Another section in PBS/Frontline’s excellent “The War Behind Closed Doors” feature has analysis of Paul Wolfowitz’s then-controversial “Defense Planning Guidance” draft, and its resemblance to the Bush administration’s current foreign policy approach. The anaylsis is in the form of interviews with four people “in the know” in Washington D.C. — most notably William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and PNAC Chairman, whose interview will be featured in a separate entry here soon. The other experts are former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, and John Lewis Gaddis, Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

The main page features select questions and answers with each of the 4 experts, with links to the full interviews. Here’s an excerpt from one of those selections, with reporter Barton Gellman:

What were [the ‘92 Wolfowitz Defense Planning Guidance draft’s] ramifications?

It was very controversial in Congress. There was an enormous amount of commentary by the opinion leaders saying, “This is way over the top.” And, it was an election year. And they caved.

Read all the excerpts and interviews here.

And certainly don’t miss the interview with William Kristol, which is a surprisingly frank and revealing look at how Wolfowitz’s once-controversial agenda came to be wholly embraced by President Bush in the wake of 9-11. That interview is a “must-read”.

From The American Prospect:

Just the Beginning
Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?

By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 4.1.03

For months Americans have been told that the United States is going to war against Iraq in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, remove him from power, eliminate Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and prevent Baghdad from blackmailing its neighbors or aiding terrorist groups. But the Bush administration’s hawks, especially the neoconservatives who provide the driving force for war, see the conflict with Iraq as much more than that. It is a signal event, designed to create cataclysmic shock waves throughout the region and around the world, ushering in a new era of American imperial power. It is also likely to bring the United States into conflict with several states in the Middle East. Those who think that U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle spreading beyond Iraq’s borders, are likely to be mistaken.

“It may turn out to be a war to remake the world,” says Ledeen.

Full Story…

This story from PBS/Frontline’s “The War Behind Closed Doors” highlights excerpts from Paul Wolfowitz’s then-controversial “Defense Planning Guidance” draft. Since then, many of the goals in the draft have become the hallmarks of the Bush foreign policy doctrine.

From the Frontline page:

The 46-page classified document circulated for several weeks at senior levels in the Pentagon. But controversy erupted after it was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post and the White House ordered then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to rewrite it.

Three primary points from the draft:

� The number one objective of U.S. post-Cold War political and military strategy should be preventing the emergence of a rival superpower.

� Another major U.S. objective should be to safeguard U.S. interests and promote American values.

� If necessary, the United States must be prepared to take unilateral action.

Full story with key excerpts and quotes from the DPG draft

A professor at Yale has posted the full text of the Washington Post article from 1992, which includes much fuller excerpts from the DPG draft.

WAR WITHOUT END?
by David Remnick
The New Yorker
Issue of 2003-04-21 and 28
Posted 2003-04-14

Saddam Hussein, who came to power in 1979 declaring his intention to combine the glory of Nebuchadnezzar with the methods of Josef Stalin, no longer rules Iraq, and not to feel relief at the prospect of a world without him is to be possessed of a grudging heart. In a region well stocked with tyrants and autocrats, Saddam was singular in his ambitions, though not in the way proposed by his cult of personality. His record of murder, torture, aggression, intimidation, and subjugation is inscribed in the documentary reports of Human Rights Watch and in the souls of the traumatized ex-subjects who have survived to hammer at his fallen monuments. And yet it would also require a constricted conscience to declare the Anglo-American invasion finished business while so much of the world remains alarmed or enraged at the level of its presumption—and while so many dead go uncounted. It is hard to put a name to what has happened (to what is happening still), not least because the Bush Administration’s intentions, both within Iraq and beyond it, are still a question of deepest concern.

Even now, as Baghdad falls after three weeks of startling military advance, one can go on choosing among images and reference points. The “jubilant” crowd described in detail late last week by the Associated Press encourages one kind of analogy, the photograph of a hideously wounded child in Time quite another. Americans will not write this history on their terms alone, and the way in which it is written, absorbed, and understood by us, by the Europeans, by the Islamic world, and, most of all, by the Iraqis themselves will depend largely upon what comes next. What are the Administration’s true ambitions?

