The neoconservative dream: a vast post-Yugoslavia

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Mon Mar 24 05:14:26 PST 2003


[And we are there.]

The American Prospect

Volume 14, Issue 3.

March 1, 2003.

Just the Beginning

Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?

by Robert Dreyfuss

For months Americans have been told that the United States is going to

war against Iraq in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, remove him from

power, eliminate Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass

destruction, and prevent Baghdad from blackmailing its neighbors or

aiding terrorist groups. But the Bush administration's hawks,

especially the neoconservatives who provide the driving force for war,

see the conflict with Iraq as much more than that. It is a signal

event, designed to create cataclysmic shock waves throughout the

region and around the world, ushering in a new era of American

imperial power. It is also likely to bring the United States into

conflict with several states in the Middle East. Those who think that

U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle

spreading beyond Iraq's borders, are likely to be mistaken.

"I think we're going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we

want to or not," says Michael Ledeen, a former U.S. national-security

official and a key strategist among the ascendant flock of

neoconservative hawks, many of whom have taken up perches inside the

U.S. government. Asserting that the war against Iraq can't be

contained, Ledeen says that the very logic of the global war on

terrorism will drive the United States to confront an expanding

network of enemies in the region. "As soon as we land in Iraq, we're

going to face the whole terrorist network," he says, including the

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic

Jihad and a collection of militant splinter groups backed by nations

-- Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia -- that he calls "the terror masters."

"It may turn out to be a war to remake the world," says Ledeen.

In the Middle East, impending "regime change" in Iraq is just the

first step in a wholesale reordering of the entire region, according

to neoconservatives -- who've begun almost gleefully referring to

themselves as a "cabal." Like dominoes, the regimes in the region --

first Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, then Lebanon and the PLO, and

finally Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia -- are slated to capitulate,

collapse or face U.S. military action. To those states, says cabal

ringleader Richard Perle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise

Institute (AEI) and chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an

influential Pentagon advisory committee, "We could deliver a short

message, a two-word message: 'You're next.'" In the aftermath, several

of those states, including Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, may end up as

dismantled, unstable shards in the form of mini-states that resemble

Yugoslavia's piecemeal wreckage. And despite the Wilsonian rhetoric

from the president and his advisers about bringing democracy to the

Middle East, at bottom it's clear that their version of democracy

might have to be imposed by force of arms.

And not just in the Middle East. Three-thousand U.S. soldiers are

slated to arrive in the Philippines, opening yet another new front in

the war on terrorism, and North Korea is finally in the

administration's sights. On the horizon could be Latin America, where

the Bush administration endorsed a failed regime change in Venezuela

last year, and where new left-leaning challenges are emerging in

Brazil, Ecuador and elsewhere. Like the bombing of Hiroshima, which

stunned the Japanese into surrender in 1945 and served notice to the

rest of the world that the United States possessed unparalleled power

it would not hesitate to use, the war against Iraq has a similar

purpose. "It's like the bully in a playground," says Ian Lustick, a

University of Pennsylvania professor of political science and author

of Unsettled States, Disputed Lands. "You beat up somebody, and

everybody else behaves."

Over and over again, in speeches, articles and white papers, the

neoconservatives have made it plain that the war against Iraq is

intended to demonstrate Washington's resolve to implement President

Bush's new national-security strategy, announced last fall -- even if

doing so means overthrowing the entire post-World War II structure of

treaties and alliances, including NATO and the United Nations. In

their book, The War Over Iraq, William Kristol of The Weekly Standard

and Lawrence F. Kaplan of The New Republic write, "The mission begins

in Baghdad, but it does not end there. ... We stand at the cusp of a

new historical era. ... This is a decisive moment. ... It is so

clearly about more than Iraq. It is about more even than the future of

the Middle East and the war on terror. It is about what sort of role

the United States intends to play in the twenty-first century."

Invading Iraq, occupying its capital and its oil fields, and seizing

control of its Shia Islamic holy places can only have a devastating

and highly destabilizing impact on the entire region, from Egypt to

central Asia and Pakistan. "We are all targeted," Syrian President

Bashar Assad told an Arab summit meeting, called to discuss Iraq, on

March 1. "We are all in danger."

