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August 6, 2002

Briefing depicted Saudis as enemies

RAND analyst urges rethinking of Saudi Arabia as U.S. ally

By Thomas E. Ricks, THE WASHINGTON POST

A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

“THE SAUDIS are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader,” stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

“Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies,” said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corporation analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East. . . .

The briefing did not represent the views of the board or official government policy, and in fact runs counter to the present stance of the U.S. government that Saudi Arabia is a major ally in the region. Yet it also represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration — especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership — and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers. . . .

The decision to bring the anti-Saudi analysis before the Defense Policy Board also appears tied to the growing debate over whether to launch a U.S. military attack to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The chairman of the board is former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, one of the most prominent advocates in Washington of just such an invasion. The briefing argued that removing Hussein would spur change in Saudi Arabia — which, it maintained, is the larger problem because of its role in financing and supporting radical Islamic movements….

“Neither the presentations nor the Defense Policy Board members’ comments reflect the official views of the Department of Defense,” Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in a written statement issued last night. “Saudi Arabia is a long-standing friend and ally of the United States. The Saudis cooperate fully in the global war on terrorism and have the Department’s and the Administration’s deep appreciation.” . . .

OIL FIELDS ‘TARGETED’?

Murawiec said in his briefing that the United States should demand that Riyadh stop funding fundamentalist Islamic outlets around the world, stop all anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli statements in the country, and “prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services.”

If the Saudis refused to comply, the briefing continued, Saudi oil fields and overseas financial assets should be “targeted,” although exactly how was not specified.

The report concludes by linking regime change in Iraq to altering Saudi behavior. This view, popular among some neoconservative thinkers, is that once a U.S. invasion has removed Hussein from power, a friendly successor regime would become a major exporter of oil to the West.

That oil would diminish U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports, and so — in this view — permit the U.S. government finally to confront the House of Saud for supporting terrorism.

“The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad,” said the administration official, who is hawkish on Iraq.

“Once you have a democratic regime in Iraq, like the ones we helped establish in Germany and Japan after World War II, there are a lot of possibilities.”

KISSINGER OBJECTS

Of the two dozen people who attended the Defense Policy Board meeting, only one, former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, spoke up to object to the anti-Saudi conclusions of the briefing, according to sources who were there. Some members of the board clearly agreed with Kissinger’s dismissal of the briefing and others did not.

One source summarized Kissinger’s remarks as, “The Saudis are pro-American, they have to operate in a difficult region, and ultimately we can manage them.”. . .

Other members of the board include former vice president Dan Quayle; former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown; former House speakers Newt Gingrich and Thomas Foley; and several retired senior military officers, including two former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired admirals David Jeremiah and William Owens.

‘A MISGUIDED EFFORT’

‘Repeating lies will never make them facts.’

— PRINCE BANDAR BIN SULTANSaudi ambassador to the United States

Asked for reaction, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said he did not take the briefing seriously. “I think that it is a misguided effort that is shallow, and not honest about the facts,” he said. “Repeating lies will never make them facts.”

“I think this view defies reality,” added Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz. “The two countries have been friends and allies for over 60 years. Their relationship has seen the coming and breaking of many storms in the region, and if anything it goes from strength to strength.”

In the 1980s, the United States and Saudi Arabia played major roles in supporting the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, pouring billions of dollars into procuring weapons and other logistical support for the mujaheddin.

At the end of the decade, the relationship became even closer when the U.S. military stationed a half-million troops on Saudi territory to repel Hussein’s invasions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Several thousand U.S. troops have remained on Saudi soil, mainly to run air operations in the region. Their presence has been cited by Osama bin Laden as a major reason for his attacks on the United States.

POPULAR IN NEOCONSERVATIVE CADRE

The anti-Saudi views expressed in the briefing appear especially popular among neoconservative foreign policy thinkers, which is a relatively small but influential group within the Bush administration.

“I think it is a mistake to consider Saudi Arabia a friendly country,” said Kenneth Adelman, a former aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is a member of the Defense Policy Board but didn’t attend the July 10 meeting. He said the view that Saudi Arabia is an adversary of the United States “is certainly a more prevalent view that it was a year ago.”

In recent weeks, two neoconservative magazines have run articles similar in tone to the Pentagon briefing. The July 15 issue of the Weekly Standard, which is edited by William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Quayle, predicted “The Coming Saudi Showdown.” The current issue of Commentary, which is published by the American Jewish Committee, contains an article titled, “Our Enemies, the Saudis.” . . .

© 2002 The Washington Post Company


Laurent Murawiec – Education: M.A. Phil, Sorbonne University, Paris. Background: Laurent Murawiec is a senior international policy analyst with the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C. His main research areas concern the Revolution in Military Affairs, Information Warfare Theory, and applying anthropology to strategy. He earned his B.A., Phil and M.A. Phil from the Sorbonne University in Paris. A foreign correspondent for a major French business weekly in Germany, he co-founded and managed GeoPol Services SA, a consulting company in Geneva, Switzerland, which advised major multinational corporations and banks. He was an adviser to the French Ministry of Defense prior to joining RAND. . . . Copyright © 2001 Elliott School of International Affairs.

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New Bretton Woods, Land-Bridge must replace bankrupt IMF system

Executive Intelligence Review April 18, 1997, pp. 30-39
by Helga Zepp LaRouche

{The following speech was delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 5, the 30th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s call to end the war in Vietnam.}

The main focus of my remarks will be the ongoing financial crash, which is reaching a totally new proportion. We are actually at the beginning of the disintegration, and soon, the danger of evaporation of the present financial system. And, I will underline that the only way the world has out of this crisis, is the global reconstruction, the implementation of all of these programs combined, as a global reconstruction of the world economy.

I want to start with a different issue, which is very disturbing. And I hope that you will not leave this room today without being utterly disturbed yourself, and burning with the desire to do whatever is in your power to remedy this. Because, what we know has been going on for some time, is now out in the public: namely, the leading German economic and daily newspaper (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) today has the story, officially now from Unicef, which we have known before, from all our friends from different countries in Africa, that presently 1.4 million refugees are in immediate mortal danger in Zaire, in Burundi, and in Tanzania.

And, what is even more horrible to imagine–but I really want to put it in your hearts, that you feel the pain–is that, of these people, 700,000 are children! Alone in eastern Zaire, according to Unicef, there are 460,000 children who are about to die. These children have absolutely nothing; they are starving, they have no parents, because their parents have been killed already. They are sitting in the woods, they are lying along the streets, they are dying. You have corpses of little bodies along the roads, over and over. Already now, in the last months, 1 million children under the age of one year died, in this.