Full Story…

This brief provides an excellent short overview of the growth of the PNAC foreign policy wave, from Paul Wolfowitz’s 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document (mentioned below), to fall 2002, when the final press for regime change in Iraq began. The brief is by Joseph Cirincione, a Senior Associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. You can hear him in a good segment on NPR’s Fresh Air (as well as the PNAC’s William Kristol) here.

Origins of Regime Change in Iraq
Proliferation Brief, Volume 6, Number 5
Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Long before September 11, before the first inspections in Iraq had started, a small group of influential officials and experts in Washington were calling for regime change in Iraq. Some never wanted to end the 1991 war. Many are now administration officials. Their organization, dedication and brilliance offer much to admire, even for those who disagree with the policies they advocate.

The guidance called for preemptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions but said that the U.S. should be ready to act alone when “collective action cannot be orchestrated.” The primary goal of U.S. policy should be to prevent the rise of any nation that could challenge the United States. When the document leaked to the New York Times, it proved so extreme that it had to be rewritten. These concepts are now part of the new U.S. National Security Strategy.

Full Story…

This special report by the Center for Public Integrity looks at the people in the Defense Policy Board, and the strong connections that many of them have to defense contractors that do major business with the U.S.

Until recently Richard Perle, a PNAC principal, was Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. He resigned on March 27th of this year, after an article in the New Yorker brought to light his apparent conflict of interest. He remains on the board, but not in the position of Chairman. The Chairman, but not the other members of the Board, is governed by “special government employee” disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules.

Douglas Feith, mentioned in the report as the person who appoints the members of the DPB, is also affiliated with the PNAC, as is former CIA Director James Woolsey, who is one of the nine Board members with ties to major government contractors mentioned in the report.

Advisors of Influence: Nine Members of the Defense Policy Board Have Ties to Defense Contractors
By André Verlöy and Daniel Politi
Data by Aron Pilhofer

Of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, at least nine have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors.

The companies with ties to Defense Policy Board members include prominent firms like Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton and smaller players like Symantec Corp., Technology Strategies and Alliance Corp., and Polycom Inc.

…

According to its charter, the board was set up in 1985 to provide the Secretary of Defense “with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy.” The members are selected by and report to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy—currently Douglas Feith, a former Reagan administration official. All members are approved by the Secretary of Defense. The board’s quarterly meetings—normally held over a two-day period—are classified, and each session’s proceedings are summarized for the Defense Secretary. The board does not write reports or vote on issues. Feith, according to the charter, can call additional meetings if required. Notices of the meetings are filed at least 15 days before they are held in the Federal Register.

Michael O’Hanlon, a military expert at The Brookings Institution, told Time magazine in November 2002 that the board “is just another [public relations] shop for Rumsfeld.” Former members said that the character of the board changed under Rumsfeld. Previously the board was more bi-partisan; under Rumsfeld, it has become more interested in policy changes. The board has no official role in policy decisions.

Full Report…

The following links are featured on the same page:

RELATED LINKS
Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee members
Corporate Affiliations of Defense Policy Board Members
ADDITIONAL RESOURCE
For additional information, visit the Web site of PBS’ “Now With Bill Moyers.”

Here is an extensive analysis piece that first appeared in the Washington Post on September 30, 2001. It is by James Mann, former diplomatic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and senior writer-in-residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It traces the development of the foreign policy philosophies of most of the top members of the Bush foreign policy team, from the 1970’s until September 2001. At the end, he talks about how Bush will need to overcome divisions in his team in order to “collaborate on behalf of a common worldview — the vision of a powerful America that all the key players have shared and pursued for the past quarter-century.” Even as this article was published, those divisions were already being “overcome”, in the form of PNAC members challenging Colin Powell’s less-hawkish approach. It’s clear now which “camp” prevailed in that contest for influence.

This article has a lot of information detailing the ascendancy of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Armitage, all affiliated with the PNAC. It’s a 4-page .PDF file.