"They want to foment revolution in Iran and use that to isolate and

possibly attack Syria in [Lebanon's] Bekaa Valley, and force Syria

out," says former Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs

Edward S. Walker, now president of the Middle East Institute. "They

want to pressure [Muammar] Quaddafi in Libya and they want to

destabilize Saudi Arabia, because they believe instability there is

better than continuing with the current situation. And out of this,

they think, comes Pax Americana."

The more immediate impact of war against Iraq will occur in Iran, say

many analysts, including both neoconservative and more impartial

experts on the Middle East. As the next station along the "axis of

evil," Iran holds power that's felt far and wide in the region.

Oil-rich and occupying a large tract of geopolitical real estate, Iran

is arguably the most strategically important country in its

neighborhood. With its large Kurdish population, Iran has a stake in

the future of Iraqi Kurdistan. As a Shia power, Iran has vast

influence among the Shia majority in Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain, with

the large Shia population in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich eastern province

and among the warlords of western Afghanistan. And Iran's ties to the

violent Hezbollah guerrillas, whose anti-American zeal can only be

inflamed by the occupation of Iraq, will give the Bush administration

all the reason it needs to expand the war on terrorism to Tehran.

The first step, neoconservatives say, will be for the United States to

lend its support to opposition groups of Iranian exiles willing to

enlist in the war on terrorism, much as the Iraqi National Congress

served as the spearhead for American intervention in Iraq. And, just

as the doddering ex-king of Afghanistan served as a rallying point for

America's conquest of that landlocked, central Asian nation, the

remnants of the late former shah of Iran's royal family could be

rallied to the cause. "Nostalgia for the last shah's son, Reza Pahlavi

... has again risen," says Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer

who, like Ledeen and Perle, is ensconced at the AEI. "We must be

prepared, however, to take the battle more directly to the mullahs,"

says Gerecht, adding that the United States must consider strikes at

both Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and allies in Lebanon. "In fact,

we have only two meaningful options: Confront clerical Iran and its

proxies militarily or ring it with an oil embargo."

Iran is not the only country where restoration of monarchy is being

considered. Neoconservative strategists have also supported returning

to power the Iraqi monarchy, which was toppled in 1958 by a

combination of military officers and Iraqi communists. When the

Ottoman Empire crumbled after World War I, British intelligence

sponsored the rise of a little-known family called the Hashemites,

whose origins lay in the Saudi region around Mecca and Medina. Two

Hashemite brothers were installed on the thrones of Jordan and Iraq.

For nearly a year, the neocons have suggested that Jordan's Prince

Hassan, the brother of the late King Hussein of Jordan and a blood

relative of the Iraqi Hashemite family, might re-establish the

Hashemites in Baghdad were Saddam Hussein to be removed. Among the

neocons are Michael Rubin, a former AEI fellow, and David Wurmser, a

Perle acolyte. Rubin in 2002 wrote an article for London's Daily

Telegraph headlined, "If Iraqis want a king, Hassan of Jordan could be

their man." Wurmser in 1999 wrote Tyranny's Ally, an AEI-published

book devoted largely to the idea of restoring the Hashemite dynasty in

Iraq. Today Rubin is a key Department of Defense official overseeing

U.S. policy toward Iraq, and Wurmser is a high-ranking official

working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International

Security John Bolton, himself a leading neoconservative ideologue.

But if the neocons are toying with the idea of restoring monarchies in

Iraq and Iran, they are also eyeing the destruction of the region's

wealthiest and most important royal family of all: the Saudis. Since

September 11, the hawks have launched an all-out verbal assault on the

Saudi monarchy, accusing Riyadh of supporting Osama bin Laden's

al-Qaeda organization and charging that the Saudis are masterminding a

worldwide network of mosques, schools and charity organizations that

promote terrorism. It's a charge so breathtaking that those most

familiar with Saudi Arabia are at a loss for words when asked about

it. "The idea that the House of Saud is cooperating with al-Qaeda is

absurd," says James Akins, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi

Arabia in the mid-1970s and frequently travels to the Saudi capital as

a consultant. "It's too dumb to be talked about."

That doesn't stop the neoconservatives from doing so, however. In The

War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen cites Wurmser in charging that,

just before 9-11, "Saudi intelligence had become difficult to

distinguish from Al Qaeda." Countless other, similar accusations have

been flung at the Saudis by neocons. Max Singer, co-founder of the

Hudson Institute, has repeatedly suggested that the United States seek

to dismantle the Saudi kingdom by encouraging breakaway republics in

the oil-rich eastern province (which is heavily Shia) and in the

western Hijaz. "After [Hussein] is removed, there will be an

earthquake throughout the region," says Singer. "If this means the

fall of the [Saudi] regime, so be it." And when Hussein goes, Ledeen

says, it could lead to the collapse of the Saudi regime, perhaps to

pro-al-Qaeda radicals. "In that event, we would have to extend the war

to the Arabian peninsula, at the very least to the oil-producing

regions."

