WHY WAR

 

1.  War is a Racket

2. War planned since 1989  War Mongers

3. Infinite WAR and it's ROOTS

4. WAR by Feud

5. CIA firebrand slams Bush's war on terror

6. Veterans speak out

 

 

Subject: War is a Racket -  General Smedley Butler

  ----------

  

Dear friends,

 

That war is a racket has been told us by many, but rarely by one of  this stature. Though he died in 1940, the highly decorated General  Butler deserves to be heralded for his timeless message. His riveting 1935 booklet War is a Racket merits inclusion as required reading for every high school student, and every member of our armed forces today. 

After reading the following excerpts from this amazingly revealing essay, please forward it to all your friends. By spreading the word far and wide, we can and will create a brighter future for ourselves and for our children.

 

To read General Butler's entire booklet (only 20 pages), go to: http://www.veteransforpeace.org/war_is_a_racket_033103.htm

 

First, an excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by General Smedley Butler, USMC

 

War is just a racket. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

 

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.

 

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

 

I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

 

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a  swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

 

 

WAR IS A RACKET- by General Smedley D. Butler

Chapter One

WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in 

which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

 

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

 

Out of war nations acquire additional territory. If they are victorious, they just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

 

Take our own case. Until 1898, our national debt was a little more than $1 billion. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We  acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national  debt had jumped to over $25 billion. [Please note that these are 1935 US dollars, to adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 10]

 

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people - who do not profit.

 

CHAPTER TWO

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

 

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52 billion. Figure it out. That means $400 [that is 

in 1935 dollars = over $4,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child.

 

The normal yearly profits of a business concern in the United States are six to  twelve percent. But war-time profits - ah! that is another matter - sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent - the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.

 

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket - and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:

 

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people - didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Well, the average pre-war earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. $58 million a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

 

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump - or did they let  Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49  million a year!

 

Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105 million a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240 million. Not bad.

 

A little copper, perhaps. Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10 million. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34 million per year. Or Utah Copper. Average of $5 million per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21 million yearly profits for the war period.

 

Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137 million. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408 million. A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.

 

Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.

 

For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were approximately $1.2 million a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15 million, a small increase of  1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a  year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12 million, a leap of 1,400 per cent.

 

Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The 65th Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 

122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war.The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.

 

And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. 

 

How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public - even before a Senate investigatory body.

 

But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.

 

Take the shoe people. They sold Uncle Sam 35 million pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4 million soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. When the war was over Uncle Sam had a matter of 25 million pairs left over. Bought - and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed. There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas!

 

They sold your Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to 

France! There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting, even if there were no mosquitoes in France.

 

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1 billion - count them if you live long enough - was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.

 

The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3 billion worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635 million worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up - and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.

 

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them - a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers - all got theirs.

 

Why, when the war was over some 4 million sets of equipment - knapsacks and the things that go to fill them - crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them  - and they will do it all over again the next time.

 

It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion. Of this sum, $39 billion was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 billion profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

 

CHAPTER THREE

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

 

Who provides the profits - these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them - in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security  marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us - the people - got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or  $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par - and above. Then the bankers again collected their profits.

 

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

 

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men - men  (now women too, eg) who were the pick of the nation 18 years ago. The very able chief  surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

 

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put through mass psychology and entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years, and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

 

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face!" This time they had to do their own readjustment. We didn't need them any more. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

 

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape;  mentally, they are gone.

 

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army. So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side. It is His will that the Germans be killed. And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God.

 

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

 

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

 

WELL, it's a racket, all right. A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions.

 

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket:

 

1. We must take the profit out of war.

2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide 

whether or not there should be war.

3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

TO HELL WITH WAR!

 

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

 

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4 million young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?

 

Money.

 

An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:

 

"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the US we 

must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't. So..."

 

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars." And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

 

There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. 

That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every 

gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane.

 

So...I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!

 

To read the entire booklet (only 20 pages), go to: http://www.veteransforpeace.org/war_is_a_racket_033103.htm

 To order the booklet:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0922915865/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1/102-8123938-9404104

 

Important Note: Please forward this to all your friends, and have a 

wonderful day. With your help, we can and will create a better world 

together. With very best wishes, Fred  

 

Explore these empowering websites coordinated by Fred: www.WantToKnow.info - Revealing major cover-ups & working together for  a better world www.gcforall.org - Building a Global Community for All www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all Together, we are creating a new paradigm of love and cooperation on 

Earth.

 

2. War planned since 1989

War Mongers

 

I pass this along as extremely important in understanding that Mr. Bush had planned this warring 30 years ago. Likely when he and his “cabinet” were “Skull and Cross Bones” students. The  awful truth is he is truly leading us down the path Russia took to go broke.

