{"id":61883,"date":"2015-08-03T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=61883"},"modified":"2015-08-02T15:06:14","modified_gmt":"2015-08-02T14:06:14","slug":"u-s-institute-of-peaces-hawkish-chairman-wants-ukraine-to-send-russians-back-in-body-bags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/u-s-institute-of-peaces-hawkish-chairman-wants-ukraine-to-send-russians-back-in-body-bags\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Institute of Peace\u2019s Hawkish Chairman Wants Ukraine to Send Russians Back in Body Bags"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 Aug 2015 – <\/em>The United States Institute of Peace is\u00a0a publicly funded national institution chartered by the U.S. government to promote international peace through nonviolent conflict resolution.<\/p>\n

But its chairman, Stephen Hadley, is a relentless hawk whose advocacy for greater military intervention often dovetails closely with the interests of Raytheon, a major defense contractor that pays him handsomely as a member of its board of directors.<\/p>\n

\"chairman,<\/a><\/p>\n

Hadley, the former national security advisor to President George W. Bush, was an advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and more recently\u00a0appeared<\/a>\u00a0in the media to call for massive airstrikes<\/a> in Syria. Over the last year, he has called for escalating the conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In a speech at Poland\u2019s Wroclaw Global Forum in June, Hadley argued<\/a>\u00a0in favor of arming the Ukrainian government in part because that would \u201craise the cost for what Russia is doing in Ukraine.\u201d Specifically, he said, \u201ceven President Putin is sensitive to body bags \u2014 it sounds coarse to say, but it\u2019s true \u2014 but body bags of Russian soldiers who have been killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hadley also called for European governments to broadly boost military spending, ideally doubling it. \u201cYou know, let\u2019s show that Europe is going to have real commitment to military forces,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The call to flood Ukraine with weapons not only contrasts sharply with the stated mission of the Institute of Peace, but many scholars believe doing so would provoke more conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cArming Ukraine is a very bad idea,\u201d says Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. \u201cThe core problem is that Ukraine\u2019s political alignment is a vital interest for Russia, which is why it intervened in the first place. It is right next door to Russia, which means Moscow both cares more about the outcome and can escalate there much more easily than we can. Doubling down now will intensify and prolong the fighting and get more Ukrainians killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin Connor, director of the Public Accountability Initiative, a watchdog group that has criticized Hadley\u2019s work for Raytheon in the past, is calling for Hadley to step aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the U.S. Institute of Peace is just an Orwellian absurdity, then Hadley is an appropriate chairman,\u201d says Connor. \u201cIf it wants to demonstrate that it isn\u2019t that, Hadley\u2019s resignation or removal would be a step in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scholars formerly affiliated with the Institute of Peace played down Hadley\u2019s role at the institute. Daniel Serwer, the institute\u2019s former vice president for peacebuilding innovation, told The Intercept<\/em> that board of directors has\u00a0a \u201crole in setting Institute goals and policy, but generally stays out of day-to-day operations.\u201d Hadley \u201cseemed to me a natural as a Republican board member and as chair, but I was not privy to the selection process,\u201d Serwer added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a lot of respect for Steve Hadley and all the former national security advisors, so it doesn\u2019t concern me,\u201d says Tara Sonenshine, the former executive vice president of the institute.<\/p>\n

The institute\u2019s \u201ccore principles\u201d start with \u201c1. We believe conflicts can be resolved without violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

But by the law that established it in 1984, it is also bipartisan: no more than eight voting members of board of directors can be from the same political party.<\/p>\n

Hadley was\u00a0nominated<\/a>\u00a0to the institute board by President Barack Obama in February of 2013. He\u00a0joined<\/a>\u00a0the institute in August and was elevated to chairman of the board in January of 2014.<\/p>\n

The stock and trade of the institute includes\u00a0regular\u00a0lectures on conflict resolution, programs to facilitate cultural exchange, and research regarding international conflicts. The institute website highlights<\/a> a \u201cculturally-sensitive policing practices\u201d grant for Israeli law enforcement.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not the first time the institute has served as a platform\u00a0for American hawkish foreign policy. Robert Turner, the first president of the institute and an appointee by President Ronald Reagan, voiced<\/a> support<\/a> for the right-wing death squads in Nicaragua known as the Contras.<\/p>\n

