{"id":65274,"date":"2002-10-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-10-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2002\/10\/02\/ces-neocons-qui-inspirent-la-politique-us\/"},"modified":"2002-10-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-10-02T00:00:00","slug":"ces-neocons-qui-inspirent-la-politique-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2002\/10\/02\/ces-neocons-qui-inspirent-la-politique-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Ces neocons<\/em> qui inspirent la politique US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ces neocons<\/em> qui inspirent la politique US<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Ce que nous vous pr\u00e9sentons ici peut \u00eatre qualifi\u00e9 de \u00ab\u00a0dossier\u00a0\u00bb, — d’où ce titre, \u00ab\u00a0le dossier de Jason Vest\u00a0\u00bb. Son sujet : la puissance et l’influence \u00e0 Washington d’un petit groupe d’hommes connu vaujourd’hui sous la d\u00e9nomination de neo-conservatives<\/em>, avec d\u00e9sormais des noms connus (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, etc) ; un petit groupe d’hommes qui furent form\u00e9s dans les ann\u00e9es 1970, dans une \u00e9poque où se poursuivait une double parano\u00efa n\u00e9e dans les ann\u00e9es 1960 : la parano\u00efa du complot int\u00e9rieur, gauchiste encore plus que communiste, mena\u00e7ant la r\u00e9publique am\u00e9ricaine ; celle de la trahison ext\u00e9rieure, avec le triomphe de la d\u00e9tente<\/em> jug\u00e9 par une partie de l’\u00e9chiquier conservateur am\u00e9ricain comme une capitulation devant les th\u00e8ses sovi\u00e9tiques, voire une complicit\u00e9 avec l’URSS.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Jason Vest est un auteur qui commence \u00e0 \u00eatre connu dans les milieux dissidents am\u00e9ricains. Il a la particularit\u00e9 d’apporter une extr\u00eame connaissance dans les questions de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 nationale, les questions militaires, etc, dans sa d\u00e9marche oppositionnelle. Vest travaille par exemple, aussi bien avec The Nation<\/em>, avec The American Prospect<\/em>, avec The Village Voice<\/em>, avec In These Times<\/em>, qu’avec le groupe des r\u00e9formateurs militaires, Defense and the National Interest<\/em>. (Ce groupe a publi\u00e9 l’\u00e9tude du \u00ab\u00a0Dr.Werther\u00a0\u00bb sur «A Nuclear Schlieffen Plan» dont Vest lui-m\u00eame avait parl\u00e9<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Le travail de Jason Vest est minutieux, syst\u00e9matique ; une enqu\u00eate pr\u00e9cieuse sur ce petit groupe d’homme des neo-conservatives<\/em>, regroup\u00e9s notamment au sein du JINSA et du CSP (on voit tous les d\u00e9tails plus loin, dans les textes de Vest). Cette \u00e9tude remarquable, qui nous donne un aper\u00e7u des situations et des psychologies qui p\u00e8sent aujourd’hui sur le pouvoir am\u00e9ricain, suscitent deux remarques g\u00e9n\u00e9rales.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sur le mythe du renouveau am\u00e9ricain<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Ce qui doit \u00eatre imm\u00e9diatement remarquable, c’est combien tous ces hommes d’influence sont \u00ab\u00a0au travail\u00a0\u00bb depuis longtemps, — pratiquement depuis un quart de si\u00e8cle. (On en retrouve pas mal dans le CPD, ou Committee on Present Danger, qu’on voit d\u00e9j\u00e0 en activit\u00e9 \u00e0 partir de 1975-76 et qui a d\u00e9j\u00e0 un r\u00f4le fondamental \u00e0 cette \u00e9poque, comme le signale Ann Hessing Kahn dans son livre «Killing the Detente<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

