« The Carr campaign | Main | War »
March 10, 2003
Four Corners on neo-con US global strategy
The ABC 4 Corners programe tonight, American Dreamers was on the US neo-cons, their geopolitical strategy in the Middle East and the war with Iraq. It defined the neo-cons more narrowly than public opinion has done---4 Corners preferred anti-totalitarianism & pro-Israel with their strategic thinking defined by the 1930s scenario of appeasement and holocaust. This misses the whole dimension of the shift from the left liberalism to conservative liberalism during the 1980s and 1990s-- the culture wars. This is a jaundiced view of the neocons from a conservative perspective.
But the focus was on the neo-con geopolitical strategy: the US keeping its hegemony; pre-emptive strike; see the UN as undermining US power; unlimited power is the destiny of the US; regime change; the long-term scenario of taking out Iraq, Iran and Syria. This provides a background a background and commentary.
The programme concentrated on a few key individuals---Richard Perle & Paul Wolfowitz and was more or less an elaboration of this.
Key documents mentioned in the strategic thinking of the crew behind Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfield are Letter to the President’ on 20 September 2001, circulated by the Project for the New American Century; the Clean Break document coauthored by Perle and Feith as advisory paper for the newly elected Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu, which called for ‘a clean break from the peace process’, by Israel.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) came up a lot in the programme as the neo-think tank. They hold reguar briefings on the road to war with Iraq. Here is a transcript of one from early March. It is very informative talks on US military preperations, the post-Saddam scenario in Iraqi, how the UN works and the West providing the Iraqi regime with its military arsenal.
There is very little of this quality (I'm a leftie talking about righties remember) being produced in Australia. What we get is its all about a neo-conservative conspiracy But we do have this but they have yet to step into the public arena like the AEI. Nor are they likely to. We need more think tanks in Australia.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at March 10, 2003 11:21 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.sauer-thompson.com/mt2/mt-tb.cgi/66