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

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

The post The True Cost of the Military in Hawaiʻi appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

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.

…

Read the full article on Truthout.

The post From Asia to the Middle East, U.S. Bombs Are a Failed Foreign Policy Choice appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Today, about 10,000 North Korean combat troops are stationed in Kursk—along with another 1,000 engineer troops—to protect this western-most city from another Ukrainian incursion and to free up Russian troops to participate in offensive operations inside Ukraine. Another 6,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or injured in previous fighting.

Earlier this year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cut a ribbon on a new housing district dedicated to the families of those killed in the Russian war in Ukraine. Recently, at the inauguration of a memorial in Pyongyang to the fallen, Kim celebrated a “new history of friendship with Russia written in blood.” North Korea’s relationship with China was previously celebrated to be “as close as lips and teeth.” But blood goes deeper still.

North Korea also continues to supply Russia with millions of rounds of ammunition—artillery shells, anti-tank rockets, and short-range ballistic missiles. According to Ukrainian estimates, this has amounted to as much as half of what Russian is using in its war. North Korea is certainly supplying quantity, but it’s not necessarily quality. In 2024, one Ukrainian military official estimated that half of the shells North Korea was supplying were duds. No matter: as Russia’s use of its own soldiers as cannon fodder suggests, the Kremlin prefers quantity over quality.

It is telling that Russia, at its time of need, must rely on a country as poor and isolated as North Korea. But what other choices does Russia have?

Some Russian allies have disappeared, like the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, or have been coopted by the United States, like the government of Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela. Other allies haven’t been able to count on Russia, so they haven’t been able to offer much in turn. Iran, for instance, has been receiving some intelligence from the Kremlin during its war with the United States and Israel. But aside from some drones, Russia hasn’t sent its ally significant hardware much less Russian warships full of soldiers.

Russia is at the center of the Collective Security Treaty Organization—a post-Soviet alliance that also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—but the group has provided little in the way of assistance even though the CSTO has a mutual defense clause comparable to NATO’s Article Five. It’s no surprise that none of these countries has sent troops to assist in Russia’s war. After all, Russia didn’t come to Armenia’s aid when Azerbaijan took over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023. Armenia has boycotted meetings of the organization ever since.

It’s not as if Russia lacks ways of enticing potential allies. Russian fossil fuel exports have become especially attractive as the war with Iran has bottled up other supplies in the Strait of Hormuz. But these exports have been monopolized by China and India, which have been taking in about 80 percent of Russia’s oil. Also, drone attacks by Ukraine have reduced Russia’s capacity to export its fossil fuels.

Russia also supplies the world with military hardware. In 2024, it fell to third place in arms exports behind the United States and France, largely because of the requirements of the war in Ukraine. Recently, however, the Kremlin has claimed that it has bounced back by exporting $15 billion worth of weapons in 2025, mostly to Africa and the Middle East. This is still a far cry from U.S. military exports of over $330 billion. But it suggests that Russia is trying to profit in some way from its otherwise disastrous war in Ukraine.

India and Russia have a new military pact, which allows them to station troops, warships, and fighter jets in each other’s countries. This agreement provides Russia with important access to the Indian Ocean. But it doesn’t mean Indian troops are heading to Ukraine. In fact, the only Indians who have fought on behalf of Russia have been tricked into doing so by the Kremlin. And one of the reasons why Russian military exports experienced such a major drop even before the war in Ukraine began is that clients like India have diversified their imports away from dependency on the Kremlin.

China’s assistance to Russia has been more complicated. In addition to the energy purchases, China is helping Russia by providing up to 90 percent of the country’s high-tech needs. Shut out of U.S. and European markets, Russia relies on China for components for drones, machine tools, batteries, fiberoptic systems.

But China is not providing Russia with enough to tip the balance of the war in its favor. Russia, like North Korea, remains something of a liability for China. While Pyongyang is unreliable because of its nuclear program and cyberoperations, Russia is unreliable in its willingness to upend international law in the pursuit of its territorial ambitions.

China, above all, wants stability. And it wants to maintain good relations with the West. The unpredictable actions of Russia and North Korea threaten the global infrastructure that contributes to Chinese growth and prosperity.

This, then, is what unites Russia and North Korea. They are both disgusted with the West, with liberalism, and with any aspect of international law that constrains their freedom of movement, whether it’s human rights conventions or rules governing maritime commerce.

This is something relatively new for Russia. Under Putin, Russia initially flirted with the United States and established a solid energy relationship with Europe. Now, under Western sanctions, it has become a great deal more like North Korea: solidly military-first, increasingly authoritarian and repressive, economically autarkic, and suspicious of technologies, like Telegram, that might magnify civic discontent.

The current reign of Donald Trump, an American leader who favors autocrats over democrats, might indicate that this Russian-North Korean model of governance is on the upswing.

But even Trump’s apparent affection for both Putin and Kim can’t make up for the fact that the economies of North Korea and Russia are struggling, their respective personality cults are showing some cracks, and the war in Ukraine is not currently going in their favor, with Russia losing territory to Ukraine in April for the first time since 2024.

Russia and North Korea are moving ever closer to each other largely because they don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Even blood oaths can’t make up the fact that their alliance is one of desperation, not inspiration.

The post Russia and North Korea: An Alliance of Desperation appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

It’s a question we all need to ask ourselves in the United States as well.

