WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.580 Well, a very good morning to you, ladies and gentlemen, on this, the first of the first three synchronous sessions of the first day of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. 2 00:00:09.800 --> 00:00:24.200 I'd like to acknowledge that we're on the lands of the, the traditional lands of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, and it's my great pleasure this morning, albeit rather, at rather short notice, to be welcoming our guest, Robert Mann. 3 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:33.620 Before I hand over to Robert, I'd just like to pass on a couple of pieces of information for your benefit. 4 00:00:34.100 --> 00:00:47.180 This afternoon at 2.30pm in the catering and book tent, we'll be celebrating the release of Unity Dow's new novel, Juggling Truths. 5 00:00:47.220 --> 00:00:53.060 If you have an interest in Africa, if you have an interest in women, and if you have an interest in justice, 6 00:00:53.800 --> 00:00:54.180 if you have an interest in the world, then you're welcome to come and join us. 7 00:00:54.200 --> 00:01:00.340 And if you have an interest in a very good storyteller, I would encourage you to come along. 8 00:01:01.820 --> 00:01:10.380 The book will be launched by Professor Nairi Nafin, and it's between sessions, so we've got a little bit of squeezing to do. 9 00:01:11.820 --> 00:01:18.960 Robert Mann joined a panel last night under the title Disquiet on the Western Front, 10 00:01:19.620 --> 00:01:23.940 and made a very significant contribution to a discussion. 11 00:01:24.200 --> 00:01:29.600 about the unease which has beset the West. 12 00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:37.260 Certainly an unease which has been projected to us that we should be feeling. 13 00:01:38.300 --> 00:01:44.120 Robert is a professor of politics at La Trobe University for some three decades now. 14 00:01:45.560 --> 00:01:46.960 No, that's not entirely true. 15 00:01:47.220 --> 00:01:49.540 He's ageing you there, Robert. 16 00:01:51.300 --> 00:01:54.080 Robert's been a very important contributor to debate. 17 00:01:54.200 --> 00:01:55.880 In public life in Australia. 18 00:01:56.140 --> 00:01:57.520 He's a man of ideas. 19 00:01:57.940 --> 00:02:05.460 For six or seven years in the 90s, he was the editor of Quadrant and took that publication in a different direction. 20 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:13.520 When Robert departed from Quadrant, it caused quite a stir in the world of letters in Australia. 21 00:02:14.380 --> 00:02:19.400 And he is, of course, a much-published writer. 22 00:02:19.640 --> 00:02:24.180 And in fact, his essay, In Denial, The Stolen Generations, 23 00:02:24.200 --> 00:02:30.480 and The Right, recently won the Queensland Premier's Prize for Contribution to Public Debate. 24 00:02:30.600 --> 00:02:37.640 Robert is undoubtedly one of the great contributors to public intellectual life in this country. 25 00:02:37.900 --> 00:02:43.740 I know that he's got a very, very packed agenda over this weekend. 26 00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:46.980 And I also know that he's looking forward to grabbing the microphone. 27 00:02:46.980 --> 00:02:50.760 So without any further ado, please welcome Robert Mann. 28 00:03:00.320 --> 00:03:00.800 Robert Mann, The Stolen Generations 29 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:05.560 Well, thank you very much for inviting me for the weekend. 30 00:03:05.720 --> 00:03:07.460 And thank you all very much for coming. 31 00:03:07.540 --> 00:03:15.720 I'm very impressed with the degree of interest there is in so many parts of our world. 32 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:21.140 I gave the title of the talk a long time ago. 33 00:03:21.240 --> 00:03:23.100 And what I'm going to talk about is... 34 00:03:25.300 --> 00:03:31.120 more an analysis of the war, or what I would prefer to call the invasion of Iraq, 35 00:03:31.660 --> 00:03:37.460 and its genesis in my understanding. 