by the M23. Amid a nearly five-year state of siege in eastern DRC, all civilian courts have been replaced with military courts, leaving doubt to companies about the independence of other courts in Congo should they need arbitration.

The DRC also ranks incredibly high on Transparency International’s corruption index, making it more expensive for U.S. companies to operate, especially without the protection of a robust enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

While USAID would not have been a panacea, in countries like DRC and around the world USAID and the State Department were focused on working to improve security, ensure transparency and support people to seek accountability from their governments. Behind the scenes, the private sector is raising candid concern that the closure of USAID and downsizing of State Department agencies will make investing in African countries even more expensive for U.S. companies.

If the Trump administration wishes to make the U.S. safer, stronger, and more prosperous through U.S. investment in critical mineral sectors abroad, it has to grapple with the loss of that expertise housed at USAID and begin ideating how it will help strengthen independent judiciaries and give companies more confidence in fair arbitration, support peacebuilding projects to help reduce levels of conflict, make a safer security environment for private sector investment, and simultaneously support investigative journalism as an external anti-corruption and accountability mechanism. It might also support health programs in mining communities that fill gaps where government services for critical healthcare were unavailable, and have an agency that works closely with the DRC de-risk investments for U.S. companies.

Companies also can’t sit it out while the administration dismantles the work and programs they need to invest responsibly and sustainably in the region. They need to speak not only to the ability of U.S. businesses to contribute materially to one of the fastest growing economic environments, but also to the value of programs that support rule of law, human rights and labor for their intrinsic good.

Issue: Democracy & Governance -- Defending democracy and countering rising ultranationalism, autocracy, kleptocracy, oligarchy and corruption