NEO-CONS MOVE TO UNITED KINGDOM
The Henry Jackson Society:
Would-Be Fascist World Rule
by Scott Thompson and Michele Steinberg
On July 14, as Israeli bombers began their 5,000 sorties against Lebanon, including the devastation of Beirut, the mass murder of civilians in the town of Qana, and repeated assaults on other civilian population centers, a would-be Nuremberg Rally occurred on a small scale in an undisclosed location in Britain, where some 200 afficionados of the Henry ("Scoop") Jackson Society cheered the United Kingdom's support for the American-backed Israeli actions, and declared that this was "The British Moment." Alan Mendoza, who is the co-president of the newly minted Scoopers' group, reported that the 200 participants "cheered to the rafters" for "the prospect of a huge increase in both the scope and frequency of British ethical intervention over the coming decade." The occasion was the release of a book called The British Moment, which is the "manifesto" of the group, which names itself after the late U.S. Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.).
It is not considered good form, usually, to cheer at a funeral, and it was a funeral. The HJS participants were gloating over the corpse of the sovereign nation-state. To demonstrate the point, in his article about the meeting, called "This is the British Moment," Mendoza, a 30-something Tweener in the tradition of the American "chicken-hawks"—i.e., the American warmongers who have never donned a military uniform—crowed, "Taking our lead from our namesake," the Henry Jackson Society pushes a " 'forward strategy' to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so. This would involve the full spectrum of our 'carrot' capacities, be they diplomatic, economic, cultural or political, but also, when necessary, those 'sticks' of the military domain."
A few days later, on July 23 and July 26, the HJS filed a series of followup articles on its website, hailing the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon to supposedly "disarm Hezbollah" as an example to the United States and Britain as to what these two nuclear superstates should be doing. To the Baby Boomer/Tweener-aged imperialists, Lebanon does not deserve full sovereignty, so it needs "those 'sticks' of the military domain."
The HJS explains that the Israeli action is not "punitive"; it is simply "coercive" in order to "force the Beirut government to confront the presence of a terrorist state within a state on its soil...."
There is a need, they say, for the Israeli "stick," which is fully backed by Tony Blair, and his American partners, Bush and Cheney, because, "Unfortunately, the Lebanese state has entered a Faustian bargain with Hezbollah.... In return for Hezbollah's continued good behaviour at home, the movement has been allowed to export terror accross the border."
The Henry Jackson Society is right now in its larval stage, set up in March 2005 by a combination of the scions of the "Golden Age" of British synarchy—the infamous Round Table—and the American neo-conservatives of the imperial/fascist Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), who needed a new base of operations and moved to London, as the American population turned bitterly against the Bush-Cheney regime in 2005. As EIR reported in June 2004, the CPD was reincarnated by the neo-cons for a third time, because support for the Iraq War "was in jeopardy." The first CPD of 1950-51 was a project of the Harry Truman Administration's Psychological Strategy Board, used to propagandize for preventive nuclear war against North Korea. The second CPD incarnation was in 1976, around the Presidential campaign of Sen. Scoop Jackson, who wanted direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. The men who ran Jackson's policy in the 1970s, and then founded the CPD, were the leading warmongers of the Bush-Cheney "first strike" preventive war doctrine, including Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's former Deputy Secretary of Defense, now at the World Bank; and Richard Perle, former chairman of Defense Policy Board. These two, along with Douglas Feith, Bush's former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, set up the rogue intelligence network in the Pentagon that reported directly to Cheney's office. Another important figure on Scoop Jackson's 1976 Presidential campaign team was Lazard Brothers synarchist banker Felix Rohatyn, who was his chief economic policy advisor.
While Rohatyn is not as well known as the neo-cons, he is perhaps the most important figure in this would-be fascist world government. Through his mentor André Meyer, CEO of Lazard Frères, the World War II-era investment bank, and investment controller today for such important institutions as the Washington Post, Rohatyn is a direct scion of the pro-Nazi Synarchist International of the 1940s. Meyer, who called Rohatyn his "son" and groomed him to take over the key operations of Lazard, is named in World War II intelligence documents prepared for President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a collaborator of the Nazis' allies in France.
Such is the nature of the new Henry Jackson Society.
