The war party’s best hope in the Republican primaries, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, told a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Oct. 20: “I’m tired of talking about a ‘department of defense.’ I want a ‘department of offense.’ Every enemy needs to fear us.” She’s called for expanding the $832 billion Pentagon budget—a budget larger than the next nine largest defense budgets in the world, combined.
Haley, who was also Trump’s Ambassador to the UN for two years, has spent the last four years garnering funds from the defense industry. Last year alone, she and her husband Michael garnered $12 million from that sector. In 2019, her first job outside of government was as a board member with U.S. defense contractor Boeing for a reported $300,000. Her husband’s new-founded companies help clients navigate the world of defense contracts. In the 11 months prior to the start of her presidential campaign, she was paid over $100,000 apiece for 12 separate speeches. This included groups advocating military muscle in Southwest Asia, including over $230,000 for a speech to the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs. She garnered $127,500 for her work as a consultant for the rather secretive “United Against a Nuclear Iran,” which advocates for a military strike upon Iran. Advised by two former Israeli intelligence officials, Zohar Palti and Tamir Pardo, the group’s donors are a closely-guarded secret. (The Department of Justice stopped a lawsuit from disclosing the donors, on the grounds of preventing “harm to national security.")
Her consultancy position with Prism Global Management, a New York-based investment fund run by Richard Kang, netted her $708,335. Its relationship to the NSA program exposed by Edward Snowden named “PRISM” is unclear; but Kang is wired into the world of defense and serves an advisor to the new America’s Frontier Fund (AFF) of Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. (Its day-to-day operations are run by Gilman Louie, the former head of the CIA’s venture capital operation In-Q-Tel. AFF evidently has leveraged investments that reap major profits in case of a conflict between China and Taiwan.
Shortly before the launch of the disastrous Ukrainian “counteroffensive,” Haley’s line was that the U.S. either defeats Russia or there will be World War III: “When Ukraine wins, that sends a message to China with Taiwan, it sends a message to Iran that wants to build a bomb, it sends a message to North Korea testing ballistic missiles, it sends a message to Russia that it’s over. It is in the best interests of America, it is in the best interests of our national security for Ukraine to win. We have to see this through, we have to finish it.” How? “It would end in a day if Russia would pull out. If Ukraine pulls out, then we’re all looking at world war.” To prevent that, she explained, Kiev needed weapons—lots of them. “A win for Ukraine is a win for all of us,” because should Ukraine fall, “Russia said Poland and the Baltics are next.... If that happens, we’re looking at a world war.”
