Overview
Founded in 1981, the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) "devotes its agenda to assessing U.S. foreign and defense polices in this new environment." According to NIPP, "The collapse of the Soviet empire and the rise of new, potentially hostile regional powers have transformed the strategic landscape for the United States. The static, bipolar Cold War model of international behavior no longer holds, and the basic assumptions behind decades of U.S. foreign and defense policy need drastic rethinking."
NIPP's advisory board includes the following figures: Kathleen Bailey, Gen. George Blanchard, USA (ret.), William R. Graham, Colin Gray, Felix Hampton (Hampton Management Associates), Charles Kupperman (Boeing), Jane Mortensen (Mortensen & Mendonca), LTG William Odom (ret.), Keith Payne, Adm. Harry D. Train (ret.), and William Van Cleave (Center for Defense and Strategic Studies). NIPP board members are Gray, Hampton, Kupperman, Mortensen, and Payne. Staff include Keith Payne (president and CEO), Kathleen Bailey (senior associate), and Colin Gray (European director). (6)
Origins and History
Since its creation in 1981, the National Institute on Public Policy (NIPP) has established itself as a key policy institute in the firmament of the right's ever-expanding constellation of counter-establishment groups. Leaving aside the question of whether it is possible to provide "high-quality" or "cogent" analysis about NIPP's favorite subjects-strategic use of nuclear weapons and the construction of hypothetical missile shields-this small policy institute in Fairfax, Virginia, has certainly had a significant impact on U.S. policy. Both during the Reagan presidency and in the new Bush administration, NIPP has succeeded in reorienting U.S. national strategy away from arms control frameworks and toward the new frontiers of star wars, national missile defense, and first strike nuclear options. (1)
Former and current NIPP presidents, Colin Gray and Keith Payne made their debut in Foreign Policy's 1980 article "Victory is Possible." The authors argued that the "United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally" and that "the West needs to devise ways in which it can employ strategic nuclear forces coercively, while minimizing the potentially paralyzing impact of self-deterrence." Both authors left the conservative Hudson Institute to join the newly created National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) in 1981. Along with Albert Wohlstetter, Gray and Payne shaped Ronald Reagan's early thinking about nuclear weapons use, evident in Reagan's March 23, 1983 statement. (2)
In anticipating a review of U.S. nuclear posture by the incoming administration, NIPP President Payne led a team that in January 2001 produced the NIPP study Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control, which shortly thereafter served as a blueprint for the Bush administration's own Nuclear Posture Review in 2002. Among those NIPP study team participants who entered the Bush administration as officials or advisers were: Stephen Hadley and Stephen Cambone, both of whom oversaw the Nuclear Review Process; Robert Joseph who oversees counter-proliferation strategy at the National Security Council; and Kurt Guthe, Linton Brooks, James Woolsey, and Keith Payne who served on the Nuclear Deterrence Advisory Panel. (3) (4)
Funding
NIPP attracts funding from right-wing foundations and enjoys an array of ties to military contractors, nuclear weapons laboratories, defense department officials, and other right-wing institutes. NIPP touts its "hallmark" as "high-quality, cogent analysis" that exerts a "significant impact on the U.S. position in the world." NIPP offers no public accounting of its funding, although it acknowledges that its "research and educational program is supported by government, corporate, and private foundation grants and contracts." (1) (5)
From 1985-2001, NIPP received more than $2.5 million from conservative and right-wing foundations, mainly Smith Richardson, Sarah Scaife, Olin, Bradley, and Carthage. (5)
During Clinton's last year in the White House, Smith Richardson Foundation provided NIPP with several major grants to explore options for deploying missile defense systems and ending the ABM Treaty. This funding enabled Douglas Feith, a former lawyer for Northrop Grumman and currently undersecretary of defense for policy to co-direct a NIPP conference on the legal status of the ABM Treaty in relation to "current missile defense diplomacy." Another Smith Richardson grant financed a NIPP contract with Max Kampelman to lead an effort to develop a bilateral consensus with Russia on accepting missile defense and ending the ABM Treaty. The Bush Administration's unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in early 2002 and its December 2002 national security directive ordering an initial set of long-range missile interceptors by September 2004 are the kind of policy impacts that NIPP maneuvers to achieve. (5)
For the NIPP study Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control, Smith Richardson Foundation ponied up the funds ($300,000) and then granted NIPP another $50,000 to publicize the report. (5)