36 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:41.440 So the implication is the kind of world we now have. 37 00:03:41.620 --> 00:03:48.220 But the centre of the lecture is something that I've become increasingly interested in, 38 00:03:48.320 --> 00:03:50.680 which is how we've got to where we are. 39 00:03:56.540 --> 00:04:00.060 And so I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you've pulled that 40 00:04:00.060 --> 00:04:04.740 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 41 00:04:04.740 --> 00:04:06.920 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 42 00:04:07.640 --> 00:04:08.800 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 43 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:08.960 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 44 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:09.680 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 45 00:04:10.120 --> 00:04:11.680 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 46 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:14.660 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 47 00:04:14.660 --> 00:04:20.940 And I'm going to turn to you to explain to you the degree to which you pulled that argument together. 48 00:04:20.940 --> 00:04:27.720 in war. According to these leaders, Iraq in addition was known to have an active program 49 00:04:27.720 --> 00:04:33.580 for the development of nuclear weapons, which was at most a few years from success. 50 00:04:34.820 --> 00:04:40.040 The danger Iraq posed to its neighbours was assumed to come from its willingness to use 51 00:04:40.040 --> 00:04:46.020 its weapons in an unanticipated strike. The danger it was said to pose to the West 52 00:04:46.020 --> 00:04:51.480 was either through clandestine passage of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups 53 00:04:51.480 --> 00:04:56.400 or through the use of nuclear blackmail to achieve its regional ends. 54 00:04:57.660 --> 00:05:07.280 It seems to me at present that the two most real questions and problems facing us 55 00:05:08.260 --> 00:05:14.920 concern the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, I can't think of a moment when I have felt 56 00:05:14.920 --> 00:05:16.000 democracy is won. 57 00:05:16.020 --> 00:05:20.480 The questions were more under challenge and where I felt more rattled by the nature of 58 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:23.520 our democracies than the questions I must now pose. 59 00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:31.800 The question, of course, is whether the war against Iraq was lawful and also whether the 60 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:39.700 war against Iraq was just. And this, to answer these questions, one has to try and explain 61 00:05:39.700 --> 00:05:45.520 how the invasion occurred. And I'm deeply troubled as I've tried more and more to understand. 62 00:05:47.540 --> 00:05:55.240 Now, my attempt to find an explanation for the invasion and to characterise it accurately 63 00:05:55.240 --> 00:06:01.560 is not driven by mere intellectual curiosity. Because if a true explanation can be discovered, 64 00:06:01.860 --> 00:06:06.840 we will have found vital clues as to the likely character of the coming age. 65 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:16.000 Any attempt at an explanation for the invasion of Iraq must begin, in my opinion, with a clear 66 00:06:16.020 --> 00:06:33.180 degree of degree of degree 67 00:06:37.900 --> 00:06:42.020 the other ideology of importance, but it is much more of domestic importance. 68 00:06:43.340 --> 00:06:50.200 The neoconservatism of which I speak has two main interconnected themes. In its cultural dimension, 69 00:06:51.220 --> 00:06:55.400 neoconservatism defends the moral and literary values of Western civilization 70 00:06:55.400 --> 00:07:03.560 from the antinomian revolution waged since the 1960s by relativists, postmodernists, 71 00:07:04.920 --> 00:07:08.840 multiculturalists, feminists, and the custodians of political correctness. 72 00:07:09.220 --> 00:07:14.780 The classic work of neoconservatism in this direction was Alan Bloom's The Closing of the 73 00:07:14.780 --> 00:07:20.960 American Mind, behind which can be found the influence of the Jewish-German political 74 00:07:20.960 --> 00:07:26.580 philosopher Leo Strauss, the founder of an academic cult about which there's been a great 75 00:07:26.580 --> 00:07:32.340 deal of discussion recently, and which certainly played a part, at least, in the intellectual 76 00:07:32.340 --> 00:07:32.820 formulation. 77 00:07:33.560 --> 00:07:37.540 And formation of several of the most influential neoconservatives. 