Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz’s classified Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), released on February 18, 1992, “argued that the United States should be prepared to act preemptively…initiating military action when necessary, not just in response to an attack or immediate threat. …The published excerpts of the DPG did not mention Israel, but its pledge […]
2/18/1992
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz’s classified Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), was released on February 18, 1992. “Written just after the demise of the Soviet Union…the DPG asserted that America’s goal should be to ‘prevent the reemergence of a new rival’ to U.S. supremacy as the lone global superpower. The document made it clear […]
2/18/1992
“Working with his former political science student at Yale[,] Scooter Libby, and [Deputy Undersecretary for Policy Planning] Zalmay Khalilzad, [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul] Wolfowitz came up with a radical, visionary, and highly controversial forty-six page classified document [on February 18, 1992] known as the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG). (The document is also sometimes […]
2/18/1992
“The first objective advanced by the [February 18, 1992] DPG [Defense Planning Guidance] was to ‘prevent the reemergence of a new rival.’ This required the United States to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would be sufficient to generate global power. The authors of the draft argued that ‘beyond deterring attack […]
2/18/1992
“One of the most distinctive aspects of neoconservative ideology is a tendency toward expansionism. It manifests itself in a desire to push for steady economic growth on the domestic front. Abroad, the same expansionist tendency translates into an aggressive foreign policy backed by military strength. This tendency was obvious as early as [February 18] 1992, […]
2/18/1992
“[T]he [February 18] 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, written for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney by then-Pentagon analysts Paul Wolfowitz…and I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby… called for establishing America’s military primacy over Eurasia by preventing the rise of any hostile power capable of challenging that primacy. It also endorsed a policy of preventative disarmament of rogue states […]
2/18/1992
“In [February 18] 1992 he [Paul Wolfowitz] provoked an uproar at both ends of the political spectrum when, as undersecretary for policy at the Pentagon, he urged exploiting America’s military supremacy for the purpose of ‘deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.’ ” – Lawrence F. Kaplan and William […]
2/16/1992
While speaking on BBC Radio 4 on February 16, 1992, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said, in reference to the decision not to topple Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War: ” ‘If we’d gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein–assuming we could have found him–we’d have had to put a lot of forces […]
2/15/1992
” ‘We have a common task–Afghanistan, the U.S.A., and the civilized world–to launch a joint struggle against fundamentalism,’ [Afghan Soviet puppet President] Najibullah told reporters in his palace office as the mujahedin closed to within rocketing distance [shortly after the February 1992 alliance between the Tajik forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud and Uzbek militia leader […]
1/15/1992
” ‘It was not our intention to totally decimate the entire Iraqi Army, it was not our intention to go to Baghdad,’ he [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell] said in one of a round of television interviews on [January 15, 1992] the first anniversary of the war [Operation Desert Storm]. ‘Had […]