Right Web

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

The Henry Jackson Society (HJS) is UK-based advocacy organization that serves as a bastion of trans-Atlantic neoconservatism. Established in 2005, the group’s “statement of principles” promotes a “forward strategy” aimed at assisting democratization across the globe, ensuring the maintenance of a strong U.S. military, giving “two cheers to capitalism,” and promoting the idea that “any international organization which admits undemocratic states on an equal basis is fundamentally flawed.”

HJS maintains staff in London, Cambridge, Jerusalem, Brussels, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. The group’s executive director is Alan Mendoza, a Cambridge-trained historian who also is the founder of the Disraelian Union, “a London-based progressive Conservative think-tank and discussion forum.”[1]  

Other staff include Brenda Simms, HJS director and a teaching fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre of International Studies; and John Bew, also a Cambridge-based scholar, who serves as the group’s vice president.Barak Seener is head of HJS’s Middle East section and a scholar of Talmudic law and philosophy who has written for U.S. neoconservative groups like the Hudson Institute and the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs. Seener is also the editor of texts by Raymond Tanter and David Makovsky, among others.[2]   

Political and Ideological Connections

The group’s political connections were apparent at its founding from the list of individuals who signed its statement of principles. The list consisted largely of elite U.K. policymakers from both the left and right, including close associates of former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. The list also included Irwin Stelzer, a U.K.-based Hudson Institute scholar long associated with U.S. neoconservatism who has advised right-wing media magnate and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch.[3]

Other signatories to the HJS statement of principles included: Denis MacShane, who was Minister for Europe until the 2005 cabinet reshuffle; Paul Cornish, a member of the Royal Institute for International Affairs; Lord Powell, who was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's personal adviser on defense and foreign affairs and maintains extensive contacts in industry and business; Lord Trimble, the former leader of Northern Ireland's Ulster Unionists and a Nobel Peace Prize winner; and Robert Halfon, the political director of Conservative Friends of Israel.

The Conservative Party was represented on the HJS list of signatories by a number of members of parliament (MPs), including Michael Ancram, grandson of Lord Lothian who was a founding member of the Round Table, an imperial secret society that was set up at the end of the 19th century to promote Anglo-American values and policies. Other signatories included Tory MPs Edward Vaizey, Greg Pope, and Michael Gove.

The group is also supported by a list of “International Patrons,” who are prominently featured on HJS’s website and are largely neoconservative. Patrons include: Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations; Michael Chertoff, former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Carl Gershman, head of the National Endowment for Democracy; Max Kampleman, a retired U.S. diplomat who has supported the work of Freedom House and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard; Bruce Jackson, founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq; Robert Kagan, cofounder with Kristol of the Project for the New American Century; Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Richard Perle, a Ronald Reagan-era assistant secretary of defense and coauthor with David Frum of the 2003 book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror; Joshua Muravchik, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; and former CIA director James Woolsey.[4]

Henry Jackson?

When the group was launched, its name — which honors the famously hawkish former U.S. senator from the state of Washington, Henry “Scoop” Jackson — caused some confusion. Also known as the “Senator from Boeing” because of his long-time patronage of the aerospace company, Jackson was a highly influential Democratic whose staunchly anti-détente and hardline “pro-Israel” positions made him a favorite of the burgeoning neoconservative movement in the 1970s.

The creation of HJS in Britain in the midst of the Iraq War marked an effort in the United Kingdom to encourage a political realignment like the one nurtured by the U.S. neoconservative movement.[5] Yet, as one observer for Right Web wrote, "If your goal is to urge European decision-makers to aggressively promote liberal values, why associate yourself with a tainted neoconservative label?" (See Luke McCallin, "The Henry Who Society?" Right Web, October 18, 2006).

HJS’s publication, The British Moment, which was authored by several Cambridge-based scholars to support the Henry Jackson Society, serves as the group’s "flagship" publication and "manifesto." HJS says the book "calls for a new way of thinking about British foreign, security, and defense policy in the 21st century and argues that the time is ripe for Britain to play a leading and progressive role in promoting democracy and human rights across the globe. The British Moment's authors argue it is time for Britain, and indeed, the rest of Europe, to reclaim the noble tradition of liberal interventionism and pursue an active strategy across the globe."

Commenting on the book, Samuel Brittan wrote in the Financial Times, "There is a paradox about the whole enterprise. The British Moment comes wrapped in a Union Jack cover, and all the emphasis is on British policy. Why, then, take the name of a U.S. senator with a very mixed bag of views? Better to have called it the Palmerston Society after the 19th-century British prime minister who selectively favored 'small nations struggling to be free,' often with the aid of British gunboats.”[6]

Iran, Israel, and the Middle East

HJS publications focus on a broad range of subjects, including Darfur, the future of NATO, a “green economy,” and Zimbabwe. However, key issues also include Israel and the Middle East, about which the group has staked out positions in line with those of its ideological supporters in the United States, pressuring policymakers in the United Kingdom and continental Europe to support policies similar to those implemented by the George W. Bush administration in its "war on terror."