L’un des mythes les plus coriaces de la politique am\u00e9ricaine, renvoyant au mythe g\u00e9n\u00e9ral du \u00ab\u00a0renouveau permanent\u00a0\u00bb et du \u00ab\u00a0chacun a sa chance\u00a0\u00bb qui contribue fortement \u00e0 la manufacture de communication de l’American Dream<\/em>, c’est celui du renouvellement constant du personnel politique qui permettrait \u00e0 des inconnus comme Bill Clinton (ou GW si l’on veut, en un sens) d’acc\u00e9der au pouvoir. Cette \u00ab\u00a0particularit\u00e9\u00a0\u00bb affirm\u00e9e de l’Am\u00e9rique est en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral mise en \u00e9vidence comme manquant tragiquement en Europe. La situation r\u00e9elle est exactement le contraire, lorsque nous parlons de choses s\u00e9rieuses, c’est-\u00e0-dire du pouvoir r\u00e9el. Ce que nous montre Jason Vest (apr\u00e8s d’autres, mais lui sans aucun doute d’une fa\u00e7on remarquable), c’est que la politique US est verrouill\u00e9e par quelques groupes dont la long\u00e9vit\u00e9 est exceptionnelle, qui se recasent lorsque leur tendance est chass\u00e9e du pouvoir, qui y reviennent lorsque a p\u00e9riode est finie. L’\u00e9quipe GW est d’ailleurs elle-m\u00eame un bon exemple : Cheney fut chef de cabinet du pr\u00e9sident Ford en 1975-76 avant d’\u00eatre secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense en 1989-93 ; Rumsfeld, qui fut le sup\u00e9rieur de Cheney en 1974-75, fut secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense en 1975-76 ; Powell fut conseiller de Reagan dans les ann\u00e9es 1980, Condoleeza Rice, \u00e9tait avec Bush-p\u00e8re, et ainsi de suite.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

La r\u00e9alit\u00e9 est celle-ci, tout simplement dite et constat\u00e9e chaque jour : la politique washingtonienne est contr\u00f4l\u00e9e par une oligarchie qui devient \u00e0 tendance g\u00e9rontocratique en fin de cycle, et le mythe du renouvellement et du \u00ab\u00a0chacun a sa chance\u00a0\u00bb ne touche que la pr\u00e9sidence. On aurait tendance \u00e0 dire : c’est l’essentiel, ce qui est faux (voir plus loin). Dans les faits, le r\u00f4le du pr\u00e9sident est contr\u00f4l\u00e9 par son entourage (et l'\u00a0\u00bbind\u00e9pendance\u00a0\u00bb ou la capacit\u00e9 d’un pr\u00e9sident se mesurant \u00e0 sa capacit\u00e9 \u00e0 choisir ind\u00e9pendamment son \u00e9quipe). Il est \u00e9vident que GW est le pr\u00e9sident le plus contr\u00f4l\u00e9 de l’histoire des USA. L’historien et collaborateur Lewis Lapham, de Harper’s<\/em> a dit de GW, \u00e0 un s\u00e9minaire r\u00e9cent dont le journaliste Alan Bock rapporte la tenue<\/a>, \u00e0 propos du choix et de la stature de GW : « We were looking at a man so obviously in the service of the plutocracy that he could have been mistaken for a lawn jockey in the parking lot of a Houston golf club …On September 11, like Pinocchio brushed with the good fairy’s wand on old Gepetto’s shelf of toys, the wooden figure turned into flesh and blood. A great leader had been born, within a month compared (by David Broder in the Washington Post) to Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill<\/em> ».<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Nous (nous : les USA et le Rest Of the World<\/em>) sommes donc dirig\u00e9s par deux ou trois petits groupes r\u00e9unis pour cette \u00e9quipe, constitu\u00e9s d’hommes qui sont en activit\u00e9 au pouvoir et autour du pouvoir depuis plus d’un quart de si\u00e8cle. Ce sont tous des gens de la Guerre froide, venus directement d’une autre \u00e9poque, avec les r\u00e9flexes et les appr\u00e9ciations de cette \u00e9poque.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Le syst\u00e8me US est le plus fig\u00e9, le plus immobiliste qu’on puisse imaginer dans notre sph\u00e8re occidentale, un peu \u00e0 l’image de l’URSS post-stalinienne, mais avec une pr\u00e9sentation, une \u00ab\u00a0communication\u00a0\u00bb infiniment plus efficace, habile et sophistiqu\u00e9e, qui dissimule le fait en le parant d’atours voyants et \u00ab\u00a0qui en jettent\u00a0\u00bb. C’est bien un \u00ab\u00a0syst\u00e8me\u00a0\u00bb au sens dynamique du terme, sans rapport avec une situation nationale, et nullement un corps politique li\u00e9 \u00e0 une situation nationale, et qu’il exprimerait plus ou moins bien. Les corps politiques des pays ouest-europ\u00e9ens sont \u00e9ventuellement r\u00e9formables parce qu’ils sont en rapport (plus ou moins pervertis, plus ou moins corrompus, c’est \u00e0 voir) avec les nations qu’ils sont cens\u00e9s repr\u00e9senter ; le syst\u00e8me US n’est pas r\u00e9formable parce qu’il n’a aucun lien avec l’entit\u00e9 qu’il est cens\u00e9 repr\u00e9sent\u00e9, et la situation aux USA ne peut changer fondamentalement que selon une logique de rupture.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

L’absence de tout lien r\u00e9galien<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Le deuxi\u00e8me point se d\u00e9duit du pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent. Il y a d’abord le constat, fait d\u00e8s les origines (voir les Cahiers<\/em> de Tocqueville, de 1831, sur son voyage en Am\u00e9rique) et trop souvent oubli\u00e9, que les États-Unis ne sont pas une nation au sens historique du terme. Ce qui tient ensemble les États-Unis, ce n’est ni la culture n\u00e9e de l’histoire, ni les traditions forg\u00e9es par l’histoire, — parce qu’il n’y a pas d’histoire am\u00e9ricaine \u00e0 proprement parler ; ce qui tient les États-Unis ensemble, c’est la communication, c’est-\u00e0-dire la circulation de l’information, manipul\u00e9e selon les int\u00e9r\u00eats et les orientations du moment, et l’histoire am\u00e9ricaine elle-m\u00eame est une repr\u00e9sentation de communication.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Comme l’observe Tocqueville, les USA sont un rassemblement d’int\u00e9r\u00eats. C’est bien ainsi que l’entendait son inspirateur principal, Alexander Hamilton, qui recommande l’instauration structurelle de la corruption comme meilleur moyen de donner aux groupes d’int\u00e9r\u00eat dont le poids se compte en dollars l’influence politique qui leur est due, et que les \u00e9lections d\u00e9mocratiques ne leur donnent pas. (Le voeu d’Hamilton a \u00e9t\u00e9 exauc\u00e9 avec l’installation officielle des lobbies<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Il se d\u00e9duit de ce qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de qu’il n’existe pas de transcendance nationale \u00e0 proprement parler aux USA, pas de processus r\u00e9galien du pouvoir, enfin pas de notion de bien public. Le pouvoir est la r\u00e9sultante de la confrontation de la puissance en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral p\u00e9cuniaire, mais aussi de la puissance au niveau de la communication, des groupes d’int\u00e9r\u00eat. Cela explique qu’on peut voir la politique am\u00e9ricaine manipul\u00e9e par des groupes habiles, d\u00e9termin\u00e9es, sachant investir des points strat\u00e9giques d’influence. Cette manipulation n’est pas le fruit d’une infamie, d’une trahison, d’une perversion, elle est le fruit naturel d’une manoeuvre autoris\u00e9e puisque la politique am\u00e9ricaine est par nature un objet manipulable. Ce fait est impossible en Europe, dans les conditions \u00ab\u00a0normales\u00a0\u00bb où l’on voit que le ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne se d\u00e9roule aux USA ; en Europe, dans les syst\u00e8mes nationaux, un homme ou des groupes d’hommes peuvent prendre le pouvoir, mais c’est alors un grave accident politique (coup d’État, par exemple), et tout le monde le sait ; un homme ou des groupes d’hommes peuvent peser sur le pouvoir jusqu’\u00e0 le corrompre absolument, mais c’est alors un grave accident politique (il y a corruption) ; aux USA, il n’y a, stricto sensu<\/em>, ni coup d’État, ni corruption absolue. En un sens, le syst\u00e8me am\u00e9ricaniste a r\u00e9solu le probl\u00e8me de la vertu politique en d\u00e9cr\u00e9tant qu’\u00e0 l’int\u00e9rieur du syst\u00e8me, le vice n’existe pas, et donc tout est absolument vertueux.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Pr\u00e9sentation des textes de Jason Vest<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

• Ci-apr\u00e8s, nous publions les deux textes de Jason Vest, publi\u00e9s d’abord (2 et 9 septembre 2002) dans The Nation<\/em>. Cette publication doit \u00eatre lu en ayant \u00e0 l’esprit la mention classique, — \u00ab\u00a0Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.<\/em>\u00ab\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

• Les textes de Jason Vest sont aussi disponibles sur le le site de The Nation<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

• Nous signalons un autre texte (d’ailleurs cit\u00e9 par Vest), qui compl\u00e8te bien les analyses de Vest : le texte de Brian Whitaker, publi\u00e9 par le Guardian du 19 août,<\/a> avec pour titre : « US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy<\/em> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

• Les deux textes de Jason Vest nous ont \u00e9t\u00e9 signal\u00e9s par notre ami Jean Santerre, que nous remercions ici. Jean Santerre publie une version fran\u00e7aise des articles de Vest \u00e0 partir de sa propre traduction, sur son site Le grand Soir, soit \u00ab\u00a0Les hommes du JINSA et du CSP\u00a0\u00bb<\/a> et \u00ab\u00a0La Turquie, Isra\u00ebl et les États-Unis\u00a0\u00bb<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Men From JINSA And CSP<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d’\u00eatre was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they’ve managed to weave a number of issues–support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general–into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

