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Honolulu, Hawaiʻi – On May 27, the Institute for Policy Studies released a new report, “The True Cost Of The U.S. Military In Hawaiʻi: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Economic, Environmental, Strategic, and Social Impacts of the U.S. Military Presence in Hawai’i,” co-produced by ʻĀina Aloha Economic Futures, The Costs of War Project, ʻĪlioʻulaokalani Coalition, Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, and the Transition Security Project.

This new analysis offers the most definitive accounting ever produced of the full costs of the U.S. military presence in Hawaiʻi. 

The report reveals groundbreaking new findings on nine research areas: historical land use and sovereignty, strategic doctrine, environmental harm, including PFAS contamination, public health, economic impact, employment, housing affordability, land valuation, and base conversion.

Hawaiʻi is central to the administration’s planned military buildup against China. That buildup is now unfolding alongside a proposed $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget — even as costs of living rise and safety net programs face deep cuts. The collision of those pressures is bringing new scrutiny to what the military presence in Hawaiʻi actually costs, and who bears that burden. 

This report comes out during a critical window in the national debate over Pentagon spending – including the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – and the statewide debate over the future of the military leases on 46,000 acres of Hawaiian land that expire beginning in 2028.

Key findings include:

• The military’s actual economic contribution to Hawaiʻi is nearly 30% less than the Pentagon and state officials claim — $7.2 billion, not $10 billion, or 6.4% of GDP rather than 9.2%. And even that sum comes at steep, in some ways, incalculable, costs to the environment, public health, housing and the islands’ long-term economic security.
• While the military paid $1 for 65-year leases, the report estimates that fair market rent for the land totals up to $133.7 billion.
• Military demand for off-base housing inflated average rents on Oʻahu by an estimated 7.1% in 2024, costing non-military renters an additional $234.8 million — about $1,848 per household.
• The toxic legacy is largely unaddressed — including the Red Hill fuel disaster — and PFAS remediation at just three installations is conservatively estimated at $493 million, with indirect costs — elevated cancer rates, water filtration, lost food production — potentially reaching into the billions.
• The U.S. military presence in Hawaiʻi is larger than necessary, driven by inflated threat assessments and an offensive doctrine that actually increases the risk of war with China. A defensive strategy would reduce escalation risks and free Hawaiʻi’s land and resources for the islands’ pressing ecological and social needs.  

This report details what has long been obscured from public view. Taken together, they reveal that the dominant narrative about the U.S. military in Hawaiʻi—that it is an indispensable economic engine, a guarantor of security, and a responsible steward of the land — is, at best, overstated, and at worst, false. 

The upcoming expiration of military land leases offers a pivotal opportunity, after more than 60 years, to revisit the terms on which these lands are held.

“The military’s economic impact is significantly smaller than officials claim,” said David Vine, author of Base Nation, who has studied U.S. military bases for nearly 25 years. “We found the military overstates its impact by $2.8 billion, or nearly 30%. Its massive use of land and federal dollars is likely limiting the growth of industries that would serve residents far better. Every $1 million spent on the military generates about 5 jobs. The same million spent in other sectors creates more than 12 jobs with broader benefits for the people of Hawaiʻi.”

“The future of land in Hawaiʻi belongs to Native Hawaiians and residents to decide—not the Pentagon,” said Davis Price of ʻĀina Aloha Economic Futures. “The U.S. military paid $1 for 65-year leases on land valued at up to $133.7 billion — not counting cleanup costs — underscoring the gross mismanagement by state and federal governments. When these leases expire in 2028, communities must reclaim this land for the people, not the U.S. war economy.”

“The U.S. military is a major, largely unacknowledged driver of Hawaiʻi’s housing crisis,” said Omar Ocampo of the Institute for Policy Studies. “Military demand inflated rents on Oahu by an estimated 7.1% in 2024 alone, costing non-military renters nearly $235 million out of pocket. Year after year, rents and home prices climb while wages don’t, pushing out middle- and low-income families. The military’s footprint is part of the problem — and reducing it is part of the fix.”

“The U.S. military has spent decades contaminating Hawaiʻi’s air, water, and food sources with toxic chemicals, including PFAS ʻforever chemicals,’” said Wayne Tanaka of the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi. “PFAS from military firefighting foams will persist for generations. Cleaning up and monitoring just three installations is conservatively estimated at $493 million — and still won’t eliminate the potential threat as PFAS migrates through our environment. Indirect costs — elevated cancer rates, lost food production, and water filtration for families who can’t trust their tap — could reach into the billions. This barely scratches the surface of what decades of unaccountable military stewardship has and will continue to cost us.”

“Hawaiʻi is paying the price for a military strategy built on worst-case assumptions. The real security threats facing the islands are rising seas, extreme weather, and wildfire risk — not a hypothetical war with China. A smarter, more defensive approach to the Indo-Pacific would reduce the risk of catastrophic conflict and return the land and resources Hawaiʻi needs to secure its people’s water, environment, and future,” warned Neta Crawford, Professor of International Relations at University of St Andrews.

For generations, Native Hawaiians have led the demand for accountability from the U.S. military. This report gives policymakers, business leaders, and the broader public the tools to demand both accountability and a fundamental change in Hawaiʻi’s relationship with the U.S. military. The people of Hawaiʻi, especially Native Hawaiians, deserve to make this decision with full knowledge of the costs, risks, and benefits. 

