Center for Security Policy

From Powerbase
Revision as of 09:23, 12 August 2009 by Claire Robinson (talk | contribs) (Directors)
Jump to: navigation, search

Center for Security Policy is a Washington-based organization set up by the hardline neoconservative Frank Gaffney, who worked in the defence department during the Ronald Reagan era. According to Jim Lobe, it is a "a small think tank funded mainly by U.S. defence contractors, far-right foundations, and right-wing Zionists".[1] It operates with the tagline 'promoting peace through strength', by which they appear to mean that global US dominance is the route to peace.

The Center states its mission as follows:

To identify challenges and opportunities likely to affect American security, broadly defined, and to act promptly and creatively to ensure that they are the subject of focused national examination and effective action.[2]

The Center has run campaigns and research on the subjects of nuclear deterrents, the war of ideas, weapons in space, Islamism and terror, among others.[3] Indeed Frank J. Gaffney Jnr describes his Center for Security Policy as "the special forces in the war of ideas"[4], stating that it has the advantage over a think tank of not being "slow and unwieldy" and being "able to turn around a product in a matter of hours".[5]

History

1976-1988

Important in itself, the Committee on the Present Danger’s (CPD) second incarnation in the 1970s and early 1980s was an extremely important predecessor to the Center for Security Policy. Set up as an independent and not-for-profit organisation, it was to assess the Soviet Union’s capabilities and threat to the United States in a non-partisan way. The group was originally called ‘Team B’ in opposition to the ‘Team A’ which did this job for the CIA, and had a political base through the Coalition for a Democratic Majority which was founded to try and fight back against any concessions made by the Democrats to the Soviet Union with regards to Foreign Policy. In 1976, this group helped set up the Committee for Present Danger to put pressure on Democrat President Jimmy Carter. The parallels with groups such as the Center for Security Policy can be shown by looking at who have been members of both – Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and even Ronald Reagan in 1979.

1988-1992

In 1987, Frank Gaffney broke with the Reagan administration over its decision to pursue treaties that aimed for nuclear arms reduction in cooperation with the Soviet Union. Gaffney argued against this policy and continued to push for a hard-line, anti-Soviet rhetoric and the continued buildup of nuclear weapons. The following year he founded the Center for Security Policy, basing it loosely on the Committee on the Present Danger, which had taken up the same aggressive opposition to nuclear arms reduction. Gaffney and his colleagues were quick to criticise the Republican President for moving towards liberal governance and preferred to push claims about the level of threat posed to the United States by the Red Menace and the need to possess a much larger nuclear arsenal than that of their rival.

1992-2000

During the Carter and Clinton administrations, the group who formed the basis for the Center for Security Policy, the neoconservatives, found themselves in opposition to a Democratic administration with different foreign policy aims and methodologies. Along with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the CSP became the main bedrock of shadow defence policy during the 1990s,[6] a time when the group helped to bring the militarisation of space from the realm of science fiction to almost reality. One of their elaborate claims throughout the 1990s resulted in support for the newly created Project for a New American Century, in which a letter was signed by several prominent CSP members, among others, and sent to President Clinton to urge him to attack Iraq due to the “scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.” [7] Gaffney was also proud of his group’s involvement in both the Rumsfeld Missile Commission and the Rumsfeld Space Commission which both suggested that the United States was under far more of a threat than previously suggested and, of course, than it realistically was. Gaffney has been known to describe his baby, the CSP, as the “Dominos Pizza of the policy business”[8] due to its speed at being responding to any situation with a demand and suggestion for policy, usually of a hard-line, neoconservative nature.

