What are the real objectives behind the Bush admistration’s current policy on Iraq? from the article below “ostensibley calls for increased U.S. global domination via unprecedented military action in every corner of the planet. Possible objectives could include ‘regime change’ in China.”
Bush’s neocons have Iraq in their sights and China on their minds](http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=13886)
Is a preemptive strike against Iraq also intended as an object lesson for China? Are President Bush’s neoconservative advisors capable of devising such a lunatic-tinged scenario?
Bush’s preemptive strike security doctrine has united other nations, not in support but in opposition to cowboy adventurism. Leaders in nearly all the European countries are deeply concerned; many Americans are just beginning to wonder just how far the war on terror will take us; and China… well if you are sitting in halls of power of China, you should be watching your back. After all the neoconservatives who crafted this doctrine, and many of the pundits who support it, have historically been obsessed with China.
According to the Washington Post’s Glenn Frankel, “European officials are expressing emotions ranging from concern to alarm to anger as they contemplate the growing gap between themselves and the Bush administration”.
Back home, public opinion remains unsettled about a preemptive strike on Iraq. Most polls show that while most Americans aren’t necessarily opposed to an invasion of Iraq, a majority would prefer the United Nations’ stamp of approval.
So how does China get tangled into this foreign policy web? A recent Pentagon report to Congress claimed China was developing so-called “exotic weapons.” These weapons reported the Washington Times’ Bill Gertz, include “high-technology arms,” such as “laser weapons and radio-frequency bombs, to boost its [China’s] ability to successfully carry out warfare against the United States and other advanced military powers.”
If these reports are true, China has initiated a weapons-development program that could ultimately trigger a US preemptive strike. The Bush doctrine clearly allows preemptive strikes on hostile states and terrorist groups that are developing weapons of mass destruction. According to the Bush Doctrine, the US will never allow its military supremacy to be challenged as it was during the cold war. (For more on this, see “Battlefield exotica: Pre-emptive strikes, ‘exotic’ weapons, Iraq and China”)
Bush’s security doctrine to guarantee uncontested American hegemony in the twenty-first century has been brewing for quite some time in the think tanks of the neoconservative brotherhood. And most of these theoreticians have focused on the “China question”. However, a dry run in Iraq could prove a solid testing ground for America’s own “exotic weapons.” This is the real deal folks… not some Dr. Strangelove fantasy.
China on their minds
During a panel called “Anticipating Today the Essential Capabilities for Tomorrow,” at the 1999 Fletcher Conference, Dr. Ashton B. Carter pointed out that China was one of the “five A-list problems that… would largely determine our future.”
He dubbed it “Thucydides’ China,” commenting “Remember, Thucydides attributed the cause of the Peloponnesian War not to a power imbalance, but to a dynamic situation when one nation’s rising power caused anxiety in the other. And specifically, he had this famous line that what caused the war was the rise of Athenian power, and not just that but the fear that rising power inspired in Sparta. And if you substitute China for Athens and us and our Pacific allies for Sparta, that’s the Thucydides’ formula.”
Taking A-list challenges seriously, Dr. Carter said, leads to “… [an] overall defense program that reflected the imperatives of prevention and preparation. Those preventive programs we collectively named ‘Preventive Defense’… [which] is what you do to try to stave off threats before they turn into imminent military threats as traditionally defined. And in our view, we were and are not doing enough as a country in the preventive area.”
A recent piece by Matthew Riemer of YellowTimes.org (September 21) called attention to a 90-page September 2000 paper for Project for the New American Century. Written by Thomas Donnelly, with support from Donald Kagan and Gary Schmitt, the report is titled “Rebuilding America’s forces: Strategy, forces and resources for a new century.”
**According to Reimer, the report “ostensibly calls for increased U.S. global domination via unprecedented military action in every corner of the planet. Possible objectives could include ‘regime change’ in China.” ** Reimer quotes Donnelly from an article “The past as prologue: an imperial manual,” in Foreign Affairs: which concluded that: “the United States may find itself with little alternative to waging ‘the savage wars of peace.’”
Reimer points out that the report claimed that it was “building on the tenets laid down by Dick Cheney during his tenure as Defense Secretary during the Gulf War.” Reimer says that other contributors to the project include I. Lewis Libby, Cheney’s current vice-presidential Chief of Staff, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Dov Zakheim.
The Project for the New American Century was founded in 1997 as an initiative of the New Citizenship Project. The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol is chairman of the Project; Robert Kagan, Devon Gaffney Cross, Bruce P. Jackson and John R. Bolton serve as directors; and Gary Schmitt is executive director. The Project’s mission is “to promote American global leadership.”
For the neocons “American global leadership” translates into “regime change” in Iraq and anywhere else they damn well please. **They disregard the despicable record of U.S.-sponsored “regime change” in the twentieth century. Angola, Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Nicaragua, Panama, Vietnam and Zaire/Congo have all experienced the disastrous effects of “regime change.” The inventory would include millions of dead, tortured and “disappeared,” years of economic privation and internal disorder with no regard for civil, political or human rights. **
Despite this sordid history, the U.S. expects and will probably receive the support of European nations and, ironically enough, China for a preemptive strike on Iraq. The neocons should be smiling all the way to the killing fields.