"I've stopped saying that Saudi Arabia will be taken over by Osama bin

Laden or by a bin Laden clone if we go into Iraq," says Akins. "I'm

now convinced that's exactly what [the neoconservatives] want. And

then we take it over."

Iraq, too, could shatter into at least three pieces, which would be

based on the three erstwhile Ottoman Empire provinces of Mosul,

Baghdad and Basra that were cobbled together to compose the state

eight decades ago. That could conceivably leave a Hashemite kingdom in

control of largely Sunni central Iraq, a Shia state in the south

(possibly linked to Iran, informally) and some sort of Kurdish entity

in the north -- either independent or, as is more likely, under the

control of the Turkish army. Turkey, a reluctant player in George W.

Bush's crusade, fears an independent Kurdistan and would love to get

its hands on Iraq's northern oil fields around the city of Kirkuk.

The final key component for these map-redrawing, would-be Lawrences of

Arabia is the toppling of Assad's regime and the breakup of Syria.

Perle himself proposed exactly that in a 1996 document prepared for

the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), an

Israeli think tank. The plan, titled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy

for Securing the Realm," was originally prepared as a working paper to

advise then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. It called on

Israel to work with Turkey and Jordan to "contain, destabilize and

roll-back" various states in the region, overthrow Saddam Hussein in

Iraq, press Jordan to restore a scion of its Hashemite dynasty to the

Iraqi throne and, above all, launch military assaults against Lebanon

and Syria as a "prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East

[to] threaten Syria's territorial integrity." Joining Perle in writing

the IASPS paper were Douglas Feith and Wurmser, now senior officials

in Bush's national-security apparatus.

Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American

Century (PNAC), worries only that the Bush administration, including

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney,

might not have the guts to see its plan all the way through once

Hussein is toppled. "It's going to be no small thing for the United

States to follow through on its stated strategic policy in the

region," he says. But Schmitt believes that President Bush is fully

committed, having been deeply affected by the events of September 11.

Schmitt roundly endorses the vision put forward by Kaplan and Kristol

in The War Over Iraq, which was sponsored by the PNAC. "It's really

our book," says Schmitt.

Six years ago, in its founding statement of principles, PNAC called

for a radical change in U.S. foreign and defense policy, with a

beefed-up military budget and a more muscular stance abroad,

challenging hostile regimes and assuming "American global leadership."

Signers of that statement included Cheney; Rumsfeld; Deputy Secretary

of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Assistant Secretary of Defense for

International Security Affairs Peter W. Rodman; Elliott Abrams, the

Near East and North African affairs director at the National Security

Council; Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House liaison to the Iraqi

opposition; I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff; and Gov. Jeb Bush

(R-Fla.), the president's brother. The PNAC statement foreshadowed the

outline of the president's 2002 national-security strategy.

Scenarios for sweeping changes in the Middle East, imposed by U.S

armed forces, were once thought fanciful -- even ridiculous -- but

they are now taken seriously given the incalculable impact of an

invasion of Iraq. Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi

Arabia during the Gulf War, worries about everything that could go

wrong. "It's a war to turn the kaleidoscope, by people who know

nothing about the Middle East," he says. "And there's no way to know

how the pieces will fall." Perle and Co., says Freeman, are seeking a

Middle East dominated by an alliance between the United States and

Israel, backed by overwhelming military force. "It's machtpolitik,

might makes right," he says. Asked about the comparison between Iraq

and Hiroshima, Freeman adds, "There is no question that the Richard

Perles of the world see shock and awe as a means to establish a

position of supremacy that others fear to challenge."

But Freeman, who is now president of the Middle East Policy Council,

thinks it will be a disaster. "This outdoes anything in the march of

folly catalog," he says. "It's the lemmings going over the cliff."

Robert Dreyfuss

Copyright © 2003 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation:

Robert Dreyfuss, "Just the Beginning," The American Prospect vol. 14

no. 3, March 1, 2003. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or

redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written

permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to

permissions at prospect.org.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list