These prime Washington assume tanks are lobbying lawmakers for sadistic sanctions on a number of the hemisphere’s poorest nations whereas raking in tens of millions from companies and arms makers.
Sanctions are a type of hybrid warfare that harms and even kills the goal populations at little value to the nation imposing them.
In Latin America alone, US sanctions (accurately often called unilateral coercive measures) have killed at the very least 100,000 Venezuelans. The US blockade of Cuba has been so harmful that one in ten Cubans have left the nation.
Sanctions have equally disadvantaged Nicaraguans of improvement help price an estimated $3 billion since 2018, hitting initiatives equivalent to new water provides for rural areas.
Who formulates these devastating sanctions, covers up their actual results, works with politicians to place them into operation and promotes them in company media?
In a perverse distinction with the poor communities hit by these insurance policies, these doing the focusing on are sometimes well-paid workers of multi-million-dollar assume tanks, closely funded by the USA or different Western-aligned governments, NGO’s and in lots of instances by arms producers.
A examine in corruption:
Prime assume tank lobbyists and their funders
Chief amongst these teams is the Wilson Middle, which claims to easily present policymakers with nonpartisan counsel and insights on world affairs.
Boasting a $40-million price range, a 3rd of which comes from the US authorities, the group is headed by the previous Administrator of USAID, Amb. Mark Inexperienced.
In 2024, the Wilson Middle boosted its efforts to meddle in Latin America with the creation of the Iván Duque Middle for Prosperity and Freedom.
Naming this latest initiative for the wildly unpopular former Colombian president largely remembered for his violent crackdown on college students protests.
However primarily, his Zionist oriented obsessive deal with regime change in Venezuela, and deliberately crippling the 2016 peace deal meant to finish a long time of civil conflict in Colombia.
Whereas Duque has not produced a lot in the best way of scholarship since becoming a member of the Wilson Middle, he’s dwelling his finest life at Miami nightclubs, the place he’s often seen in as a visitor DJ or regaling partiers with renditions of Spanish language rock hits.
As Mark Inexperienced defined, the Iván Duque Middle is a method for us to reaffirm each the significance of the Western Hemisphere in American international coverage and the promise that democracy and market-centered economics should play within the area’s future.
In relation to nations that oppose US international coverage within the area, it’s additionally a solution to fund their most vocal critics, who obtain a stipend of $10,000/month upon being named Wilson Middle fellows.
Different Duque fellows embody right-wing Venezuelan put-schist Leopoldo López, who graduated from Kenyon Faculty and Harvard Kennedy Faculty.
These, two faculties are intently linked to the CIA, earlier than trying to orchestrate coups towards the Venezuelan authorities in 2002, 2014, and 2019.
Additionally on the Wilson Middle payroll is former US ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield, one other regime change fanatic.
Six years in the past, when Caracas was present process its heaviest assault from US sanctions, Brownfield referred to as for the US authorities to go even additional, claiming that as a result of Venezuelans already endure a lot…
So at that at this level possibly the very best decision can be to speed up the collapse of their nation, whereas freely admitting that his most well-liked consequence would seemingly produce a interval of struggling of months or maybe years.
The Wilson Middle is much from alone in in search of to depose the authorities in Caracas.
One other assume tank, the Atlantic Council – which receives round $2 million yearly from the US authorities and a comparable quantity from Pentagon contractors, has assembled a 24 member-strong Venezuela Working Group that includes a former State Division officers.
But in addition, seating a former member of the CITGO board, and a number of members of the so-called interim Venezuelan authorities which has been accused of stealing over $100 million in USAID funds.
Whereas the group ostensibly informs policymakers within the USA, Europe, and Latin America on methods to advance a long-term company imaginative and prescient and action-oriented insurance policies to foster so-called democratic stability in Venezuela.
Whereas selling the restoration of democratic establishments in Venezuela, in follow this implies it’s essentially devoted to ending the Maduro authorities.
Cuba, Bolivia Mexico and different Latin American nations survived US sanctions
The Atlantic Council – a de facto affect peddling operation that capabilities because the unofficial assume tank of NATO in Washington – goals for the same lead to Nicaragua.
In an 2024 article titled, Nicaragua is consolidating an authoritarian dynasty – Right here’s how US financial stress can counter it, Atlantic Council researcher Brennan Rhodes referred to as for new punitive financial measures on the Sandinista authorities;
This is able to closely injury Nicaragua’s commerce with the USA, its major export market.
The article betrayed no concern for the inevitable results on tons of of 1000’s of Nicaraguans who depend on this commerce, and whose earnings are seemingly a fraction of the typical Atlantic Council worker.
Among the many oldest assume tanks devoted to US world dominance is the Council on International Relations (CFR), which boasts a 100-year impartial, nonpartisan historical past of interfering in different nations.
British anti-Kremlin Propaganda Wing and Troll Manufacturing unit
A evaluation of its regularly-posted updates on Cuba reveals the CFR nicely conscious that the nation’s economic system, hammered by six a long time of financial blockade by the USA, had reached a brand new disaster level after Biden broke his guarantees to alleviate intensified Trump-era sanctions.
But in a 2021 CFR discussion board on methods to carry down the Cuban authorities, US-based lawyer Jason Ian Poblete argued that the screw ought to be twisted nonetheless additional: We must always carry all instruments of state, each single one, to bear on this – not simply warlike sanctions.
