On Cue, Saudi and Weapons-Contractor-Funded Pundits Attack Bernie Sanders' Yemen War Powers Resolution
The past few days shows how undisclosed influence by weapons makers and Gulf despots defines the foreign policy “think tank” world.
Earlier this week, it looked like Sen. Bernie Sanders was going to hold a Senate vote on a War Powers Resolution (WPR) to end direct U.S. participation in hostilities in the Saudi-led war on Yemen. But on Tuesday, Sanders withdrew the resolution, and no vote took place, with the senator from Vermont instead saying he would hold direct negotiations with the White House (though he says he will bring the resolution again if “we do not reach agreement”). The discourse swirling around the short-lived attempt to revive the WPR effort is a useful objection lesson in how many of the foreign policy think tanks function as harmful propaganda nodes at key junctures of public debate.
Sanders' move was relatively sudden and unexpected. Backed by over 100 peace groups—including the Friends Committee on National Legislation, MoveOn, Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, Demand Progress, Just Foreign Policy, Churches for Middle East Peace, Yemen Freedom Council, and Yemeni Alliance Committee—Sanders revived a tweaked resolution to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal bombing of Yemen that passed both houses of Congress back in 2019, but was vetoed by then-President Trump. The version of the War Powers Resolution that Sanders embraced this week defines hostilities as “sharing intelligence” and “providing logistical support,” including spare parts transfer and maintenance, for the purpose of enabling “offensive coalition strikes.” (The resolution would not end all U.S. support for the war—for example, weapons sales.) While Saudi-led airstrikes are not happening now, as the truce breaks down, activists worry they may resume, and say a War Powers Resolution is necessary to prevent more bloodshed.
But now there’s a Democrat in the White House who opposes ending U.S. support for the war, and a lot of “foreign policy experts” don’t want to make him look bad. Citing a current ceasefire and the modest—though incomplete—easing of the blockade, opponents of the War Powers Resolution are using the temporary reduction in hostilities to argue that the U.S. ending its support for Saudi Arabia, which could begin bombing Yemen again at any minute, is unnecessary and harmful. Aside from the usual partisan hacks who simply rush to defend Biden regardless of the substance of the policy, this latest round of hand-wringing and obstruction has the usual suspects from the foreign policy “think tank” world on the dole of the very same Gulf despots who are prosecuting the war, and the weapons makers who continue to reap billions from its continuation.
Let’s begin with a piece in Politico by Alex Ward and Matt Berg that ran interference for the Biden White House’s backing of Saudi Arabia, propped up by comments by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS):
“Riyadh has largely abided by its commitments under the ceasefire that was implemented earlier this year,” said JONATHAN LORD, director of the Center for a New American Security’s Middle East program. “At this juncture, the WPR would only serve to punish the Saudis for past sins, which is ultimately unhelpful in incentivizing their continued and future cooperation in achieving a lasting peace agreement in Yemen.” The Houthis are the ones unwilling to negotiate a peace with the Saudis, Lord added.
CNAS’s two biggest funders are the U.S. Department of Defense and weapons maker Northrop Grumman. Other major funders include the UAE, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, and Boeing.
Most risibly conflicted is the Middle East Institute, a “think tank” whose two biggest 2021 donors are Saudi Arabia and UAE, which donated $1,760,000 and $230,000 respectively. Other major donors include Lockheed Martin and a who’s who of Middle East oil interests. Their resident “Yemen expert,” Nadwa Dawsari, came out swiftly in opposition to the War Powers Resolution:
American Enterprise Institute’s Kathrine Zimmerman used the exact same “sins of the past” line that CNAS’s Jonathan Lord did.
Unlike most think tanks, AEI keeps its donors a closely guarded secret. But given AEI’s long historical ties to corporate America, there is reason to be concerned it receives funding from the weapons industry.
Gregory D. Johnsen, who is a fellow at the Saudi- and UAE-created and funded think tank Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (previously he worked at the 100 percent Saudi-funded Arabia Foundation), jumped in to concern troll the War Powers Resolution.
While we cannot, in every case, prove that the financial conflicts of interest are the sole reason why such individuals took these positions, on aggregate, a clear pattern emerges. And this is why disclosure is so important: Even if one accepts that working for organizations that take millions from Gulf dictatorships and weapons contractors is not per se corrupting, these conflicts should, at the very least, be clearly shared so media consumers can have a full picture of what forces shape our policy consensus.