 

Colleagues,

         We have Bob Reuschlein, the World Federalist expert on the military- industrial complex, to thank for reminding us about the following seminal article from The Nation about JINSA and CSP, which morphed into the Project for a New American Century and took over much of our foreign and defense establishment and policy.

         The Soviet Empire collapsed as it was bankrupted in trying to extend its tentacles by building up and maintaining the huge outlay for armaments demanded by its ideologues.  Is there a lesson for the U.S.A. in the face of what appears to be a neocon conspiracy to create an American Empire with control of land, sea, air, and space, by building up an expensive military and starting an "endless War on Terrorism," in which, inter alia, it would take out Saddam and abet Sharon in Likud's efforts to take over all of Palestine, or render it an impotent fiefdom of Israel and calling it a state?

         Isn't it time to retire the warmongers and try to rebuild the U.S.A. as the beneficent and admired country that it once was?  Isn't it time to start emulating the European Union and our own U.S. roots by working for a democratic, federal system of government in and for the world, in place of the ultra-nationalism of the neocons and their religious extremist co-conspirators?

            The Nation article was available well over a year ago.  Please excuse if you have already read it.

            John O. Sutter

Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 02:24:40 -0500

From: Bob Reuschlein <earlwal@chorus.net Organization: Peace Economics Subject: neocons

This is the classic article for understanding the neocons.  "JINSA and CSP" (8 pages).  Of course the main neocon group [which they have joined in] is Project for a New American Century (pnac.org).  On their website you can find the September 2000 "Rebuilding America's Defenses", 60 pages, that calls for a new Pearl Harbor to implement their plan. But this article shows you where they are all coming from, the ringleaders of the military industrial complex, as all three groups overlap heavily with each other and Richard Perles official pentagon "Defense Policy Board". Bob Reuschlein

Three Key Excerpts:

         The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot [and] Egypt as the prize."

         Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security have been fairly simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on just about every national missile defense program.

         CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 CSP memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court.

 

 

The Nation FEATURE STORY | September 2, 2002

The Men From JINSA and CSP by Jason Vest

         Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.

         Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues--support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general--into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.

         On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East—a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

         For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot [and] Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and its adjuncts.

         Indeed, there are some in military and intelligence circles who have taken to using "axis of evil" in reference to JINSA and CSP, along with venerable repositories of hawkish thinking like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute, as well as defense contractors, conservative foundations and public relations entities underwritten by far-right American Zionists (all of which help to underwrite JINSA and CSP). It's a milieu where ideology and money seamlessly blend: "Whenever you see someone identified in print or on TV as being with the Center for Security Policy or JINSA championing a position on the grounds of ideology or principle--which they are unquestionably doing with conviction--you are, nonetheless, not informed that they're also providing a sort of cover for other ideologues who just happen to stand to profit from hewing to the Likudnik and Pax Americana lines," says a veteran intelligence officer. He notes that while the United States has begun a phaseout of civilian aid to Israel that will end by 2007, government policy is to increase military aid by half the amount of civilian aid that's cut each year--which is not only a boon to both the US and Israeli weapons industries but is also crucial to realizing the far right's vision for missile defense and the Middle East.

         Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the United States might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five years JINSA has gone from a loose-knit proto-group to a $1.4-million-a-year operation with a formidable array of Washington power players on its rolls. Until the beginning of the current Bush Administration, JINSA's board of advisers included such heavy hitters as Dick Cheney, John Bolton (now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and Douglas Feith, the third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Both Perle and former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, two of the loudest voices in the attack-Iraq chorus, are still on the board, as are such Reagan-era relics as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow and Ledeen--Oliver North's Iran/contra liaison with the Israelis.

         According to its website, JINSA exists to "educate the American public about the importance of an effective US defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded" and to "inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East." In practice, this translates into its members producing a steady stream of op-eds and reports that have been good indicators of what the Pentagon's civilian leadership is thinking.

         JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of contact between the US government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize the Palestinians. To give but one example (and one that kills two birds with one stone):  According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in control of all violence in the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the violence solely "to protect Saddam.... Saddam is at the moment Arafat's only real financial supporter.... [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the violence against Israel and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor and paymaster." And if there's a way to advance other aspects of the far-right agenda by intertwining them with Israeli interests, JINSA doesn't hesitate there, either. A recent report contends that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge must be tapped because "the Arab oil-producing states" are countries "with interests inimical to ours," but Israel "stand[s] with us when we need [Israel]," and a US policy of tapping oil under ANWR will "limit [the Arabs'] ability to do damage to either of us."

