In response to President Trump’s comments suggesting denuclearization and reducing defense spending in line with Russia and China, Center for International Policy executive vice-president Matt Duss issued the following statement:
“If Trump is serious about significantly reducing nuclear arsenals and Pentagon spending in step with Russia and China — lawmakers and civil society should stand ready to help do it right, thereby improving national security and human security in the US and globally.
There is no good reason to continue our current trajectory of proliferating nuclear weapons and ever-increasing defense budgets, half of which goes to giant defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, with minimal transparency or accountability. This practice has raised numerous concerns regarding waste and corruption. It is primarily greed, self-interest and a lack of political will that propagates the nearly $1 trillion –half of our discretionary budget—that goes annually to these programs. These spending levels make us less, not more, secure by making conflict more likely and fueling the flawed strategy of American hegemony behind so many of the costly US foreign policy boondoggles of the 21st century and the nuclear near-misses of the last 80 years.
The Trump administration has not always made good on past pledges –including a similar suggestion in his first term— and many of the promises upon which he’s acted do great damage, but this is a promise he should keep for the good of Americans and people around the world.”
Alex Thurston is Associate Professor in the University of Cincinnati’s School of Public and International Affairs.
The foreign policy establishment has been famously cast as a bipartisan “Blob” with monolithic views. Yet if the Blob is bipartisan, the Democratic foreign policy network has become the core of the Blob today. Democratic foreign policy hands view themselves as the keepers of order within American foreign policy, the crew that cleans up Republican foreign policy disasters. Democrats stand as reliable defenders of an American imperial order, the party tasked with winding down unwinnable wars (Iraq under Barack Obama, Afghanistan under Joe Biden) while prosecuting wars where the U.S. is ostensibly not a front-line combatant (Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza). Serious reforms to status quo American foreign policy have been fleeting. As vice president, Kamala Harris has championed the Democratic foreign policy status quo; at the insider-heavy Munich Security Conference in February 2024, she offered up the party’s mantras about American leadership, “international rules and norms,” and the importance of alliances with Europe and beyond. As the new nominee and through her choice of Tim Walz as vice president, Harris has stirred some hope that she will prove less militaristic than Biden and that her advisers will listen more to dissenting views.
The Democratic foreign policy elite sometimes tinkers with the status quo, but in relatively superficial and fleeting ways. Obama’s team showed imagination on Iran and Cuba, and Biden’s team promised a “new Washington consensus.” Yet Trump easily undermined Obama’s reforms, especially on Iran, and Biden’s team did not fight back vigorously once Democrats were back in power. Nor did Biden’s team undo Trump decisions such as moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. As on many domestic issues, Democrats portray themselves as the adults while mostly letting Republicans shape the playing field. Democrats’ defense of the status quo, moreover, often brings both criticism from the non-governmental players in the Blob (the think tank set and the editorial pages of East Coast newspapers) and fallout among their own base; in different ways, Ukraine and Gaza both exemplify how Democrats act out the preferred policies of the Blob, take elite criticism for not being hawkish enough, and simultaneously lose ground with Democratic activists and core voters.
As on many domestic issues, Democrats portray themselves as the adults while mostly letting Republicans shape the playing field.
A more progressive foreign policy would need a different kind of executive, but also a different cadre of people to implement it. If the National Security Council-led “Process Makes Perfect” when it comes to debating foreign policy in the White House – a dubious claim, actually – then that “process” also involves not just selecting among options but constructing those options for the principals. The people who steer the process matter.
Yet pathways into the Democratic foreign policy establishment remain narrow. One is to be a politician whose brand revolves partly or heavily around supposed foreign policy expertise, for example Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or John Kerry. Another path is to be a career political appointee, in the mold of Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, or Susan Rice – and, one could add, in the mold of Harris’ top two foreign policy advisors, Philip Gordon and Rebecca Lissner. A third path is to rise through the civil service (especially the Foreign Service or the CIA) and then convert bureaucratic capital into political capital, in the mold of Bill Burns or Linda Thomas-Greenfield. More complex pathways are possible too, involving careers in journalism, the NGO world, academia, or other sectors – Samantha Power came out of journalism and academia, for example. These pathways have some commonalities, however: they are all highly dependent on mentor-mentee relationships, and at the highest levels of a presidential administration, the representatives of different pathways tend to talk and sound the same.
Pathways into Power
Senior policymakers in the Biden administration today, mostly born in the 1960s and 1970s, represent the third or fourth generation to 1) steer the national security state, itself a relatively recent creation that dates to the end of World World II, the National Security Act of 1947, and the advent of the Cold War; and 2) manage the “liberal world order,” also a WWII-era phenomenon centered upon the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, and NATO.
Aside from the handful of Senators to brand themselves as foreign policy experts, the Democratic Party’s foreign policy professionals have no political constituency of their own; few of them are household names. Being a career political appointee requires close relationships with elected politicians and with more senior members of the foreign policy elite. Moreover, power within any given administration can manifest in different ways; the author James Mann, for example, argues that during Obama’s first term, the cabinet (Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, etc.) had less direct presidential access and empowerment than did members of Obama’s inner circle, such as Ben Rhodes and Denis McDonough. In Biden’s administration, in contrast, levels of formal and informal power sometimes seem to align, as with Blinken’s appointment as Secretary of State.
For career political appointees, the path into power often involves academic accomplishment (a Rhodes Scholarship, and/or an Ivy League J.D. or Ph.D.), then work for a Senator, then a senior post in a Democratic administration, followed by a cabinet-level post. Vetting and selection mechanisms kick in early; it is not that working-class Americans are completely frozen out, but attending a state school, or missing out on the mentorship that prepares one for major fellowship competitions, acts as a major brake on early access to the network. And if the foreign policy elite is becoming more diverse over time by gender and race, it nonetheless continues to skew male and white. Even more subtle, meanwhile, are the homogenizing effects of the selection mechanisms when it comes to ideological diversity, or lack thereof; the Ivies, the elite fellowships, and the early career opportunities in government or at top publications can all act as screening devices for junior applicants to the Blob.
the Ivies, the elite fellowships, and the early career opportunities in government or at top publications can all act as screening devices for junior applicants to the Blob.
To take a few examples of career political appointees, a 30-year-old Blinken served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council in a mid-level role from 1994 to 2001, then became a key aide to then-Senator Biden on the Foreign Relations Committee. Blinken followed Biden into the Obama administration and, in 2021, was tapped as Secretary of State. Sullivan, a Yale-educated lawyer, worked for Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. That role opened the door to a 31-year old Sullivan joining Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016. When Clinton became Secretary of State, Sullivan served in two key posts – Director of Policy Planning at State, and then as National Security Advisor to then-Vice President Biden. Had Clinton won the 2016 presidential election, Sullivan likely would have become National Security Advisor, one of the youngest ever. He eventually did take on that role in the Biden administration (2021-present).
For career bureaucrats, meanwhile, the Foreign Service and the intelligence community offer structured, hierarchal paths to advancement. If the bureaucrat rises high enough, he/she becomes visible to the politicos in the White House. A post such as Assistant Secretary can offer an audition for even more politically important jobs in a subsequent administration. One representative of the bureaucratic path is Bill Burns. The son of a major general, he won a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford in 1978, completed his Ph.D. there, and then joined the Foreign Service in 1982. He served in the offices of both of Bill Clinton’s Secretaries of State and then, starting at 42 took up high-profile posts as Ambassador to Jordan (1998-2001), Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (2001-2005), Ambassador to Russia (2005-2008), Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (2008-2011), and Deputy Secretary of State (2011-2014). Burns’ rise proceeded under Democratic and Republican presidents alike, but his post-Foreign Service career has seen him gravitate towards the Democratic establishment, serving as president of the liberal think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2014-2021) before accepting the directorship of the CIA under Biden.
Bureaucrats-turned-elites are major assets to any administration – these bureaucrats bring substantial government experience to the table, as well as long-practiced diplomatic skills. If there is an American “Deep State,” then Burns personifies it; indeed, some post-October 7 coverage suggests that it is Burns, rather than Blinken, who is the real voice of American negotiations in the Middle East.
Power, finally, and lesser-known figures such as Richard Stengel, exemplify paths that run through journalism or other sectors. Power, a war correspondent, joined Harvard in 1998 to establish the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy; she earned fame, and a Pulitzer, for her 2003 book on genocide, A Problem from Hell. She then became a key advisor to Barack Obama, eventually serving, starting at 42, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during his second term and returning to the White House under Biden as director of the United States Agency for International Development.
Pathways When Out of Power
One important facet of such figures’ careers is what they do when Democrats are out of power. The typical moves are to think tanks, universities (again, especially Ivy Leagues), or consulting firms. Such roles can keep foreign policy professionals visible (through speaking engagements, appearances in the media, and/or participating in policy reports and high-level working groups) and can help them maintain and expand their networks. Consulting firms are, obviously, lucrative ways to leverage government experience and political connections, but are also important parts of the foreign policy infrastructure, again allowing out-of-power elites to stay connected to key contacts at home and abroad, and also to create professional perches for peers and proteges. When out of power, top figures not only often find prestigious and lucrative perches but also combine multiple roles – as think tankers and consultants, for example – to burnish their images as serious thinkers while simultaneously cashing in.
Key pipelines into the Biden administration included two consulting firms: Albright Stonebridge Group (an outgrowth of former Clinton secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s consulting firm, founded in 2001, which merged in 2009 with Stonebridge International, a firm launched by Albright’s fellow Clinton administration alumnus Sandy Berger, who had served as National Security Advisor from 1997-2001); and WestExec Advisors (founded in 2017 by Blinken and several other top Obama officials). Although such firms are substantially smaller than Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, they play a broadly similar function in the revolving door of Washington, allowing the kind of zig-zagging career mobility (and profitability) for the foreign policy elite that major investment banks and corporations have allowed for the financial elite. WestExec has been criticized for the opacity of its client list, and for the ways in which the firm leveraged promises of “face time” with once-and-future officials as a selling point for clients.
Another way that out-of-power Democrats occupy themselves is, of course, with planning how to get back into power. A key venue between the Obama and Biden administrations was National Security Action, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group. Co-chaired by Rhodes and Sullivan, the group included Blinken, Burns, Thomas-Greenfield, and a host of other familiar faces, many of whom joined the Biden administration. Various institutions, then, allow the Democratic foreign policy elite to bide their time and stay in the game while between White Houses. It may also be time out of power, moreover, that reinforces the network’s cohesion even more than time in power; the shared experience of opposing a Republican president, planning lines of attack and promises for the future, and engaging in shared consulting and corporate work likely also serve to bind a diverse elite more closely together.
Worldviews and Goals of the Democratic Foreign Policy Establishment
What do the Democratic foreign policy elites want and believe? From their writings and statements, many senior members of this club exhibit a generic liberal view of America’s place in the world, tinged with elements of progressivism.
There are no specific values that one could permanently associate with Blinken or Sullivan, for example. While out of power, Democratic foreign policy elites – as with top candidates for office – gesture towards the imperative to uphold “our values” and restore a perceived normalcy in American life and foreign policy. National Security Action, for example, “work[ed] to ensure that America endures as a beacon of opportunity, dignity, and hope to people around the world.” The group declared, “We reject the false choice between welcoming immigrants and refugees and ensuring our security” and also said that “enabling or excusing oppression abroad today only fuels the injustices and instability that endanger us all tomorrow.” Back in office, however, the Biden administration proved more than willing to crack down on immigrants, and even more willing to double down on alliances with autocrats around the world.
Similar promises from Sullivan and others that U.S. foreign policy under Biden would “work better for the middle class” had relatively little substance and were soon abandoned. The policy paper Sullivan helped organize in 2020 recommended, among other items, to “shift some defense spending toward research and development (R&D) and technological workforce development to protect the U.S. innovative edge and enhance long-term readiness,” but the defense budget has instead grown each year under Biden.
When called upon to articulate a view of America’s role in the world, the top Democratic strategists are often vague. In October 2023, Sullivan penned an article for Foreign Affairs called “The Sources of America Power.” The article became infamous for Sullivan’s boast that “although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades” – lines written and spoken before Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023 and the ensuing genocidal response by Israel, but naïve nonetheless. More telling of Sullivan’s worldview, however, was this sentence: “The essence of President Biden’s foreign policy is to lay a new foundation of American strength so that the country is best positioned to shape the new era in a way that protects its interests and values and advances the common good.” Such sentiments amount to little more than an argument that America is inherently good, so therefore it should lead the world, and therefore America must be “strong.” This is less a foreign policy than it is a vague, all-purpose justification for ad hoc decisions.
Such sentiments amount to little more than an argument that America is inherently good, so therefore it should lead the world, and therefore America must be “strong.”
Harris’ advisors are clearly reflective – Gordon published a book in 2020 called Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East – yet there are limits to their introspection. If Gordon is a reformist, as some have argued, he is a moderate one at most. Gordon’s thinking in Losing the Long Game revolves around cost-benefit analysis in a framework that still assumes and extols American primacy, rather than a wider set of questions about how, for example, U.S. failures in the Middle East could provide impetus for a fundamentally different approach to the region and the world. And reflection can turn into overcorrection; among various troubling notes in the book, Gordon portrays Obama’s (very reluctant) support for Egyptian protesters in 2011 as a form of “regime change” gone wrong, collapsing U.S. rhetorical support for largely non-violent Egyptian protests with the more aggressive U.S. interventions in Syria and Libya. And despite Gordon’s reflections when out of power, Biden himself has appeared to call for regime change in Russia and, depending on how one parses his statements, Iran. Biden’s statements could be seen as gaffes, but the instinct to push for regime change in adversaries runs deep, and no senior staff resigned over either remark. Meanwhile, Lissner co-authored a book in 2020 called An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st Century Order. Endorsed by Henry Kissinger, the book’s call for openness is welcome – but is the key question facing the U.S. really how to “win”?
Even those individuals who do enter the foreign policy elite with a more recognizable set of values (or, more cynically, a “brand”) typically end up becoming defenders rather than reformers of existing policy frameworks; the ultimate example is Samantha Power, an ostensible critic of U.S. inaction in the face of genocide but, while in senior posts under the Obama and Biden administrations, a rather conventional liberal hawk.
There are also no specific policies that Democratic elites consistently defend. Many of the top officials in Biden’s administration, for example, were involved in negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the “Iran Deal”) under Obama, but showed little hunger to restore the deal under Biden. Some fixtures of Democratic White Houses are more associated with specific policies – Middle East hand Rob Malley, for example, is seen as a leading Democratic expert on Iran and a proponent of easing tensions – but those associations can in fact become professional liabilities, and Malley was subjected to an extended barrage of criticisms in the press before being placed on leave in June 2023 under unclear circumstances concerning his security clearance.
Democratic foreign policy elites will sometimes innovate, but more often they default to defending the status quo of the moment, while invoking 1945 and 1989-1991 as idealized moments of supposed “order” in a U.S.-centric worldview. The goals of any given moment – for example, the administration’s reported push for a “grand bargain” between Saudi Arabia and Israel as a purported path for ending the Gaza war – often appear predicated on a hunger for “normalcy” and an eye to what would play well with establishment media, rather than on introspection about America’s changing place in the world or about why the status quo might be a problem rather than a destination. It is striking, meanwhile, how often Democratic foreign policy elites invoke George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker as foreign policy hands they admire – a Republican-lite foreign policy sometimes appears to be the horizon of imagination for today’s top Democrats.
a Republican-lite foreign policy sometimes appears to be the horizon of imagination for today’s top Democrats.
If ideological vagueness, a belief in American greatness, and a preference for the status quo are all interwoven with a hierarchical, elite, and difficult to permeate network, then it is little surprise that the Democratic foreign policy establishment is largely self-perpetuating and unfriendly to genuine reformers. New entrants to the establishment are almost invariably proteges of existing members, and/or the senior campaign staff of winning presidential campaigns. Meanwhile, surviving and rising in that world requires intricate knowledge of the government’s inner workings as well as a sophisticated mental rolodex of who is who in Washington. If one is working sixteen-hour days at the National Security Council attempting to plan foreign trips and write talking points for a frazzled boss all while running “sub-IPC” meetings and plotting one’s next career move, what time is left to question whether American foreign policy is heading in the right direction?
Opportunities for Reform – or Revolution?