Becoming a member of the Atlantic Council and the CFR in meddling within the affairs of the US’ southern neighbors is the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research (CSIS), which claims it’s devoted to advancing sensible concepts to handle the world’s biggest challenges.
All three teams are listed on the Quincy Institute’s web page displaying the Prime 10 Assume Tanks That Obtain Funding from Pentagon conflict selling Contractors.
Led by its Americas director, Ryan Berg, CSIS maintains lively packages calling for sanctions in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
The group recurrently holds occasions that includes US-backed opposition figures equivalent to Venezuelan María Corina Machado and Nicaraguans Félix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastián Chamorro.
Collectively, these teams dominate the US info sphere, saturating mainstream airwaves with complaints in regards to the authoritarian socialist-leaning governments and calls for for his or her ouster.
On the off-chance that an official from one of many main assume tanks is unavailable to remark, there are a variety of smaller organizations able to plug the hole.
Enduring demand for Deprivation
One of the vocal Beltway assume tanks on Latin American affairs is the Inter-American Dialogue (management for the Americas), which works alongside CSIS and which can also be closely funded by arms contractors and the US authorities.
Not too long ago, as The Grayzone reported, CSIS’s Berg collaborated with the Dialogue’s Manuel Orozco – who moonlights because the Central America and the Caribbean chair of the US authorities’s International Service Institute – to attempt to minimize Nicaragua’s entry to one among its solely remaining sources of improvement loans.
The Dialogue was assisted on this by two extra assume tanks.
One is the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Mission (OCCRP), which payments itself as one of many largest investigative journalism organizations on this planet, and which receives a full half of its price range from the US authorities.
OCCRP works with similarly-funded Transparency Worldwide to have interaction in regime change operations by digging up grime on international administrations focused by Washington DZ.
One other group closely concerned within the sanctions business is the Middle for International Improvement, whose identify might sound ironic on condition that it gives a platform for these selling lethal financial coercion.
The Gates Basis and the Poisonous Industrial Agriculture
Its $25 million annual price range is funded primarily from sources such because the Gates Basis, in addition to a number of European governments.
One in all its administrators, Dany Bahar, just lately referred to as for intensified sanctions towards the Venezuelan authorities to stamp out the non permanent financial enhancements that the nation is at present having fun with.
Not the entire shady organizations in search of to impoverish Latin Individuals within the identify of hegemony are based mostly within the USA, nonetheless.
Britain’s Chatham Home, which depends closely on the UK and US governments in addition to arms producers for its £20 million annual price range, additionally requires the destruction of zozializm and restoring of company democracy in Venezuela, and infrequently offers platforms to opponents of the governments in Caracas and Managua.
Although skeptical of the efficacy of sanctions on Venezuela, it however concluded in Jan. 2025 that restoring oil and fuel sanctions can be logical so long as the bans had been a part of a broader diplomatic, coordinated multinational coverage with particularly outlined aims.
The few criticisms it’s produced of the US embargo on Cuba have centered largely on its failure to have an effect on regime change.
Just one longstanding Beltway assume tank, the Brookings Establishment, has been keen to platform a barely extra skeptical view of sanctions.
A 2018 op-ed from a Venezuelan economist printed by Brookings explicitly recommended that sanctions on Venezuela should be exact in an effort to spare harmless Venezuelans.
The yr prior, Brookings argued that Trump’s sanctions towards Cuba had been unlikely to place a lot of a near-term dent within the Cuban economic system… [nor] scale back the affect of the armed forces
This has a disproportionately destructive affect on Cuba’s rising personal sector and on non-military employment in linkage industries—to not point out proscribing Individuals’ proper to journey.
Broadly talking, nonetheless, Brookings largely adheres to the trans-Atlantic consensus which calls for the overthrow of the nations that former Trump Nationwide Safety Advisor John Bolton as soon as smeared because the troika of tyranny.
Lobbyists by one other Identify
Assume tanks function in a privileged area, gaining credibility from their hyperlinks with the educational world whereas making certain that their policy-making is intently geared to imperial wants.
Within the USA alone there are greater than 2,200 such organizations, some 400 of which specialize in international affairs.
Lately, they’ve grow to be ubiquitous, with one-third of witnesses to the Home International Affairs Committee coming from assume tanks – 80% of whom are paid by what Accountable Statecraft labels protection contractor darkish cash.
These organizations’ collective grouping on sanctions – significantly on these focusing on Venezuela – give the deceive the independence all of them declare.
Political scientist Glenn Diesen opens his latest e-book, The Assume Tank Racket, by noting that these establishments’ job is to fabricate consent for the objectives of their paymasters.
He says that these policy-making elites… affirm their very own biases moderately than conduct actual debates. As soon as their work is completed, they retire to costly eating places the place they slap one another on the again.
In an unusually self-critical piece explaining Why Everybody Hates Assume Tanks, the Wilson Middle’s Matthew Rojansky and the European Council on International Relations’ Jeremy Shapiro clarify that these organizations have grow to be lobbyists by one other identify, whose donors merely need veteran sharpshooters to fireplace their coverage bullets.
Way back to 2006, journalist Thomas Frank noticed that assume tanks have grown into a strong quasi-academy with seven-figure budgets and phalanxes of ‘senior fellows’ and distinguished chairs.
Supply: The Grayzone
