Thanks for that, Der, a good read. Doesn't sound like there's evidence for him working directly for the CIA (that is, the Central Intelligence Agency - he worked for the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, ie: also CIA but later changed to CFIA as a cunning disguise!), but moved in the same circles and received funding from the NED, which is basically the same thing.

It's interesting that a lot of his critique of state power fits in with an anarchist world view, which I would agree with, but his association with arch neocons and free market fundamentalists makes clear the kind of libertarianism he favoured. I don't know if he was deliberately leaving his language vague to allow left-libertarians to feel like they could get involved, eg:

'we must deliberately act in ways which strengthen the non-State institutions of our society, and consciously refrain from increasing the concentration of effective power in the State [...] One way to do this is to develop alternative institutions to meet those desirable and necessary functions now provided by the large centralized institutions. [...] In order to reduce progressively the size of the existing central State apparatus, and thereby its dangers, it will be necessary to create or strengthen smaller-scale institutions (loci of power) with decentralized decision-making to provide [for] genuine needs, and then gradually to shift to them tasks now carried out by the State.” '

But I think the author is correct to flag the likelihood that Sharp could be talking about privatisation and 'entities like businesses, banks, foundations, non-profits, religious organizations—all of which are privately controlled, and none of which are required, as a matter of law, to submit to any internal democracy'. The fact that all of his pet projects were socialist/communist enemies of the west bears this out. This was especially telling:

'According to its own annual reports, AEI did not prioritize fighting dictators and promoting “democratic freedoms and institutions” in US client states like Saudi Arabia, Zaire, Chile, El Salvador, or Guatemala. These countries are either never mentioned, or mentioned only in brief passing, in two decades worth of AEI annual reports. Rather, AEI and its adjuncts consistently focused their efforts in countries where political leadership was resisting NATO’s geostrategic priorities and/or the economic liberalization programs being pushed by the World Bank, the IMF, and U.S. Treasury’s “Washington Consensus”: countries like the Soviet Union, Burma, Thailand, Tibet, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and post-collapse Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.'

This makes it plain that he's a stooge for neoliberalism and imperialism, using just enough left-populism to sucker in youthful idealists and tie them to the project of subverting their countries to the hegemonic power interests. It even worked on Chomsky & Zinn, remarkably enough:

'In 2008, Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, wrote an open letter defending Sharp, the Albert Einstein Institution, as well as Popovic’s CANVAS and Ackerman’s ICNC.207 One hundred and thirty-eight people signed it, including Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Paul Ortiz, Daniel Ellsberg, and activist trainers like Paul Engler and George Lakey. The signatories “categorically reject” the “false accusations” that Sharp “engaged in activities designed to promote U.S. imperialism.” '

Pfff...

cheers,
I