The estimates are that in the last months, 1 to 2 million refugees have already died. I really want you to get upset about this. American TV shows these pictures, but I was just in Germany about ten days ago, and they showed these pictures on the TV screen, where you saw these people, mainly women and children, because many of the men have been systematically eliminated already. And you saw these children with these eyes, looking at you. I cannot forget it. The cheeks are completely fallen in; the eyes are staring, like out of a little skeleton. These children are probably dead already by now. The world knows this. The world is watching it. . . .

Threats to the Eurasian Land-Bridge

Now, let me focus on the second aspect of the strategic picture, in which you have to see what happens in Africa, what happens to the financial system. You have to look at the world as a whole, because you cannot find a remedy in a partial solution. There is no way that you can solve the problem of one country or one continent, and not the rest. We are sitting in one boat!

When the famous Beijing conference took place last year in May, where the Chinese government announced the Eurasian Land-Bridge, and in which I and some other people from the Schiller Institute participated, a beautiful new proposal for what to do with the world economy was laid on the table, and the Chinese government invited the whole world to join in the beginning of the building of a new era of mankind, in which, through science and technology, development would be brought into every land-locked area in the world. For the first time in human history, the geographical precondition would no longer decide whether a country would be rich or poor, but that, through the idea of driving development corridors into all areas of the world, you could elevate all of mankind to a human condition, for all people on this planet.

It is now clear, with the full impact of “China-gate” and the massive, vicious campaign to demonize China, the “yellow peril” – you have such low-lifes as Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, who are running around the United States saying there is a new peril, a yellow peril, that China is building to fight a war with the United States, conflict with America is inevitable–this all comes from what?

We are now finding out more about this. Already in May last year, the same month that this beautiful proposal for the Eurasian Land-Bridge was presented, there was a gathering of individuals in Prague, in the Czech Republic, called the Prague Initiative. The sponsors of this were Vaclav Havel; Margaret Thatcher; Helmut Schmidt; Leszek Balcerowicz, the former prime minister of Poland, who ruined Poland with the reforms, the famous “Polish model”; Henry Kissinger; and George Shultz.

The chair of the executive was John O’Sullivan. On the advisory board were Kissinger and Lane Kirkland. On the board, Zbigniew Brzezinski; Richard Burt; Lord Chalfont; Pete du Pont; Ed Feulner, from the Heritage Foundation; Robert Hormats; Jack Kemp; Bill Kristol, the son of Irving Kristol; Michael Ledeen, famous for his commitment to “universal fascism”; Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary; Jeane Kirkpatrick; Karel Schwartzenberg; Lord Weidenfeld.

Participating also were Christoph Bertram from the IISS [London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies]; Midge Decter; Lobkowicz; and somebody who was once part of our organization and is now on the side of organized crime, Laurent Murawiec – he was among the lower-level participants, but nevertheless, he participated. . . .

* * *

www.larouchespeaks.com

Strategic Memorandum

The Case of “Teddy” Goldsmith

To better understand the importance of the facts I have just outlined, consider a related current development, and some of its relevant background.

At the same time as the referenced attacks from WWF-Brazil and Australia, there has been a relevant, ongoing operation, targeting Brazil from Pôrto Alegre, led by the Edward “Teddy” Goldsmith, the brother of the late Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, and former, 1950s, witting, Paris-based collaborator of both Stephen Spender and a figure who later became an old adversary of mine from the 1983-1984 days of the launching of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). That adversary is “Teddy” Goldsmith’s old crony from Paris days: spooky New York banker John Train.

Whereas, WWF and related neo-Malthusian organizations, are among the chief world-wide arms of the effort to bring about the extermination of the sovereign nation-state throughout this planet, through “globalization,” “Teddy” Goldsmith is a central figure of a riotous collection of so-called “activists” following in the tradition of the British Foreign Office’s Jeremy Bentham from the terrorist days of Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. This rabble is deployed in protesting impotently, if with some proclivity for violence, against “globalization.” Goldsmith acts, not to the effect of defeating globalization, but, rather, ensuring its success, by deploying to take control of the opposition to globalization, pre-emptively, out of the hands of what might otherwise emerge as the leading opposition. . . .

Threats to the Eurasian Land-Bridge

Now, let me focus on the second aspect of the strategic picture, in which you have to see what happens in Africa, what happens to the financial system. You have to look at the world as a whole, because you cannot find a remedy in a partial solution. There is no way that you can solve the problem of one country or one continent, and not the rest. We are sitting in one boat!

When the famous Beijing conference took place last year in May, where the Chinese government announced the Eurasian Land-Bridge, and in which I and some other people from the Schiller Institute participated, a beautiful new proposal for what to do with the world economy was laid on the table, and the Chinese government invited the whole world to join in the beginning of the building of a new era of mankind, in which, through science and technology, development would be brought into every land-locked area in the world. For the first time in human history, the geographical precondition would no longer decide whether a country would be rich or poor, but that, through the idea of driving development corridors into all areas of the world, you could elevate all of mankind to a human condition, for all people on this planet.

It is now clear, with the full impact of “China-gate” and the massive, vicious campaign to demonize China, the “yellow peril” – you have such low-lifes as Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, who are running around the United States saying there is a new peril, a yellow peril, that China is building to fight a war with the United States, conflict with America is inevitable – this all comes from what?

We are now finding out more about this. Already in May last year, the same month that this beautiful proposal for the Eurasian Land-Bridge was presented, there was a gathering of individuals in Prague, in the Czech Republic, called the Prague Initiative. The sponsors of this were Vaclav Havel; Margaret Thatcher; Helmut Schmidt; Leszek Balcerowicz, the former prime minister of Poland, who ruined Poland with the reforms, the famous “Polish model”; Henry Kissinger; and George Shultz.

The chair of the executive was John O’Sullivan. On the advisory board were Kissinger and Lane Kirkland. On the board, Zbigniew Brzezinski; Richard Burt; Lord Chalfont; Pete du Pont; Ed Feulner, from the Heritage Foundation; Robert Hormats; Jack Kemp; Bill Kristol, the son of Irving Kristol; Michael Ledeen, famous for his commitment to “universal fascism”; Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary; Jeane Kirkpatrick; Karel Schwartzenberg; Lord Weidenfeld.

Participating also were Christoph Bertram from the IISS [London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies]; Midge Decter; Lobkowicz; and somebody who was once part of our organization and is now on the side of organized crime, Laurent Murawiec – he was among the lower-level participants, but nevertheless, he participated. . . .


February 28, 2002

From Rand’s Web Site:

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. . . .

