Joseph Cotto
By the metrics of conventional American politics, Donald Trump was not supposed to become president. This should be apparent to anyone who paid even minimal attention to media reports about the 2016 election cycle. Exactly why Trump was deemed unfit by the Washington, DC, establishment is something that needs to be explored, and it is possible that there is no single right answer. A combination of factors may have rendered the Donald unpalatable to those with influence in America’s political-media complex. His brash, unpolished nature may have been even more repellent to establishment forces than his political stances.
What comes to mind when one speaks about the “establishment” is typically left-leaning advocates and their causes. It is hard to imagine that anyone, outside of the radical leftist fringe, considers the major American news media to be right-wing in orientation. Nonetheless, it would be a serious mistake to overlook nonmainstream news outlets, which are sometimes sympathetic to Republican positions and to those who hold them.
This would be even truer of think tanks, which represent for Republicans and those who claim to be conservative a sort of alternative mass outlet. In these institutions one encounters advocates of tax cuts, those who support pro-business economic policies (including tax credits for business enterprises), and opponents of runaway government spending (unless expenditures are directed to military use). These think tanks also feature social conservatives who preach traditional values but who usually do not bring in as much funding as other groups represented in conservative think tanks.
In understanding the politics of think tanks, it is necessary to look at those responsible for lavishing wealth on them. Once it is made clear who funds the Center Right establishment—also known as Conservatism, Inc.—it should become obvious why some in establishment conservatism rallied against Trump’s candidacy and continue to support public policy unpopular with most of the country.
There are certain common characteristics of these tanks, starting with where they happen to be located. Shortly after Donald Trump’s election, The Economist revealed that in Washington, DC, alone “there are 397 think-tanks … each incubating ideas for new policies and frequently incubating the policymakers themselves during periods out of power.” Trump seizing victory “was a shock for think-tank fellows because most are left-leaning.” While “think-tanks are meant to be non-partisan to preserve their tax status,” people who work at these organizations “live in a liberal town and their fellows usually have post graduate degrees,” a demographic “that identifies Democratic 57% to 35%.” Indeed, think tankers “are part of the American political establishment,” and “the Republican primary as well as … the November general election” was a repudiation of it.1
It should be no surprise that “Donald Trump was unpopular even amongst right-leaning policy shops.” Especially peeved by his success was “the Republican foreign policy establishment,” whose luminaries include, among others, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Eliot Cohen, and David Gordon. Those last two wrote a letter alleging “that Mr. Trump was not qualified to be president and would put America’s national security and well-being at risk.” This letter was cosigned by forty-eight other “former Republican administration national security officials.” According to these critics, Trump “felt no more respect for DC experts than they felt for him.”2
Beyond those bonds uniting think tanks across the political spectrum, there are others peculiar to the Republican subspecies. Most relevant here are the strains shared by Center Right tanks that focus on foreign policy. These are the think tanks that provide the personnel for inciting and justifying military action. In a 2006 New York Times piece, commentator Thomas Frank explained that rather than dealing with fiscal issues exclusively, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) “has long been the reliable source of corporate money” whose “deep thinkers … after moving into the Bush administration, dreamed up the war in Iraq.” He added that the AEI boasts “a comprehensive directory of conservative Washington power” and that “there is no better-connected group of people outside the government itself.”3