It’s not limited to just this week. Any cursory glance at recent coverage of President Biden’s relationship with Saudi Arabia isn’t complete without a supposedly neutral academic—working for an organization drowning in Saudi, UAE, or weapons-maker money—jumping in to insist the U.S. supporting, arming, and diplomatically backing Saudi Arabia is a necessary evil. Or that any proposed action is simply not the right time, or the right way, to address the suffering of Yemenis.
An October article in FT explaining how Biden had no choice but to support Saudi Arabia quoted Tom Karako, director of the missile program at CSIS, as saying, “It’s an understandable reaction, but there are also strong forces and strong rationale for continuing cooperation. There’s a strong and shared interest in maintaining defence and a deterrent [to Iranian threats].”
Left unmentioned is that CSIS’s “missile program” is funded by a who’s who of weapons companies with a direct stake in continuing U.S. support: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. CSIS’s top donors also include the Saudi state via its state oil company ARAMCO, and the UAE, directly.
CSIS’s primary role with its Saudi Arabia commentary is to vaguely gesture towards human rights concerns or process issues but insist the US partnership is necessary and inevitable.
July 5, 2022, Reuters: “Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Biden's trip is necessary to recalibrate relations with a key ally.”
July 15, 2022, BBC: Ben Cahill, an energy security expert at CSIS: "I think there is a sense in the White House that they need to be able to pick up the phone and have a constructive dialogue with lots of parties and in the oil world that starts with Saudi Arabia,"
Nov 18 2022, FT: [commenting on Biden’s decision to grant immunity to Mohammed bin Salman for bone-sawing a Washington Post columnist] “‘From a practical point of view, it is hard to imagine any circumstances under which a judgment would be paid, and that would set this up to be a durable irritant in our diplomatic relationship,’ said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”
Oh well, I guess nothing can be done. Biden—and the U.S. in general—has no choice but to fund, arm, and support this brutal regime.
In 2016, the New York Times got their hands on internal emails between CSIS and its corporate donors and discovered CSIS was directly lobbying for weapons makers, despite its public insistence it has a “firewall.” It’s a rather searing window into how these “think tanks” influence peddle for war profiteers and human rights-abusing dictatorships, and is worth reading in its own right. This, naturally, didn’t stop the New York Times foreign policy reporters from immediately going back to treating CSIS like a neutral observer.
And this is the way the game is played. Saudi Arabia and its junior partner, the UAE, create enough distance, using think tanks to shape and influence national security coverage and policy. Think tanks flooded with dictatorship money aren’t required to have a stigmatizing “state affiliated” tag on social media, despite them being funded by a murderers row of human rights abusing foreign regimes. As I wrote in March, there’s a loophole in the whole “foreign influence” thing—which is: It’s okay when U.S. allies do it. Does anyone, for a second, think that if CSIS or Middle East Institute started taking Iranian or Russian money and then published content arguing their wars were “nuanced” and required U.S. support, this glaring conflict wouldn’t be pointed out? Of course it would, and would quickly be socially shunned or made illegal. But there’s a silly taboo in U.S. media against pointing out these obvious conflicts of interests, largely because reporters—short on time and resources—rely so heavily on the same dozen Gulf dictator and weapons-contractor-funded think tanks to mold and direct their foreign policy coverage. So, to point out their most frequent sources are influence peddlers would undermine this whole arrangement. Add to the fact that many of these reporters rotate through these same institutions, and their social circles and friends and colleagues either currently—or hope to soon—collect checks from these think tanks, there’s a broad Gentlemen’s Agreement that the millions Saudi Arabia and UAE floods into groups like CSIS and the Middle East Institute does not, on the whole, affect editorial output.
To those not party to this Gentlemen’s Agreement, viewing this dynamic as an outside observer, this reads as, at best, naive, and, at worse, deeply corrupt. To those inside this world, it’s simply business as usual. And U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, whose brutal bombing of Yemen has left 250,000+ dead and is entering its ninth year, is simply too “complex,” “nuanced,” and “ill-timed” to do anything about.