The PNAC's 'positioning statement' was ostensibly to promote American global leadership. Fundamental to its 'vision' is that such "leadership" -- however defined -- is good both for the U.S. and for the world. Whilst this might sound magnanimous, for those looking the impact of the pernicious, self-serving ideology behind the PNAC has wreaked havoc on an apocalyptic scale that 15 years into the new millennium shows little sign of waning.
Again, herein memory lane beckons, for the all-important context and perspective.
Since Ronald Reagan's heyday then, for the most part the neo-conservatives, ideological 'exceptionalists', and hard-core 'chicken hawks', and had been keeping their heads down and their powder dry. These included -- but certainly weren't limited to -- folks like the estimable Dick Cheney, along with Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, and not least, the ever irrepressible Donald Rumsfeld, a man once described by no less an authority on such personality types, Richard M Nixon, as a "ruthless little bastard", and of whom it can be said (we) might never know what he didn't know and when he didn't know it!
What we do know however is that most of these folks would play a significant role in George W Bush's elevation to power. In various measure all of them -- as the powers behind the throne -- would wield enormous influence within and outside the administration after shoe-horning Number 43 into the White House via the trades-mans' entrance.
Yet whilst the more obvious genesis for PNAC harks back to the end of the so-called Gulf War, we can in fact trace the mindset fueling its ideology back beyond Reagan to George Kennan's heyday. (See Part One.) Moreover, as we will see later on, this "ideology" was not exclusively 'homegrown' as it were. For now though it's enough to know the PNAC construct has its more recognisable origins in the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Mostly the (bastard) brainchild of Wolfowitz (later deputy Secretary of Defense in the Bush 2 administration) in the wake of the Gulf War, at its simplest PNAC advocated unilateralism and pre-emption in U.S. foreign policy. Those unfamiliar with foreign policy jargon need only note herein that "unilateralism" means we're not going to seek permission from the United Nations (UN) to kick your a*s if we feel we have to. And "pre-emption" means "if we feel we have to", we're going to go in hard, go in early and, kick your a*s before you even think of kicking ours.
However, like a shrink-wrapped, hard-core magazine the local druggist might discreetly keep under the counter, PNAC was kept under wraps throughout Bill Clinton's administration. Yet by ignoring the PNAC, we can safely say Clinton only delayed the momentum of the movement designed to corner the market on hegemonic dominion. This was along with the less well-documented - but by no means less important - goal of firstly securing future U.S. energy supplies, then monopolising world energy sources and other key strategic resources. Put simply, the stuff over which wars are waged.
In any event, even if he were inclined to embrace the Wolfowitz proposals as later spelled out in PNAC, notwithstanding any possible attractions it held, the deal-breaker for Clinton would have been knowing that with its overarching ambitions and goals, convincing the American public to go along with them -- not to mention America's allies and others not so enamoured of such grand geopolitical ambitions -- would have been an especially hard sell. This even for a slick political 'spruiker' like Clinton. Tellingly, even the proposal's authors acknowledged this dilemma. Contained in the document was a startlingly -- indeed ominously -- frank admission that achieving such ambitions without broad public or multi-lateral support would not be a cake-walk in the ballpark; "absent a new Pearl Harbor", it would be a long time in the making. Short of Mein Kampf itself, if there were any more portentous words in anyone's geopolitical manifesto in the course of modern history, this writer would be keen to know about it. Suffice it to say that the day after 9/11, to the extent there were any 'bets' in play at the time, they were promptly taken off the geopolitical table.
Rebuilding America's Offences
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