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The Vulcans is a nickname used to refer to Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's foreign policy advisory team assembled to brief him prior to the 2000 US presidential election.
The Vulcans were led by Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the U.S. National Security Council. The group's ranks included Richard Armitage, Robert Blackwill, Stephen Hadley, Richard Perle, Dov S. Zakheim, Robert Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, and Wolfowitz protégé, Scooter Libby.
During the campaign, Bush sought to deflect questions about his own lack of foreign policy experience by pointing to this group of experienced advisers. After the election, all the members of the team received key positions within the new Bush administration. Other key campaign figures including Dick Cheney, George P. Shultz and Colin Powell were also closely associated with the group, but were never actually members.
The name "The Vulcans" alludes to a huge statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metalworking, in Rice's home town of Birmingham, Alabama. It may also allude to fictional, humanlike, alien beings who suppress their emotions in favor of cold rational logic in Star Trek. The most famous of those Vulcans is Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy.