Project for the New American Century: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is an American conservative think tank established in the spring of 1997 as a non-profit educational organization whose goal is to promote "American global leadership".

The chairman of PNAC is William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard. Present and former members include several prominent members of the Republican Party and Bush Administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, William J. Bennett, Gary Schmitt, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Ellen Bork, the wife of Judge Robert Bork. A large number of its ideas and its members are associated with the neoconservative movement. PNAC has seven full-time staff members, in addition to its board of directors.

The PNAC is quite controversial, and has raised the concern of many because it can be viewed as proposing military and economic domination of land, space, and cyberspace by the United States, so as to establish American dominance in world affairs for the indefinite future—hence, "the New American Century".

Content

The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project, a non-profit 501c3 organization that is funded by the Bradley Foundation [1]. The PNAC declares itself to be dedicated to the fundamental propositions that

• American leadership is good both for America and for the world;
• Such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy, and commitment to moral principle;
• Too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership;

The group states that when diplomacy has failed, military action is an acceptable and necessary resort. PNAC advocates the installation of permanent military bases around the world for the establishment of a United States Global Constabulary. This global police force would have the power to keep law and order around the world in accordance with rules that the United States would establish as being proper and just. It also advocates the United States government should capitalize on its military and economic superiority to gain unchallengeable superiority through all means necessary, including military force.

The PNAC and its members had long called for the United States to abandon the ABM Treaty. The PNAC also proposes to control the new "international commons" of space and "cyberspace" and pave the way for the creation of a new military service - U.S. Space Forces - with the mission of space control. In 1998, Rumsfeld chaired a bipartisan commission on the US Ballistic Missile Threat towards advancement of these goals.

In September 2000, the PNAC issued an 80-page report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, And Resources For A New Century. The report has been the subject of much analysis and criticism.

The PNAC has been the subject of considerable criticism and controversy.

Many and isolationists, dispute the premise that American world leadership is desirable for the world or even for America. The PNAC's harshest critics argue that it represents a broad, borderline imperial agenda of global US military expansionism and dominance. Supporters reply that the PNAC's goals are not fundamentally different than what has long been proposed by other conservative foreign policy analysts, and that the PNAC is the target of unfair conspiracy theories.

Much of the basis for its critics' arguments is derived from the text of Rebuilding America's Defenses. PNAC critics suggest that portions of the document call into question the true motives behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq, although the document contains no specific policy recommendations about Iraq.

After the election of George W. Bush, many of PNAC's members were appointed to key positions within the new President's administration:

• Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate, president of American Values
• William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education and Drug Czar, co-founder of Empower America, author of the Book of Virtues
• Ellen Bork, deputy director of PNAC
• Rudy Boschwitz
• Jeb Bush, governor of Florida
• Eliot A. Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University
• Thomas Donnelly, director of communications, Lockheed Martin
• Steve Forbes, multi-billionare publisher of Forbes Magazine, former presidential candidate
• Aaron Friedberg, director of the Center of International Studies
• Frank Gaffney, columnist, founder of Center for Security Policy
• Reuel Marc Gerecht, director of the Middle East Initiative
• Fred Ikle, Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Donald Kagan, Yale University professor, conservative columnist with various State Department ties
• Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador
• Charles Krauthammer
• William Kristol, a PNAC founder and chairman, editor of the Weekly Standard
• Christopher Maletz
• Daniel McKivergan
• Richard Perle, a PNAC founder, formerly of the Defense Policy Board
• Norman Podhoretz, Hudson Institute
• Dan Quayle, former vice-president
• Stephen Rosen, Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs, Harvard University
• Henry Rowen, former president of Rand Corporation
• Gary Schmitt
• Vin Weber, former congressman, lobbyist, vice-chairman of Empower America
• George Weigel, political commentator
• R. James Woolsey, vice-president at Booz Allen & Hamilton

• PNAC.info. An anti-PNAC website claiming to "investigate, analyze, and expose" the PNAC.
• Paul Reynolds, BBC
• PNAC members and their letters
• Terry Jones: ‘Could Tony Blair look at the internet now, please?’ and ‘Why look in the crystal ball?’
• Interpretation of Michael Meacher, former cabinet minister for Tony Blair
• ‘New York, you've been used’ by William Rivers Pitt, attacking the PNAC
• PNAC letter to Bill Clinton