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The Guardian
Washington hawks get power boost
Rumsfeld is winning the debate
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday December 17, 2001
America's top
sabre-rattlers Donald Rumsfeld - A veteran of the cold war chosen by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, in the face of opposition from Colin Powell, now secretary of state. His radical policies and abrasive manner initially provoked resistance from the Pentagon generals. But the war on terrorism has made him the most powerful member of the cabinet and he is expanding his influence into foreign policy fields normally managed by the secretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz - Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, and the foremost exponent of a new war against Saddam Hussein. He is a former academic with a wide-ranging network of travellers and sympathisers, commonly referred to in Washington as the "Wolfowitz cabal". Doug Feith - The Pentagon's policy supremo and a former director of the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), who has led the charge for a more pro-Israel Middle East policy. Frank Gaffney - a former defence policy official and Rumsfeld acolyte who now runs the CSP - a thinktank and ideological seminary for young hawks. He advocates the scrapping of the Oslo peace process, the forceful promotion of the national missile defence system, and a settling of scores with Baghdad. Richard Perle - Known as Ronald Reagan's "prince of darkness" for his distaste for disarmament treaties, and his hawkish attitude towards the Soviet Union. Mr Perle retains an important role in the defence policy board, a Pentagon thinktank which he chairs. John Bolton - The hawks' man inside the state department. Despite the objections of Colin Powell, he was appointed undersecretary of state for arms control, non-proliferation and international security, even though he is a committed unilateralist who opposes global arms treaties on principle. Zalmay Khalilzad - the top Afghan-American in the administration. Three years ago, he signed a joint letter with Donald Rumsfeld and other hawks, calling on the Clinton administration to topple Saddam. He is seeking to take over the Middle East portfolio when Bruce Reidel steps down later this month. |
The gathering for a recent dinner at an expensive Washington hotel was
officially to honour the "Keepers of the Flame" - US security officials deemed
by their more conservative colleagues to have fought the good fight for bigger
defence budgets and tougher policies.
It was also a celebration.
The mostly casualty-free military successes in Afghanistan have significantly
boosted the power of Washington's "super-hawks" - a tight-knit group of former
cold warriors who have returned from more than a decade in policy exile to grasp
the levers of power once more.
"It's taken us 13 years to get here, but we've arrived," the evening's host,
Frank Gaffney, the head of a hawkish Washington thinktank, declared to applause
and murmurs of agreement.
The new defence establishment clustered around the defence secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, is clearly winning the policy debate
against the state department.
In the latest of a string of setbacks for Colin Powell's multilateralist
approach, the secretary of state's attempts to keep negotiations going with
Moscow over missile defence was abruptly brought to an end last week with the
announcement that the United States would withdraw from the anti ballistic
missile (ABM) treaty.
Meanwhile, the hardliners are capturing key squares on the chessboard of
Washington power, at the expense of the moderates at state.
Barring a military disaster in the Afghan endgame, the Pentagon is almost
certain to win its battle to pursue the war of terrorism into Iraq and suspected
terrorist havens across the world.
"This is the third significant military campaign, after Desert Storm and Kosovo,
in which air power has been the decisive element and where casualties have been
negligible," John Pike, the chief analyst at the online security newsletter
GlobalSecurity.com <http://www.GlobalSecurity.com>,
said.
"To the extent that the administration now can't tell the difference between a
war and a firepower display, there is a greater temptation to resort to force."
But the hawk ascendancy has had other far-reaching implications.
Significant foreign policy issues have been annexed by the Pentagon and its
militant allies, including the negotiation of key international treaties and the
handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
John Bolton - the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz group's own man in the state department -
was forced on Mr Powell despite the secretary of state's strenuous objections.
Mr Bolton is under secretary of state for arms control and international
security. He serves as senior adviser to the president on non-proliferation and
disarmament - a role which causes grim amusement in the state department as he
opposes multilateral arms agreements on principle.
Inserted into the department to oversee the destruction of the ABM treaty, Mr
Bolton was also instrumental in torpedoing international negotiations in Geneva
earlier this month aimed at enforcing the toothless 1972 biological weapons
convention.
Mr Powell does not have a counterweight to Mr Bolton in the Pentagon, and he is
about to lose an important ally in the White House.
Bruce Reidel, a Clinton holdover who has echoed the state department's emphasis
on the need to maintain an Arab coalition, is due to leave his job as head of
the national security council Middle East desk next week.
The hawks' candidate to take over is Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American with
little experience in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose empire will include
the Middle East, Iran and Iraq.
Three years ago, he co-signed a letter to the then president, Bill Clinton,
calling on him to throw his weight wholeheartedly into an effort to topple
Saddam Hussein. The letter was also signed by Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Wolfowitz, Mr
Bolton and others.
And for the Washington hawks, Israel is a strategic ally which should not be
bullied into giving ground - a view promoted by Doug Feith at the Pentagon, and
Frank Gaffney, his former colleague at the Centre for Security Policy (CSP).
"The so-called Middle East 'peace process,' which began with secret
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Oslo, has materially contributed to the
present, catastrophic situation," the CSP argues on its website.
"Successive concessions made in the name of advancing the 'peace process' by
both Labour and Likud-led governments of Israel have not appeased demands for
further concessions, only whetted Arab appetites for more."
The CSP has now established itself as an influential player in Washington, a
policy powerhouse focused on establishing a radical, unilateralist and
aggressive new defence doctrine.
The ballroom for the "Keepers of the Flame" gathering was packed with the high
priests of the new security establishment. They included Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Feith
and another Pentagon advisor, JD Crouch, sitting alongside the former CIA
director, James Woolsey, a leading proponent of a new war against Saddam.
Among them was Richard Perle, known as the "prince of darkness" in the
Reagan-era arms race, who has been reborn as the chairman of the defence policy
board.
Mr Rumsfeld was the night's keynote speaker. He declared his happiness at being
able to speak his mind "among friends" and embraced the mood by telling a
cheering audience that after finishing off al-Qaida and the Taliban, "we'd best
go after the rest of the terrorists".
For the time being, at least, there is little in Washington to stop Mr Rumsfeld
chasing America's foes all the way to Baghdad.