William D. Hartung

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at CIP and a senior adviser to the center's Security Assistance Monitor. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). From July 2007 through March 2011, Mr. Hartung was the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Bill Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal. He has been a featured expert on national security issues on CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News, the Lehrer Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international radio outlets. He blogs for the Huffington Post, the Hill, and Medium.

Arms Sales

America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales) . . . And Again… and Again… and Again

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America. In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the […]

Arms Sales

Trump’s Art of the Arms Deal: Filling up the Volatile Middle East with High-Tech Weapons

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – 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 market. From Yemen […]

Pentagon

Police, Prisons, and the Pentagon: Defunding America’s Wars at Home and Abroad

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – 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 […]

Donald Trump

Will Trump Ride Pentagon Spending to Reelection? The President Bets on Arms Sales Big Time

William D. Hartung

(Tomdispatch.com) – 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 United […]

Pentagon

The Military-Industrial State Just Keeps Getting More Expensive for the Rest of US

William D. Hartung

By William D. Hartung | – (Tomdispatch.com) – 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 regime […]

Arms Sales

America’s Arms Sales Addiction: The 50-Year History of U.S. Dominance of the Middle Eastern Arms Trade

William D. Hartung

(Tomdispatch.com) – 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 continued with […]

Pentagon

Bestselling Pentagon Fiction: Beware of Defense Secretaries Pledging Reform

William D. Hartung

Co-author: Mandy Smithberger | – (Tomdispatch.com) – 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. […]

Pentagon

How the Military-Industrial Complex Ate America

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – 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 now receives up to […]

Pentagon

Boondoggle, Inc.: Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget

William D. Hartung

By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In its latest budget request, the Trump administration is asking for a near-record $750 billion for the Pentagon and related defense activities, an astonishing figure by any measure. If passed by Congress, it will, in fact, be one of the largest military […]