"Don't look now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback-and not among the Republicans who have made it famous, but in the Democratic Party," declared writer Jacob Heilbrunn in a May 28, 2006 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. In "Neocons in the Democratic Party," Heilbrunn argued that a new generation of Democratic "pundits and young national security experts" are trying to revive the Cold War precepts of President Harry S. Truman and apply them to the war on terror. "The fledgling neocons of the left are based at places such as the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), whose president, Will Marshall, has just released a volume of doctrine called With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty . Their political champions include Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman and such likely presidential candidates as former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)."
Concluded Heilbrunn: "It is amusing to see that at the very moment when hawkish realists are trying to extirpate the neocon credo in the Republican Party, it's being revived in the Democratic Party that first brought it to life."
PPI, founded in 1989 by Marshall and Al From, is a project of the Third Way Foundation, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. As the think tank for the Democratic Leadership Council, the PPI says its mission "arises from the belief that America is ill-served by an obsolete left-right debate that is out of step with the powerful forces reshaping our society and economy." PPI claims to advocate "a philosophy that adapts the progressive tradition in American politics to the realities of the information age and points to a 'third way' beyond the liberal impulse to defend the bureaucratic status quo and the conservative bid to simply dismantle government."
Marshall and From have long advocated for a "third way" in the political debate that consists of free-market principles that largely echo the right-wing platform, making their organization's name misleading. Indeed, one of PPI's five strategies includes "confronting global disorder by building enduring new international structures of economic and political freedom" (PPI Overview, June 1, 1998).
Marshall is president of the Third Way Foundation and of PPI, and From is the foundation's chairman. Paul Weinstein is the institute's chief operating officer. In fiscal 2004, Third Way board members included Linda Peek Schacht, Charles Alston, William Budinger, William Galston, and Susan Hothem, according to the IRS Form 990 provided at GuideStar.org. PPI staff includes Marshall, Steven Nider (expert in foreign and security studies), Michele Stockwell (education and social policy), David Kendall (health), Edward Gresser (trade), and Jan Mazurek (energy and environment). PPI senior fellows include Weinstein, Andrew Rotherham, Marshall Wittmann, and Fred Siegel. PPI operates on an annual budget approaching $3 million. Seymour Martin Lipset, a leading neoconservative political sociologist, is a former PPI board member, according to a 2002 report by Capital Research Center.
The core principles of the "third way movement" are set forth in the DLC/PPI's 1996 publication, The New Progressive Declaration: A Political Philosophy for the Information Age. As the New Democrats explain, the enduring progressive values must be adapted to the information age, which translates into policy recommendations that are very close to policies articulated by the administration of George W. Bush: uncompromising support for free market and free trade economics, a strong military with a global presence, an end to the politics of entitlement, rejection of affirmative action, and an embrace of competitive enterprise while at the same time rejecting a key role for government in development policy. Expressing the opinion of many progressive Democrats, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect editor, wrote that the political approach of the DLC amounts to "splitting the difference with a Republican administration" (American Prospect, July 7, 2002).
The PPI publishes reports and press releases that bolster DLC positions, including support for the invasion of Iraq and a more confrontational approach to relations with North Korea and Iran. Although the PPI largely reflects neoconservative positions on foreign and military policy, it has a more favorable view of multilateralism as a principle of foreign policy and rejects the argument that a missile defense system is necessary for U.S. national security (see, for example, Peter D. Zimmerman, "Missile Defense and American Security: A Sensible National Policy," PPI Policy Report, May 1, 1996; and Steven J. Nider, "A Third Way on Missile Defense," Blueprint Magazine, September 10, 2001).
In June 2006, PPI president Marshall opined in the Democratic Strategist that Democrats needed to "raid the red zone" and win over Republican voters. "Security will continue to dominate national politics for the foreseeable future. It is axiomatic that the American people are not likely to give power to a party they do not trust to defend their values and keep them safe," Marshall wrote. "Democrats therefore must close the national security confidence gap that has dogged them since the era of Vietnam protests. This requires reclaiming, not abandoning, the party's venerable tradition of muscular liberalism-the Truman-Kennedy legacy that helped America win the Cold War. Updated for new threats, it offers the best answer to the challenge of Islamist extremism today." Marshall suggests three specific tactics: "We must put security first-and mean it . Second, Democrats must convince the public that we are ready to take over the fight against Islamist extremism . Third, Democrats must recognize that since 9/11, patriotism has become the most potent values issue in U.S. politics" (Democratic Strategist, June 22, 2006).
The PPI's efforts to get Democrats to be more pro-military and pro-defense were also obvious in its May 2006 book, With All Our Might. Edited by Marshall, the book contains an introduction and 14 essays on how to address "jihadist terrorism." In the introduction, Marshall contrasts the "progressive internationalism" of PPI with the "conservative unilateralism" of the Bush administration. The war in Iraq is part of a larger strategy for "building a world safe for individual liberty and democracy," according to Marshall, who writes that the "Bush Republicans have been tough but they have not been smart" in directing the course of the Iraq War. Part of being smart is "using our strengths," says Marshall. "Democrats must be committed to preserving America's military predominance, because a strong military undergirds U.S. global leadership."
The reception With All Our Might received from the neoconservative corner was, perhaps unsurprisingly, warm. In a Weekly Standard article entitled "The Loneliness of the Liberal Hawk: Dems Who Understand War, Pols Who Don't," neocon stalwart Thomas Donnelly opined that the volume "actually represents an impressive lineup of younger defense and security intellectuals." Book contributor Kenneth Pollack "sounds like a closet neocon," and Jan Mazurek's essay is "even tougher on Middle East strategy than Pollack," according to Donnelly (Weekly Standard, May 22, 2006).