The reproduction mechanisms of the Democratic foreign policy elite are strong. From one’s undergraduate years on, access to opportunities relies heavily on connections to top mentors, who are overwhelmingly likely to prefer people with worldviews similar to their own – or at least malleable ones. The rewards for ideological and professional conformity are huge: proximity to power when Democrats are in office and, when out of office, lucrative positions within consulting firms and/or prestigious perches within universities and think tanks. All of this adds up for considerable longevity, over decades, for people who make it into the foreign policy elite. Whether or not Harris wins in November, and whoever the next Democratic president is, Biden administration figures such as Blinken, Sullivan, and their close proteges are likely to continue shaping Democratic executives’ foreign policy for years to come. One can also look ahead to key incubators for upcomers – the State Department’s Policy Planning unit, for example, or the National Security Council’s myriad senior directorships – to get a sense of what the next cadre of senior policymakers will look like.
The rewards for ideological and professional conformity are huge
Is such a system impenetrable to change? For would-be reformers, one exciting prospect would be a presidential candidate who bypasses the foreign policy establishment and brings genuinely fresh perspectives into senior levels of government. As the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries showed, however, the obstacles to such a scenario are massive. The 2008 election is another cautionary tale, in fact; a president whom many perceived as a reformer ended up welcoming numerous upholders of the status quo into his administration.
Another potential prospect is reform from without – in other words, building up an alternative cadre of foreign policy experts. To some extent, that alternative cadre already exists, just not in a cohesive way; people with progressive foreign policy visions are already distributed throughout academia, think tanks, NGOs, and the wider society. Yet their empowerment would, again, be predicated on appointments to key positions, which in turn depends upon access to powerful elected politicians. And appointments to such positions are no guarantee against the ensuing pressures for ideological conformity and malleability.
an “inside-outside” strategy appears most promising
For the time being, an “inside-outside” strategy appears most promising. Reformists can and should cut their teeth in the existing Democratic foreign policy world, resigning when morally imperative but gleaning knowledge of how things work when possible. Critics can and should challenge the Democratic foreign policy elite and worldview, and not just issue by issue but in a holistic way that lays bare the vacuity of appeals to American power, greatness, and leadership. Ultimately, more creative and broad-reaching coalitions will be key to transformation – it is not the pens of academics and unconventional analysts that will give Harris pause on Gaza, but the tens of thousands of uncommitted votes cast in primaries. Biden’s team has claimed to be implementing a foreign policy for the middle class, but they have largely spoken for the middle class rather than with it or through it, and listening efforts have been token and performative.
For progressives and leftists, a mass working-class base, involved directly in the articulation and advocacy of an alternative foreign policy, is one key to achieving change. Such an effort, already underway in tentative forms, would involve connecting the cadres of an alternative foreign policy team more directly and intensively to the workers unionizing Amazon and Starbucks, as well as to the mostly domestically-focused organizers pursuing single-issue campaigns at the state level. To make those connections stronger and more powerful will take new and more robust institutions, as well as a great deal of listening from the reformists currently embedded in the offices of progressive members of Congress, NGOs, and academia. It is unlikely that status quo-minded Democrats could be dislodged from the foreign policy ladder simply by being out-argued; the challenge is instead to make the foreign policy elite more answerable and vulnerable to mass politics.
As a candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris is signalling her rejection of a corporatist neoliberalism in favor of progressive, worker-first policies at home. Such a policy would build on the existing pro-labor success of the Biden administration, but it also presents an opportunity to move towards a more pro-worker foreign policy, without getting caught in great power competition.
Writes Matt Duss:
The United States can build a more equitable global order, or it can frantically try to maintain global primacy, but it can’t do both. The Harris-Walz team has an important task and a big opportunity to diminish this contradiction and complete this transformation. Just as the neoliberal era proved that giving carte blanche to big corporations—whether they’re car companies or weapons manufacturers—is not a means for achieving broad economic progress or security, the past 20 years of the “war on terror” showed that a heavily militarized foreign policy feeds global insecurity and shreds the fabric of international norms.
As outlined by Trump and Vance, the Republican vision is essentially zero-sum: The United States and its workers only win by others losing, and vice versa. The Harris-Walz team can offer a vision of contrasting solidarity, which doesn’t seek to build political consensus by vilifying the foreign enemy of the moment but rather seeks ways to uplifts workers and their communities in every country.
As Kamala Harris prepares to formally accept her party’s nomination at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, CIP senior non-resident fellow María José Espinosa Carillo discussed what a Harris presidency would mean for Latin America in a Q&A with Latin America Advisor (a daily publication of The Dialogue) explaining:
“A Harris presidency could bring a renewed, forward-looking vision for U.S. relations with the Americas, focusing on contemporary issues critical to the region. Her track record as vice president, senator and California’s attorney general, particularly her commitment to justice and human rights, aligns closely with the challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean—a region deeply intertwined with U.S. interests.
In migration policy, the focus will likely be on promoting regional cooperation, as demonstrated by the Biden-Harris administration through the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection. This framework has already facilitated regional collaboration on migration management. Given the strain on resources and infrastructure caused by unprecedented migration flows in the Americas, a Harris presidency will need to capitalize on and expand these efforts to strengthen stabilization and integration of migrants and asylum seekers across the continent.
Harris’ approach to U.S. leadership emphasizes close collaboration with allies and partners, actively listening to their needs and working together on solutions. This is evident in her unprecedented work with Caribbean nations, particularly on climate action. Her commitment to addressing the climate crisis aligns with the region’s pressing needs, where climate change threatens agriculture, infrastructure and coastal communities. Her leadership, including historic investments in climate initiatives, could drive collaboration on renewable energy, conservation and sustainable development, aligning U.S. policies with regional efforts.
As women’s rights become central to policy and female politicians break the mold in Latin America, a Harris presidency would continue to advocate for these rights, including access to abortion, health care, combating gender-based violence and promoting women’s economic empowerment.”
Lillian Mauldin and Janet Abou-Elias are co-founders of Women for Weapons Trade Transparency and research fellows at the Center for International Policy. Liv Owens, Mekedas Belayneh, and Rosie Khan are all researchers with Women for Weapons Trade Transparency and, respectively, a doctoral candidate at City St. George’s University of London, an economic master’s candidate at John Jay College, and an environmental policy master’s candidate at Duke University.
For the past ten months, the world has watched the devastating Israeli assault on Gaza in which more than 38,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, 70% of them women and children. Protestors internationally have drawn public attention to the mass civilian casualties and unprecedented destruction. Student protests and encampments across the United States erupted in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, only to be met with increasingly violent and militarized responses from law enforcement.
Equipped with riot gear, tear gas, and rubber bullets, police forces have swiftly and aggressively dismantled peaceful demonstrations. Columbia University police used crowd control weapons and riot squads to break up encampments and deployed surveillance drones to monitor protester activity. Indiana University authorized state police to set up snipers aimed at protestors from the top of the student union building. At UCLA, the only pause the police took from throwing stun grenades at the encampments was during the hours-long attack from violent counter protesters. For this, police opted to stand aside and watch. At the University of Arizona, police confronted peaceful protestors with MRAP-style armored vehicles called Lenco BearCats. Then they deployed chemical agents against the crowd.
As defense contractors and weapons manufacturers seek new markets, they find lucrative opportunities in selling military style equipment to domestic police forces.
The military-industrial complex plays a significant role in encouraging increasingly militarized responses by law enforcement agencies against civilians in the United States. As defense contractors and weapons manufacturers seek new markets, they find lucrative opportunities in selling military style equipment to domestic police forces. Programs such as the Department of Defense’s 1033 and 1122 federal surplus programs facilitate easier access to weapons and tactical gear designed for warfare.
This normalization of military style tools in police arsenals creates a mindset that views civilian protests as combat situations requiring aggressive force. Consequently, police departments equipped with advanced weaponry and armored vehicles are more likely to resort to brutalization and violent tactics, even in situations involving peaceful demonstrations. This not only escalates tensions and leads to excessive use of force but also undermines the principle of policing by consent, transforming community protectors into warriors prepared for battle.
What is the 1122 Program?
The 1122 program is one way excess military equipment from the bloated Pentagon budget is offloaded to police departments, bringing militarization abroad back home. Established in 1994, the 1122 Program is managed by the Defense Logistics Agency, the Army, and the General Services Administration to allow law enforcement agencies to purchase discounted military equipment for counter-drug, homeland security, and emergency response activities. These discounts are meant to encourage local police departments to purchase equipment from the DOD inventory and contractors, propping up the same military-industrial companies that profit off of war abroad and police violence at home.
