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Creed, Cabal, or Conspiracy – The Origins of the current Neo-Conservative Revolution in US Strategic Thinking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Ebrahim Afsah

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Americans usually start a presentation with a joke, Germans usually with an apology, Russians with a complaint, and Middle Easterners often with a conspiracy theory. There are many reasons why Middle Easterners have been more prone to conspiracies than others. The psychology of conspiracy is complex, and merits a separate treatment. But part of the answer must lie in the fact that for much of its modern history the Middle East has been at the mercy of external forces whose decisions were not only beyond the control of indigenous populations and elites, but moreover appeared unfathomable to those unfamiliar with the way political and strategic decisions are made in the West.

Type
Special Issue
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 9: Special Issue , 01 September 2003 , pp. 901 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Ever since the French under Napoleon were defeated by the English in 1803 at Aboukir, all the major decisions affecting the Middle East have been taken abroad.Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., Thierry Meyssan, 11 September 2001: L'Effroyable Imposteur (2002), Andreas von Bülow, Im Namen des Staates (2000). Andreas von Bülow, Die CIA und der 11. September. Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste (2003); Mathias Bröckers, Verschwörungen, Verschwörungstheorien und die Geheimnisse des 11. 9. (2003).Google Scholar

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4 Id.,at 5.Google Scholar

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6 “The artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united to bring about an overturn or usurpation especially in public affairs; also: a group engaged in such artifices and intrigues.” Merrian-Webster online, <http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=cabal>..>Google Scholar

7 The best known is certainly the Project for a New American Century. “Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project. William Kristol is chairman of the Project, and Robert Kagan, Devon Gaffney Cross, Bruce Jackson and John R. Bolton serve as directors. Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project.” See, Thomas Donelly, et al., Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (September 2000), 2. The report can be found at <http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf>. The other famous think-tanks associated with the current neo-conservative ascendancy are the American Enterprise Institute, <http://www.aei.org>; the Hudson Institute, <http://www.hudson.org>; and the somewhat more orthodox Cato Institute, <http://www.cato.org>..+The+other+famous+think-tanks+associated+with+the+current+neo-conservative+ascendancy+are+the+American+Enterprise+Institute,+;+the+Hudson+Institute,+;+and+the+somewhat+more+orthodox+Cato+Institute,+.>Google Scholar

8 During an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz made the following remark: “The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason.” See, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html>. The Pentagon tried subsequently to accuse Mr. Tannenhaus as having misquoted Mr. Wolfowitz, but the transcript clearly shows that he had been accurately paraphrased. For a comparison of the official transcripts and Pentagon counterstatements, see, http://www.digitalmediatree.com/onelap/references/22502/> (“[L]et me paraphrase his comments on the ‘motive’ question based on the text of the Vanity Fair interview transcript (linked above). There were three main reasons: 1) WMD, 2) links to terrorism, and 3) Saddam was bad for Iraq. Number three didn't justify an invasion. Number two was weak. Number one was something we could get people to rally around. Also, the hidden agenda was to remove a threat to the ‘friendly governments’ in the region, and to satisfy bin Laden's demand that we vacate Saudi Arabia.”)..+The+Pentagon+tried+subsequently+to+accuse+Mr.+Tannenhaus+as+having+misquoted+Mr.+Wolfowitz,+but+the+transcript+clearly+shows+that+he+had+been+accurately+paraphrased.+For+a+comparison+of+the+official+transcripts+and+Pentagon+counterstatements,+see,+http://www.digitalmediatree.com/onelap/references/22502/>+(“[L]et+me+paraphrase+his+comments+on+the+‘motive’+question+based+on+the+text+of+the+Vanity+Fair+interview+transcript+(linked+above).+There+were+three+main+reasons:+1)+WMD,+2)+links+to+terrorism,+and+3)+Saddam+was+bad+for+Iraq.+Number+three+didn't+justify+an+invasion.+Number+two+was+weak.+Number+one+was+something+we+could+get+people+to+rally+around.+Also,+the+hidden+agenda+was+to+remove+a+threat+to+the+‘friendly+governments’+in+the+region,+and+to+satisfy+bin+Laden's+demand+that+we+vacate+Saudi+Arabia.”).>Google Scholar