In more recent history, the institute\u2019s board has included neoconservative leaders such as Daniel Pipes, an advocate for ethnic\u00a0profiling and the invasion of Middle East countries.\u00a0Eric Edelman, a current board member, has called<\/a>\u00a0for the Obama administration to hike military spending, for the\u00a0U.S. to\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0an Israeli military strike on Iran, and for NATO countries to deploy nuclear weapons into former Warsaw Pact states that are now NATO members in an effort to confront Russia.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Hadley joined with other former Bush officials to launch a consulting firm now known as RiceHadleyGates LLC. The firm says it helps\u00a0corporations\u00a0\u201cdevelop and implement their international strategic plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hadley also\u00a0serves as a highly paid board member of Raytheon, a\u00a0company that\u00a0stands to gain from increased military assistance to Ukraine.\u00a0Hadley\u00a0has been a\u00a0Raytheon board member since 2009 and was paid cash and stock awards worth $290,025<\/a> in 2014 alone.<\/p>\n

For\u00a0companies<\/a>\u00a0like Raytheon, global instability and intervention have been good for business.<\/p>\n

The conflict in Ukraine raised regional defense spending, a dynamic that has greatly boosted profits\u00a0for Raytheon, which recently\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0higher-than-expected quarterly earnings. Dave Wajsgras, Raytheon\u2019s chief financial officer,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0that European states are hiking their defense budgets in the wake of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, leading to higher revenues for his company.<\/p>\n

Raytheon vice president Tom Kennedy told investors in October of 2014 that his company is competing\u00a0\u201cin Poland for an integrated air and missile defense system,\u201d explaining that the deal \u201chad a heightened sense of urgency in Poland relative to the activities going on in eastern Europe, especially relative to Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July, Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the U.S. should supply Ukraine with the Javelin portable missile system produced\u00a0by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. \u201cThey need a Javelin,\u201d McCain\u00a0said<\/a>, speaking at the Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n

Through his relationship with RiceHadleyGates, Hadley works for APCO Worldwide, an international lobbying firm for which he\u00a0serves<\/a>\u00a0as on the firm\u2019s international advisory council. The RiceHadleyGates-APCO business\u00a0partnership<\/a>\u00a0was announced in 2011.<\/p>\n

In March of this year, APCO won two\u00a0contracts<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0represent<\/a>\u00a0the Ukrainian Prime Minister and Ukraine\u2019s Minister of Finance to help influence relations with the American government and media.\u00a0The Ministry of Finance has\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0international creditors\u00a0to renegotiate the terms of the country\u2019s sovereign debt as Ukraine has struggled to make payments.<\/p>\n

Last week, Hadley weighed in on this topic, arguing in a column for the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0that Western powers should\u00a0extend<\/a>\u00a0debt reduction for Ukraine. \u201cThe odds may be long, but the prize is great, and the trans-Atlantic community will never have a better chance to invest in Ukraine\u2019s success,\u201d Hadley wrote.<\/p>\n

Hadley, who serves on the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department\u2019s foreign affairs policy board,\u00a0is also\u00a0advising<\/a>\u00a0Jeb Bush\u2019s presidential campaign on foreign policy and national security issues.<\/p>\n

In 2011, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House voted to withhold the institute\u2019s funds \u2014 two of them called it<\/a> \u201ca case study in how government waste thrives.\u201d But the funding \u2014 $40 million that year \u2014 was restored in committee. \u00a0The institute, housed in a new $186 million<\/a> palatial building overlooking the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is also supported by private donations, including a\u00a0$1 million<\/a>\u00a0grant from weaponsmaker Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Contact the author <\/em>lee.fang@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United States Institute of Peace chairman Stephen Hadley is a relentless hawk whose advocacy for greater military intervention often dovetails closely with the interests of Raytheon, a major defense contractor that pays him handsomely as a member of its board of directors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}