American Dreams - Intellectual Roots of Neo-Conservative Thinking

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4. Mai 2003

American Dreams - Intellectual Rootsof Neo-conservative Thinking

By Khurram Husain (*)

They were thoughtful men, intelligent and attentive to detail. They eschewed the

blare and chaos of politics, preferring to work silently through collegial persuasionand networked access to important offices. They were analysts at the RAND

corporation and their job was to think the unthinkable. They were the brainsbehind the armored brawn of the most powerful war machine the world had everknown.

James Schlesinger, who was to serve as Secretary of Defense in the Nixon

administration, was amongst them, as was Herman Kahn, famous for arguing thatAmerica could win a nuclear war and caricatured for it as Dr Strangelove in StanleyKubricks film by the same name. There was Albert Wohlstetter, the Columbia

trained mathematician described by Henry Kissinger as a brilliant strategist andAndrew Marshall whose network in the defense establishment today reads like a

whos who of the Bush cabinet. There was Alain Enthoven, the leader of a team ofwhiz kids who advised Robert McNamara on the conduct of the Vietnam War. Andthere was Daniel Ellsberg, the weak link in their chain, who broke ranks with hiscolleagues and went public with the nature of his work and brought down a

President as a result. The story of these iconoclastic men is, in many ways, thestory of our times.

Started as a division in the Douglas Aircraft corporation, Project RAND was

commissioned in 1945 as a platform to connect research and development with

military planning. It was conceived by Gen. H.H. Arnold of the US Army Air Force to

retain the scientific experts who had worked for him during wartime and would belost to the Air Force with the establishment of peace. In 1948, with some legal and

financial help from the Ford Foundation, Project RAND was separated from its basein industry and incorporated as a nonprofit organization headquartered in Santa

Monica, California.

The other services did not lag far behind in creating think tanks to house theirscientific experts and promote research in their fields. The Army had its OperationsResearch Office at the Johns Hopkins University and the Navy had its Operations

Evaluation Group at M.I.T. In time, such organizations multiplied: the Institute ofDefense Analysis for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense, and the

Stanford Research Institute which served no one service in particular. What these

organizations represented was a collaboration of military and civilian expertise forwar-fighting purposes in a time when warfare had advanced beyond the capabilities

ML http://druckversion.studien-von-zeitfragen.net/Intellect...

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of any single profession.

The RAND Corporation became the site of the most inter-disciplinary, cutting edgeresearch that was funded at the time. It was here that the internet was born, and

research proceeded in packet switching, network communication protocols, artificial

intelligence, space systems, game theory, linear and dynamic programming andsystems analysis. The basic thrust of much of RAND research was to provide tools

to government decision makers to analyse complex, multi-variable situations, andmake decisions under conditions of extreme uncertainty. A network of researcherswas pulled in from the most prestigious seats of academia, such as M.I.T.,

Princeton, California Institute of Technology, together with the most advanced

private industry labs such as Westinghouse Electric Corporation and the CarnegieCorporation.

Albert Wohlstetter joined the RAND Corporation in 1949 and worked initially as a

systems analysts conducting third area defense simulations and studyingoptimum basing patterns and sortie rates for nuclear bombers. But it was his

writings on the concept of nuclear deterrence where the substance of his thinkingwas most clearly illustrated.

Oppenheimer had once described the concept of deterrence as two scorpions in abottle, but Wohlstetter saw it differently. Deterrence would only work if America

retained the ability to strike even after absorbing a surprise attack by the USSR:To deter an attack means being able to strike back in spite of it he wrote.

It was only logical to Wohlstetter that any first strike by the enemy would targetAmericas nuclear arsenal and its delivery capabilities, which at that time was

largely bomber based. This meant that was necessary to calculate whatcombination of missile strikes in what number would be required to cripple theStrategic Air Command, which was tasked with the delivery of nuclear weapons. If

a first strike could take out a substantial portion of Americas arsenal, it would leave

America unable to assure the USSR of unacceptable retaliation.