78 00:07:39.800 --> 00:07:45.140 In its defense and foreign policy dimension, and this is the one that matters to us, 79 00:07:46.140 --> 00:07:50.660 neoconservatism once represented the attempt to revive the spirit of anti-communism 80 00:07:50.660 --> 00:07:54.120 after the battering it had taken during the Vietnam War. 81 00:07:54.960 --> 00:07:58.800 And I must say, at this stage in my life, I was a sort of neoconservative. 82 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:01.820 In its present incarnation, 83 00:08:03.560 --> 00:08:10.280 neoconservative foreign policy thought is dominated by strategies aimed at capitalizing on the 84 00:08:10.280 --> 00:08:16.520 American victory in the Cold War, and on the arrival of the post-Cold War era of American 85 00:08:16.520 --> 00:08:17.640 global hegemony. 86 00:08:19.380 --> 00:08:25.180 During the 1980s, several prominent neocons, as I'll call them from now, joined the Reagan 87 00:08:25.180 --> 00:08:31.780 administration and became enthusiasts for his muscular internationalist brand of defense and 88 00:08:31.780 --> 00:08:32.560 foreign policy. 89 00:08:33.820 --> 00:08:40.760 During the 1990s, now in exile during the Clinton years, the neocons regrouped. 90 00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:49.020 Many were founding members of what was called the Project for the New American Century, an offshoot 91 00:08:49.020 --> 00:08:53.180 of the most powerful neoconservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. 92 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:03.320 Nineties foreign policy neoconservatism argued against both the status quo realism of Henry Kissinger, 93 00:09:03.420 --> 00:09:03.540 and the 94 00:09:03.560 --> 00:09:04.840 first President Bush. 95 00:09:06.040 --> 00:09:13.160 They called instead for what William Crystal, perhaps the most important publicist for neoconservatism, 96 00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:21.600 and presently the editor of Weekly Standard, financed entirely by Rupert Murdoch, they called for what 97 00:09:21.600 --> 00:09:31.040 William Crystal in Foreign Affairs in 1996 described, I quote, as a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military 98 00:09:31.040 --> 00:09:33.060 supremacy and moral confidence. 99 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:33.540 And I think that's a very important point. 100 00:09:33.540 --> 00:10:03.520 In other words, they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the degree to which they had tolemean degree to the 101 00:10:03.520 --> 00:10:05.080 of the uses of military power. 102 00:10:06.720 --> 00:10:10.200 Despite the fact that the US had no serious major enemy, 103 00:10:10.640 --> 00:10:14.860 the neocons advocated a heavy increase in US defence spending 104 00:10:14.860 --> 00:10:19.140 of something in the order of an additional $80 billion per annum. 105 00:10:20.200 --> 00:10:22.800 They also supported a military strategy 106 00:10:22.800 --> 00:10:27.480 which had been first outlined by Defence Secretary Dick Cheney 107 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:29.820 and his Under-Secretary Paul Wolfowitz 108 00:10:29.820 --> 00:10:32.700 in the dying days of the first Bush administration, 109 00:10:33.520 --> 00:10:34.460 the old Bush, 110 00:10:34.620 --> 00:10:38.740 which aimed at ensuring permanent American military superiority 111 00:10:38.740 --> 00:10:40.760 over all possible rivals. 112 00:10:41.880 --> 00:10:45.680 The neocons were worried about the eventual challenge of China. 113 00:10:47.060 --> 00:10:49.340 In his 1996 foreign affairs article, 114 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:52.860 William Crystal even wrote of US-China policy 115 00:10:52.860 --> 00:10:56.480 looking ultimately towards regime change there. 116 00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:01.360 For the neocons, the oceans barely reached to their knees. 117 00:11:03.540 --> 00:11:07.320 The neocons were also preoccupied by the Middle East. 118 00:11:08.100 --> 00:11:12.660 All were not merely uncritical and unconditional supporters of Israel, 119 00:11:12.900 --> 00:11:16.860 but also well-connected to the most hawkish elements of Likud. 120 00:11:18.160 --> 00:11:21.800 Many were hostile to Clinton's attempts to break a peace 121 00:11:21.800 --> 00:11:23.700 between the Israelis and the Palestinians. 