Peace-Washing: Is a Network of Major Donors Neutralizing Activism in the
Peace Movement?
June 10, 2021
Were now in a situation where many ostensible peace groups seem tied to
the Democratic Party while the Biden administration pursues militaristic
policies, writes Dave Lindorff.
Jan. 4, 2020, protest in Washington, D.C. against President Donald Trumps
ordering of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Irans top general, and
others in a drone strike near the Baghdad airport. (Stephen Melkisethian,
Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Dave Lindorff
Salon
During the four years of the Trump administration, resistance and even
revolutionary talk were in the air as organizations with names like The
Resistance and Our Revolution brought together liberals, Democrats of all
stripes and Sandernistas, all opposed to President Donald Trump and to
Trumpism in all its manifestations.
When it came to matters of war and peace, virtually everything Trump did
internationally his fawningly friendly relations with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim
Jong-un, his Tomahawk cruise missile attacks on Syria, his coziness with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his ordering of a drone
assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, his massive military budgets
was criticized mercilessly by progressives, the liberal establishment and
groups in the Democratic mainstream.
With the arrival of the Biden presidency, the dynamics have changed
dramatically. Consider the liberal response to the Biden transition team
floating Michèle Flournoys name as a potential secretary of defense.
Instead of outrage at the idea of someone who had spent the previous four
years helping arms contractors win business with the Trump Pentagon and who
is an advocate for tough, even aggressive stances towards Russia, China and
Iran, we saw an open letter of support signed by 29 key people active in the
peace and arms-control arena.
June 3, 2014: Michèle Flournoy, at right, in panel on the evolution of
Treasurys national security role, i.e. imposing economic sanctions. (CSIS,
Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Signatories included Joe Cirincione, former president for 12 years of the
Ploughshares Fund, along with Tom Collina, Michelle Dover and Emma Belcher
of that same well-endowed grant-offering organization. They were joined by
the likes of Tom Countryman and Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control
Association, Rachel Bronson of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Ilan
Goldenberg of the Center for New American Security, Joan Rohlfing of the
Nuclear Threat Initiative and others.
The letter declared that Flournoy was the best candidate for the job and
that her deep understanding of nuclear weapons policy and budgets made her
ready to address the issues with experience from the first day in
office.
What these individuals and organizations represent are many of the big-money
peace funding and lobbying groups in the country groups with access to
Democratic-aligned power centers in Washington that can now, through their
financial clout and their access, lure more grassroots peace activists and
their less well-funded and plugged in organizations into supporting the
Biden administration and the narrow Democratic majorities in Congress or
at least throttling their criticism.
The idea of a Flournoy nomination ultimately foundered, in large part
because some bolder antiwar groups and the watchdog group Project on
Government Oversight highlighted her record of hustling for arms industry
pay dirt after leaving her job as undersecretary of defense for policy
during Barack Obamas first term. Thats when, after turning down an offer
to work under Trump Defense Secretary James Mattis, Flournoy took a senior
adviser position at the Boston Consulting Group. There she powered that
firms arms-industry advisory business from a paltry $1 million to $32
million in less than a year.
Flournoy went on to parlay her Pentagon connections into bigger money by
co-founding WestExec Advisors, a were-not-a-lobbying-organization,
were-a-strategic-advisory-firm outfit that offers national security
business leaders unrivaled
recent experience and unmatched networks in
defense, foreign policy, intelligence, economics, cybersecurity, data
privacy, and strategic communications.
An EZ-pass for Tony Blinken at State
Antony Blinken swearing in as 71st U.S. secretary of state on Jan. 26.
(State Department, Ron Przysucha)
Interestingly though, while serious opposition coalesced among
anti-militarism, anti-revolving-door people and groups in the Flournoy case,
her WestExec Advisors co-founder Antony Blinken, nominated as secretary of
state, sailed through his nomination and hearing process. This despite
Blinkens record as an enthusiastic interventionist while serving in the
Obama administration as deputy national security adviser and later as deputy
secretary of state, and despite his profiting off his connections as a
WestExec adviser to arms makers after leaving office.
Even though he was teamed up with Flournoy as a fellow arms-industry
influence peddler at WestExec, Blinken won effusive backing for his
nomination as secretary of state in an email to Council for a Livable World
members authored by people like former Rep. John Tierney, Council for a
Livable Worlds executive director, and Matt Duss, the widely praised
foreign-policy staffer for Sen. Bernie Sanders who has publicly fawned over
Blinken. Likewise Faiz Shakir, a former aide to Sen. Harry Reid and Sanders
2020 campaign manager, who called Blinken a solid choice for the State
Department job.
There wasnt the same full-court press for Blinkens nomination that there
was in the push to get Flournoy the nomination at the Pentagon, perhaps
because Blinken, a close associate of Biden, was seen as having the
nomination in the bag. But the strong support for both these individuals,
even from people with a history of progressive foreign policy stands, is
noteworthy.
