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Project for the New American Century

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MinisterofInfo
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« on: October 14, 2007, 05:09:40 am »

Although many of the January 2005 signatories belong to the usual circle of neocons (such as Cohen, Donnelly, Gaffney, Gerecht, the Kagans, Max Boot, Clifford May, and James Woolsey), others were liberal hawks and liberal internationalists like Peter Beinart, Paul Kennedy, Will Marshall, Michael O'Hanlon, and James Steinberg.

Several months earlier, in September 2004, PNAC published an "Open Letter to the Heads of State and Government of the European Union and NATO," which expressed concern about the domestic and foreign policies of Vladimir Putin's government in Russia. The letter stated: "President Putin's foreign policy is increasingly marked by a threatening attitude toward Russia's neighbors and Europe's energy security, the return of rhetoric of militarism and empire, and by a refusal to comply with Russia's international treaty obligations. In all aspects of Russian political life, the instruments of state power appear to be being rebuilt and the dominance of the security services to grow. We believe that this conduct cannot be accepted as the foundation of a true partnership between Russia and the democracies of NATO and the European Union." Among the 100 signatories were many prominent neoconservatives. Prominent Democrats who signed the letter included Marshall, Steinberg, Joseph Biden, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright.

The most recent PNAC report, "Iraq: Setting the Record Straight," published in April 2005, is an apologia for the invasion and war. It concludes that Bush's decision to act "derived from a perception of Saddam's intentions and capabilities, both existing and potential, and was grounded in the reality of Saddam's prior behavior." The authors blame the reporting of the UN inspection teams and U.S. government statements, which they say "left wide gaps in the public understanding of what the president faced on March 18, 2003, and what we have learned since." PNAC also charges that administration critics "selectively used material in the historical record to reinforce their case against the president's policy." In other words, PNAC makes no apology for its own role in urging the administration to invade Iraq but rather defends the Bush administration as acting on the best intelligence available.

PNAC's activities dwindled in 2005, and there have been no postings to its website in 2007. The most recent material under the "What's New" section of its website is from 2006: articles written by PNAC associates Gary Schmitt and Ellen Bork, all of which were published in the Weekly Standard or the New York Sun.

The Bush administration's war on terrorism spawned an array of other neoconservative organizations and advocacy groups that shared PNAC's views about U.S. global dominance and whose key figures have been associated with PNAC. Several of these entities—such as the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, the U.S. Committee on NATO, and the Coalition for Democracy in Iran—were formed as ad hoc pressure groups closely associated with PNAC and have now folded or become dormant. Other groups, notably the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), have emerged as major institutions with large budgets and staffs.

Despite PNAC's efforts to forge a consensus around neoconservative ideas, during the course of the Bush presidency many differences have emerged in the circle of hawks and social conservatives that PNAC brought together in 1997. Some, like Fukuyama, have backed away from the imperialism of PNAC and the neocon camp, and while generally supportive of the Bush administration's stance on the "global war on terror," many neocons, militarists, and social conservatives have grown increasingly critical of its foreign, military, and domestic policies—creating divisions between PNAC associates inside and outside government.

Some of the problems identified in PNAC's 1997 Statement of Principles have come back to undermine conservative unity around foreign policy. The statement observed that conservatives "have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century."

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