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Highlights & Quotes Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and neocon numero uno in the Bush administration, is a longstanding hawk who seamlessly made the transition from anti-Soviet crusader to neo-imperialist true believer after the end of the Cold War. He has a long track record of producing influential (and controversial) policy proposals: In the late 1970s, he participated on the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel, a notorious effort to reinterpret CIA intelligence on the Soviet threat that helped put the country on a confrontational path with the Soviet Union and set the stage for the Reagan arms build up; as Dick Cheney's undersecretary of defense for policy in the Bush Sr. administration, he drafted--with I. Lewis Libby--a controversial defense guidance that is widely regarded as an early blueprint for the George W. Bush administration's preemptive defense posture and interventionist foreign policies; and he collaborated with the Project for the New American Century's advocacy campaign calling for war in Iraq. Before joining the Bush administration, Wolfowitz was the dean of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, the DC-based graduate school that has been home to a number of key neocon figures, including Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century and the Defense Policy Board's Eliot Cohen. In 1992, while he was Cheney's undersecretary of defense for policy, Wolfowitz was charged with producing a guidance aimed at formulating a post-Cold war defense posture. Upset by President H.W. Bush's decision to leave Saddam Hussein's regime in place after the 1991 Gulf War, Wolfowitz--along with I. Lewis Libby--argued in a draft version of the Defense Policy Guidance that the U.S. should actively deter nations from "aspiring to a larger regional or global role," use pre-emptive force to prevent countries from developing weapons of mass destruction, and act alone if necessary. Although the draft guidance was quashed soon after it was leaked to the New York Times, many of its ideas--in particular, the doctrine of pre-emption--later found their way into President George W. Bush's national security strategy. The document also seems to have served as a template for the founding statement of principles of the Project for a New American Century, which was signed by a who's who list of hawks and neocons who now serve in the current administration, including Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Peter Rodman and Zalmay Khalilzad. (9) Despite his hawkish views, some observers regard Wolfowitz as more of an idealist than a pure neocon hardliner. Reportedly an opponent of Israeli settlements, Wolfowitz's vision of the Middle East often seems infused with an earnest belief in the possibility of democracy and human rights taking hold in the Arab world. But some fault this very idealism as being at the root of U.S. problems in Iraq. After accompanying Wolfowitz on a tour of parts of Iraq, the Washington Post's David Ignatius wrote that he asked Wolfowitz's if his "passion for the noble goals of the Iraq war might overwhelm the prudence and pragmatism that normally guide war planners. He didn't answer directly, except to say that it was a good question." (10) Wolfowitz, has received numerous awards for his public service, including the Presidential Citizen's Medal, the Department of Defense's Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Department of State's Distinguished Honor Award, and the Department of Defense's Distinguished Civilian Service Medal. (1) | |
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Sources
(1) Defense Department Bios: Paul Wolfowitz (2) "Axis of Influence: Appendix C: Who's Who in the Bush Administration," World Policy Institute, July 2002 (3) Project for the New American Century: Search: Wolfowitz (4) Rand 2001 Transition Panel Members (5) Group Watch: Committee on the Present Danger (6) Jason Leopold, "The Origins of the Bush Iraq War Plan The 1998 Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz Memo to Clinton," Counterpunch, February 19, 2003 (7) Jason Leopold, "Tenet: Wolfowitz Did It," Counterpunch, July 19, 2003 (8) Peter Slevin and Dana Priest, "Wolfowitz Concedes Iraq Errors," Washington Post, July 23, 2003 (9) Michael Flynn, "The War Hawks," Chicago Tribune, April 13, 2003 (10) David Ignatius, "A War of Choice, and One Who Chose It," Washington Post, November 2, 2003 (11)
Excerpts from the 1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance, PBS.org
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