Center welcomes Bush-Baker ‘Forum’ to NSC-in-exile

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy today welcomed the announcement that senior officials of the Bush-Baker Administration have decided to create a new think-tank called the Forum for International Policy. This organization would seem well-equipped to do for the last Administration what the Center has been doing for the previous five-years for the Reagan Administration: providing an institutional and intellectual base for people with considerable government experience, a shared worldview and a desire to remain actively engaged in the security policy debate. A current listing of participants in the Center’s network — its National Security Advisory Council — is attached.

The Center frequently had differences with the policy prescriptions advanced by some of the principals in this new organization — for example, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger, Robert Strauss, Condoleeza Rice, Arnold Kanter and Joan McEntee — while they were in office. It notes with regret that a number of those prescriptions have been continued by the successor Clinton Administration (e.g., radical cuts in defense spending; paralysis vis vis Bosnia; the wooing of Assad and Arafat as “peace-makers”; imprudent dismantling of export controls on sensitive dual-use technology; largely unconditional aid to the former Soviet Union; movement toward normalization of relations with Vietnam; coddling of China; inadequate steps toward fielding national defenses against ballistic missile attack; etc.)

That said, the Center for Security Policy has noted that a number of those affiliated with the new Forum have in their capacities as private individuals exhibited a greater vision than was evident when in public office. To the extent such qualities produce policy recommendations and initiatives consistent with those that have always guided the Center — i.e., in support of a muscular and principled America thoroughly engaged in international affairs for its own good and that of the entire civilized world — the Center’s staff and Board of Advisors look forward to making common cause with the new exiles from government.