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Batch removal of Nuclear spin badge tags, and subsequent replacement with Nuclear PR Category tags.
[[Category:Nuclear PR]]The '''Committee on the Present Danger''' (CPD) is a hawkish "advocacy organization" first founded in 1950 and re-formed in 1976 to push for larger defense budgets and arms buildups, to counter the [[Soviet Union]]. In June 2004, ''The Hill'' reported that a third incarnation of CPD was being planned, to address the [[War on terrorism]]. The head of the 2004 CPD, PR pro and former [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] adviser [[Peter Hannaford]], explained, "we saw a parallel” between the Soviet threat and the threat from terrorism. The message that CPD will convey through lobbying, media work and conferences is that “the war on terror needs to be won,” he said.[http://thehill.com/news/063004/coldwar.aspx]
Members of the 2004 CPD include Senator [[Joseph I. Lieberman]], former CIA director [[R. James Woolsey, Jr.]], and Reagan administration official and 1976 Committee founder [[Max M. Kampelman]].[http://thehill.com/news/063004/coldwar.aspx] At the July 20 launching of the 2004 CPD, Lieberman and Senator [[Jon Kyl]] were identified as the honorary co-chairs.[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63067-2004Jul19.html] Other notable members listed on the CPD website include [[Laurie Mylroie]], [[Norman Podhoretz]], [[Frank Gaffney]] and other associates of the [[American Enterprise Institute]], [[Heritage Foundation]], [[American Israel Public Affairs Committee]] and the [[Boeing Company]]Company.[http://www.fightingterror.org/members/index.cfm]
One day after the launch of the 2004 CPD, managing director [[Peter Hannaford]] resigned after it was reported that Hannaford, while working for his PR firm the [[Carmen Group]], has lobbied on behalf of Austria's Freedom Party, which is headed by [[right-wing ]] nationalist [[Joerg Haider]]. Haider has been quoted as commending the "orderly employment policy" of the Nazi [[Third Reich]] government and paid a "solidarity visit" to [[Iraq ]] dictator [[Saddam Hussein]] in 2002. Some CPD members defended Hannaford; [[Midge Decter]] said, "I first came to know him because he was a right-hand man of [[Ronald Reagan]]. I cannot imagine Pete Hannaford is anything but a firm and solid lover of democracy."[http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getmailfiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2004/07/22&ID=Ar00501]
==History: 1950s==
The CPD, according to the ''PublicEye.org'' website (last updated July 1989), was originally "formed in 1950 by top eastern establishment luminaries. It was designed as a 'citizen's lobby' to alert the nation to the Soviet 'present danger,' and the resultant need to adopt the [[NSC-68]] agenda in order to survive. NSC-68 was a top secret [[National Security Council]] document written by [[Paul H. Nitze]] promoting a huge military build-up for the purpose of rolling back communist influence and attaining and maintaining U.S. military supremacy in the world. In 1951 the CPD launched a three-month scare campaign over the NBC network. Every Sunday night thereafter the group used the Mutual Broadcasting System to talk to the nation about the 'present danger' and the need to take action. As a result of efforts such as these both in and out of government, the recommendations of NSC-68 were adopted. President [[Harry S. Truman]] adopted a policy of containment militarism and the military budget escalated even more than the targeted factor of three times. The [[Cold War ]] and an era of interventionist policies became a political reality in the United States." [http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/cpd.php]
==History: 1970s==
"The post Vietnam era, however, saw the reemergence in the American public of anti-interventionist sentiment. In Congress, new policies of detente and arms control reflected a more conciliatory attitude toward East-West relations. Such trends were anathema to the CPD's bipolar view of the world. Led once again by [[Eugene V. Rostow]] and Nitze, members of the CPD regrouped for action.
"The revitalization of the CPD grew out of an independent group called [[Team B]]. Team B was authorized in 1976 by President [[Gerald R. Ford]] and organized by then-[[CIA]] chief, [[George Herbert Walker Bush]]. The purpose of Team B was to develop an independent judgment of Soviet capabilities and intentions. Team B was headed by [[Richard Pipes]] and included Paul Nitze, [[Foy Kohler]], [[William R. Van Cleave]], Lt. Gen. [[Daniel O. Graham]] (ret.), [[Thomas Wolf]] of [[RAND Corporation]] and Gen. [[John Vogt, Jr.]] (ret.). Also a part of Team B were five officials still active in government: Maj. Gen. [[George Keegan]], Brig. Gen. [[Jasper Welch]], [[Paul Dundes Wolfowitz]] of the [[U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency|Arms Control and Disarmament Agency]], and [[Seymour Weiss]] of the State Department. Team B was housed in the offices of the [[Coalition for a Democratic Majority]].