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Rand Corporation Financial Statement 2000/1999

REPORT OF INDEPENDENT ACCOUNTANTS

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REVENUES & EXPENSES FOR FISCAL YEAR ENDED SEPT 24, 2000

REVENUES

Contracts and Grants ……………………………………… $142,741,607
Fees ………………………………………………………………….. 6,444,756
Income on Investments, net ………………………………….. 2,747,500
Other Investment Income ……………………………………… 101,087
Net realized gains on investments …………………………. 4,363,265
Contributions ………………………………………………………. 3,678,585
Other …………………………………………………………………. 13,984
Net Assets released from restriction ……………………….
2,202,494

Total revenues, gains and other support ……………. $165,237,797

EXPENSES

Research ………………………………………………………. $128,323,074
Management …………………………………………………..
29,521,429

Total Expenses ………………………………………………. $157,844,503



– Report of Independent Accountants: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

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RAND Board of Trustees

Ronald L. Olson, (Chairman) Partner, Munger, Tolles & Olson

Ann McLaughlin Korologos, (Vice Chairman) Chairman Emeritus, The Aspen Institute; former Secretary of Labor

Carl Bildt, Former Prime Minister (Sweden)

Peter S. Bing, Private Investor

Harold Brown, Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Frank C. Carlucci, Chairman, The Carlyle Group

Lovida H. Coleman, Jr., Partner, Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan LLP

Robert Curvin, President, Greentree Foundation

Pedro Jose Greer, Jr., M.D., Assistant Dean, University of Miami School of Medicine

Rita E. Hauser, President, The Hauser Foundation, Inc.

Karen Elliott House, President, International Group of Dow Jones & Co., Inc.

Jen-Hsun Huang, President and Chief Executive Officer, NVIDIA Corporation

Paul G. Kaminski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Technovation, Inc.

Bruce Karatz, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, KB Home

Philip Lader, Chairman, WPP Group

Arthur Levitt, Senior Advisor, The Carlyle Group

Lloyd N. Morrisett, Retired President, The Markle Foundation

Amy B. Pascal, Chairman, Columbia Pictures

Patricia Salas Pineda, Vice President, Legal, Human Resources, Environmental & Government Affairs, and Corporate Secretary, New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.

John Edward Porter, Partner, Hogan & Hartson

John Reed, Retired Chairman, Citigroup

Donald B. Rice, President and Chief Executive Officer, Agensys, Inc.; former President and Chief Operating Officer, Teledyne, Inc.; former President, RAND

Kenneth I. Shine, M.D., President, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences

Jerry I. Speyer, President, Tishman Speyer Properties, Inc.

James A. Thomson, President and Chief Executive Officer, RAND

James Q. Wilson, James A. Collins Professor Emeritus of Management, The John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles

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EXECUTIVE BRIEFING

A Global Agenda for the U.S. President

By Frank Carlucci, Robert Hunter, and Zalmay Khalilzad

The authors co-chaired Transition 2001, a panel of 54 American leaders in foreign and defense policy who were convened by RAND to forge a bipartisan agreement on the central tenets of U.S. national security policy and to offer bipartisan recommendations to the new U.S. president.

Frank Carlucci, a RAND trustee, was secretary of defense from 1987 to 1989. Robert Hunter, a senior advisor at RAND, was ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998. Zalmay Khalilzad, corporate chair for international security studies at RAND, was assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for policy planning from 1991 through 1992 and director of President George W. Bush’s Department of Defense Transition Team in December 2000 and January 2001.

The conclusions of the panel are summarized below. . . .

Dear Mr. President:

Ten years after the end of the cold war, the United States finds itself with unrivaled military, economic, political, and cultural power. However, we are still struggling to understand what we must do abroad to support our interests and values, what are the limits of our power, and what we can do with others to help shape the kind of world in which we want to live. In the past decade, we learned anew that America cannot retreat from the world, that isolationism is impossible. We learned that American economic and military strength are as important as ever and that much of the world still depends on us to be engaged–and to lead.

Yet American power and purpose alone cannot suffice to meet the array of global challenges to the welfare of the United States, of our friends and allies, and of the planet as a whole. Thus, we advocate selective global leadership by the United States, coupled with strengthened and revitalized alliances. The United States, together with its democratic allies in Europe and Asia, possesses an unparalleled ability to meet tomorrow’s challenges. However, without the help of these allies, many emerging challenges will prove beyond our capacity to manage. Thus, strengthening our alliances is essential to America’s future and should form the bedrock of U.S. engagement abroad.

None of this can be done without a price. The array of new global challenges and opportunities will significantly increase the demand for U.S. diplomacy and other nonmilitary involvement abroad. Therefore, nonmilitary spending on foreign policy and national security should increase substantially as well.

Thus, Mr. President, we urge that you ask Congress for a 20 percent hike in spending for the U.S. Department of State, for payment of U.N. dues, and for other critical nonmilitary requirements of foreign policy. We also recommend that you seek about a 10 percent increase in defense spending, or about $30 billion more for procurement plus another $5-$10 billion for property maintenance, recruitment, targeted pay raises, retirement, and medical care. The alternatives to these defense investments would be either (1) to reduce the commitments of U.S. forces abroad or (2) to make politically painful reductions in the logistics and support infrastructure while simultaneously relying on unproven technologies. Linked to these budget increases for the defense and state departments should be structural reforms that would allow both departments to operate more efficiently and effectively.

We outline below what we consider to be the most important national security decisions that you will face during the first few months of your presidency. Short-term priorities appear first; long-term priorities, second. We conclude with further recommendations for a new global agenda.

Short-Term Priorities

Mr. President, we believe that you will need to address three critical issues right away, involving (1) national missile defense, (2) a modernized defense program, and (3) Arab-Israeli peacemaking. You should also be ready to meet crises that might erupt in places like Iraq, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, and Colombia.

Handle national missile defense with care. Mishandling the issue of national missile defense could have severe consequences for the nation’s military security as well as for relations with our allies, with Russia, and with China. Within the membership of the Transition 2001 panel, opinions varied considerably about the best way to proceed with missile defense; but we did agree that the issue requires a fresh look and that you should mandate a comprehensive review of all the technological, financial, and diplomatic variables. The panel also agreed that you should proceed with theater missile defense systems in key locations around the world in order to protect the forces of the United States, its allies, and friends.

There are several technological contenders for a national missile defense system. Each has positive and negative attributes. We recommend that you evaluate each option in light of emerging global threats, the fiscal impact on other U.S. military programs, and diplomatic relations with allies, with Russia, and with China. Because of the high costs involved, the many issues at stake, and the controversy–both at home and abroad–that will attend any choice, it is critical to get this decision as “right” as possible and to take sufficient time in making it.

Modernize the defense program. For about a decade, the U.S. Department of Defense has unwittingly, but consistently, underestimated the cost of maintaining and operating its force structure. Lack of funds has reduced training opportunities, starved some budgets for spare parts and maintenance, delayed new technological capabilities, and caused military housing and other components of the physical plant at many bases to be neglected.