Today, in the United States, this network is severely weakened—blamed for the glib prediction that the toppling of Saddam Hussein would be a "cakewalk." And their latter-day "Scoop," Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), went down in flames in his Aug. 8 primary election, defeated because of his blind allegiance to the Cheney doctrine and the Iraq War policy. Lieberman, who is co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, gave the keynote to its founding meeting on June 16, 2004, in which he declared "Islamic Jihadism" to be the 21st-Century equivalent to "Nazi totalitarianism" of the early 20th Century.
Make no mistake, however, in thinking that the defeat of Lieberman removes the threat and that the new Round Table imperialists have been taught a lesson. The Henry Jackson Society wants to be the kernel of a fascist world government that can wield the "military stick" against any nation that it identifies as a threat to its world order. Most importantly, the aim of the HJS is to establish the precedent that all "nations" are not equal in sovereignty. For the HJS, the destruction of the sovereign nation-state means repeating over and over the supranational ("coalition of the willing"), or unilateral (if necessary) intervention against unwilling nations, until the lesson is learned.
As the founders of the Committee on the Present Danger were eager to stress, the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough. To win the "global war on terror," it is necessary to militarily defeat Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, and perhaps a few other Islamic states, they vowed.
Project for a New Anglo-American Century
A senior U.S. intelligence source familiar with the launching of the Henry Jackson Society described it as the fusion of the British Tory neo-conservatives with the U.S. neo-cons in both the Democratic and Republican parties, who are positioning themselves to survive in the post-Bush era. The source noted that some of the leading "patrons" (see list below) from the U.S. side were supporters of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) challenge to George W. Bush for the Presidency in 2000, and are maneuvering to ride the McCain candidacy back into power in 2008. But at the same time, the U.S. neo-cons are hedging their bets for a Democratic victory in 2008.
The Democratic Party side of the HJS is evidenced by the participation of James Woolsey, former Clinton Administration CIA Director, and leading member of the "Wolfowitz cabal" that hatched the Iraq War plan in 2001. Woolsey is also one of the founders of the Truman Project on National Security (see EIR, July 21, 2006), out of the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which is the base of synarchist Rohatyn's operation inside the Democratic Party.
Informed Washington sources also suggest, however, that the HJS is the relocated form of the Project for a New American Century, which went out of business in July 2006. It could be called the Project for an Anglo-American Century.
On June 12, 2006, the Washington Post wrote: "The doors may be closing shortly on the nine-year-old Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative think tank headed by William Kristol ... editor of the Weekly Standard....
"The PNAC was short on staff—having perhaps a half-dozen employees—but very long on heavy hitters. The founders included Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul D. Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby....
"The goal was ... projecting American power and 'moral clarity' in a post-Cold War world, the group's manifesto said. The targets were liberal drift and conservative isolationism."
One of its main policy demands was the toppling of Saddam Hussein. PNAC was quite signficant in the Cheney-Bush Administration. Loaded with members of the inner circle of followers of the late fascist ideologue Leo Strauss, PNAC's founding document was more or less the basis for the 2002 National Security Strategy, which openly stated a doctrine of preventive war—including the preventive use of nuclear strikes against such countries as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
The PNAC did go out of business around July 1, claiming "Mission Accomplished." But its movement was in relative shambles compared to the heyday of pre-Iraq War 2003, when the Administration could lie with impunity. In late 2005, when I. Lewis Libby, the highest-ranking neo-con in the land, serving as Cheney's National Security Advisor, was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, it was clear that the neo-cons were no longer at their zenith.
What the Washington Post and most Americans, especially Congressmen and Senators, do not realize, is that PNAC has effectively moved to Britain, and set up shop in London as the Henry Jackson Society. What may have begun as an idea of expansion, or an insurance policy for the neo-cons if America turns against them, has now become a necessity. The accelerating global economic-financial collapse is reducing the support for the Bush-Cheney regime to dust, at the same time that the need for an imperial synarchist drive—from their standpoint—has never been greater.
The move to the United Kingdom occurred in two phases: first, the American neo-con Scoopers opened their United Kingdom flank with the March 11, 2005 founding of the Henry Jackson Society. Then, the formal "launching" occurred on Nov. 22, 2005, with a statement of principles designed to destroy the nation-state tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt, putting in its place "robust interventionism" in the name of "democracy."
The effort was to consolidate the principles behind the Iraq War—unilateral intervention—and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's Kosovo War before that. These axioms have already, under the Blair-Bush-synarchist-directed assault, placed World War III within the realm of possibility in the near term.
