My Books

National Insecurity – The Cost of American Militarism

Upon leaving the White House in 1961, President Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the dangers of a “military-industrial complex,” and was clearly worried about the destabilizing effects of a national economy based on outsized investments in military spending. As more and more Americans fall into poverty and the global economy spirals downward, the U.S. is spending more on the military than ever before. What are the consequences and what can be done?

Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA

The time for serious soul-searching regarding the role of the Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence community in general is long overdue. The recent intelligence failures regarding the unanticipated collapse of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war demonstrate a CIA and a $50 billion intelligence enterprise that cannot provide strategic warning to policymakers and, even worse, is capable of falsifying intelligence to suit political purposes.

Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives Are Putting the World at Risk

Fifty years ago, the United States founded the United Nations, promoted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, used economic aid as a tool for creating stability, and viewed collective agreements and cooperation as the principal methods of sharing the costs and the risks of security. Today, under the leadership of George W. Bush, the main tool of foreign policy is military force, not diplomacy. America is going it alone, and paying the price, both abroad and at home, for the reckless endangerment of both national and international security.

The Phantom Defense: America’s Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion

In the past four decades, the United States has spent $85 billion pursuing the fantasy of an effective missile defense system to shield our nation against the threat of a nuclear attack. Recent public tests, while less exotic than some of the original Star Wars proposals, were spectacular failures and call into question the whole…