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Neo-conservatism,
hardcore
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - If hardcore neo-conservatives
Richard Perle and David Frum had their way, the Bush
administration would be issuing ultimatums on virtually
a daily basis.
In their new book, An End to
Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, Perle, the well-connected former chairman
of the Defense Policy  Board, and Frum, a former White House
speechwriter, call for the administration to, among many other
things:
Actively promote, presumably through direct action,
the secession of the oil-rich eastern province of Saudi
Arabia, unless the Saudi government provides its "utmost
cooperation in the war on terror."
Cut off the flow of oil (from Iraq) and arms
supplies to Syria, and pursue suspected "terrorists"
into its territory, unless Damascus implements a
thoroughgoing "Western reorientation" of its policies,
economy and political system.
Prepare to launch preemptive strikes against North
Korea's nuclear facilities (although "we do not know
where all these facilities are"), unless Pyongyang
"immediately surrenders all of its nuclear material,
closes its missile bases and agrees to the permanent
presence of international inspectors".
Explicitly reject the jurisdiction of the United
Nations Charter, unless it is amended to accommodate
Washington's new strategic doctrine of "preemption".
Help "dissidents" overthrow the government of Iran -
"the regime must go".
In what they call a
"manual for victory", the two authors, both resident
fellows at the American Enterprise Institute, describe
an extremely dangerous world in which the greatest
current evil, "militant Islam", can be found everywhere
- from "Indonesia to Indiana" (not to mention "in some
remoter areas of Venezuela", Paraguay, Brazil and
northern Nigeria) ... The stakes could not be higher.
Militant Islam "seeks to overthrow our
civilization and remake the nations of the West into
Islamic societies imposing on the whole world its
religion and law", write the authors.
Nor do
such ambitions represent only a tiny minority of
Muslims, as US President George W Bush himself has
contended. The militants' goals command wide support
among Muslims worldwide, including in the United States,
where the "loyalty" of US Muslims requires special
scrutiny by law enforcement and their fellow citizens,
according to Perle and Frum. "The roots of Muslim rage
are to be found in Islam itself," they write. "There is
no middle way for Americans," they warn. "It is victory
or holocaust."
If all this sounds a little
terrifying, it is because Perle and Frum are deeply
concerned that the administration's determination - and
that of the country as a whole - to wage the "war on
terror" to its bitter end is flagging. "We can feel the
will to win ebbing in Washington; we sense the reversion
to the bad old habits of complacency and denial."
This book, then, is designed to re-energize the
effort, and must be taken seriously because it no doubt
echoes arguments that are currently being made at the
highest levels of the Bush administration. While Frum,
who allegedly coined the phrase "axis of evil" linking
Iraq to Iran and North Korea in Bush's 2002 State of the
Union address, is known more for his rhetoric than his
foreign-policy expertise, Perle has been a fixture of
the national-security policy scene for more than 30
years.
Known as the "Prince of Darkness" for his
opposition to arms-control agreements with the Soviet
Union as a senior Pentagon official under former
president Ronald Reagan, he has been one of Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's best friends since
1969, as well as the mentor of Douglas Feith, the
ultra-Zionist under secretary of defense whose office
oversaw preparations for the Iraq invasion and the
postwar occupation.
A longtime ally of both
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President
Dick Cheney, Perle was described by the Washington Post
last year as the "intellectual guru of the hardline
neo-conservative movement in foreign policy", who enjoys
"profound influence over Bush policies". it is thus safe
to say that Perle's views count, and the fact that he
believed already in October - when the book (published
by Random House) went to print - that the administration
was losing its zeal is significant.
Perle and
Frum naturally blame the State Department, the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), retired military officers and
senior officials from the administration of the current
president's father - in other words, all the
foreign-policy specialists and "realists" who initially
raised questions about going to war in Iraq - for
resisting their calls for expanding the war to Syria,
Iran, North Korea and even Saudi Arabia.
And
they categorically reject, albeit often defensively, any
notion that the loss in momentum might be due more to
over-optimistic predictions by themselves and their
friends in the offices of Cheney and Rumsfeld about the
ease with which US forces could occupy Iraq without
significant international support.
More than
once, they insist that if only the White House had
installed their hero, Iraqi National Congress chief
Ahmad Chalabi, as president of a provisional government
before the invasion, all would be well today. "Seldom
has the foreign-policy bureaucracy inflicted such
shameful damage on American interests than in its
opposition to working with Saddam [Hussein]'s Iraqi
opponents," they write.