         The bulk of JINSA's modest annual budget is spent on taking a bevy of retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where JINSA facilitates meetings between Israeli officials and the still-influential US flag officers, who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line. (Sowing seeds for the future, JINSA also takes US service academy cadets to Israel each summer and sponsors a lecture series at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies.) In one such statement, issued soon after the outbreak of the latest intifada, twenty-six JINSAns of retired flag rank, including many from the advisory board, struck a moralizing tone, characterizing Palestinian violence as a "perversion of military ethics" and holding that "America's role as facilitator in this process should never yield to America's responsibility as a friend to Israel," as "friends don't leave friends on the battlefield."

         However high-minded this might sound, the postservice associations of the letter's signatories--which are almost always left off the organization's website and communiqués--ought to require that the phrase be amended to say "friends don't leave friends on the battlefield, especially when there's business to be done and bucks to be made." Almost every retired officer who sits on JINSA's board of advisers or has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter works or has worked with military contractors who do business with the Pentagon and Israel. While some keep a low profile as self-employed "consultants" and avoid mention of their clients, others are less shy about their associations, including with the private mercenary firm Military Professional Resources International, weapons broker and military consultancy Cypress International and SY Technology, whose main clients include the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which oversees several ongoing joint projects with Israel.

         The behemoths of military contracting are also well represented in JINSA's ranks. For example, JINSA advisory board members Adm. Leon Edney, Adm. David Jeremiah and Lieut. Gen. Charles May, all retired, have served Northrop Grumman or its subsidiaries as either consultants or board members. Northrop Grumman has built ships for the Israeli Navy and sold F-16 avionics and E-2C Hawkeye planes to the Israeli Air Force (as well as the Longbow radar system to the Israeli army for use in its attack helicopters). It also works with Tamam, a subsidiary of Israeli Aircraft Industries, to produce an unmanned aerial vehicle. Lockheed Martin has sold more than $2 billion worth of F-16s to Israel since 1999, as well as flight simulators, multiple-launch rocket systems and Seahawk heavyweight torpedoes. At one time or another, General May, retired Lieut. Gen. Paul Cerjan and retired Adm. Carlisle Trost have labored in LockMart's vineyards. Trost has also sat on the board of General Dynamics, whose Gulfstream subsidiary has a $206 million contract to supply planes to Israel to be used for "special electronics missions."

         By far the most profitably diversified of the JINSAns is retired Adm. David Jeremiah. President and partner of Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation (described as a "strategic advisory firm and investment banking firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications and electronics industries"), Jeremiah also sits on the boards of Northrop Grumman's Litton subsidiary and of defense giant Alliant Techsystems, which--in partnership with Israel's TAAS--does a brisk business in rubber bullets. And he has a seat on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, chaired by Perle. About the only major defense contractor without a presence on JINSA's advisory board is Boeing, which has had a relationship with Israeli Aircraft Industries for thirty years. (Boeing also sells F-15s to Israel and, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Apache attack helicopters, a ubiquitous weapon in the occupied territories.) But take a look at JINSA's kindred spirit in things pro-Likud and pro-Star Wars, the Center for Security Policy, and there on its national security advisory council are Stanley Ebner, a former Boeing executive; Andrew Ellis, vice president for government relations; and Carl Smith, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee who, as a lawyer in private practice, has counted Boeing among his clients. "JINSA and CSP," says a veteran Pentagon analyst, "may as well be one and the same."

         Not a hard sell: There's always been considerable overlap beween the JINSA and CSP rosters--JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Phyllis Kaminsky also serve on CSP's advisory council; current JINSA advisory board chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP's board of directors; and before returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served as the board's chair. At this writing, twenty-two CSP advisers--including additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch--have reoccupied key positions in the national security establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage.

         While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries, its star is Frank Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A protégé of Perle going back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate's most zealous champion of Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only to be shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long after Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of influential conservative hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen years, churning out a constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns for the Washington Times) making the case that the gravest threats to US national security are China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles launched by rogue states, and the passage of or adherence to virtually any form of arms control treaty.

         Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security have been fairly simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on just about every national missile defense program. (CSP was heavily represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in keeping the program alive during the Clinton years.)

         Looking at the center's affiliates, it's not hard to see why: Not only are makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the CSP's board of advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice president for space and strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of defense systems Douglas Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also a CSP adviser, as is former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert Livingston.  Ball Aerospace & Technologies--a major manufacturer of NASA and Pentagon satellites--is represented by former Navy Secretary John Lehman, while missile-defense computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard is represented by George Keyworth, who is on its board of directors. And the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus and Osprey (or "tilt rotor") caucus are represented by Representative Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.

         CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 CSP memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the most insightful window on the JINSA/CSP policy worldview comes in the form of a paper Perle and Feith collaborated on in 1996 with six others under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.  Essentially an advice letter to ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" makes for insightful reading as a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.

