Home
Archive
Newsletters
Video
Blogs
Discuss
About
Search
Donate
Advertise
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
  • AlterNetYour turn

Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.


Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.

Advertisement
Advertisement

The Anniversary of a Neo-Imperial Moment

By Jim Lobe, AlterNet. Posted September 12, 2002.


Bush's foreign policy -- including the plan to attack Iraq -- is not about fighting terrorism, but dreams of global dominance as revealed in a document leaked 10 years ago.

Share and save this post:

      

      

Share on Facebook       

AlterNet Social Networks:
follow us on twitter
find us on Facebook

More stories by Jim Lobe

Advertisement
Upcoming AlterNet stories on Digg

When excerpts of the document first appeared in the New York Times in the spring of 1992, it created quite a stir. Sen. Joe Biden, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was particularly outraged, calling it a prescription for "literally a Pax Americana," an American empire.

The details contained in the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance(DPG) were indeed startling.

The document argued that the core assumption guiding U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century should be the need to establish permanent U.S. dominance over virtually all of Eurasia.

It envisioned a world in which U.S. military intervention would become "a constant fixture" of the geo-political landscape. "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," wrote the authors, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby –- who at the time were two relatively obscure political appointees in the Pentagon's policy office.

The strategies put forward to achieve this goal included "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role," and taking pre-emptive action against states suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction.

The draft, leaked apparently by a high-ranking source in the military, sparked an intense but fleeting uproar. At the insistence of then-National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, the final DPG document was toned down beyond recognition.

But through the nineties, the two authors and their boss, then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney, continued to wait for the right opportunity to fulfill their imperial dreams.

Their long wait came to an end on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when two hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan and a third into the Pentagon outside Washington.

And the timing could not have been more ideal. Dick Cheney had already become the most powerful vice president in U.S. history, while the draft's two authors, Wolfowitz and Libby, were now Deputy Defense Secretary and Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser, respectively.

In the year since, these three men, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded officials strategically located elsewhere in the administration, have engineered what former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke recently described as a "radical break with 55 years of bipartisan tradition" in U.S. foreign policy.

U.S. foreign policy after World War II was based on two broad strategies: a realist policy organized around containment and deterrence to U.S. power; and a more liberal, internationalist policy based on the construction of a set of multilateral institutions and alliances to promote open market-based economies and democratic values.

While Republican administrations leaned more towards the realist agenda and Democratic administrations toward the internationalist perspective, neither deviated very far from the core assumptions.


Digg!    Share on facebook   submit to reddit    Bookmark on Delicious   Stumble This  

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »

Wildfires Are Linked to Global Warming -- But Media Obscure the Relationship
Environment: As climate change intensifies, wildfires are going to increase in the U.S. Publicizing the link could help drive home the danger of global warming.
By Sam Kornell, Miller-McCune Magazine. July 6, 2009.
Unemployed and on the Verge of Losing Everything: "I Don't Know How I'll Make It"
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Luz Guerra has already lost her job. Now she might lose her car, her home and her health insurance.
By Rachel Neumann, AlterNet. July 6, 2009.
High Noon in Honduras
World: The drama in Honduras has moved from the small, impoverished country to the international stage.
By Laura Carlsen, AlterNet. July 4, 2009.
Advertisement
Advertisement