From the Wall Street Journal:
Bush Dreams of Changing Not Just Regime but Region
A Pro-U.S., Democratic Area Is a Goal
That Has Israeli, Neoconservative Roots
By ROBERT S. GREENBERGER and KARBY LEGGETT
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 21, 2003
As he sends American troops and planes into Iraq, President Bush has in mind more than changing a country. His dream is to make the entire Middle East a different place, and one safer for American interests.
The vision is appealing: a region that, after a regime change in Baghdad, has pro-American governments in the Arab world's three most important countries, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In the long run, that changes the dynamic of the region, making it more friendly to Washington and spreading democracy. Reducing the influence of radicals helps make Palestinians more amenable to an agreement with Israel.
It's a dream that has grown slowly over the last half-dozen years, from seeds first sown by a small group of neoconservative thinkers laboring in the quiet vineyards of policy think tanks during the Clinton administration. President Bush has come to embrace it in the traumatic days since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, so that he now sees disarming Iraq as only the beginning of the good that can come from ousting Saddam Hussein.
How realistic is the dream? In the short run, it's entirely possible the attack on Iraq could produce trends that run in the opposite direction, especially if the war doesn't go well. The influence of radicals may grow, fertilized by anger at America's intrusion onto Arab soil. Friendly governments such as that in Egypt, where demonstrators angry over the bombing of Iraq clashed with police Thursday, may pull back from the U.S. for a time.
And the impact of the war on the region's intractable Palestinian problem -- the one that ultimately has to be resolved to truly calm the region's waters -- is highly uncertain. If the war goes well and the elimination of a radical regime in the region creates pressure on the Palestinians to move away from confrontation, the path to peace with Israel might widen. But the result could be a backlash if Palestinians think increased U.S. dominance of the region means any negotiations will come more on the terms of America's staunch ally in Israel. That might leave the problem
further from resolution.
The story of how Mr. Bush came to embrace the vision began with a family quarrel among Republicans. It picked up strength in the late-1990s with the failure of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and Palestinians, which strengthened hawks in Israel and Washington who were advocating more-muscular policies toward Arabs. And finally it emerged as a centerpiece of American policy with a president looking for a new theory of the region after it gave rise to the most deadly attack ever on American soil.
One of the places the idea was born was the Project for the New American Century, which was a fledgling and unnoticed neoconservative think tank in 1998. That's when it told Mr. Clinton the time had come to depose Saddam Hussein.
In a letter to Mr. Clinton put together by the group's director, former intelligence official Gary Schmitt, the group declared: "The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term this means a willingness to undertake military action. ... In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power."
It was an audacious declaration in many ways. The group had only one full-time staffer and an intern.
But it managed to get its message signed by 18 national-security hawks. Many of them focused on Iraq because they viewed Mr. Hussein as a disruptive force who, with a record of invading his neighbors, intimidated moderate forces in the region. They also saw his continued rule as epitomizing all that was wrong with the Clinton administration's foreign policy: a lack of clear purpose, a willingness to act based on political expediency rather than moral principles, and an unwillingness to use sufficient military power to bend Mr. Hussein to America's will.
Such messages usually are lost in the din of the countless think tanks that reside in downtown Washington. But in this case, the message grew -- and became especially important as, over the next few years, more and more of the signers moved into the foreign-policy camp of presidential contender George W. Bush.
Even before the 1998 letter to President Clinton, the idea of using regime change in Baghdad to foster Middle East stability was around. In a 1996 memo to then newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Richard Perle, a hard-liner from the Reagan administration, proposed replacing Mr. Hussein with Jordan's King Hussein as part of an audacious plan to strengthen Israel. Mr. Perle, who headed a study group, was trying to produce a change that would secure Israel's "streets and borders" by forcing significant change in the Arab world. Mr. Perle later signed the letter to Mr. Clinton.
Similar Conclusions
Through this same period, some Israeli thinkers had begun examining what drove countries to war, and moved toward similar conclusions about basic changes in the Arab world. Uzi Arad, director of Israel's Institute of Policy and Strategy and former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, followed the research closely. The result was what he now refers to as the "Theory of Democratic Peace," where the checks and balances built into democratic systems prevent a single individual from pursuing a militaristic course that leads to war.
Mr. Arad says the research has had a fundamental impact on the way the Bush administration views the Middle East and its long history of violence. "The evidence was irrefutable: Democracies do not attack democracies," he says. Though they don't advertise the fact much, U.S. officials share the view that moves toward more democracy in the long run would increase stability in allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as in Iraq.
