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The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a Cold War-era, anti-Soviet group, was resurrected in June 2004 by group of militarist policy figures—including many neoconservatives who were members of the 1970s-era CPD—to support an aggressive "war on terror." This is the third incarnation of the committee. In its two previous manifestations, the CPD served as a pressure group, first in 1950 to win public and congressional approval for a post-World War II remilitarization and troop deployment that helped initiate the Cold War, and then again in 1976 by a large group of Cold War hawks who wanted to eliminate the politics of détente with the Soviet Union and roll back communism rather than continue the containment strategy that had largely guided U.S. foreign policy since the 1950s.

The CPD says it "is dedicated to protecting and expanding democracy by supporting policies aimed at winning the global war against terrorism and the movements and ideologies that drive it." According to its website, "Our mission is to educate free people everywhere about the threat posed by global radical Islamist and fascist terrorist movements; to counsel against appeasement of terrorists; to support policies that are part of a strategy of victory against this menace to freedom; and to support policies that encourage the development of civil society and democracy in those regions from which the terrorists emanate."

The CPD also advocates hawkish weapons programs. In October 2009, for example, the CPD held a roundtable to criticize the Barack Obama administration’s approach to missile defense and promote re-funding of such defenses. The roundtable included the showing of a trailer of a new fear-mongering Heritage Foundation video called 33 Minutes, which promotes a number of discredited and/or far-fetched threats, including the use of nuclear ballistic missiles by terrorists groups and the danger of an electromagnetic pulse attack. [1]

The CPD's leadership is dominated by erstwhile Cold Warriors and leading figures of the neoconservative political faction and the pro-Israel Right. George Shultz, secretary of state during the Reagan presidency, and former CIA head James Woolsey are CPD co-chairs, and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) serve as CPD's honorary co-chairs, giving the CPD a sheen of bipartisanship. Jose Maria Aznar, former Spanish president, and Vaclav Havel, former Czech president, are CPD's international leaders. Other notable members include Kenneth Adelman, Rachel Ehrenfeld, Nina Shea, Danielle Pletka, Peter Hannaford, Clifford May, Randy Scheunemann, and William Van Cleave, Akbar Atri, and Moshe Yaalon.

The committee is a not-for-profit (501(c)(4)) organization. Its website says that its "membership is limited to those in private life and does not include elected or appointed full-time federal or state officials or candidates for public office. ... As a committee, we have no ties or obligations to any administration or political party."

Jeane Kirkpatrick, a CPD member before her death in 2006, said the committee's members are largely "friends of mine," and that "a number of the people involved in it are also members of Freedom House," a neoconservative-led human-rights organization on whose board of trustees Kirkpatrick once served. [2]

A proponent of a long-term U.S. military commitment in Iraq, the CPD and its members have also been outspoken in their support for aggressive U.S. action against Iran and have helped push the idea of intervention against Tehran into the national spotlight. The CPD's website features an "Iran Update" section, the contents of which are regularly emailed to subscribers; its members' writings on Iran are featured on its homepage, and it produces "policy papers" devoted specifically to Iran. One "Iran Update," titled "Iran's Other Proxy War Against the West," argued that Iraq wasn't the only place Tehran was causing problems for the U.S.-led "war on terror." It argued that "Iran's ayatollahs are attempting to subvert the fragile, pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan" by returning Afghan refugees and purportedly shipping arms to the Taliban. The update concluded: "All of which begs the question: are the Americans, and the international community, prepared to do anything about it?" [3] An update from mid-October 2007, titled "Iran and the Bomb: Ominous Nuclear Progress in Tehran," lambasted Bush administration officials for downplaying the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program, arguing that the new information allegedly indicated that Iran "will have enough fissile material to field a nuclear weapon by sometime next fall—at the latest.” [4]

The CPD in general is also hawkish on NATO expansion and missile defense. CPD policy papers have included The Continuing Need for United Nations Reform, by Richard Schifter and Pedro Sanjuan; Oil and Security, by Shultz and Woolsey; Missile Defense for the 21st Century, authored by Henry Cooper et al.; and Iran: An Update, by Kyl and Lieberman. The CPD also published a symposium DVD in 2005 called Propaganda & Terrorism: Policy Options for the War of Ideas, and endorses and promotes NATO: An Alliance for Freedom, a study produced by the Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies in Madrid.