These problems are magnified by the fact that much of the force requires substantial new spending to modernize or recapitalize the aging weapon and support platforms that were fielded in the 1970s and 1980s. Current U.S. strategy now demands capabilities (e.g., stealth) that old platforms simply cannot provide. Thus, a sizable modernization bill cannot be avoided. As a result, a critical demand on your secretary of defense will be to build and execute an affordable defense program that puts enough resources into chronically underfunded budgets so that near-term readiness does not suffer unduly–and, at the same time, to allocate sufficient modernization spending to prevent future obsolescence. Striking the balance between the near term and the long term is one of the most important defense policy tasks facing your administration.

Resources can also be saved over the long term by rationalizing the military base structure in this country and adopting more efficient business practices. It is widely believed that the present set of bases is too large and costly for the needs of the U.S. military. You have a major opportunity to restart the base realignment and closure process. We recommend that you seek congressional authority early in your administration for an independent commission to develop a nonamendable package of base closures.

Continue U.S. efforts at Arab-Israeli peacemaking. The unpredictability of events in the Middle East should not obscure our enduring principles. We believe that you should emphasize that U.S. security commitments to Israel remain firm, unquestioned, and not linked to any peace negotiations. We also recommend that you reiterate America’s commitment to creating a just and lasting peace for Israel and all its neighbors and to including the entire region in the great promise of the global economy. To this end, we recommend a fundamental review of the U.S. diplomatic strategy for advancing the peace process, including when and how you as president should become directly engaged.

Prepare for potential crises. We have singled out four: Saddam Hussein may try to act militarily (e.g., against the Kurds in northern Iraq) or to reduce Iraqi oil exports. Incidents in the Taiwan Strait could provoke a crisis between Taiwan and China. In Korea, you could face either a crisis or an opportunity for major improvement in intra-Korean relations. In Colombia, you could confront a crisis, with wider regional implications, stemming from the central government’s loss of control over large parts of its territory.

If provoked militarily once again by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the United States should be prepared to attack a wide range of strategic and military targets as a way to demonstrate resolve and to deter further challenges. We also recommend that you prepare to tap the strategic petroleum reserve and to seek an understanding with Saudi Arabia and others to expand oil production. Regarding the Taiwan Strait, we recommend stating clearly to both parties that the United States opposes unilateral moves toward independence by Taiwan but will support Taiwan in the event of an unprovoked Chinese attack.

Regarding the Korean Peninsula, the potential endgame of the conflict is an intra-Korean issue, but we believe that the United States should communicate its interests to both North and South: to Pyongyang, an end to the development of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction; to Seoul, an agreement on the size and character of U.S. forces on the peninsula after a diplomatic breakthrough. In exchange, the United States would guarantee the security and independence of the entire peninsula and provide economic assistance to help integrate the two countries. In the meantime, we should give watchful support to South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s reconciliation efforts.

In Colombia, an escalating crisis could confront the United States with two unattractive alternatives: either to abandon its counternarcotics and regional stability interests or to become more deeply involved in a protracted internal conflict. To avoid confronting such a choice, the United States should provide the Colombian government with more equipment–such as helicopters, reconnaissance assets, and communications equipment–and help it with intelligence. U.S. troops, however, should be excluded from military operations. The United States should also cooperate with concerned neighbors to promote regional stability over the longer term.

Long-Term Priorities

Short-term demands should not distract you from longer-term priorities for national security. We highlight three: (1) sustain a preeminent military, (2) build a broader U.S.-European partnership, and (3) recast U.S. alliances in Asia. Your administration will also need to formulate policies toward several regional powers whose domestic or international positions are now in flux.

Sustain a preeminent military. As indicated above, we need to overcome looming problems in the military to ensure that it can meet current challenges as well as take advantage of emerging technologies. Our existing forces face the progressive obsolescence of many premier platforms. Operating costs are high and growing. Peacekeeping and humanitarian deployments impose significant burdens. Signs of strain include recruitment shortfalls, loss of experienced personnel, and some decline in morale. Despite recent increases in the defense budget, a gap remains between resources and requirements.

But these trends also present an opportunity. The continuing modernization of the U.S. military should take place in the context of a long-delayed transformation of American security strategy. By and large, we are still living with a defense establishment that is a legacy of the cold war. Today, however, our strategy must balance a wider range of threats and challenges. The United States must now field a force capable of countering missiles, various weapons of mass destruction, and attacks on information systems. We have seen glimpses of the future, with sensors that can detect moving vehicles over huge sections of the battlefield in all conditions, and guided munitions that can attack targets precisely. Now is the time to move aggressively to develop and field the systems that can permit new ways of conducting military operations.

U.S. forces also need specialized capabilities for smaller-scale missions, such as peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, which are likely to remain principal missions of the military. Your administration should find ways to fund these operations that minimize disruptions to other important military programs.

Your administration also should determine the extent to which we can count on our allies in meeting future military challenges. Allied capabilities should be more closely integrated into U.S. force planning to achieve greater interoperability and to relieve some of the burdens on U.S. resources. For political as well as economic reasons, the United States needs to encourage its allies to increase their capability for power projection and to be more effective in coalitions with U.S. forces. At times, the U.S. government has been ambivalent about increasing allied capabilities and roles, especially decisionmaking roles, in military operations. We believe that this ambivalence should end.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government has also been reluctant to share high technology with our allies, hampering both interoperability and a transatlantic defense industry that could benefit both sides. We recommend that you propose far-reaching changes in the transatlantic regime for defense exports and investments, providing greater flexibility for countries and companies that agree to manage their own export control rules, compatible with U.S. practice. In Europe, U.S. policy should encourage efforts at defense integration and rationalization across borders, while ensuring that NATO remains the central institution for transatlantic cooperation on European security.

Closer to home, your administration must find a way to continue recruiting and retaining the skilled personnel who are the most critical element of American military superiority. To compete with a booming economy, the Department of Defense will have to consider a variety of options, from increasing compensation across the board to targeting pay raises to specific positions or even restructuring military careers. RAND research shows that targeted pay raises, especially those aimed at skilled enlisted personnel, produce better results than across-the-board raises. However, even targeted raises need to be supplemented by other measures, including targeted bonuses to increase retention of critical personnel, separation pay and tax-sheltered retirement savings plans to allow more flexible retirement schedules, and additional recruiting resources to attract new types of recruits. Adjustments should also be made in deployments to ensure that personnel do not face a tempo of operations so taxing that it reduces their effectiveness, lowers their morale, or causes them to leave when their enlistments are up.