Federal agencies responsible for the program have failed to track, audit, or account for the weapons and gear that are transferred or sold through it.
The excess production of military equipment by these companies justifies the need for DOD programs that sell accumulating surplus equipment to various law enforcement agencies. Since the program primarily gives ownership of equipment to police departments, there is very little tracking of the military equipment that is sold to them. The 1122 Program does not have an audit mechanism; therefore, its sale of secondhand military weapons and other equipment, such as surveillance gear, does not have any safeguards to protect against its improper use. Currently, the program has no centralized database of purchases so there is no mechanism for public accountability or awareness of the distribution and use of military equipment by police. Federal agencies responsible for the program have failed to track, audit, or account for the weapons and gear that are transferred or sold through it. Meanwhile, police brutalization and use of excess force is ever present. With military equipment in the hands of police, there are dangers of significant misuse and harm going unchecked.
Missing records, no audits, and dangerous by design
Throughout Women for Weapons Trade Transparency’s investigation into the program starting in 2021, we sought clarity on the program’s record-keeping processes, departmental oversight, and typical purchases. We encountered unclear purchase record-keeping procedures that varied by state, agencies that were uncooperative and violated their obligations to open records law, and state points of contact who had little or no information about the operations of the program in their state. When we attempted to confirm which law enforcement agencies were enrolled and which state agencies managed them, our inquiries frequently yielded no certain answers.
Despite filing open records requests with dozens of local and state agencies in states that participate in the 1122 Program, we were only able to acquire centralized, organized spreadsheets of purchases from Colorado, California, and Massachusetts. Most state agencies denied or ignored our requests. When government staff responded to our requests, they would commonly misdirect us to other agencies, misinterpret our requests, or reject our requests without valid explanation.
A lack of record keeping on 1122 Program procurements creates a risk of military style equipment being unaccounted for in police inventory. When asked if purchases from the 1122 program are audited after procurement, a Texas official responsible for administering the program in the state commented: “Once the items are received, our office does not inventory, account or audit.” A New York point of contact commented that “[my] responsibilities and duties end at the approval of the purchase. I do collect Contract Usage forms. The NYS 1122 Program does contain language in that the ultimate responsibility lies with the customer.” A Colorado point of contact confirmed separately: “We verify that purchases are made by state and local governments in support of counter-drug, homeland security and emergency response activities prior to procurement of vehicles. We do not trace purchased vehicles after they are received by the state and local agencies. Vehicles become property of the agency once received…”
Without state or federal level end use monitoring, the 1122 Program fails to create safeguards to protect against violence perpetrated by equipment
What’s more, the federal government does not require any oversight to monitor an agency’s compliance with counter drug, homeland security, and emergency response purposes. Without state or federal level end use monitoring, the 1122 Program fails to create safeguards to protect against violence perpetrated by equipment and against diversion into the wrong hands. After months of FOIA request correspondence with the Defense Logistics Agency, we finally acquired federal level data on 1122 Program transfers. Unfortunately, the data was incomplete, accounting only for purchases through the program after 2017, and moreover, missing item identifications for years prior to 2020. The total 1122 Program acquisition value for years 2017–2021 was given as just $379,473. However, this number contradicts data we received on the state level. A Colorado point of contact estimated that the state had purchased $1 million in vehicles in one year through the program, a number far greater than what was reported by the DLA for total nationwide purchases.
The inconsistent data across local, state, and national levels uncovers a disturbing reality that 1122 Program transfers are largely unaccounted for. It is clear from the harms that occur as a result of this gross negligence and inconsistency that the 1122 Program should be sunsetted by Congress.
Connecting the dots to increasing criminalization
In June 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that unhoused people could be arrested for sleeping in public spaces, overturning a previous rule that cities could not do so if there was insufficient shelter space in the city. With U.S. law enforcement agencies over-funded and relied on to tackle issues of U.S. infrastructure, lack of social services, and public health crises, these already vulnerable populations are exposed to an even higher risk of encountering unlawful violence from militarized police forces.
Criminalization of unhoused people has long perpetuated cycles of poverty and injustice. But as federal programs like 1122 continue to equip police with dangerous military style weapons and vehicles, and this criminalization of unhoused people is legalized nationwide, the threats to life and safety of Americans without homes becomes even greater and widespread. Police have historically ignored the constitutional rights of vulnerable populations during interactions and arrests. The U.S. Department of Justice issued a report on the Phoenix Police Department in June of this year after an almost three-year investigation. It found that Phoenix police routinely violated the rights of unhoused people “by unlawfully detaining, citing and arresting them and unlawfully disposing of their belongings.” Further, the report found that over a third of all “arrests in Phoenix from 2016 to 2022 were of people experiencing homelessness” and that many of these arrests were unconstitutional. The DOJ — the highest law enforcement authority in the country — has confirmed that these police committed crimes against the very individuals they are sworn to serve. And because Arizona is enrolled in the 1122 Program, these same agencies have the ability to purchase military style equipment and weapons.
In response to the report, Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, commented: “Criminalization doesn’t end anybody’s homelessness. The way to resolve homelessness for people is to provide housing and the supportive services that people want and need… we need investments at the federal level to address the affordable housing crisis and shortage that is impacting not just Arizona but communities across the country.”
The pathological warrior-cop mentality, the violations of unhoused people’s rights committed by police, and the brutal repression of domestic political protests are manifestations of the imperial boomerang – inevitable consequences of the U.S.’s foreign policy
The aforementioned increasingly violent and militarized responses from law enforcement in response to protests since April also highlight a larger trend of repression and criminalization of protest and free speech that is aided and abetted by military equipment transferred through the 1122 Program. A recent analysis of police misconduct lawsuits filed during the 2020 protests in response to the murder of George Floyd revealed that the police response to many protests broke laws and violated rights. Many of these lawsuits also resulted in police reforms, including restrictions on the use of “less lethal” weapons, such as rubber bullets, pepper balls, and tear gas that have long been used to crush dissent in the United States around the world. If weapons such as these are being scrutinized and restricted, military style equipment purchased through the 1122 Program such as MRAPs and BearCats should be too.
Furthermore, studies have found that additional force by police leads to increased violence and a positive feedback loop of escalation from both protesters and police forces. Additionally, empirical analysis of the correlations between police militarization through the 1122 Program’s sister 1033 Program and police violence revealed “a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings.” The pathological warrior-cop mentality, the violations of unhoused people’s rights committed by police, and the brutal repression of domestic political protests are manifestations of the imperial boomerang – inevitable consequences of the U.S.’s foreign policy.
Intertwined international and domestic militarization
“The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
― James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
Investigative scrutiny, such as Government Accountability Office reports on DOD’s Section 333 Train and Equip programs, highlights how U.S. military resources are not only allocated for foreign allies’ military forces but also integrated into their law enforcement agencies. Programs such as Worldwide Warehouse Redistribution Services (WWRS), DOD’s Section 333 Authority to Build Capacity, and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s Excess Defense Articles (EDA) showcase how the US operates a durable system for distributing weapons and other military equipment to the local and federal level forces of other nations. These programs are not isolated: they demonstrate a U.S. strategy of distributing military-grade equipment internationally through numerous channels, which has far-reaching harms for civilians policed by both military and law enforcement forces.
The 1122 Program’s impacts on domestic militarization and other programs like EDA and WWRS paint a picture of the broader landscape of militarization. While the 1122 Program enables states and local governments in the United States to access federal equipment and discounts for domestic use, EDA and WWRS enable the redistribution of surplus U.S. military equipment to international customers. This common mechanism of reallocating excess military resources demonstrates the similar causes and effects of domestic and international militarization: inflated defense budgets beget greater civilian harm. In these ways, the repurposing of military equipment raises concerns about the budgetary and human security implications of such programs.
This common mechanism of reallocating excess military resources demonstrates the similar causes and effects of domestic and international militarization: inflated defense budgets beget greater civilian harm.
WWRS exemplifies the complexity and opacity of U.S. military transfer programs. This program facilitates the transfer of articles acquired under the U.S. Arms Export Control Act through Foreign Military Sales (FMS) cases or Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) purchases. Essentially, WWRS operates as a global redistribution center for excess U.S. military equipment. U.S. Government organizations are eligible to be WWRS buyers as well as foreign FMS customers. The anonymity maintained for both buyers and sellers within this program raises concerns about its lack of transparency and oversight, much like that of the 1122 Program. As such, both programs display larger trends of a lack of end use monitoring of U.S. supplied weaponry, leading to their potential misuse.
