posted 06-02-2003 06:31 AM
May 28, 2003
A PNAC Primer
How We Got Into This Mess
By BERNARD WEINER Recently, I was the guest on a radio talk-show hosted by a thoroughly decent
far-right Republician. I got verbally battered, but returned fire and, I
think, held my own. Toward the end of the hour, I mentioned that the National
Security Strategy -- promulgated by the Bush Administration in September 2002 --
now included attacking possible future competitors first, assuming regional
hegemony by force of arms, controlling energy resources around the globe,
maintaining a permanent-war strategy, etc.
"I'm not making up this stuff," I said. "It's all talked about openly by the
neoconservatives of the Project for the New American Century -- who now are in
charge of America's military and foreign policy -- and published as official
U.S. doctrine in the National Security Strategy of the United States of
America."
The talk-show host seemed to gulp, and then replied: "If you really can
demonstrate all that, you probably can deny George Bush a second term in 2004."
Two things became apparent in that exchange: 1) Even a well-educated,
intelligent radio commentator was unaware of some of this information; and, 2) Once
presented with it, this conservative icon understood immediately the
implications of what would happen if the American voting public found out about these
policies.
So, a large part of our job in the run-up to 2004 is to get this information
out to those able to hear it and understand the implications of an imperial
foreign/military policy on our economy, on our young people in uniform, on our
moral sense of ourselves as a nation, on our constitutional freedoms, on our
constitutional freedoms, and on our treaty obligations -- which is to say, our
respect for the rule of law. Nearly 40% of Bush's support is fairly solid, but
there is a block of about 20% inbetween that 40% and the 40% who can be
counted upon to vote for a reasonable Democratic candidate -- and that 20% is where
the election will be decided. We need to reach a goodly number of those
moderate (and even some traditionally conservative) Republicans and independents
with the facts inherent in the dangerous, reckless, and expensive policies
carried out by the Bush Administration.
When these voters become aware of how various, decades-old, popular programs
are being rolled back or eliminated (because there's no money available for
them, because that money is being used to fight more and more wars, and because
income to the federal coffers is being siphoned-off in costly tax-cuts to the
wealthiest sectors of society), that 20% may be a bit more open to hearing
what we have to say.
When it's your kids' schools being short-changed, and your state's and city's
services to citizens being chopped, your bridges and parks and roadways and
libraries and public hospitals being neglected, your IRAs and pensions losing
their value, and your job not being as secure as in years past -- in short,
when you can see the connection between Bush&Co.'s expensive military policies
and your thinner wallet and reduced social amenities, true voter-education
becomes possible. It's still the economy, stupid.
ORIGINS OF THE CRISIS
Most of us Americans saw the end of the Cold War as a harbinger of a more
peaceful globe, and we relaxed knowing that the communist world was no longer a
threat to the U.S. The Soviet Union, our partner in MAD (Mutually Assured
Destruction) and Cold War rivalry around the globe, was no more. This meant a
partial vacuum in international affairs. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The only major vacuum-filler still standing after the Cold War was the United
States. One could continue traditional diplomacy on behalf of American ends
-- the kind of polite, well-disguised defense of U.S. interests (largely
corporate) and imperial ambition carried out under Bush#1, Reagan, Clinton, et al.
-- knowing that we'd mostly get our way eventually given our status as the
globe's only Superpower. Or one could try to speed up the process and accomplish
those same ends overtly -- with an attitude of arrogance and in-your-face
bullying -- within maybe one or two Republican administrations.
Some of the ideological roots of today's Bush Administration power-wielders
could be traced back to political philosophers Leo Strauss and Albert
Wohlstetter or to GOP rightist Barry Goldwater and his rabid anti-communist followers
in the early-1960s. But, for simplicity's sake let's stick closer to our own
time.
In the early-1990s, there was a group of ideologues and power-politicians on
the fringe of the Republican Party's far-right. The members of this group in
1997 would found The Project for the New American Century (PNAC); their aim was
to prepare for the day when the Republicans regained control of the White
House -- and, it was hoped, the other two branches of government as well -- so
that their vision of how the U.S. should move in the world would be in place and
ready to go, straight off-the-shelf into official policy.
This PNAC group was led by such heavy hitters as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick
Cheney, James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, James Bolton,
Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Bennett, Dan Quayle, Jeb Bush, most of whom were
movers-and-shakers in previous Administrations, then in power-exile, as it were,
while Clinton was in the White House. But even given their reputations and
clout, the views of this group were regarded as too extreme to be taken
seriously by the mainstream conservatives that controlled the Republican Party.