To understand the variety of ways a first strike could play itself out, Wohlstetter

performed a series of labyrinthine calculations that took into account protectivemeasures such as dispersal of bomber bases, mobile ICBMs, hardened targets, airdefense systems to intercept incoming bombers and civil defense structures to

protect populations. The long span of time that separated a weapon system from its

inception to its deployment meant that waiting for the enemy to make his movebefore countering it would leave a window of vulnerability during which America

would be without a deterrent. Given the catastrophic consequences involved innuclear war, Wohlstetter argued that even the smallest chance of vulnerability wasunacceptable. This according to him, made it imperative to look ahead and

anticipate the enemys moves.

In fact, looking ahead to anticipate future threats was a central part of

Wohlstetters methodology. In an essay published in 1959 Wohlstetter argued forsignificantly boosting of Americas nuclear umbrella, in number and in its capacity

to resist a first strike, in anticipation of Soviet moves to deploy more missiles withgreater accuracies in the next ten years. To the imperatives of nuclear deterrence,he went on to recommend a large conventional force capable of fighting a general


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war against the USSR alongside a full blown nuclear conflict. And significantlyenough, he emphasized the capability to fight in limited theater conflicts, statingthat we do not believe that the full variety of non-nuclear aggressions can be met

with nuclear weapons.

Wohlstetter also projected that in the 1960s, the American deterrent would have todeter not just the USSR, but China as well. Grimly pointing out that the Russians

suffered 20 million dead in World War II and still emerged as a superpower, hewondered how much damage they would consider as unacceptable, that is,enough to deter them from a military adventure in which they might emerge

victorious. Against China, he pointed out that the threshold of unacceptable

damage would probably be significantly higher, and Americas nuclear forcestructure would have to take this into account. All this meant that there would beno rest for the military in the 1960s according to Wohlstetter.

But nuclear strategy and war were not the only concerns on Wohlstetters mind. By1968, Wohlstetter was deeply troubled by the sweeping critiques of Americas

global mission that the Vietnam war was encouraging, both at home and abroad. Inan essay clarifying his thoughts on the war, he disagreed with the popular idea thatthe war was a product of a military bureaucracy that had lost its moorings.

The Vietnam war, from which he claims to have dissented early on, was the product

of bad decision making by McNamara and Rostow in his view. From the beginning,Wohlstetter thought the architects of the war misread their options. They could

either have committed themselves to a political solution involving thereconstruction of South Vietnam through aid and democratic reform, an alternative

to which he was sympathetic. Or they could have opted for a military solution,which meant weighing in with overwhelming force. The imbroglio, in his opinion,was the product of a war strategy that did neither.

Wohlstetter was also troubled by talk that smacked of isolationism, whether by the

superpower, or any other country. He was a firm believer in a global order,underwritten by Americas might and secured through the export of American

secular and humanistic values to the rest of the world. In his view America couldnot be a great power without a worldwide web of interests. And this web ofinterests could not be secured through military means alone, although no holes

could be left in the military underpinnings of this web in the nuclear age.

In 1962, Wohlstetter left the RAND Corporation and entered academia, doing briefstints in different universities before settling down at the University of Chicago in

1964. It was here that he met a bright young student doing his dissertation in thePolitical Science department. His name was Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz was drawn toWohlstetters intellect and temperament and began working under his supervision

to carry his ideas further.

Wolfowitz became interested in strategic questions in the nuclear age and picked up

where Wohlstetter left off. Where Wohlstetter had warned of preparing for arearmed USSR and a nuclear China, Wolfowitz considered the third dimension along

which nuclear strategy would evolve in the future: nuclear proliferation.

Wolfowitz wrote his dissertation on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East at the


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appears to have evaded detection!

Their claims for what the Soviets held, and what they would be in a position todeploy were all drawn from worst case scenarios. But the Team B reports are more

significant for the thinking that they reveal. The authors relied heavily on projecting

future Soviet stockpiles in light of current expenditures, and built up a picture of aUSSR bent on dominating the world based on wild speculations, including writings

by an 18th century Russian General. When the Team B reports were ignored by theCarter administration, the members took their crusade to the press, prompting callsfrom Congress for hearings on its findings.

When Reagan entered office, the Team B members were back in business.

