by JOHN PERRY
These top Washington think tanks are lobbying lawmakers for sadistic sanctions on some of the hemisphere’s poorest countries while raking in millions from corporations and arms makers.
Sanctions are a form of hybrid warfare that harms or even kills the target populations at little cost to the country imposing them. In Latin America alone, US sanctions (correctly known as “unilateral coercive measures”) have killed at least 100,000 Venezuelans. The US blockade of Cuba has been so destructive that one in ten Cubans have left the country. Sanctions have similarly deprived Nicaraguans of development aid worth an estimated $3 billion since 2018, hitting projects such as new water supplies for rural areas.
Who formulates these devastating sanctions, covers up their real effects, works with politicians to put them into operation and promotes them in corporate media? In a perverse contrast with the poor communities hit by these policies, those doing the targeting are often well-paid employees of multi-million-dollar think tanks, heavily funded by the US or other Western-aligned governments and in many cases by arms manufacturers.
A study in corruption: top think tank lobbyists and their funders
Chief among these groups is the Wilson Center, which claims to simply provide policymakers with “nonpartisan counsel and insights on global affairs.” Boasting a $40-million budget, a third of which comes from the US government, the organization is headed by the former Administrator of USAID, Amb. Mark Green.
In 2024, the Wilson Center boosted its efforts to meddle in Latin America with the creation of the “Iván Duque Center for Prosperity and Freedom,” naming its newest initiative for the wildly unpopular former Colombian president largely remembered for his violent crackdown on students protests, his obsessive focus on regime change in Venezuela, and intentionally crippling the 2016 peace deal meant to end decades of civil war in Colombia.
While Duque has not produced much in the way of scholarship since joining the Wilson Center, he is living his best life at Miami nightclubs, where he’s frequently seen in as a guest DJ or regaling partiers with renditions of Spanish language rock hits.
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