Results for: Paul Singer

As the U.S. envoy in  postwar Iraq from 2003-2004, former diplomat Paul Bremer was responsible for the extremely controversial decision to disband the Iraqi armed forces and rebuild them anew—a factor strongly linked to the rise of a Sunni insurgency and Iraq's subsequent descent into sectarian bloodletting. Despite his own role in the U.S. occupation of the country, Bremer has blamed the rise of ISIS and Iraq's disintegration on the Obama administration's decision to complete the U.S. troop withdrawal initiated by President Bush. "I thought it was odd to be listening to Bremer’s advice on this," said James Mann, author of Rise of the Vulcans, an influential book about the Bush administration's war cabinet. "He’s the guy who disbanded the [Iraqi] army, and that single action probably had the greatest causative effect to the mess we see now of anyone."

James Schlesinger, who passed away in March, was an elite member of hawkish policy circles for decades. In the 1970s, he served under several administrations as the director of the CIA, secretary of defense, and secretary of energy, before entering the corporate world and serving on government advisory panels for the remainder of his career. A lifelong advocate of nuclear weapons, he was once called the “Yoda” of nuclear strategists. Despite his generally hawkish views, Schlesinger evinced an independent streak, once warning military leaders not to take any order to mobilize from President Richard Nixon—whom Schlesinger thought was dangerously unstable—unless he or Henry Kissinger had approved it.

According to Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “democracy has been a disaster for minorities in the Middle East” and “’inclusive authoritarianism’ might be a better alternative.” The irony of this idea was not lost on observers. One writer quipped: “This guy literally runs an outfit called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies!” FDD, a bastion of neoconservative political activism, became a major policy force during the George W. Bush administration and has returned even stronger in the Trump era. Stocked with ideologues supporting aggressive anti-Iran and “pro-Israel” policies, FDD has also been one of the few organizations defending Trump’s refusal to take serious measures against Saudi Arabia over their war in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Foreign Policy Initiative was a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group founded in 2009 by several high-profile neoconservative figures to promote militaristic U.S. policies in the Middle East and other global hotspots.

Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) leader Matt Brooks claims that  the Democratic Party had “become the home of a growing number of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish extremists who would rather support terrorist groups that attack America than America’s only true friend in the Middle East—the Jewish state of Israel.” The combative tone and the effort to turn the issue from a bipartisan to a Republican wedge issue typifies the RJC’s approach and stands in stark contrast to other staunchly pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and even to groups associated with the Democrats. One of the few Jewish groups that strongly supports Donald Trump, they applauded loudly when he pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. Their national chairman, Norm Coleman, is also a paid lobbyist for Saudi Arabia.

Sen.Marco Rubio’s influence over Trump administration policy in the Western Hemisphere has led observers to describe him as the “virtual undersecretary of state for Latin America.” He has been credited with steering Trump to take an interventionist posture on Venezuela and quickly embrace the new Brazilian government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, while declining to address Bolsonaro’s unabashed support for torture and discriminatory attitudes on gender, race and sexual orientation.The favored candidate of “pro-Israel” donors and neoconservatives for the 2016 Republican nomination, “Little Marco” has steadily improved his relations with Trump.

“The goal of freedom with its noble simplicity and even quiet grandeur. … gives meaning and elevation to the American experiment.” This is how Bill Kristol—the son of the trailblazing neoconservative, Irving Kristol, and notorious war-hawk who promoted the invasion of Iraq —summed up what he thinks U.S. foreign policy should be. Kristol was the founder of the recently shuttered neoconservative periodical, The Weekly Standard. Although once chief of staff to Vice President dan Quayle, Kristol’s contributions to right-wing politics have been more prominent as a pundit. He was a key supporter of the “war on terror” and is known to have been influential in many Republican Party decisions, including the selection of Sarah Palin as VP in 2008. Kristol is widely seen as a leader of the “Never Trump” movement and has been vociferous in his opposition to first Trump’s candidacy and, later, many of his administration’s policies.

Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson has become Donald Trump’s biggest financial supporter, by a wide margin. He donated a total of $55 million dollars in just four months to Republican congressional funds after Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said of Adelson’s long reach in both Washington and Jerusalem that “it is troubling that one man, with a willingness and ability to give away giant sums, can now tilt Israeli and American politics his way at the same time.” A long-time booster of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Adelson came to support Trump only after it became apparent that he was going to secure the Republican nomination in 2016.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is a prominent Republican Party figure and a darling of neoconservatives whose militaristic views on foreign policy have helped him gain popularity across the political right. A leading hawk on Iran and a reliable pro-Likud voice in the Senate, Cotton was known for his efforts to push the United States into violating international law by reneging on its commitments under the Iran nuclear agreement. Karl Rove has said of Cotton, “He’s a rising star. He’s capable of building bridges within the Party.” And Steve Bannon: “How many guys in town can give a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations and also get kudos in the pages of Breitbart? The answer is, one guy.”

Kelly Ayotte was a Republican senator from New Hampshire who is close to right-wing and neoconservative factions.

The Tikvah Fund has worked closely with neoconservative think tanks and media outlets as well as many universities to promote conservative ideologies. Although until recently Tikvak was relatively little recognized for its influence on U.S. politics, the foundation demonstrated its ability to shape public discourse during the heated debate over negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program. In September, Tikvah’s head Roger Hertog was on hand at the Hudson Institute to award Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his efforts “to combat Islamic radicalism” and other services to Israel.

Jeb Bush is the former Republican governor of Florida and a founding signatory of the Project for the New American Century.

Matthew Taylor, a filmmaker with ties to the Republican Party, is the director of Los Abandonados, a controversial documentary that advances conspiracy theories about the Argentinian government. Observers have questioned the financial and political motives of the film’s producers and backers, in part because of Taylor’s track record of making films that advance right-wing causes and also because of the relationship between some of the filmmakers to investors who own part of Argentina’s national debt.

Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Strategy and Assessment Center, is a “former Washington Post reporter turned right-wing foreign policy analyst,” as one foreign policy writer puts it. Farah has hawkish views on Latin American politics as well as ties to infamous holders of Argentina’s debt. He was an associate producer on a controversial recent documentary that promoted discredited conspiracy theories regarding Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

The International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC) is a foreign policy think tank that is tied to individuals who have sought to pressure Argentina over its debt default because of their ownership of much of this debt. Among IASC’s funders has been hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, a right-wing “pro-Israel” ideologue whose Elliott Investments is one of the leading holdouts opposing Argentina’s debt restructuring. An IASC senior fellow recently served as associate producer of a controversial documentary that promotes conspiracy theories concerning alleged efforts by the government of Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to cover up Iran’s purported involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

One of The Israel Project’s (TIP) biggest donors, billionaire Paul Singer, has been in the media spotlight recently as observers have begun associating his political funding to his long-running dispute with Argentina over its 2001 debt default. Since Singer increased donations to TIP in 2012, TIP has “provided a steady stream of content critical of Kirchner’s government,” according to one account. 

The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is U.S.-based pressure group that has pushed for the United States to attack Iran and has smeared critics of hawkish Israeli policies. ECI has stridently opposed the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran and has characterized the recent framework nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 as a “litany of concessions to Iran.” ECI has called on members of Congress to do their “duty” and “kill this proposed deal.”

Seth Klarman is a billionaire hedge fund investor and prolific funder of an array of hardline “pro-Israel” groups.

The Philos Project is a Christian advocacy organization that promotes hawkish U.S. policies towards the Middle East. Backed by right-wing “pro-Israel” donors like Paul Singer, the group has called for the use of U.S. ground troops against ISIS, has strongly defended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has criticized efforts to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute. Wrote one critic: “The Philos Project stands as an object lesson in the eagerness with which neoconservatives try to create the perception that their views are shared by a vast, diverse constituency, which in this case is warning Christians about the imperial designs of Iran and the dangers of a nuclear deal between it and the P5+1.”

