OUR EXCERPTS OF FROM THE 1992 DRAFT "DEFENSE PLANNING GUIDANCE

.OUR EXCERPTS OF FROM THE 1992 DRAFT "DEFENSE PLANNING GUIDANCE
 

Paul Wolfowitz, then-under secretary of defense for policy, supervised the drafting of a 1992 policy statement on America's mission in the post-Cold War era. Called the "Defense Planning Guidance," it is an internal set of military guidelines that typically is prepared every few years by the Defense Department. This policy guidance is distributed to military leaders and civilian Defense Department heads to provide them with a geopolitical framework for assessing their force level and bugetary needs.

The 46-page classified document circulated for several weeks at senior levels in the Pentagon. But controversy erupted after it was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post and the White House ordered then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to rewrite it.

Key Points/Excerpts:

· The number one objective of U.S. post-Cold War political and military strategy should be preventing the emergence of a rival superpower.

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.

"There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."
 

The Doctrine

Released Sept. 17, 2002, twenty months after President Bush took office, the 33-page "National Security Strategy of the United States" (NSS) offers the administration's first comprehensive rationale for a new, aggressive approach to national security. The new strategy calls for pre-emptive action against hostile states and terror groups, and it states that the U.S. "will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively." The NSS also focuses on how diplomacy and foreign aid can and should be used to project American values, including "a battle for the future of the Muslim world."

Here are the views of historian John Lewis Gaddis of Yale; defense policy expert Kenneth Pollack; Mark Danner of The New Yorker; William Kristol of The Weekly Standard; and Karen DeYoung and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post on the significance of this document.

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The Middle East and Beyond

Some within the Bush administration argue that a successful regime change in Iraq could be a test case for a transformed, democratic Middle East, or maybe even a catalyst for free and open societies elsewhere in the world.

Here, defense policy experts Kenneth Pollack and Richard Perle; William Kristol of The Weekly Standard; and historian John Lewis Gaddis of Yale evaluate that thinking.

 1992 Strategy

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has been at the center of Pentagon strategic planning in both Bush administrations. A hawk on the use of U.S. military power, Wolfowitz took the lead in drafting the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance on America's military posture toward the world. The draft said that containment was an old idea, a relic of the cold war. It advocated that America should maintain military strength beyond challenge and use it to preempt provocations from rogue states with weapons of mass destruction. And it stated that, if necessary, the U.S. should be prepared to act alone. Leaked to the press, Wolfowitz's draft was rewritten and softened by then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Ten years later, many analysts see a strong resemblance between President Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy and Wolfowitz's 1992 draft.

Here, Barton Gellman of The Washington Post; Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard; historian John Lewis Gaddis of Yale; and Dennis Ross, former State Department official and Mideast envoy, discuss the 1992 Wolfowitz document and its ramifications.

 Going It Alone

In both the Bush administration's overall foreign policy strategy -- as laid out in its National Security Strategy of September 2002 -- as well as in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, the administration has made it clear that in the end, if necessary, the U.S. is prepared to go it alone.Here, Barton Gellman of The Washington Post; historian John Lewis Gaddis of Yale; defense policy analyst Richard Perle; and former State Department official and Mideast envoy Dennis Ross assess the debate over a multilateral vs. unilateral approach to the world.