122 00:11:24.820 --> 00:11:28.520 Many were enthusiasts for and had learned from 123 00:11:28.520 --> 00:11:32.060 the Israeli idea of the pre-emptive military strike, 124 00:11:32.060 --> 00:11:35.260 as seen, for example, in the Israeli decision 125 00:11:35.260 --> 00:11:40.020 to take out the Iraqi nuclear facility at Ozirak in 1981 126 00:11:40.020 --> 00:11:45.000 in order to prevent the emergence of a danger at a much later time. 127 00:11:45.760 --> 00:11:47.620 There was a complex theory about pre-emption 128 00:11:47.620 --> 00:11:49.540 developed particularly by Richard Pearl. 129 00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:54.200 All were extremely hostile to Israel's enemies in the Middle East, 130 00:11:54.880 --> 00:11:56.940 Iran, Syria, and above all, Iraq. 131 00:11:57.940 --> 00:11:59.600 This is of critical importance. 132 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:02.040 Well before September 11, 133 00:12:02.040 --> 00:12:06.220 the neocons advocated the end of the Iraqi regime. 134 00:12:07.160 --> 00:12:11.180 One of the early initiatives of the program for the new American century 135 00:12:12.040 --> 00:12:15.880 was an open letter to President Clinton in January 1998, 136 00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:20.240 signed by 18 prominent neoconservatives, 137 00:12:20.440 --> 00:12:24.760 including Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz, 138 00:12:25.040 --> 00:12:27.060 Douglas Feith, and William Crystal, 139 00:12:27.240 --> 00:12:30.960 which called for the armed overthrow of Saddam Hussein. 140 00:12:32.040 --> 00:12:37.080 The most serious of all the strategists for the overthrow of Saddam 141 00:12:37.080 --> 00:12:38.020 was Paul Wolfowitz, 142 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:45.800 who argued essentially for a plan of funding an Iraqi emigre organization, 143 00:12:46.980 --> 00:12:49.800 Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, 144 00:12:50.120 --> 00:12:53.480 and for the creation under American military protection 145 00:12:54.420 --> 00:13:00.820 of an anti-Saddam military enclave in the oil-rich Shia-dominated south. 146 00:13:00.820 --> 00:13:05.100 Wolfowitz put his plan with great seriousness, 147 00:13:05.160 --> 00:13:07.700 and it was seriously debated in 1998. 148 00:13:09.960 --> 00:13:13.740 In the lead-up to the November 2000 presidential election, 149 00:13:14.060 --> 00:13:19.560 the loyalties of the neocons were divided between the Republican contenders, 150 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:20.640 McCain and Bush. 151 00:13:21.680 --> 00:13:23.380 Indeed, during the campaign, 152 00:13:23.700 --> 00:13:27.780 George W. Bush made certain noises about the unwisdom 153 00:13:27.780 --> 00:13:30.180 of American involvement in nation-building, 154 00:13:30.820 --> 00:13:33.080 and the dangers of American hubris, 155 00:13:33.900 --> 00:13:36.520 which were unpleasing to the neocons, 156 00:13:36.520 --> 00:13:40.740 and which smelt to them of old conservative isolationism, 157 00:13:40.780 --> 00:13:42.460 for them a bogey term. 158 00:13:43.580 --> 00:13:45.540 Despite these misgivings, however, 159 00:13:45.660 --> 00:13:49.580 what turned out to be of far greater significance for the neocons 160 00:13:49.580 --> 00:13:54.340 was Bush's choice of Dick Cheney as his vice-presidential running mate. 161 00:13:55.620 --> 00:13:59.800 Cheney was a founding member of the Program for New American Century, 162 00:13:59.980 --> 00:14:00.800 and he was a member of the American Council for the Development of American 163 00:14:00.820 --> 00:14:04.220 Largely due to his influence, following Bush's election, 164 00:14:04.580 --> 00:14:07.340 many of the most prominent neocons, 165 00:14:07.340 --> 00:14:12.140 including 10 of the 18 signatories of the letter to Clinton on Iraq, 166 00:14:12.500 --> 00:14:16.080 moved into quite critical positions in the new administration. 167 00:14:16.820 --> 00:14:19.280 John Bolton, who is presently in Australia, 168 00:14:19.660 --> 00:14:23.560 and Richard Armitage took senior posts in the Department of State, 169 00:14:23.760 --> 00:14:26.720 just under Colin Powell. 170 00:14:27.080 --> 00:14:30.800 Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feeney, 171 00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:31.780 both of whom, as you can see, 172 00:14:31.780 --> 00:14:34.840 occupied the three most senior jobs in the Department of Defense. 