“Aloha ʻāina reminds us that land is not a commodity to be exploited but a living relationship to be honored and sustained. This report is a crucial resource as we decide what comes next. Decisions made today will have a huge impact on future generations. We have been living with the decisions that were made decades ago – now we have the opportunity to make them right for future generations. Itʻs Our Time! Letʻs make it right! Letʻs make it Pono. Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka ʻĀina I Ka Pono!” said Vicky Holt Takamine, Founder, ʻIlioʻulaokalani Coalition. 

Summary of key findings: https://www.ips-dc.org/summary-true-cost-of-u-s-military-bases-in-hawaii 

Full analysis:
https://www.ips-dc.org/report-true-cost-of-u-s-military-bases-in-hawaii 

Experts on each aspect of the report and the concerns it raises are available for comment or interviews. To speak with one of the report co-authors, contact IPS Deputy Communications Director Olivia Alperstein at olivia@ips-dc.org.  

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But there is one element that makes Hawai’i’s housing market unique: the role of the U.S. military. Our chapter in a new report finds that military presence in Hawai’i’s housing market puts an upward pressure on rental prices that freezes out locals. We estimate that troops in the private market raised housing prices by 7.1 percent in 2024.

Hawai’i is the most militarized state per capita in our nation. Not only does it have a high concentration of service members, but more than 230,000 acres of land out of the 4.1 million in the island chain are currently under military control.

A dense network of military bases is conspicuously scattered across the eight islands. And almost a quarter of the state’s most populous island, O’ahu—home to Honolulu and Kailua—is currently under what local activists and groups call a military occupation, contributing to land shortages and higher land prices that make real estate development even more expensive.

More than 98 percent of the 42,503 active-duty service members in Hawai’i were stationed in O’ahu in the summer of 2024. But not all of them lived on-base. According to the Department of Defense, there were 14,700 active-duty service members who entered the private rental market. We estimate that they resided in 10.3 percent of the 142,130 renter-occupied units in Honolulu County.

Not only does the military have a significant presence in O’ahu’s rental market, but it also contributes to upward pressures on Hawai’i’s housing prices because of the tax-free stipends—known as Basic Allowance for Housing or BAH—that active-duty service members receive on a monthly basis.

Local residents have difficulty competing with compensation packages bolstered by BAH payments, making military renters more attractive to landlords.

An E5 Sergeant, a rank of enlisted personnel who have been promoted to lead a small team or section, with dependents and 4 years experience had a base pay of $40,388 and a BAH of $39,852 in 2024 for a total of $80,240. This is $10,000 more than the average annual salary of an urban Honolulu worker, who earned $70,179 (a mean wage of $33.74) in the same year. This difference does not include food allowances and bonuses that military personnel also receive.

The graph below demonstrates that E5 non-commissioned officers with and without dependents can comfortably afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment while more than half of Hawai’i’s working-class residents are cost-burdened, i.e. they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities. Other households struggle to afford to rent and are forced to leave Hawai’i altogether, particularly to Nevada, which is often jokingly referred to as Ninth Island.

It is clear that the BAH contributes to rental market tightness, and thereby higher prices. However, further analysis is stymied by a lack of data transparency from the Department of Defense. We know the DoD spent $27.9 billion to endow the BAH program in 2024, but we have no information on how those resources are distributed state-by-state nor how much BAH money enters the rental market.

Our report estimates that the DoD spent $1.1 billion on BAH just in O’ahu with more than half of that money—$648.9 million—entering the private rental market. The average BAH monthly payment per service member is $3,679 and we estimate this dynamic caused rents to increase by 7.1 percent in 2024. As a result, non-military tenants in O’ahu spent an estimated $234.8 million more in rent that year.

To help alleviate the inflationary impacts of military rental demand on the Hawai’i’s housing market, our report recommends that all active-duty service members be housed on-base.

Vacancy rates at military installations should be zero percent and the number of service members in the private market should also be zero. The U.S. military should disclose how many on-base housing units they own, operate, and monitor. And new, dense military housing should be built if necessary.

Critical tenant protections like rent control need to be implemented in order to provide immediate relief for renters. And the development of permanently affordable social housing is necessary to deliver high-quality and inexpensive housing. Sixty-five percent of all new units need to be set at 80 percent of area median income and market-based solutions have proven incapable of delivering affordability to lower-income households.

Our findings demonstrate that the military plays a significant role in Hawai’i’s affordability crisis, but there are steps that can be taken to make Hawai’i affordable to the people of Hawai’i.

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One example of this phenomena can be found in the world of private jets, one of the most ecologically indefensible forms of transformation. The private jet lobby has worked for years to secure tax breaks for aircraft purchases and fuel — and shift their costs on to taxpayers and the commercial flying public.

The lobby scored a big win when a 100 percent bonus depreciation for business assets including private planes was included in the 2017 Trump tax cut. That provision was renewed in 2025’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

With that provision in place, if a billionaire buys a $170 million luxury jet, they can deduct the entire purchase as a business expense in the year they buy it, greatly reducing their tax bill. Most business expenses are deducted to reflect their depreciation over multiple years. A purchase of a truck or vehicle, for example, is typically depreciated over five years.

Current tax loopholes give the ultra-wealthy —including both private citizens and businesses — millions in tax write-offs for their luxurious travel, including the costs of planes themselves and related expenditures like private pilots and fuel.

The Private Jet Accountability Project (PJAP) at the Institute for Policy Studies has been working with members of Congress to rollback these subsidies. U.S. Representatives Eugene Vindman (Va-07), Kristen McDonald Rivet (Mich.-08), and Greg Landsman (Ohio-01) recently introduced the Stop Subsidizing Private Jets Act of 2026.

