THE NEOCON REVOLUTION
Posted by: joan.Russow on http://PEJ.org Sunday, January 30, 2005
F.H. Knelman, Ph.D.
The first emergence of a distinct radical new ideological group, the
neoCons, first appeared during the Reagan administration. Some
individual early prototypes appeared on the political/policy scene
earlier. Among this latter group was Alfred Wohlstetter, an early
member of the Rand Corporation's strategy reports, whose first report
on nuclear strategy was a classified paper - Rand Report R-244-S (K.
Husain, "NeoCons: The Men Behind the Curtain", Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, Nov/Dec, 2003, pp. 62-71).
Later, while a professor at the University of Chicago, Wohlstetter
engaged two young graduate students, Paul Wolfowitz, currently
Assistant Secretary of Defense and Richard Perle, the perennial hard-
line neoCon.
Both Wohlstetter and Wolfowitz argued that the U.S. must extend its
security umbrella to the middle East. Wolfowitz was also a member of
the notorious Team B, established by then CIA Director, George Bush
Sr., in 1976. The major message of the Wohlstetter-Wolfowitz team was
to argue that the U.S. move away from deterrence to a policy of world
domination, the centrepiece of a 1990 report by Wolfowitz to the then
Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney. A decade earlier Team B had found
a place in the Reagan administration, Reagan's "Evil Empire" rhetoric
underscored and began the undertaking of moving completely from
deterrence to nuclear warfighting dominance, leading to the largest
defence budget increase in U.S. history up to that time. Reagan's
neoCon advisers argued for a preemptive action which became the
centrepiece of George Bush Jr.,'s policy. Iraq became the
inevitable target of their policies, incorporating the policy of the
geopolitics of oil. Also a natural consequence of seeking world
domination was to trash the nuclear arms control regime and to
discount international law and the UN, i.e. unilateralism.
Key neoCons in the Reagan administration were the hawkish Secretary of
Defense, Caspar Weinberger, the perennial neoCon, Richard Perle, and a
mixture of the Old and New Right. In support were a number of lobbies
whose members were pure neoCons. The Committee on the Present Danger
(CPD) was typical. Its message was clearly enunciated by two key
members, Colin Gray and Keith Payne, in an article, "Victory is
Possible", i.e. "The United States should plan to defeat the Soviet
Union and to do so at a cost that would not prohibit U.S. recovery",
(see F.H. Knelman, "America, God and the Bomb: The Legacy of Ronald
Reagan") (Vancouver, New Star Books), 1987. The result was a complete
break with deterrence policy in favour of defeating the Soviet Union
through a counterforce first strike nuclear attack. The "acceptable"
cost was estimated at twenty million U.S. deaths. To reduce this
cost, a "Star Wars" development was proposed, later sanitized as the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The above policies are being
operationalized by the current Bush administration. Reagan sent the
complete neoCon, Donald Rumsfeld, as a special emissary to Iraq,
bringing with him a huge basket of military gifts to help Iraq defeat
Iran, a true irony of history.
Together with Wohlstetter, the evil wizard who fathered the neoCon
revolution was Lee Atwater. To his critics he was a symbol of the
dark side of U.S. politics (Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, March
30, 1991, p.A-1). Atwater had been the key adviser to George Bush
Sr., along with his associate, Karl Rove, the master of dirty tricks,
who is the current president's major adviser. Atwater was the key
parent of Pax America. This lineage continued with Rumsfeld's key
adviser, Thomas Barnett. Richard Perle, the Prince of Darkness, whose
influence began in the Reagan presidency, is a member of this clan of
evil wizards. All they needed was a compliant president and they
found the perfect one in George W. Bush. I believe that certain moral
judgements should be made with great caution.
Nevertheless the above men, the precursor advisers in favour of Pax
Americana were evil in the full meaning of that word. They were not
unlike the advisers to Hitler and their advice to Bush was sinister.
The message, "Do anything necessary to fulfill Pax America" was
planned, promoted and processed. And the current crop of advisers and
members of the Bush administration - Wolfowitz, Libby, Feith et al
are the servants of the nightmares which they serve with conviction
and, in many ways, control. We believe they are so blinded by power
that they will voluntarily persist in the trap of Iraq. To hold
elections under the current conditions is the fulfillment of failure.
