RICHARD BARNET was co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington.

The IPS, the leading radical think-tank in the US, is unusual, if not unique, in that it advocates social action as well as academic research. Funded by the Fabergé cosmetics family, it employs a relatively large staff of very competent researchers and analysts from a wide range of disciplines. IPS’s stated aim is to develop alternative strategies to US policies, “to create a more responsible society — one built around the values of justice, non-violence, sustainability, and decency”.

Over the years it has been actively involved in issues such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, and national and global security, globalisation, environmental justice and fair trade.

At a time when most US think-tanks favour increasing national wealth, deregulating markets and maximising growth, the IPS has to struggle to make its voice heard.

“What we’re doing,” Barnet said, “is pointing out what’s irrational in our society — before it becomes part of the conventional wisdom.”

Richard Jackson Barnet was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1929 and raised in nearby Brookline. After obtaining an undergraduate degree at Harvard University in 1951, he went on to take a law degree, also at Harvard, in 1954. He then served for two years in the US Army. He practised law in Boston until 1959 when he became a fellow at the Russian research centre at Harvard University.

In 1961 he joined the US State Department, working in the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as an aide to John McCloy. Two years later he co-founded, and became the co-director of, IPS with Marcus Raskin, who had been working in the White House as an aide to McGeorge Bundy, adviser to President John F. Kennedy. In 1978 he gave up the co-directorship to become a Senior Fellow and a Distinguished Fellow of the institute until he retired in 1998.

Barnet and Raskin decided to found IPS in 1963 when they came to realise that the Kennedy Administration was not seriously interested in peace and security issues. From their experiences when working as insiders, they learnt that the government assumed that major problems were administrative and managerial, whereas Barnet and Raskin believed they were moral and that social change should, and perhaps could only, be promoted directly. They also learnt that the military dominated national policymaking.

Barnet and Raskin were able to recruit to the institute some first-rate people to do research and participate in seminars — people like Hannah Arendt, Hans Morgenthau, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Warnke. During the 1960s, the IPS strongly supported the opposition to the Vietnam War, providing, for example, a platform for Bernard Fall, the former State Department official who correctly predicted that the US would experience the same fate as France in Indochina.

Their implacable opposition to the Vietnam War provoked the Johnson Administration to infiltrate FBI agents into the institute and to tap its telephones. Barnet was also on President Nixon’s “enemies list” — which he took as a compliment.

A tragic episode in the life of the IPS was the murder of two of its associates. On September 21, 1976, the car carrying Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt was blown up. Letelier was a former Chilean Ambassador to the US who became a vocal critic of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Many suspected that the CIA, the FBI and the US Justice Department prevented a thorough investigation of the crime to avoid upsetting the Chilean regime.

IPS has made major studies of the global arms trade, showing how US arms are flowing to a large number of countries. For example, it showed how US arms were supplied to South Africa’s apartheid regime via Italy.

Government accountability was another issue studied during Barnet’s time at IPS. In particular, the institute encouraged whistle-blowers. It tried to get legislation passed that would protect civil servants who publicised government wrongdoing.

Perhaps the most famous whistleblower helped by Richard Barnet was Daniel Ellsberg, the former Pentagon official and US Marine company commander who, in October 1969, smuggled out of his office and made public a top-secret, 7,000-page study of decision-making in Vietnam. The material, which soon became known as the Pentagon Papers, was published in The New York Times and The Washington Post. It was a sensation that changed the course of history.

Ellsberg’s courageous feat exposed the deceptions and delusions of the US involvement in Vietnam, and implicated several presidents and administrations. The Pentagon Papers revealed that Washington had known for years that the Vietnam War was a catastrophe.

Today, the IPS is a major opponent of the war in Iraq. Although liberalism is on the decline in the US and neo-conservatism is on the rise, the IPS continues to argue for progressive causes, confident that the spirits of liberals can be revived.

Barnet was a prolific writer of books and articles on many topics. His first book, published in 1960, was Who Wants Disarmament? — a study of the disarmament negotiations between the US and the Soviet Union. His other books include: Roots of War (1972); Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (1974), one of the first books to expose the huge power of multinational corporations; The Giants (1977), an analysis of Soviet-US relations; Lean Years (1980), an account of the environmental movement; and Global Dreams (1994), an analysis of the most powerful corporations. In 1998, he wrote, with his wife Ann, a paediatric neurologist, Youngest Minds: Parenting and Genes in the Development of Intellect and Emotion.

The New Yorker magazine serialised many of his longer articles and surveys. He also wrote for Harper’s Magazine, The Nation and the Christian ecumenical magazine Sojourners, among other publications.

Barnet’s strong religious beliefs moulded his views, particularly on war and peace, and civil rights. He was an inspiration to many young people, researchers and campaigners. And he was a talented violinist — in his later years he taught music to children from poor neighbourhoods.

Barnet’s wife, two daughters, a son and a foster son survive him.

Richard Barnet, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, was born on May 7, 1929. He died on December 23, 2004, aged 75.