EDA repurposes surplus U.S. military equipment to foreign governments and international organizations with the primary goal of modernizing U.S. ally forces in line with U.S. foreign policy objectives. This program underscores the similarities between international militarization and domestic militarization practices. The equipment provided through EDA is often the same equipment that could be accessed domestically through programs like the 1122 Program, such as armored vehicles, MRAPs, and surveillance gear. Clearly, the line between military forces abroad and law enforcement agencies at home has been blurred. DOD’s Section 333 Train and Equip Programs similarly militarize foreign security forces and have funded police abroad in their counter terrorism and drug trafficking activities, which directly mirrors the purposes and mechanisms of the 1122 Program in the United States.
The parallels between international and domestic militarization practices raise concerns about the lack of accountability and oversight of these transfer and security cooperation programs. The redistribution of military-style equipment, whether to international allies or domestic agencies, can lead to the misuse and diversion of such equipment. For instance, there is a risk that this equipment could be used to suppress democratic protests or other forms of civil unrest, both abroad and at home. The opaque nature of these transfers obscures the end-uses of such equipment, thus eroding public trust and posing threats to civilian safety.
there is a risk that this equipment could be used to suppress democratic protests or other forms of civil unrest, both abroad and at home
After drawdowns from conflicts such as that in Afghanistan, the U.S. has often repurposed military equipment by transferring it to domestic law enforcement agencies. This process is in addition to the over $7.1 billion in U.S.-funded military weapons left in Afghanistan, which face a high risk of diversion in the region and have already appeared in conflicts such as in the disputed South Asian region of Kashmir. Following the U.S. drawdown, CENTCOM reported that “984 C-17 loads of material” had been transported out of Afghanistan. Among this material, the DOD declared 17,074 pieces of equipment as federal excess personal property, which was sent to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) for disposition. Contrary to some media reports equating “disposition” with “destruction,” most of this equipment is unlikely to be destroyed. Instead, it often finds its way into the hands of local police through programs like the DOD’s 1033 Program. These transfers have resulted in police departments acquiring surplus military gear, including armored vehicles and tactical equipment. This raises an important question: how often do military drawdowns and other foreign engagements lead to spikes in the transfer of military equipment to domestic law enforcement agencies?
The linkage between military drawdowns abroad and upturns in 1033 transfers at home is evident in the data. Stephen Semler, co-founder of Security Policy Reform Institute, observed that there was a significant uptick in the transfers of surplus military equipment to domestic law enforcement agencies as the U.S. military pulled out of Iraq. This pattern is particularly clear from the flow of MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles), which were produced in large numbers to protect troops from improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. As military operations decreased, these vehicles, along with other excess equipment, were funneled into the 1033 Program, flooding police departments with gear intended for war zones. The surge in military budgets during this period also contributed to an abundance of surplus equipment, further fueling the transfers. This trend underscores the direct relationship between overseas drawdowns and the increased militarization of police forces at home. If this pattern holds true for the 1033 Program, then it is likely that a similar trend of cyclical militarization occurs with the 1122 Program.
The Solution
The 1122 Program’s lack of oversight and inconsistent data collection practices obscure public and policymaker understanding, hindering effective civilian and governmental scrutiny. This scrutiny is crucial, as the transfer of military equipment to local police forces blurs the line between military and civilian roles. It encourages a warrior-cop mentality, leading to a more aggressive and confrontational style of policing inappropriate for community-based law enforcement. Increased surveillance and excessive force suppresses dissent through intimidation and violence, threatening First Amendment freedoms of speech and demonstration.
Sunsetting the 1122 Program would have three main benefits.
First, sunsetting the 1122 Program would address critical issues in U.S. foreign policy by curbing the overproduction of military equipment that contributes to domestic and international militarization and surveillance. By reducing the domestic demand for such equipment, the incentive for manufacturing and exporting militarization would diminish. The aggressive posture that currently drives U.S. foreign policy is unsustainable and deadly – and it should be divested from. This shift is essential, as it not only promotes a restraint and peace-oriented foreign policy but also counters the normalization of using military-style weaponry against civilians.
Second, discontinuing the 1122 Program would significantly reduce the demand for the mass production of military-style equipment, thereby lessening the environmental impact from the extraction of resources needed for its production. The consumption of fuel and energy involved in the manufacture and deployment of this equipment exacerbates environmental degradation both domestically and internationally. Directing funding away from militarization would not only mitigate these environmental harms but also support global efforts to avoid conflict stemming from resource extraction. This realignment would reflect a strong commitment to responsible governance and international cooperation, fostering a more sustainable and peaceful global landscape.
Third,redirecting funds from the acquisition of excess military equipment to the provision of social programs can address the root causes of crime and improve overall community safety and health, creating a more just and equitable society. At a time when communities across the United States face significant challenges such as poverty, public health crises, and inadequate social services, it is imperative to prioritize funding for programs that directly benefit the well-being of residents. State and local governments have much more finite budgets than the Pentagon and the federal government, and yet, they still inevitably subsidize the DOD and weapons manufacturers through the 1122 Program. Sunsetting the 1122 Program would free up these dollars to be used for much needed social and infrastructure projects and will foster a more transparent, accountable, and humane approach to both national security and international relations.
* This publication was made possible in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.
Bill Goodfellow co-founded the Center for International Policy in 1975, and from 1985 to 2017, served as CIP’s executive director. He is a member of CIP’s advisory board and the director of the Afghanistan Peace Campaign.
For nineteen years, Wayne Smith led the Center for International Policy’s Cuba program. Wayne, who died on June 28th, was widely acknowledged as the most effective and best-known critic of the failed U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Wayne spent twenty-five years in the Foreign Service and had a PhD from George Washington University. But he was not a cautious State Department bureaucrat or a milquetoast academic. Rather, his aggressive style of political advocacy drew on his time as a star high school and college football player and a Parris Island Marine drill sergeant.
While directing the Center for International Policy’s Cuba program, Wayne continued to teach at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His perch at CIP gave him the freedom to speak out, provided full-time staff to organize delegations to Cuba and provided legal and financial backing to fend off his litigious right-wing critics.
Wayne took on the powerful and well-financed Cuban-American National Foundation, which twice sued him, and CIP, for libel. After we spent tens-of-thousands of dollars for lawyers in Washington and Miami, Wayne eventually prevailed.
Wayne loved Cuba and the Cuban people, but he was not a starry-eyed admirer of Fidel Castro or the Cuban government. Cubans from all walks of life respected him for his long commitment to increasing understanding between Cuba and the United States. In Havana, cab drivers often called out to him, and his visits to Cuba occasionally included long dinner meetings with Fidel Castro.
But his best Cuban friends on the island were independent thinkers like Pablo Armando Fernández, one of Cuba’s most famous poets and novelists, and Elizardo Sánchez, a former philosophy professor who is one of Cuba’s most prominent dissidents still residing in the country.
Wayne challenged the U.S. government’s restrictions on American citizens’ freedom to travel to Cuba by intentionally going to Cuba without the required license.
Wayne challenged the U.S. government’s restrictions on American citizens’ freedom to travel to Cuba by intentionally going to Cuba without the required license. He was disappointed when he was not arrested after giving a press conference on the Miami airport tarmac before boarding a flight to Havana.
Under the auspices of the Center for International Policy and using the Center’s Treasury Department travel license, Wayne took dozens of influential Americans to Cuba. Delegations of members of Congress and their staffers, farm-state business executives keen to sell American agricultural products to Cuba, as well as academics, all traveled to Cuba with Wayne.
One memorable trip was in December 2014 when I accompanied Wayne and a half-dozen CIP board members to Havana. Wayne was being honored by a Cuban academic institution for his decades of advocacy for better relations between the United States and Cuba. The morning after the ceremony, we were stunned to see Barack Obama and Raul Castro on the television announcing that the U.S. and Cuba would begin to move to restore full diplomatic relations. Wayne was summoned to the CNN studio in Havana to explain the significance of the two presidents’ announcement to a world-wide audience.
In July of 2015, we were invited to the Cuban mission in Washington when the Cuban flag was raised and it became the Cuban embassy. A month later, Wayne was in Havana, along with Secretary of State John Kerry, when the U.S. interests section reopened as the U.S. embassy.
