The
second term of the Bush Administration is off to an ominous start, even worse
than his bitterest opponents had feared. Flush from a dubious 51 percent
“mandate” and determined to “spend my political capital,” Bush is aggressively
pursuing his ideological objectives.
The
president has made three controversial nominations for key positions in recent
weeks — John Negroponte as the new director of national intelligence, John
Bolton as UN ambassador, and Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank. And
all three seem to have gotten the nod simply because they adhere to Bush’s
neo-conservative ideology.
At
a time when the US needs to mend fences around the world — and fresh on the
heels of putative goodwill trips by the president and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice — these appointments seem to fly in the face of all logic.
Unless, of course, one of the objectives is to reinforce to international and
domestic opponents that this administration will do what it wants.
As the new intelligence
czar, John Negroponte will be the primary conduit of all intelligence given the
president. He’ll have operational and budgetary authority over 15 intelligence
agencies and will have the authority to direct new intelligence activities and
determine policy. This is truly an awesome level of power.
Negroponte’s
background is remarkably short on actual intelligence-evaluation experience,
but quite extensive in more sinister matters. As Ambassador to Honduras in the
early 1980s, he oversaw clandestine military operations and human rights abuses
in neighboring Central American countries. Death squads operating in Honduras,
Nicaragua, and El Salvador were supplied by the US, trained at Fort Benning,
and coordinated by Negroponte.
Numerous
international human rights organizations have ample evidence to support this
position, which Negroponte naturally denies. (More information on his Central
American activities can be found on nsarchive.org and hiddeninplainsight.org.)
When Negroponte was nominated to be UN Ambassador in 2001, he was questioned
extensively about his Honduran activities. And he clearly committed perjury
based on documents now available through National Security Archives.
Negroponte
began serving last June as the first US Ambassador to the new Iraqi government.
In a story broken by Newsweek this
January, it was indicated that Negroponte was behind a proposal to implement a
“Salvador strategy” — no doubt a cliché for a death-squad approach in Iraq.
Now Negroponte is nominated to be one of the most powerful men in the United
States.
It’s difficult
to imagine a more unlikely nominee for US Ambassador to the UN than John Bolton. Joining
the State Department early in the Reagan Administration, he has since forged a
career as a right-wing advocate of American unilateralism utterly disdainful of
the UN and everything it stands for.
When
the Clinton Administration came along, Bolton left the State Department and
joined the American Enterprise Institute, where he prepared position papers and
op-ed pieces advocating the neocon ideology. He opposed US adherence to
international law, stating that the US should not be bound by multinational
institutions and should not pay UN dues unless the UN supported the US
position.
When
the Bush Administration came to power, Bolton was nominated as Under Secretary
of State for Arms Control. Due to his strident public positions, Bolton’s
confirmation hearings were unusually difficult and the vote was only 57-43 to
confirm.
It
was widely believed by Washington insiders that Bolton was actively undermining
his boss, Colin Powell (who reportedly wanted to get rid of him), and was
working closely with the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis of the Bush Administration.
Beyond Bolton’s ideology is his personal demeanor, which is described by those
who know him as humorless, irascible, and petulant. Sounds perfect for a key
diplomatic post where the US is trying to shore up international support.
You would
assume that to be President of the World Bank the candidate would need a background in
banking or finance, or at least some background in the internal development of
Third World economies. In the case of Paul Wolfowitz, that assumption would be
wrong.
Wolfowitz’s
history seems to point in a different direction on every particular. He was US
Ambassador to Indonesia in the 1990s, when rampant crony capitalism preceded a
mammoth financial collapse. (He also chose to ignore the genocide in East
Timor.) He was one of the architects of the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC), a document spelling out the details of a US-dominated world in
which the US would be the ultimate guarantor of security and would use
preemption as a strategic doctrine. One of its precepts was to prevent the rise
of any conceivable global rival or ally.
Another PNAC precept was to use economic power to help ensure American
hegemony.
It
would not be unreasonable to assume that other nations might well interpret the
Wolfowitz nomination as a further move by the US neocon establishment to
dominate the world economy through the auspices of the World Bank. Wolfowitz is
clearly a polarizing figure, not only because of his association with PNAC, but
also his hawkish stance on the war in Iraq. His limited financial acumen was
clearly demonstrated in his public statements on how easy and cheap the Iraq
war and subsequent reconstruction would be. Is this the level of judgment to be
expected as the President of the World Bank?
In
the Bush Administration, ideology and unstinting adherence to neocon orthodoxy
mean everything. Competence, appropriateness for the job, and concern for
domestic and foreign alternative input mean nothing. Following the patterns of
the appointments of Condoleezza Rice, Porter Goss, and Alberto Gonzales, the
administration is clearly not interested in any divergent points of view. Those
prone to even the slightest independent thinking (i.e. Powell, former Secretary
of Treasury Paul O’Neil) are gone. Also gone is any hope during the remainder
of this administration of improving our image throughout the world.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2005.
