Special Report
October 2002

The Men Who Stole the Show

By Tom Barry and Jim Lobe

SRmen.pdf (119 kb)

• Focusing on the “New American Century”
• Bringing It All Together
  
  
• Box 1: Security Strategy Foretold
• Box 2: Glossary of the Right-Wing Sectors in U.S. Foreign Policy
  
  
• Endnotes

Security Strategy Foretold

In September 2000, PNAC issued its strategic plan on how America should exercise its global leadership and project its military power. In its forward, PNAC’s Rebuilding America’s Defenses notes that PNAC’s plan “builds upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush administration.” It credits the draft of the Defense Policy Guidance as providing “a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” (Wolfowitz and Libby were the two dozen consultants involved in the report.) Among the key conclusions of PNAC’s defense strategy document were the following:

• “Develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world.”
• “Control the new ‘international commons’ of space and ‘cyberspace,’ and pave the way for the creation of a new military service—U.S. Space Forces—with the mission of space control.”
• “Increase defense spending, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually.”
• “Exploit the ‘revolution in military affairs’ [transformation to high-tech, unmanned weaponry] to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces.”
• “Need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements” complaining that the U.S. has “virtually ceased development of safer and more effective nuclear weapons.”
• “Facing up to the realities of multiple constabulary missions that will require a permanent allocation of U.S. forces.”
• “America must defend its homeland” by “reconfiguring its nuclear force” and by missile defense systems that “counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.”
• “Need for a larger U.S. security perimeter” and the U.S. “should seek to establish a network of ‘deployment bases’ or ‘forward operating bases’ to increase the reach of current and future forces,” citing the need to move beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia to increased permanent military presence in Southeast Asia and “other regions of East Asia.” Necessary “to cope with the rise of China to great-power status.”
• Redirecting the U.S. Air Force to move “toward a global first-strike force.”
• End the Clinton administration’s “devotion” to the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
• “North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or similar states [should not be allowed] to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies, or threaten the American homeland itself.”
• “Main military missions” necessary to “preserve Pax Americana” and a “unipolar 21st century” are the following: “secure and expand zones of democratic peace, deter rise of new great-power competitor, defend key regions (Europe, East Asia, Middle East), and exploit transformation of war.”

According to the PNAC report, “The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable, and durable. Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time: even a global Pax Americana will not preserve itself.” To preserve this “American peace” through the 21st century, the PNAC report concludes that the global order “must have a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence.” The report struck a prescient note when it observed that “the process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Thomas Donnelly, the document’s principal author and recently PNAC’s deputy director (until he was recruited by Lockheed-Martin), expressed the hope that “the project’s report will be useful as a road map for the nation’s immediate and future defense plans.” His hope has been realized in the new security strategy and military build-up of the current Bush administration. Many of PNAC’s conclusions and recommendations are reflected in the White House’s National Security Strategy document of September 2002, which reflects the “peace through strength” credo that shapes PNAC strategic thinking.

- Tom Barry