Significantly, much of the support for Flournoy, and some of the backing for
Blinken, came from groups and individuals associated with the Peace and
Security Funders Group (PSFG), either as funders, like the Ploughshares
Fund, or as recipients of PSFG member funds, like the Council for a Livable
World.
Weve seen this kind of thing before the use of grant funding and promises
of access to power to restrain or neutralize a militant and critical
activist movement.
When the environmental movement began to take off in the 1970s, it
demonstrated such dynamism and massive public support that even Republican
President Richard Nixon felt compelled to head off critics by establishing
the Environmental Protection Agency.
Dec. 4, 1970: President Richard Nixon, at left, as William Ruckelshaus,
accompanied by his wife Jill Ruckelshaus, is sworn in as first administrator
of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by Chief Justice Warren Burger.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Corporate America, as represented by huge funding entities many, like the
various Rockefeller family funds and the Chevron Corporation, associated
with the fossil fuel industry responded by establishing in 1987 a
consortium of funders called the Environmental Grantmakers Association. The
EGA began meeting to decide how the major funders of environmental groups
would distribute grants, and ultimately to influence the tactics and goals
of environmental activist groups.
Environmental Movement Tamed by Funder Consortium
As Jeffrey St. Clair, editor and co-founder with the late Alexander Cockburn
of Counterpunch magazine and author of the book Been Brown So Long It Looked
Like Green to Me puts it, It was the power of the Environmental
Grantmakers Association that made the greens easy to manipulate. Its a
phenomenon that replicates itself again and again.
As St. Clair suggests, it appears that the PSFG, a strikingly similar
organization to the EGA, may be playing a similarly influential and even
dominant role when it comes to the U.S. peace movement.
Matt Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Until
his resignation five years ago, he was a board member of Council for a
Livable World, one of the larger national security/arms control
organizations in the PSFG. Hoh says that while he has no inside information
about the funding policies of the funding consortium or its members, the
assumption that the big peace and national security funding groups are
taming the peace movement is a correct one.
He explains:
When you have a bunch of organizations in a group like that, and some of
them are really mainstream vanilla like Open Society, youre going to see
the whole organization and its member groups moderate their positions and
their funding policies to the lowest denominator. These big groups,
especially the ones that also act as holding pens for people in the foreign
policy area who have to leave government employment when a Republican
administration comes in, and use them as references when looking for
government jobs under a new Democratic administration like this one, dont
want to be funding groups that mount protests in House or Senate committee
hearings or try to arrest [former Nixon Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger
for war crimes.
Hoh says he recalls comments being made while he was at Council for a
Livable World about organizations receiving grants needing to ease up on
their rhetoric or protest actions, but doesnt recall that kind of
conversation moving beyond Council for a Livable World to the collective
PSFG membership.
But he also says, I think the issue of putting pressure on activist groups
has deepened over the last 10 years. He adds, The best evidence that there
is pressure on activists to tone down is the way youre finding so few
leaders of groups that get funding from PSFG member organizations willing to
speak for this article on the record.
(@PSFundersGroup, Twitter)
As pacifist David Swanson, executive director of World Beyond War, puts it,
People in groups that get funding from these big grant-making organizations
have to consider that there could be a financial price to be paid for taking
a militant stand against policies of an administration like Bidens that the
big funding groups like. Mostly he says, the problem shows up as
self-censorship, not as an actual verbal reprimand or loss of an expected
grant.
Like American Petroleum Institute & Oil Industry
One peace activist in a group that has taken strong stands against U.S.
military actions that violate the UN Charter said: PSFG as a trade
organization of the big peace funding groups is like the American Petroleum
Institute in the oil industry. If its members were private companies, some
of what they do would be called antitrust violations. They can blacklist
groups that dont stick to the consensus position of supporting a Democratic
administration.
A blacklist from the PSFG would be a serious threat even if it were not
actually employed in practice. Merely thinking it might happen could be
enough to keep most activist-driven organizations in line if they rely on
grant support.
Thats not to suggest that all the member organizations of PSFG apply that
kind of pressure. Swanson notes, for example, that his own organization has
received funding from the Jubitz Family Foundation, a member of PSFG. He
says that foundation has never wavered in its support for World Beyond War
despite his groups uncompromising opposition to all war and military
violence by the U.S. as well as other countries, and regardless of who is
running things in Washington.
One peace activist, meanwhile, complained that big funding organizations in
the Funding Group like Ploughshares and Open Society create an environment
where their grantees are invited into the fold as part of a community, and
that community has to agree on policy. The funders, this activist
organization leader claimed, dont want to support real protest. Just do
old-fashioned lobbying, support the Democrats, and youre in the group. But
organize a protest and youre out.
July 19, 2010, from left to right: John Podesta, Joe Cirincione, Sen.Tom
Daschle in a panel on nuclear nonproliferation. (Center for American
Progress, Flickr)
They carefully regulate who gets to go on retreats, who signs group
letters, this activist continued. It narrows and divides the inside and
outside crowd. (One example of this was support within the PSFG circle for
the possible Flournoy nomination, with those who were not supportive mostly
remaining silent, and opposition coming largely from outside the
organizations umbrella.)
