[R-G] Neo-Con Ideologues Launch New Foreign Policy Group

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46272

POLITICS-US:  Neo-Con Ideologues Launch New Foreign Policy Group
By Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Mar 25 (IPS) - A newly-formed and still obscure neo- 
conservative foreign policy organisation is giving some observers  
flashbacks to the 1990s, when its predecessor staked out the  
aggressively unilateralist foreign policy that came to fruition under  
the George W. Bush administration.

The blandly-named Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) - the brainchild of  
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neo-conservative foreign  
policy guru Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan  
Senor - has thus far kept a low profile; its only activity to this  
point has been to sponsor a conference pushing for a U.S. "surge" in  
Afghanistan.

But some see FPI as a likely successor to Kristol’s and Kagan’s  
previous organisation, the now-defunct Project for the New American  
Century (PNAC), which they launched in 1997 and which became best  
known for leading the public campaign to oust former Iraqi president  
Saddam Hussein both before and after the Sep. 11 attacks.

PNAC’s charter members included many figures who later held top  
positions under Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary  
of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and his top deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

FPI was founded earlier this year, but few details are available about  
the group, which has so far attracted no media attention. The  
organisation’s website lists Kagan, Kristol, and Senor, who came to  
prominence as a spokesman for the occupation authorities in Iraq, as  
the three members of its board of directors.

Two of FPI’s three staffers, policy director Jamie Fly and Christian  
Whiton, have come directly from foreign policy posts in the Bush  
administration, while the third, Rachel Hoff, last worked for the  
National Republican Congressional Committee. Contacted by IPS at the  
group's office, Fly referred all questions to Senor, who did not  
return the call.

The organisation’s mission statement argues that the "United States  
remains the world’s indispensable nation," and warns that "strategic  
overreach is not the problem and retrenchment is not the solution" to  
Washington's current financial and strategic woes. It calls for  
"continued engagement - diplomatic, economic, and military - in the  
world and rejection of policies that would lead us down the path to  
isolationism."

The mission statement opens by listing a familiar litany of threats to  
the U.S., including "rogue states," "failed states," "autocracies" and  
"terrorism", but gives pride of place to the "challenges" posed by  
"rising and resurgent powers," of which only China and Russia are named.

Their prominence may reflect the influence of Kagan, who has argued in  
recent years that the 21st century will be dominated by a struggle  
between the forces of democracy (led by the U.S.) and autocracy (led  
by China and Russia). He has called for a League of Democracies as a  
mechanism for combating Chinese and Russian power, and the FPI  
statement stresses the need for "robust support for America’s  
democratic allies".

This emphasis may also indicate that FPI intends to make confrontation  
with China and Russia the centrepiece of its foreign policy stance. If  
this is the case, it would mark a return to the early days of the Bush  
administration, before 9/11, when Kristol’s Weekly Standard took the  
lead in attacking Washington for its alleged "appeasement" of Beijing.

For its formal coming out, however, FPI has chosen to push for  
escalating the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. The organisation’s  
first event, to be held here Mar. 31, will be a conference entitled  
"Afghanistan: Planning for Success".

The lead speaker will be Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican  
presidential candidate and long a favourite of both Kagan and Kristol.  
In February, McCain gave a well-publicised speech at the neo- 
conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) arguing that the U.S.  
could not afford to scale back its military commitment in Afghanistan  
and calling for a redoubled effort to win the war.

Other speakers will include AEI fellow Frederick Kagan, Robert's  
brother and one of the key proponents of the "surge" strategy in Iraq,  
counterinsurgency expert Lt. Col. John Nagl, the new director Centre  
for a New American Security, and hawkish Democratic Representative  
Jane Harman.

FPI has inevitably drawn comparisons to PNAC, a "letterhead  
organisation" founded by Kristol and Kagan shortly after their  
publication in 'Foreign Affairs' of an article entitled "Toward a Neo- 
Reaganite Foreign Policy" which called for Washington to exercise  
"benevolent global hegemony" and warned against what they saw as the  
post-Cold War drift of the Republican Party toward "neoisolationism"  
after it lost the White House to Bill Clinton.

"This reminds me of the Project for the New American Century," said  
Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New  
America Foundation. "Like PNAC, it will become a watering hole for  
those who want to see an ever-larger U.S. military machine and who  
divide the world between those who side with right and might and those  
who are evil or who would appease evil."

PNAC’s membership was a veritable who’s-who of neoconservatives and  
other future Bush administration hawks. In addition to Cheney,  
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, charter members included then-Florida governor  
Jeb Bush, who was at the time considered a more likely presidential  
candidate than his elder brother; Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis  
"Scooter" Libby, who left the administration after being indicted for  
perjury in October 2005; and Elliott Abrams, who became Bush’s top  
Middle East aide at the National Security Council; among several  
others who later served in senior Bush administration posts.

The group’s June 1997 statement of principles called for "a Reaganite  
policy of military strength and moral clarity" that entailed  
"increas[ing] defence spending significantly" and "challeng[ing]  
regimes hostile to our interests and values".

In January 1998, PNAC published an open letter to President Clinton  
calling for "the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power", by  
military force if necessary. The letter was signed by many who would  
become architects and backers of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including  
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, future deputy secretary of state Richard  
Armitage, and future U.N. ambassador John Bolton.

In September 2001, only days after the 9/11 attacks, another PNAC  
letter called on President Bush to broaden the scope of the "war on  
terror" beyond those immediately responsible for the attacks to  
include Iraq and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

And in April 2002, the group labeled Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian  
Authority (PA) "a cog in the machine of Middle East terrorism,"  
compared Arafat to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and called on the  
U.S. to end support for both the PA and the Israeli-Palestinian peace  
negotiations as a whole.

"Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight," it said, urging Bush  
to "accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power."

That FPI's debut public event should focus on why Washington should  
escalate its involvement in Afghanistan is ironic given the role  
played by PNAC and other hawks in and outside the administration in  
pushing for the invasion of Iraq so soon after the U.S. campaign to  
oust the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in late 2001. Many  
experts believe the diversion of military and intelligence resources  
to Iraq made it possible for both the Taliban and al Qaeda's  
leadership to survive and rebuild.

The top priority given by the Bush administration - again, with the  
strong encouragement of PNAC and its supporters - to Iraq as the  
"central front in the war on terror" also meant that aid needed to  
bolster the western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai was  
unavailable.

PNAC effectively ceased its activities at the beginning of Bush’s  
second term. This may partly have been due to the large amount of bad  
publicity the group attracted for its seminal role in bringing about  
the Iraq war.

But the formation of FPI may be a sign that its founders hope once  
again to incubate a more aggressive foreign policy during their exile  
from the White House, in preparation for the next time they return to  
political power.

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/ 
.

(END/2009)