Dan Senor, who served as the Bush administration's spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, gained notoriety for his misleading and deeply politicized statements about U.S. "progress" in the disintegrating country. Undeterred, Senor—who is also an investment banker and the cofounder of the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative—has re-emerged to urge the Obama administration to send "air power" and "special ops" to Iraq to prop up the beleaguered sectarian government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is an influential rightist think tank chaired by hedge fund magnate Paul Singer, an important financial backer of neoconservative advocacy groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Manhattan Institute has promoted lower taxes on the rich, public service cuts for the poor, and controversial "stop and frisk" police practices. Through its influential quarterly magazine, City Journal, many Manhattan Institute figures also weigh in on foreign policy. In a recent column, City Journal contributing editor Judith Miller—notorious for her efforts to relay Ahmed Chalabi's false intelligence about Iraq as a New York Times reporter—expressed "profound skepticism" about any international agreement to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons.

Robert Joseph is a former State Department hawk who has long championed aggressive U.S. approaches on Iran, like scraping the Iran nuclear deal. Since becoming a lobbyist for the cultish Iranian opposition group the Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran (MEK), Joseph has pressed the case that there is a “viable” opposition to the government in Tehran, claiming at a recent congressional hearing that the MEK-associated National Council of Resistance of Iran is a “formidable alternative to the mullah’s tyranny.”

Newspaper columnist Bret Stephens is both a prominent “Never-Trumper” and a supporter of many of his policies, especially with respect to Israel and Iran. His inconsistencies, widely noted by informed critics, reflect a deeper problematic: Stephens’ glaring inability to coherently address real concerns about the threat to U.S. security and well-being that are a result of the country’s one-sided embrace of Israel. It is an enduring peculiarity of the defenders of the U.S.-Israel relationship that they consistently fail to address the particulars of the criticisms of that relationship. When logic threatens Stephens’ ideology, he falls back on bombast. A case in point was his bombastic assessment of the controversial but nevertheless coherently argued 2006 paper “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by renowned IR scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Said Stephens: “Let’s be clear: What professors Walt and Mearsheimer have produced under the guise of disinterested scholarship is a demagogic, disingenuous, distorted, bigoted, factually inaccurate, analytically flawed, and intellectually wretched piece of work.”

Nikki Haley, who announced her resignation as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in late 2018, has long been considered a rising star in the Republican Party. Her tenure at the U.N. was described by one observer as “an unmitigated disaster for the cause of human rights and international law.” Even in her last days, she was often contradicted by President Donald Trump, such as in the 2018 clash between Russia and Ukraine where she called out Russia for its “outlaw actions,” while Trump said he didn’t like actions “either way.” A staunch supporter of right-wing “pro-Israel” policies, Haley notoriously warned that the U.S. was “taking names” of those opposed to U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, widely considered one of the more powerful vice presidents in U.S. history, was a key formulator of the “war on terror” and continues to defend the invasion of Iraq as well as the use of torture. He has also continued to espouse militaristic views as a member of the board of trustees for the American Enterprise Institute and through the short-lived advocacy organization he put together with his daughter, Liz, the Alliance for a Stronger America. Although an early opponent of Donald Trump, Cheney has since come to support him and applauded Trump’s decisions to leave the Iran nuclear deal, pardon “Scooter” Libby, and to support the controversial head of the CIA, Gina Haspel.

Considered a relatively moderate Republican on some domestic issues, Mitt Romney is a hawk with neoconservative leanings on foreign policy. After failing in the 2012 presidential race and being rejected for a post in the Trump administration, Romney is mounting a political comeback with his candidacy to replace long-time Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch in a race he is widely expected to win.

John Negroponte, a controversial Reagan-era official who was involved in implementing counter-insurgency policies in Central America, served as the first national intelligence director under President George W. Bush. He recently denounced the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program and opined that Obama was distancing the United States from Israel. “My experience in the conduct of American foreign policy over 50 years it’s been pretty much an article of faith that we must do our best to be supportive of Israel,” he declared in an interview.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) suspended his Republican presidential campaign after finishing near the bottom during the Iowa caucuses. He has endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for the nomination, who like Santorum advocates a staunchly hawkish foreign policy. Santorum says he supports Rubio because the Florida senator is “a candidate that espouses the values we believe in … someone who has a real understanding of the threat of ISIS.”

