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CURRENT UPDATES: May 7, 2001 Dear Friends, In this eagerly awaited email update, we look at George W. Bush's choices for the second tier of his Cabinet. After the storm of media attention in his appointments of prominent people like Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, the choices for posts like Assistant Secretary of State for Western Affairs, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Assistant Secretary of State for Africa are --surprisingly enough-- not receiving commensurate attention. Nonetheless, these choices further reveal Bush's commitment to a unilateralist foreign policy in which corporate interests receive pride of place. As Bill Hartung put it in a comment quoted by editorial columnist Robert Landauer in the May 6th issue of The Oregonian, when President Eisenhower appointed Charles Wilson, the head of General Motors (then the leading contractor for the U.S. Army), to run the Pentagon, Wilson's defense against charges of conflict of interest was "what's good for General Motors is good for America." Under President George W. Bush, who is running the most pro-corporate administration in a long, long while, it's a case of what's good for Halliburton (the oil services company that was run by Dick Cheney), what's good for Chevron (which named a tanker after its former board member, Bush National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice), what's good for Lockheed Martin (the nation's number one weapons contractor has snagged the top two positions in the Transportation Department for its former executives Norman Mineta and Michael Jackson), and on down the line. As we note below, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has made "corporate experience" a prerequisite for key jobs in the Pentagon, including the chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. NOTE: The information on Lockheed Martin and Chevron's links to the administration came from "The Public I" the investigative arm of the Center for Public Integrity, which can be accessed at www.public-i.org. In this update:
I. PAUL WOLFOWITZ, Deputy Secretary of Defense On the campaign trail in June 1999, Bush tried to counter media characterizations of himself as a foreign policy novice by saying, "if the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a statement." It's East Timorese, George. His choice of Paul Wolfowitz as the day-to-day manager of the Pentagon puts Asia on the front burner of American foreign policy and allows the President to seem knowledgeable and well prepared on an area of the world of which he lacks detailed knowledge (to put it as politely as possible). Wolfowitz fills the gap. He is an expert in Asian affairs and comes to the Pentagon from a prestigious post at one of the most prestigious universities in the world-- Dean and Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Like many of Bush's other picks, Wolfowitz is no stranger to Washington. In the last 30 years he has held an enviable number of official posts under Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder and now under George W. Bush. Wolfowitz is a hard-line insider whose core beliefs reflect a pro-business, pro-military slant. He is an ardent missile defense booster who served on the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission on the ballistic missile threat to the United States and advocates getting out of the ABM treaty by any means necessary. He said that moving forward with missile defense within the confines of the ABM treaty is like defending ourselves "with one hand tied behind our back and four fingers of the other hand tied together." Bush's speech on May 1st in which he called for a "new framework" to replace the ABM "which enshrines the past," make it clear that Wolfowitz's views are right at home. In the speech, President Bush emphasized consultations with allies and friends about missile defense, and chose Wolfowitz to head the delegation to Russia. It is unlikely that the Putin and the Russian Duma will interpret this choice indicative of good will in light of Wolfowitz's recent insulting and accusatory comments about the former superpower. In an interview in a British newspaper, Wolfowitz said of the Russians, "These people seem to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money." On U.S.-China relations, Bush reversed a thawing trend with the spy plane fiasco and the largest arms sales package to Taiwan in a decade, although he wisely held off on the controversial AEGIS destroyers. Wolfowitz is all for a cold shoulder towards China. He supports an independent and robustly armed Taiwan, something that is anathema to China. Unsurprisingly, his appointment has been celebrated in the Taiwanese press. A quote from the Taiwan Studies Institute tells why: "He worked for President Reagan when the administration ignored China's demand that the United States establish a deadline for stopping arms sales to Taiwan. And he was serving in the first Bush administration for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney when F-16 fighters were sold to Taiwan against China's wishes." In 1999, Wolfowitz was one of 22 signatories to letter urging Clinton and Congress to state "America's unequivocal support for coming to Taiwan's defense in the event of an attack by China and for the United States to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons, including a theater missile system, to shield against a possible [Chinese] missile attack." Two years later Wolfowitz is poised to do just that. An April 2 2001 article in the New York Times described Wolfowitz as "the intellectual architect in a steely, staunchly conservative triad that includes a political overseer (his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney) and a bureaucratic black belt (Mr. Rumsfeld). This group has emerged as the most influential and disciplined in President Bush's national security team." Good news for Taiwan and weapons manufacturers with billion dollar contracts to build missile defense systems, bad news for diplomacy, disarmament and arms control. For more information:
