The Stimson Center has established the National Security Reform Program as a vehicle to expose “waste in the military budget while offering pragmatic, forward-thinking perspectives on security policy issues – regardless of politics or parochial interests.”
“For far too long, militarism and corporate interest have corrupted national security policy,” according to the program, which the center announced on June 20. “As a result, the United States has seen more than 20 years of warships that don’t sail, aircraft that don’t fly, and weapons that don’t fight – all with little to no oversight or accountability to the American taxpayer.”
The program would fill a niche in Washington, D.C.’s stable of think tanks. Many of the latter that focus on defense receive funding from defense contractors.
“The National Security Reform Program seeks to advance rational policies to meet the national security challenges facing us today, while providing more effective and accountable solutions to defense matters beyond spending more money,” the program said.
The program’s first initiative is to be the Effective Defense Policy project to conduct “realistic threat assessments to shape how the Pentagon approaches military force structure and arms control issues.”
“Through extensive research, the team promotes defense policy to maximize military readiness at the lowest possible cost to American taxpayers,” the program said. “This work challenges the status quo by demonstrating how the never-ending pursuit of global military primacy actually threatens national security and military servicemembers.”
Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at Stimson, directs Stimson’s National Security Reform Program. Grazier is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and was a defense analyst at the Project On Government Oversight from 2015 to April this year.
“In a time of global upheaval, it is imperative that we scrutinize the status quo and craft practical policies to better address the critical issues facing our national security,” Brian Finlay, the president of the Stimson Center, said in a June 20 statement. “For 30 years, Stimson has championed independent thinking, and the launch of the National Security Reform program continues that tradition and brings back to the center topics that were central to Stimson’s founding.”
As the Cold War was waning, Barry Blechman and the late Michael Krepon, former colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, founded the Stimson Center in 1989.
Stimson’s namesake, Henry Stimson, served both Republican and Democratic administrations, including as Secretary of War for President William Howard Taft from 1911-13 and for Presidents Roosevelt and Truman from 1940-45.