Wolfowitz was sent as ambassador to Indonesia and other members found positionsin the defense and state departments. The Reagan defense buildup of the 1980sand the evil empire rhetoric of the second cold war built on the work of Team B

members. The result was the largest defense budget increases in peacetimehistory.

By the first Bush administration, Wolfowitz was working for Richard Cheney, the

Secretary of Defense. In May 1990 he delivered a briefing for Cheneyrecommending that the US take steps to ensure its strategic dominance of theworld for the foreseeable future. He was then assigned as Director, Defense

Planning Board of the Pentagon and tasked with writing up the next DefensePlanning Guidance paper recommending where Americas military priorities ought to

be in the post-Cold war world.

Wolfowitz wrote the DPG 1992 paper and sparked a storm of controversy

immediately. The paper was leaked to the New York Times and drew sustainedcriticism until Cheney had to clarify that it was merely an exercise and not astatement of official policy.

What Wolfowitz produced in that document was nothing less than a blueprint for

America to dominate the world. He argued that after the defeat of the USSR, thenext main challengers to American power will emerge on a regional stage, and

America must prepare to confront them. This will involve disarming all but a handfulof countries of all weapons of mass destruction, and setting an aggressiveconfrontational posture to militarily dominate those regions where America has any

vital interests, whether political or military.

The DPG 1992 was buried when the Bush administration lost the election. Wolfowitzand his ilk were out of a job but used their time well to do their homework. Heaccepted a job as Dean at Johns Hopkins university and maintained contact with his

empire builder friends. They wrote regularly in the Weekly Standard, the right wingorgan where many of the ideas that we are seeing put into practice were discussed

throughout the 1990s.

Wolfowitz and Wohlstetter come from that section of the American right wing that

stands in opposition to the realism of Henry Kissinger. Unlike Kissinger, they seethe export of American values as the main prop and justification for an American

global mission. This is why Wohlstetter disapproved of McNamaras handling of theVietnam war, and perhaps why he felt compelled to answer the pangs of conscience


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in the face of a worldwide revolt against American imperialism in 1968.

Wohlstetter spent his last few years bitterly chastising Clinton for his inaction in theBosnian wars, arguing in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal that

American hesitation in the face Serbian aggression against the muslims of Bosnia

was a travesty, both morally and strategically. He appealed repeatedly for theembargo on Bosnia to be lifted so that the muslims could at least have an

opportunity to defend themselves. Albert Wohlstetter died in 1997.

If Wohlstetter was a moralist at heart because he believed that power had a higherpurpose, Andrew Marshall, his contemporary and peer in the RAND Corporation,

who also joined in 1949, is a purist. For Marshall there are no lessons to draw from

Vietnam except military lessons, and power is its own justification.

For 23 years, Marshall worked with the RAND Corporation but has left virtually nopaper trail behind. All we know of him is what we are told by those who have

known him. He is known as a man of few words, rarely ever speaking before large

gatherings, meticulously avoids leaving behind a record, and has been described asdelphic in his manner of speech sometimes. And yet his may be the single most

enduring legacy of any from amongst his peers.

There is very little to tell us about Marshalls work at RAND since hardly any of ithas been declassified. In 1972, his friend and fellow RAND researcher, JamesSchlesinger who was serving as Secretary of Defense in the Nixon administration,

created a little office in the Department of Defense titled the Office of Net

Assessments (ONA), and made Marshall the Director. The ONA had a murky brief.Marshalls job was to imagine every kind of threat the US military might ever face.

Marshall used the ONA to assist the Team B in their efforts to access rawintelligence. He followed Soviet military thinking closely, ran war game exercisesinvolving novel scenarios, and taught a summer seminar at the Naval War College.

For 30 years Marshall has directed the ONA, and built for himself a formidable

reputation and an equally formidable network of protgs in and out ofgovernment.

In the 1970s, Marshall busied himself with concepts of ballistic missile defense andclosely reading Soviet literature on nuclear war. This is where he came across thewritings of the Soviet general staff on the nature of military revolutions. The Soviet

officers were arguing that advances in missile, communication and sensor

technologies were creating the conditions for a military technical revolutionsomewhat akin to how artillery had rendered horse mounted cavalry obsolete.