The Scoopers' statement of principles was a mantra of the Bush Doctrine, and it was signed by neo-conservatives across the party lines in Britain. According to the statement of principles: "The pursuit of a robust foreign policy was one of Henry 'Scoop' Jackson's central concerns. This was to be based on clear universal principles such as global promotion of the rule of law, liberal democracy, civil rights, environmental responsibility and the market economy."
This was followed by a set of principles that include: "2. Supports a 'forward strategy' to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so; 3. Supports the maintenance of a strong military, by the United States, the countries of the European Union and other democratic powers, armed with expeditionary capabilities and global reach; 4. Supports the necessary furtherance of European military modernisation and integration under British leadership, preferably within NATO; ... 6. Believes that only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate, and that any international organization which admits undemocratic states on an equal basis is fundamentally flawed; ... 8. Accepts that we have to set priorities and sometimes compromise, but insists that we should never lose sight of our fundamental values. This means alliances with repressive regimes can only be temporary."
Here is a recipe for disaster of the sort that has seen U.S.-U.K. unilateralism, driven by the Synarchist bankers that financed Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and France's Vichy government during World War II.
The New Round Table
The British home for the Henry Jackson Society, however, adds a crucial element, necessary for a world government: the inclusion of centuries-old families of "Empire," who consider their American collaborators to be country bumpkins and newcomers to their imperial game.
In addition, the British oligarchs know that the United States is still very much attached to the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose three administrations represented the general welfare of the people of the United States, especially the "forgotten man," and who was a vehement opponent of colonial imperialism—as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill learned.
The dead giveaway that the Henry Jackson Society is a wishful revival of the original British Round Table project of Cecil Rhodes, aimed at capturing the United States as a pawn of the British Commonwealth/Empire, is the prominent role in the HJS of Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram, the 13th Marquess of Lothian—the grandson of Round Table leader Philip Kerr (11th Marquess of Lothian). As Prof. Carrol Quigley detailed in his The Anglo-American Establishment (New York: Books in Focus, Inc., 1981), the Round Table Group—also known as the Rhodes Trust, the Milner Kindergarten, and the Cliveden Set—was launched as an imperial secret society at the end of the 19th Century, with the specific goal of sustaining the British Empire, under the guise of the Commonwealth. Key to the entire project was the cooptation and recruitment of a U.S.A.-based Anglophile establishment, to consolidate the de facto absorption of the United States into the British fold.
The original Round Table founders were Cecil Rhodes, William T. Stead, and Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Escher). The core group was soon turned over to Lord Milner, Lord Lothian, and Sir Robert Brand, the latter being the managing partner of the Lazard Bank in London. Over the course of the next century, the Round Table Group, in its various manifestations, led the pro-Hitler faction of the British establishment, while at the same time extending its reach into the United States, to promote a solid Anglo-American "alliance," which Winston Churchill once described in boastful terms: With American brawn and British brains, the Anglo-Americans could rule the world.
At all times during its 20th-Century heyday, the Round Table Group was centered in Lazard Bank, with Sir Robert Brand and his two successors at Lazard holding positions on the Round Table's secret committee, through into the 1980s at least.
The current Lord Lothian is Michael Andrew Foster Jude Kerr, PC, QC, MP. Born in London in 1945, known as Michael Ancram, he is a Conservative Party politician, Member of Parliament for Devizes, and former member of the Shadow Cabinet. Ancram was educated at Ampleforth College (sometimes known as the Catholic Eton), Christ Church, Oxford (BA History 1966, MA), and the University of Edinburgh (LLB, 1968). He practiced law, and dropped his title professionally. He inherited his father's title upon his death in 2004, but does not use it. He is the grandson and heir to Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), who was a notorious member of the Round Table movement and the Cliveden Set.
The other leading members of the Henry Jackson Society UK similarly convey the idea that this project is being promoted by the upper echelons of what is historically known as the "Club of the Isles," the heart of the Anglo-Dutch financier oligarchy. They include:
Col. Tim Collins. Commander, First Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, Iraq 2003.
Prof. Paul Cornish. Carrington Professor of International Security, Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), the public arm of the Round Table in London.
Sir Richard Dearlove. KCMG, OBE, born 1945, was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1999 until May 6, 2004. The appointment was made by then-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in consultation with Prime Minister Tony Blair. Dearlove played a crucial role in orchestrating the lies that Bush, Cheney, and Blair used to bamboozle the Congress and the American population into accepting an unjustified and unnecessary war in Iraq.
