The Committee for a Strong Europe lives!

[muriel_volestrangler]

About a year ago, I wrote up what I've found out about the Henry Jackson Society - which seemed to be shaping up as a possible successor to the PNAC, judging by its 'international patrons'. It seems to have stayed more as a discussion group, though it did publish a book. But part of my interest derived from the "Committee for a Strong Europe", which had previously been talked about by a PNAC member as a successor to that organisation - but had then failed to materialise, either on the web, or anywhere apart from the various blogs speculating about it.

Well, now it's turned up on the web - http://www.strongeurope.org/ . It has various articles on it, reprinted from things like The Weekly Standard, mostly from 2005 - but looking at the Google caches, it seems to have sprung into existence in mid-February 2007 (though the domain name was registered in Jan 2005 - seemingly based in Madrid).

Some of the articles are headed "Committee for a Strong Europe"
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/9.pdf
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/10.pdf
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/11.pdf
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/12.pdf
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/14.pdf

but some are headed "The Madrid Initiative", although that name doesn't seem to mean anything (it was occasionally used as a name for the anti-WMD "Proliferation Security Initiative", in which several countries (the usual suspects - USA, UK, Australia, France, Germany and more) claimed the right to stop and search any ship on the high seas, if it was suspected of carrying WMD-related material. This seems to have been aimed at North Korea).

http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/1.pdf
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/4.pdf
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/5.pdf
http://www.strongeurope.org/pdf/6.pdf

Ironically, its "Statement of Principles" is blank (as is its 'Manifesto'). It also interestingly reprints an article by Frank Gaffney called "Our Saudi Enemies" - not standard PNAC stuff.

Anyway, this is as much a way of getting their pages indexed on Google, by linking to them, as anything. But I do wonder who's behind the site, this time.

[dave_p]

1. The Committee that died of shame

Their http://www.strongeurope.org/page/3">About, http://www.strongeurope.org/page/2">Manifesto and http://www.strongeurope.org/letters">Letters & statements pages presumably tell us what's going through their heads (i.e. they're empty).

The phantom body was first reported on Oct 2, 2005 with McCain and disgraced lying Spanish ex-premier Aznar as co-chairs. Oddly enough, 11 months later the AEI had two of its "scholars" working "to organize a new AEI start-up, the Committee for a Strong Europe". That it's reduced to recycling ancient second-hand US opinion pieces doubtless reflects the enthusiasm with which Europeans have flocked to its banner of doing for them what the neocons have done for America.

Intriguingly its http://www.strongeurope.org/links/9">Links page only lists four officially-inspired bodies in Taiwan, which could be an indication of where the money's coming from - all $4.99 of it, to judge by progress so far.