There are also certain corporate interests that have found a sponsor in “conservative” think tanks. In 2005, AEI chairman Christopher DeMuth refrained from delivering any specifics, but mentioned that one-third of his organization’s yearly income came from corporations, another third from personal contributions, and the final third from other endowed organizations. AEI raised in total between $20 and $25 million each year. DeMuth also explained that his think tank relied on more than three hundred corporate contributors. How does the institute employ its largesse? Certainly, war is not a low priority. “Two of Washington’s most successful think-tank hawks are Frederick and Kimberly Kagan,” the former of whom is an AEI scholar, Salon reported nearly a decade after DeMuth’s statements. The Kagans are a “husband-and-wife team who” authored “papers that advocate an aggressive U.S. military policy.”4
This couple with think-tank roots “moved to Afghanistan in 2010 where they became ‘de facto senior advisors’ to General David Petraeus.” While in Kabul, the Kagans “were given top-level security clearance.” Both accessed “classified intelligence reports and participated in strategy sessions,” utilizing “their positions to advocate substantive changes in the U.S. war plan.” Unique about the Kagans was that they went “beyond traditional influence peddling” and had “the ear of the military man in charge of a real war.” Perhaps even more notable is that they “were not paid by the U.S. government for their work, but their proximity to Petraeus provided valuable benefits.”5
But AEI is not the only beneficiary of being associated with this power couple. “The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most-famous living general,” the Washington Post related, “provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute to” the Institute for the Study of War, where Kimberly Kagan works. During a mid-2011 banquet commemorating Petraeus, she “thanked executives from two defense contractors who sit on her institute’s corporate council, DynCorp International and CACI International.” Petraeus’s dinner “was sponsored by General Dynamics. All three firms have business interests in the Afghan war.”6
Given the negative public impression of American military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is understandable that various think tanks would decline to speak about receiving donations from defense contractors. Nonetheless, these donations continue to pour in and may well influence the positions taken by their recipients.
In December 2009, Foreign Policy bemoaned that the majority of DC think tanks portray “themselves as objective, quasi-scholarly institutions (indeed, they increasingly give researchers endowed chairs and other quasi-academic titles).” Yet, in reality, “unlike most universities, most think tanks remain heavily dependent on ‘soft money,’ ” which makes them “bound to be especially sensitive to what potential donors might be thinking.”7 Around that same time, WIRED magazine explained how many tanks purportedly devoted to examining national security are really a veiled extension of the commercial defense sector: “Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing … contribute to many of the defense-oriented think tanks, although getting specific amounts is tricky” because the IRS’s Form 990, which furnishes the public with data regarding nonprofit institutions, “does not break down individual donations.”8
All hope is not lost, however, for deciphering donor identity. Some think tanks are more up front than others about who funds them. Take the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) deems “a ubiquitous voice on the topic of missile defense,” with special attention paid to “the urgent threat of North Korea.” CSIS champions American “deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system … to South Korea.”9
These words ran under the following headline: “Lockheed Martin-Funded Experts Agree: South Korea Needs More Lockheed Martin Missiles.” The CSIS’s top ten largest business contributors have their own special disclosure category of “$500,000 and up.” Five of these corporations “are weapons manufacturers: Besides Lockheed Martin, this list includes General Dynamics, Boeing, Leonardo-Finmeccanica and Northrop Grumman.”10 Unlike AEI, the CSIS does not practice concealment about who floods them with funds.
