Bipartisan think - Bush policy stinks

Think tanks are becoming a growth industry. There seems to be a new one springing up every day but this one perhaps has more import than most. Partnership for a Secure America, "a group of diplomatic heavyweights" is "preparing to launch a bipartisan coalition to promote a return to a more moderate and multilateral foreign policy." The membership roll lives up to this somewhat hyperbolic review.

The group includes top officials who served in the administrations of presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, such as the two presidents' most durable national security advisers - Samuel Berger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, respectively - as well as former secretary of state Warren Christopher; Clinton's first national security adviser, Anthony Lake; former defense secretary William Perry, and former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

But it also includes leading Republican moderates, some of whom have even served under Bush. They include former senator Howard Baker, who served until last year as Bush's ambassador to Japan, and, even more significantly, his most recent UN ambassador, former senator John Danforth, who, since his resignation, has been uncharacteristically outspoken about his concerns that the Republican Party has increasingly come under the sway of the Christian Right.

Lawrence Eagleburger, a protege of Henry Kissinger and the number two in the State Department under George H W Bush who also served briefly as acting secretary of state in 1992, as well as one of Ronald Reagan's national security advisers, retired General Robert "Bud" MacFarlane, have also signed up.

Other leading Republicans include former trade representative Carla Hills, former senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker, former New Jersey governor and co-chair of the 9-11 Commission Thomas Kean, and the former deputy secretary of state under Reagan, John Whitehead. Former UN ambassador Thomas Pickering, who served under Bush Sr but, like Eagleburger was a career foreign service officer, has also joined.

Notable among the missing high rollers are,

George H W Bush's former secretary of state James Baker and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft - the deans of Republican realism - who may feel that joining such a potentially high-profile group risks the loss of whatever moderating influence they retain in the administration, particularly with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. Not to mention Colin Powell.

It's actually a bit terrifying to consider, if these guys weren't really concerned about the direction our foreign policy is currently going in, none of them would probably be giving up the fruits of their retirement to organize a challenge to the PNAC crowd.

Time will tell whether this is just another symbolic gesture or actual call to arms for, as the author puts it, radical centrists. Whatever happens, I have to think such a bipartisan conjunction of major political players can only be a good thing.