On no issue is the JINSA\/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war–not just with Iraq, but \u00a0\u00bbtotal war,\u00a0\u00bb as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, \u00a0\u00bbregime change\u00a0\u00bb by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents–be it Colin Powell’s State Department, the CIA or career military officers–is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East–a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

For example, the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board–chaired by JINSA\/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups–recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA’s recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA\/CSP crowd’s preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that \u00a0\u00bbGrand Strategy for the Middle East\u00a0\u00bb should concentrate on \u00a0\u00bbIraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot [and] Egypt as the prize.\u00a0\u00bb) Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the \u00a0\u00bbaxis of evil\u00a0\u00bb and its adjuncts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Indeed, there are some in military and intelligence circles who have taken to using \u00a0\u00bbaxis of evil\u00a0\u00bb in reference to JINSA and CSP, along with venerable repositories of hawkish thinking like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute, as well as defense contractors, conservative foundations and public relations entities underwritten by far-right American Zionists (all of which help to underwrite JINSA and CSP). It’s a milieu where ideology and money seamlessly blend: \u00a0\u00bbWhenever you see someone identified in print or on TV as being with the Center for Security Policy or JINSA championing a position on the grounds of ideology or principle–which they are unquestionably doing with conviction–you are, nonetheless, not informed that they’re also providing a sort of cover for other ideologues who just happen to stand to profit from hewing to the Likudnik and Pax Americana lines,\u00a0\u00bb says a veteran intelligence officer. He notes that while the United States has begun a phaseout of civilian aid to Israel that will end by 2007, government policy is to increase military aid by half the amount of civilian aid that’s cut each year–which is not only a boon to both the US and Israeli weapons industries but is also crucial to realizing the far right’s vision for missile defense and the Middle East.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the United States might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five years JINSA has gone from a loose-knit proto-group to a $1.4-million-a-year operation with a formidable array of Washington power players on its rolls. Until the beginning of the current Bush Administration, JINSA’s board of advisers included such heavy hitters as Dick Cheney, John Bolton (now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and Douglas Feith, the third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Both Perle and former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, two of the loudest voices in the attack-Iraq chorus, are still on the board, as are such Reagan-era relics as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow and Ledeen–Oliver North’s Iran\/ contra liaison with the Israelis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

According to its website, JINSA exists to \u00a0\u00bbeducate the American public about the importance of an effective US defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded\u00a0\u00bb and to \u00a0\u00bbinform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.\u00a0\u00bb In practice, this translates into its members producing a steady stream of op-eds and reports that have been good indicators of what the Pentagon’s civilian leadership is thinking.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of contact between the US government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize the Palestinians. To give but one example (and one that kills two birds with one stone): According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in control of all violence in the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the violence solely \u00a0\u00bbto protect Saddam…. Saddam is at the moment Arafat’s only real financial supporter…. [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the violence against Israel and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor and paymaster.\u00a0\u00bb And if there’s a way to advance other aspects of the far-right agenda by intertwining them with Israeli interests, JINSA doesn’t hesitate there, either. A recent report contends that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge must be tapped because \u00a0\u00bbthe Arab oil-producing states\u00a0\u00bb are countries \u00a0\u00bbwith interests inimical to ours,\u00a0\u00bb but Israel \u00a0\u00bbstand[s] with us when we need [Israel],\u00a0\u00bb and a US policy of tapping oil under ANWR will \u00a0\u00bblimit [the Arabs’] ability to do damage to either of us.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The bulk of JINSA’s modest annual budget is spent on taking a bevy of retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where JINSA facilitates meetings between Israeli officials and the still-influential US flag officers, who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line. (Sowing seeds for the future, JINSA also takes US service academy cadets to Israel each summer and sponsors a lecture series at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies.) In one such statement, issued soon after the outbreak of the latest intifada, twenty-six JINSAns of retired flag rank, including many from the advisory board, struck a moralizing tone, characterizing Palestinian violence as a \u00a0\u00bbperversion of military ethics\u00a0\u00bb and holding that \u00a0\u00bbAmerica’s role as facilitator in this process should never yield to America’s responsibility as a friend to Israel,\u00a0\u00bb as \u00a0\u00bbfriends don’t leave friends on the battlefield.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