The Bush Team Shares a Vision But Not How To Reach It
The Washington Post
September 30, 2001
By James Mann

Suddenly, the Bush administration’s foreign policy team occupies center stage in Washington. After eight months of focus on domestic issues such as the tax cut, the nation will now be watching anxiously to see if the administration can deal with the rest of the world in a way that will prevent further attacks on American soil. Luckily, Bush’s foreign policy advisers have a remarkable record of experience to draw upon. They’re going to need it.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will test, as never before, the strength of the ideas for which this team’s members have all worked — the notions that the United States should remain militarily strong and globally deployed, that it can count on its allies, that it should protect its interests in the Middle East, and that, above all, American power is not beginning to decline. Taken together, the current Bush team represents the generation that believes in unrivaled American power — an America so strong that it has no need to reach accommodations with anyone, neither the Soviet Union or China in the Cold War period, nor Russia or China today.

Full Story… (.pdf file)

This “Editor briefing” in the U.K.’s Guardian Unlimited uses short quotes from various news and opinion sources as “answers” to a series of basic questions about the “neo-cons” — the term frequently used to refer to the group behind the PNAC’s (and now America’s) foreign policy model. The format leaves a little to be desired, but the “briefing” provides a decent basic summary, and its question & answer format makes it easier to digest than many of the longer articles about the PNAC. This excerpt on the Middle East plan is the best example of that:

And their Middle East plan? The US establishes a reasonably democratic, pro-western government in Iraq. When Palestinians see Iraqis beginning to enjoy real freedom and economic opportunity [they’ll] demand the Palestinian Authority reform politically and negotiate with Israel. A democratic Iraq will also hasten the fall of the fundamentalist Shia mullahs in Iran, whose citizens are gradually adopting anti-fanatic, pro-western sympathies. Jordan’s pro-western Hashemite monarchy would likely come into full bloom. Syria would be no more than a pale reminder of the bad old days. (If they made trouble, a US invasion would take care of them, too). The corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt would [look like] holdouts against the democratic tide. We could decide whether to ignore them as harmless throwbacks to the old days or deal with them, too.

Joshua Micah Marshall in Washington Monthly, April

The rise of the Washington ‘neo-cons’
The Editor briefing
Monday April 14, 2003
The Guardian

This audio segment from April 1st’s Fresh Air program on National Public Radio starts with an excellent summation of the PNAC’s goals, as explained by Joseph Cirincione from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s opposed to the PNAC’s plan for the world, but he gives a pretty fair appraisal of the benefits that the PNAC folks claim to seek, which he follows with a very succinct statement of why he opposes them.

He outlines the development of the PNAC coalition, discussing the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document drafted by Paul Wolfowitz, the 1998 letter written by PNAC members to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq, the 2000 “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” report, and the 2001 National Security Strategy, as well as a number of other episodes that have come together to bring us to the U.S. foreign policy stance that we see today.

The next half of the segment features William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and Chairman of the PNAC. He offers responses to many of the criticisms advanced by Mr. Cirincione, and answers host Terry Gross’ further questions.

The two segments together total about 45 minutes, and require either Real Player or Windows Media Player 9 in order to listen to them.

Joseph Cirincione and William Kristol on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, April 1, 2003

With the war on Iraq being gradually replaced by the occupation of Iraq, it seems that Syria has come into the sights of the Bush administration as the next adversary to be confronted in its war on terrorism.

This is consistent with the strategic vision of the Project for the New American Century, which declared in its first formal response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 that,

“any war against terrorism must target Hezbollah. We believe the administration should demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism.

-Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism, September 20, 2001

As this excerpt indicates, Iran is also viewed as a threat to be dealt with somewhere down the road, but it has not received nearly as many admonitions from the Bush administration as Iraq’s neighbor to the west. Clearly, the pressure and focus right now is on Syria.

Perhaps it should come as little surprise that the necessity of confronting Syria, possibly with military force, was first articulated some three years ago by the Middle East Forum, a think tank with strong links to the PNAC. Jim Lobe of the Asia Times has the story.

Familiar hawks take aim
By Jim Lobe
April 17, 2003

Many of the same people who led the campaign for war against Iraq signed a report released three years ago that called for using military force to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to end its military presence in Lebanon.

The study, “Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: The US Role“, was co-authored by Daniel Pipes, who has just been nominated by Bush to a post at the US Institute of Peace, and Ziad Abdelnour, who heads a group founded by him called the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL). The study was released by Pipes’ group, the Middle East Forum.

Full story…