The Business of War

The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex: Corporate Think Tanks and the Doctrine of Aggressive Militarism

by William Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca

The aggressive first-strike military strategy now animating U.S. policy toward Iraq was developed during the 1990s by a network of corporate-backed conservative think tanks.

Each major element of the Bush administration's national security strategy -- from the doctrines of preemptive strikes and "regime change" in Iraq, to its aggressive nuclear posture and commitment to deploying a Star Wars-style missile defense system -- was developed and refined before the Bush administration took office, at corporate-backed conservative think tanks like the Center for Security Policy, the National Institute for Public Policy and the Project for a New American Century. MORE>>

Total Business Awareness: The Corporate Contracting Behind John Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness Program

by Adam Mayle and Alex Knott

The Total Information Awareness System, the controversial Pentagon research program that aims to gather and analyze a vast array of information on people in the United States, has hired at least eight private companies to work on the effort. Since 1997, those companies have won contracts from the Defense Department agency that oversees the program worth $88 million.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which oversees the Total Information Awareness System (TIA), awarded 13 contracts to Booz Allen & Hamilton amounting to more than $23 million. Lockheed Martin Corporation had 23 contracts worth $27 million. The Schafer Corporation had nine contracts totaling $15 million. Other prominent contractors involved in the TIA program include SRS Technologies, Adroit Systems, CACI Dynamic Systems, Syntek Technologies and ASI Systems International. MORE>>

Oil, Security, War: The Geopolitics of U.S. Energy Planning

by Steve Kretzmann

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) describes itself as a "professional forum for study of defense and international security."Located in the heart of London, RUSI is an incubator for the latest defense establishment thinking. It is no great surprise to enter and find Robert "Bud" McFarlane, formerly Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, addressing a crowd of officers and bureaucrats. The surprise last October was his message -- greater security for Great Britain and the United States will be achieved not by building and deploying more aircraft carriers and tanks in the Persian Gulf, but by increasing energy efficiency and automobile fuel economy at home.

National security would best be served, McFarlane argued, by focusing on reducing domestic demand for oil. Focusing on the supply of oil will prove "ultimately inadequate," concluded McFarlane, who once worked for the man who removed solar panels from the White House. This is not your father's clean energy movement. At the symposium McFarlane addressed, there was little discussion of climate change or other environmental impacts of oil addiction. There was even less discussion of the human rights issues that have plagued oil projects from Nigeria to Colombia and Burma. The issue for McFarlane and the others at RUSI was simply national security. MORE>>

No Cause For War: Pretexts, Preemption and the Prospects for Peace

an interview with Phyllis Bennis

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., has been a writer, analyst and activist on Middle East issues, especially Israel-Palestine, for 25 years. Based at the United Nations, she began working on U.S. domination of the UN at the time of the run-up to the Gulf War, and has stayed involved in work on Iraq sanctions, disarmament and U.S. policy towards Iraq. Bennis is the author of several books, and is frequently published in the Baltimore Sun, Middle East International, Middle East Report (MERIP), TomPaine.com and many other publications. She is appears regularly on U.S. and international media. MORE>>