However high-minded this might sound, the postservice associations of the letter’s signatories–which are almost always left off the organization’s website and communiqu\u00e9s–ought to require that the phrase be amended to say \u00a0\u00bbfriends don’t leave friends on the battlefield, especially when there’s business to be done and bucks to be made.\u00a0\u00bb Almost every retired officer who sits on JINSA’s board of advisers or has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter works or has worked with military contractors who do business with the Pentagon and Israel. While some keep a low profile as self-employed \u00a0\u00bbconsultants\u00a0\u00bb and avoid mention of their clients, others are less shy about their associations, including with the private mercenary firm Military Professional Resources International, weapons broker and military consultancy Cypress International and SY Technology, whose main clients include the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, which oversees several ongoing joint projects with Israel.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The behemoths of military contracting are also well represented in JINSA’s ranks. For example, JINSA advisory board members Adm. Leon Edney, Adm. David Jeremiah and Lieut. Gen. Charles May, all retired, have served Northrop Grumman or its subsidiaries as either consultants or board members. Northrop Grumman has built ships for the Israeli Navy and sold F-16 avionics and E-2C Hawkeye planes to the Israeli Air Force (as well as the Longbow radar system to the Israeli army for use in its attack helicopters). It also works with Tamam, a subsidiary of Israeli Aircraft Industries, to produce an unmanned aerial vehicle. Lockheed Martin has sold more than $2 billion worth of F-16s to Israel since 1999, as well as flight simulators, multiple-launch rocket systems and Seahawk heavyweight torpedoes. At one time or another, General May, retired Lieut. Gen. Paul Cerjanand retired Adm. Carlisle Trost have labored in LockMart’s vineyards. Trost has also sat on the board of General Dynamics, whose Gulfstream subsidiary has a $206 million contract to supply planes to Israel to be used for \u00a0\u00bbspecial electronics missions.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

By far the most profitably diversified of the JINSAns is retired Adm. David Jeremiah. President and partner of Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation (described as a \u00a0\u00bbstrategic advisory firm and investment banking firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications and electronics industries\u00a0\u00bb), Jeremiah also sits on the boards of Northrop Grumman’s Litton subsidiary and of defense giant Alliant Techsystems, which–in partnership with Israel’s TAAS–does a brisk business in rubber bullets. And he has a seat on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, chaired by Perle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