         The paper's first prescription was for an Israeli rightward economic shift, with tax cuts and a selloff of public lands and enterprises--moves that would also engender support from a "broad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders." But beyond economics, the paper essentially reads like a blueprint for a mini-cold war in the Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to articulate a way to advance right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense advocacy. "Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state," it reads. "Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel's survival, but it would broaden Israel's base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense"--something that has the added benefit of being "helpful in the effort to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem."

         Recent months in Washington have shown just how influential the notions propagated by JINSA and CSP are--and how disturbingly zealous their advocates are. In early March Feith vainly attempted to get the CIA to keep former intelligence officers Milt Bearden and Frank Anderson from accepting an invitation to an Afghanistan-related meeting with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon--not because of what the two might say about Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the incident, but likely out of fear that Anderson, a veteran Arabist and former chief of the CIA's Near East division, would proffer his views on Iraq (opposed to invading) and Israel-Palestine (a fan of neither Arafat nor Sharon). In late June, after United Press International reported on a US Muslim civil liberties group's lambasting of Gaffney for his attacks on the American Muslim Council, Gaffney, according to a fellow traveler, "went berserk," launching a stream of invective about the UPI scribe who reported the item.

         It's incidents like this, say knowledgeable observers and participants, that highlight an interesting dynamic among right-wing hawks at the moment. Though the general agenda put forth by JINSA and CSP continues to be reflected in councils of war, even some of the hawks (including Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz) are growing increasingly leery of Israel's settlements policy and Gaffney's relentless support for it. Indeed, his personal stock in Bush Administration circles is low. "Gaffney has worn out his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly rather than a serious contributor to policy," says a senior Pentagon political official. Since earlier this year, White House political adviser Karl Rove has been casting about for someone to start a new, more mainstream defense group that would counter the influence of CSP. According to those who have communicated with Rove on the matter, his quiet efforts are in response to complaints from many conservative activists who feel let down by Gaffney, or feel he's too hard on President Bush. "A lot of us have taken [Gaffney] at face value over the years," one influential conservative says. "Yet we now know he's pushed for some of the most flawed missile defense and conventional systems. He considered Cuba a 'classic asymmetric threat' but not Al Qaeda. And since 9/11, he's been less concerned with the threat to America than to Israel."

         Gaffney's operation has always been a small one, about $1 million annually--funded largely by a series of grants from the conservative Olin, Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as some defense contractor money--but he's recently been able to underwrite a TV and print ad campaign holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy Number One in the War on Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of Israel. It's here that one sees the influence not of defense contractor money but of far-right Zionist dollars, including some from Irving Moskowitz, the California bingo magnate. A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well as a JINSA director), Moskowitz not only sends millions of dollars a year to far-right Israeli settler groups like Ateret Cohanim but he has also funded the construction of settlements, having bought land for development in key Arab areas around Jerusalem. Moskowitz ponied up the money that enabled the 1996 reopening of a tunnel under the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which resulted in seventy deaths due to rioting.

         Also financing Gaffney's efforts is New York investment banker Lawrence Kadish. A valued and valuable patron of both the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush, Kadish helps underwrite CSP as well as Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an offshoot of conservative activist William Bennett's Empower America, on which he and Gaffney serve as "senior advisers" in the service of identifying "external" and "internal" post-9/11 threats to America. (The "internal" threats, as articulated by AVOT, include former President Jimmy Carter, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham and Representative Maxine Waters.) Another of Gaffney's backers is Poju Zabludowicz, heir to a formidable diversified international empire that includes arms manufacturer Soltam--which once employed Perle—and benefactor of the recently established Britain Israel Communication and Research Centre, a London-based group that appears to equate reportage or commentary uncomplimentary to Zionism with anti-Semitism.

         While a small but growing number of conservatives are voicing concerns about various aspects of foreign and defense policy--ranging from fear of overreach to lack of Congressional debate--the hawks seem to be ruling the roost. Beginning in October, hard-line American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin (to Rubin, outgoing UN human rights chief Mary Robinson is an abettor of terrorism) arrives at the Pentagon to take over the Defense Department's Iran-Iraq account, adding another voice to the Pentagon section of Ledeen's "total war" chorus. Colin Powell's State Department continues to take a beating from outside and inside—including Bolton and his special assistant David Wurmser. (An AEI scholar and far-right Zionist who's married to Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research Institute--recently the subject of a critical investigation by London Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker--Wurmser played a key role in crafting the "Arafat must go" policy that many career specialists see as a problematic sop to Ariel Sharon.)