"The political base for CPD II was in the [[Coalition for a Democratic Majority]], a group formed in 1972 by the hard-line, anti-Soviet wing of the Senate, led by Sen. [[Henry M. Scoop Jackson]]. These conservative Democrats contended that communism was a great evil and that the U.S. had a moral obligation to eradicate it and foster democracy throughout the world. The 193 individual members of the revitalized CPD comprise a who's who of the Democratic Party establishment and a cross-section of Republican leadership. Eventually, 13 of the 18 members of the Foreign Policy Task Force of the CDM, lead by Eugene V. Rostow, joined the CPD. Notable among them were [[Jeane J. Kirkpatrick]], [[Leon Keyserling]], [[Max M. Kampelman]], [[Richard Shifter]], and [[John P. Roche]].
==Private Connections==
"The CPD is a member of the Coalition for Peace Through Strength (CPTS), an ad hoc lobby group of the American Security Council which is modeled after the [[Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament]]. The Emergency Coalition was set up by the CDM in 1976. CPTS, which has 191 members of Congress in its ranks, serves as a link or umbrella for the [[New Right]], the neoconservatives and the [[military-industrialists]]. It is the public face of the [[American Security Council]], a group established in the 1950s by the [[military-industrial complex]] to ferret out 'internal subversives.'
"[[Rita E. Hauser]] of the CPD was chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the [[American Jewish Committee]].
"[[Frank Barnett]], director of the [[National Strategy Information Center]], a lobbying organization and think tank dedicated to the preservation of [[containment militarism]], opened an office in Washington DC in 1976. According to [[Jerry Sanders]] in ''Peddlers of Crisis'', the major reason behind the DC office was to be more effective in the promotion of CPD policy. The Washington office is directed by [[Roy Godson]] who is also the director of Georgetown's [[International Labor Program]]. In 1983, seven CPD members were on the staff of the Intl Labor Program.
"Industry was represented on the founding board of CPD by [[David Packard]] of [[Hewlett-Packard Company|Hewlett Packard]]; Richard V. Allen president of the [[Potomac International Corp]]; [[William Connell]], president of [[Concept Associates]]; [[Henry Fowler]], partner at [[[[Goldman Sachs||Goldman, Sachs & Co.]] investment brokerage house; [[David Harper]] of [[Gateway National Bank]] of St. Louis; [[James A. Linen]], director and former president of [[Time, Inc.]]; [[Hobart Lewis]], chairman of ''[[Reader's Digest]]''; [[Sarason D. Liebler]], president of [[Digital Recording Corp.]]; [[Donald S. MacNaughton]], chairman and CEO of The [[Prudential Insurance Company of America]]; [[Thomas S. Nichols]], president of [[Nichols Co.]] and former chairman of the executive committee of the [[Olin Corp.]]; [[George Olmsted]], chairman and CEO of [[International Bank]] in Washington; [[Charles E. Saltzman]], partner in Goldman, Sachs & Co.; and [[Harold W. Sweatt]], former chairman of the board of [[Honeywell, Inc.]]
"Think tank representatives on the original board of directors included [[Donald G. Brennan]], director of National Security Studies at the [[Hudson Institute]], a conservative [[think tank]] in Indiana; [[George Tanham]], vice president and trustee of the [[RAND Corporation]]; Glenn Campbell, director of the [[Hoover Institution]] on War, Revolution and Peace at [[Stanford University]]; [[Harris Huntington]], trustee at the [[Brookings Institution]]; Ray Cline, director of the Center for Strategic and Intl Studies; and [[J. C. Hurewitz]], director of Columbia's [[Middle East Institute]].
"Once in power, these men geared US policy toward forcing the Soviets to accept US strategic superiority, if not humiliating defeat. Outraged by the fact of Soviet nuclear parity as enshrined in the ABM accord of 1972, they sought to move beyond the stabilizing strictures of [[Mutual Assured Destruction]] into a brave new world of [[effective first-strike]]s and laser defenses. In a series of extremely destabilizing public statements, they described nukes as effective offensive weapons. Rather than seeing the Soviet build-up of the 1970s as a rational and belated response to the American build up of the 1960s, they argued that the Soviets were preparing to use nuclear blackmail against the US and takeover the world. That this was roundly rejected as absurd by nearly every major academic and foreign policy analyst had little effect on Reagan's Defense and State Departments, where closed system intellectual incestuousness and a religious intensity kept everyone happily immune to rational criticism.
"In retrospect, given the scale of recklessness in the policies and statements of the first Reagan Administration--from medium-range missiles in Europe to civil defense to [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] (SDI ) to '[[winnable nuclear war]]'--it is remarkable that disaster was avoided. During the early 1980s, US leaders sounded less like educated and serious men with the fate of the earth in their palms than did General Buck Turgidson of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: 'I'm not saying we won't get our hair muffed. Ten to twenty million casualties tops--depending on the breaks.'
"The full story makes for fascinating history. Unfortunately it is a history we may be doomed to repeat.