During his tenure as head of MI6, or "C," he was the purported author of the "Downing Street Memorandum," which indicated that Bush and Blair had already arrived at the policy decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq, and the only thing necessary was to "curve fit" the intelligence to provide a cover to convince people that the war was justified under international law.
Dearlove became Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 2004, and accepted an invitation to join the Trustees of the Cambridge Union Society in 2006.
Maj.-Gen. John Dreewienkiewicz. Military advisor to the High Representative for Bosnia.
Mark Etherington. Civil Governor, Wasit (Kut) province, Iraq, 2002-04. Author, Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq. A former British paratrooper.
Michael Cove. MP. Born in 1967 in Edinburgh. Cove is a politician, journalist, and author. He has been the Conservative Party MP for Surrey Heath since 2005. He is seen as part of an influential set of young Tories, sometimes referred to as the Notting Hill Set, including David Cameron. When Cameron was elected leader of the party in December 2005, Cove was appointed housing spokesman in the team shadowing the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
Robert Halfon. Political director, Conservative Friends of Israel.
Oliver Kamm. Columnist, The Times. He has written for it on the founding of the HJS, and the legacy of Henry Jackson.
Jacqueline Rita Lawrence. Labour Member of Parliament from 1997 until 2005.
Dr. Denis MacShane. MP. Born 1948. Labour Member of Parliament for Rotherdam, and was Minister of State for Europe at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until the 2005 ministerial reshuffle.
Stephen Pollard. Columnist, The Times. Senior Fellow at the Centre for Europe and at Civitas.
Greg Pope. MP. Born in 1960 in Blackburn. Labour Member of Parliament for Hyndburn; first elected in 1992.
Lord Powell of Bayswater. Lord Powell was for many years private secretary and advisor on foreign affairs and defense to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He is currently chairman of Sagitta Asset Management Ltd; chairman of Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers; and chairman of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet-Hennesy) in the U.K. He is a board member of, among others, the Textron Corporation; Caterpillar, Inc.; LVMH; and Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. He is president of the China-Britain Business Council; chairman of the Singapore-British Business Council; and chairman of the Trustees of the Oxford Business School.
Dr. Jamie Shea. Born 1953 in London, Shea is Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of the Secretary General of NATO, responsible for advising the Secretary General, senior NATO management, and the Council on strategic issues.
Dr. Irwin Steltzer. Director of Economic Policy Studies, Hudson Institute. An American economist, Steltzer writes a weekly column in the Sunday Times of London and is a close friend and key advisor to publisher Rupert Murdoch. Steltzer has been a regular visitor to Tony Blair and at one point was being paid as a consultant to Downing Street. Murdoch is known to have paid him £1 million a year.
Gisela Geschaider Stuart. MP. Born in 1955 in Velden, Bavaria, Germany. Moved to Britain in 1974. Labour Member of Parliament from Birmingham Edgbaston. She attracted some controversy in October 2004 by becoming the only Labour Party MP to call for the re-election of George W. Bush.
Lord David Trimble. Crossbench Peer. Entered the House of Lords on June 6, 2006. Previously MP for Upper Bann until April 11, 2005.
His interest in politics developed in the early 1970s, when, along with many others, he became increasingly disillusioned with the existing unionist leadership in Northern Ireland. As a result, Trimble was to associate himself with the Ulster Vanguard movement, which attempted to organize unionist opinion. In 1973, when this group evolved into the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP), he became a member and unsuccessfully stood for election at the Assembly Elections in June 1973.
Eventually, following an internal crisis in 1978, the VUPP ceased to operate as a political party, and so, with some of his former colleagues, he joined the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). In 1990 he became the UUP's candidate at the Westminster by-election for the constituency of Upper Bann, which he won and served from 1990-2005. In 1996 he was returned to the Northern Ireland forum for Political Dialogue for the constituency of Upper Bann (1996-98), and led his party into the multi-party negotiations which commenced in June 1996. Following the entry of Sinn Fein into the talks in September 1997, Trimble overcame UUP opposition to remain involved in negotiations. This led to the Belfast Agreement in May 1998 referendum. His efforts during this time were to be recognized when, later in 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with John Hume, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Following elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, Trimble was elected to the body for Upper Bann. In November 1999, with the establishment of the Northern Ireland Executive, he took up his position as First Minister (1999-2001 and 2001-02). Since then, however, Trimble twice resigned his seat in an effort to accelerate paramilitary decommissioning. In the 2005 Westminster Election, he lost his seat, and soon after resigned the leadership of the UUP, to be succeeed by Sir Reg Empey. He took his seat in the House of Lords on June 2, 2006.
