WASHINGTON - It was four years ago
this week that a little-known group called the
"Project for the New American Century" (PNAC)
published an open letter to President George W
Bush advising him on how precisely he should carry
out his brand-new "war on terrorism".
In
addition to ousting Afghanistan's Taliban, the
letter's mostly neo-conservative signatories
called for implementing regime change "by all
necessary means" in Iraq, "even if evidence does
not link Iraq directly to the (September 11)
attack". It also urged "appropriate measures of
retaliation" against Iran and Syria if those
countries refused to comply with US demands to cut
off support to Hezbollah, which they considered
part of the terror network.
The letter
called for cutting off aid to the Palestinian
Authority unless it immediately halted attacks
against Israel and Israeli
settlements, and for a "large
increase in defense spending" in order to rein in
the conflict that some of its signers, notably
former CIA director James Woolsey, were soon
describing as "World War IV".
Six months
later, PNAC published a second letter - again
little-noticed by the US mainstream media -
calling for Washington to "accelerate plans for
removing Saddam Hussein from power", "lend full
support to Israel" whose "fight against terrorism
is our fight", and greatly increase the defense
budget to ensure that the impending war could be
successfully carried out in all its aspects.
PNAC's prescription and subsequent events
fostered the impression, particularly in Europe
and the Arab world, that the group had
successfully and - given the lack of media
coverage - covertly "hijacked" US foreign policy,
particularly in the Middle East.
These
events included the administration's fulsome
embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
followed by the invasion of Iraq, not to mention
the effective cut-off of communications with both
Damascus and Tehran (albeit not precisely because
of their ties to Hezbollah).
Indeed, when
the historical record of what the Bush
administration has actually done in the region is
compared with PNAC's recommendations, the
correspondence can only be described as stunning.
But they were hardly the result of some
covert conspiracy.
In fact, the PNAC,
whose staff consists of only about half a dozen
people, had been issuing letters, statements and
reports quite openly for several years before. It
called in particular for regime change in Iraq as
part of a larger foreign policy project inspired
mainly by a policy paper drafted by hawks in the
Pentagon under former President George H W Bush
after the first Gulf War, and by a 1996 article by
PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan
in Foreign Affairs magazine that called for the US
to practice "benevolent global hegemony" based on
"military supremacy and moral confidence".
The ideas contained in those works
attracted - indeed reflected - the thinking of
what could best be called a coalition of hawks,
including assertive nationalists,
neo-conservatives and the Christian Right, which
have worked together since the mid-1970s.
And it was that coalition that seized the
initiative after September 11, 2001 within the
administration. Guided by Kristol, who doubles as
editor of The Weekly Standard, PNAC simply became
the public voice of that coalition.
After
all, among the signatories of its 1997 charter
statement were Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their two top aides,
I Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz (who had authored
the 1992 Pentagon paper), respectively, as well as
several other top administration officials.
Thus, in its September 20, 2001 letter to
Bush, the PNAC was not "recommending" anything
that these men were not already pushing within the
administration's highest councils, as Washington
Post reporter Bob Woodward among others has since
made clear. It was acting as a combination of
transmission belt, echo chamber and cheerleader on
the outside, as it has since.
So, four
years later, how is the PNAC is doing? The short
answer is not so well. Because it represents a
coalition of different, although like-minded
varieties of hawks, its own influence - or at
least the perception of that influence - is highly
dependent on the coalition's unity.
But
that unity began to fray even as US troops were
flowing into Iraq. Sensing that Rumsfeld, in
particular, was not committed to using the kind of
overwhelming force - and keeping it there -
necessary for "transforming" Iraq (and the
region), Kristol and Kagan, among other
neo-conservatives, began attacking the defence
secretary and have repeatedly called for his
resignation.
Moreover, their tactical
alliance with "liberal internationalists" - mostly
Democrats - in appealing for the resources
required for "nation-building" has, by many
accounts, deeply offended Rumsfeld and other
"assertive nationalists" in and outside the
administration.
Some in turn have blamed
neo-conservatives for deluding themselves and Bush
into thinking that US troops would be greeted with
"sweets and flowers" in Iraq. The exile of
Wolfowitz to the World Bank and the resignation
last summer of Undersecretary of Defence for
Policy Douglas Feith should be seen in this light.
But the breakdown in the coalition's unity
and coherence resulted at least as much from
external factors, as well, beginning with the
tenacity of the Iraq insurgency. In bogging down
US land forces, it has put paid to the coalition's
original dreams of the armed forces being prepared
to intervene in any crisis - anytime, anywhere.
In addition, the unanticipated and
enormous costs associated with the occupation in
Iraq - to which might now be added the
unanticipated and enormous costs of recovery from
Hurricane Katrina - has also demonstrated, both to
some right-wing but budget-conscious nationalists,
as well as to the rest of the world, that the
money for the kind of military PNAC has always
lobbied for is simply not available.
Thus,
significant hikes in the defence budget, or in the
occupation force in Iraq, as called for by PNAC in
its most recent letter this January, are simply
beyond the political pale.
Indeed, the
growing public perception that Iraq has become a
"quagmire" has added to the burdens of the PNAC
coalition, members of which now must spend an
inordinate amount of time defending the original
decision to invade. A group that is
temperamentally best suited to offence has found
itself over the past two years in an increasingly
defensive crouch.
Another external event
that has clearly divided the PNAC coalition, and
even the neo-conservatives who have dominated it,
was Sharon's determination to disengage from Gaza
and parts of the West Bank.
The September
20, 2001 letter and its April 3, 2002 follow-up on
the Israel-Palestinian conflict both reflected the
coalition's commitment to the closest-possible
alliance between the US and a Likud-led Israel.
But just as the Likud Party in Israel has
split over Sharon's disengagement, so PNAC hawks,
particularly the neo-conservatives and the
Christian Right, have split here. And because
Israel holds such a central position in the
worldview of both groups, internal disagreement on
such a key issue is particularly debilitating.
But it would be a mistake to believe that
because the PNAC and the coalition it represents
are down, they must be out, particularly with
respect to the other policy initiatives which they
recommended four years ago.
Confrontation
with Iran, particularly under the leadership of
hard-line President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, is
something that the coalition remains unified
about, particularly with respect to the prospect
of Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.
While the PNAC has not explicitly
addressed what to do about Iran, there is little
question that the coalition - like the hawks
within the administration - remains fundamentally
united on its own hardline policy and, in any
event, an absolute refusal to directly engage the
new government.
What to do about Syria is
more uncertain, although more hawkish sectors
within the coalition clearly favor "regime
change", possibly with the help of cross-border
attacks in the name of preempting the infiltration
of insurgents into Iraq, as has been called for by
Kristol, among others.
While realists
within the administration argue in favor of
engaging Syrian President Bashar Assad, if only
because the alternative could be so much worse,
the hawks, particularly the neo-conservatives who
often refer to Damascus as "low-lying fruit",
appear determined to prevent any weakening of
their policy of isolation and economic pressure on
the assumption that the regime will soon collapse.
As in Iraq, however, the question of what
will take its place has not yet been fully thought
through.