“Right now, the tax code allows those buying private jets worth tens of millions of dollars to receive enormous write-offs, while middle-class families do not get deductions for basics like gas or groceries. That is wrong,” Vindman said in a statement. “My bill is a commonsense fix that ends these unfair giveaways while protecting farmers, small businesses, and emergency responders who depend on aviation for real business and community needs.”

Today, private jets, even those valued at $100 million or more, are not considered a luxury vehicle, which means the full value can be a business expense write-off. Expenses such as fuel, pilots, decor, and in-flight services are also a write-off. It is estimated that the owner of a $100 million jet can get a $21 million tax benefit.

This legislation will end these loopholes while protecting “exemptions for aircraft, primarily used to transport property, as well as planes used for agriculture, firefighting, emergency medical services, flight instruction, sky diving operations and certain commercial flights available to the public” as described in the bill.

These are funds we cannot afford to lose. An Institute for Policy Studies report found that private air travel is a significant portion of air traffic, with a ratio of one private jet per six commercial planes. Despite this, private jet travel only contributes 2 percent of the taxes that go to fund the Federal Aviation Administration. At the same time, people flying commercial pay a 7.5 percent federal excise tax on tickets to fund the FAA’s Airport and Airway Trust Fund. Every day commercial flyers are taxed more heavily for their tickets compared to private jet travelers who are only taxed on their jet fuel.

“It’s ridiculous and unfair that the ultra-wealthy get million-dollar tax breaks for their private jets while working families are seeing their health care and food assistance cut,” said Rep. McDonald Rivet. “We need to get rid of this insane loophole, because if you can afford a private jet, you can afford to pay your fair share in taxes.”

“The fact that our tax dollars are still funding tax breaks for someone’s private jet is insane,”  Rep. Landsman added. “We have to fix the tax code so the super-wealthy stop getting special treatment, and our small businesses and farmers can actually get ahead.”

In the face of the jet fuel crisis, European lawmakers are exploring banning certain kinds of private jet operations. Here in the U.S., all we are asking is that private jets pay their fair share.

Luxury travel that isn’t taxed appropriately epitomizes the inequality that exists in the tax and travel systems. Why should everyday Americans foot the bill for the ultra-wealthy’s private air travel and the air travel infrastructure we all use?

The passage of the Stop Subsidizing Private Jets Act of 2026 is an important step in correcting the imbalance of wealth and power in our democracy.

The post Lawmakers Press to Eliminate Private Jet Travel Subsidies appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Reagan installed Korb as his Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, and Logistics. After the first term Korb stepped down, taking along with him the defense department’s medal for Distinguished Public Service. His next move sent him down a former Pentagon official’s most-traveled path: straight into the defense industry. He was hired to run the Washington office of the Raytheon Corporation (now RTX).

Then his relatively conventional story took a turn.

With Raytheon’s permission he had joined the board of the Committee for National Security (CNS), a nonprofit with a mission to generate public debate on national security issues and ways to prevent nuclear war. According to court documents, on a lunch hour in March 1986 Korb turned up at a Senate Office Building to speak at a CNS press conference. He argued against increasing military spending to cover the costs of the Navy Secretary’s plans for an expanded 600 ship-, 15 carrier- group Navy, among other things. The CNS report displayed at the press conference included a broader critique: “The threats cited most consistently by the Reagan administration to justify its buildup have either not materialized, or have proved far less menacing than advertised.”

By then, the Reagan military buildup was already heading back down, and Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had already begun their series of summits foreshadowing the end of the Cold War. Korb’s position was definitely more in step with the times than the Navy Secretary’s.

But not in step with his employer. Two Navy officials and a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer called Raytheon to complain. Korb was soon fired from his job, and offered a temporary face-saving position as a “special advisor” on the condition that he get prior approval for any speeches and not speak to the media. Or he could be reassigned as a commercial marketing consultant at a Raytheon subsidiary in Philadelphia, barred from any contact with the Pentagon. In other words: He could end his public life, in exchange for a Raytheon salary.

Instead, he sued. The ACLU of Massachusetts took his case (Raytheon was headquartered in the state), arguing he was wrongfully terminated in bad faith and in violation of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. They contended that this declaration “embodies a strong public policy supporting freedom of speech, and that Raytheon’s actions interfered with both [Korb’s] right to express himself and the public’s right to hear what he had to say.”

They lost. The thrust of Raytheon’s defense was that it hadn’t violated policy in firing Korb because he had “rendered himself ineffective” as the company’s spokesperson by “publicly expressing views in direct conflict with the economic interest” of the company.

Raytheon may have fired him, but it did not silence him. For the next 30-plus years he made his case for a smaller Pentagon budget from the upper echelons of civil society’s national security think tanks: as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, then as director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and finally at the Center for American Progress. He made the case in countless congressional hearings, books, op-eds in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, to name a few. He also appeared on widely watched programs such as Face the Nation, The News Hour, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, Larry King, and The O’Reilly Factor.

I met Korb at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting early in this century. I had read an essay of his arguing that national security could not be achieved by military force alone. It required a “full toolkit” of security tools he characterized as “offense” (the military) “defense” (homeland security), and “prevention” (including diplomacy, foreign aid, support for international institutions such as United Nations peacekeeping forces, and nuclear nonproliferation.) He argued that the country needed a Unified Security Budget to understand the relative balance in funding for these tools and to outline how it could be rebalanced.

With remarkable chutzpah I don’t usually possess, and not much in the way of credentials for the task, I asked if he’d like to collaborate with me in fleshing out this framework. He said sure.

