# William D. Hartung

William D. Hartung (born 7 June 1955) is director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He has also served as a Senior Research Fellow in the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program, and is former director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute.

## Quotes

* The Pentagon will get an extra $165 billion over the next two years—that’s even more than Donald Trump asked for...The figures contained in the recent budget deal that kept Congress open, as well as in President Trump’s budget proposal for 2019, are a case in point: $700 billion for the Pentagon and related programs in 2018 and $716 billion the following year. Remarkably, such numbers far exceeded even the Pentagon’s own expansive expectations.... The majority of Republican fiscal conservatives were thrilled to sign off on a Pentagon increase that, combined with the Trump tax cut for the rich, funds ballooning deficits as far as the eye can see—a total of $7.7 trillion worth of them over the next decade.
** The Military-Industrial Complex Is on Corporate Welfare (February 27, 2018), The Nation
* Here’s a story that would be reported only in passing and remain remarkably uncommented upon by the punditocracy or anyone in Congress: seven months after that resignation, Mattis took up a position on the board of General Dynamics, one of the nation’s largest defense contractors, with all the perks involved. (Admittedly, he had been on that same board from the moment he retired from the military in 2013 until the president gave him the proverbial Trumpian bear hug and appointed him secretary of defense in 2017.) There were no columns about it. No pundits raised a storm. Nobody of any significance said much of anything. Oh, let me amend that for accuracy’s sake. There was indeed a public enthusiast quoted in the media: General Dynamics Chairwoman and CEO Phebe Novakovic, the head of a company that, just after Mattis's resignation, landed a $714 million delivery order to upgrade 174 Army M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks. [...] On the very board that Mattis rejoined sit six other former military officers and officials, including a former Navy admiral, a former Air Force general, a former deputy secretary of defense, and Novakovic herself who once worked for the CIA and the Pentagon. And while we’re on the subject, don’t forget about all those figures from the world of the weapons makers who have headed the other way like Mark Esper, the current secretary of defense, who was previously a lobbyist for Raytheon.
** Tomgram: Mandy Smithberger, A Recipe for Disaster (January 21, 2020), TomDispatch
* In a century when a staggeringly funded military couldn't win a war anywhere (and yet never stopped trying), failure continues to prove to be the military-industrial complex's ultimate success.
** Tomgram: Mandy Smithberger, A Recipe for Disaster (January 21, 2020), TomDispatch

## External links

* At The New America Foundation
* American Strategy Program homepage at New America Foundation website
* at Democracy Now
* Video debate/discussion with William Hartung and Lee Smith on Bloggingheads.tv
* Appearances on C-SPAN
* Authority control: WorldCat search