Massive Pro-Israeli Think Tank Influence Controlling U.S. Foreign Policy: Paper

WASHINGTON, August 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A leading progressive news weekly reports that members of two extreme rightwing pro-Israeli think tanks are currently influencing U.S. foreign policy, reports The Nation in its September 2, 2002, issue.

With support of Israel as its central agenda, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP), espouse issues such as national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general, reports the paper.

Many of its current and former members, including Pentagon Defense Policy Board chair and JINSA/CSP adviser Richard Perle and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of an agenda advocating “total war” and “regime change” in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, continues.

The Nation reports that dissent against JINSA/CSP policies, including that from the State Department, the CIA or career military officers, is considered heresy “against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between U.S. and Israeli national security interests.”

Perle recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the U.S. that needs to be brought controlled, including the possibility of oil field seizures. Many of the suggestions made in that congressional briefing mirror JINSA's recommendations, reflecting a preoccupation with Egypt, reports the paper.

There are some in U.S. military and intelligence circles who have taken to using U.S. President George W. Bush’s "axis of evil" comment referencing Iraq, Iran and North Korea, to describe JINSA and CSP, along with other rightwing Conservative hawkish thinking like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute, as well as other entities underwritten by far-right American Zionists -all of which help to underwrite JINSA and CSP, said The Nation.

However, JINSA exerts influence on retired U.S. military officials by taking them to Israel, and who return as ardent supporters of the regime there.

Not surprisingly, almost every retired U.S. military officer who sits on JINSA's board of advisers, or has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter, works, or has worked, with military contractors who do business with the Pentagon and Israel, reports The Nation.

JINSA’s U.S. military members hold key positions in major U.S. defense contractors, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems and General Dynamics (and its Gulfstream subsidiary).

JINSA was founded in 1976 by neo-conservatives concerned the U.S. might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event of another Arab-Israeli war. Over the past twenty-five years, JINSA has gone from an informal small group to a $1.4-million-a-year operation with a formidable array of Washington power players on its rolls.

Its website says that JINSA exists to "educate the American public about the importance of an effective U.S. defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded" and to "inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East."

JINSA/CSP members and/or advisory board members currently in the U.S. government include Cheney, John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control; Douglas Feith, the third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon; Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode, Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment.