Security Policy Reform Institute

Afghanistan has been almost entirely absent from American media coverage. Unfortunately, US press interest in the war hasn’t correlated with civilian deaths.

There is nothing progressive about Biden’s $753 million military budget request.

Biden reneged on his campaign promise of stopping weapons of war from going to law enforcement agencies. Congress should pressure him to use his executive power to prevent further transfers of military hardware and recall combat gear from our streets.

U.S. objectives in Syria are unattainable. Syrian civilians will continue to suffer needlessly as the U.S. military occupies one-third of the country and Washington amplifies economic pressures in hopes that a favorable outcome will somehow materialize. This is cruel and counterproductive. To actually use their leverage in Syria, U.S. forces must withdraw.

War is an industry. Breaking down defense contracting for FY2020 shows exactly how the military industrial complex wins favorable policies, runs pressure groups and think tanks, and dominates the Pentagon — so it can eke out contracts to hand government jobs over to Corporate America.

In large numbers, congressional Democrats voted against amendments to shave 10 percent off the Pentagon budget. We break down the numbers and defense industry campaign contributions to show how the party’s fiercest “resistance” occurs along class, rather than partisan, lines.

Police reform proposals aim to change to a system that cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled. Critically, the trail of military equipment left in its wake must be removed from public life.

Both Democratic and Republican parties have fanned the flames of new cold wars with China and Russia. Pressure must be applied across the political spectrum to urge the U.S. to immediately reduce tensions and end this dangerous arms race.

The U.S. has repeatedly and ineptly failed the Syrian people. The Caesar sanctions convert the proxy war into an economic siege calibrated to punish Syrian civilians to coerce Iran. Rather than hastening the demise of Bashar Al-Assad, the sanctions will only bring about further hardship for ordinary Syrians.

Sixteen-time incumbent Eliot Engel supported the racist 1994 crime bill, building more prisons, and gutting public schools. His foreign policy is even worse. As House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Engel stands in the way of a progressive foreign policy.

Speaker Pelosi asks “How do you pay for that” only for working-class priorities. Every year, Congress has the opportunity to right our broken spending priorities. Some try and fail. Others, like Pelosi, actively work to entrench inequality.

A better Congress requires electing leaders who will fight for the working class, and removing those who won’t. There is an opportunity to do both in Maryland’s 5th congressional district on June 2.

As essential workers bail out the country, Congress bails out (non-essential) corporations. The most promising candidates have now dropped out of the presidential race, yet Congress is still up for grabs. A better Congress is possible — and more important now than ever.

Capt. Brett Crozier won instant celebrity for speaking out for his crew. That should be commended. Yet the USS Theodore Roosevelt saga reveals America’s blind spot toward Guam and our colonial present.

COVID-19 pandemic is a national emergency. In that sense, it differs from the 34 active national emergencies. As it turns out, national emergency declarations are yet another way the national security establishment perpetuates working-class insecurity by ignoring crises of healthcare access, social mobility, student debt, and climate change.

Coronavirus is scary, and self-distancing will be difficult. But this can also be a time to build solidarity with friends and neighbors. We can also use it to reap a cultural and intellectual dividend. At SPRI, we’ll be using the lockdown to revisit our reading lists as we continue to develop new ideas to build a foreign policy for the left. 

Adam Smith condemned Trump’s corruption, but as Smith’s own campaign warchest demonstrates, much of ‘national security’ funding has an afterlife propping up the campaigns of members of Congress who are friendly to the industry. The ranking Democrats’ impeachment inquiry was never about corruption per se, but rather about which forms of corruption ‘national security’ permits. 

Israel receives more aid every three years than Palestine has in seven decades. This aid disparity is not the only issue; in reality, much of U.S. support to Palestine is — in effect — support to Israel. Crucially, U.S. policies that favor Israel and deprive Palestinians of basic rights the means of self-determination reflect a bipartisan consensus that long predates Trump. 

There is good reason to dwell on the deliberate cruelty of foreign policy in the era of Trump. This would be a mistake. It is precisely the temptation to see these events as a historical discontinuity  that must be resisted, lest we fail to understand the fact that in terms of substance, Trump’s approach to Palestine differs little from that of his predecessors in the White House and in Congress.