[6] The organization stated that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world", and sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity".
[7] Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
[8][9][10][11] Observers such as Irwin Stelzer and Dave Grondin have suggested that the PNAC played a key role in shaping the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, particularly in building support for the Iraq War.
In the article, they argued that American conservatives were "adrift" in the area of foreign policy, advocated a "more elevated vision of America's international role", and suggested that the United States' should adopt a stance of "benevolent global hegemony.
It said the United States should strengthen ties with its democratic allies, "challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values", and preserve and extend "an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles".
Calling for a "Reaganite" policy of "military strength and moral clarity", it concluded that PNAC's principles were necessary "if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next".
[32] Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, specifically advocating regime change through "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq".
[14][40][41][42][43] Writing in Der Spiegel in 2003, for example, Jochen Bölsche specifically referred to PNAC when he claimed that "ultra-rightwing US think-tanks" had been "drawing up plans for an era of American global domination, for the emasculation of the UN, and an aggressive war against Iraq" in "broad daylight" since 1998.
Citing the PNAC's 1997 Statement of Principles, Rebuilding America's Defenses asserted that the United States should "seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership" by "maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces.
It also lists the names of 27 other participants who contributed papers or attended meetings related to the production of the report, six of whom subsequently assumed key defense and foreign policy positions in the Bush administration.
[48][49] It suggested that the preceding decade had been a time of peace and stability, which had provided "the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth" and "the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy".
Written before the September 11 attacks and during political debates of the Iraq War, a section of Rebuilding America's Defenses titled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force" became the subject of considerable controversy: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
Writing in Der Spiegel in 2003, Jochen Bölsche claimed that Rebuilding America's Defenses "had been developed by PNAC for Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Libby" and was "devoted to matters of 'maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests'".
[44][51] British MP Michael Meacher made similar allegations in 2003, stating that the document was "a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana", which had been "drawn up for" key members of the Bush administration.
[54] Similarly, Abelson has written that "evaluating the extent of PNAC's influence is not as straightforward" as Meacher and others maintain" as "we know very little about the inner workings of this think tank and whether it has lived up to its billing as the architect of Bush's foreign policy".
[61] In 2009 Robert Kagan and William Kristol created a new think tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative, which scholars Stephen M. Walt and Don Abelson have characterized as a successor to PNAC.