J.D. Crouch II is a former deputy national security adviser and assistant to President George W. Bush who resigned in early May 2007. Regarded as one of the administration's staunchest foreign policy hawks, Crouch's resignation was seen by some observers as a response to the administration's acquiescence to renewed efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to push diplomacy and dialogue with North Korea and Iran. Crouch denied these allegations, saying that he had " total confidence in [the president] and in his judgment on these things." He added: "The only bitterness ... is that I can't stay here forever and work with this president" (Washington Post, May 5, 2007).
The resignation was regarded with chagrin by other erstwhile Bush administration hardliners, including former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who told the Post (May 5, 2007): " It's a sad day because he had a very clear-eyed view of Iran and North Korea. He understands the nature of the threat. ... He was a very steady voice for sensible policy, and now there will be one less voice in the administration."
Crouch's resignation came only a few months after he, working under National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, helped formulate the "surge" strategy announced by the president in January 2007, which significantly increased the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. Crouch reportedly led the review team that produced the strategy (Washington Post, May 5, 2007). His support for these policies won him praise from some of the more hardline right-wing political factions, including the neoconservatives. Said Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy, in a 2006 press interview: "Knowing him as I do, I'm almost certain that he is exercising influence, and influence that is reinforcing the most robust policies and positions of this administration" (Inter Press Service, January 9, 2006).
Crouch's position as deputy national security adviser was his third post in the Bush administration. Before serving as ambassador to Romania—his job before joining the staff of the national security adviser—Crouch was an assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. In this role, Crouch served as a point person for Pentagon nuclear weapons programs. In announcing the release of the declassified version of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review in January 2002, Crouch strongly hinted that the administration was considering developing a new generation of nuclear weapons: "We are trying to look at a number of initiatives. One would be to modify an existing weapon, to give it greater capability against hard and deeply buried targets" (Center for Defense Information, January 22, 2002).
In a spring 2005 article for the Middle East Report, commentator Jim Lobe wrote that Crouch's appointment under Hadley "constituted a net gain, if not for the neoconservatives, then certainly for their aggressive nationalist and Christian right partners." According to Lobe, Crouch is a longtime nuclear enthusiast, a protégé of Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz (with whom he helped produce the 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance, widely regarded as an early formulation of Bush's post-9/11 policies), and a close associate of William Van Cleave, a leading Cold Warrior in the 1970s and 80s whose record includes membership on the notorious Team B Strategic Objectives Panel and the U.S. delegation to the START talks.
According to a State Department profile, Crouch was once a reserve deputy sheriff in Christian County, Missouri; cofounded PalmGear.com, "the Internet's leading source of Palm OS software"; and served as a legislative assistant in the 1980s to the hawkish Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-WY), an early proponent of a national missile defense system.
Before joining the Bush administration, Crouch worked alongside Van Cleave at Southwest Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. The department's faculty website reads like a who's who of influential hardliners. Faculty have included: Keith Payne, founder of the National Institute for Public Policy; Henry Cooper, a former head of the Strategic Defense Initiative and founder of the pro-missile defense group High Frontier who worked with Crouch in the mid-1980s as chief negotiator of the U.S. Delegation on Nuclear and Space Arms Talks with the Soviet Union; William Graham, a former Reagan administration adviser whose record includes membership on Donald Rumsfeld's Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States and executive of various defense contractors, including R&D Associates and Jaycor; Charles Kupperman, a former Lockheed executive and director of Empower America; and Ilan Berman, president of the hawkish American Foreign Policy Council and a member of the neoconservative-led Committee on the Present Danger. Crouch has also been a longtime supporter of Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, one of the more outspoken and widely publicized hardline policy institutes in Washington.
Crouch has published widely on a number of issues, including both domestic and foreign policy. An example of his commentary: In a 1999 letter to the Washington Times, Crouch blamed the Columbine High School massacre on "30 years of liberal social policy that has put our children in day care, taken God out of the schools, taken Mom out of the house, and banished Dad as an authority figure from the family altogether" (Middle East Report, Spring 2005).
Crouch offered a succinct account of his political views in a 1995 commentary on the 1994 "Republican Revolution" in Congress for the journal On Principle, published by the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashbrook University, a bastion of conservative academics. With Republicans in control of the congressional agenda, Crouch said they should push an ambitious policy program that, in his words, included the following agenda items:
- "True welfare reform that prevents people from spending lives and generations on the dole and that does not tear apart the family of its recipients, sending thousands of its progeny into the crime culture.
- "A balanced budget amendment and a line item veto.
- "A slashing of taxes and a revamping of the tax code to eliminate 'progressive' taxation that consumes the incentive to create wealth.
- "A restoration of the strength of and the pride in our armed forces by increasing defense spending, and taking care of the most pressing threats to U.S. national security, in particular the building of an SDI defense of the American homeland.
- "Repealing the trash in the crime bill, especially the limits on the rights of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, and passing measures that promote strong local law enforcement and the individual's role in preventing crime.
- "Abolishing unneeded agencies and departments of government that are the domain of individuals or local government, such as the Departments of Energy and Education.
- "Above all passing a federal term limits act that forever eliminates the career politician and reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy, including reducing the size of congressional staffs."
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Affiliations
Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University): Professor of Defense and Strategic Studies (1993-2001)
Center for Security Policy: Former Member, Board of Advisers
Comparative Strategy: Former Member, Editorial Board
Government Service
Deputy National Security Adviser: January 2005-May 2007
State Department: U.S. Ambassador to Romania (May 2004-January 2005)
U.S. Department of Defense: Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy (August 2001-October 2003)
Christian County Sheriff's Office: Former Reserve Deputy Sheriff
Multi-County Special Response Team: Member
Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-WY): Military Legislative Assistant (1986-1990)
U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: Assistant Director for Strategic Programs (1984-1986)
U.S. Delegation on Nuclear and Space Arms Talks with the Soviet Union: Adviser
Private Sector
PalmGear.com: Cofounder
Education
University of Southern California: BA, MA, PhD, International Relations
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