"Not far from Capitol Hill, neo-conservative strategists are currently pushing to make foreign policy a front-burner issue again, and the scripted ideas being put forward by Bush on the trail manifest a disturbing nostalgia for the brashness and imagined simplicity of the Reagan era. Many prominent neo-conservatives clearly yearn for the good old days, when imagined '[[windows of vulnerability]]' won them the White House and ''The Day After'' was on the tube. '[[Assertive internationalism]]' and '[[Robust Nationalism]]' are the hot keywords of the new old thinking. Needless to say, arms control does not fit into the future being projected. For it is a future of absolute American technological mastery, and no artificial limits on the national megatonnage will be tolerated.
"Infused with the righteousness of the true believer, neo-conservatives are terrifyingly fanciful when it comes to international affairs. [[Robert Kagan]] and [[William Kristol]], two neo-con architects of GOP policy, recently penned an essay in the conservative ''[[National Review]]'' entitled 'The Present Danger' in which they explicitly held up the Cold War era Reagan model as appropriate for the next president. While the authors admit that the new Present Danger is not incarnate in any adversary--'it has no name'--they nonetheless recommend that the US spend an extra $60-100 billion per year above current defense budgets to combat it. This money would be devoted to enhancing America's ability to project force abroad and the pursuance of '[[regime change]],' i.e., the invasion of foreign countries and the overthrow of leaders unpalatable to Mr. Kagan and Mr. Kristol. Flagrant disregard for international law and arms racing is to make the world safe for democracy--again.
"The flagship neo-con journal, the ''[[Weekly Standard]]'', offers an analysis of the present international scene that can only be described as paranoid delusional, claiming in a recent editorial that 'it's hard to think of a time when America's international standing has been so low, when Washington's credibility was in such disrepair.' The piece goes on to compare [[Bill Clinton]]'s foreign policy 'drift' to Carter's 'weakness'; the implication being that what America needs is another maniacal spread-eagle cowboy like Ronald Reagan. There's no Soviet bogeymen to rally behind and no charismatic leader this time around, but apparently certain unnamed mortal threats and Bush Jr. will have to do. We are surrounded and our freedom in grave peril, and apparently only ''The Weekly Standard'' has the vantage point needed to see this.
"Connections between propagandists for the new Present Danger and the original Committee of the 1970s are not limited to nostalgia and borrowed catchphrases. A list of current advisors to George W. Bush reveals former members of the old Committee, most notably Richard Perle, who served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense. Along with Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, Perle was the most vocal proponent of '[[winnable nuclear war]]' in Reagan's first Administration. Known as a hawk's hawk, he once famously described the European peace movement as an expression of mere 'protestant angst.' The millions that marched against US policy weren't really worried about getting fried in a nuclear war, you see, they were just reading too much Kierkegaard.
"That Richard Perle, an advocate of nuclear superiority and manageable nuclear exchange, is one election away from getting his corner office at the [[Pentagon ]] back doesn't only worry liberals. Republicans of a less ideological bent fear that the neo-conservatives will pull a Bush White House in an extremist direction, thus keeping responsible voices away from policy formation. Moderate 'realists' like [[Alexander Haig]] either resigned or were forced out of the cold war circus of the 1980s for lack of passion, and the silencing of rational perspectives could again occur in a Bush Administration dominated by neo-conservative thinking.
"Such worries have led [[Gideon Rose]] of the [[Council on Foreign Relations]] to doubt that the Republicans are ready to 'exercise power responsibly.' He sees recent statements by influential neo-conservative strategists as 'cause for alarm' and says that their eerily familiar ideological passion 'remains constant and dangerous.' Mr. Rose is no dove, and for him to caution that the current constellation of forces in the GOP is incapable of producing a foreign policy of mature adults should stop us in our tracks.
*[[R. James Woolsey]] Chairman
*[[Joseph Lieberman]] Senator; Member
*[[John Jon Kyl]] Senator; Member
*[[Jeane Kirkpatrick]]
*[[Joshua Muravchik]]
*[[Project for the Republican Future]]
*[[Peter Hannaford]]
*[[Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000]]
== External Links links ==
*[http://www.neoconeurope.eu/Committee_on_the_Present_Danger Committee on the Present Danger], Neocon Europe, accessed 18 May, 2009.
*Laura Rozen, "[http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/000940.html Oy Vey II]," ''War and Piece'', July 20, 2004.
*Justin Raimondo, "[http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3135 The Present Danger: Neocons attempt a comeback]," ''Antiwar.com'', July 23, 2004.
*James Kirchick, "[http://thehill.com/news/063004/coldwar.aspx Cold warriors return for war on terrorism]," ''The Hill'', June 30, 2004.
*Paul Rogers, "[http://opendemocracy.net/themes/article-2-2061.jsp The present danger: from “cold war” to “war on terror”]," Opendemocracy, 26 August, 2004.
*Jim Lobe, "[http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0722-14.htm They’re Back: Neocons Revive the Committee on the Present Danger, This Time Against Terrorism]", CommonDreams''Common Dreams'', July 22, 2004 .*Tom Barry, [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HF23Aa01.html "US: Danger, danger everywhere,"] ''Asia Times'', June 23, 2006. [[Category:Right wing]][[Category:United States]][[Category:War/peace]]