The irony is that the Sunnis are unlikely to vote, thus the Shiite
majority is sure to win, once again creating an Islamic
fundamentalist regime which the U.S. had opposed earlier in Iran,
when it supported Iraq. To have a national election under such
adverse conditions is the mark of a madman. We now have hard evidence
that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and even Powell, based their invasion of
Iraq on a library of lies.
How can any fair person not conclude that the war in Iraq is an
international crime and these are the criminals who planned and
continue to wage it. Unfortunately there is no court to bring them to
justice. The court of history will have to perform this function.
The major neoCon goal is to establish a world dominated by Pax
Americana, the first global domination of our planet. An early
version of Pax Americana was contained in the publication of the
group Policy for New American Century (PNAC). Virtually every current
member of the neoCons in the Bush administration were former members
of PNAC. They included Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Eliot Cohen,
Stephen Cambone, Dov Zakheim and Lewis Libby. They were also all
academics. In 2000 they published what was to become the policy
blueprint of the Bush Administration, i.e. Rebuilding America's
Defenses. The New American Century is the realization of Pax
Americana. Their master was Donald Rumsfeld, one of the chief
architects of U.S. policies of preemption, unilateralism and
domination. They have now embraced the radical new policy of `net
war' and exploiting the planet's high ground, i.e. space. This has
become the primary agenda of the Bush administration. It was in the
above document that the authors stated that the transformation in
U.S. policy they sought "was likely to be a long one...." and "absent
some catastrophic and catalytic event" would not be feasible while
Condoleezza Rice, following the 9/11 event stated "this is the Pearl
Harbor we have been waiting for". One could not invent a more
inappropriate person to represent a country on the U.N. Security
Council, which is why George Bush named her as such.
What began by a group of neoCon advisers to government and members of
associations dedicated to establishing Pax Americana has now become
the government itself and it is prepared to bring global domination
to a successful end.
Pax Americana has moved relentlessly from its conceptual stage to the
operational plans and policies of its fulfillment. The components of
Pax Americana are (1) to achieve control of the world's major oil
deposits; (2) an aspect of this is to stabilize the Middle East and
support Israel, to control the oil and gas reserves of Eastern
Europe, to make certain of Canadian supply and to upset the
government of Venezuela in order to recapture control of its oil
(Iraq was invaded for its oil and to help "stabilize" the Middle
East); (3) to slowly surround, suffocate and isolate Russia, whom it
considers to be a potential "re-emergent peer" as well as to plan to
fight and win a nuclear war with Russia. U.S. activities in
Azerbeijan and the Ukraine are an important part of isolating Russia
and accessing the rich oil and gas deposits of the Caspian Sea
region; (4) to take control of those countries known as the "gap" who
are currently resisting globalization, the goal being to "manage the
global distribution of resources, people, energy and money". This is
the plan of Thomas Barnett, author of the book "The Pentagon's New
Map", in what he calls the "Grand March of History", (see Janet M.
Eaton, jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca.).
It should be noted that Barnett is Rumsfeld's top strategist. Barnett
calls for the complete end to multilateralism and the total embrace of
preemption. Key countries in the "gap" are Nigeria and Venezuela, with
their huge oil fields, but also Senegal, Ghana, Mali and Uganda as
well as Columbia and the Republic of Georgia.
The strategic containment of Russia described above involves expanding
missile defense systems into Eastern Europe, while oil-rich Iran will
be encircled with missiles based in Azerbeijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq and
Afghanistan. In order to assist in this global venture the U.S. plans
to cover the entire Earth with secret satellite surveillance. This
will be posted on the internal military "net" (a new "internet in
the sky"), leading to the capacity to fight a war anywhere on the
planet, i.e. "net war".
But a tragic flaw may be brewing, and that is Iraq. The neoCons have
conveniently forgotten the lessons of Viet Nam. Drunk with power and
over-confidence, they may yet be facing an ultimate loss which will be
politically wounding to the entire Bush administration. This is
Rumsfeld's nightmare and possibly Blair's as well. There is nothing
more blinding than absolute convictions which are not based on
reality. As for the outcome of the Iraqi elections, the Americans
won, but we knew that even before the elections were held.
Al Rycroft, Senior Editor
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