Another generously endowed Republican think tank is the Heritage Foundation. Unlike other institutions of its type, Heritage has not allowed any daylight between itself and the administration of Donald Trump. According to New Republic, “No group is more responsible for helping to craft Trump’s agenda than the Heritage Foundation.” Ironically this tank initially blasted Trump because he had “no track record of allegiance to conservative causes.” Despite this early riff, Heritage eventually had an impact “on virtually every policy Trump advocates, from his economic agenda to his Supreme Court nominees.” This relationship “between Trump and the Heritage Foundation represents a return to prominence for an organization that was established in 1973 specifically as a Republican appendage.11
The foundation released a summation of its finances on the last day of 2016. Its budget for that year surpassed $85 million, with the previous one totaling over $91 million. In 2016, Heritage raised more than $58.6 million from donations alone, while 2015 brought it upward of $76 million. During the former year, Heritage reported net assets in excess of $240.6 million.12
How did Heritage acquire such staggering wealth? According to the Intercept: “The Pentagon decided in 2009 to cut funding for Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor fighter jet,” described as “a weapons system with cost overruns in the billions of dollars” seldom utilized amid armed conflict. Nonetheless, “the Heritage Foundation fought tooth and nail to restore taxpayer money for the planes.” Heritage insisted that the F-22 is a key instrument for promoting America’s national interests. There was more than met the eye, however, at least insofar as the public went: “Lockheed Martin, a corporate donor to” the foundation, “met with [its] officials on nearly a monthly basis to discuss the F-22 and other defense industry priorities.”13
Unauthorizedly released emails, which were eventually obtained by the Intercept, “show at least 15 meetings in 2008 and 2009 between officials at Heritage and Lockheed Martin, including one with Bill Inglee, who at the time served as a senior lobbyist” for the military aircraft manufacturer. The same emails “also suggest that Heritage continued courting Lockheed Martin for donations,” placing “the company repeatedly in Excel spreadsheets used to collect pledges from past donors.” As far as the contributions themselves go, “Lockheed Martin gave $40,000 to Heritage in 2008, bringing its total contribution to $341,000.”14
The combined efforts of Heritage and Lockheed ultimately did not produce the desired outcome. Yet, before that became obvious, “Lockheed Martin directed its registered lobbyists to fight back against the cuts in Congress.” The corporation also “took out full-page advertisements in D.C. publications.” Meanwhile, “the Heritage Foundation produced a flurry of reports and media outreach efforts to encourage Congress to overturn the Pentagon’s decision.” The defense industry has “historically played an outsized role in shaping the national security debate through think tank funding.” Moreover, “Lockheed Martin in particular funds an array of other policy institutes and think tanks.” Beyond Lockheed, though, it is worth noting that “the nexus of defense contracting money and think tanks is poorly understood.” The reason is that detailed disclosure of such information by think tanks has been voluntary.15
This report is not arguing anything as simplistic as the idea that AEI, Heritage, and other “conservative” and/or Republican think tanks advocate military entanglements because of their funding sources. The opposite could just as easily be the case. Military hawks and defense industries become associated with particular institutions because they know where they stand on foreign policy and grasp that their positions are compatible. But it is equally obvious that the dependence of certain think tanks on massive funding from certain sources strengthens their predisposition toward certain policies. It also renders it difficult for the funded institutions to change course if their interests will be compromised as a result of a policy shift. This dependence also steers the foundations under discussion away from embracing other issues and positions that are not financially profitable. For example, why should a conservative foundation put any moral capital into defending traditional social positions if it is being funded almost entirely for other reasons? Needless to say, Heritage and AEI were far more willing to jettison opposition to gay marriage than support for increased military spending and the policy of “standing up” to the supposed thug in the Kremlin.
It is even quite possible that if the Republican establishment fades and is replaced by Donald Trump loyalists, “conservative” think tanks will continue to showcase the same priorities. That, after all, is what they are being financed to do, even while they work to increase their leverage and presence in the White House. One might also note the hypocrisy when institutions that claim to be fighting “big government” are delighted to increase their size and cost, providing they are paid to advocate for that expansion. But these think tanks defend what they wish to increase as necessary costs and necessary expansion. That is supposedly because the “conservative policy community” stands behind these policies, and Fox News, which works hand in glove with that community, tells us repeatedly that everything its allies advocate is both “conservative” and good for the country.16 That position will eventually turn into one that the leftist media will proclaim as the authorized conservative one.
Postscript: If most of the sources cited above came from Democratic and leftist publications, this should not surprise or disappoint the reader. Almost all journalists and activists associated with Conservatism, Inc., defend and, if possible, cover up the financial interests of their own think tanks. A detailed treatment of these funding sources at an earlier point in time can be found in Paul Gottfried’s The Conservative Movement, revised edition (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993). What stands out from comparing figures is how much less Heritage was taking in then (about $15 million a year in the early 1990s) relative to its present annual funding. At that time much more funding came from neoconservative-controlled educational foundations than from defense industry and military lobbyists.