Date of Award

Spring 5-2016

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Program

History

Department

History

Major Professor

Dr. Günter J. Bischof

Second Advisor

Dr. James Mokhiber

Third Advisor

Col. Allan R. Millett USMCR (ret.), Ph.D.

Abstract

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative Washington, D.C. foreign policy think tank, comprised of seasoned foreign policy stalwarts who had served multiple presidential administrations as well as outside-the-beltway defense contractors, that was founded in 1997 by William Kristol, editor of the conservative political magazine The Weekly Standard, and Robert Kagan, a foreign policy analyst and political commentator currently at the Brookings Institution. The PNAC would shut down its operations in 2006. Using The Weekly Standard as its mouthpiece, the PNAC helped foment support for the removal of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein beginning in 1998, citing Iraq’s noncooperation with UN weapons inspections. The PNAC became further emboldened in its urgency and rhetoric to quell the geopolitical risk posed by Hussein after the 9/11 terror attacks. The only justifiable response the George W. Bush Administration could play in thwarting Hussein, the PNAC argued, involved a military action.

Keywords: The Project for the New American Century; Iraq War; Saddam Hussein; The Weekly Standard; The Vulcans; weapons of mass destruction

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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