About the only major defense contractor without a presence on JINSA’s advisory board is Boeing, which has had a relationship with Israeli Aircraft Industries for thirty years. (Boeing also sells F-15s to Israel and, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Apache attack helicopters, a ubiquitous weapon in the occupied territories.) But take a look at JINSA’s kindred spirit in things pro-Likud and pro-Star Wars, the Center for Security Policy, and there on its national security advisory council are Stanley Ebner, a former Boeing executive; Andrew Ellis, vice president for government relations; and Carl Smith, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee who, as a lawyer in private practice, has counted Boeing among his clients. \u00a0\u00bbJINSA and CSP,\u00a0\u00bb says a veteran Pentagon analyst, \u00a0\u00bbmay as well be one and the same.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Not a hard sell: There’s always been considerable overlap beween the JINSA and CSP rosters–JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Phyllis Kaminsky also serve on CSP’s advisory council; current JINSA advisory board chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP’s board of directors; and before returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served as the board’s chair. At this writing, twenty-two CSP advisers–including additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch–have reoccupied key positions in the national security establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries, its star is Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Perle going back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry \u00a0\u00bbScoop\u00a0\u00bb Jackson (a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate’s most zealous champion of Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only to be shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long after Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of influential conservative hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen years, churning out a constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns for the Washington Times) making the case that the gravest threats to US national security are China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles launched by rogue states, and the passage of or adherence to virtually any form of arms control treaty.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Gaffney and CSP’s prescriptions for national security have been fairly simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on just about every national missile defense program. (CSP was heavily represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in keeping the program alive during the Clinton years.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Looking at the center’s affiliates, it’s not hard to see why: Not only are makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the CSP’s board of advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice president for space and strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of defense systems Douglas Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also a CSP adviser, as is former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert Livingston. Ball Aerospace & Technologies–a major manufacturer of NASA and Pentagon satellites–is represented by former Navy Secretary John Lehman, while missile-defense computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard is represented by George Keyworth, who is on its board of directors. And the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus and Osprey (or \u00a0\u00bbtilt rotor\u00a0\u00bb) caucus are represented by Representative Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 CSP memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the most insightful window on the JINSA\/CSP policy worldview comes in the form of a paper Perle and Feith collaborated on in 1996 with six others under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Essentially an advice letter to ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, \u00a0\u00bbA Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm\u00a0\u00bb makes for insightful reading as a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The paper’s first prescription was for an Israeli rightward economic shift, with tax cuts and a selloff of public lands and enterprises–moves that would also engender support from a \u00a0\u00bbbroad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders.\u00a0\u00bb But beyond economics, the paper essentially reads like a blueprint for a mini-cold war in the Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to articulate a way to advance right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense advocacy. \u00a0\u00bbMr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state,\u00a0\u00bb it reads. \u00a0\u00bbNot only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel’s survival, but it would broaden Israel’s base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense\u00a0\u00bb–something that has the added benefit of being \u00a0\u00bbhelpful in the effort to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Recent months in Washington have shown just how influential the notions propagated by JINSA and CSP are–and how disturbingly zealous their advocates are. In early March Feith vainly attempted to get the CIA to keep former intelligence officers Milt Bearden and Frank Anderson from accepting an invitation to an Afghanistan-related meeting with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon–not because of what the two might say about Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the incident, but likely out of fear that Anderson, a veteran Arabist and former chief of the CIA’s Near East division, would proffer his views on Iraq (opposed to invading) and Israel-Palestine (a fan of neither Arafat nor Sharon). In late June, after United Press International reported on a US Muslim civil liberties group’s lambasting of Gaffney for his attacks on the American Muslim Council, Gaffney, according to a fellow traveler, \u00a0\u00bbwent berserk,\u00a0\u00bb launching a stream of invective about the UPI scribe who reported the item.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It’s incidents like this, say knowledgeable observers and participants, that highlight an interesting dynamic among right-wing hawks at the moment. Though the general agenda put forth by JINSA and CSP continues to be reflected in councils of war, even some of the hawks (including Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz) are growing increasingly leery of Israel’s settlements policy and Gaffney’s relentless support for it. Indeed, his personal stock in Bush Administration circles is low. \u00a0\u00bbGaffney has worn out his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly rather than a serious contributor to policy,\u00a0\u00bb says a senior Pentagon political official. Since earlier this year, White House political adviser Karl Rove has been casting about for someone to start a new, more mainstream defense group that would counter the influence of CSP. According to those who have communicated with Rove on the matter, his quiet efforts are in response to complaints from many conservative activists who feel let down by Gaffney, or feel he’s too hard on President Bush. \u00a0\u00bbA lot of us have taken [Gaffney] at face value over the years,\u00a0\u00bb one influential conservative says. \u00a0\u00bbYet we now know he’s pushed for some of the most flawed missile defense and conventional systems. He considered Cuba a ‘classic asymmetric threat’ but not Al Qaeda. And since 9\/11, he’s been less concerned with the threat to America than to Israel.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Gaffney’s operation has always been a small one, about $1 million annually–funded largely by a series of grants from the conservative Olin, Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as some defense contractor money–but he’s recently been able to underwrite a TV and print ad campaign holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy Number One in the War on Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of Israel. It’s here that one sees the influence not of defense contractor money but of far-right Zionist dollars, including some from Irving Moskowitz, the California bingo magnate. A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well as a JINSA director), Moskowitz not only sends millions of dollars a year to far-right Israeli settler groups like Ateret Cohanim but he has also funded the construction of settlements, having bought land for development in key Arab areas around Jerusalem. Moskowitz ponied up the money that enabled the 1996 reopening of a tunnel under the Temple Mount\/Haram al-Sharif, which resulted in seventy deaths due to rioting.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Also financing Gaffney’s efforts is New York investment banker Lawrence Kadish. A valued and valuable patron of both the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush, Kadish helps underwrite CSP as well as Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an offshoot of conservative activist William Bennett’s Empower America, on which he and Gaffney serve as \u00a0\u00bbsenior advisers\u00a0\u00bb in the service of identifying \u00a0\u00bbexternal\u00a0\u00bb and \u00a0\u00bbinternal\u00a0\u00bb post-9\/11 threats to America. (The \u00a0\u00bbinternal\u00a0\u00bb threats, as articulated by AVOT, include former President Jimmy Carter, Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham and Representative Maxine Waters.) Another of Gaffney’s backers is Poju Zabludowicz, heir to a formidable diversified international empire that includes arms manufacturer Soltam–which once employed Perle–and benefactor of the recently established Britain Israel Communication and Research Centre, a London-based group that appears to equate reportage or commentary uncomplimentary to Zionism with anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While a small but growing number of conservatives are voicing concerns about various aspects of foreign and defense policy–ranging from fear of overreach to lack of Congressional debate–the hawks seem to be ruling the roost. Beginning in October, hard-line American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin (to Rubin, outgoing UN human rights chief Mary Robinson is an abettor of terrorism) arrives at the Pentagon to take over the Defense Department’s Iran-Iraq account, adding another voice to the Pentagon section of Ledeen’s \u00a0\u00bbtotal war\u00a0\u00bb chorus. Colin Powell’s State Department continues to take a beating from outside and inside–including Bolton and his special assistant David Wurmser. (An AEI scholar and far-right Zionist who’s married to Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research Institute–recently the subject of a critical investigation by London Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker–Wurmser played a key role in crafting the \u00a0\u00bbArafat must go\u00a0\u00bb policy that many career specialists see as a problematic sop to Ariel Sharon.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As for Rumsfeld, based on comments made at a Pentagon \u00a0\u00bbtown hall\u00a0\u00bb meeting on August 6, there seems to be little doubt as to whose comments are resonating most with him–and not just on missile defense and overseas adventures: After fielding a question about Israeli-Palestinian issues, he repeatedly referred to the \u00a0\u00bbso-called occupied territories\u00a0\u00bb and casually characterized the Israeli policy of building Jewish-only enclaves on Palestinian land as \u00a0\u00bbmak[ing] some settlement in various parts of the so-called occupied area,\u00a0\u00bb with which Israel can do whatever it wants, as it has \u00a0\u00bbwon\u00a0\u00bb all its wars with various Arab entities–essentially an echo of JINSA’s stated position that \u00a0\u00bbthere is no Israeli occupation.\u00a0\u00bb Ominously, Rumsfeld’s riff gave a ranking Administration official something of a chill: \u00a0\u00bbI realized at that point,\u00a0\u00bb he said, \u00a0\u00bbthat on settlements–where there are cleavages on the right–Wolfowitz may be to the left of Rumsfeld.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Turkey, Israel and the US<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