Wayne had been the third secretary at the U.S. embassy in Havana in 1962 when relations were broken and the American flag was lowered, and from 1979 to 1981, Wayne was chief of the U.S. interests section. He was teary-eyed when he saw the American flag once again flying over the U.S. embassy.
Although relations between the United States and Cuba are fraught, the two countries still maintain full diplomatic relations. Moreover, most Americans agree with Wayne: our policy of trying to isolate Cuba is counterproductive and it is long past time to try something new, diplomacy and engagement.
Although Wayne did not live long enough to see it, eventually the United States and Cuba will have truly normalized relations, just as every other nation in the hemisphere has with Cuba. That will be Wayne’s legacy.
Michael Paarlberg is an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Follow him on X: @MPaarlberg
Voters in Venezuela were greeted at midnight Sunday with the least surprising outcome to the latest in a string of dubious elections: the incumbent president, Nicolás Maduro was declared winner in a race that he was projected to lose in a landslide. The state election body, the CNE (Consejo Nacional Electoral), did not produce the evidence which they are required by law to post under an electoral system set up by Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez – the actas, or printed vote tallies. Instead, the CNE simply announced Maduro the winner. Give the regime credit, at least, for declaring he won with just 51% of the vote, rather than 80 or 90%; officials clearly thought they were being subtle.
Since Sunday, the opposition – the coalition of Maduro’s opponent and likely winner, Edmundo González, and led by banned candidate María Corina Machado – announced that they have collected 73% of the vote tallies, which show González winning by a 70-30 margin. This is consistent with pre-election polls that showed him leading Maduro by at least a 35 point margin, and exit polls on Sunday showing a similar blowout. Polls are not always correct, and have been hampered in recent years by nonresponse bias – the tendency of voters on one side or another to be more likely to refuse to answer polls. In an authoritarian context like Venezuela’s however, nonresponse would actually underestimate the opposition’s support. But with nearly three-quarters of vote tallies collected as of the time of writing, the margins reported make it mathematically impossible for Maduro to have won.
As testified by the Carter Center, which has monitored Venezuelan elections since 1998, the fault lies not with the Venezuelan people, polling staff, party witnesses, or citizen observers, all of whom contributed to a fair election. “However,” the Center declared in a statement, “their efforts were undermined by the CNE’s complete lack of transparency in announcing the results.”
Thus it is clear that Maduro stole the election. The question remains what happens next. Events on the ground are moving fast, with mass protests breaking out throughout the country. This, too, is unsurprising, and a scenario for which the regime had clearly prepared. In the run-up to the election, Maduro had bolstered his standing with the military to ensure their loyalty in the face of inevitable unrest and warned of a “bloodbath.” It has been the government’s response to those protests that has made this bloodbath a reality; as of the time of this writing, at least 20 protesters have been killed and over 700 jailed. Venezuela’s political future is being decided on the streets, but at the moment, the government and its security forces – both police and paramilitary colectivos – have the upper hand.
Lessons for the US
That Maduro would not accept the results of the election was always a highly likely outcome. None should be less prepared for this than the US government, the longtime antagonist to the chavista regime. Successive administrations, Democrats and Republicans, have been open about their desire for regime change, though not necessarily an Iraq-style approach. In 2019, the US and much of the rest of the world recognized a shadow presidency of Juan Guaidó, who never consolidated domestic support nor threatened Maduro’s grip on power. Trump hinted at military action before losing interest and imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector, crippling the economy and contributing to the migrant exodus.
Biden pushed hard for a negotiated settlement under which the regime agreed to hold elections in exchange for a gradual lifting of the Trump-era sectoral sanctions, resulting in 2023’s Barbados Agreement. The July election was thus a major Biden foreign policy objective, one that was hoped to lower both oil prices and migration flows – an incredible 7.7 million Venezuelans, 20% percent of the population, have left the country in the past decade – ahead of the US election in November. Had it resulted in a peaceful transfer of power, it would be a crowning achievement. That it did not should have been anticipated, with contingency plans in place to protect those now being targeted by the regime.
What went wrong? Diplomacy is fundamentally about meeting the leaders of nations where they are, but that must be the starting point, not the end, and Maduro’s declaration of victory despite evidence to the contrary violates the existing agreement. As a result, the Biden administration appears naïve, or at least too eager to reach a deal to curb migration and inflation with a strongman who never intended to bargain in good faith. To confront this blatant theft and state violence, the US and the world community need to have a smarter strategy. The condition for noncompliance with the Barbados Agreement, a clawback to status quo ante sanctions, is no disincentive to a regime that has weathered them so far.
Venezuelan civil society needs to call the shots, and be empowered to negotiate an end to an untenable situation that even the regime knows cannot last forever.
One way out of the present crisis would be a negotiated exit using both carrots and sticks, which would require giving Maduro and his cronies and the generals who really decide his fate, immunity from prosecution for their many crimes against the Venezuelan people and considerable corruption – a deal that was similarly unsatisfying but successful in hastening the exit of right-wing dictatorships in the 1980s. This seems unlikely. With multiple indictments against him in US courts, and Republicans calling for Maduro to serve prison time, he is making the same calculation as other dictators with their backs to the wall: to spill as much blood as necessary to stay in power.
This is not to say sanctions relief was a mistake. Broad-based sanctions have done nothing to dislodge Maduro; rather, they have exacerbated the suffering of ordinary Venezuelans while government elites remained insulated. Targeted relief aimed at improving the lives of everyday Venezuelans is both humane and strategic: it is one of the best ways to reduce irregular migration while empowering Venezuelan civil society. Free and fair elections are vital, but making them the condition for targeted relief hurts as much as helps. Ultimately, Venezuelan civil society, not the US, China or Russia, needs to call the shots, and be empowered to negotiate an end to an untenable situation that even the regime knows cannot last forever.
Lessons for progressives
For an uncomfortably long time, criticism of Venezuela’s chavista regime has been taboo for the global left. In large part a legacy of Chávez’s personal charisma and eagerness to confront the US at a low point in its global reputation – the Iraq War – and partly also due to Venezuela’s financial largesse at a time when its treasury was overflowing under a global oil price boom, many center- to far-left parties reflexively defended Maduro even as he tanked the economy and ramped up repression.
This residual support is fading. Venezuela’s longtime allies such as Brazil’s Lula and Colombia’s Petro have voiced skepticism about Maduro’s purported victory, demanding to see the vote tallies. Other, newer leaders of Latin America’s left, Chile’s Gabriel Boric and Guatemala’s Bernardo Arévalo, have been more forceful in their criticisms. The Maduro regime has reacted by expelling diplomats of critical countries, left or right, an unprecedented move signaling its growing self-isolation. The few countries to unquestionably accept the cooked results have been Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and outside the region, Russia, Iran and China. The divides don’t line up neatly by ideology, unless one considers Putin to be a better arbiter of the progressive position than Boric. Even Venezuela’s Communist Party is in opposition to the Maduro regime, in stark contrast to left parties in other countries who lazily view the world through a campist lens.
If the global left seeks to show solidarity with the Venezuelan people, it should listen to voices within civil society rather than the regime: NGOs, human rights advocates, labor unions, and groups like the Foro Cívico that have articulated reforms necessary for true representation. And if the left seeks to play the long game and cares about its prospects in the future, it should recognize the Maduro regime for what it is: the worst model of the left with which to be associated. Throughout Latin America, far right candidates win office by running against the chavista bogeyman, and for millions of voters, “socialism” means what it means in Venezuela: authoritarianism, state terror, hunger and insecurity. The 7-plus million Venezuelans who have fled the country bring with them stories of what made them leave, and as this crisis escalates, more will follow. At the same time, it is a model other strongmen (not on the left) find useful. Even Trump praised Maduro for supposedly lowering Venezuela’s crime rate, and according to his former national security advisor, privately expressed admiration for Maduro for being “too smart and too tough” to be overthrown, as well as for “all those good-looking generals” who stood beside him. Should Maduro succeed in crushing the protests, it would likely only make those in the global authoritarian axis admire him more.
EDITOR’S NOTE: you can watch Paarlberg discuss Venezuela’s election, and the reaction to it, with CIP fellow María José Espinosa and Executive Vice President Matt Duss.
Stephen Miles is the president of Win Without War. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter.)