SETTING UP PNAC
To prepare the ground for the PNAC-like ideas that were circulating in the
HardRight, various wealthy individuals and corporations helped set up far-right
think-tanks, and bought up various media outlets -- newspapers, magazines, TV
networks, radio talk shows, cable channels, etc. -- in support of that day
when all the political tumblers would click into place and the PNAC cabal and
their supporters could assume control.
This happened with the Supreme Court's selection of George W. Bush in 2000.
The "outsiders" from PNAC were now powerful "insiders," placed in important
positions from which they could exert maximum pressure on U.S. policy: Cheney is
Vice President, Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz is Deputy Defense
Secretary, I. Lewis Libby is Cheney's Chief of Staff, Elliot Abrams is in charge
of Middle East policy at the National Security Council, Dov Zakheim is
comptroller for the Defense Department, John Bolton is Undersecretary of State,
Richard Perle is chair of the Defense Policy advisory board at the Pentagon, former
CIA director James Woolsey is on that panel as well, etc. etc. (PNAC's
chairman, Bill Kristol, is the editor of Rupert Murdoch's The Weekly Standard.) In
short, PNAC had a lock on military policy-creation in the Bush Administration.
But, in order to unleash their foreign/military campaigns without taking all
sorts of flak from the traditional wing of the conservative GOP -- which was
more isolationist, more opposed to expanding the role of the federal
government, more opposed to military adventurism abroad -- they needed a context that
would permit them free rein. The events of 9/11 rode to their rescue. (In one of
their major reports, written in 2000, they noted that "the process of
transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one,
absent some catastrophic and catalyzing even--like a new Pearl Harbor.")
After those terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration used the fear
generated in the general populace as their cover for enacting all sorts of draconian
measures domestically (the Patriot Act, drafted earlier, was rushed through
Congress in the days following 9/11; few members even read it), and as their
rationalization for launching military campaigns abroad. (Don't get me wrong. The
Islamic fanatics that use terror as their political weapon are real and deadly
and need to be stopped. The question is: How to do that in ways that enhance
rather than detract from America's long-term national interests?)
THE DOMESTIC RAMIFICATIONS
Even today, the Bush manipulators, led by Karl Rove, continue to utilize fear
and hyped-up patriotism and a permanent war on terrorism as the basis for
their policy agenda, the top item of which, at this juncture, consists of getting
Bush elected in 2004. This, in order to continue to fulfill their primary
objectives, not the least of which domestically is to roll back and, where
possible, decimate and eliminate social programs that the far-right has hated since
the New Deal/Great Society days.
By and large, these programs are popular with Americans, so Bush&Co. can't
attack them frontally -- but if all the monies are tied up in wars, defense, tax
cuts, etc., they can go to the American public and, in effect, say: "We'd
love to continue to fund Head Start and education and environmental protection
and drugs for the elderly through Medicare, but you see there's simply no extra
money left over after we go after the bad guys. It's not our fault."
So far, that stealth strategy has worked. The Bush&Co. hope is that the
public won't catch on to their real agenda -- to seek wealth and power at the
expense of average citizens -- until after a 2004 victory, and maybe not even then.
Just keep blaming the terrorists, the French, the Dixie Chicks, peaceniks,
fried potatoes, whatever.
One doesn't have to speculate what the PNAC guys might think, since they're
quite open and proud of their theories and strategies. Indeed, they've left a
long, public record that lays out quite openly what they're up to. As I say, it
was all laid out years ago, but nobody took such extreme talk seriously; now
that they're in power, actually making the policy they only dreamed about a
decade or so ago -- with all sorts of scarifying consequences for America and
the rest of the world -- we need to educate ourselves quickly as to how the
PNACers work and what their future plans might be.
THE PNAC PAPER TRAIL
Here is a shorthand summary of PNAC strategies that have become U.S. policy.
Some of these you may have heard about before, but I've expanded and updated
as much as possible.
1. In 1992, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had a strategy report
drafted for the Department of Defense, written by Paul Wolfowitz, then
Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy. In it, the U.S. government was urged, as the
world's sole remaining Superpower, to move aggressively and militarily around the
globe. The report called for pre-emptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions, but said
that the U.S. should be ready to act alone when "collective action cannot be
orchestrated." The central strategy was to "establish and protect a new order"
that accounts "sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial
nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership," while at the same
time maintaining a military dominance capable of "deterring potential competitors
from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Wolfowitz outlined
plans for military intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure
"access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.