In a 1996 Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies paper prepared for Binyamin Netanyahu, the authors—including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, now the respective chair of the Defense Policy Board and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy—advised Israel to \u00a0\u00bbshape it’s strategic environment by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria,\u00a0\u00bb and \u00a0\u00bbfocus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq—an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.\u00a0\u00bb It’s all heady stuff, but perhaps the most interesting parts of the documents are passing references to realizing the \u00a0\u00bbnew strategy for securing the realm\u00a0\u00bb by \u00a0\u00bbworking closely with\u00a0\u00bb or working \u00a0\u00bbin cooperation\u00a0\u00bb with Turkey.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Not only have JINSA and CSP been enthusiastic boosters in the service of assuring a constant flow of US military aid to Turkey, but JINSA\/CSP advisors Perle and Feith have spent the past 15 years—in governmental and private capacities—working quietly and deftly to keep the US arms sluice to Turkey open, as well as drawing both Turkey and Israel and their respective American lobbies closer together.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

To Perle, Feith and other hawks, the importance of Turkey not just to the United States, but to Israel, is self-evident. As a secular Muslim state, Turkey has always been an attractive political and military ally to the Israelis; respectful of the close relationship between the US and Israel, over a decade ago the Turks began to appreciate the value for Turkish-US relations in being close with Israel, and have also grown to appreciate how useful an ally the American Jewish lobby can be against the Greek- and Armenian-American lobbies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In fact, the idea of a strong Turkey-Israeli-US trifecta is nothing new. It was a cherished idea of Perle mentor and CPD principal Albert Wohlstetter, the University of Chicago mathematician and RAND consultant who was key in drawing up the Pentagon’s strategic and nuclear blueprints during the Cold War. In classified studies written at the Pentagon’s behest over the years, Wohsletter was a serious Turkey booster; when Perle ascended to his post in the Reagan-era Pentagon, he began implementing Wohlstetter’s vision, conducting regular meetings in Ankara and, in 1986, closing a deal for a five-year Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement with Turkey which the Financial Times characterized as \u00a0\u00bbsomething of a personal triumph\u00a0\u00bb for Perle. It wasn’t so bad for Turkey, either: After Israel and Egypt, Turkey became the third largest recipient of US military aid, and got a nice break on debts owed to the US.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Perle left government service in 1987. But in 1989, various Turkish press outlets reported that Perle had quietly started lobbying in Washington on behalf of Turkey. In short order, the Wall Street Journal confirmed it, reporting that Perle had \u00a0\u00bbsold the idea for the new [lobbying] company to Turgat Ozal, Turkey’s prime minister, at a meeting in New York last May,\u00a0\u00bb but that Perle wouldn’t be registering as a foreign agent because Perle was merely \u00a0\u00bbchairman of the firm’s advisory board,\u00a0\u00bb which, the Journal noted, only consisted of one individual: Perle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Perle responded to the Journal revelation with a bizarre letter, on the one hand claiming that—despite years of media reporting on his Pentagon Turkey initiatives—he had no responsibility for Turkey while a Pentagon official, but that he had, nonetheless, advocated for Turkey in the Pentagon; now in private life, he was going to do something about it—but only so much, as Doug Feith would be taking point, and Perle would simply be in the \u00a0\u00bbadvice business\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

