The new Cold Warriors

NO history of the Cold War would be complete without the mention of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a Washington-based lobbying organisation that brought together some of the leading figures in public life, with its main goal being to mobilise the American people and elites in confronting the threat of the Soviet Union and "to stiffen American resolve to confront the challenge presented by terrorism and the ideologies that drive it", as its mission statement put it.

Established during the start of the Cold War in1950, the bipartisan group included Democratic and Republican politicians, retired generals and diplomats and academic luminaries who were supportive of strengthening the US military as part of an overall effort to project a tough posture vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and the communist bloc - the "present danger" identified as "the aggressive designs of the Soviet Union".

The CPD had gone through several iterations during the Cold War, and was transformed into a powerful voice of military hawks in the 1970s who were opposed to the policy of détente with the Soviet Union pursued by US administrations at the time, many of whom ended up occupying top foreign policy positions under the hawkish and anti-Soviet Republican president Ronald Reagan.