What followed was an eight-year partnership producing the annual “Unified Security Budget for the United States.” Each year we calculated the balance and compiled a rebalanced budget incorporating the recommendations of experts in each field; Korb supplied the analysis of the Pentagon budget and rationales for what could be cut from it. No collaborative partner I’ve ever had has been easier to work with.

In representative testimony to the Senate Budget Committee on May 12, 2021, Korb promised to focus on three main subjects: the exceptionally high amount of money then President Joe Biden’s administration proposed to spend on defense for the coming fiscal year; the Pentagon’s unnecessary spending on costly yet flawed weapons systems; and the need for Pentagon leadership to vastly improve the department’s management.

Needless to say, this program of reform has languished. Korb retired in 2024, and had to watch since then, as we all have, astronomical sums being seriously entertained for the Pentagon, a disastrous war of choice, technological developments threatening to put control of dangerous weapons beyond the reach of humans, and the open embrace of new frontiers of corruption in weapons procurement.

Korb and I never talked about his history. I first learned about the court case from his son at his funeral after he passed away in late April. His odyssey from Pentagon official to Pentagon critic gave him unique and invaluable standing in the fight against Pentagon excess. The fight will miss him.

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Tegucigalpa, Honduras – On May 26, the Institute for Policy Studies, Transnational Institute (TNI), TerraJusta, Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN), Network of Women Human Rights Defense Lawyers (RADDH), Southern Social Environmental Movement for Life (MASSVida), and Caritas Choluteca released a new report, “The Dark Side of the Energy Transition: Green Colonialism in Southern Honduras,” which exposes how corporate profiteering and strong-arming under the guise of sustainable development have shaped the installation of solar parks across southern Honduras.

This analysis is based on a meeting with affected communities in Choluteca, Honduras in July 2025, and examines in-depth how transnational investors have exploited the global green energy transition discourse to profit from privatization, corruption, and dispossession in Honduras, one of the continent’s most impoverished countries. Norwegian, Canadian, and U.S. corporations, Central American elites, and a Norwegian public development finance institution have all exploited this situation to their benefit. 

The new report highlights four ways that green colonialism operates in the context of solar parks in southern Honduras: (1) solar parks that have hobbled the state electricity company, maximizing profits for private renewable energy providers via long-term supply contracts at exorbitant prices for the Honduran people; (2) $1.205 billion USD currently in international arbitration claims against Honduras that the energy sector can leverage to negotiate project expansion and discourage the government from enacting community-supported environmental protection measures; (3) denial of marginalized communities’ self-determination, even as they face significant harm from deforestation, rising temperatures, and loss of access to productive land and water sources due to these solar energy projects; and (4) solar projects that have added to the existing energy matrix and benefited private corporate interests and consumers instead of replacing fossil fuel-based power generation and addressing local communities’ unmet energy needs.

During the narco-dictatorship, the corporate-backed government in Honduras extended exorbitant subsidies to these private companies while forcing the state power company to buy electricity from them at exorbitant rates. Hondurans ended up paying higher power bills while public coffers were emptied. Worse still, the projects often harmed local communities, who were met with repression when they resisted. 

When the democratically elected government of former President Xiomara Castro reformed these practices, multinational corporations sued the Honduran government for another exorbitant sum — a clear effort to undermine democracy.

“The transmission lines pass over the villages, but they are thinking about big industry, not about the villages – about profits for them and not for us,” explained German Chirinos of the Southern Social Environmental Movement for Life (MASSVida).

“These solar parks, like other renewable energy projects in Honduras, did not replace fossil fuels – instead, they expanded the energy matrix and worsened the financial crisis of the state energy company without democratizing access or benefiting local populations. What climate agreements and global development policies promised as a path to a sustainable future, Honduran communities experienced as international backing for a narco-state, corruption, and corporate looting with solar panels,” said report co-author Karen Spring of the Honduras Solidarity Network.

As the report highlights, those transnational investors can also wield a powerful tool to deter resistance to their energy projects: they can use the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system to sue national governments in private tribunals when they believe that a government’s protective measures, often resulting from community pressure, harm corporate profit margins. When former Honduran President Xiomara Castro’s administration enacted reforms to revert some of the worst excesses in contracts with private energy generation companies and to rescue the state electricity company, Norwegian, U.S., Central American and Canadian investors slapped Honduras with hefty arbitration claims. Honduras currently faces $1.205 billion USD in international arbitration claims from the electricity sector. 

“The strategy of criminalizing and paralyzing community members who are defending their territories is similarly being used against the Honduran government in the form of ISDS,” stated Denia Castillo, an attorney with the Network of Women Human Rights Defense Lawyers (RADDH).

The report focuses on the Los Prados project belonging to Norwegian investors Scatec, Norfund (a public development finance institution), and KLP Norfund Investments. From 2017 to 2019, at least 59 environmental and land defenders were criminalized for opposing the project, successfully stopping six of nine solar parks that make up this large-scale project from going into operation. Ten defenders are still required to report monthly to Honduran courts to ensure they fulfill their bail conditions as they await trial.

Meanwhile, their complaints against corruption and irregularities in the approval of solar energy contracts and permits have not advanced. Community members continue to denounce harms from deforestation, rising temperatures, and loss of access to productive land and water sources. 

“These solar parks in southern Honduras represent a prime example of green colonialism,” said report co-author Luciana Ghiotto of the Transnational Institute. “Instead of treating Honduran communities as sacrifice zones for the global economy, further marginalizing and impoverishing them, we need to demand true climate solutions that grant local communities meaningful input and control over the development and approval of energy projects that will benefit them.”