House Republicans have just given us a glimpse into the possible future through their consideration of the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and it’s terrifying. Let’s unpack what just happened.
At its most basic level, the NDAA is the bill that authorizes the Pentagon and associated spending at other agencies, but it’s much more than that. While it authorizes a gargantuan level of spending, nearly one trillion dollars and rising, its real distinction is in being considered one of Congress’ last “must pass” pieces of legislation. Its passage is typically bipartisan, with wide majorities, and contains provisions that touch on nearly every area of federal policy.
In years past, the biggest fights were often about national security and foreign policy, as you’d expect from legislation with ‘national defense’ in the title. How much we should spend at the Pentagon, whether to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the like. But starting last year, something pretty big changed, and this year, House Republicans went into overdrive.
The Mandate of Kevin
The bill started out bipartisan, passing the House Armed Services Committee with large bipartisan support, as usual. Then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, navigating a narrow majority, chose to feed his most MAGA members some red meat by allowing a handful of amendments on the House floor on issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and diversity in the military. This turned what had been a bipartisan bill into one of the most partisan ever.
This was, of course, always destined to fail on legislation that needed to pass a Democratic Senate and be signed into law by a Democratic President. So, after months of bluster and bravado, House Republicans did what they’ve had to do on every other piece of major recent legislation and swallowed a compromise bill, one that was popular with a broad bipartisan majority but enraged the far-right MAGA wing of the party.
Which brings us to this year’s NDAA and now-Speaker Johnson navigating an even smaller majority. Rather than recognize reality, work with Democrats, and engage in an honest, robust debate on the myriad of genuine national security threats our country and the world face, Speaker Johnson decided to double down and give even more control to the far-right of his caucus.
This created the fascinating, if horrifying, opportunity to view just what the future may hold should November’s election return unified Republican control to government. It’s a far reaching, radical agenda, so let’s dig in.
Red Meat for the Red Meat Caucus
It’s worth starting with national security and foreign policy, the ostensible focus of the underlying bill. Three issues dominated: Israel and Gaza, China, and Ukraine. Sadly, the overwhelming focus of these amendments and the ensuing floor debate was mostly scoring partisan political points. There was little to no grappling with the complexity of these challenges, honest debate around our nation’s actual goals, or interest in de-escalating geopolitical tensions.
Beyond those issues though, we got an even clearer sense of where a future MAGA majority might take governing. Far from the focus on actual questions of national defense, Republican amendments to the NDAA quickly veered into a litany of far right fever dreams. Reps. Reschenthaler, Greene, and Gosar targeted electric cars while Rep. Biggs focused on trying to gut the Endangered Species Act. Reps. Banks, Norman, and Higgins offered amendments both eliminating diversity focused jobs and offices at the Department of Defense and also barring any such positions in the future. Rep. Ogles had an anti-mask covid conspiracy amendment while a host of Republicans led amendments targeting trans individuals’ access to healthcare. There were also amendments attacking pride flags, drag shows, and women in the military. There was even an amendment from Rep. Boebert to ban the government from trying to confront domestic terrorism. That’s right, Rep. Boebert amended the national defense bill to bar us from defending the nation.
But there was so much more. Perhaps not surprisingly for a party that has made immigration its focus lately, the NDAA featured multiple amendments on the issue, though as with others, there was little to no serious attempts to grapple with a complex issue. Instead we got amendments imagining an immigrant threat to military bases, inventing false analogies to demonize immigrants, and even trying to kick Mexico out of North America. Seriously. But the real window into a possible MAGA future is Rep. Crenshaw’s amendment to require the Secretary of Defense to come up with plans to go to war in Mexico. Yes, you read that right, plans for a U.S. war in Mexico. And this isn’t a case of one random member of Congress with outrageous ideas, it’s in lockstep with the apparent plans of the soon-to-be Republican nominee for President.
Lost causes and MAGA monuments
Two final amendments really complete the emerging picture. The first, not surprisingly, is a repeat of the anti-abortion amendment that nearly tanked the entire NDAA last year. Sponsored by dozens of Republicans and adopted on a near party line vote, there’s little reason to believe that this year’s effort will be any more successful in overcoming opposition in the Senate and the White House. However, with control of the Senate and the White House possible to change, it is worth understanding that this provision is likely the floor, not the ceiling of anti-abortion efforts likely to be included in future NDAAs.
But perhaps no other amendment is more revealing than one by Reps. Clyde and Good to force the military to re-install a monument to the Confederacy at Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington, of course, has a complex history deeply tied to the Civil War, but this effort is nothing but pure white supremacy and an attempt to erase the horrific legacy of slavery. It is cold comfort that two dozen Republicans joined with all House Democrats to narrowly defeat this amendment given the very real possibility that an increased Republican majority would pass it and other similar pieces of legislation, openly glorifying some of our nation’s darkest hours.
And while a handful of other Republican amendments similarly narrowly failed given the slim House majority and united Democratic opposition, the vast majority passed. Just like last year, House Democrats overwhelmingly voted against the final bill and Republicans sent it to the Senate by the slimmest of margins. The Senate is now working on its own bill, and the two will likely ultimately head to a conference committee where, in consultation with the White House, Republicans will be forced to drop most, but not all, of these provisions.
Yet, House Republicans have now given one of their clearest views yet into how they will govern next year under possible unified control of Congress and the White House. It’s a terrifying vision, one driven by hate, conspiracy, and bigotry. It’s one that sacrifices genuine efforts to protect people in the United States and around the world in favor of partisan efforts to wage culture wars, limit freedom, and threaten lives.
It’s a dark, deeply disturbing vision of a future we may find ourselves in very soon, and we can’t say we weren’t warned.
Catherine Ellis is a freelance journalist based in Colombia who focuses on migration and human rights. She also worked for an NGO assisting Venezuelan migrants near the Colombia-Venezuela border.
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left Venezuela over the last decade – a quarter of the population. The vast majority of those who have left, around 84 percent, have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile. But difficulties in finding jobs, poor salaries and high costs of living have pushed some to pack their bags and set off once again, this time northwards towards the southern border of the United States. Politicians responding to these arrivals should resist the temptation to invoke overly restrictive measures, not only because they trample on the human rights of Venezuelans in desperate situations, but because compassionate migration policies can reduce the political salience of border arrivals, and benefit the U.S. both economically and morally.
Migration is as old as humanity, but the arrival of migrants to the southern border of the United States has been treated as a political crisis. A large wave of Venezuelan migrants arriving at the southern border over the past three years has fanned the flames – and been treated as a national crisis. In part, this is because the Republican governor of Texas has adopted a policy of shipping migrants further into the interior of the country, explicitly to burden social services in Democratic states far from the border. As the Migration Policy Institute notes, in fiscal year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered Venezuelans 266,000 times in the Mexico-US border, a more than five-fold increase in encounters from 2021.
President Biden, after saying in 2020 he would restore the U.S.’ ‘historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers,’ has introduced some progressive policies. Yet immigration has become more of a political headache than he envisaged. At a campaign stop in Michigan on April 2nd, former President Donald Trump called migrants ‘animals.’ At a stop in Wisconsin later that day, former Trump called Venezuelans criminals, before promising to unleash a mass deportation programme of undocumented migrants if he wins reelection in November. According to a February 2024 Gallup poll, immigration is the US electorate’s number one concern, with 28 percent of Americans saying it was the issue most important to them, and Biden has been steadily peeling back his open-arms rhetoric.
On May 9, Biden announced new proposals to assess migrants at an initial asylum screening stage, instead of during the interview stage. This would allow some percentage of asylum seekers to be turned away by officers at the border much faster than under current rules, so long as the officers deem the asylum seeker a national security or public safety risk. As Maanvi Singh wrote in The Guardian, “The proposed rule that was released on Thursday would only affect about 2 to 3% of asylum seekers, by the administration’s estimation, based on historical data. It also aims to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist.”
While this change might reduce wait times at the border on the margin, it undermines long standing asylum norms, and is also unlikely to satisfy anyone in Washington, including some in the Democratic Party, who want more stringent action, including executive action to fix what they call a ‘broken immigration system.’
Waiting outside asylum
Curiously, border encounters have already been dropping this year, mildly appeasing those even within his own party who want stronger deterrence measures. In December 2023, there were 46,919 border encounters of Venezuelans but only 16,492 in March 2024, according to CBP figures. Before border hawks celebrate a slow rate of arrival as the result of punitive policies, it’s important to understand that at least some of the slowed arrival rate is because migrants haven’t stopped trying to get to the US, they’re simply stuck elsewhere.
