Will It Be a Cold War Redux?

The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) was an articulate and effective Cold War-era advocacy grouping that played an influential role in instilling an all-of-government-and-society response to the challenge presented by the Soviet Union. Stocked with a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of the Beltway’s political and policy aristocracy, the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD-I) served as a bulwark against the influence of communism in the U.S. in the late-1940s/early-1950s and, resuscitated in the mid-1970s as the Committee on the Present Danger II (CPD-II), played an equally pivotal role in the U.S.’ Cold War victory push in the 1980s.

In spring 2019, a new Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPD:C), modelled on its Cold War forerunners, was launched by a hawkish assortment of distinguished national security practitioners, determined anti-China publicists, and anti-Establishment ‘America First’ theorists. The new Committee is no chip off the old block. That said, with Beijing’s ties with Washington in disarray and with a broad bipartisan consensus palpably evident regarding the imminent Great Power challenge of China at hand, the ability of a re-constituted Committee on the Present Danger: China to morph, down-the-line, into a powerful anti-China pressure group with widespread buy-in across the Beltway and beyond should not be dismissed.

So, what were the facilitative conditions, ingredients of success, and modus operandi that was instrumental to the storied achievements of the Cold War-era CPD’s? And what are the practical implications that derive or are relevant today, insofar as the CPD:C is concerned in particular?

First, the key national security policy divide during the Cold War was not between the national security ‘internationalists’ and the ‘isolationists’ but was within the mainstream ‘internationalist’ establishment. CPD-I and CPD-II was essentially about policy and bureaucratic competition within the internationalist-minded senior bureaucracy to capture the national security decision-making control tower, and thereby frame out and fill-in the means to implement ‘containment’. Relevant to today, a Committee on the Present Danger: China that is honeycombed in part with ‘America First’ sentiment will need to shed its populist and isolationist leanings if it is to have any chance of ‘going mainstream’ as the Beltway’s premier anti-China mobilizational operation.

Second, the modus operandi employed by CPD-I and CPD-II hawks to outmaneuver their realist-minded counterparts within the national security senior bureaucracy was to argue that: (a) the Soviets were an aggressive and immoral power; (b) hoping to elicit change in the Kremlin’s international conduct for the better was an illusory notion; (c) to seek accommodation and coexistence was not just dangerous but defeatist and compromised the moral foundations of American foreign policy; and (d) what was needed rather was a qualitatively deeper commitment in men, money, materiel, and ultimately willpower to stare down and defeat the Soviet Communist challenge. A successful future CPD:C will almost-certainly employ this tried-and-tested playbook. Conversely, it is questionable if the fiscal means will be available, even if the appetite for conflict is undimmed.

Third, for CPD-I and CPD-II’s provocative hardline arguments to gain traction within the larger body politic as well as the American public, it was essential to manufacture episodes of East-West tension as a moment of existential crisis for American national security. CPD proponents generated hysteria about Soviet intentions and overstated Moscow’s capabilities. Sophisticated political advocacy and lobbying was deployed thereafter to delegitimize the supposedly weak-kneed response of the incumbent, realist-minded policymakers. A successful CPD:C will almost-certainly mimic this tried-and-tested playbook during a future flashpoint crisis with China. It is instructive to point out though that in the current age of mass media decentralization – and disinformation – the top-down manufacturing of the necessary ‘public will’, as was the case during the CPD-I and CPD-II eras, is no longer a straightforward proposition. 

Fourth, the core membership of both Committees on the Present Danger shared three essential traits. First, they may have been hawkish to a fault but they were not anti-mainstream players. Second, they came from a diversity of occupations, and were therefore representative of a wide swathe of American society and success. And third, CPD-I and II’s key leaders had significant experience at the senior-most levels of government and even once out of government, continued to enjoy impeccable access to the highest levels of government. The current Committee on the Present Danger: China, composed overwhelmingly as it is of the inbred mid-level reaches of the state’s military-industrial complex, is lacking on each of these counts.

Fifth, the success of both Committees on the Present Danger derived from their long incubation periods outside government or at the lesser reaches of government, during which time their proponents were able to sharpen their ideological and political agenda and perfect their messaging to the political establishment and the American people. It also enabled them to establish excellent connections within government and parley an ‘insider-outsider’ strategy to constrict the sitting Administration’s national security policymaking space and bend it to the Committee’s harder-line policy will. Few among the current Committee on the Present Danger: China, by contrast, will be returning to the loftiest portals of government anytime soon.

Finally, CPD-I and CPD-II members originated from both sides of the political aisle but found their calling and voices primarily in Republican administrations. For any Committee on the Present Danger: China to go viral within the Beltway, it will need to possess cross-over bipartisan appeal – something that it currently lacks. Furthermore, the ideological moorings of the present-day Republican Party remain in flux too. And should the Party’s slide towards the isolationist, anti-mainstream populism of its disenchanted white, working class constituents continue unchecked, it could commensurately cease to be an appropriate vehicle to transmit the new Cold War fight to Socialist China’s door.