Marshall was impressed, and followed this idea of military revolutions closely. He

found that the period in the 1920s and 30s was the most dynamic period in militaryrevolutions, seeing new technologies like aircraft, but also new operational concepts

in supply and maneouver such as blitzkrieg. He became an advocate of just such a

revolution, but added that it was not exclusively technology driven, but

opertationally driven as well.He called his ideas the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Failing to make much

headway with top level decision makers in replacing containment and deterrencethinking with RMA, he turned his attention to the officer corps of the Pentagon. He


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ran annual exercises, war games and seminars and stimulated his students at theNaval War College to think about warfare in entirely new terms.

He attracted quite a following. Barry Watts, an air force pilot and graduate of the

airforce academy, took his ideas to Northrop Grumman Corporation and as director

of their Analysis Center, persuaded the company to look away from large fighterplatforms and towards high tech avionics for its future. Grumman was the first

company bring the ideas of the RMA on board.

Lt Gen. Andrew Krepenevich of the Marine Corps was another protg, who wasimmensely impressed with Marshalls novel thinking on the role of information in

warfare, and authored a book with Zalmay Khalilzad, an oil company consultant and

current Bush envoy to Afghanistan and Iran, on the subject.

His best known protg is probably Donald Rumsfeld, whose association withMarshall is decades old, dating from Rumsfelds early days in the Pentagon.

Rumseld became an early proponent of ballistic missile defense, a Marshall idea and

belonged to that clique of hawkish policy makers who were opposed to Kissingersideas of dtente and engagement with China.

Following the collapse of the USSR, Marshall had a brief period when he argued that

the USSR was now at its most dangerous moment since they might lash out at onelast chance to militarily hold their empire together. In the early 90s, Marshallbecame a China hawk, arguing that Chinese growth rates had made it possible for

China to become a nuclear competitor of the US within 25 years. In 1993 the ONA

funded a series of roundtable discussions amongst all the services to discuss themilitary impact of advances in information technology, the value of space warfare,

joint operational commands and greater coordination amongst the services, and theimpact of declining budgets on the RMA.

By 1994, Marshalls twenty year long efforts to convert the Pentagon officer corps

were beginning to bear fruit. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry started a

project to conduct a department wide discussion on the RMA. The project looked atfuture defense needs till 2015 and recommended the most promising technologies

and operational concepts, conducted war games to simulate these defenseenvironments and produced a report on their findings.

When the Bush administration came to power, the RMA was put into practice.Rumsfeld was made the Secretary of Defense, and began by appointing Barry Watts

to the Program Evaluation and Assessment Office, James Roche as the Secretary ofthe Air Force, and empowered Andrew Marshall to conduct a sweeping review of themilitary and make recommendations to make the military into a 21st century

fighting force. The RMA was no longer part of the lunatic fringe from where it hadoriginated. Its adherents were now in control, and were going to make their

presence felt.

The outcome was the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2002. The review called for

reshaping the armed forces to make them lighter, faster, more flexible and able toconduct multi theater operations simultaneously. It met fierce resistance from the

old guard of the services, who were wedded to the status quo and feared seeingtheir pet fighter wings, aircraft carrier battle groups and armored divisions get


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scrapped. But Marshall and his ilk have a history of an almost cult like confidence intheir mission, and a determination to succeed that is best seen in their 30 year longeffort that has only now come to its moment of truth.

The ideas of Marshall and Wohlstetter drive the foreign policy of the Bush

administration. The doctrine of pre-emptive action only takes Wohlstetters logicbehind the second strike capability to its logical conclusion in a world where those

who possess weapons of mass destruction may not be as easily deterred as theUSSR was. And the war on terrorism has provided that environment of perpetualuncertainty in war that Marshall and his protgs have been thinking about for

decades. As the superpower girds itself for a ruinous war in an uncertain part of the

world, one is reminded of the hubris of power and the follies that led America intothe Vietnam war. Today America is being steered into an endless war precisely bythose who have been preparing for this sort of world all their lives. We shall soon

see whether they know what they are doing.

(*) An earlier draft of this article has been published in the March 2003 issue of

Herald Pakistan.

http://www.dawn.com/herald/mar03.htm


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