William Hartung
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of "Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex" (2012) and "How Much Are You Making on the War Daddy?: A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration" (2003). He is the co-editor of "Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War "(2008).
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, January 28, 2021 How the National Security State Has Come to Dominate a "Civilian" Government This month’s insurrection at the Capitol revealed the dismal failure of the Capitol Police and the Department of Defense to use their expertise and resources to thwart a clear and present danger to our democracy. As the government reform group Public Citizen tweeted , “If you’re spending $740,000,... Read more |
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Views Monday, November 30, 2020 The Pandemic of Pentagon Spending Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States, advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in. Nowhere is there more at stake than when it comes to how he handles this country’s highly militarized foreign policy in general... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, October 13, 2020 The U.S. of A(rms) The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 07, 2020 Police, Prisons, and the Pentagon Think of it as a war system that’s been coming home for years. The murder of George Floyd has finally shone a spotlight on the need to defund local police departments and find alternatives that provide more genuine safety and security. The same sort of spotlight needs soon to be shone on the... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 11, 2020 Will Trump Ride Pentagon Spending to Reelection? Donald Trump likes to posture as a tough guy and part of that tough-guy persona involves bragging about how much he’s spent on the U.S. military. This tendency was on full display in a tweet he posted three days after an American drone killed Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad: “The... Read more |
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Views Monday, December 16, 2019 Lessons From Battling the Pentagon for Four Decades I’ve been writing critiques of the Pentagon, the national security state, and America’s never-ending military overreach since at least 1979—in other words, virtually my entire working life. In those decades, there were moments when positive changes did occur. They ranged from ending the apartheid... Read more |
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Views Monday, November 18, 2019 America's Arms Sales Addiction It’s no secret that Donald Trump is one of the most aggressive arms salesmen in history. How do we know? Because he tells us so at every conceivable opportunity. It started with his much exaggerated “$110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia, announced on his first foreign trip as president. It... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 02, 2019 Trump and Money Are Shielding Saudi Arabia From Accountability for Khashoggi's Killing Following the brutal killing of Saudi dissident and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, one year ago, the Saudi government became something of a toxic commodity in American politics. Several high-profile lobbying and public relations firms... Read more |
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Views Friday, September 27, 2019 Bestselling Pentagon Fiction: Beware of Defense Secretaries Pledging Reform For the Pentagon, happy days are here again (if they ever left). With a budget totaling more than $1.4 trillion for the next two years, the department is riding high, even as it attempts to set the stage for yet more spending increases in the years to come. With such enormous sums now locked in,... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 16, 2019 Merger Mania: The Military-Industrial Complex on Steroids When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it... Read more |