         As for Rumsfeld, based on comments made at a Pentagon "town hall" meeting on August 6, there seems to be little doubt as to whose comments are resonating most with him--and not just on missile defense and overseas adventures: After fielding a question about Israeli-Palestinian issues, he repeatedly referred to the "so-called occupied territories" and casually characterized the Israeli policy of building Jewish-only enclaves on Palestinian land as "mak[ing] some settlement in various parts of the so-called occupied area," with which Israel can do whatever it wants, as it has "won" all its wars with various Arab entities--essentially an echo of JINSA's stated position that "there is no Israeli occupation." Ominously, Rumsfeld's riff gave a ranking Administration official something of a chill: "I realized at that point," he said, "that on settlements—where there are cleavages on the right--Wolfowitz may be to the left of Rumsfeld."

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.

 

www.mideast.org.uk

 

Since the first Gulf War, the U.S. has built a network of military bases that now almost completely encircle the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.

 

In 1989, following the end of the Cold War and just prior to the Gulf War, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz produced the 'Defense Planning Guidance' report advocating U.S. military dominance around the globe. The Plan called for the United States to maintain and grow in military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge us on the world stage. Using words like 'preemptive' and military 'forward presence,’ the plan called for the U.S. to be dominant over friends and foes alike. It concluded with the assertion that the U.S. can best attain this position by making itself 'absolutely powerful.'

 

The 1989 plan was spawned after the fall of the Soviet Union. Without the traditional threat to national security, Cheney, Powell and Wolfowitz knew that the military budget would dwindle without new enemies and threats. In an attempt to salvage defense funding, Cheney and company constructed a plan to fill the 'threat blank'. On August 2, 1990 President Bush called a press conference. He explained that the threat of global war had significantly receded, but in its wake a new danger arose. This unforeseen threat to national security could come from any angle and from any power.

 

Iraq, by a remarkable coincidence, invaded Northern Kuwait later the same day.

 

Cheney et al. were out of political power for the eight years of Clinton’s presidency. During this time the neo-conservatives founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The most influential product of the PNAC was a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defense," (www.newamericancentury.org) which called for U.S. military dominance and control of global economic markets.

http://www.pnac.info/

 

 

 

 

April 25, 2003

 

1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" Draft Excerpts:

U.S. post-Cold War political and military strategy should be preventing the emergence of a rival superpower and be  prepared to take unilateral action

Introduction: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.Posted by Lance Brown at April 25, 2003 04:37 AM |

 

 

The Washington Post

March 11, 1992, Wednesday, Final Edition

Keeping the U.S. First;

 

Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower

 BYLINE: Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writer

 

 In a classified blueprint intended to help "set the nation's direction for the next century," the Defense Department calls for concerted efforts to preserve American global military supremacy and to thwart the emergence of a rival superpower in Europe, Asia or the former Soviet Union. The 46-page memorandum describes itself as "definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense" for preparation of defense budgets for fiscal 1994 through

 

1999. It defies the predictions of some outside analysts that the Pentagon would relax resistance to further budget cuts after the turmoil of the election year. Instead it mounts a detailed argument for maintaining the current "base force" of 1.6 million active-duty troops to the end of the decade and beyond.

 

Though noting that "the passing of the Cold War reduces pressure for U.S. military involvement in every potential regional or local conflict," the document argues not only for preserving but expanding the most demanding American commitments and for resisting efforts by key allies to provide their own security.

 

In particular, the document raises the prospects of "a unilateral U.S. defense guarantee" to Eastern Europe, "preferably in cooperation with other NATO states," and contemplates use of American military power to preempt or punish use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, "even in conflicts that otherwise do not directly engage U.S. interests."

 

The memo was drafted under supervision of Paul Wolfowitz, undersecretary for policy. Although it is not supplied to Congress and was not intended for public release, the document represents a response at the highest levels of the Pentagon to a growing call in the American political debate for retrenchment from commitments abroad.

 

First reported Sunday in the New York Times, it provides the rationale for U.S. involvement around the world as "a constant fixture" in an era of fundamental change.

 

The central strategy of the Pentagon framework is 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."

 

"While the U.S. cannot become the world's 'policeman,' by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations," the document states.

 

Much of the document parallels the extensive public statements of Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Believing this year's defense debate is a pivotal moment in development of a post-Cold War security framework, the two men have given unusually detailed briefings to Congress of the rationale for the force they designed after collapse of the Warsaw Pact in late 1989.

 

Like their public statements, the classified memo emphasizes the virtues of collective action and the central U.S. interest in promoting increased respect for international law and "the spread of democratic forms of government and open economic systems."

 

Also like their public statements, the document describes a reorientation of U.S. defenses away from the threat of global war with the former Soviet Union and toward potential regional conflicts.

 

But the new memo gives central billing to U.S. efforts to prevent emergence of a rival superpower, a diplomatically sensitive subject that has not been prominent in public debate.

