Reply #32: Their sense of purpose and power DEPENDS on Armaggedon

[Dover]

so if it doesn't exist then it must be created, if only in their minds... This paranoia goes to the core of PNAC policy:

Neo-conservatism and the politics of paranoia

Max Fraad Wolff

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/June2003/x-June2003-neocon.html

...Leo Strauss was an inspirational guru. His belief in powerful, aggressive policy was shaped in reaction to his personal experience of Weimar Germany. Permissive democracy is naturally weak. Military strength and sacrifice of excessive personal freedom are required to combat tyranny and avoid defeat. A cast of menacing internal and external enemies perpetually threatens. Supremacy of Western culture, US constitutional democracy and individualism are melded with free enterprise. The US is the embodiment of strength, morality and civilisation. Opponents are either deluded (as in the case of the Europeans) or threatening aggressors. Diplomacy and compromise reveal weakness, menace freedom and encourage tyranny, relativism and chaos. Survival demands martial mastery of myriad threats. The great texts of Western philosophy are not simply the expressions of one system of human organisation; they contain the true guide to supremely meritorious society. Alternative philosophies and political structures are inferior and threatening. Philosophy and ideology lead human activity, determine society’s success and failure. The majority of people see only shadows on the walls of Socrates’ cave; an enlightened vanguard must lead.

Strauss handed down an ideology of fear to the first neo-cons. Steeped in the paranoia of red scares, the Great Depression, Cold War hysteria and the New York immigrant experience, a group of anti-communist liberals groped towards an acceptably patriotic world-view. Fearful of democracy’s weaknesses and contradictions, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Bell (see the box ‘First-generation neo-cons’) strove to motivate US primacy as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. Disturbed by the pilloried leftism of family members and their ethnic Brooklyn neighbours, these success-oriented young men found solace and acceptability by celebrating the morality of US power.

Suspicion of leftists and creeping communists ruled supreme during the neo-cons’ formative years. Hysterical fear justified attack, which was trumpeted as defence of imperiled morality and liberty. Compromise was veiled aid to mortal enemies. Arms reduction and trade normalisation marked surrender. The neo-cons’ alliance with Rand Corporation heavyweight Albert Wohlstetter (see box, below) symbolised their entrance into Republican power circles.

..snip..

The potency of Pnac and similar think-tanks is enormous. Above all else they concentrate on fear and vulnerability to cataclysmic attack. The cast of threats and methods of confrontation has evolved, but the ethical mandate for pre-emptive action has survived the test of time. The neo-cons’ sense of their own success in the Cold War invigorates their certainty of method and aggression of action. Domestic and foreign opponents feel the sting of bold impatience with dissent. Conflicts conceived as confrontations with evil allow little room for polite debate.

Neo-conservatism has long struggled for the influence it now commands. It seeks to control mortal threats (real or imagined) before destruction is unleashed. The revolution in military affairs offered by Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz was designed by Wohlstetter and friends at the Rand Institute in the 1970s; the neo-cons waited in the wings ever since. The two Gulf wars, Venezuela and Afghanistan have been the test phases of a ‘new’ strategic disposition. The UN, Nato, strategic alliances and military assets are being reshuffled to advance US power.

Why now? Globalisation, emerging rivals, economic weakness and multiculturalism menace. Alongside goods, services and wealth flow people, cultures and ideologies. This process has stretched inequalities – fuelling outrage, resistance and chaos. It also furnishes great fortunes and business opportunities. Neo-con anger feeds on the disorder, opposition, risk and danger that globalisation fosters. The flows of trade and wealth are embraced as civilising and positive. The proliferation of cultures and forms of resistance is hated and feared. Multilateral policy-making, perpetual compromise and tolerance of disorder and dysfunction are perceived to be lurking everywhere.

The neo-cons recommend impassioned reaction. They offer an alternative vision of globalisation in which the US takes control of a chaotic world. Opponents, rival ideas and rising powers are brought to heel.....cont'd