Jonathan Marshall is author of many articles on military procurement and contractors, including “US Arms Makers Invest in a New Cold War,” “Feeding the Military-Industrial Complex,” and “New Navy Ship Leaking Tax Dollars.”
Donald Trump is not the first U.S. president to want to militarize life beyond Earth.
When Donald Trump declared it was time to Make America Great Again, he didn’t just mean here on Earth. As he directed the Pentagon in June to create a new branch of the armed services devoted just to space warfare, Trump declared, “It is not enough to have an American presence in space.We must have American dominance in space.” Not waiting for
Donald Trump’s bluster at the NATO summit only has to do with money, not whether the alliance serves any genuine security purpose.
The usual NATO summit begins and ends with U.S. and European leaders issuing platitudes about the unbreakable bonds between Western democracies. The two-day summit that began Wednesday is not the usual NATO summit. President Donald Trump came to Brussels armed with a barrage of insults and Twitter blasts against his ostensible
Selective outrage over civilian suffering in Syria – hyping Syrian government bombing while downplaying the effects of U.S.-led Coalition air strikes – undermines the legitimacy of human rights advocacy.
News stories are full of quotes painting the situation as nearly unprecedented in its horror: “hell on earth,” “never seen anything like this,” “one of the worst attacks in Syrian history,” and “flagrant war crime” on an “epic scale.” A New York Times editorial, calling the battle “one of the most violent episodes of the seven-year
Donald Trump’s Israel policies may have more to do with outmaneuvering Democrats than they do with any concern for Middle East peace.
Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Israel last week revived warnings by foreign policy experts over the Trump administration’s controversial announcement that it will break with past policy and relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. “It’s still mysterious just how Mr. Trump believes he has advanced the cause of peace, or fortified America’s
Trump is certainly not the first president to appoint defense industry executives to senior Pentagon posts, but he’s taken the practice to extreme lengths. He’s also extended the same practice to almost every other cabinet department.
In the Famous-Last-Words department, this Dec. 12, 2016, headline from Reuters surely ranks among the worst: “Trump attack on Lockheed Martin foreshadows war on defense industry.” When it comes to military contractors, President Trump surely prefers to make love, not war. Not only does he seek a $51 billion increase in the base military budget,
Another part of the U.S. mainstream media’s rash of Russia-bashing is to claim that Moscow is arming Afghanistan’s Taliban, but again the evidence doesn’t match the accusations.
News flash: The United States is supplying spiffy new Humvees and Ford Ranger pickup trucks to the Taliban, who brazenly parade their troops in those vehicles “without fear of being targeted by Afghan or Coalition forces,” according to a senior fellow at the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. As Bill Poggio observed in the
“Be prepared, there is a small chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III.” – Donald Trump, August 31, 2013
Like some demonic Hollywood director, President Trump keeps finding new ways to make us jump out of our seats, just when we think we’ve seen everything. On Tuesday, he outdid himself by twice pledging to meet any further North Korean threats to the United States “with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” His headline-grabbing comments