Build a broader U.S.-European partnership. Early in your administration, you should begin a strategic dialogue directly with the European Union (EU) in addition to the central U.S. strategic engagement with NATO. An opportune time to launch this initiative, with a global agenda of actions in the common interest, will be at the projected U.S.-EU summit in Sweden in June.

The next NATO summit is planned for sometime in 2002. At this summit, the allies will review progress made toward NATO membership by nine applicants: Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia–and possibly Austria or Croatia. On this issue, the United States–and more particularly you, as U.S. president–will be expected to take the lead. In the end, it will be the willingness of the United States to make the strategic commitment to the new members that will be most important, and your decision is likely to prevail within the alliance.

Most observers believe that you need to make your decision about NATO enlargement in 2001 and make your preference clear. In theory, you do not have to bless the principle of NATO enlargement, but not to do so would represent a major change in U.S. and allied policy and would result in serious negative consequences both for the alliance and for U.S. credibility across the continent. In any event, the applicants and other observers must be convinced that NATO has not abandoned its pledge of an “open door” to enlargement.

As leader of the alliance, the United States should also continue building with its allies a comprehensive approach to European security. Admitting new countries into NATO is only one element; assuring other countries that they are not being left out is equally important. Therefore, the United States and its allies should build on the Partnership for Peace, the NATO-Ukraine Charter, the U.S.-Baltic Charter, and the NATO-Russia relationship, while ensuring that NATO retains a monopoly in deciding whom to admit. The United States will also be expected to lead the alliance in determining its overall goals and purposes, any changes to its command structure, and the practical limits to enlargement.

The Balkans remain the most troubled part of Europe. We counsel against assuming that the stabilization forces in Bosnia and Kosovo can soon depart. Currently, the most difficult question is the future of Kosovo–whether it remains a part of Serbia or becomes independent. Once again, your administration will be expected to take the lead in answering this question. In our judgment, you should decide early whether the United States favors independence, autonomy, or some third alternative.

Recast U.S. alliances in Asia. Soon after your inauguration, you should direct a review of U.S. strategy throughout Asia. A renewed strategy would shift the U.S. military posture broadly southward, perhaps toward the Philippines, while recasting our alliances with Japan and South Korea. The United States will need to retain some forward bases in Asia to help provide stability in the region and prevent hegemony by any regional power. We suggest a five-part strategy:

>> Reaffirm existing Asian bilateral alliances, especially with Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia.

>> Enhance these alliances and other important relationships in the region with information sharing, joint exercises, and joint plans to maintain regional stability.

>> Support efforts in Japan to revise its constitution, to expand its security horizon beyond territorial defense, and to acquire capabilities for supporting coalition operations.

>> Address situations that might tempt others to use force. This might include helping to keep tensions between Taiwan and China to a minimum and helping to resolve territorial disputes, such as those in the South China Sea, while emphasizing the continuing U.S. commitment to freedom of navigation.

>> Promote an inclusive security dialogue among as broad a range of Asian states as possible, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This dialogue should encourage new states to enter into the U.S.-led multilateral framework in the future.

Formulate long-term policies toward regional powers in flux. Several countries of strategic significance to the United States are in the midst of dramatic changes that might affect U.S. interests. We single out the following five areas as most critical for efforts in 2001, especially in terms of laying the foundation for long-term policies that can be sustained throughout your administration:

>> Russia. The United States and its allies should continue seeking to anchor Russia to the West and to build a positive political and military relationship with it. We should work for reductions in the Russian nuclear arsenal, firm control over that arsenal, reforms within the Russian military, and an end to any Russian role in the proliferation of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. Western economic assistance can–with careful monitoring–be useful. You should also search for areas of global cooperation with Russia, such as protection of the environment. At the same time, the United States should continue to press Russia to live up to international norms of human rights as an essential element of its full integration into the community of nations.

>> China. In cooperation with its allies, the United States should pursue a mixed strategy toward China that neither relies on engagement nor resigns itself to containment. While engaging China through commerce, military-to-military ties, and other joint projects, the United States should also press for democracy and human rights in China, discourage it from spreading missile technology, and hedge against a Chinese military buildup. If China chooses to cooperate within the current international system and becomes democratic, this mixed strategy could evolve into mutual accommodation and partnership. If China becomes a hostile power bent on regional domination, the U.S. posture could evolve into containment.

>> India and Pakistan. We recommend that you decouple India and Pakistan in U.S. calculations. If current trends continue, India will become the world’s fourth largest economy by 2015 and will emerge as a great power. India warrants an increased level of U.S. engagement. By contrast, Pakistan is in the midst of deep social crisis and is pursuing policies counter to U.S. interests. You should increase pressure on Islamabad to stop support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, to cooperate in the fight against terrorism, to show restraint in Kashmir, and to focus on solving its own internal problems.

>> Iraq and Iran. The United States should also reappraise its policy of dual containment toward Iraq and Iran. This reappraisal would assess whether a regime change in Iraq is necessary to U.S. long-term goals and, if so, how to bring it about and at what cost. Containment of Iraq could be aided by an Iran that was prepared to rejoin the international community by ending its support for terrorism, its opposition to the Arab-Israeli peace process, and its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Your administration should be prepared either to continue the policy of isolating Iran or to seize the opportunity for improved relations if Tehran signals an interest in rapprochement. If relations do improve, the U.S. government should seize the opportunity to increase U.S. investment in Iran, to end U.S. opposition to an energy pipeline through Iran from Central Asia, and to cooperate on containing Iraq and stabilizing Afghanistan.

>> Indonesia. Severe instability in Indonesia could disrupt trade and investment flows throughout Asia, generate widespread violence, create massive refugee flows, encourage secessionist movements throughout Southeast Asia, and impede the progress of democracy in the region. The United States should thus help Indonesia to avoid political collapse and to keep its democratic reforms on track. We should support the country’s economic recovery and territorial integrity, engage its military, and help to restore its role in regional security.

A New Global Agenda

Radical changes in the global economy have expanded the international agenda.

Globalization defined here as the increasing volume and speed of cross-border flows of goods, services, ideas, capital, technology, and people – is, according to many observers, redefining “foreign policy.” Globalization is reducing the degree of control over events by governments in favor of the private sector and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Globalization is also strengthening interconnections among events in different parts of the world. We believe that U.S. leadership should respond to these developments in at least four ways:

Foster global economic order. Early in your administration, we recommend that you seek “fast-track” trade negotiating authority from Congress, secure support from key foreign allies on the framework for multilateral trade negotiations, engage U.S. groups with concerns about the labor and environmental practices of some U.S. trading partners, and ensure that less-influential countries and NGOs gain appropriate access to the negotiations. We also believe that you should promote reforms in international financial institutions to ensure that they are accountable to their constituencies, that their funds are promoting balanced and sustainable growth, and that their funds are neither being diverted or stolen by host-country officials nor allocated to inefficient or socially irresponsible uses. Finally, we recommend that you take proactive measures to deepen economic ties with Latin America, especially Mexico, in order to foster a stable, democratic, and free-market-oriented hemisphere.