173 00:14:37.140 --> 00:14:40.560 Now, there was little evidence in the first months of 2001 174 00:14:41.800 --> 00:14:44.880 that the neocons were making any serious policy headway. 175 00:14:45.920 --> 00:14:49.380 Perhaps they expected to be disappointed by any administration. 176 00:14:50.940 --> 00:14:55.160 Before the election, the PNAC program, 177 00:14:56.040 --> 00:14:58.460 PNAC now is Program for New American Century, 178 00:14:58.460 --> 00:15:01.580 had produced an extraordinary imperial plan 179 00:15:01.580 --> 00:15:04.020 for a new global Pax Americana 180 00:15:04.020 --> 00:15:08.120 in a paper called Rebuilding America's Defenses. 181 00:15:08.700 --> 00:15:11.780 In this paper, they argued that the shift 182 00:15:11.780 --> 00:15:14.840 to the more aggressive global strategy they desired 183 00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:16.560 would happen only gradually, 184 00:15:16.740 --> 00:15:19.240 unless there were to be, I quote, 185 00:15:19.540 --> 00:15:22.660 some catastrophic and catalyzing event, 186 00:15:22.780 --> 00:15:24.420 like a new Pearl Harbor. 187 00:15:25.220 --> 00:15:27.980 As it happened, this was a prescient remark. 188 00:15:27.980 --> 00:15:32.420 Providing food for several conspiracy theorists in the future. 189 00:15:33.380 --> 00:15:36.280 September 11 represented, or presented, 190 00:15:36.520 --> 00:15:40.620 the neocons situated at the heart now of the U.S. government 191 00:15:40.620 --> 00:15:42.640 with their historic chants. 192 00:15:46.360 --> 00:15:49.160 Following September 11, the Bush administration, 193 00:15:50.100 --> 00:15:53.560 in coalition with a number of countries, including our own, 194 00:15:53.660 --> 00:15:57.760 went to war against Afghanistan after the Taliban had failed 195 00:15:57.760 --> 00:16:01.400 to hand over al-Qaeda military forces based on their territory. 196 00:16:02.600 --> 00:16:06.120 In my view, the U.S.-led war against Afghanistan 197 00:16:06.760 --> 00:16:10.260 did not in particular reflect the influence of the neocons. 198 00:16:11.060 --> 00:16:14.520 No matter who was in the White House on September 11, 199 00:16:14.820 --> 00:16:17.260 it seems to me likely that the United States 200 00:16:17.260 --> 00:16:20.100 would have taken military action against al-Qaeda 201 00:16:20.100 --> 00:16:23.460 and the regime which offered it protection and support. 202 00:16:24.880 --> 00:16:27.740 Given that al-Qaeda had just launched an unilateral attack, 203 00:16:27.760 --> 00:16:30.460 an unprovoked terrorist strike on the United States, 204 00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:33.300 which had killed 3,000 of its people, 205 00:16:33.860 --> 00:16:37.000 military action against it and its protector regime 206 00:16:37.760 --> 00:16:40.340 was in my view both inevitable and also just, 207 00:16:40.620 --> 00:16:42.980 according to the most traditional understanding 208 00:16:43.760 --> 00:16:46.460 regarding all nations' right to act in self-defense. 209 00:16:49.960 --> 00:16:54.500 As is now clear, what was most important from the neocons' point of view 210 00:16:54.500 --> 00:16:57.020 was whether or not they would be able to utilize 211 00:16:57.020 --> 00:17:01.320 the September 11 attack in order to draw the Bush presidency 212 00:17:02.020 --> 00:17:04.840 towards the kind of foreign and defense policy position 213 00:17:04.840 --> 00:17:10.100 they had been advocating in more tranquil pre-September 11 times. 214 00:17:12.520 --> 00:17:15.360 The most influential neocons out of government 215 00:17:15.360 --> 00:17:19.560 interpreted September 11 in genuinely apocalyptic terms. 216 00:17:20.780 --> 00:17:24.660 Elliot A. Cohen spoke of the beginning of the Fourth World War. 217 00:17:24.880 --> 00:17:27.000 The Third World War had been the Cold War. 218 00:17:27.020 --> 00:17:30.840 The Fourth World War, he said, would be between 219 00:17:30.840 --> 00:17:33.420 Western civilization and radical Islam. 