 

That objective, the document states, "is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East

Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union and Southwest Asia."

 

Distributed Feb. 18 to military service chiefs and secretaries, the commanders in chief of worldwide military theaters and other top Pentagon officials, the memorandum is a nearly final draft of this year's long overdue " Defense Planning Guidance," the defense secretary's cornerstone statement of policy and strategy.

 

Senior officials said the document has not been given final approval by Wolfowitz or Cheney. But they acknowledged that both had played substantial roles in the document's creation and endorsed its principal views. "This is not the piano player in the whorehouse," one official said.

 

The policy plan restates support for a set of seven classified scenarios prepared by the Pentagon describing hypothetical roads to war by the end of the century. Those scenarios, reported late last month by the New York Times and Washington Post, included an American-led defense of Lithuania and Poland from invasion by Russia, wars against Iraq and North Korea to repel attacks on their southern neighbors and smaller-scale interventions in Panama and the Philippines.

 

The scenarios came under congressional attack by political figures in both parties, and senior defense officials then suggested that they might be revised or abandoned.

 

Air Force Secretary Donald B. Rice, for example, said in an interview that the scenario set "was a staff product. It was just about to be circulated for higher level review, and it could have benefited from that review."

 

The new document, by contrast, directs military services and defense agencies to measure their purchasing and training decisions against the requirements of the war scenarios.

 

The services are told, for example, to buy enough "threat-oriented munitions" -- such as missiles, bombs and artillery shells -- to provide 80 percent confidence that they would destroy 80 percent of the expected targets "in the two most demanding Major Regional Conflict scenarios."

 

Among Democrats on Capitol Hill, the policy memorandum has already come under bitter attack. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), an advocate of deep cuts in defense spending to pay for domestic needs, called the 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," he said.

 

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), attacking what he said was the document's emphasis on unilateral action, ridiculed it as "literally a Pax Americana. . . .

 

It won't work. You can be the world superpower and still be unable to maintain peace throughout the world."

 

Senior Pentagon officials angrily disputed the charge, first made in Sunday's New York Times, that the new strategy was "the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism."

 

They cited the document's pledge, on its first page, to "continue to support and protect those bilateral, multilateral, international or regionally based institutions, processes and relationships which afford us opportunities to share responsibility for global and regional security."

 

"What is just dead wrong is this notion of a sole superpower dominating the rest of the world," a ranking defense official said. "The main thrust of what the secretary has to say and what that draft also says is that the key to maintaining the rather benign environment we have today is sustaining the democratic alliances we've shaped over 40 years."

 

Harold Brown, a former defense secretary, agreed in an interview yesterday that there is no contradiction between collective security and desirability of maintaining the United States as the world's strongest military power.

 

"Take the Persian Gulf situation," he said. "That was clearly a collective security arrangement but it clearly wouldn't have happened if the U.S. hadn't taken the lion's share, by which I mean almost all, of the military burden. That is a demonstration of how you can have both at the same time."

 

Academic criticism of the new strategy centered, by contrast, on its treatment of Russia. Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy analyst at Johns Hopkins University, argued that the logic of preventing reemergence of a hostile superpower suggests "far greater involvement in the economy and democratization of the Russians and the Ukrainians."

 

But in the current political debate, he said, "giving them money seems to be a taboo word." Cheney has spoken in glowing terms of potential U.S.-Russian friendship "if

democracy matures," even suggesting the possibility of combined military action against regional aggressors.

 

But he has also expressed skepticism that the United States or Western Europe possesses any great influence over Russia's internal development.

 

The new strategy describes a delicate balance between supporting the former Soviet republics "in their efforts to become peaceful democracies with market based economies" and the need to "hedge against the possibility that democracy will fail."

 

"Our strategic challenge," the memo states, "is to construct the security hedges against democratic failure in such a way that we do not . . . increase the likelihood of a democratic failure."

 

In that context, Brown and others also criticized the document's suggestion that the United States or NATO might extend security guarantees to Eastern Europe, describing it as provocative of Russian nationalism and ignoring "the same grave danger of nuclear war" that prevented Western intervention there for 45 years.

 

 

The New York Times

May 24, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 4; Foreign Desk

 

HEADLINE: PENTAGON DROPS GOAL OF BLOCKING NEW SUPERPOWERS

 

BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER, Special to The New York Times DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 23

 

The Pentagon has revised a draft of its post-cold-war strategy, dropping language from an earlier document advocating the perpetuation of a one-superpower world in which the United States would work to prevent the rise of any "competitors" to its primacy in Western Europe and East Asia.

 

The new document, approved by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on Friday, sharpens the American commitment to collective military action as a "key feature" of United States strategy and looks forward to the decline of military investment as the principal means of balancing power among nations.