Counter asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare refers to the capacity of smaller powers to cause damage and to influence the global agenda to a degree out of proportion to their recognized status in the world. For example, a smaller power (or nonstate actor) might resort to terrorism, the use of weapons of mass destruction, or cyber threats partly in response to U.S. military dominance. The transnational nature of many of these threats means that the U.S. ability to counter them will depend on greater cooperation among the major industrial countries. More specifically, the United States should work to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention, press Russia to stop providing assistance to Iran for its nuclear program, and discourage Chinese and Russian assistance in the spread of missile technology. We also strongly recommend that you mandate cooperation among domestic law enforcement, intelligence, economic, and diplomatic assets to combat these threats.

Respond actively to nontraditional threats and opportunities. A host of new global challenges may soon require imaginative and sustained responses by the United States and its allies. These nontraditional challenges include uncontrolled migration across borders, international crime, pandemics like AIDS and malaria, and environmental degradation. Many of these problems will affect Africa in particular. In few of these cases is there a consensus that they represent serious “security” threats to the United States or its allies. However, in this era, we in the United States, along with our major industrial-state allies, have the resources and opportunity to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a world where such problems continue to fester, or whether we will try to make a difference. For your administration, this is primarily a matter of leadership and exhortation. Then it is a matter of forming alliances with like-minded, relatively wealthy countries to begin creating a new ethos for the future that is not based solely on a short-term national model but that embraces a long-term global vision.

Meanwhile, your administration can continue the U.S. government’s vigorous commitment to human rights and democracy. This is the major opportunity of the age: to create a world in which more people than ever before will be able to be secure in their persons, to take part in civil society, and to pursue basic benefits for themselves and their families. Unstinting U.S. support for human rights need no longer be limited, in terms of country or region, by the trade-offs that were sometimes required during the cold war. Democracy is perhaps the most formidable social and political force in the world, both today and for the indefinite future. The United States–and your administration–can and should remain the foremost champion of democratic development, in word and deed, including vigorous support for global democracy-based institutions, for democracy-oriented NGOs, and for following up on the June 2000 World Democracy Conference in Warsaw.

Nurture international institutions. The United States wants to maintain its relative freedom from external threats and its capability to shape the global environment. One long-term means to these ends is particularly critical: U.S. leadership in building international institutions, practices, attitudes, and processes that can benefit the United States precisely because they also benefit other countries. The utility of this approach was demonstrated by the re-creation of NATO during the Bush and Clinton administrations. As a result of this effort, a wider range of countries can now benefit both from greater security and from greater social development. The EU has also made great strides, not only for its 15 members, but also for other countries in Central Europe and beyond.

No doubt, neither the NATO nor EU model will find direct application elsewhere; both are the products of unique circumstances. But as U.S. president, you can promote the basic method of institutional development. This method can help mobilize support for action in those parts of the world–such as Africa and parts of Asia–that tend to generate less interest in the wake of the cold war. Sustaining support for this approach will also require rebuilding the effectiveness of the United Nations as an institution and reestablishing U.S. domestic support for the U.N. At the very least, the United States must fulfill its commitments to pay its U.N. dues, while continuing to press for necessary institutional reforms.

Members of the Transition 2001 Panel

The following members endorsed the basic content of the panel’s final report to the president:

Gordon M. Adams, director, Security Policy Studies Program, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

Kenneth L. Adelman, former director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

J. Brian Atwood, former administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development

Norman R. Augustine, retired chairman and chief executive officer, Lockheed Martin Corporation

Jeremy R. Azrael, director, Center for Russia and Eurasia, RAND

Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, former U.S. ambassador to Portugal and U.S. Department of State senior advisor

Robert Bates, former corporate secretary, Mobil Corporation

Barry M. Blechman, president, DFI International

Harold Brown, trustee, Center for Strategic & International Studies

Richard Burt, chairman, IEP Advisors, Inc.

Daniel L. Byman, policy analyst, RAND

Frank C. Carlucci, chairman, The Carlyle Group

Ashton Carter, Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

David S. C. Chu, vice president and director, Arroyo Center, RAND

Natalie W. Crawford, vice president and director, Project AIR FORCE, RAND

Lynn E. Davis, senior fellow, RAND

Thomas A. Dine, president, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.

Marc Ginsberg, managing director and chief executive officer, Northstar Equity Group, Inc., and former U.S. ambassador to Morocco

David C. Gompert, president, RAND Europe

Jerrold D. Green, director, Center for Middle East Public Policy, RAND

William Harrop, former U.S. ambassador and former inspector general, U.S. Department of State and U.S. Foreign Service

Robert E. Hunter, senior advisor, RAND

Jeffrey A. Isaacson, vice president and director, National Security Research Division, RAND

Bruce W. Jentleson, director, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and professor of public policy and political science, Duke University

Zalmay M. Khalilzad, corporate chair, international security, RAND

F. Stephen Larrabee, corporate chair, European security, RAND

Mel Levine, partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Samuel W. Lewis, vice chairman, American Academy of Diplomacy

Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (with dissent)

Dave McCurdy, president, Electronic Industries Alliance

David A. Ochmanek, senior defense analyst, RAND

Diann H. Painter, former chief economist, Mobil Corporation

Angel Rabasa, senior policy analyst, RAND

Michael D. Rich, executive vice president, RAND

John E. Rielly, president, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations

Robert Satloff, executive director, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Jeremy Shapiro, policy analyst, RAND

David Skaggs, executive director, Democracy & Citizenship Program, The Aspen Institute (with dissent)

Marin J. Strmecki, vice president and director of programs, Smith Richardson Foundation

Loren B. Thompson, chief operating officer, Lexington Institute

James A. Thomson, president and chief executive officer, RAND

Harlan K. Ullman, senior fellow, Center for Naval Analyses, and senior associate, Center for Strategic & International Studies (with comment)

Ted Van Dyk, professor of politics and policy, Claremont Graduate University, and senior fellow, UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research

Edward L. Warner, senior defense analyst, RAND

The following members participated in the process but, because of their affiliation, could not endorse the panel’s final report:

Thomas E. Donilon, executive vice president–law and policy, Fannie Mae

Albert Eisele, editor, The Hill

Richard N. Haass, vice president and director, Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution

Rita E. Hauser, president, The Hauser Foundation

Harriet Hentges, executive vice president and chief operating officer, United States Institute of Peace

Anthony Lake, visiting distinguished professor in the practice of diplomacy, Georgetown University

Richard H. Solomon, president, United States Institute of Peace

Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the board of governors, Federal Reserve System

Paul D. Wolfowitz, dean, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University

Dov S. Zakheim, corporate vice president, System Planning Corporation


Zalmay Khalilzad – Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan.

