PREVENTIVE WARRIORS – A documentary by Michael Burns and Greg Ansin

Neoconservatives… I don’t think they are conservatives at all - they are radicals, quite serious radicals committed to the unilateral exercise of military power, of the militarization of the country. They fully accept the militarism that goes with their imperialism [..]. With the attacks on Sep 11 2001 they have said in so many words it was their opportunity: it was like Pearl Harbour…a chance to take over; and under the cover of a so called presidentially declared war on terrorism. They began to implement a private agenda of their own”  Chalmers Johnson

It appears that many people do not take the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) seriously. There is plenty of evidence of who they are and what they believe (their website for example!). Michael Moore and others mention them in their films, documentaries have been made and yet no one seems to want to know. A number of academics, students and businesspeople I know just point blank refuse to believe it. I think this is because when people hear about a minor mistake that a government has made they are ready to jump on it but when they hear about some hideous grand plan they prefer to switch off and pretend its not happening. It is just too big for people to feel able to cope with. Sixteen people involved with the PNAC now work or have worked for George W. Bush (including Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Francis Fukuyama).

This documentary focuses on the US 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) paper and its roots in earlier documents. The 2000 paper ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences’ is said to be a much more in depth and honest version of the 2002 paper. The 2000 document in turn grew out of the ‘Defence Planning Guidance’ written by Paul Wolfowitz in 1992. This time though, it is coming from people in office and not out. The basic idea of all of the documents is how best can the US ‘take advantage of the unipolar moment?’ (that is to say unipolarity in world power after the demise of the USSR). The film asserts that the answer Wolfowitz’ came up with was ‘an open assertion of military dominance’ and an attempt to ensure not just that the US could not be challenged militarily but also in terms of access to resources.

“The main thrust of the document is to ensure US military dominance for the rest of time. Never to allow another power to arise that could conceivably challenge the United States.” – Michael Klare.

In order to achieve this military objective there is a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, total supremacy in terms of Military technology and power must be achieved. Given that the US on its own spends around the same amount as everyone else put together this may be said to have been realised. As an addendum to this, no other (hostile) country can be allowed to build up its military capability to the point where it could challenge US authority. This principle (if that’s the word) can be interpreted in a variety of different ways  - as Noam Chomsky pointed out in an article on the subject 

“President Bush and his colleagues adaptively revised the doctrine of the NSS to enable them to resort to force even if a country does not have WMD or programmes to develop them. The "intent and ability" to do so is sufficient. Just about every country has the ability, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. The official doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to attack.”[i]

Secondly, a large increase in the number of military bases worldwide will be necessary. The US has put new bases in around a dozen countries since 9/11 – which adds to the bases that existed in more than a hundred different countries beforehand. Thirdly, wars for regime change must be instigated and puppet regimes left behind. Alarmingly, if Chalmers Johnson is correct there is a lot more of this to come….

“Vice-President Cheney once spoke of 50 nations that he wanted to carry out regime change in; the president upped him 10 more and said there were 60 of them. That’s letting the rest of the world know we’re coming.”

Noam Chomsky takes the idea further….

“they made it very clear right away to the world that they mean it. And the way you make it clear is by carrying out what’s called sometimes an exemplary action. An action undertaken to let the world know…. that we’re not just talking.[That action] was the invasion of Iraq. There was bitter opposition in elite groups all over the world: even the World Economic Forum practically broke up over it but they don’t really care – that’s what they wanted. They wanted people to understand that we mean this doctrine, we are going to attack anyone we like without authorisation, we are not going to care about credible pretexts.”

Elite groups in other parts of the world may have been bitterly opposed but the film talks of the belief among elite circles in the US that they have a right, an obligation or even in some cases a destiny to bring their political and economic systems to the world. It is not a new thing. Reagan, Bush sr.and Clinton are not the only examples of this. It goes back hundreds of years. What is different is the brazenness with which this policy is now being stated. These policies may have been in action for a long time but never before have leaders felt so confident that they would declare them openly.

Gideon Rose – former member of the Council on Foreign Relations –is seen at a conference. However, what he said in an article discussing what difference a Kerry victory would have made is more illustrative than his comments in the documentary….

Sure, there would be some differences between what the two camps would do, both in style (a lot) and substance (a little). But the similarities would be far more pronounced because Bush and Kerry's current positions on major issues just aren't that far apart--and because whoever is elected will have relatively little room for manoeuvre.[ii]

Cliff May is just about the only defender of the NSS on show (which is obviously the filmmakers choice). He is President of the Foundation for Defence of Democracy and a former Republican National Committee Communications Director. His comments near the end are worrying. He seems to think abusing the French is an adequate substitute for an explanation.

I strongly urge you to watch this. It’s free. It lasts about 50 minutes and has excellent contributors. I also urge you to read up on the PNAC www.newamericancentury.org . If it all seems a bit crazy then I think Noam Chomsky sums it up well… 

“It has a certain rationality within kind of a lunatic framework but that’s not so unusual in world affairs. History is replete full of examples of actions that were undertaken by perfectly rational people that carried [..] a severe risk to themselves and their own interests but were undertaken because of pursuing short-term goals of higher priority. History is full of it – just take a look at the history of wars. Wars are started by somebody, the people who start them very often lose the war and get destroyed but it doesn’t mean it was irrational. In fact, if somebody was watching this whole story from mars they would think we are all berserk but within a lunatic framework it looks not only rational but laudable.” – Noam Chomsky

You can watch the full documentary free here

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/30/1333210

A. Michael Greenwell

Added: June 10th 2005
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Language: english