Somehow, this report leaked to the press; the negative response was
immediate. Senator Robert Byrd led the Democratic charge, calling the recommended
Pentagon strategy "myopic, shallow and disappointing....The basic thrust of the
document seems to be this: We love being the sole remaining superpower in the
world and we want so much to remain that way that we are willing to put at risk
the basic health of our economy and well-being of our people to do so."
Clearly, the objective political forces hadn't yet coalesced in the U.S. that could
support this policy free of major resistance, and so President Bush the Elder
publicly repudiated the paper and sent it back to the drawing boards. (For the
essence of the draft text, see Barton Gellman's "Keeping the U.S. First;
Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower" in the Washington Post.)
2. Various HardRight intellectuals outside the government were spelling out
the new PNAC policy in books and influential journals. Zalmay M. Khalilzad
(formerly associated with big oil companies, currently U.S. Special Envoy to
Afghanistan & Iraq ) wrote an important volume in 1995, "From Containment to Global
Leadership: America & the World After the Cold War," the import of which was
identifying a way for the U.S. to move aggressively in the world and thus to
exercise effective control over the planet's natural resources. A year later,
in 1996, neo-conservative leaders Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, in their
Foreign Affairs article "Towards a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," came right out
and said the goal for the U.S. had to be nothing less than "benevolent global
hegemony," a euphemism for total U.S. domination, but "benevolently" exercised,
of course.
3. In 1998, PNAC unsuccessfully lobbied President Clinton to attack Iraq and
remove Saddam Hussein from power. The January letter from PNAC urged America
to initiate that war even if the U.S. could not muster full support from the
Security Council at the United Nations. Sound familiar? (President Clinton
replied that he was focusing on dealing with al-Qaida terrorist cells.)
4. In September of 2000, PNAC, sensing a GOP victory in the upcoming
presidential election, issued its white paper on "Rebuilding America's Defenses:
Strategy, Forces and Resources for the New Century." The PNAC report was quite
frank about why the U.S. would want to move toward imperialist militarism, a Pax
Americana, because with the Soviet Union out of the picture, now is the time
most "conducive to American interests and ideals...The challenge of this coming
century is to preserve and enhance this 'American peace'." And how to preserve
and enhance the Pax Americana? The answer is to "fight and decisively win
multiple, simultaneous major-theater wars."
In serving as world "constable," the PNAC report went on, no other
countervailing forces will be permitted to get in the way. Such actions "demand American
political leadership rather than that of the United Nations," for example. No
country will be permitted to get close to parity with the U.S. when it comes
to weaponry or influence; therefore, more U.S. military bases will be
established in the various regions of the globe. (A post-Saddam Iraq may well serve as
one of those advance military bases.) Currently, it is estimated that the
U.S. now has nearly 150 military bases and deployments in different countries
around the world, with the most recent major increase being in the Caspian
Sea/Afghanistan/Middle East areas.
5. George W. Bush moved into the White House in January of 2001. Shortly
thereafter, a report by the Administration-friendly Council on Foreign Relations
was prepared, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,"that
advocated a more aggressive U.S. posture in the world and called for a
"reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy," with access to oil
repeatedly cited as a "security imperative." (It's possible that inside Cheney's
energy-policy papers -- which he refuses to release to Congress or the
American people -- are references to foreign-policy plans for how to gain military
control of oilfields abroad.)
6. Mere hours after the 9/11 terrorist mass-murders, PNACer Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld ordered his aides to begin planning for an attack on Iraq, even
though his intelligence officials told him it was an al-Qaida operation and
there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks. "Go massive," the aides'
notes quote him as saying. ( "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." Rumsfeld
leaned heavily on the FBI and CIA to find any shred of evidence linking the
Iraq government to 9/11, but they weren't able to. So he set up his own
fact-finding group in the Pentagon that would provide him with whatever shaky
connections it could find or surmise.
7. Feeling confident that all plans were on track for moving aggressively in
the world, the Bush Administration in September of 2002 published its "
National Security Strategy of the United States of America." The official policy of
the U.S. government, as proudly proclaimed in this major document, is virtually
identical to the policy proposals in the various white papers of the Project
for the New American Century and others like it over the past decade.