Zalmay Khalilzad and the Bush Agenda

by Jennifer Van Bergen, t r u t h o u t

Jan 13, 2002 – The appointment by the Bush Administration of Zalmay Khalilzad as special envoy to Afghanistan which was announced on December 31, 2001, only nine days after the U.S.-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul, seems timely and logical.

Khalilzad, a U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan with extensive knowledge of the region and experience, appears to be the right person for the job. Khalilzad’s presence, however, is the fruit of an older agenda, one that reaches back at least to the Reagan era, and Khalilzad has more connections to that agenda than meets the eye.

Simply put, Khalilzad’s appointment means OIL.

Oil for the United States. Oil for Unocal, a U.S. company long criticized for doing business in countries with repressive governments and rumored to have close ties to the Department of State and the intelligence community.

Zalmay Khalilzad was an advisor for Unocal. In the mid 1990s, while working for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal at the time it had signed letters of approval from the Taliban.

The analyses were for a proposed 890-mile, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic-feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project which would have extended from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.

In December 1997, Khalilzad joined Unocal officials at a reception for an invited Taliban delegation to Texas.

UNOCAL – LONG CRITICIZED FOR BUSINESS PRACTICES

Unocal, the world’s ninth largest oil company according to the National Center for Policy Research, but according to the Los Angeles Times, smaller than America’s “most powerful energy companies,” has long been criticized for doing business with repressive foreign governments. Legal action was brought against Unocal in 1997 by Burmese refugees for human rights abuses which the refugees claimed were committed by the Burmese military hired by Unocal to protect their operations.

Unocal has also been criticized for its business dealings in this country. A 1998 petition signed by Environmental, Human Rights and Women’s Groups, asked California Attorney General to revoke Unocal’s Charter, citing Unocal’s record as a “repeat offender” of environmental, labor and deceptive practices laws.

The petition claimed that Unocal was principally responsible for the notorious 1969 oil blowout in the Santa Barbara Channel and has since then polluted multiple sites from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Petitioners claimed that Unocal committed hundreds of violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, treated U.S. workers unethically and unfairly, engaged in a pattern of illegal deceptions of the courts, stockholders and the public, and “usurped political power,” undermining U.S. foreign policy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Exxon filed a report in August 2001 with antitrust regulators which states that Unocal “subverted the standard-setting process” of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “to obtain unlawful monopoly profits.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating a questionable patent Unocal obtained behind the backs of CARB and oil competitors after Unocal sat in on official meetings to establish cleaner-burning gasoline.

FTC investigators say that the patent may have contributed to last summer’s Midwest gasoline crisis. Other reports cite Unocal’s open support of “the most brutal dictatorship” in Asia, General Suharto of Indonesia, where Unocal is one of the largest oil companies, a $5.5 million legal settlement of a citizens suit filed by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund against Unocal for pouring poisonous wastewater into the San Francisco Bay, and Unocal’s attempts to intimidate two native tribes in Montana into renewing its pipeline lease without basic environmental protections.

There have been some claims that Unocal was getting briefings from the Department of State. Unocal denied any connection beyond that which a company doing business overseas would obtain from the DOS. However, a look at some of Unocal’s CEOs and board members shows strong government ties.

Charles Larson, former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command sits on the board. So does Donald Rice, a former colleague of Khalilzad’s at RAND Corp., who was Secretary of the Air Force under Bush I. And Robert Oakley, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan during the time the CIA was funneling money and weapons through the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) to Afghan muhajeeden in the 1980s, later the U.S. special envoy to Somalia, worked subsequently for Unocal.

CENTGAS – THE AFGHAN OIL CONNECTION

Unocal was the “Development Manager” of the Centgas consortium. The purpose of Centgas was to build an 890-mile-long pipeline from Turkmenistan through Aghanistan to Pakistan.

Centgas, or the Central Asia Gas and Pipeline Consortium, was a group formed in the mid-1990s which was made up of the government of Turkmenistan and six international companies: Delta Oil Company (Saudi Arabia), Indonesia Petroleum, ITOCHU Oil Exploration Co. (Japan), Hyandai Engineering & Construction Co. (South Korea), Crescent Group (Pakistan) and Gazprom (Russia).

Unocal owned nearly half of the shares of Centgas. As Centgas’ Development Manager, Unocal opened talks with the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. To show its good will, Unocal donated money to CARE projects in Afghanistan and provided support for earthquake relief efforts. (According to the CIA World Factbook, damaging earthquakes are known to occur in the Hindu Kush mountains, which run across the center of the country.)

According to L.A. Weekly, Unocal also gave nearly a million dollars to the University of Nebraska’s Center for Afghan Studies, which Unocal stated was not used to “provide pipeline constructions skills training.”

Unocal said the money was used to provide “basic job skills training and education” for Afghans and elementary schooling for their children. However, according to the Asia Times, the Center for Afghan Studies also at one time produced a study of oil and gas reserves in Central Asia, placing their total worth at around US$3 trillion. Thus, the Center was not only interested in helping Afghans obtain basic education and job skills.

Thomas E. Gouttierre, the director of the Center for Aghan Studies, is an old friend of Zalmay Khalilzad. In fact, Gouttierre coached Khalilzad on a high school basketball team when “Zal” first visited America as an exchange student.

The Clinton administration offered backing for Unocal’s Centgas project, but after the U.S. bombed Aghanistan in 1998 in retaliation for the Embassy bombings, Unocal withdrew from the consortium, citing “sharply deteriorating political conditions.” Unocal stated that it would only participate in a Centgas pipeline project “when and if” Aghanistan achieved the “peace and stability necessary to obtain financing from international agencies and a government that is recognized by the United States and the United Nations.”

In February 1999, Unocal denied reports published in Pakistan that it was considering rejoining Centgas, and Unocal continues to state on its Homepage that it has no plans to return to the consortium. Unocal spokesman, Mike Thatcher, stated last October that “We’re not going to do it, but sooner or later, someone will.” However, it is clear that the December 5, 2001 “Bonn Agreement,” which establishes an interim Aghani government overseen by the United Nations, will fulfill Unocal’s prerequisite of an “internationally recognized government.”

One representative of the Turkmenistan embassy told L.A. Weekly, “So we are hoping that once peace is restored in Afghanistan, building these pipeliness will again become a priority.”

ENTER KHALILZAD

Khalilzad’s appointment as special envoy to Afghanistan raises suspicions about the priorities of the Bush administration. Long-standing political and business ties connect Khalilzad to an oil agenda.

