The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) is a Jerusalem-based think tank, with a Washington office, founded in 1984 by Robert Loewenberg. During the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the little-known institute gained public attention thanks to a study it had put out in 1996, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The paper's recommendations pressed Israel's then-incoming Likud government to scrap the peace process in favor of a hardline posture aimed at attacking states like Syria and Iraq. Because two of its contributors, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, years later obtained high-level posts with the George W. Bush administration, commentators cited the paper's authorship as evidence that the Bush administration was full of hawkish Mideast experts who were determined to remake the region.
So sensitive was the administration to media reports connecting "A Clean Break" and Bush officials that in 2004, Feith, then serving in the Pentagon, responded to a Washington Post article about the paper by writing a letter to the editor in which he denied direct authorship. He wrote: "David Wurmser, as the group's rapporteur, drafted the report. There were no coauthors, and the discussion participants were not asked to clear the final text of the paper." He added: "[The report's] introductory paragraph said, 'The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including [myself] participated.' Thus, there is no warrant for attributing any particular idea, let alone all of them, to any one participant" ( Washington Post , September 16, 2004). In other words, according to Feith, the report was drafted in such way as to be plausibly deniable by everyone involved.
On the other hand, the study group that resulted in the production of "A Clean Break" included eight individuals representing a passel of think tanks that have supported policies like those advocated in the report. Perle, with the American Enterprise Institute, served as "study group leader;" James Colbert represented the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; Feith was then with the law firm Feith and Zell Associates; Jonathan Torop represented the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Wurmser and Loewenberg represented IASPS; and Meyrav Wurmser was at Johns Hopkins University. Three of these individuals were tapped to serve in the Bush administration: Feith became deputy undersecretary of defense for policy; Perle was chosen to be chairman of the Defense Policy Board; and David Wurmser became Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
The report argued that a "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq [was] an important Israeli objective in its own right." It advocated working closely with "Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll back" regional threats, and using "Israeli proxy forces" based in Lebanon for "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon." If that should "prove insufficient, [Israel should strike] at select targets in Syria proper." Further, "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria." This would create a "natural axis" between Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq, and Turkey that "would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula." This "could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria's territorial integrity."
IASPS describes itself on its website as pursuing the "limitation of Israeli socialist statism supported by U.S. aid, by means of free market reform and a robust missile defense." In the view of IASPS, "The link between these economic and geostrategic policies reflects a critique of those policies which stand in opposition to limited government and affect an undermining of the elementary truths of human order. At the purely political level, IASPS policies stand in opposition to those supportive of statism and the diminution of the balance of power."
Loewenberg is president of IASPS. The executive director in Jerusalem is Zev Golan; in Washington, Robert Heiler. William R. Van Cleave is co-director of the institute's Research in Strategy division. Yakir Plessner is a senior fellow, Yoss Laster an associate fellow, Yuval Levin an adjunct fellow, and Paul Wihbey an IASPS strategic fellow. Van Cleave, an American who is also associated with the Hoover Institution, Ariel Center, and the International Institute of Strategic Studies, was a member of "Team B" in the mid-1970s and was on the executive committee of the original Committee on the Present Danger, founded in 1976.
The institute has two main divisions: Economic Policy Research and Research in Strategy. It also has a Hebrew-language portal on its website. IASPS aims to train a new generation of Israeli economists and political analysts. "Institute Fellows," according to its economic division, "assist Knesset members with economic research and help develop economic reform policies based on their research. As part of their activities, the Fellows spend a month in Washington, serving as research assistants to members of Congress."
IASPS's work is not exclusive to the Middle East; it has produced studies on various African countries, Taiwan, and the Caspian region. The institute's Caspian Project, for example, produced a strategic study titled "The Real Energy Solution is Not in Iraq." Published in March 2003 and authored by IASPS fellow Vladimir Socor, the report argued that a number of current trends "add urgency to the goal of bringing Caspian oil and gas westward, directly to consumer markets." One of these trends "concerns the need to pacify and reorder the Middle East. The effort is only beginning with the U.S.-led war to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. It will be a protracted effort, which may well require further operations against terrorist groups and rogue-state WMD proliferators elsewhere in the Middle East in the years ahead. The effort is also likely to entail nation-building as a stabilizing factor. Only then can the sources of volatility subside in the region. Meanwhile volatility may even increase if radical anti-Western elements in the region react spasmodically in the initial stages of the anti-terrorist, anti-rogue-WMD operations."
IASPS also examines resource issues in Africa through its Africa Oil Policy Initiative Group. On January 25, 2002, IASPS sponsored a forum on "African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development" at the University Club in Washington, DC. According to the institute, "West African oil is what can help stabilize the Middle East, end Muslim terror, and secure a measure of energy security. First, the Africa Initiative is Africa's Turn. And, turning Africa can help turn the kaleidoscope that will reset misalliances and unseat misrule driven by oil and murder. It's a policy" ("Proceedings of an Institute Symposium," May 2002).
Speaking at the IASPS forum, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kantsteiner III, said, "African oil is of national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important as we move forward. It will be people like you who are going to develop that resource, bring that oil home, and try to develop the African countries as you do it."
One can get a glimpse of the right-wing, paranoid politics of IASPS from reading the contributions to its 2004 seminar on "The Convergence of Western Elites and Islam." Reflecting on the anti-Bush demonstrations at the Republican National Convention, IASPS adjunct scholar D.Y. Anaximander, based in Jerusalem, spumed: "The depths to which we've come . now marked by the convergence of terrorist Islam and Western elites (represented at this moment by the Democrat candidate for president of this country) are such that we must be grateful-it is horrifying to say-that we were attacked by Muslims. Although the effectual arm of the Western Elites, in media, the Hollywood crowd, the professors, responded immediately in fellowship with the protesters (who announced their solidarity with the Muslims and could not say 'We are the terrorists' fast enough even to satisfy arch-Hate Master Noam Chomsky-he is the Jewish anti-Semite leader of the liberal Jewish Legions within the Western Elites), Americans could not be herded quickly: the Muslim assault was too vile and too evil. America would strike back. The Elites had to wait. They have waited for such an opportunity as they have today in New York City. The opportunity is golden. It is not going to be missed."
According to Media Transparency, in the years from 1997 to 2004, IASPS received $685,000 from two key right-wing foundations, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Work supported by these donations included projects on U.S.-Russian-Caspian affairs, on strategic resources and geostrategic policy, and a 1997 conference titled "Israel: The Advanced Case of Western Afflictions."
A July 2006 IASPS op-ed written by Loewenberg recalled the 1997 conference in its explanation of the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict in southern Lebanon. According to Loewenberg, "the message" of the conference was that "Israel cannot survive a Palestinian State because its Elites and Political Classes are wedded to the World State (also known as democracy or the Open Society) . Israel's policy today, well understood by the World's Elites and Political Classes, and not understood at all by anyone else, including the Jews of Israel and the United States, is this: blast away at Lebanon, a terrorized quasi-state of Christians and Muslims. When this goes on long enough to get the Western orders to stop Israel, the war will stop. Money will be rewarded. Conferences will be convened" (IASPS, July 17, 2006).
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Contact Information
Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
16 Bilu Street
Jerusalem, Israel 93221
Voice: 02-563-8171
1020 Sixteenth Street NW, Suite 310
Washington, DC 20036
Voice: (202) 833-9716
Fax: (202) 862-4981
Website: www.iasps.org
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