Chief among them are: 1) the policy of "pre-emptive" war -- i.e., whenever
the U.S. thinks a country may be amassing too much power and/or could provide
some sort of competition in the "benevolent hegemony" region, it can be
attacked, without provocation. (A later corollary would rethink the country's atomic
policy: nuclear weapons would no longer be considered defensive, but could be
used offensively in support of political/economic ends; so-called "mini-nukes"
could be employed in these regional wars.) 2) international treaties and
opinion will be ignored whenever they are not seen to serve U.S. imperial goals. 3)
The new policies "will require bases and stations within and beyond Western
Europe and Northeast Asia."
In short, the Bush Administration seems to see the U.S., admiringly, as a New
Rome, an empire with its foreign legions (and threat of "shock&awe" attacks,
including with nuclear weapons) keeping the outlying colonies, and potential
competitors, in line. Those who aren't fully in accord with these goals better
get out of the way; "you're either with us or against us."
SUMMARY & THE PNAC FUTURE
Everyone loves a winner, and American citizens are no different. It makes a
lot of people feel good that we "won" the battle for Iraq, but in doing so we
paid too high a price at that, and may well have risked losing the larger war
in the Arab/Muslim region: the U.S. now lacks moral stature and standing in
much of the world, it is revealed as a liar for all to see (no WMDs in Iraq, no
connection to 9/11, no quick handing-over the interim reins of government to
the Iraqis as initially promised), it destroyed a good share of the United
Nation's effectiveness and prestige that may come in handy later, it needlessly
alienated our traditional allies, it infuriated key elements of the Muslim world,
it provided political and emotional ammunition for anti-U.S. terrorists, etc.
Already, we're talking about $80 to $100 billion from the U.S. treasury for
post-war reconstruction in Iraq. And the PNACers are gearing up for their next
war: let's see, should we move first on Iran or on Syria, or maybe do
Syria-lite first in Lebanon?
One can believe that maybe PNAC sincerely believes its rhetoric -- that
instituting U.S.-style free-markets and democratically-elected governments in Iraq
and the other authoritarian-run countries of the Islamic Middle East will be
good both for the citizens of that region and for American interests as well --
but even if that is true, it's clear that these incompetents are not
operating in the world of Middle Eastern realities.
These are armchair theorheticians -- most of whom made sure not to serve in
the military in Vietnam -- who truly believed, for example, that the Iraqis
would welcome the invading U.S. forces with bouquets of flowers and kisses when
they "liberated" their country from the horribleness of Saddam Hussein's reign.
The Iraqis, by and large, were happy to be freed of Saddam's terror, but, as
it stands now, the U.S. military forces are more likely to be engulfed in a
political/religious quagmire for years there, as so many of the majority Shia
population just want the occupying soldiers to leave.
And yet PNAC theorists continue to believe that remaking the political
structure of the Middle East -- by force if necessary, although they hope the
example of what the U.S. did to Iraq will make war unnecessary -- will be fairly
easy.
These are men of big ideas, but who don't really think. They certainly don't
think through what takes place in the real world, when the genies of war and
religious righteousness are let out of the bottle. For example, as New York
Times columnist Tom Friedman recently put it, the U.S. had no Plan B for Iraq.
They did great with Plan A, the war, but when the Saddam government collapsed,
and with it law and order, and much of the population remained sullen and
resentful towards the U.S., they had no prepared way of dealing with it. An
embarrassing three weeks went by, with no progress, finally leading the Bush
Administration to force out its initial administrators and to put in another team to
have a go at it.
No, friends, the PNAC boys are dangerous ideologues playing with matches, and
the U.S. is going to get burned even more in years to come, unless their hold
on power is broken. The only way to accomplish this, given the present
circumstances, is to defeat their boss at the polls in 2004, thus breaking the
HardRight momentum that has done, and is doing, such great damage to our reputation
abroad and to our country internally, especially to our Constitution and
economy.
We don't need an emperor, we don't need huge tax cuts for the wealthy when
the economy is tanking, we don't need more "pre-emptive" wars, we don't need
more shredding of constitutional due process. Instead, we need leaders with big
ideas who are capable of creative thinking. We need peace and justice in the
Middle East (to help alter the chemistry of the soil in which terrorism grows),
we need jobs and economic growth at home, and we need authentic and effective
"homeland security" consistent with our civil liberties.
In short, we need a new Administration, which means that we need to get to
serious work to make all this change happen. Organize!, organize!, organize!#
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international relations at
various universities, and was a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle
for nearly 20 years. He now co-edits the progressive website The Crisis Papers.
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