“ISDS stacks the deck in favor of corporate interests, in stark contrast with the lack of access to justice for affected communities,”explained co-author Jen Moore of the Institute for Policy Studies. “Our report adds to the growing body of evidence that this international arbitration system serves as a profound obstacle to climate, environmental, and tax justice in Honduras and beyond.” 

The stakes are particularly high at the moment, in the wake of the inauguration of Honduran President Nasry Asfura, as Honduras risks a return to the deeply harmful and corrupt narco-dictatorship policies that led to the original approval of the existing solar parks.

Already, there are indications of a return to those harmful policies. Although Castro’s government withdrew Honduras in 2024 from the most frequently used tribunal for ISDS lawsuits, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), Asfura’s Trump-backed government returned Honduras to ICSID on their first day in office in January 2026. 

Among key recommendations, this analysis makes a compelling case that the Honduran government should cancel the Los Prados project out of respect for the self-determination of the affected communities, and the Norwegian company Scatec should stop the persecution of environment and land defenders. Additionally, the Public Prosecutor’s Office should investigate the 33 complaints filed against public officials for irregularities and acts of corruption, including alleged ties to organized crime, in the approval of contracts for photovoltaic parks. 

The report also concludes that the Honduran government must:

• Alongside corporations’ home governments, oblige corporations to provide reparations for harm to local communities and to the environmental and land defenders who have suffered years of persecution for their peaceful resistance,
• Exit the ISDS investment protection framework
• Work toward a just, democratic energy model based on community and public control. 

Full report: https://ips-dc.org/report-dark-side-of-the-energy-transition

Executive summary highlighting key findings and recommendations: https://ips-dc.org/summary-dark-side-of-the-energy-transition

Report co-authors and researchers and representatives of local Honduran communities are available for comment and interviews in both English and Spanish. Contact IPS Deputy Communications Director Olivia Alperstein at olivia@ips-dc.org. 

Press contacts:

Olivia Alperstein, Institute for Policy Studies, olivia@ips-dc.org
Jen Moore, Institute for Policy Studies, jen@ips-dc.org
Karen Spring, Honduras Solidarity Network, karen@hondurasnow.org

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Hawaiʻi is central to the Trump administration’s planned military buildup against China. That buildup is now unfolding alongside a proposed $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget — even as costs of living rise and safety net programs face deep cuts. The collision of those pressures is bringing new scrutiny to what the military presence in Hawaiʻi actually costs, and who bears that burden.

The large military footprint in Hawaiʻi has often been touted by supporters as a boon for the islands’ security, job market, and economy. This new report — produced by the Institute for Policy Studies, alongside ʻĀina Aloha Economic Futures, The Costs of War Project, ʻĪlioʻulaokalani Coalition, Sierra Club of Hawai’i, and the Transition Security Project — challenges those claims.

The most comprehensive analysis of the military’s impact on Hawaiʻi ever conducted, our multi-disciplinary report examines what that presence actually costs and offers an alternative vision for how the land can be used. The expiration of military leases on public lands around 2029 presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change course.

A few key findings follow. Much more is available in the executive summary and the full-length PDF.

Download

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Countries around the world need to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. But in some of the world’s most impoverished countries, the companies developing this technology are too often repeating the colonial, exploitative practices of the fossil fuel companies that came before them.

The installation of solar parks across southern Honduras, for example, tells a tale of corporate profiteering and bullying under the guise of “sustainable development.”

During the narcodictatorship in Honduras that followed the 2009 military-backed coup, transnational corporations benefited from exorbitant incentives to attract investment in the renewable energy market. In practice, they cynically exploited the call for green technology to profit from deepening privatization, corruption, and dispossession in one of the Americas’ most impoverished countries.

Solar parks did not replace fossil fuels in Honduras. Rather, they expanded the energy matrix without democratizing access to electricity, significantly reducing emissions, or benefiting local populations. What resulted was a massive transfer of public resources to private investors — and overpriced electricity for ordinary consumers.

Hondurans ended up paying some of the highest prices for electricity in Central America, while financing the profits of Norwegian and U.S. corporations, Central American elites, and international development banks. Campesino communities who resisted some of these projects — for example the Los Prados project in the municipality of Namasigüe — faced violent repression, forced displacement, and criminalization.

After the narcodictatorship, former President Xiomara Castro’s government (2022-2026) passed reforms to rescue the state electricity company by addressing some of the worst excesses in contracts with private energy generation companies. In response, Norwegian investors Scatec, Norfund, and KLP Norfund Investments brought multimillion dollar arbitration claims against the country.

Under many trade agreements, some national laws, and contracts, transnational corporations have exclusive access — via an arcane process known as Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) — to sue governments in private tribunals when they make decisions that affect their profit expectations. This contrasts starkly with the lack of access to justice for affected communities.

This report — produced by the Institute for Policy Studies, Transnational Institute (TNI), TerraJusta, Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN), Network of Women Human Rights Defense Lawyers (RADDH), Southern Social Environmental Movement for Life (MASSVida), and Caritas Choluteca — explores how these developments represent a kind of “green colonialism.”

Some key findings and recommendations are below. You can read a summary PDF here or download a PDF of the full report here.

What is “Green Colonialism”?

Green colonialism, in this context, operates in three dimensions.

• The first is economic. Using ISDS and other means of protecting foreign investment, transnational corporations and their allies in governments prioritize profits while undermining both national sovereignty and the self-determination of local communities.
• The second is environmental. The threat of ISDS can dissuade countries like Honduras from adopting measures to protect the environment, undertake a meaningful energy transition, and ensure the well-being of people affected by extractivism.
• The third is racialized. Green colonialism is built on and reinforced by racism, treating territories and populations as sacrifice zones for the global economy, further marginalizing, exploiting, and impoverishing often racialized populations.