RUMSFELD'S CORPORATE SLANT The following brief overview of other appointments to the Bush Pentagon is drawn from the update of our report, Military Industrial Complex Revisited, which will be issued by Foreign Policy in Focus within the next 4 to six weeks. President Bush's "compassion" for corporate interests and conservative causes has extended beyond the cabinet level, down to the level of deputies and assistant secretaries who have a powerful influence over day-to-day policy matters. According to an account in the conservative Washington Times, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has made corporate experience a litmus test for appointment to key positions in the Pentagon. One Pentagon insider described Rumsfeld's plan for running the Pentagon as follows: "It's Department of Defense, Inc. . . . You have the guys who run the Navy, Air Force, and Army, and then you have the comptroller as the financial officer." The article goes on to note that Rumsfeld's choices for service secretaries, James Roche (Air Force), Thomas E. White (Army), and Gordon R. England (Navy) "all have extensive corporate experience running programs and divisions." (See Rowan Scarborough, "Rumsfeld's 'Defense Inc.' Reasserts Civilian Control," Washington Times, April 24, 2001). Roche served as a corporate vice president with Northrop Grumman, which builds the Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft and is hoping to persuade the Bush administration to revive the production line for its B-2 bomber, which at over $1 billion per copy is the most expensive aircraft ever built. White is the vice chairman of the energy services division of Enron, an international oil firm which was a major contributor to the Bush presidential effort. England is an executive vice president at General Dynamics, a second tier weapons contractor whose big projects include attack and ballistic missile submarines (built at its Electric Boat facility in Groton, Connecticut), and armored vehicles such as the M-1 tank. Meanwhile, other top Pentagon posts are going to conservative ideologues like Stephen Cambone, who served as staff director for Rumsfeld's Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was responsible for a 1998 report that dramatically overstated the Third World ballistic missile threat to the United States; and Douglas Feith, a Beltway lawyer and lobbyist who chaired the advisory board of Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy and has been a prominent advocate of the half-baked legal theory that argues that since the Soviet Union no longer exists, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between Washington and Moscow is no longer valid. Heading up Rumsfeld's 'board of directors' for the Pentagon will be Paul Wolfowitz, who served on the Rumsfeld Commission, advocates an aggressive posture towards China and has been a prominent supporter of the idea of arming Iraqi opposition groups with the aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Feith and Wolfowitz are long-time associates of Richard Perle, an unreconstructed Cold Warrior who was known as the "Prince of Darkness" during his tenure at the Reagan Pentagon in recognition of his grim, hard-line views.
III. WALTER H. KANSTEINER III, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner will be instrumental in formulating policy for a continent where almost half of its population endures conditions of extreme poverty. The World Bank has predicted that the number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa living on $1 a day will grow by 59 million in 15 years. Nearly 70% of all people infected with HIV live in Africa. These are the major problems facing Africa, and yet Mr. Kansteiner's background is not in humanitarian or health concerns. He has worked on a strategic minerals task force at the Department of Defense and was Executive Vice President of a commodity trading and manufacturing company specializing in tropical commodities in the developing world. Considering that many of the problems of Africa are directly related to the exploitation of mineral resources Mr. Kansteiner's appointment is disconcerting, particularly with respect to the evolution of U.S. policy towards the war ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo. The latest reports coming out of the DRC are that 2.5 million people have died since the war began. Starvation and disease have caused 80% of these deaths. The war is being fueled by the massive extraction of mineral resources, as stated in the recent UN report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Considering Mr. Kansteiner's background, he hardly seems equipped to deal with Africa's humanitarian crisis. Instead, he is ready to deal with the continent's mineral resources. The looting of minerals essential to many American products has caused massive destabilization in the DRC and other countries on the Continent. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has been very critical of U.S. foreign policy in the DRC. In a letter to President Bush dated March 28th 2001, she criticizes statements made by Kansteiner in support of partitioning the DRC based upon ethnic lines. "The partitioning of Congo in the way prescribed by Mr. Kansteiner would amount to a reward to Rwanda, Uganda and their allies whose combined invasion has now cost the lives of two million Congolese men, women and children and the displacement of an estimated 500,000 civilians in eastern Congo." FOR MORE INFORMATION:
IV. PROFILE UPDATES JOHN BOLTON,
The Armageddon Nominee Check out our profile of Bolton at www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/042601.htm and Go to www.stopbolton.org to send a letter to your Senator urging them to "Stop Bolton." OTTO REICH: The
Wrong Stuff Recently our friend Alec Dubro at Foreign Policy in Focus wrote an article for The Nation's website about Reich's ties to the pro-business apparel advocacy organization-- WRAP or Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production. In the article Dubro concludes that Reich "is willing to link himself with other retrograde causes, including an implicitly antilabor, antienvironment, prosweatshop organization. Just the man we need to run US hemisphere policy." Read his article at www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/ottoreich.htm V. PRESS CONVERAGE OF DEADLY LEGACY The Arms Trade Resource Center's new report, DEADLY LEGACY UPDATE: U.S. ARMS AND TRAINING PROGRAMS IN AFRICA by William Hartung and Dena Montague has been well received. It was first presented at the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons and has since been distributed at a forum sponsored by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney entitled Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gin in Washington DC. Shelly Witman, a researcher for Sir Ketumile Masire, the former President of Botswana currently facilitating for the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, called from Botswana to asked for the report which she thought would assist in her investigation into Western involvement in the DRC war. Additionally, the report was featured in an article in The East African; a newspaper based in Nairobi, Kenya, distributed throughout East Africa. The report was also distributed on www.allafrica.com.
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