Origins of Regime Change in Iraq  
Proliferation Brief, Volume 6, Number 5
Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Long before September 11, before the first inspections in Iraq had 
started, a small group of influential officials and experts in Washington 
were calling for regime change in Iraq. Some never wanted to end the 
1991 war. Many are now administration officials. Their organization, 
dedication and brilliance offer much to admire, even for those who 
disagree with the policies they advocate. 

We have assembled on our web site links to the key documents produced 
since 1992 by this group, usually known as neo-conservatives, and 
analysis of their efforts. They offer a textbook case of how a small, 
organized group can determine policy in a large nation, even when the 
majority of officials and experts originally scorned their views.

In the Beginning

In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then-under secretary of defense for policy, 
supervised the drafting of the Defense Policy Guidance document. 
Wolfowitz had objected to what he considered the premature ending of 
the 1991 Iraq War. In the new document, he outlined plans for military 
intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital 
raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the proliferation 
of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.

The guidance called for preemptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions but 
said that the U.S. should be ready to act alone when "collective action 
cannot be orchestrated." The primary goal of U.S. policy should be to 
prevent the rise of any nation that could challenge the United States. 
When the document leaked to the New York Times, it proved so extreme 
that it had to be rewritten. These concepts are now part of the new U.S. 
National Security Strategy.

Links to Likud

In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, now 
administration officials, joined in a report to the newly elected Likud 
government in Israel calling for "a clean break" with the policies of 
negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace. They said 
"Israel can shape its strategic environmentaby weakening, containing 
and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam 
Hussein from power in IraqaIraq's future could affect the strategic 
balance in the Middle East profoundly." They called for "reestablishing 
the principle of preemption."

In 1998, 18 prominent conservatives wrote a letter to President Clinton 
urging him to "aim at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from 
power." Most of these experts are now officials in the administration, 
including Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Paula 
Dobriansky, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and 
Paul Wolfowitz.

The Power of Planning

In 2000, the Project for the New American Century, which is chaired by 
William Kristol and includes Robert Kagan as a director, issued a 
report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." The Project had organized the 
1998 letter to Clinton and the 2000 report seems to have become a 
blueprint for the administration's foreign and defense policies. The 
report noted, "The U.S. has for decades sought to play a more permanent 
role in the Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with 
Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial 
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime 
of Saddam Hussein."

While not explicitly calling for permanent bases in Iraq after regime 
change, the report notes the difficulty of basing forces in Saudi Arabia, 
given "Saudi domestic sensibilities," and calls for a permanent Gulf 
military presence even "should Saddam pass from the scene" as "Iran 
may well prove as large a threat."

The official National Security Strategy of the United States, issued 
September 2002, holds that our defense "will require bases and stations 
within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia."

A Rising Chorus

Immediately after September 11, Paul Wolfowitz and other officials 
urged President Bush to attack Iraq. New Yorker writer Mark Danner 
notes as part of a PBS Frontline special that they saw this as a "new 
opportunity presented by the war on terror - that is, an opportunity 
to argue to the public that Iraq presented a vital danger to the United 
States." Colin Powell and the joint chiefs opposed them. "Powell's view 
was that Wolfowitz was fixated on Iraq, that they were looking for any 
excuse to bring Iraq into this," Washington Post reporter Dan Balz told 
Frontline. Powell won, but briefly.

Neo-conservative writers began to urge regime change as part of a 
larger strategy for remaking the Middle East. In June 2002, Michael 
Kelly wrote that a democratic Iraq and Palestine "will revolutionize 
the power dynamic in the Middle EastaA majority of Arabs will come to 
see America as the essential ally."

"Change toward democratic regimes in Tehran and Baghdad would 
unleash a tsunami across the Islamic world," claimed Joshua Muravchik 
in August of that year. Michael Ledeen on September 4, 2002, called for 
the US to launch "a vast democratic revolution to liberate all the peoples 
of the Middle EastaIt is impossible to imagine that the Iranian people 
would tolerate tyranny in their own country once freedom had come to 
Iraq. Syria would follow in short order."

Democracy experts, including Carnegie's Tom Carothers, call this vision 
"a dangerous fantasy." But on September 12, President Bush embraced 
the strategy when he told the United Nations, "The people of Iraq can 
shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic 
Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout 
the Muslim world." The president seems to have absorbed the entire 
expansive strategy. Now, for him, regime change in Iraq is not the 
end, it is just the beginning.  


http://www.ceip.org/files/Iraq/index.htm#regime_change
Click here for all these documents and more insight into the people and 
strategy behind the occupation of Iraq.

Joseph Cirincione is a Senior Associate and Director of the Non-
Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
http://www.ceip.org/files/nonprolif/templates/Publications.asp?p=8&Publication
ID =1214

Cheers, Steve..

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