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11 Plenty of textbooks describe the dominant paradigm in international relations, realism, in detail. A useful starting point is Michael Joseph Smith, Realist thought from Weber to Kissinger (1986); see, also, Robert Gilpin, The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism, in Neo-Realism and its Critics (Robert Keohane ed. 1986).Google Scholar

12 Francis Fukuyama writing in the Wall Street Journal, 24 December 2002.Google Scholar

13 Who famously quipped that if he had to choose between order and justice, he would always choose order.Google Scholar

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15 For an extremely insightful intellectual history of the group, see, Alain Frachon and Daniel Vernet, Le stratège et le philosophe, Le Monde (16 April 2003), available, in French, at <http://www.zeitounatv.com/le%20stratege.html>, and translated into English, at <http://www.counterpunch.org/frachon06022003.html>. For an interesting discussion of the philosophical issues raised by this article, see, the article by its English translator. Norman Madarasz, Plato, Leo Strauss, and Allan Bloom, available at <http://www.counterpunch.org/madarasz06022003.html>.,+and+translated+into+English,+at+.+For+an+interesting+discussion+of+the+philosophical+issues+raised+by+this+article,+see,+the+article+by+its+English+translator.+Norman+Madarasz,+Plato,+Leo+Strauss,+and+Allan+Bloom,+available+at+.>Google Scholar

16 Throughout the crisis Kennedy showed great restraint and reluctance to act on the suggestion of his military commanders. He was greatly worried about the dangers of miscalculations, and misperception. He was greatly influenced in his thinking by Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (1962). Tuchman presents the outbreak of the First World War as an unintended catastrophe where well-meaning politicians seemed to stumble into war through a combination of inflexible and self-fulfilling military doctrines, illusions of grandeur and complexes of inferiority, plain misunderstanding and stupidity. The President is quoted by his brother, Robert Kennedy, in his posthumously published book about the Cuban missile crisis: “…Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August had made a great impression on the President. ‘I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time, The Missiles of October,’ [President Kennedy] said to [Robert Kennedy].” Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis 127 (1969). Discussed in David M. Kunsman and Douglas B. Lawson, A Primer on U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy (January 2001). [Sandia Report, (SAND2001-0053) 43-45]. For a discussion of the validity of the thinking presented by Tuchman, see, Steven Van Evera, Causes of War – Power and the Roots of Conflict (1999) 61-66.Google Scholar

17 The best account of the thirteen days of nuclear brinkmanship are probably the recently de-classified transcripts of the White House deliberations. See, Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (1997); Graham Allison & Philip D. Zelikow, Essence of Decision; Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (2nd ed. 1999).Google Scholar

18 Bundy to the President, July 21, 1961, National Security Files, Box 318, Index of Weekend Papers, JFK Library, Boston.Google Scholar

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20 The doctrine is maybe best symbolized in the person of General Curtis LeMay who played a key role in developing the air bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan, including the low-flying incendiary raids on Tokyo, as well as the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was subsequently given command of the newly created Strategic Air Command where “his strategy was not one of restraint. Should a nuclear war start, LeMay did not believe in holding back some of the stockpile, but rather in delivering the entire stockpile in the first blow, the so-called ‘Sunday punch'. … During the Cuban missile crisis, he advocated attacking Cuba, even after the Soviets had agreed to remove the missiles.” Kunsman and Lawson (note 16), 105. It might be noted that he was the inspiration to the mad general in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Love the Bomb. His aggressive posture is also well documented in the transcript of the deliberations. See, May and Zelikow (note 17).Google Scholar

21 Among the main architects is Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who “practiced a type of diplomacy described as “brinkmanship.” In the mid-50s he wrote an article in which he said, “If you are afraid to go to the brink, you are lost.” In a January, 1954, speech, he outlined the policy of “massive retaliation” in which a U.S. response to aggression would be “at places and with means of our own choosing.” See, Kunsman and Lawson (note 16), 113. One of Dulles main critics was Henry Kissinger who opposed “massive retaliation” in favor of a coordinated conventional cum nuclear reaction to aggression coined “flexible response,” which he laid out in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, and elaborated in his 1960 book The Necessity for Choice, where he argued that massive retaliation was not credible to the Soviets.Google Scholar

22 Kunsman and Lawson (footnote 16, supra).Google Scholar

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24 A comprehensive list of Albert Wohlstetter's early writings can be found at <http://www.rand.org/publications/classics/wohlstetter/>>Google Scholar

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27 Schelling (footnote 19, supra).Google Scholar

28 Waltz refers to nuclear weapons as “a great force for peace” and argues for their wide distribution. See, Waltz, Kenneth N., The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory, in The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars 39, 48 (Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb eds., 1989); Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, Adelphi Paper no. 171 (International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981); Kenneth N. Waltz, Nuclear Myths and Political Realities, 84 American Political Science Review 731 (1990); Kenneth N. Waltz, The Emerging Structure of International Politics, 18 International Security, No. 2, 44 (1993),. See also, John Mearsheimer, Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War, 15 International Security, No. 1 (Summer 1990); and, more disturbingly, John Mearsheimer, Why we will soon miss the Cold War, Atlantic Monthly, 266/2 (August 1990). John Lewis Gaddis attributes the long period of peace in Europe to the stabilizing nature of nuclear weapons. See, John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (1987). He makes the argument that new nuclear actors would soon be “socialized” into the “habit of responsibility,” and argues that more of them make a more stable system. See, John Lewis Gaddis, Towards the post-Cold War World, 70 Foreign Affairs 102 (Spring 1991); John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997).Google Scholar

29 Wohlstetter, Albert, Nuclear Sharing: NATO and the N+1 Country, 39 Foreign Affairs 355 (April 1961). Again this policy is far from self-evident.Google Scholar

30 In the early days of the Cold War the delivery systems for nuclear weapons consisted mainly of traditional bombers.Google Scholar

31 The vulnerabilities arose due to the increasing accuracy of nuclear weapons, which now allowed strikes against specific “point” targets such as individual missile silos or air bases, and not only against area targets such as cities.Google Scholar

32 It has been first developed into a fully-fledged theory by Wohlstetter, Hoffmann, and Schelling. See, Albert Wohlstetter and Fred Hoffmann, Defending a Strategic Force after 1960, unpublished RAND working paper (1 February 1954); Albert Wohlstetter, The Delicate Balance of Terror, 37 Foreign Affairs 221(January 1959).; Thomas C. Schelling, Surprise Attack and Disarmament, 15 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist 413 (December 1959); Thomas C. Schelling, Meteors, Mischief, and War, 16 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, 292 (September 1960); Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict 207-254 (1960); Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence 221-259 (1966). For an excellent treatment of the literature, see Van Evera (note 16), 35–72, chapter 3, Jumping the Gun: First-Move Advantage and Crisis Instability. The general notion that the risk of war rises with the size of the first-strike advantage is a modern one, and might have been the decisive factor in causing the First World War, see, Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the Wars 184 (1984).Google Scholar

33 He built on the work of his wife, Roberta Wohlstetter, who showed how closely the Pearl Harbour attack resembled a potential Soviet attack on vulnerable strategic nuclear assets, see her Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962. She describes how Admiral Isoroku hoped to “decide the fate of the war on the very first day” and “at the outset of the war give a fatal blow to the enemy fleet”, 368.Google Scholar

34 These were primarily land and sea based missiles. This shift in strategy occurred at the expense of the Air Force, and benefited the Navy and Army. Not surprisingly the commanding officers tried to shape overall strategy in a way that benefited their service most, see the debates between General Curtis LeMay, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and Secretary McNamara.Google Scholar

35 Schelling at 235(footnote 26, supra).Google Scholar

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43 The major arms control treaties are the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT I and II, 1972 and 1979; note that SALT II was signed by Carter but that the Senate, during the Reagan administration, failed to ratify it.); the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM 1972); the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT 1996, not yet ratified by the US). For a concise overview of the major strategic legal instruments, see <www.armscontrol.org/pdf/ussovietrussianarms.pdf>; for a comprehensive full-text list refer to see <www.armscontrol.org/treaties>.;+for+a+comprehensive+full-text+list+refer+to+see+.>Google Scholar

44 The crucial agreements are the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF 1987; note that this treaty for the first time eliminated an entire class of weapons); Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE 1991); Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I 1991 in force 1994, START II 1993, START III, note that START II has been signed in 1993 but the ratification is unclear: U.S ratified 1996, Russia ratified in 2000 but versions are different, and START III not yet been negotiated, so far there has only been the Helsinki Joint Statement 1997), Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT 2002, Russia ratified 2003, US has not yet ratified). Likewise the unilateral reductions announced by President Bush in September 1991, which came to be known as Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNI I and II).Google Scholar