Security recommendations are nothing new for PPI. In October 2003, the institute published a policy blueprint titled "Progressive Internationalism: A Democratic National Security Strategy." The contributing authors to "Progressive Internationalism" were: Marshall, Nider, Gresser, and James R. Blaker of PPI; Ronald D. Asmus, German Marshall Fund of the United States; Kurt Campbell, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Gregory Craig, Williams & Connelly; Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution; Michele A. Flournoy, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Philip H. Gordon, Brookings Institution; former Sen. Bob Kerrey, New School University; Michael McFaul, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Kenneth M. Pollack, Saban Center for Middle East Policy; and Jeremy Rosner, Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research, Inc.
Using language that closely mirrored that of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), in "Progressive Internationalism" PPI hailed the "tough-minded internationalism" of past Democratic presidents such as Truman. Like PNAC, which in its founding statement warned of grave present dangers confronting America, the PPI security strategy declared that, "Today America is threatened once again" and is in need of assertive individuals committed to strong leadership. The authors' observation that, "Like the Cold War, the struggle we face today is likely to last not years but decades," echoes both neoconservative and Bush administration national security assessments. As the "Progressive Internationalism" authors explain, the PPI endorsed the invasion of Iraq "because the previous policy of containment was failing, because Saddam posed a grave danger to America as well as to his own brutalized people, and because his blatant defiance of more than a decade's worth of UN Security Council resolutions was undermining both collective security and international law."
The PPI has a vision of national security that extends to fostering democracy and freedom around the world in "the belief that America can best defend itself by building a world safe for individual liberty and democracy." It's likely that PNAC itself would heartily agree with this PPI comment: "While some complain that the Bush administration has been too radical in recasting America's national security strategy, we believe it has not been ambitious or imaginative enough."
According to its press release, PPI's security strategy "takes issue with left-wing activists who routinely call for deep cuts in military spending, reflexively oppose the use of force, and embrace an anti-trade, anti-globalization agenda that would damage the U.S. economy and condemn developing nations to perpetual poverty." From the report itself: "Progressive internationalism occupies the vital center between the neo-imperial right and the non-interventionist left, between a view that assumes that our might always makes us right and one that assumes that because America is strong it must be wrong."
In remarks introducing the report, Marshall said that the progressive internationalism strategy draws "a sharp distinction between this mainstream Democratic strategy for national security and the far left's vision of America's role in the world. In this document we take issue with those who begrudge the kind of defense spending that we think is necessary to meet our needs, both at home and abroad; with folks who seem to reflexively oppose the use of force; and who seem incapable of taking America's side in international disputes.
"We also argue," said Marshall, "strong international leadership should not be equated with a kind of toothless multilateralism that puts the quest for consensus above the hard and risky business of grappling with chaos, of dealing with real conflicts, and confronting real enemies and aggressors. And we warn against an anti-globalization agenda that not only hurts our economy but that condemns developing countries in the world to poverty. So, however troubling the Bush record is, we think that the pacifist and protectionist left offers no viable alternative" (PPI Speech, October 30, 2003).
The neoconservative leanings of the PPI are also evident in the writings of "Progressive Internationalism" contributing authors. In a March 9, 2004 essay for PPI, Asmus and McFaul asserted that "a bipartisan consensus is emerging in America about the need to bring greater freedom and democracy to the Greater Middle East." Having signed on to the neocon agenda of invading Iraq, based on false claims about Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, the liberal hawks after the invasion also became among the most vocal advocates of the regional political restructuring plans of such neocon institutes as the American Enterprise Institute and PNAC. Asmus and McFaul call for a tenfold budget increase for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental "democracy-promotion" institute that was established as a neoconservative political project in 1983. Despite their proposal that Middle Easterners themselves take charge of the region's democratization and restructuring, Asmus and McFaul proposed that NED work closely with business and labor in the political project of overhauling the greater Middle East, arguing that "nothing would set back the democratic cause in the region more than a premature American disengagement from Iraq, where a critical democratic transition is now underway" (PPI, March 9, 2004).
In articles in Blueprint and in other media outlets, Marshall has struck out at Democrats who have either opposed the Iraq invasion or called for a U.S. pullout. As he told the Los Angeles Times in the run-up to the 2004 election: "You hear way too much from the Democrats in this race about turning over the whole mess to the UN. Well, that's not credible and most people know it. It doesn't have the power to achieve the only outcome we can accept" (Los Angeles Times, December 4, 2003).
In a January 2004 article titled "Stay and Win in Iraq," Marshall took a blithely nationalist view of body counts in a war in which most of the dead are Iraqi civilians. "Coalition forces still face daily attacks but the body count tilts massively in their favor," wrote Marshall, a leading voice for the liberal hawks in the United States (Blueprint, January 8, 2004).
PPI's parent organization, the Third Way Foundation, an umbrella group of the New Democrats in the DLC, describes itself as a nonprofit corporation. Between 2000 and 2002, the foundation received $225,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (a top right-wing foundation), according to data collected by Media Transparency.
The PPI and the DLC have received grants from many Fortune 500 companies and various right-wing foundations such as the Bradley Foundation. According to a 2002 study by the Capital Research Center, corporate contributors to the PPI have included the AT&T Foundation, Eastman Kodak Charitable Trust, Prudential Foundation, Georgia-Pacific Foundation, Chevron, and Amoco Foundation. The Third Way Foundation has received funding from the Howard Gilman Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, and General Mills Foundation. According to John Nichols in the Progressive, the DLC has had funding from Bank One, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, Health Insurance Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Occidental Petroleum, and Raytheon (Progressive, October 2000).