Recommendations

• Scatec, the Norwegian company operating the Los Prados project, should cease the criminalization of environmental defenders. And the Honduran and Norwegian governments should oblige the company to provide appropriate reparations for the harm they have suffered after more than eight years of persecution for peacefully defending their rights.
• The Los Prados project should be cancelled out of respect for the self-determination of the affected communities.
• The Honduran Public Prosecutor’s Office should bring to justice the 33 complaints filed against public officials for irregularities and acts of corruption in the approval of contracts for photovoltaic parks, as well as investigate any links in the energy sector between investors, companies, and public officials with organized crime.
• International Financial Institutions should ensure that no project that they finance has links to or involves investors with ties to organized crime.
• The Honduran government should ensure transparency regarding the ongoing ISDS claims and take steps to exit the ISDS arbitration system (as outlined in the report The Corporate Assault on Honduras).
• The Honduran government should prioritize international human rights, indigenous, environmental, and labor treaties regarding any future investments in the country, including an energy model based on energy justice and democracy.

The post The Dark Side of the Energy Transition: Green Colonialism in Southern Honduras appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The Iran war has killed thousands of Iranians and Lebanese and displaced hundreds of thousands more. People in poor countries around the world are facing fuel shortages, power outages and food insecurity, with much worse to come.

Here in the United States, the war has already cost more than $50 billion, and the cost is only going up — not just at the gas pump but in opportunity. For that $50 billion, we could have paid for healthcare for 3 million people in this country and gotten about 1.5 million kids into Head Start, according to the IPS National Priorities Project.

Which makes us safer?

President Trump would like us to believe that no price is too high to stop Iran’s “nuclear threat.” But Iran isn’t a nuclear threat. Year after year, including 2026, U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that Iran is not building nuclear weapons.

In 2015, Iran agreed to cut its stockpile of enriched uranium, reduce its reactors, and submit to unprecedentedly intrusive U.N. inspections. The United States, in return, agreed to end many of the sanctions that were crippling Iran’s economy.

It worked. Intelligence agencies around the world, including in the United States, agreed that Iran was complying. U.N. inspectors kept a watchful eye on Iran’s reactors, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz flowed freely, and Iran was still not trying to build a nuclear weapon, maintaining that a bomb would violate Islamic law.

However, Trump tore up the agreement in 2018. He didn’t pretend Iran was violating it; he just claimed he could “get a better deal.” He couldn’t.

Instead, Trump joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ratcheted up threats against Iran. Eventually, those threats turned into reality — first in a short-term bombing campaign in June 2025 and then a full-scale U.S.-Israeli war this year.

Despite repeated ceasefire declarations and claims from the White House that “we’ve won,” the war continues months later. Thousands are dead, gas prices are shockingly high, and the Strait of Hormuz (which was running fine before Trump trampled the nuclear deal) remains largely closed.

It’s easy to say that diplomacy works and war does not. That’s not just a statement of principle — it’s the truth.

Diplomacy is the only strategy that’s ever worked to change Iran’s behavior. It wasn’t because the U.S. asked nicely. It was because the U.S. negotiated seriously, changed its own aggressive behavior, and stopped using its economic, political and strategic power as acts of war against Iran.

Is this war worth the human, economic or environmental costs? Clearly not. You could say the same of Trump’s other second-term conflicts — including his support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and his attacks on Somalia, Yemen, Venezuela and Nigeria.

In fact, today most Americans would agree that none of the major wars in this country’s recent memory have been worthwhile — not in Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iraq again.

For the $16 trillion the U.S. had spent on the military after 9/11 before the Iran war, we could have made transformative investments in healthcare, education and renewable energy. We could have erased student debt and virtually wiped out child poverty at home and globally.

Instead, our leaders continue to spend money on wars they think will make the United States the undisputed power in the world — wars that instead kill millions of people abroad, endanger U.S. troops and make life harder at home.

Veterans know this. “The U.S. has been at war in one form or another since my deployment in the Persian Gulf, 36 years ago,” said Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace.

“Trillions of tax dollars spent, thousands of U.S. military service members dead, and tens of thousands wounded. The toll on the rest of the world is even more staggering, while warmongers and those who send us to war get richer,” he added.

“It’s time to invest in people and life and stop spending money on death and destruction,” McPhearson said.

I agree — and so do most Americans.

The post Our Wars Haven’t Been Worth It, and Not Just in Iran appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Perhaps a reformer would come along — say, a North Korean version of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — who could right the airship of state and guide it toward the runway of reunification with South Korea.

More direly, the North Korean regime could collapse all of a sudden, like the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989. Those were relatively peaceful affairs, but North Korea’s worst-case scenarios might involve violent power struggles, the return of famine, and a free-for-all scramble for the country’s loose nukes. U.S. analysts have gamed out the consequences of just such a hard landing — and so has the Pentagon with its OPLAN 5029 — and they all add up to a tragedy not only for North Koreans and the region, but also potentially for the United States and the rest of the world.

The North Korean government has, however, defied such scenarios by somehow surviving, while rejecting reunification with the South and turning up its nose at conventional versions of reform. Despite additional challenges — a sustained COVID quarantine, several distinctly hostile governments in South Korea, and a flatlining economy — the regime has so far avoided collapse and, if anything, tightened its control over its population. For the time being at least, the North Korean plane evidently has no intention of landing, much less crashing.

Today, in an improbable plot twist, however, Donald Trump’s United States is starting to seem ever more like an aircraft in distress.