According to Foreign Agent Registration Act filings, Perle’s advice counted for a lot—a total of $231,000 between 1990 and 1994. To help Turkey out, Feith also deployed legal associate Michael Mobbs—now a Pentagon adviser, most recently in the news after a federal judge decided his memo making the case for the detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi as an \u00a0\u00bbenemy combatant\u00a0\u00bb was insufficient. Feith also hired Morris Amitay, former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and current head of the pro-Israel Washington PAC, who took aim earlier this year at the Bush-appointed Jewish-American US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, for Kurtzer’s circumspect public criticism of Israel’s settlements policy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

IAI hit the ground running in 1989, effectively flexing its lobbying muscle immediately by securing the defeat of Congressional efforts to keep Turkey’s US military aid at a level lower than that of neighboring Greece. In addition to cementing the US-Turkey military-to-military relationship, IAI was also part of a joint 1989 Turkish-Israeli effort to quash a US Senate resolution marking the 75th anniversary of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. \u00a0\u00bbQuietly, Israeli diplomats and some American Jewish activists have agreed to help Turkey even as other Jewish leaders have complained they have no business intervening in such a sensitive matter,\u00a0\u00bb reported Wolf Blitzer, then the Jerusalem Post’s Washington correspondent. Blitzer went on to quote a source who explained that \u00a0\u00bbAs a people which was itself a victim of genocide, we feel natural sympathy for the Armenians. But Israel wants to foster its relations with Turkey, which it views with great importance.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

With the Pentagon’s hawks girding for war with Iraq yet again, Perle and his ilk have been both wooing and talking up Turkey, which, at the moment, is on shaky economic and political ground—despite previous efforts of the Bush administration, including an arranged $16 billion IMF bailout and a pending $228 million US aid package. In response to Turkish concerns about the potential for further political and economic destabilization in the wake of an attack on Iraq, Perle and others have proposed an expansive free trade agreement between Turkey and the US; a first step in that direction is already evident in the form of a Senate bill, sponsored by Senators John Breaux (D-LA) and John McCain (R-AZ) and boosted by the recently-formed, three-dozen strong bipartisan American-Turkish Caucus on Capitol Hill, that would let Turkish textiles into the US duty-free via Israel. According to a Pentagon source briefed on Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s recent trip to Ankara, the Turks have also indicated that they might be amenable to supporting an Iraq invasion in exchange for another defense debt write-off to the tune of $5 million, as well as a free Patriot missile defense system.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But even with such measures—and despite the ministrations of Perle and Feith over the years—it’s unclear as to what the future holds for US-Turkish relations. Turkish elections are scheduled for November, and right now the moderately pro-Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party appears to be leading at the polls, a situation that has caused hand-wringing in both Washington and Ankara. And, according to diplomatic sources in Washington, while the Turks have indicated a certain potential willingness to back a US invasion and restructuring of Iraq, they continue to voice serious concerns about overall regional destabilization, the financial cost to Turkey of war, and that the establishment of a Kurdish province in a post-Saddam, federal-style Iraq could mark the first step in a re-invigorated military campaign by Turkey’s Kurds for total Kurdish independence—an effort that might be made easier if Kirkuk, an oil town in northern Iraq, comes under Kurdish control. \u00a0\u00bbIt’s not exactly a volatile situation yet,\u00a0\u00bb says one Washington-based diplomat, \u00a0\u00bbbut let’s just say a lot of people are keeping a very watchful eye on Turkey.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ces neocons qui inspirent la politique US Ce que nous vous pr\u00e9sentons ici peut \u00eatre qualifi\u00e9 de \u00ab\u00a0dossier\u00a0\u00bb, — d’où ce titre, \u00ab\u00a0le dossier de Jason Vest\u00a0\u00bb. Son sujet : la puissance et l’influence \u00e0 Washington d’un petit groupe d’hommes connu vaujourd’hui sous la d\u00e9nomination de neo-conservatives, avec d\u00e9sormais des noms connus (Richard Perle, Paul… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3198,3331,3213,3629],"class_list":["post-65274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-de-lectures","tag-gw","tag-neo-conservatives","tag-perle","tag-vest"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}