One example was the September 2007 interview with Richard Perle that the Society published.[7] In the interview, Perle lamented the lack of momentum to complete the job in Iraq and aggressively take on "threats" in Iran and Syria. On Iran, he argued that the U.S. failure to adequately court opposition figures in the country (a failure that he said rested largely on the shoulders of the State Department) was a "huge missed opportunity, spanning a number of years, [which] has left us, even today, without a credible political approach to regime change." He added, "In Iran, no one seriously, myself included, contemplates using ground troops to invade Iran. Precision air strikes aimed at destroying Iran's capacity to produce nuclear material could be effective, if it comes to that, but not an invasion."[8]

Perle also associated criticism of neoconservatism with anti-Semitism. "Anti-Semites are always seeking a new template to express their views. Very early on when the Patrick Buchanans in the United States and the George Galloways in the U.K. began to enumerate the risks of neoconservatism, they did not mention the non-Jewish subscribers to neoconservative ideas, but only singled out the Jews. This speaks volumes."[9]

HJS also published a 2007 "strategic briefing" authored by the rightist pro-Israel ideologue Meyrav Wurmser, cofounder of the controversial Middle East Media Research Institute and wife of David Wurmser who served as an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.[10] In the executive summary of the briefing, titled "Iran-Hamas Relations: The Growing Threat from a Radical Religious Coalition," Wurmser wrote:

Hamas' coup against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in May 2007 was a monumental event, not just for the Palestinians, but also the Middle East. Iran, the proud sponsor of Hezbollah, launched a successful war against Israel in Lebanon during the previous summer, and was once again signally [sic] its intentions through the actions of its Palestinian client. As such, it has taken on the behavior of regional hegemon. Indeed, Iran's rhetoric in the past few years has made clear that its leadership views itself as the leader of a bloc of Third World countries that actively oppose the West and wish to harm its interests, in Iraq and elsewhere, in every conceivable way. One central aspect of Iran's ambitions is its growing alliance with Hamas, a relationship dating back to the first official meeting between both in December 1990. These ties grow closer and more intimate, particularly after August 2005, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power.[11]

More recently, in July 2010, HJS published a “feature article” penned by Fariborz Saremi, a Hamburg-based political writer, which promoted aggressive intervention in Iran. He argued that efforts to pursue a diplomatic track with Iran have proved to be a “fatuous” exercise that will fail to prevent the country from building a nuclear bomb because Iran is governed by an “apocalyptic regime that believes in dissimulation and for foreign-policy issues consults with the Quran.”[12] The article, titled “Why Iran is a threat to international security and what must be done about it,” went on to argue that the “wisest” solution to the problem was “regime change,” dubiously claiming:

Throughout history, both ancient and modern, in times of crisis and general malaise, as soon as a national leader emerged, particularly when supported by the International Community, the people of Iran have quickly rallied around the new leader and brought about change.[13]

HJS has also published articles and hosted meetings aimed at promoting a view of Middle East affairs similar to that of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party. An example was a July 2010 event launching the Friends of Israel Initiative, a group made up of various U.S. neoconservatives and rightist politicians from various countries to combat what it claims is an “unprecedented campaign of deligitimation against Israel waged by the enemies of the Jewish State and, perversely, supported by numerous international institutions.”[14]

Founding members include John Bolton and George Weigel, both long standing neoconservative figures, as well José María Aznar, former conservative prime minister of Spain. Also among the ranks of FII’s membership are Fiamma Nirenstein, a member of the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlesconi’s coalition; Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru; and David Trimble, former leader of Northern Ireland’s conservative Ulster Unionist Party.[15]

The launch event, which took place at the British House of Commons, featured a number speakers, including Aznar, who gave the opening speech. Aznar touted the group as made of up courageous individuals who were united in the effort to “stand up” for Israel’s right to exist despite “knowing that we will automatically be stigmatized as Zionist agents, as neo-conservative conspirators, or something worse.” He claimed they were willing to do this because “we live in a world where losing our moral bearings, losing our identity, losing the faith in our democratic societies, can only bring our own destruction.”[16] He added:

We see an emboldened Iran, pursuing nuclear weapons; we see traditional allies of the West asserting themselves in ways that are not always benign or constructive, like Turkey, for instance; we see a Europe focused on economic survival that disregards existential topics like the rise of political Islam among us; and we see a United States of America sending out signals that she no longer places as much emphasis as before on her leadership position of the free world, let alone as the world’s policeman.[17]

Despites the group's close association with neoconservatism, some of the views expressed on the website run counter to the thinking of many U.S. neoconservatives. For example, HJS president Brenda Simms wrote in a 2005 editorial that the use of force cannot be completely discounted, but that HJS hopes to promote strategies in which "the military option may just be implicit."[18]

Among the strategies Simms highlighted: being "open to seeing retreating regimes as partners," including Syria; recognizing that while "there may be a case for a limited air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities ... that will solve nothing in the long run and will probably do more harm than good”; and recognizing that as "the region becomes more democratic, Israeli human rights abuses and settlement policies should be subjected to closer scrutiny. Soon, Israel should be pressed for a full withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, or some other suitable boundary negotiated with the Palestinians, within the context of an overall democratization and pacification of the region.”[19]

Programs and Publications

A central part of the society's website is its "Policy and Research Areas," which includes sections on six geo-strategic regions of the world: Britain; Greater Europe; the Americas; Middle East; Africa; and Asia Pacific. The research areas also include sections on “Environment & Economy” and “Governance Strategy & Terrorism.” Each of these sections provides links to editorials as well as background information about the society's positions on emerging issues in these regions.

One HJS initiative was the October 2006 "open letter" to world leaders regarding the Darfur crisis in Sudan. The letter called on "governments to empower and fund the African Union, so that it has one last chance to deal with the crisis. Meanwhile, our leaders must apply as much pressure as may be required on the Sudanese regime in order to make it cooperate with the international community." It was signed by figures across the political spectrum.[20]

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