Intellectual Roots of Neo-conservative Thinking

By Khurram Husain (*)



They were thoughtful men, intelligent and attentive to detail. They eschewed the blare and chaos of politics, preferring to work silently through collegial persuasion and networked access to important offices. They were analysts at the RAND corporation and their job was to “think the unthinkable.” They were the brains behind the armored brawn of the most powerful war machine the world had ever known.

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By the first Bush administration, Wolfowitz was working for Richard Cheney, the Secretary of Defense. In May 1990 he delivered a briefing for Cheney recommending that the US take steps to ensure its strategic dominance of the world for the foreseeable future. He was then assigned as Director, Defense Planning Board of the Pentagon and tasked with writing up the next Defense Planning Guidance paper recommending where America’s military priorities ought to be in the post-Cold war world.

Wolfowitz wrote the DPG 1992 paper and sparked a storm of controversy immediately. The paper was leaked to the New York Times and drew sustained criticism until Cheney had to clarify that it was merely an exercise and not a statement of official policy.

What Wolfowitz produced in that document was nothing less than a blueprint for America to dominate the world. He argued that after the defeat of the USSR, the next main challengers to American power will emerge on a regional stage, and America must prepare to confront them. This will involve disarming all but a handful of countries of all weapons of mass destruction, and setting an aggressive confrontational posture to militarily dominate those regions where America has any vital interests, whether political or military.

The DPG 1992 was buried when the Bush administration lost the election. Wolfowitz and his ilk were out of a job but used their time well to do their homework. He accepted a job as Dean at Johns Hopkins university and maintained contact with his empire builder friends. They wrote regularly in the Weekly Standard, the right wing organ where many of the ideas that we are seeing put into practice were discussed throughout the 1990s.

more: http://www.jahrbuch2003.studien-von-zeitfragen.net/Weltmacht/American_Dreams/american_dreams.html