The privatisation of part of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) has been generally reported as a financial scandal. More important is what it tells us about the politics of New Labour. There are two dimensions to this: first there is New Labour’s commitment to big business and in particular to […]
[…] big step towards meeting. It is the story of the Committee on the Present Danger, the Cold War think-tank that prepared the way for the election of Reagan and provided the administration with Jeanne Kirkpatrick, William Casey and Eugene Rostow. Sanders shows how the CPD emerged from a split between what he calls the […]
[…] to the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. For Kamm, these reflected ‘….a curious belief – reinforced by loose talk from a new President, Ronald Reagan – that a new generation of intermediate missiles was being deployed in order to fight a “limited” nuclear war in Europe. The notion was preposterous. The […]
[…] it also resulted from a convergence of the rightist political aims of both the ‘private’ groups and factions within the national security apparatus created by President Ronald Reagan and his advisors. Among the groups that have participated in these activities are the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), the Air Commando Association (ACA), the National Defense […]
[…] Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection, (Sheridan Square Publishing, New York 1986) pp. 92-7; Jane Hunter, Jonathan Marshall and Peter Dale Scott, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, (South End Press, Boston, 1987) pp. 72-5; Larry Gurwin, The Calvi Affair: Death of a Banker, (Pan, London 1984) pp.190-195.
Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire Anne Norton New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004 $25/£16 What’s the Matter with America? Thomas Frank The Resistable Rise of the American Right London: Secker & Warburg, 2004, £12 Most of us in Europe find it difficult to understand what happened in America on […]
All four of Tony Blair’s new political appointees at the Ministry of Defence are part of Labour’s Atlanticist network. Three of them, George Robertson, Lord John Gilbert and John Speller, are members of two interrelated bodies, the Atlantic Council and its labour movement wing, the Trades Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding (TUCETU). The […]
Free Ride Department Meanwhile the Rand Corporation (that liberal think tank in Santa Monica which helps decide which Russian cities should be atom-bombed) has declared that the federal government must continue to support an obscure military satellite system known as Global Positioning Network. Much beloved by high-tech hikers and rental car enthusiasts, the GPS supposedly […]
NB This essay has been compressed a good deal. The longer version is at < http://www.pertier.com/demos.html > Ostensibly a left-leaning ‘think tank’, Demos’ initial Advisory Board gathered mostly those who wished to extend ‘Thatcherism’ into the ‘New Labour’ project. The Advisory Board Martin JacquesHis time in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) has been […]
A spook, moi? One of the formative experiences of my youth – and we’re talking early 1960s here, beatnik days, when wearing a narrow leather tie was pretty hip – was going to the Mound in Edinburgh on Sunday nights. The Mound is like Hyde Park Corner in London, a place where local by-laws allow […]