45 For early adherents of this theory, see, Bull, Hedley, The Control of the Arms Race 158-174 (2nd ed., 1965); Glenn H. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security 97-114 (1961); Thomas C. Schelling and Morton H. Halperin with Donald G. Brennan, Strategy and Arms Control 9-17 (1961). The implications of stability theory for US policy are discussed in, Steven E. Miller, The Limits of Mutual Restraint: Arms Control and the Strategic Balance, chapter 3 (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1988)). My entire discussion of the theoretical background is heavily based on the work of my teacher. See, Van Evera (footnote 16, supra).Google Scholar

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66 Best exemplified maybe in his “evil empire” speech 1983.Google Scholar

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68 PD-59 had been issued by Harold Brown, Secretary of Defense under Carter, and aimed at countering the large Soviet technological advances and weapon deployments made while the United States was politically paralyzed by the Watergate scandal, and militarily occupied by first waging and then extricating themselves from the Vietnam War. Brown explained it as “a strategy that denies the other side any possibility that it could win—but it doesn't say that our side would win.” Kunsman and Lawson 59 (footnote 16, supra).Google Scholar

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73 NSC-68 was an attempt to devise a foreign policy in a world that could be armed with thermonuclear bombs. Its principal author, Admiral Nitze pointed out that Soviet leaders would favor preventive war if they thought the U.S. was weak, either militarily or in will: “the enemy's perception of American strength and will was as important as their reality in the great power game.” See, Kunsman and Lawson at 118 (footnote 16, supra). See, also, Ernest R. May, American Cold War Strategy : Interpreting NSC 68 (1993).Google Scholar

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80 This is a marked departure from realist thinking in both Republican and Democratic administrations, epitomized in Roosevelt's quip about a Central American dictator: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.” See, inter alia, Charles Krauthammer, The Clinton Doctrine, CNN/allpolitics (29 March 1999), <http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1999/03/29/doctrine.html>>Google Scholar

81 President Clinton approved Presidential Defense Directive PDD-60 on 13 Nov 1997.Google Scholar

82 Bell, Robert G., senior director for defense policy at the National Security Council, in the Washington Post p. 1 (7 December 1997).Google Scholar

83 Kunsman and Lawson at 68 (footnote 16, supra).Google Scholar

84 Grier, Peter, The End of a Defense Doctrine, The Christian Science Monitor p. 1 (7 July 2000) (quoted in Kunsman and Lawson at (footnote 16, supra)).Google Scholar

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87 Basically, it is much cheaper to deploy offensive weapons than to create a reliable defensive mechanism against them. In the early 1960s the cost-exchange ratio between antimissile defenses and offsetting responses was estimated at 5:1. In the debate over SDI this ratio was still estimated at 3:1, “the ratio is still strongly weighted against defense and will remain so.” James R. Schlesinger, Rhetoric and Realities in the Star Wars Debate, 10 International Security 3, 8 (Summer 1985), discussed in Van Evera at 251 fn. 27 (footnote 16, supra).Google Scholar

88 Quoted in the Senate debate over the adoption of the Rumsfeld Commission Report 1998, see, <www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_cr/s980731-rumsfeld.htm>..>Google Scholar

89 As reported to congressmen in a letter by the CIA's Congressional Relations Office of 1 December 1995, quoted ibid.Google Scholar

90 The General Accounting Office prepared a report, and two former Directors of Central Intelligence, Jim Woolsey and Bob Gates offered their opinions which concluded that the level of certainty stated in NIE-95-19 was “overstated” and that it was “politically naïve”.Google Scholar

91 The text can be found at <www. fas.org/irp/threat/missile/rumsfeld/. For a summary of its key findings see www.cdiss.org/98july2.htm>..>Google Scholar

92 Kunsman and Lawson at 67 (footnote 16, supra).Google Scholar

93 The Commission's members were: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Barry M. Clechman, General Lee Butler, Richard l. Garwin, William R. Graham, William Schneider Jr., General Larry D. Welch, Paul D. Wolfowitz, and James Woolsey.Google Scholar