The aggressive and dominating behavior that the United States is currently displaying appears to have been planned years ago.
Prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, a neo-conservative organization called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) issued a report blueprinting the course U.S. foreign policy should follow in order to deal with global trends and “maintain American global leadership.”
PNAC’s report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century,” was complied in September 2000 as an extension of a 1992 report by Dick Cheny. It is a 91 page document which clearly outlines the need for a new defense policy and an increase in defense spending.
According to the report, “the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.”
Some of the suggested efforts to “preserve and extend” the position of the United States are as follows:
1. Use key allies, such as the U.K., as the “most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership.”
2. Keep all peacekeeping and rebuilding missions within the power of American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations.
3. Get rid of the regimes that could rival U.S. leadership, such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Syria.
4. Create “the U.S. Space Forces” and maintain control over cyberspace.
5. Withdraw from treaties which prevent the U.S. from developing weapons, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
6. Position troops in the Philippines.
7.Increase defense spending between 3 percent and 3.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
There are apparent parallels between the actions taken by the Bush administration and the finds and suggestions of this report.
For instance, Bush has used the United Kingdom as a supportive “sidekick” in the war with Iraq, the United States has defied the United Nations by acting without its support, three of the five “dangerous regimes” have been identified as the axis of evil, the United States has withdrawn from the ABM Treaty, troops have recently returned to the Philippines and the current defense spending is about 3.8 percent of the GDP.
Given the supporters and compliers of this report, however, this is no surprise. Vice President Dick Cheny, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Jeb Bush are among the original founders and chairmen of PNAC, while maintaining high offices within the Bush administration.
The most disturbing parallel, though, is on page 62 of the report. It says that the process of enacting all of the suggestions of the report would be long, unless the United States had “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
I am not suggesting that Sept. 11 was a conspiracy, but I am merely bringing this report and the actions and ideas of PNAC to the public’s attention.
Dick Cheny introduced the original report 11 years ago. Now the ideas of that report are quickly taking shape within Bush’s presidency.
