During the last Bush (George W) administration the so called neo-conservatives came to prominence. They developed and advocated the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). In September 2000 (a year before Bush’ victory) they produced a blueprint called –
Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces, And Resources For A NEW Century, its main demands are:
- US military control of the Gulf region
- The US to ‘fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars’ as a ‘core mission’
- US forces to be ‘the cavalry on the new American frontier’
- Actions to discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging US leadership or aspiring to a larger regional or global role
- Exploitation of allies like the UK as “the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership’
- Ensuring that ‘peacekeeping’ missions have “American political leadership, rather than that of the United Nations’
- Permanent US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
- Increased military pressure on China
- The creation of “US Space Forces” to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent “enemies” using the Internet against the US
- Development of new methods of attack – electronic, ‘non-lethal’ and biological.
- The development of a ‘worldwide command-and-control system’ (world army) to contain the ‘dangerous’ regimes of North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran
- This ‘American grand strategy’ to be advanced ‘as far into the future as possible’
The PNAC document said that this ‘process of transformation’ was likely to be a long one – ‘absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbour’.
This was one year before the events of 9/11, Bush even referred to September 11th as ‘our Pearl Harbour’. More on 9/11 later.
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