Neocons

[Zeno]

Below is a link to a very interesting article (somewhat long) that purports to show the antecedents of the present foreign policy doctrine now employed by the Bush Administration. This article is bias (as most articles are), but the outline of historical thought patterns and how they developed is intriguing. The people and institutions are also colorful and provide a great backdrop to put the present into some perspective. The author’s allusions to Rome and Cato are not without some merit but the parallel is weak and the insinuations stretch history to fit preconceived notions of the present.

The article appears in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: Neocons (http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/nd03/nd03husain.html)

-Zeno

[Chris Alger]

"In true Wohlstetter fashion, Wolfowitz argued [around 1964] that even the hint of nuclear weapons in the Middle East would be a matter of the gravest concern."

Certainly an odd sentence given that the U.S. had just concluded a three-year deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Turkey (the famous "Jupiter" program of Cuban Missile Crisis fame), that Israel's nuclear program was well underway, and that the Soviet Union had ample, irrevocable ability even with short-range weapons to target everything in the Middle East.

I doubt that Wolfowitz has ever believed that literally any hint of these weapons in the Middle East would be "a matter of the gravest concern." It seems more likely that Wolfowitz was more concerned with local regional competitors with nuclear weapons. Which then raises the question of whether Wolfowitz was concerned more with the prospect of nuclear destruction of a vital area or the ability of others to deter the U.S. In the absence of any suggestion by Wolfowitz that the U.S. should strive to make the area as "nuclear free" as possible, it seems that he was more concerned about the latter, even if it meant a greater threat of regional nuclear war. This is certainly the attitude that Wolfowitz and other DOD neocons promote today. Given this context, it appears that the connection between Wolfowitz and Wohlstetter's concern about "zero degrees of vulnerability" for U.S. nuclear forces in the 1950's is largely rhetorical.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if that's essentially what Wolfowitz wrote, there needs to be some common sense corrective added when statements of intention or concern, if taken at face value, are implausible or absurd. Othewise you end up in blind alleys or pursuing topics more suitable to long-range psychoanalysis, such as debates over whether U.S. officials really thought that communism in Vietnam or WMD's in Iraq were threats to U.S. security.