Arthur Waldron is a professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania and a well-known China hawk. In a recent email to Right Web, Waldron wrote, “I can only express gratitude for the care and accuracy with which you track my activities.” He wittily added: “Occasionally when I can’t remember, I look you up.” Waldron appears to be concerned about the numerous associations with neoconservative groups that his Right Web profile documents, writing: “I am NOT a neoconservative, in favor of U.S. intervention all over the place. I am a conservative who thinks we should identify carefully what is and is not our interest. My basic passion is human rights, even for the Chinese.”

The Center for Security Policy (CSP), a neoconservative think tank led by the unabashedly Islamophobic Frank Gaffney, held its annual gala dinner recently. A featured speaker at the event called Islam an enemy that has “existed for 1,400 years” and “brought devastation to nearly the same number of humans as the plague.”

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy recently published a letter signed by former officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations that has been framed as critical of the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. However, the letter, which was also signed by prominent neoconservatives, has been described by one signatory as “very much in line with current U.S. policy.” 

The Institute of World Politics is a Washington, D.C.-based graduate school closely tied to right-wing networks in the United States.

Charles Hill is a former diplomat who now teaches “Grand Strategy” at Yale. A strong proponent of the “international system” enforced by the United States—by military force if necessary—Hill has accused the Obama administration of “turning backward” the “democracy wave that began 20 years ago” with the end of the Cold War. When the Obama administration opted not to intervene in Syria’s civil war, Hill also accused the White House of turning over global leadership to a “troika” of Russia, Iran, and China.

Founded by neoconservative trailblazer Irving Kristol in 1985, the National Interest has drifted away from its neocon roots since its takeover by the realist-oriented Nixon Center in 2001. Editor Jacob Heilbrunn, for example, recently defended libertarian Sen. Rand Paul against an onslaught of criticism from GOP hawks—including Irving Kristol's son William—who battered the Kentucky Republican over his opposition to U.S. intervention in Syria and Ukraine. Heilbrunn, who held out that Paul could revive the realist Republican school of foreign policy, likened Paul's critics to Cold War-era hawks who "were all full of talk of confrontation and readiness to resort to nuclear war" but who ultimately failed at the brass tacks of foreign policy.

Former EMP Commission chairman William R. Graham, who has served as a corporate executive for a passel of defense contractors, recently joined a number of right-wing hawks—including Frank Gaffney, John Bolton, and Douglas Feith—in signing an open letter to President Obama calling on the administration to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The letter signatories, who were convened by the hard-right Center for Security Policy, accused North Korea of conspiring with Iran to spread nuclear technology to U.S. adversaries, among other questionable claims. Graham has also accused Iran of plotting an "electromagnetic pulse" (EMP) attack that could purportedly kill the vast majority of Americans.

Billionaire hedge fund investor Daniel Loeb recently sold his firm's shares in the company Yahoo for over $1 billion. The sale capped off Loeb’s yearlong stint as a member of the company's board, during which time the confrontational investor push through several high-profile changes to the company's leadership and business practices. Although he is a registered Democrat, Loeb used some of his fortune to support the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. He is also a supporter of the Emergency Committee for Israel, a controversial neoconservative pressure group that has agitated for war with Iran.

U.S.-Russian relations continue to cool, but for Richard Pipes, a professor emeritus at Harvard who was a notorious anti-Soviet hardliner during the Cold War, now is the time to cajole Russia into the “Western” fold. Instead of antagonizing the country, writes Pipes, the West should consider dissolving NATO and patiently “convince Russians that they belong to the West and should adopt Western institutions and values.” On the other hand, Pipes has rejected Russian opposition to U.S. efforts to place anti-missile systems close to its borders and has recently supported the work of a host of neoconservative groups, whose scholars have pressed a hard line on Russia.

A retired U.S. Air Force general and defense industry executive, Fogleman has been a long time government adviser on defense and security policy and served on the “Military Advisory Council” of Mitt Romney’s 2012 election campaign.

Akins, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and advisor to the hawkish Iran Policy Committee, helped play a role forging elite Middle East consensus over Israel during the 1970s and foresaw the popular backlash in the region over U.S. policies.