After all, the present pilot of Air America, exhibiting signs of psychosis or perhaps dementia, has begun to dismantle the cockpit under the delusion that it’s his to transform into a ballroom. The crew — and indeed much of the supporting infrastructure on the ground below — has been decimated by budget cuts. The airline itself is fast taking on debt. Many of the passengers are praying for a soft landing and hoping that, if the plane does touch down for a risky layover, they will get a new pilot.

But another fear lurks in the background. Given the state of the airplane — a malfunctioning altimeter, compromised landing gear — it might not matter who the pilot is anymore. Air America may well be heading for a crash landing regardless of who’s in charge.

Those of us on board, gripping our armrests in terror, are asking ourselves one question above all else: is it too late to avert catastrophe?

Trump’s Totalitarian Tendencies

North Korea has come closer than any country in the modern era to building a totalitarian state. Beginning with the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, its leadership has eliminated all oppositional politics, suppressed virtually all signs of civil society, and tolerated no freedom of the press, speech, or assembly. Nor is there any freedom of religion, unless you count the personality cult attached to the Kim family leadership, which is now in its third generation.

But all totalitarianism is aspirational. The Soviet Union had its dissidents and underground samizdat literature. The Confessing Church movement attempted faith-based resistance to the Nazis. Likewise, the North Korean government’s control over the population is not total, as can be measured by rising levels of private enterprise and covert enthusiasm for South Korean culture.

So, too, are Donald Trump’s totalitarian tendencies aspirational. He would like to achieve total control, but he’s hemmed in by institutional limits. Still, he prefers to bypass Congress with rule by executive decree. He has attempted to control the media, rein in the power of universities, and tilt the electoral playing field to benefit his party. He has aligned himself internationally not with democrats but with autocrats. He has had a particular fondness for authoritarian leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Javier Milei of Argentina who consolidated their power within democracies. But he has also gotten cozy with the likes of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, who doesn’t bother at all with elections.

The most inexplicable friendship Trump developed while in office is certainly with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the founder’s grandson. Having traded escalating threats during part of Trump’s first term in office, the two leaders grew closer after several in-person meetings and a raft of exchanged letters. “I was really being tough,” Trump explained in 2018. “And so was he. And we’d go back and forth. And then we fell in love. OK? No, really.”

Really, the only way to explain such an attraction of opposites — an elected U.S. leader and the North Korean dictator — is to point out that the two distinctly have something in common: their desire for total control. Whether intentionally or not, Trump has applied some of the features of the Kim family playbook to his own governing style. In doing so, he has also damaged, perhaps irreparably, the very idea of America.

Different Beds, Same Dreams

One of the key elements of North Korean politics is the personality cult of the Kim family, which casts a long shadow over the country’s culture. Drawn in part from northern Korea’s earlier Christian heritage — through the development of a trinity of founding figures, the 10 commandments of Kimilsungism, and pervasive themes of sacrifice and redemption — that personality cult has generated so much fervor among many North Koreans that even defectors have spoken of their pride in founder Kim Il Sung and his ideology.

Trump, too, has tried to construct such a personality cult — by placing his name on public buildings (the Kennedy Center), putting his face on U.S. coins (the semiquincentennial dollar), inserting his image in future passports, and planning a golden statue of himself at his presidential library that resembles one of Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang. So far, however, outside of the MAGA faithful, his cult seems to have generated little more than ridicule.

Another aspect of Pyongyang’s governance that probably attracts Trump is its overemphasis on the military. North Korea devotes 34% of its gross domestic product to military spending (compared to Russia at 6% and the United States at under 4%). Although it hasn’t launched any wars of its own for more than 75 years, Pyongyang has dispatched thousands of troops to help fight Russia’s war in Ukraine. Since the 1990s, the government has spoken of a songun — military first — doctrine to justify the sacrifices made to maintain a huge standing army, a range of missiles, and a small but significant nuclear arsenal.

Similarly, the prevailing theme of Trump’s second term has been war and military spending. Despite his once-upon-a-time promises not to become involved in “forever wars,” particularly in the Middle East, Trump joined Israel this year in an attack on Iran, a conflict that cost over $11 billion in its first week alone. He has proposed an astonishing $1.5 trillion military budget, an increase of 50% over last year’s already bloated total, and that sum doesn’t even include the costs of the Iran War.

Then there’s Trump’s economic thinking, if you can call it that. He has repudiated the free market orthodoxy of his fellow Republicans to embrace a form of economic nationalism: high tariff walls to reduce trade imbalances, a focus on rebuilding American manufacturing, and the repudiation of international rules of the road (like the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea) in order to drive a dagger into economic globalization. In such respects, Trump’s approach resembles North Korea’s path of import substitution and defiance of the international rule of law.

In North Korea’s case, such an economic strategy has been partly born of necessity, given the economic embargo imposed on it after the Korean War of the early 1950s. Trump, however, is steering the U.S. economy into a tailspin without provocation. If you add together the costs associated with his kamikaze tariffs, the follow-on effects of the Iran War and boosts in military spending, the gutting of government programs investing in the economy, the watering down of environmental regulations, and reductions in government revenue because of tax cuts, Trump is guiding the United States toward the kind of triple whammy that hit North Korea in the 1990s, when environmental disasters and political criminality combined with rising energy prices to bring its manufacturing and agricultural sectors to a virtual halt, while killing an estimated one million people.

But, you might point out, Wall Street is still on an upward ascent. The U.S. economy is still growing, however modestly, and, while U.S. food insecurity is rising, famine isn’t on the horizon. To return to the airplane analogy, the in-flight experience has become more uncomfortable for those who can’t afford business class, but that doesn’t mean a crash is imminent.