In the U.S., these issues brought to the surface old splits among isolationists, pragmatists and globalists in the Republican party. A number of neoconservatives, nostalgic for the Reagan era, were determined to reassert America's strong presence in the world. Though they advocated such stands as higher defense spending and a tougher policy on China, much of the debate centered on Iraq.
Two of them, William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, and Robert Kagan, who had worked in the Reagan administration, wrote a 1996 article warning that "conservatives are adrift" and clamoring for an American "benevolent hegemony." The article, in Foreign Affairs magazine, didn't focus on Iraq.
Meanwhile, although Mr. Clinton's presidency undertook limited military action against Iraq, his term ended with sanctions in place and no firm plans to get rid of Mr. Hussein. To the neoconservatives, the beginning of the Bush presidency promised only more of the same. Mr. Bush had run a campaign against "nation building" and focused on a domestic agenda.
But the statement calling for regime change in Iraq had quietly moved to the center of U.S. foreign-policy thinking. Of the 18 who signed it, half took important jobs in the new Bush administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; two top State Department officials, Richard Armitage and John Bolton; and Elliott Abrams, now the National Security Council's top Mideast official.
There was no sign this thinking had deep impact on the new president, who didn't devote much thought to regime change in Iraq. But soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Iraq began to emerge as a terrorist threat in the eyes of Mr. Bush and his top officials. There were no concrete links between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden. But U.S. officials knew that al Qaeda wanted to acquire weapons of mass destruction to use against the U.S. They figured Mr. Hussein had an ample inventory of them -- as well as reason to have a grudge against Mr. Bush, whose father led the coalition that drove Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991.
To those in the administration who already had called for regime change, eliminating Mr. Hussein was an idea whose time had come. They began talking privately last spring about the notion of creating democracy in Iraq as a model for the region. President Bush came around to their views.
In the most detailed explanation of such a policy, Mr. Bush said in a recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute that a "liberated" Iraq could "show the power of freedom and transform that vital region" by bringing hope and progress to millions. It wouldn't be easy, he added, but "there was a time when many people said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable" of moving from dictatorship to democracy.
Palestinian Militancy
Yet seeking change in the Mideast through military action poses vast challenges in the near term. Some fear the campaign could deal a setback to regional security and to efforts to cool the biggest flashpoint, the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Among challenges Mr. Bush faces after the war will be persuading Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to return to the negotiating table with the Palestinians.
Though Mr. Sharon and the democracy he presides over are viewed as a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to bring democracy to the region, Mr. Sharon is widely reviled in the Arab world, viewed as more interested in expanding Israel's military control than making peace. One reason is his controversial policy of taking pre-emptive military action against Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
That policy, in place for more than two years, has led to the death of dozens of militants as well as innocent civilians. Now, if Mr. Bush emerges with a quick victory in Iraq, it could embolden Mr. Sharon's policy of pre-emptive action, not just against Palestinian militants but also in places such as the northern border with Lebanon, where Israel is locked in slow-burning conflict with Hezbollah guerrillas.
If Mr. Sharon were to take action against Hezbollah, it would likely breed new anger in the Arab world toward Israel and the U.S. And while Mr. Sharon says he supports the idea of a separate Palestinian state, his new government is packed with conservatives opposed to any form of Palestinian statehood.
In addition, the war in Iraq could make the populace in the Palestinian territories more militant, says Hisham Ahmed, a professor at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah in the West Bank. He has watched extremism grow there. "I think this war will irrevocably radicalize the Arab world," he says. "There will be many Osama bin Ladens created."
People such as George Saliba underline his point. A 29-year-old student of mathematics with short hair and a thick mustache, Mr. Saliba lives in an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. He carries an Israeli ID card, votes and believes democracy is a good thing. But after watching an Israeli military campaign that has killed many Palestinians over the past two years, he voices views that appear ripe for exploitation by groups such as al Qaeda. Indeed, he says he would be supportive of Mr. Hussein if he used chemical weapons against U.S. forces: "The U.S. is the biggest terrorist in the world, and I believe this is the last war it will fight. Saddam is our hero."
Such hostility toward the U.S. will become the central argument Arab nations present to the Bush administration in the months ahead: If the U.S. hopes to avoid a lethal backlash in the Arab world, it needs to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an even-handed manner.
But both the U.S. and Israel are betting the removal of Mr. Hussein from power will pave the way for change. Mr. Sharon said Thursday night he hopes and believes the uprooting of Mr. Hussein "will mark the beginning of a new era, one that is better for our region and for the entire world."
