By the middle of last decade, the storm clouds were building over
the neocons: their “regime change” in Iraq was a disaster; President
George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech was a running joke; news
articles were appearing about their “dark side” behavior in the “war on
terror”; and the public was tired of the blood and treasure being
wasted.
You might have expected that the neocons would have been banished to
the farthest reaches of U.S. policymaking, so far away that they would
never be heard from again. However, instead of disappearing, the neocons
have proved their staying power, now reemerging as the architects of
the U.S. strategy toward Ukraine.
Prominent
neocon and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century
Robert Kagan. Hillary Clinton elevated Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, to
be State Department spokesperson. (Mariusz Kubik,
mariuszkubik.pl/Creative Commons)Neocons played key
behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Feb. 22 coup that overthrew a
democratically elected president with the help of neo-Nazi
militias; the neocons have since whipped Official Washington into a
frenzy of bipartisan support for the coup regime; and they are pushing
for a new Cold War if the people of Crimea vote to leave Ukraine and
join Russia.
A few weeks ago, most Americans probably had never heard of Ukraine
and had no idea that Crimea was part of it. But, all of a sudden, the
deficit-obsessed U.S. Congress is rushing to send billions of dollars to
the coup regime in Kiev, as if the future of Ukraine were the most
important issue facing the American people.
Even opinion writers who have resisted other neocon-driven stampedes
have joined this one, apparently out of fear of being labeled “an
apologist” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Indeed, it is almost
impossible to find any mainstream U.S. politician or pundit who has not
fallen into line with the belligerent neocon position on Ukraine.
And the skies ahead are even brighter. The neocons can expect to
assert more power as President Barack Obama fades into “lame-duck”
status, as his diplomatic initiatives on Syria and Iran struggle (in
part because the Ukraine crisis has driven a deep wedge between Obama
and Putin), as neocon-leaning Democrat Hillary Clinton scares off any
serious opposition for the 2016 presidential nomination, and as her most
likely Republican presidential rivals also grovel for the neocons’
blessings.
But this stunning turn of fate would have been hard to predict after
the neocons had steered the United States into the catastrophic Iraq War
and its ugly bloodletting, including the death and maiming of tens
of thousands of U.S. soldiers and the squandering of perhaps $1 trillion
in U.S. taxpayers’ money.
In Election 2006, GOP congressional candidates took a pounding
because Bush and the Republicans were most associated with the neocons.
In Election 2008, Sen. Hillary Clinton, a neocon-lite who had voted for
the Iraq War, lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack
Obama, who had opposed invading Iraq. Then, in the general election,
Obama defeated neocon standard-bearer John McCain to win the White
House.
At that moment, it looked like the neocons were in serious trouble.
Indeed, many of them did have to pack up their personal belongings and
depart government, seeking new jobs at think tanks or other
neocon-friendly non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
More significantly, their grand strategy seemed discredited. Many
Americans considered the neocons’ dream of more “regime change” across
the Middle East — in countries opposed to Israel, especially Syria and
Iran – to be an unending nightmare of death and destruction.
After taking office, President Obama called for winding down Bush’s
wars and doing some “nation-building at home.” The broad American public
seemed to agree. Even some right-wing Republicans were having second
thoughts about the neocons’ advocacy of an American Empire, recognizing
its devastating impact on the American Republic.
The Comeback
But the neocons were anything but finished. They had positioned themselves wisely.
They still controlled government-funded operations like the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED); they held prominent positions
inside think tanks, from the American Enterprise Institute to the
Council on Foreign Relations to the Brookings Institution; they had
powerful allies in Congress, such as Senators McCain, Lindsey Graham and
Joe Lieberman; and they dominated TV chat shows and opinion pages,
particularly at the Washington Post, the capital’s hometown newspaper.
Since the late 1970s and early 1980s when they first emerged as a
noticeable force in Washington, the neocons had become “insiders.” They
were both admired and feared for their intellectual ferocity, but — most
important for their long-term survival – they had secured access to
government money, including the slush fund at NED whose budget grew to
over $100 million during the Bush-43 years.
NED, which was founded in 1983, is best known for investing in other
countries’ “democracy building” (or CIA-style “destabilization”
campaigns, depending on your point of view), but much of NED’s money
actually goes to NGOs in Washington, meaning that it became a lifeline
for neocon operatives who found themselves out of work because of the
arrival of Obama.
While ideological advocates for other failed movements might have had
to move back home or take up new professions, the neocons had
their financial ballast (from NED and many other sources) so their
ideological ship could ride out the rough weather.
