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transformation of war made possible by the new techniques," including nuclear weapons, in the hands of new, often regional threats.
The group noted critically that the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review of 1997 "assumed that [North Korea's] Kim Jong Il and [Iraq's] Saddam Hussein each could begin a war-perhaps even while employing chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons-and the United States would make no effort to unseat either ruler."
The paper observed that "past Pentagon war games have given little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power and conduct post-combat stability operations."
"The current American peace will be short-lived if the United States becomes vulnerable to rogue powers with small, inexpensive arsenals of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction. We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq or similar states to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself. The blessings of the American peace, purchased at fearful cost and a century of effort, should not be so trivially squandered."
According to Gary Schmitt, a co-chairman of the project, George W. Bush, governor of Texas at the time, was neither a member of the group nor as far as Schmitt knows aware at the time of its findings. But among the participants were Wolfowitz and Libby, architects of the basic concept of a muscular defense including preemption of threats of weapons of mass destruction.
Did Bush as president come on his own to embrace the precepts of the project or was he sold on them by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby and others of the circle known as "the Vulcans"? Either way, events of the post-9/11 years have confirmed that those precepts were at the core of the radical foreign policy that have imperiled his presidency and American leadership across the globe.
Among the first challenges for Bush's successor in 2009 will be to demonstrate dramatically that he or she has learned the hard lesson of that go-it-alone foreign policy, which in the end forced America to go hat-in-hand to the international community. The new president must waste no time putting America back on the track of multilateralism and collective security.
With very good luck and a return to diplomacy, the United States could be out of Iraq by that time, giving the next president, Republican or Democratic, a free hand to restore the reputation of the American presidency in the eyes of friends and foes abroad, and at home as well.
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