Or does it?

A Soft vs. Hard Landing

Whether he is consciously modeling his efforts on North Korea or not, Donald Trump wants to make an indelible imprint on the United States. He aspires to fundamentally change the demographics of the country, the structure of the economy, and the nature of its politics. To do that, he aims to ensure that his MAGA personality cult, his anti-government crusade, and his self-defeating economic policies outlive his own tenure in office. That will certainly require a substantial dismantling of democratic safeguards given that such policies don’t attract majority support.

In other words, much as Kim Il Sung destroyed anything that could have challenged his authority — the church, the intelligentsia, landowners, rival political factions — Trump has now launched a scorched-earth policy to ensure that his successors can’t undo his damage. If the Democrats regain Congress in November and even the White House in 2028, they will inherit an enormous bill for Trump-era damages (and count on a chorus of Republican voices improbably blaming them for the disaster).

Any incoming reformers will face an uphill battle to convince the public to restore funding for infrastructure, whether green or otherwise. And they will have to deal with a terrifying erosion of faith in government, resulting from the incompetence, lies, and malpractice of the Trump administration. At the international level, U.S. allies will think twice about concluding any deals with this country, given the possibility of another political swing in subsequent elections.

Trump’s tactics, in other words, are designed to make a soft landing ever more difficult. An inveterate gambler, he is betting that his extreme approach will enable Air America to climb into the very stratosphere, even if he is far more likely to force an emergency landing.

Nightmare scenarios have long haunted American consciousness. The sheer size of the U.S. debt —  at nearly $40 trillion, it’s the highest absolute amount in the world — could put the country into receivership if the dollar slips from its status as the global currency. Default could tear apart an already polarized society. Such a hard landing could look like what analysts of North Korea have often predicted for that country.

But North Korea hasn’t collapsed. With its considerable resources, surely the United States, too, can avoid such a scenario.

True, no one is going to make any money at Polymarket predicting the imminent fall of the Kim regime. But North Korea is not exactly following a recipe for long-term success either. Even if it limps along for another decade or two, with leadership passing to Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter, any country that follows its policies of personality cult, autarkic economic policies, massive corruption, military-first approaches, and ruthless suppression of dissent is not likely to prosper over the long term. Just look at how Vladimir Putin has steered Russia into a terrifying nosedive.

Substantial reform could head off such a scenario for the United States. If Trumpism can be likened to a devastating depression (which it could still precipitate), the obvious recourse for any successor would be to embark on an immediate course correction comparable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Whatever it’s called — not a Green New Deal, given the irrational resistance of a large section of the U.S. electorate to anything “green” except greenbacks — such an American renewal plan would need to restructure the U.S. economy to favor the bulk of American workers rather than the current generation of robber barons. Implemented with a much better promotional campaign — led perhaps by future Chief of Reconstruction (and now New York Mayor) Zohran Mamdani — it would link concrete benefits to identifiable government programs and services. It would offer a striking real-life illustration of your tax dollars at work.

Such a reform plan would have to restore trust in government by punishing corruption, enlisting the public as watchdogs, and taxing the super-wealthy into semi-submission. By shifting away from war and aggressive military spending, such a project of renewal would also have to work with partners overseas to promote policies of cooperative prosperity and sustainability in order to restore a measure of trust in U.S. actions globally. Soft landings require soft power, leaving hard power to those determined to crash and burn.

The North Korean case is a reminder that awful policies may not themselves precipitate collapse. Trumpism will not go away simply because it is on the verge of winning multiple Darwin Awards for its counter-evolutionary policies. Having hijacked American democracy, Trump and his cronies are under the impression that they are flying ever upwards, but they have not been blessed with a good sense of direction. Sheer inertia could keep Air America in the air — though with steadily deteriorating conditions on board (as in North Korea). Such a “MAGA ‘til we drop” option would not be much of an improvement over a hard landing.

In 2016, arch-conservative Michael Anton published a piece in the Claremont Review of Books arguing that it was Hillary Clinton and the Democrats who had hijacked America. In “The Flight 93 Election,” Anton imagined that Trump, aided by an energized electorate, could rush the cockpit — just like the passengers on Flight 93, hijacked on September 11, 2001 — and save the country. (It was certainly an infelicitous analogy, given that Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.) Trump’s 2016 victory, however, turned Anton into a dark prophet and vaulted him into the subsequent administration, despite (or because of) the absurdities of his arguments.

In yet another stomach-churning reversal, Anton’s analogy has now finally become all too applicable. Trump has gained the cockpit not once but twice. Having failed to crash Air America the first time around, he seems determined to put his Flight 93 doctrine of heroic self-destruction into practice today. There is no guarantee that a hard landing can be avoided either now or after his departure from office. But this country, its egalitarian ideals, and its democratic traditions (if not much of its dismal history) are certainly worth fighting for.

We’re losing altitude fast. Elections approach.

Let’s roll.

The post What Can North Korea Tell Us About America’s Future? appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Among the first confirmed casualties were more than a hundred schoolchildren killed in a strike on their elementary school in southern Iran. Within a month, 850 U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Iran. President Donald Trump has delivered on his promise to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” with U.S. and Israeli missiles targeting bridges, pharmaceutical and steel plants, and civilian infrastructure like schools and hospitals. The bombing campaign has struck civilian oil infrastructure in Tehran, engulfing a city of 10 million people in toxic black rain. Thousands of Iranians and Lebanese have been killed, and hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs as factories and basic infrastructure have been destroyed.

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Read the full article on Truthout.

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