Edward Vaizey. MP. Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Wantage. Closely associated with young Tories of the David Cameron stripe.
David Willetts. MP. Born 1956. Conservative Member of Parliament for Havant. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he was a whip, then junior minister (Paymaster General) under Prime Minister John Major, but was forced to resign when it was found by the Committee of Standards and Privileges, that he had lied in a case. A couple of years later he was back in the front bench as a Shadow Cabinet member. In August 2005, commentators speculated he was gunning for the post of Shadow Chancellor and would cut a deal with either David Davies or David Cameron. He chose David Davies, the bookies' favorite.
International Patrons
Dr. Brenden Simms. Co-president.
Dr. Alan Mendoza. Co-president. A co-founder of the HJS, Dr. Mendoza will use his position for a smooth transition of the HJS from Cambridge to London and to establish a fundraising base for the HJS. Co-founder and president of the Disraelian Union, a London-based Conservative think-tank and discussion forum.
James Rogers. Executive secretary. Associate editor for the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Worked for two Labour Members of Parliament.
John Bew. Vice president. Research Fellow of Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge.
Matthew Jamieson. Media secretary. Born in Northern Ireland, he graduated with a degree in history from Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 2005. From the Summer of 2006, Jamieson returned to Peterhouse to begin research for his M.Phil. in history, examining Tony Blair's foreign policy in relation to Britain's imperialist past. In 2003, he was elected chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Party, after serving as Campaigns Officer.
Martyn Frampton. Web-editor; Section Director, Greater Middle East. Frampton is a final year Ph.D. (history) candidate in Jesus College, Cambridge. His principal field of research is modern Irish history, with special reference to the "Troubles." Other interests include the politics of the Middle East, the Balkans, and more general modern British and wider European History.
The American 'Cousins'
The Henry Jackson Society also maintains a public list of Patrons, who are comprised, predominantly, of American neo-conservatives who have been at the very center of the Washington War Party, and who formerly comprised the leadership core of PNAC. Among the Patrons are:
Bruce P. Jackson. President, the Project for Transitional Democracies, a founder of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based neo-con front.
Robert Kagan. Senior associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and one of the leading neo-con propagandists for the Anglo-American empire.
William Kristol. Editor, The Weekly Standard.
Vytautus Landsbergis. Former President of Lithuania.
Clifford May. President, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. President, Committee on the Present Danger, and Chairman of its Policy Committee.
Michael McFaul. Senior fellow, Hoover Institution. Senior advisor, National Democratic Institute.
Joshua Muravchik. Leading figure in the Democratic Party right-wing networks of the Social Democrats USA, and a leading propagandist for the Bush-Cheney permanent war policy.
Richard Perle. Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense. Former aide to Sen. Henry Jackson. Head of the Defense Policy Board for the first years of the Bush-Cheney Administration, and one of the most outspoken of the neo-con ideologues in Washington.
Gen. Jack Sheehan. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander.
James Woolsey. Former Director of the CIA, co-chair, with George P. Shultz, of the Committee on the President Danger, and the mentor of Rachel Kleinfeld, the founder of the Truman Project on National Security, a young neo-con penetration of the Democratic Party.
'Tomorrow the World'
The HJS has divided itself into sections for research, writing, and forums—each section being under one or more of the members of the Organizing Committee that gathered the signators to the Statement of Principles. (The Organizing Committee, better called the Cambridge "Kindergarten," hopes to divide up, not its work, but the planet itself.)
The first section is Greater Europe, and the section director is James Rogers. It argues that with Britain as the "pivot" between the European Union and its "special relationship" to the United States, Europe is emerging as a dominant power. In the March 11, 2005 "Opening Editorial" for this section, the author notes: "Today, in the opening years of the twenty-first century, the European Union is very much a global power. Its 'hard' coercive power is as significant as its 'soft' attractive power...."
A subsumed section is on the Balkans. In the "Opening Editorial" on the Balkans of March 15, 2005, the author applauds "interventionism": "Today it no longer makes sense to see international politics as a question of left versus right: rather, the principal ideological division in the West is between what might broadly be called the 'interventionists' and the 'anti-interventionists.' It was this division that governed discourse over the Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq wars.... In practice, the debate is between, on the one hand, those who support military and other forms of intervention by the Western democracies to confront dictatorship, oppression, and the abuse of human rights, and on the other, those who do not."
