War is Coming 2021

 Earlier this week Joe Biden released a list of transition teams for the various departments in his future White House. The Pentagon transition team for Biden consists of 23 people, many of whom hail from hawkish think tanks.

The team is led by Kathleen Hicks, who worked in the Pentagon under the Obama administration. Hicks most recent employer is the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS), a think tank that receives contributions from arms makers like Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, to name a few.

CSIS also receives contributions from governments. The think tank’s top government donors are the US, the UAE, Taiwan, and Japan. Two other CSIS employees are on the transition team; Andrew Hunter and Melissa Dalton, who both worked in the Pentagon under the Obama administration.

CSIS employees author policy papers and Op-Eds that generally call for more US involvement around the world. In August, Hicks co-authored an Op-Ed in The Hill titled, "Pentagon Action to Withdraw from Germany Benefits Our Adversaries," a piece that slammed Trump’s plan to draw down troops from Germany, which Biden could to call off.

Two members of the transition team come from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Susanna Blume, a former Pentagon employee, and Ely Ratner, who served as deputy national security advisor to then-vice president Joe Biden from 2015 to 2017.

CNAS is another think tank that enjoys hefty donations from weapons makers, major corporations, and governments. From 2019 to 2020, CNAS received at least $500,000 from the US State Department and at least $500,000 from Northrop Grumman. Other donors include Google, Facebook, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin.

Of the 23 peo­ple who com­prise the Depart­ment of Defense agency review team, eight of them — or just over a third — list their ​“most recent employ­ment” as orga­ni­za­tions, think tanks or com­pa­nies that either direct­ly receive mon­ey from the weapons indus­try, or are part of this indus­try. These fig­ures may be an under­count, as In These Times was not imme­di­ate­ly able to exhaus­tive­ly source the fund­ing of every employer.

The Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS) is list­ed as the ​“most recent employ­ment” of three indi­vid­u­als on Biden’s Depart­ment of Defense agency review team: Kath­leen Hicks (a for­mer defense offi­cial under Pres­i­dent Oba­ma), Melis­sa Dal­ton and Andrew Hunter. CSIS is a hawk­ish and influ­en­tial for­eign pol­i­cy think tank that receives fund­ing from Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Cor­po­ra­tion, Raytheon, Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion, Lock­heed Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er weapons man­u­fac­tur­ers and defense con­trac­tors, as well as oil companies. 

Raytheon is a key sup­pli­er of bombs to the U.S.-Saudi war in Yemen, and has aggres­sive­ly lob­bied to pre­vent any curbs on arms sales to the Sau­di-led coali­tion. Among the weapons that Northrop Grum­man man­u­fac­tures is drones, which have been used by the U.S. mil­i­tary in Afghanistan, Iraq and Soma­lia, among oth­er loca­tions. Notably, a New York Times inves­ti­ga­tion in 2016 found that, based on a cache of email leaks, CSIS was effec­tive­ly dou­bling as a weapons indus­try lob­by­ing firm, push­ing for expand­ed drone sales. Lock­heed Mar­tin is a key con­trac­tor for the THAAD mis­sile sys­tem in South Korea — a sys­tem that CSIS has also advo­cat­ed for with­out dis­clos­ing their con­flict of inter­est. The com­pa­ny also man­u­fac­tured the bomb that struck a school bus in North­ern Yemen in August 2018, killing at least 26 children.

CSIS also receives mon­ey from a host of gov­ern­ments, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, as well as the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, which has joined with the Unit­ed States and Sau­di Ara­bia to wage war on Yemen. CSIS, in addi­tion, receives mon­ey from the state-run oil com­pa­ny Sau­di Aram­co, which effec­tive­ly amounts to a dona­tion from the Sau­di government.

Two of the indi­vid­u­als named for Biden’s Depart­ment of Defense agency review team — Ely Rat­ner and Susan­na Blume — list the think tank Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty (CNAS) as their most recent employ­er. CNAS takes a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of its mon­ey from Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion, as well as the U.S. State Depart­ment ($500,000 or more per year on both counts), and from Lock­heed Mar­tin, Raytheon, and a host of cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing oil companies. 

Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Kamala Har­ris drew heav­i­ly from CNAS to advise her pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry cam­paign. The think tank is known for embrac­ing con­ven­tion­al, pro-war for­eign pol­i­cy, as well as esca­la­tion toward Rus­sia and China.

Three peo­ple from the team — Sta­cie Pet­tyjohn, Ter­ri Tanielian and Chris­tine Wor­muth (also a for­mer defense offi­cial under Oba­ma) — hail from the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion, a hawk­ish think tank that receives sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from the U.S. Army and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. (These indi­vid­u­als are not being includ­ed in the tal­ly of peo­ple who work for orga­ni­za­tions fund­ed by the arms indus­try, but nonethe­less their involve­ment shows the polit­i­cal bent of Biden’s Depart­ment of Defense tran­si­tion team.)

“It’s telling the think tanks rep­re­sent­ed here — RAND, CSIS and CNAS — are among the top recip­i­ents of Depart­ment of Defense and Depart­ment of Defense con­trac­tor fund­ing,” says Ben Free­man of the For­eign Influ­ence Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive, which recent­ly authored a report on think tank fund­ing. ​“CNAS and CSIS are lit­er­al­ly num­ber one and num­ber two in terms of dona­tions received from U.S. defense con­trac­tors in the last six years. RAND is, by far, the top recip­i­ent of Depart­ment of Defense fund­ing of any think tank.”