220 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:38.440 Norman Podhoretz, the godfather of neoconservatism, 221 00:17:38.580 --> 00:17:41.420 the editor of, for many, many, many years, 222 00:17:41.700 --> 00:17:43.700 the editor of Commentary magazine, 223 00:17:44.200 --> 00:17:47.660 argued that as a result of this new world war 224 00:17:47.660 --> 00:17:51.580 that Cohen had predicted, the United States might soon find itself, 225 00:17:51.840 --> 00:17:57.000 and I quote, forced to topple five or six or seven more countries. 226 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:59.020 And that would be to end more tyrannies in the Islamic world. 227 00:17:59.240 --> 00:17:59.860 End quote. 228 00:18:00.900 --> 00:18:04.660 He also, in my view, nicely captured the metamorphosis 229 00:18:04.660 --> 00:18:07.420 that had occurred in the spirit of the U.S. president 230 00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:09.920 in the months after September 11. 231 00:18:10.280 --> 00:18:13.940 I quote from Podhoretz, who knows a lot of people 232 00:18:13.940 --> 00:18:15.180 very close to the president. 233 00:18:15.480 --> 00:18:16.920 This is what he said. 234 00:18:17.700 --> 00:18:21.260 One hears that Bush, this is February 2002, 235 00:18:21.800 --> 00:18:24.520 one hears that Bush, who entered the White House 236 00:18:24.520 --> 00:18:26.940 without a clear sense of what he wanted to do there, 237 00:18:27.120 --> 00:18:31.060 now feels that there was a purpose behind his election all along. 238 00:18:31.800 --> 00:18:34.020 As a born-against-Christian, it is said, 239 00:18:34.180 --> 00:18:36.280 he believes he was chosen by God 240 00:18:36.280 --> 00:18:39.200 to eradicate the evil of terrorism from the world. 241 00:18:39.620 --> 00:18:41.540 I think it is a plausible rumor. 242 00:18:42.260 --> 00:18:43.080 End quote. 243 00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:48.340 What I'm arguing is this, 244 00:18:48.480 --> 00:18:50.800 that at the time of September 11, 245 00:18:51.180 --> 00:18:53.460 the neocons in the Bush administration 246 00:18:53.460 --> 00:18:56.980 were the only group with a clear foreign policy vision 247 00:18:56.980 --> 00:19:01.600 that answered to the president's needs 248 00:19:01.600 --> 00:19:03.720 and reflected his new mood. 249 00:19:05.720 --> 00:19:09.840 The intellectual and policy work they now had to do 250 00:19:09.840 --> 00:19:12.060 was to translate the war on terror 251 00:19:12.060 --> 00:19:14.680 that had begun with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan 252 00:19:15.440 --> 00:19:18.320 into the first installment of their plans 253 00:19:18.320 --> 00:19:20.380 for the grand policy transformation 254 00:19:21.340 --> 00:19:23.440 of which they had long dreamed. 255 00:19:24.620 --> 00:19:27.820 With President Bush's State of the Union address 256 00:19:27.820 --> 00:19:29.760 in January 2002, 257 00:19:30.680 --> 00:19:32.960 where the president announced the existence 258 00:19:32.960 --> 00:19:36.740 of an axis of evil of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, 259 00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:39.920 their victory for the mind of the president 260 00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:41.100 was becoming clear. 261 00:19:42.280 --> 00:19:45.360 Before a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 262 00:19:45.360 --> 00:19:47.540 on February 7, 2002, 263 00:19:48.280 --> 00:19:51.000 William Crystal outlined the scope and nature 264 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:53.120 of that victory with admirable clarity. 265 00:19:53.960 --> 00:19:55.700 At first, Crystal argued, 266 00:19:55.960 --> 00:19:57.920 Bush had declared war on al-Qaeda. 267 00:19:58.940 --> 00:20:01.600 Then he had declared war on all terrorists 268 00:20:01.600 --> 00:20:04.460 who possessed what he called global reach, 269 00:20:05.360 --> 00:20:08.280 that is, a capacity to trouble the United States. 270 00:20:09.340 --> 00:20:11.240 By November 2001, 271 00:20:11.740 --> 00:20:13.320 I'm paraphrasing Crystal, 272 00:20:13.620 --> 00:20:16.500 having grasped the danger posed by terrorists 273 00:20:16.500 --> 00:20:20.460 armed with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, 274 00:20:21.320 --> 00:20:22.960 Bush had turned his attention 275 00:20:22.960 --> 00:20:25.140 finally from, quote, 276 00:20:25.220 --> 00:20:29.580 terrorist groups to terror-loving states, end quote. 277 00:20:29.920 --> 00:20:34.080 And then Crystal continued in the key part of his evidence. 