 

With far more diplomatic language than in an earlier draft, the new document forsakes any goal of preventing the emergence of "any potential future global competitor" and stresses the importance of strengthening international organizations like the United Nations for resolving disputes.

 

Input From Cheney

The elimination of what was a dominant theme in the earlier draft reflects high-level input from both Mr. Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, senior Pentagon officials said.

 

The new language represents a significant retrenchment and appears to have discredited the idea, expressed in internal Administration foreign policy discussions, that the United States should focus its energies on containing German and Japanese aspirations for regional leadership.

 

The nearly final draft has been circulating in the Pentagon since April 16. A copy was provided to The New York Times by an Administration official who believes the debate on post-cold-war strategy should be conducted in public.

 

Earlier Draft Criticized

The earlier draft, dated Feb. 18, was roundly criticized in the White House and in foreign capitals after its contents were disclosed in The New York Times in March. Prepared under the supervision of the Pentagon's Under Secretary for policy, Paul Wolfowitz, the earlier draft implied that a competing power or alliance of nations, bolstered by surging economic strength in Germany or Japan, could arise from these nations and eventually express their rivalry with America through military competition.

 

To keep this from happening, the earlier draft proposed that the United States build a new order based on "convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests."

 

The new draft reflects an American foreign policy establishment far less threatened by ascending roles for important allies, even leadership by those allies when their interests are more directly affected. Yet a goal of the new draft is to seek to preserve a leading American role in strategic deterrence and regional alliances that will, by their demonstration of military cooperation, deter hostile and non-democratic powers from seeking to dominate important regions.

 

On Friday, Germany and France announced the formation of an all-European military corps and invited other nations to join. The new security alliance would work with NATO in crises where NATO'S 16 member nations declared an interest, but would also respond independently in crises where NATO interests were not involved.

 

The later Pentagon draft substantially softens the earlier document's expressed opposition to emerging security alliances in Europe while also emphasizing the need to preserve a key role for NATO, where American power and influence have been pre-eminent.

 

 

 

Striking Change of Tone

With a striking change of tone, the later draft states, "One of the primary tasks we face today in shaping the future is carrying longstanding alliances into the new era, and turning old enmities into new cooperative relationships."

 

For the first time in the memory of military officials who have drafted policy, the new draft states that while a strong defense to deter potential foes will continue

to be an important concept in American security, a leveling of military investment coupled with greater economic and security cooperation will create a more stable world.

 

"It is not in our interest or those of the other democracies to return to earlier periods in which multiple military powers balanced one another off in what passed for security structures, while regional, or even global peace hung in the balance," it said.

 

The new document places greater emphasis on international military cooperation, with a special emphasis on cooperation with Russia, Ukraine and the other republics of the former Soviet Union, as a means of providing "security at lower costs with lower risks for all."

 

The document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-99 fiscal years, has never been made public and parts of it are classified. It is a policy that is an internal planning guide for the Pentagon and prepared every two years. As such, it represents "guidance" from the President and the Secretary of Defense to the four military services on how to prepare their budgets and forces in the future.

 

Additional Refinements Made

A senior Pentagon official, commenting on the April 16 draft, said that it "more carefully reflects" the thinking of Mr. Cheney, but that additional refinements and editing changes have been made since that version was circulated. He said the major elements remain.

Though Mr. Cheney signed the document Friday, it was not clear whether it would be subject to additional comment or revision after circulating to the White House and State Department.

 

The new draft continues to make the case for the Bush Administration's concept of a "base force" military of 1.6 million uniformed troops and rejects calls in Congress for a greater peace dividend that could be derived from deeper military cuts. And while it strengthens the Administration's commitment to act in concert with allies and through international bodies like the United Nations, it preserves a commitment "to act independently, as necessary, to protect our critical interests."

 

A central theme of the later draft, which echoes Mr. Cheney's and General Powell's public testimony, is that a precipitous decline in military spending could "break" the organizational competence of the American military and tempt adversaries like Iraq to seek to dominate critical regions.

 

Commitment to Israel

The later draft also makes a specific commitment to the security of Israel and to providing Taiwan with modern military equipment.

 

The later version of the planning document, like its predecessor, calls on the four military services to be prepared to fight two major regional wars simultaneously while maintaining sizable military presence in Europe, where the old Soviet-led Warsaw Pact threat has disappeared.

 

"We must recognize what we are so often told by the leaders of the new democracies -- that continued U.S. presence in Europe is an essential part of the West's overall efforts to maintain stability even in the midst of such dramatic change," it states.

 

Even with significant adjustments, the later draft is likely to have little impact on the military services. The battle over the document's tone, emphasis and language is more a struggle of ideas about the future of American foreign policy and military strategy.

