Return of the Committee on the Present Danger

The Committee on the Present Danger, a bi-partisan group of neoconservatives that has its roots in the Cold War, has been re-formed in its third incarnation. The aim of the group, according to member Senator Joseph Lieberman, is

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, demoralise and divide America will not succeed.

Jim Lobe of the IPS writes on the overlap between the Committee's membership and the various other neocon think tanks and organisations around Washington:

The vast majority of the 41 members are well-known neo-conservatives who have strongly helped lead the drive to war in Iraq and have long supported broadening President George W Bush's "war on terrorism" to include Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, as well.

Prominently represented are fellows from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), such as former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Joshua Muravchik, Laurie Mylroie, Danielle Pletka, Michael Rubin and Ben Wattenberg. Members from Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's Defence Policy Board (DPB) include Kenneth Adelman, Newt Gingrich, and [Chairman R. James] Woolsey himself.

Committee members from the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), include CSP President Frank Gaffney, Charles Kupperman, William Van Cleave, and Dov Zakheim, who just stepped down as an undersecretary of defence under Rumsfeld.

Board members or fellows of several other right-wing or mainly neo-conservative think tanks have also joined the new CPD, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Manhattan Institute, Freedom House, the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, the former Committee to Liberate Iraq, the National Institute for Public Policy and Americans for Victory Over Terrorism.

The Committee is a positive step in bridging the artificial gap between the neocons in the two parties. Neoconservativism began as the anti-Communist, hawkish wing of the Democratic Party, inspired by the writings of Paul Nitze (one of the founders of the original CPD), especially the seminal NSC-68. It wasn't until the Carter administration that the neocons began to move into the Republican Party, finding in Ronald Reagan a like-minded soul.

The CPD has already run into trouble - the managing director of the Committee chose to resign after his relationship with the far-right Austrian politician was dug up by Laura Rozen.