2000-present

When George W. Bush, himself a hard-line neoconservative, was elected in the year 2000, members of the Center for Security Policy gained important positions in the administration. Frank Gaffney, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and John Bolton are all names that have become synonymous with the neoconservative agenda and aggressive "War on Terror" foreign policy that has been a feature of the world in the past 8 years, providing much work and profit to companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The events of September 11, 2001 gave the Center for Security Policy a new impetus to push both its war of ideas and its idea of “America the vulnerable”, building on its "educational video" of 1998 with the same name,[9] and through Gaffney and the CSP’s network of members throughout the administration. Indeed, when Donald Rumsfeld addressed the ‘Keeper of the Flame’ banquet in November 2001 he said of Gaffney, "If there was any doubt about the power of your ideas, one only has to look at the number of Center associates who people this administration — and particularly the Department of Defense — to dispel them."[10] He made this statement in front of a banner proclaiming CSP’s ominous motto of “Peace Through Strength”, suggesting that the CSP was influential in the early stages of the supposed “War on Terror”.

Center for Security Policy Board of Directors

Chairman of the Board

Directors

National Security Advisory Council

CSP Board of Advisors has been renamed the National Security Advisory Council(NSAC). Most of its memberships overlaps with the Committee on the Present Danger, including one of the same honorary co-chair.

Mark Albrecht Morris Amitay William Ball Kathleen Bailey
Robert Barker William Bennett J. Stephen Britt Charles Brooks
Beverly Byron Margo D. B. Carlisle Henry Cooper Christopher Cox
Devon Gaffney Cross Brian Dailey Mitchell Daniels Midge Decter
Diana Denman Stanley Ebner Andrew Ellis Charles Fairbanks
Edwin Feulner, Jr. Rand Fishbein Frank Gaffney, Jr. Paul Goble
Daniel Gouré Douglas Graham Margaret Graham William Graham
Dorothy (Deecy) Gray E.C. Grayson James Hackett Charles Hamilton
Amoretta Hoeber John David Hoppe Charles Horner William Houser
Tim Hutchinson Kay Bailey Hutchison Henry Hyde Fred Iklé
James M. Inhofe Bruce Jackson Jamie Jameson Clark Judge
Phyllis Kaminsky Garry Kasparov Alan Keyes George Keyworth
Jeane Kirkpatrick Charles Kupperman Curtin Winsor, Jr. Christopher Lay
John Lehman John Lenczowski Robert Livingston James Longley
Carnes Lord Jennifer Macdonald Warren Marik Taffy Gould McCallum
Tidal McCoy James McCrery Kinnaird McKee Bruce Merrifield
Philip Merrill J.William Middendorf Thomas Miller Dominic Monetta
Thomas Moore Laurie Mylroie Robert Patron Richard Perle
John Piotrowski Roger Robinson, Jr. Edward Rowny Albert Santoli
William Schneider, Jr. Bernard Schriever John Shadegg James Gregory Sherr
Bob Smith Carl Smith Owen T. Smith Jose Sorzano
Howard Teicher Edward Teller William R. Van Cleave Troy Wade
Arthur Waldron Malcolm Wallop James Webb Curt Weldon
Faith Whittlesey Pete Wilson Deborah Wince-Smith  

Contact

Website: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org

Related Articles

Notes

  1. Jim Lobe, Neo-Con Superhawk Earns His Wings on Port Flap, IPS News, 24 February 2006.
  2. Center for Security Policy "The Center's Role in National Security Policy accessed 26th February 2008
  3. Center for Security Policy Center for Security Policy Projects accessed 26th February 2008
  4. Common Dreams News Center Neo-Con Superhawk Earns His Wings on Port Flap accessed 26th February 2008
  5. The Washington Times Keeper of the flame for foreign-policy hard-liners accessed 26th of February 2008
  6. Jason Vest, The Men From JINSA and CSP, The Nation, 15 August 2002, accessed 4th March 2008
  7. Right Web Center for Security Policy accessed 4th March 2008
  8. Media Transparency Recipent Grants: The Center for Security Policy accessed 4th March 2008
  9. Right Web Center for Security Policy accessed 4th March 2008
  10. Right Web Center for Security Policy accessed 4th March 2008
  11. Center for Security Policy Center for Security Policy accessed 12th March 2008