278 00:20:34.580 --> 00:20:37.140 The State of the Union address marked 279 00:20:37.140 --> 00:20:39.860 the maturation of the Bush doctrine. 280 00:20:40.560 --> 00:20:42.700 This war, according to the president, 281 00:20:42.840 --> 00:20:44.120 has two great objectives. 282 00:20:44.840 --> 00:20:46.980 The first is defeating terrorism. 283 00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:49.060 Only the first. 284 00:20:49.960 --> 00:20:50.840 The second objective, 285 00:20:51.140 --> 00:20:52.940 marking the most significant victory 286 00:20:52.960 --> 00:20:53.180 in the history of the United States, 287 00:20:53.180 --> 00:20:53.200 The second objective, 288 00:20:53.200 --> 00:20:56.240 by an American president in almost 20 years, 289 00:20:56.480 --> 00:20:57.760 back to Reagan, 290 00:20:57.900 --> 00:21:00.220 is an unequivocal rejection 291 00:21:00.220 --> 00:21:02.480 of the international status quo. 292 00:21:03.940 --> 00:21:05.740 The United States of America, 293 00:21:06.020 --> 00:21:07.160 said President Bush, 294 00:21:07.360 --> 00:21:08.560 he's quoting him, 295 00:21:08.740 --> 00:21:11.680 will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes 296 00:21:11.680 --> 00:21:12.720 to threaten us 297 00:21:12.720 --> 00:21:14.840 with the world's most destructive weapons. 298 00:21:15.600 --> 00:21:17.400 Time, Bush said, 299 00:21:17.400 --> 00:21:18.860 is not on our side. 300 00:21:20.440 --> 00:21:22.000 And Crystal goes on, 301 00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:24.940 the president is thus willing to act preemptively 302 00:21:24.940 --> 00:21:26.860 and if need be, unilaterally. 303 00:21:27.100 --> 00:21:29.720 This is a matter of American self-defense. 304 00:21:30.500 --> 00:21:33.460 Nor was this all that the Bush doctrine implied. 305 00:21:34.080 --> 00:21:35.080 Crystal continued, 306 00:21:35.540 --> 00:21:38.800 the president was concerned not merely with the dangers 307 00:21:38.800 --> 00:21:39.780 of terror regimes, 308 00:21:40.040 --> 00:21:41.880 but also, I quote, 309 00:21:42.120 --> 00:21:44.320 seeks to challenge tyranny in general. 310 00:21:45.380 --> 00:21:46.880 And he ended up, 311 00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:48.380 no nation is exempt 312 00:21:48.380 --> 00:21:51.820 from the true and unchanging American principles 313 00:21:51.820 --> 00:21:53.440 of justice and liberty. 314 00:21:57.200 --> 00:21:58.940 Crystal was asked by the senators 315 00:21:58.940 --> 00:22:00.220 a more practical question. 316 00:22:01.800 --> 00:22:03.800 Who's next in the war on terrorism? 317 00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:07.060 For the neo-cons inside 318 00:22:08.020 --> 00:22:10.320 and outside the Bush administration, 319 00:22:10.620 --> 00:22:12.420 he answered with a single word, 320 00:22:12.580 --> 00:22:13.320 Iraq. 321 00:22:13.780 --> 00:22:15.460 This is February 2002. 322 00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:19.400 The war on terrorism had already then, 323 00:22:19.560 --> 00:22:23.400 by the time of the State of the Union Address, 324 00:22:23.460 --> 00:22:24.860 January 2002, 325 00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:30.200 been transformed into a revolutionary strategy 326 00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:33.220 for Pax Americana on a global scale. 327 00:22:36.780 --> 00:22:38.520 Reaction to September 11 328 00:22:38.520 --> 00:22:41.560 had already begun to reshape American foreign policy 329 00:22:41.560 --> 00:22:43.780 according to the neo-cons' desires. 330 00:22:43.780 --> 00:22:47.580 The war on terrorism would extend naturally 331 00:22:47.580 --> 00:22:49.380 to war against Iraq. 332 00:22:51.880 --> 00:22:53.840 It took only nine months 333 00:22:53.840 --> 00:22:57.640 from Bush's State of the Union Address 334 00:22:57.640 --> 00:23:01.120 to the final formulation of U.S. general doctrine 335 00:23:01.120 --> 00:23:03.180 for the post-September 11 world. 336 00:23:04.660 --> 00:23:07.460 This new strategic doctrine argued, 337 00:23:07.780 --> 00:23:10.320 and I think it's one of the most important documents 338 00:23:10.320 --> 00:23:13.080 for several decades, actually, 339 00:23:13.160 --> 00:23:13.760 in foreign policy, 340 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:17.840 in equivalent to NSC 68 in 1950, 341 00:23:18.180 --> 00:23:20.360 which was the doctrine for the Cold War. 342 00:23:20.580 --> 00:23:23.280 This new strategic doctrine argued, 343 00:23:23.980 --> 00:23:26.940 firstly, that in the ten years following the Soviet collapse, 344 00:23:27.300 --> 00:23:30.140 the U.S. had failed to grasp the nature of the threats 345 00:23:30.140 --> 00:23:32.860 posed in the new post-Cold War world. 