The United States has been bombing Afghanistan in retaliation for terrorist attacks on this country. But Khalilzad’s appointment makes it clear that oil is now — and perhaps has been since before 9/11 — behind U.S.-Afghan policy.

Zalmay Khalilzad was born about 50 years ago in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, 70 miles south of the Soviet border. While he was still young, his family moved to Kabul, where his Pashtun father worked in the government, which was then a monarchy, and Zalmay attended English-language schools. According to Thomas E. Gouttierre, the director for the Unocal-funded Center for Afghan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the Khalilzad family “certainly would have been people among the intellectual elite of the time.” . . .

Gouttierre met Zalmay when the young Afghani first visited the United States as an exchange student through the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker charitable organization. Gouttierre coached him in basketball. He returned to Afghanistan to complete his high school, but earned his undergraduate degree from the American University in Beirut. At that time, Beirut was still the “Paris of the Middle East.” Khalilzad obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1979 (the same year the Soviets invaded his homeland), where, according to the New York Times News Service, “he became the protege of a famous hard-line strategic thinker.” There he also met an Austrain woman, Cheryl Benard, whom he married. Benard writes novels and co-wrote a book about revolutionary Iran with Zalmay.

In the early 1980s, Zalmay taught political science at Columbia University in New York, where he worked with Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was also executive director of the Friends of Afghanistan, a support group for the mujaheddins fighting the Soviets — the same mujuaheddins later known to have spawned bin Laden. In 1984, Khalilzad became an American citizen and joined the State Department on a one-year fellowship. Khalilzad’s background and language skills earned him a permanent position on the State Department’s Policy Planning Council during the Reagen era. There he worked under Paul Wolfowitz, then Reagan’s director of policy planning, now the No. 2 man at the Pentagon. In 1998, the two, having retained close ties, joined others in signing an open letter to Clinton that argued for the overthrow of Saddam.

From 1985 to 1989, Zalmay served as special adviser to the undersecretary of state. He belonged to a small group of policymakers who advocated providing arms to the “resistance” fighters in Afghanistan.

Khalilzad then consulted for the Rand Corp., a conservative think tank, on defense issues and returned to Washington when Bush I took office, taking up the post of assistant deputy under-secretary of defense for policy planning. Again he worked closely with Wolfowitz, then the Pentagon’s No. 3 official. He also got to know Dick Cheney at the Defense Department during the Gulf War.

During the Clinton years, Khalilzad returned to Rand and spent his time writing books and articles. After Bush II was elected, Cheney selected him to head the transition team for defense.

In May 2001, Bush appointed him the National Security Council official in charge of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. His direct superior was Condoleeza Rice, the national security adviser, who herself had served as an oil consultant for Chevron….

© : t r u t h o u t 2001

Professor Leonard Swidler, Ph.D, S.T.L., LL.D., LL.D. Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue Co-Founder/Editor, Journal of Ecumenical Studies Co-Founder/Co-Director, Global Dialogue Institute Religion Department, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA

Web: http://blue.temple.edu/~dialogue

* * *

Afghan-American a Key Adviser to Bush

By DEB RIECHMANN

WASHINGTON (AP) – When the terror attacks made the need urgent for an adviser who thoroughly understands Afghanistan, President Bush did not have to look far. As it happened, a leading foreign policy adviser at the White House is an Afghan-American who had been warning for months about the trouble brewing in his homeland and the need to confront the Taliban.

Zalmay Khalilzad, an ethnic Pashtun who dresses with a European flair, is finding his expertise in demand at the top levels of the Bush administration. Prescriptions he laid out last winter, when America was at peace, are very much at play in the war. “He knows Afghanistan in a way that no other high official in the administration does,” said Charles Fairbanks, director of the Central Asia Caucasus Institute. “It’s amazing good fortune for the country.” . . .

While his influence is clearly being felt behind the scenes, Khalilzad’s persona is hardly that of a vanilla-flavored technocrat. Colleagues call the suave and savvy 50-year-old, who has worked at both the State and Defense departments, charming, even playful. He’s a sharp dresser, they say, who shuns the basic gray suit of American bureaucracy in favor of clothes with a Parisian or Milanese flair.

“He has the kind of vitality and spirit one doesn’t usually see in public officials,” Fairbanks said. “He can be a little boisterous. I’m sure he knows how to do bureaucratic maneuvers, but he’s a more colorful figure. He enjoys parties. He is very amusing and animated.” . . .

Khalilzad was born in Mazar-e-Sharif the son of a government worker who moved the family to Kabul. Khalilzad, from an upper-class family, studied at American University in Beirut and earned a doctorate in 1979 at the University of Chicago.

Between 1985 and 1989, Khalilzad worked at the State Department, advising on the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1991 and 1992, he was assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for policy planning, working under Paul Wolfowitz, now in the No. 2 seat at the Pentagon. During the Clinton years, Khalilzad worked on defense and political issues at the Washington office of Rand, a policy think tank.

After Bush was elected, Vice President Dick Cheney named him to head Bush’s transition team for defense. In May, Khalilzad was named special assistant to the president and senior director at the NSC for the Persian Gulf, southwest Asia and other issues in the region.

“Zalmay is immensely influential in driving U.S. policy toward Afghanistan,” said Philip Smith, a longtime analyst on Afghanistan who directs the Center for Public Policy Analysis. “With his past experience at the Pentagon, I think he’s helping to map out strategy and tactics and much of the day-to-day operations.”

Khalilzad wasn’t always helping wage war against the Taliban. After the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, Khalilzad, like many other experts on Afghanistan, hoped the Taliban would bring stability to the country, which had slipped into a cycle of brutal fighting among warlords after the Soviet invasion ended in 1989.

The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran,” Khalilzad, then a senior strategist at Rand, wrote in October 1996. About four years ago, Khalilzad helped entertain Taliban leaders in Texas.

At the time, Khalilzad was a consultant for a company hired by the California-based Unocal Corp., which was trying to get the Taliban to back a multibillion-dollar pipeline through Afghanistan. The country’s instability eventually derailed the project.

A year later, terrorists thought to have trained in Afghanistan bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa. Prior to the bombings in August 1998, oil company executives in the United States were aggressively seeking diplomatic recognition for the Taliban government and World Bank financing for pipeline projects, analyst Smith said.

“During this period, Khalilzad, along with other oil consultants working on envisioned pipeline projects in Afghanistan, plus some senior State Department and CIA officials, advocated a higher level of U.S. engagement with the Taliban,” Smith said.

“To a large degree there has been a complete about-face. The United States no longer seeks to engage the Taliban, but seeks to overthrow the regime.” . . .


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Last update July 4, 2003, by The Catbird Seat





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