But the authors fail to
note that since he was virtually carried to Baghdad on
the shoulders of the invading US forces, Chalabi's main
power base does not appear to have expanded much beyond
his US-trained militia and his friends back in the
Pentagon.
Indeed, a persistent theme in the book
is that if Washington really prevails in the "war on
terror", it will be no thanks to the bureaucrats who run
the State Department and the CIA, whose apparatchiks are
"blinded by the squeamishness that many liberal-minded
people feel about noticing the dark side of Third World
cultures".
Hence, CIA director George Tenet "has
failed. He should go," while "we should increase sharply
the number of political appointees in the State
Department and expand their role". Such measures should
ease adoption of the neo-conservatives' agenda, which
includes not only ultimatums but also simple directives,
such as:
Work fastidiously to isolate France from the rest of
Europe while doing "our utmost to preserve our British
ally's strategic independence from [emphasis
added] Europe", in part by offering UK arms
manufacturers preferential treatment, and promoting an
Anglo-American defense condominium that would also
include Australia and Canada.
Forge a defense partnership "with Japan, Australia,
and other willing Asian democracies as intimate and
enduring as the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization] alliance. China should know that any
attempt to bully any of its democratic neighbors will be
resisted by all of them - no ifs, buts or exceptions."
"Cease criticizing Israel for taking actions against
Hamas and Hezbollah (or similar groups) analogous to
those the United States is taking against al-Qaeda. The
distinction between Islamic terrorism against Israel, on
the one hand, and Islamic terrorism against the United
States and Europe, on the other, cannot be sustained."
Avoid turning Iraq into a "ward of the United
Nations or the 'international community'," because "once
the international bureaucrats get their hands on
society, they never let go".
This last point is
illustrated by a curious list of countries, including
Cambodia and Somalia, where the authors apparently
believe - mistakenly - that the United Nations remains
in charge.
That is one of a striking number of
factual errors, illustrating either the haste with which
the book, which even lacks an index, was put together,
or simple ignorance on the part of the authors. They
contend, for example, that "Saudi-inspired extremists"
launched wars against Christian communities on
Indonesia's Sulawesi and Maluku islands, when they are
apparently referring to Laskar Jihad, a militia that
most experts believe was not only inspired but armed by
elements in Indonesia's military.
Frum and Perle
make similar assumptions about the indigenous insurgency
in Indonesia's Aceh province and what are predominantly
ethnic, rather than religious, clashes in northern
Nigeria. Indeed, much as they invariably attributed
Soviet aggression to various nationalist, ethnic and
reformist movements during the Cold War, Perle and Frum
now seem determined to find a "militant Muslim" and/or
Saudi-Wahhabi hand in conflicts or terrorism from
Mindanao to Lake Maracaibo.
And just as in the
Cold War, they appear to prefer authoritarian to
democratic regimes if the latter risks empowering
Islamic radicals, as they make clear in yet another
directive: "In the Middle East, democratization does not
mean calling immediate elections and then living with
whatever happens next," they write.
"That was
tried in Algeria in 1995 [sic], and it would have
brought the Islamic extremists to power as the only
available alternative to the corrupt status quo.
Democratization means opening political spaces in which
Middle Eastern people can express concrete grievances in
ways that bring action to improve their lives."
While the authors stress that democratization
also requires protecting minorities and women, the
message that comes through is that democracy is not
their highest priority, the neo-conservatives' frequent
protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
It is clear from recent events - particularly
Bush's criticism of Taiwan, his tentative feelers toward
Iran, and his warm words for Libya ("an implacably
hostile regime", according to the authors), as well as
the acceleration of the transition timetable in Iraq -
that the neo-cons' influence has waned further in the
months since the book was sent to print.
No
surprise, really: after watching Bush's poll numbers
plummet as US casualties rose beginning last summer, the
president's political adviser Karl Rove reportedly
issued a directive of his own several months ago: "No
war in '04," an election year.
The neo-cons
might be down but they are most certainly not out. They
and their administration allies, notably Cheney, have
shown that they retain sufficient influence for now to
prevent any major softening in the hard lines on North
Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If
Bush wins a second term with Cheney at his side,
neo-conservatives such as Perle might well find
themselves back on top. If so, you may be able to buy
this book on remainder and use it as a scorecard.
(For excerpts from An End to Evil: How to
Win the War on Terror, click here.)
(Inter Press Service)
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