 

Beginnings

The third incarnation of the CPD was officially launched on July 20, 2004 during a press conference in Washington, DC. [5] The group had earlier been listed by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) as the cosponsor of a June 16, 2004 symposium on "Iraq's Future and the War on Terrorism." In a press release about the conference, FDD described the CPD as a "venerable Cold Warrior group, now in the process of being recreated." Since its beginnings, CPD has been closely interlinked with FDD. Clifford May, FDD's president, has directed CPD's policy committee. FDD board members Steve Forbes and Jack Kemp are also CPD members. Three of FDD's four "distinguished advisers"—Woolsey, Newt Gingrich, and Lieberman—are also CPD members.

At the official launch, former CIA director Woolsey said that the CPD aimed to combat what he called "a totalitarian movement masquerading as a religion." Repeating old neoconservative axioms, he said: "We understand very well that this time, the danger that we must address is a danger to the United States but also a danger to democracy and civil society throughout the world, and it is very much our hope to be of support and assistance to those who seek to bring democracy and civil society to the part of the world, the Middle East extended, to which this Islamist terror is now resonant in and generated from."

Also speaking at the press conference, Lieberman said CPD's objective was "to form a bipartisan citizens' army, which is ready to fight a war of ideas against our Islamist terrorist enemies, and to send a clear signal that their strategy to deceive, demoralize, and divide America will not succeed."

Accompanying the CPD's official launch were full-page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times. On the same day, honorary co-chairs Lieberman and Kyl published an op-ed for the Washington Post titled "The Present Danger," which likened the war against terrorism to the Cold War. They wrote: "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks awoke all Americans to the capabilities and brutality of our new enemy, but today too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy's evil worldwide designs, which include waging jihad against all Americans and reestablishing a totalitarian religious empire in the Middle East. The past struggle against communism differed in some ways from the current war against Islamist terrorism. But America's freedom and security, which each has aimed to undermine, are exactly the same.” [6]

Among Lieberman and Kyl's core concerns were the rising anti-war movement and the criticism of the war by the realists and traditional conservatives. They wrote: "The leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties have so far stood firm in their commitment to finish the job in Iraq and to fight to victory the war on terrorism. But that bipartisan consensus is coming under growing public pressure and could fray in the months ahead. Although the tide is turning in the war on terrorism, a political undertow in this country could wash out our recent gains. We must not let this happen."

Despite the splashy media launch, CPD got off to a shaky official start. On its second day, CPD Managing Director Peter Hannaford was asked to resign from the board after complaints from the Anti-Defamation League and concerns from CPD members that Hannaford was registered as a lobbyist for the nativist Austrian Freedom Party, then headed by the right-wing nationalist Jörg Haider, who has spoken highly of the orderly practices of the Third Reich. Freelance journalist Laura Rozen, a close observer of the neoconservatives, published information about Hannaford's international lobbying work in her blog. Hannaford is a communications specialist who runs his own international PR firm and who was Ronald Reagan's top communications official during his years as governor and for his successful presidential campaign in 1980. [7]

 

Precursors

Writing about the membership of CPD and its links to the 1970s version CPD, Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service observed: "A number of members of the new CPD, including [Max] Kampelman, Kemp, Kirkpatrick, [Joshua] Muravchik, Gaffney, and Woolsey himself, overlap with the membership of the advisory boards of the Likud-oriented Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Middle East Forum, or the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. In addition, a husband-and-wife team who played key roles in the evolution of neoconservatism from the late 1960s to the present and who also were associated with both CDM [ Coalition for the Democratic Majority] and CPD-2, former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz and his spouse, Midge Decter (who co-chaired the Committee for the Free World with [Donald] Rumsfeld during the Reagan administration), have also joined the new CPD.” [8]

The original CPD, formed at the prodding of the State Department in the years after World War II, was a committee of prominent citizens—Democrats and Republicans—including presidents of universities, foundation directors, and corporate leaders who aimed to engender congressional and public support for the coming Cold War. It aimed to defuse postwar isolationist sentiment within the Republican Party and on the political left by raising fears of a communist incursion. [9]

The second CPD, in contrast, was formed by Democratic Party hawks in opposition to the increasing consensus in favor of détente and arms control agreements within government and among the leadership of both political parties. While it incorporated liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, the Jackson Democrats—who would later join the Reagan administration and identify themselves as neoconservatives—were the second CPD's driving ideological and operational force. Like its third incarnation, the second CPD was hawkishly “pro-Israel.”

The third and current CPD has a narrower political base than either of its predecessors, despite its best efforts to represent itself as nonpartisan. Although it has managed to incorporate some major political figures, such as George Shultz, this CPD has few real connections to corporate America, the leadership of either party, or such social sectors as labor, churches, or ethnic groups.

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.