When migrants do get to the U.S./Mexico border, they are stuck waiting for slow processing at legal entry points. Should the migrants get caught up immigration enforcement in Mexico, they may end up deported south, out of the country. Venezuelans bottlenecked in Mexico are stuck navigating the slow waiting times to secure an appointment via the CBP One app. This initiative, designed to incentivize entry at legal ports of entry along the US-Mexico border rather than crossing the border illegally, needs to process arrivals faster to more compassionately usher asylum seekers and migrants into the legal immigration process. When it works properly, the scheme allows migrants to enter the US while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard. When it does not, it leaves people vulnerable.
According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, this wait “impermissibly limits the right to seek asylum for many people and compels them to wait in foreseeably dangerous and inhumane conditions in Mexico.” Appointments can sometimes take weeks or months to get. Many Venezuelans, often with few financial resources, often sleep in the streets or rely on overflowing migrant shelters, becoming easy targets for criminal groups. There have been disturbing tales of kidnappings, robberies and sex trafficking by criminal groups using the migration crisis for lucrative financial gains. The Washington Office on Latin America, a group that promotes human rights in the region, has recommended ramping up the number of CBP appointments and ‘urgent walk ups,’ at ports of entry as well as more asylum officers immigration judges.
Beyond issues with processing, current US policy also depends on Mexico to help the crackdown on migration, with disturbing results. Checkpoints and patrols have surged throughout the country, and police are sending migrants on buses heading southwards, or demanding exorbitant bribes for letting them pass. Mexico and the US have also recently agreed on further steps to crackdown on illegal migration, including stricter measures at railways, buses and airports. “The teamwork is paying off,” John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, told the press in April. Migrants now say it’s Mexico, not the Darien Gap, a notoriously dangerous stretch of jungle spanning the Colombia-Panama border, that they fear most.
Through the sky legally
Expanding legal pathways to enter the US could help reduce the risks for Venezuelans considering traversing the Darien and then Mexico. A humanitarian parole program, where Venezuelans – and Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans – are eligible for entry to the US if they find a sponsor and arrive by air, offered hope for many Venezuelans when it was introduced in 2022. By the end of February 2024, 94,000 Venezuelans had arrived in the US through this scheme. But for those with no links to the US, finding sponsors is a challenge.
For those already in the US, ensuring they can be financially independent helps them live more dignified lives. The Temporary Protection Status (TPS) policy, which was offered to some Venezuelans in 2021 and extended to almost half a million in September 2023, enables Venezuelans to support themselves while waiting for their immigration cases to be heard. Although it doesn’t give full residency or citizenship, it enables migrants to be self-sufficient, alleviating the squeeze on overflowing migrant shelters, reducing the financial strain on cities, and helping fill vacancies in sectors such as healthcare and construction.
Extending TPS even further would provide a way for more migrants to become financially independent and contribute to the US economy. A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office, estimated that the labor force is projected to grow by 5.2 million by 2033, mostly due to higher net migration. Because of this it estimates GDP will grow by about $7 trillion.
TPS has long been criticized by Donald Trump, saying it attracts more migrants. But past experience shows this is not the case. A 2022 study analyzing TPS designated countries of El Salvador and Honduras found it did not lead to increased unauthorized migration and actually reduced pressure on factors driving US-bound migration.
The study’s authors say money sent home in the form of remittances helps stem further migration flows. People receiving the money in Venezuela, or other South American countries where they are settled, can buy food, medicine and other basic necessities, disincentivizing them to leave. The study found remittances sent to TPS designated countries were substantially higher compared with those countries who didn’t have TPS and the scheme reduced both irregular migration, and asylum claims.
Migration is a story of humans uprooted from their lives, gambling that a long journey to somewhere else will be reward them with a more stable future than living in the precarious conditions that have come to mark their daily lives. The majority of Venezuelans aren’t arriving at the border because of ‘the American Dream,’ but due to an economic, political and humanitarian crisis in their home country that has propelled them to leave their homes, and in many cases their families. A compassionate approach to migration will let them arrive in the United States with a warm welcome, rather than razorwire.
Michael W. Chamberlin is a non-resident senior fellow at The Center for International Policy.
Mexico is gearing up for its general elections on June 2, a crucial event where over 20,000 public officials will be elected, spanning from the Senate and the House of Representatives to numerous governorships and municipalities, and even the Presidency of the Republic. Notably, this election marks the first time both leading contenders for the presidency are women. Regardless of which candidate wins, the results of the election have already been shaped by political violence. It will take courage as well as international support for non-violent means to reduce the outsized role of armed agents, be they criminal or military, over the country’s democratic future.
The electoral landscape unfolds against a grim backdrop of violence across many regions of the country. A report by the think tank Data Civica titled “Vote Between Bullets” highlights a staggering 1,833 incidents of threats, murders, armed attacks, disappearances, and kidnappings related to electoral activities between 2018 and April 29, 2024. As of May 10th, there is a toll of 63 persons linked to the electoral process killed, 32 of them candidates, according to Laboratorio Electoral, another Mexican think tank. This violence, orchestrated by organized crime groups, has sadly become a tool to sway election outcomes.
The statistics paint a harrowing picture. The year 2023 witnessed the highest toll of political-criminal violence, with 575 individuals and facilities targeted, closely followed by 2022 with 486 incidents. Since January 2024 alone, the toll includes 22 pre-candidates and candidates murdered, 14 facing threats, 4 suffering armed attacks, 8 enduring assaults, and 10 subjected to kidnappings. Shockingly, over 2,000 candidates—about 10% of the total—have withdrawn from their candidacies due to threats and violence, particularly at the local level.
The infiltration of organized crime into the political fabric of the nation not only jeopardizes freedom of choice at the ballot box but also raises profound concerns about governance, the agendas that will prevail, and the vulnerability of citizens in the face of entrenched corruption and impunity.
It’s no secret that organized crime has burgeoned in Mexico, extending its grasp far beyond drug trafficking to control a myriad of legal and illicit enterprises—from human trafficking to monopolizing markets for staples like chicken, avocado, and lemons—often through extortion. Over the past 15 years, the “war on drugs”, initially backed by the Merida Initiative, has inadvertently handed over vast swathes of territory to criminal groups, with an estimated 30% to 35% of Mexico’s territory under their control by 2021.
Simultaneously, the country has witnessed a surge in militarization, initially aimed at combating drug cartels but gradually expanding to encompass diverse spheres including public security, environmental protection, social policies, health, customs, and infrastructure development.
A damning report titled “The National Inventory of the Militarized” reveals that between 2006 and 2023, civil functions or budgets were transferred to the armed forces on at least 291 occasions, with the Legislative Branch presenting 87 initiatives contributing to militarization, 77% of which surfaced in the last two legislative sessions dominated by the ruling Morena party.
This relentless militarization, stretching across three different administrations, underscores a concerning trend where the influence of the armed forces and organized crime transcends political boundaries, undermining the civil authority of the Republic.
So, what hangs in the balance come election time?
In the immediate future, there’s a looming threat of escalated violence potentially jeopardizing elections across nearly 30% of the country’s territory—a concern highlighted by the opposition coalition. In the long run, there’s a risk of eroding Mexico’s civil and democratic governance. Despite not being direct contenders in the elections, both the armed forces and organized crime wield considerable influence over the outcomes.
The failed anti-drug policies have inadvertently bolstered the political and economic clout of both these entities, with thousands of lives lost or wasted. Official figures from 2006 to 2022 paint a grim picture: 449,329 intentional homicides and 316,816 missing persons, of which 116,300 remain unaccounted for.
The enabling factors behind this surge in lethal power, whether on the military or criminal fronts, stem from the rampant corruption within the political elite, the prevailing culture of impunity shielding wrongdoers, and a dire lack of transparency and accountability across military ranks, political parties, and elected representatives, blurring the borders between state and non-state actors, criminal and governing bodies. Far from firing missiles at Mexico, the battle against organized crime must be waged using the tools of democracy and justice; guns have only fueled further violence.
If the United States aims to champion democracy and freedoms globally, it must actively support the strengthening of civil institutions and checks and balances within Mexico. Failure to do so risks empowering an already formidable transnational monster, fed through corruption by security assistance programs.