And, despite Obama’s opposition to the neocons’ obsession with
endless warfare, he didn’t purge them from his administration. Neocons,
who had burrowed deep inside the U.S. government as “civil servants” or
“career foreign service officers,” remained as a “stay-behind” force,
looking for new allies and biding their time.
Obama compounded this “stay-behind” problem with his fateful decision
in November 2008 to adopt the trendy idea of “a team of rivals,”
including keeping Republican operative (and neocon ally) Robert Gates at
the Defense Department and putting hawkish Democrat Hillary Clinton,
another neocon ally, at State. The neocons probably couldn’t believe
their luck.
Back in Good Graces
Rather than being ostracized and marginalized – as they surely
deserved for the Iraq War fiasco – key neocons were still held in the
highest regard. According to his memoir
Duty, Gates let neocon
military theorist Frederick Kagan persuade him to support a “surge” of
30,000 U.S. soldiers into the Afghan War in 2009.
Gates wrote that “an important way station in my ‘pilgrim’s progress’
from skepticism to support of more troops [in Afghanistan] was an essay
by the historian Fred Kagan, who sent me a prepublication draft.”
Defense Secretary Gates then collaborated with holdovers from Bush’s
high command, including neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus, and
Secretary of State Clinton to maneuver Obama into a political corner
from which he felt he had no choice but to accede to their
recommendation for the “surge.”
Obama reportedly regretted the decision almost immediately after he
made it. The Afghan “surge,” like the earlier neocon-driven Iraq War
“surge,” cost another 1,000 or so dead U.S. soldiers but ultimately
didn’t change the war’s strategic direction.
At Clinton’s State Department, other neocons were given influential
posts. Frederick Kagan’s brother Robert, a neocon from the Reagan
administration and co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American
Century, was named to an advisory position on the Foreign Affairs
Policy Board. Secretary Clinton also elevated Robert Kagan’s wife,
Victoria Nuland, to be State Department spokesperson.
Though Obama’s original “team of rivals” eventually left the scene
(Gates in mid-2011, Petraeus in a sex scandal in late 2012, and Clinton
in early 2013), those three provided the neocons a crucial respite, time
to regroup and reorganize. So, when Sen. John Kerry replaced Clinton as
Secretary of State (with the considerable help of his neocon friend
John McCain), the State Department’s neocons were poised for a powerful
comeback.
Nuland was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for European
Affairs and took personal aim at the elected government of Ukraine,
which had become a choice neocon target because it maintained close ties
to Russia, whose President Putin was undercutting the neocons’ “regime
change” strategies in their most valued area, the Middle East. Most
egregiously, Putin was helping Obama avert wars in Syria and Iran.
So, as neocon NED president Carl Gershman
wrote
in the Washington Post in September 2013, Ukraine became “the biggest
prize,” but he added that the even juicier target beyond Ukraine was
Putin, who, Gershman added, “may find himself on the losing end not just
in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
In other words, the ultimate goal of the Ukraine gambit is not just
“regime change” in Kiev but “regime change” in Moscow. By eliminating
the independent-minded and strong-willed Putin, the neocons presumably
fantasize about slipping one of their ciphers (perhaps a Russian version
of Ahmed Chalabi) into the Kremlin.
Then, the neocons could press ahead, unencumbered, toward their
original “regime change” scheme in the Middle East, with wars against
Syria and Iran.
As dangerous – and even crazy – as this neocon vision is (raising the
specter of a possible nuclear confrontation between the United States
and Russia), the neocons clearly appear back in control of U.S. foreign
policy. And, they almost can’t lose in terms of their own self-interest,
whichever way the Ukraine crisis breaks.
If Putin backs down in the face of U.S. ultimatums on Ukraine and
Crimea, the neocons can beat their chests and argue that similar
ultimatums should be presented to other neocon targets, i.e. Syria and
Iran. And, if those countries don’t submit to the ultimatums, then there
will be no choice but to let the U.S. bombings begin, more “shock and
awe.”
On the other hand, if Putin refuses to back down and Crimea votes to
abandon Ukraine and reattach itself to Russia (which has ties to Crimea
dating back to Catherine the Great in the 1700s), then the neocons can
ride the wave of Official Washington’s outrage, demanding that Obama
renounce any future cooperation with Putin and thus clear the way for
heightened confrontations with Syria and Iran.
Even if Obama can somehow continue to weave his way around the neocon
war demands for the next two-plus years, his quiet strategy of
collaborating with Putin to resolve difficult disputes with Syria and
Iran will be dead in the water. The neocons can then wait for their own
sails to fill when either President Hillary Clinton or a Republican
(likely to need neocon support) moves into the White House in 2017.
But the neocons don’t need to wait that long to start celebrating. They have weathered the storm.
Copyright © 2014 Consortiumnews
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book,
Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are
Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'.
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