This activist continued, The situation with the peace movement was horrible
during the Obama administration. It got better when Trump was president,
although you had peace groups that actually criticized Trump for pulling
troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. How can you call that position being for
peace! In any case, now with Biden as president its starting to get
horrible with the peace movement all over again.
The issue of exerting control through the purse strings is reportedly at
work when it comes to getting access to people in power. If you want
meetings at the White House or State Department, reports one activist,
youd better fall in line with the position of the Funding Group. This
source adds, Its so sad that time and again we see this division between
groups that want to play by the rules and support the Democrats, and groups
that are ready to challenge war no matter whos in power.
A staffer who works for one of the funder organizations in PSFG said they
had not personally witnessed the group as an organization blacklisting any
peace group for being critical of the current Democratic administration (or
any other), but did say there were discussions among the organizations
members each year about which groups to fund. That kind of discussion, of
course, as opposed to just coordinating grants to avoid duplicating grants
to the same organization, can amount to just a subtler way to bring pressure
by ensuring a kind of uniform policy.
In any event, the fact that leaders of all but one funded organization
reached for this story were unwilling to have their names used while
speaking critically about the funding groups or their collective
organization PSFG and that was also true of leaders of groups that are
outside PSFG and do not receive grants from its member funders
demonstrates the power and influence of PSFG members and their money and
connections in Washington.
Another leader of a national security-oriented group that receives funding
from several members of PSFG offers another perspective, saying, Especially
in the national security space were in, there is a lot of careerism, with
people moving in and out of government and think tanks and funding groups.
And those people and groups dont like appearing to be associated with
oppositional organizations.
The impact of the Peace and Security Funding Groups financial leverage over
antiwar and disarmament organizations is evident. Says one peace activist,
whose group is not funded by any of the groups funding organizations, Look
at Ploughshares and Open Society. They supported Flournoy for secretary of
defense when she was being touted as the likely nominee. Almost none of the
grantees of those two big funders criticized her. The Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft said a few mild things against her. Women Cross DMZ
signed a letter opposing her. Cato wrote one letter too. But none of them
appears to have put any major effort into opposing her.
The PSFGs critics point out that its member funding organizations pretty
much operate within the Beltway bubble. The development director of one
group that has sought funding for peace activism work over many years told
me that the analogy between the PSFG and the Environmental Grantmakers
Association was on the mark, adding, While mainstream environmental
funders have gradually moved toward funding grassroots groups working on the
frontlines to keep fossil fuels in the ground, peace and security funders
in the PSFG have not been seeding grassroots peace efforts in the same way.
Their funds continue to go to the security-may-bring-some-peace (for us)
revolving-door people, rather than to the activists working to actually
organize for peace.
PSFG did not respond to Salons request for comment. The Ploughshares Fund,
asked for comment, sent this response by email:
Our model of impact philanthropy includes, in part, tackling immediate
policy opportunities through discrete campaigns, where we work with partners
to develop an action plan, convene stakeholders, and support activities to
achieve concrete policy outcomes. Grant recommendations, whether or not they
are a part of these campaigns, are based on a variety of factors and are the
result of a process that includes conversations, proposals, and other
elements of due diligence.
We value our relationships with civil society organizations. We think that
collaboration among a variety of groups and individuals helps advance our
vision of a world where nuclear weapons will never be used again.
From the late 1950s through the early 70s, with the Cold War and the
Indochina War both in full swing, the U.S. peace movement was nonpartisan.
Most activists werent interested in whether the president and the Congress
were in the control of Republicans or Democrats. Whether under LBJ or
Richard Nixon, the movement was in the streets and militantly opposed to
both parties as they enabled war to continue. The peace movement had allies
in Congress that it supported and who supported the movement, but even as
some of its members may have supported peace candidates like Eugene McCarthy
against LBJ or George McGovern against Nixon, the antiwar movement wasnt in
the pocket of the Democratic Party. In fact, as time went on, it was the
Democratic Party that found itself in the position of trying to win support
from the activists.
But were now in a situation where many ostensible peace groups seem tied
to the Democratic Party while the Biden administration pursues militaristic
policies towards Iran, Russia and China, and sits on its hands as Israel
pounds a captive civilian population in Gaza.
There are plenty of explanations on offer for this pattern. But the role of
Big Peace funding groups and a funding consortium like the Peace and
Security Funders Group, as with the Big Green groups in the Environmental
Grantmaking Association in earlier years, has to be seen as one of these.
Dave Lindorff is an investigative journalist who writes for The Nation,
London Review of Books, Counterpunch, Tarbell, FAIR and is founder of the
collectively-run news site This Cant Be Happening! He won a 2019 Izzy Award
for outstanding independent journalism.
This article is from Salon and reprinted with permission.