Sharon Burke, on Biden’s team, works for New Amer­i­ca, which calls itself a ​“nation­al net­work of inno­v­a­tive prob­lem-solvers.” The orga­ni­za­tion receives fund­ing from Raytheon, Northrop Grum­man, Gen­er­al Atom­ics Aero­nau­ti­cal Sys­tems and U.S. Army War College.

Shawn Skel­ly’s most recent employ­er is list­ed by the Biden team as CACI Inter­na­tion­al, which pro­vides infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy for U.S. mil­i­tary weapons sys­tems. (Because Skel­ly’s LinkedIn page says she worked at CACI until ​“Novem­ber 2020,” In These Times is includ­ing her in the tal­ly of peo­ple who receive mon­ey from or are employed by the weapons indus­try, giv­en the rel­e­vance to her present finances.) Before Skel­ly start­ed work­ing there, CACI was sued by Iraqis for­mer­ly detained in the noto­ri­ous U.S. mil­i­tary prison Abu Ghraib, on the grounds that con­trac­tor played a direct role in their tor­ture. (The law­suit is still ongoing.)

Vic­tor Gar­cia lists ​“Rebel­lion Defense” as his most recent employ­er. This soft­ware com­pa­ny says it helps ​“our defense and nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies unlock the pow­er of data across all domains.” It was found­ed by for­mer defense offi­cials and ​“ana­lyzes video gath­ered via drone,” accord­ing to the New York Times.

Of those remain­ing, one team mem­ber works for JPMor­gan Chase & Co., anoth­er is retired from the State Depart­ment, a few work for uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, and one works for the Nuclear Threat Ini­tia­tive, which says it strives to ​“pre­vent cat­a­stroph­ic attacks with weapons of mass destruc­tion and dis­rup­tion — nuclear, bio­log­i­cal, radi­o­log­i­cal, chem­i­cal and cyber.” Lisa Coe, also on the team, lists as her most recent employ­er Oth­er­Side Con­sult­ing, a defense indus­try con­sul­tant, accord­ing to Defense News. How­ev­er, because In These Times was unable to inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy this, Coe is not being includ­ed in our count of team mem­bers fund­ed by the mil­i­tary or weapons industry.

Farooq Mitha, also a mem­ber of the Depart­ment of Defense team, is on the board of Emgage, which has gar­nered crit­i­cism for its affil­i­a­tion with anti-Pales­tin­ian organizations.

The news prompt­ed dis­ap­point­ment from anti-war groups. ​“Biden build­ing a team of peo­ple with con­nec­tions to weapons man­u­fac­tur­ers and the mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex is a prime exam­ple of how mil­i­tarism and impe­ri­al­ism are bipar­ti­san,” says Sid­ney Miralao, an orga­niz­er with Dis­senters, a group of young peo­ple who oppose U.S. mil­i­tarism and the war indus­try. ​“Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans alike per­pet­u­ate and prof­it off of war and vio­lence in our com­mu­ni­ties at home and abroad. By con­tin­u­ing the lega­cy of the revolv­ing door with the defense indus­try, Biden and his team are set­ting them­selves up to be able to con­tin­ue grow­ing the mil­i­tary and strength­en­ing the nar­ra­tive that war is nec­es­sary to safety.”

While cam­paign­ing, Biden made some over­tures to the surg­ing left wing that near­ly cat­a­pult­ed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion, form­ing a uni­ty task force with Sanders back­ers that issued a series of rec­om­men­da­tions, from cli­mate to labor. Yet these efforts to reach out to the left large­ly omit­ted issues of war and mil­i­tarism, leav­ing crit­ics of U.S. aggres­sion con­cerned that a Biden admin­is­tra­tion would bring a con­tin­u­a­tion of the wars he’s sup­port­ed through­out his career. Biden played an influ­en­tial role in back­ing the 2003 U.S. inva­sion of Iraq, has been a career-long sup­port­er of Israel’s aggres­sion toward Pales­tini­ans, and has defend­ed the open-end­ed occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan, among oth­er acts.

Out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, for his part, hoist­ed peo­ple with close ties to the arms indus­try into promi­nent Depart­ment of Defense posi­tions, appoint­ing Mark Esper, a for­mer lob­by­ist for Raytheon, to the posi­tion of Sec­re­tary of Defense. (Trump fired Esper and a num­ber of oth­er senior mil­i­tary offi­cials in recent days, in what appears to be a sign of Trump’s effort to stay in pow­er despite los­ing the pres­i­den­tial election.)

“Has Biden already for­got­ten who put him in the posi­tion he’s in?” says Ramón Mejía, anti-mil­i­tarism nation­al orga­niz­er with the Grass­roots Glob­al Jus­tice Alliance, an alliance of com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions. ​“The only rea­son he’s pres­i­dent-elect is because Black, Brown, Indige­nous youth mobi­lized to vote out Trump’s fas­cism. Biden shouldn’t make the mis­take that Democ­rats are com­mon­ly known to make, which is to aban­don the same peo­ple who put them there.”

“War-mak­ing and cor­po­rate prof­i­teer­ing is a non-starter,” Mejía adds. ​“We must divest the bulk of our bud­get from a war-fuel­ing extrac­tive econ­o­my, and pri­or­i­tize invest­ing in a life-sus­tain­ing regen­er­a­tive economy.