For speaking boldly, Ruth is now in prison. She’s been held without trial since May 18, 2025 — now a year ago — when she was torn from her bed by police and arrested without any investigation or judicial warrant. Ruth has since had minimal contact with her family and lawyers.

Ruth’s crime? She opposed corruption.

When Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele signed a secret agreement with the Trump administration to accept $4.7 million for the illegal transfer of more than 200 U.S. deportees to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, Ruth spoke up to defend their basic rights. She filed habeas corpus petitions for 76 families who wanted to know where their loved ones had been taken. Soon afterwards, she herself was arrested.

Ruth’s advocacy for democracy spans two decades. She worked for El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Court to ensure transparency in elections, then for the Social Security Institute, where she fought to expand benefits for Salvadorans living abroad. She has also defended the right of Salvadorans abroad to vote.

As a member of El Salvador’s Superintendency of Competition, she issued more than $8 million in fines to businesses for illegal mergers and anti-competitive practices. After El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as an official currency in 2021, she represented victims of fraud.

Since joining the staff of Cristosal, a regional human rights organization, she has documented the Bukele regime’s use of state resources to spy on critics, make backroom deals with violent gangs, and the misuse of pandemic relief funds. She has continued to investigate corporate corruption, filing criminal complaints with the Attorney General and motions with the Constitutional Court.

For her efforts, Ruth was named one of 100 most influential women in the world by the BBC, and has received numerous awards — including the American Bar Association’s International Human Rights Award, the Magnitsky Human Rights Award, and the OCCRP Anti-Crime & Corruption Hero Award.

More than 500 organizations — including the American Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association, the Organization of American States, Human Rights Watch, Washington Office on Latin America, Human Rights First, the Robert F, and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, the Due Process of Law Foundation, Alianza Americas, and the organization I lead, People’s Action — are calling for Ruth’s immediate release.

Amnesty International has named Ruth a prisoner of conscience, and The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has determined she now faces “cruel and inhuman treatment” and the risk of irreparable harm to her life and integrity.

For me, Ruth represents what every Salvadoran — and every American — should want our society to be: a place where we live without fear for ourselves and our loved ones, where our rights are respected, our votes are counted, and the vulnerable have the same protections as the rich and powerful.

Here in the United States, what happened to Ruth is a warning. The Trump administration now looks to El Salvador not only as a destination for those it illegally detains and deports, but also as a model for how any of us can be detained and held indefinitely without charges.

Already, the Trump administration has indefinitely detained thousands upon thousands of immigrants as well as U.S. citizens, often without a warrant. They’ve detained and tried to deport people for writing op-eds, joining demonstrations, reporting on ICE, or otherwise exercising First Amendment rights. And they’ve been relentlessly harassing critics of all kinds with lawsuits, investigations, and trumped-up charges.

That’s why we can’t allow what happened to Ruth to stand.

To help, you can sign the petition to Congress (online at ​​https://ppls.ac/freeruth) demanding Ruth’s immediate release and calling on the U.S. to condition any future support for El Salvador on respecting human rights. You can also post a statement of support on social media with the hashtag #FreeRuth.

It is essential that El Salvador #FreeRuth now.

The post She Spoke Up for Due Process. Now She’s Detained Without Charges. appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Phyllis addressed the mounting human and financial costs of U.S. military policy, calling the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran “a war of choice and a war of aggression” that is “immoral and illegal” under both U.S. and international law. 

She cited the more than $50 billion spent on that war so far, and noted that the same dollars could fund Medicaid coverage for 1.5 million people, 35,000 university scholarships, and living wages for 117,000 families. (Those figures came from our National Priorities Project’s Trade-offs Calculator. Other NPP trade-off data appeared on signs at the rally.)

On Gaza, Phyllis  pointed out that the United States has paid nearly $28 billion directly to the Israeli military since the start of the genocide, and that in 2024 alone, U.S. tax dollars covered 40 percent of the entire Israeli military budget.

She also warned that the deployment of National Guard troops on American streets is a form of policy violence, designed to normalize military presence and suppress the votes of people of color and immigrant communities.

“When we fight for justice here — when we fight for jobs and health care and education — we know that fight is not complete until we include the Palestinians, the Venezuelans, and the Iranians in our fight.”

Watch Phyllis’s full remarks below:

The rallies, organized by IPS ally Repairers of the Breach, brought together communities outside the White House and Congressional offices in cities across the country in a coordinated act of nonviolent moral resistance. Organizers say they gathered to challenge a nation that “continues to spend billions on war while people suffer at home and abroad” — standing against what they call policy violence, abandoned communities, and the normalization of destruction.

The post VIDEO: Phyllis Bennis Says “Stop the War” at the National Moral Monday Peace Rally appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

In late April, dozens of world governments — led by Colombia and the Netherlands — convened the first ever international diplomatic conference on phasing out fossil fuels, demonstrating the kind of leadership the world needs today. It’s a refreshing contrast from what we’ve seen from Washington.

Just two days before Earth Day, for example, President Trump issued an order invoking his authority under the Defense Production Act to expand domestic production and exports of fossil fuels, purportedly to boost national security.

…

Read the full article on In These Times.

The post While the U.S. Doubles Down on Fossil Fuels, Other Countries Are Charting a Path Away From Them appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.