 

Potential Threats Reformulated

 

The later draft, in stating potential threats, retreats to a more narrow formulation, which calls for the United States to prevent "any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests." It adds that such "consolidated, non-democratic control of the resources" in a region "could generate a significant threat to our security."

 

The February draft had stated that while the United States could not become the world's policeman in the future, "we will retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations."

 

The later draft abandons the broad sweep and unilateral tone of the earlier draft and stresses a more narrow point that where possible, the United States will act in concert and cooperation with allies, "but we must maintain the capabilities for addressing selectively those security problems that threaten our own interests."

A specific goal of restraining India's "hegemonic aspirations" in South Asia also was dropped in the later draft in favor of language promoting a reduction of tensions between India and Pakistan.

 

Some Fine Nuances

In some cases, the nuances of change in the new draft seem to draw distinctions without a difference. For instance, the new document drops the claim of an allied "victory" over the Soviet Union, a claim that former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had criticized after the earlier document was made public. Instead, the new draft characterizes as a "great success" the overall discrediting of Communism as an ideology and the collapse of the Soviet empire.

 

But other changes in emphasis appeared to be driven by a more fundamental recognition that in the post-cold-war era, diplomatic and economic tools will become more effective instruments in international relations while military tools will recede to a lower status.

 

"Our tools include political and economic measures and others such as security assistance, military-to-military contacts, humanitarian aid and intelligence assistance, as well as security measures to prevent the emergence of a non-democratic aggressor in critical regions," the new draft states.

 

While the role of the United Nations was left unrecognized in the earlier draft, it is prominently mentioned in the new document, which says, "In this more secure international environment, there will be enhanced opportunities for political, economic, environmental, social and security issues to be resolved through new or revitalized international organizations, including the United Nations, or regional arrangements."

 

GRAPHIC: Photos:

The Pentagon has revised a draft of its post-cold-war strategy in far more diplomatic language than in an earlier draft. The changes reflect opinions from Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, left (Michael Geissinger for The New York Times), and Gen. Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Associated Press) (pg. 14)

 

Chart: "Superpower Notion Gives Way to 'Collective' Approach"

 

Key Sections of Pentagon Document on Post-Cold-War Strategy

 

Initial Draft (Feb. 18, 1992)

 

1) Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power.

 

2) The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.

 

 In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.

 

3) Like the coalition that opposed Iraqi aggression, we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.

Nevertheless, the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S. will be an important stabilizing factor.

 

4) While the U.S. cannot become the world's policeman, by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.

 

5) We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others....We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of

destroying the United States.

 

6) In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil.

 

Latest Draft (April 16, 1992)

 

1) Our most fundamental goal is to deter or defeat attack from whatever source. . .. The second goal is to strengthen and extend the system of defense arrangements that binds democratic and like-minded nations together in common defense against aggression, build habits of cooperation, avoid the renationalization of security policies, and provide security at lower costs and with lower risks for all. Our preference for a collective response to preclude threats or, if necessary, to deal with them is a key feature of our regional defense strategy.

 

The third goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the re-emergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies.

 

2) One of the primary tasks we face today in shaping the future is carrying long standing alliances into the new era, and turning old enmities into new cooperative relationships. If we and other leading democracies continue to build a democratic security community, a much safer world is likely to emerge. If we act separately, many other problems could result.

 

3) Certain situations like the crisis leading to the Gulf War are likely to engender ad hoc coalitions. We should plan to maximize the value of such coalitions. This may include specialized roles for our forces as well as developing cooperative practices with others.

 

4) While the United States cannot become the world's policeman and assume responsibility for solving every international security problem, neither can we allow our critical interests to depend solely on internation mechanisms that can be blocked by countries whose interests may be very different than our own.

 

Where our allies interests are directly affected, we must expect them to take an appropriate share of the responsibility, and in some cases play the leading role; but we maintain the capabilities for addressing selectively those security problems that threaten our own interests.

 

5) The U.S. has a significant stake in promoting democratic consolidation and peaceful relations between Russia, Ukraine and the other republics of the former Soviet Union.

 

6) In the Middle East and Persian Gulf, we seek to foster regional stability, deter aggression against our friends and interests in the region, protect U.S. nationals and property, and safeguard our access to international air and seaways and to the region's oil.

 

The United States is committed to the security of Israel and to maintaining the qualitative edge that is critical to Israel's security. Israel's confidence in its security and U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation contribute to the stability of the entire region, as demonstrated once again during the Persian Gulf War. At the same time, our assistance to our Arab friends to defend themselves against aggression also strengthens security throughout the region, including for Israel. (pg. 14)

 

1997 --- Statement of Principles PNAC http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

 

 

 

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