Rogers is also the section director for Britain in the World, which argues that within the last 20 years, Britain has undergone a "renaissance," which, according to the "Opening Editorial," has made "British military strength ... second only to that of the United States." Indeed, as Nile Gardner and John Hulsman have recently remarked: "Britain has unquestionably emerged as the world's second most powerful nation.... One BBC commentator has even advocated that a new form of British 'empire', based on cultural attraction and world-wide influence, has now emerged, and that this will allow Britain to retain its pivotal position almost indefinitely."
Rogers is also the section director for America in the World. Its "Opening Editorial" states: "Senator Jackson might have frowned on the triumphalism that has recently emerged in certain neoconservative circles, but he would have been far more critical of the Democratic naysayers who still noisily object to the political restructuring of the Middle East.... Since the autumn of 2001, American policy makers and American public have come to the painful and immediate realisation that terrorism is not 'someone else's problem'.... The 'forward strategy' proposed by the Bush administration, however, must not jeopardise the vision of liberal democracy, the very ideal that it seeks to 'push forward' in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. The United States, while avoiding the apologetic stance that some leftists would wish it to adopt, should also avoid being confused with the non-representative and authoritarian regimes that it seeks to reform.... At the end of the Cold War, the Jacksonian tradition ... successfully bridged the apparent—if not real—divide between a belief in cultural centrism and a belief in an active US military posture."
Former Zbigniew Brzezinski aide Christopher Swift is section director of Russia and Eurasia. In his "Section Overview," Swift writes: "Since 1999, the Kremlin has curtailed civil liberties, suspended democratic reforms and consolidated presidential authority. These developments accompanied the sale of nuclear technology to Iran, a savage war in Chechnya and aggressive interference by Moscow in its neighbours' domestic affairs.... Against that backdrop, it would be a mistake to acknowledge formally or implicitly Moscow's 'spheres of interest' in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus or Central Asia.... The EU and NATO must continue to enlarge, with substantial emphasis now placed on supporting reforms in Ukraine and Georgia. Success in these areas will provide a positive impetus for Russia's continued evolution, as well as a bulwark against Russia's occasional neo-imperialist impulses."
Martyn Frampton is section director for the Greater Middle East. Dr. Brenden Simms, co-president of HJS, wrote the "Opening Editorial" for this section, which states: "Once it became clear that terrorists of Middle East origin were responsible for the attacks of 9/11, the debate on how to respond has produced two very different schools of thought. The one said: 'We have to change'.... There is something to be said for this view, but not much." Simms continues: "The alternative response to 9/11 was to say: 'They will have to change.... Only by 'draining the swamp,' by reclaiming the region from its miasma of repression and fanaticism, so the argument ran, could security be achieved. Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising that the democratic transformation of the Middle East should have begun with an attack on its greatest dictator, Saddam Hussein, rather than putting pressure on its only democracy, Israel. But the removal of Saddam Hussein was also the beginning of a much greater project: a new and democratic geopolitics of the Middle East, with new fronts and new spaces.... This section of the Henry Jackson Society will defend the decision to remove Saddam Hussein by force, and it may well support similar measures in future.... We may have to be patient in Iran.... There may be a case for a limited air strike on Iranian nuclear facilties, but that will solve nothing in the long run and will probably do more harm than good...."
The section director for Asia/Pacific Rim is Tobias Harris, and the "Opening Editorial" for this section reads: "Following the end of the Cold War, statesmen and scholars have predicted that the Twenty-first Century will belong to Asia.... There is much to be said for this view. By virtue of their size alone, the economic rise of China and India has had and will continue to have a distortionary effect on the global economy.... There is a dark side to the Asian Century, however. With five of the world's ten biggest military spenders East Asian powers, the potential for conflict in East Asia is particularly acute.... Especially dangerous are heightened levels of nationalism throughout Asia, which could serve to escalate small disputes in contested areas into major struggles.... The central rivalry in the Asia-Pacific region may prove to be that between the US and China.... The more legitimacy China acquires in international organizations, however, the easier it will be for China to win the support of its neighbors and to supplant the US as the regional leader.... Does Brussels truly seek the return to a multipolar global security competition? ... An Asia without the US playing a significant role in security affairs would likely have more nuclear weapons than at present and be safer for oppressive regimes.... The EU will only come to support the US position in East Asia, however, if the United Kingdom takes a lead role in formulating EU policy vis-à-vis Asia."