346 00:23:33.500 --> 00:23:36.560 With September 11, the U.S. finally awoke. 347 00:23:37.380 --> 00:23:40.860 The new threats concerned not only so-called terrorists 348 00:23:40.860 --> 00:23:42.080 with a global range, 349 00:23:42.080 --> 00:23:46.260 a euphemism for terrorists with capacity to strike America, 350 00:23:46.600 --> 00:23:49.860 but also against what were called rogue states, 351 00:23:50.200 --> 00:23:53.080 those states which brutalized their own people, 352 00:23:53.360 --> 00:23:55.060 hated the United States, 353 00:23:55.280 --> 00:23:57.760 and sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction. 354 00:23:58.800 --> 00:24:01.800 Although such states were less militarily formidable 355 00:24:01.800 --> 00:24:05.000 than the old Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, 356 00:24:05.300 --> 00:24:07.060 if anything, it was argued, 357 00:24:07.260 --> 00:24:09.080 they posed to the United States 358 00:24:09.080 --> 00:24:11.920 an even greater threat than had the Soviets. 359 00:24:12.080 --> 00:24:12.860 Why? 360 00:24:14.040 --> 00:24:15.560 Unlike the Soviet Union, 361 00:24:15.840 --> 00:24:18.520 rogue states were not what was called risk-averse. 362 00:24:19.340 --> 00:24:21.420 For them, weapons of mass destruction 363 00:24:21.420 --> 00:24:23.020 were weapons of choice. 364 00:24:23.960 --> 00:24:27.040 Rogue states believed that by using such weapons, 365 00:24:27.280 --> 00:24:30.940 they could overcome the conventional military superiority 366 00:24:30.940 --> 00:24:32.240 of the U.S. 367 00:24:33.100 --> 00:24:34.720 Extraordinary thing to say, but nevertheless, 368 00:24:34.820 --> 00:24:36.100 I'm just quoting from the document. 369 00:24:37.080 --> 00:24:40.400 Even worse, such states were sponsors of world terrorism. 370 00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:43.720 Because of the overlap between rogue states 371 00:24:43.720 --> 00:24:45.640 and global terrorist networks, 372 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:49.120 the U.S. had no alternative now but to act. 373 00:24:49.980 --> 00:24:52.800 We are now at the heart of the new strategic doctrine. 374 00:24:53.500 --> 00:24:55.040 The U.S., it was claimed, 375 00:24:55.320 --> 00:24:57.800 faced the prospect of an attack 376 00:24:57.800 --> 00:24:59.480 either from one of the rogue states, 377 00:24:59.760 --> 00:25:02.420 a direct attack from one of the rogue states, 378 00:25:02.680 --> 00:25:05.580 or a terrorist group supplied by them 379 00:25:05.580 --> 00:25:06.940 with weapons of mass destruction. 380 00:25:08.840 --> 00:25:10.380 Before this kind of thing, 381 00:25:10.380 --> 00:25:13.740 the threat cold war ideas about deterrence and containment 382 00:25:14.380 --> 00:25:15.360 had become obsolete. 383 00:25:16.020 --> 00:25:18.380 The only rational military strategy 384 00:25:18.380 --> 00:25:21.420 was the so-called preemptive strike. 385 00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:25.320 According to the Bush doctrine, 386 00:25:25.540 --> 00:25:27.540 the idea of the preemptive strike 387 00:25:27.540 --> 00:25:29.620 as a legitimate form of self-defense 388 00:25:29.620 --> 00:25:31.460 was well written into mainstream 389 00:25:31.460 --> 00:25:33.660 traditional international law. 390 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:35.860 In this tradition, it argued, 391 00:25:36.100 --> 00:25:38.560 the use of a preemptive strike 392 00:25:38.560 --> 00:25:40.360 is justified as a 393 00:25:40.360 --> 00:25:40.800 preemptive strike at a time 394 00:25:40.800 --> 00:25:42.760 when enemy forces are massing, 395 00:25:42.780 --> 00:25:44.560 that is, when a visible threat 396 00:25:44.560 --> 00:25:46.180 appears across the horizon. 397 00:25:46.980 --> 00:25:49.200 After September 11, however, 398 00:25:49.300 --> 00:25:52.000 it argued, circumstances had changed. 399 00:25:52.480 --> 00:25:55.180 The new enemy was invisible. 400 00:25:55.920 --> 00:25:58.680 It might strike with lethal weapons 401 00:25:58.680 --> 00:26:00.780