Rise of the Vulcans by James Mann

Author:James Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

At the end of 1991 the Soviet Union broke up and disappeared. That sent Pentagon planners back to the drawing boards once again. The strategies and budgets they had put forward over the previous two years had assumed that the Soviet Union would continue to exist, although the threat from it would be greatly diminished. Now the Soviet collapse altered the calculations once again.

In Congress the calls for a large peace dividend intensified. Senator Edward M. Kennedy proposed taking $210 billion from the defense budget over seven years and devoting the money to universal health insurance, education and job programs.25 Amid the new climate of uncertainty, even Wolfowitz, who had heretofore regularly warned against exaggerating the degree of change in the Soviet Union, fell into unaccustomed optimism about the extent to which future Russian governments might help the United States. He raised the possibility that Russian troops might someday fight side by side with Americans. “We would even hope . . . if we were to face a crisis like the Persian Gulf ten years from now, that a democratic Russia would not just be a sort of passive political partner, but would be an active military participant in a coalition, if we had to put one together,” Wolfowitz asserted.26

Wolfowitz’s office was working intensively on the preparation of a new version of the Defense Planning Guidance. This classified document, rewritten every two years, describes America’s overall military strategy and serves as the basis for coming defense budgets. The 1992 Defense Planning Guidance was to be the first since the Soviet collapse. It was an early draft of this document that leaked to the press in March 1992, making public the vision of the United States as the world’s sole superpower, actively warding off potential rivals.

Ever since it first came to light, this document has been linked to Wolfowitz’s name. He has received both the credit and the blame for it. That judgment is ultimately fair since the Defense Planning Guidance was drafted by Wolfowitz’s office and reflected, in a general sense, many of his ideas. Yet attributing the document to Wolfowitz carries a triple irony. First, the ultimate sponsor of this now-famous document, the person who took primary responsibility for it, was Cheney, the defense secretary. Second, Wolfowitz didn’t write the document himself and never saw it before it became public; indeed, for a few days afterward he nervously sought to distance himself from it. Third, Wolfowitz and his top aide Scooter Libby thought that in subtle but important ways, the early draft that leaked to the press was flawed, not because it was too radical but because in some ways it didn’t go far enough.

Inside the Pentagon, Wolfowitz had delegated the job of coming up with the new Defense Planning Guidance to Libby, his protégé and top assistant, who held the title of principal deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy and resources. The document was due in early 1992 and was to serve as the basis for future defense budgets starting in fiscal year 1994.

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