William Kristol: beating the Drums of War
'Soft power' overlooked
By Stephen Post, Collegian columnist
October 29, 2004
When William Kristol speaks, Washington listens. More to the point, the Bush administration listens. Kristol is the man behind the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the neo-conservative think-tank that pushed regime change in Iraq years before 9/11. After the 1991 Gulf War, Kristol was a one-man drum and fife corps, keeping Iraq on the agenda when others had lost interest.
He kept pressing, and in 1998, PNAC sent a letter to President Clinton, urging him to unseat Saddam, and fast. If Clinton did not act, the letter read, "the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard." Among the undersigned were such lights as Francis Fukuyama, as well as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's DoD counterpart in the current administration).
Kristol's magazine, the Weekly Standard, subsidized by Rupert Murdoch, published opinion piece after opinion piece harping on the Iraq issue. Doggedly, and through eight years of a democratic administration, Kristol carried the torch, and when Bush came into office in 2000, the stage was set for Saddam's take-down.
On Wednesday night, I stood face to face with William Kristol. He was in town to debate Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, about America's role in the world. Should it use "hard power" or "soft power" to get its way? Military force or moral suasion? "Shock and Awe" or "winning hearts and minds"?
The venue, Cole Assembly Room at Amherst College, was packed. Students, assorted Political Science faculty, VIPs and others crammed themselves into every available inch of space, filling the aisles and sitting cross-legged in front of the polished wooden debate table. The scene reminded me of the 9/11 commission hearings, journalists squatting en masse, trying to get the best shot of Condoleezza Rice or Madeline Albright as they testified. Two spotlights, one in each corner of the room, converged on the table. Two cameramen, filming the debate for C-SPAN 2, took their positions.
Nye started. 9/11, he said, had been like a flash of lightning, briefly illuminating the outlines of a new landscape, and then leaving us in darkness. Terrorism itself was nothing new, but it had become "more lethal and more agile." 9/11 ushered in a change in U.S. foreign policy. Suddenly we had new goals, and we needed the means to reach these goals. And it is the means that disturb Nye, not the ends. For him, it is a question of strategy.
In pursuing what Charles Krauthammer had called the "New Unilateralism," the Bush administration had become "one dimensional thinkers in a three-dimensional world." If we think of international relations as a three-dimensional chess game, he argued, the Bush administration, by pursuing military force as a means, was only playing on the top board. They completely ignored "soft power" as an option; they weren't concerned enough with winning hearts and minds.
Kristol took the stage. Where Nye had been soft-spoken and a bit pedantic, Kristol was loose. He cracked jokes. We laughed. After the banter, he opened his bag of tricks and started the show. He talked about the Cold War, "the 90s," and now. "The 90s ended on Sept. 11," he said. We are now in a new era, "a new moment." Before 9/11, foreign policy was barely on the radar at all. It made nothing more than a cameo appearance in the October presidential debates.
9/11 changed everything. It called for new thinking, new tactics. Bush has made mistakes. "It's hard when you're in a new moment," Kristol said. We live in a dangerous world with threats on all sides, and Bush "reacted appropriately" by launching wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Bush," he said, "does not get enough credit." Kristol went on to say that terrorism had decreased as a result of Bush's policies; that the Afghan elections are "impressive"; that what is now happening in the Middle East is "hopeful." Hard power is still necessary, especially when you're trying to "promote democracy and freedom."
I watched and listened, sitting in my black leather swivel chair, clutching my tape recorder and I felt sick.
Kristol finished his statement with a riff about Iraq. "We all thought he had weapons," he said with a smile. "He certainly had connections to terrorists." With someone like Saddam, Kristol explained, we couldn't afford to do nothing: "We had to make a choice." We had to get rid of him; we had to give him a taste of America's hard power. The risk was not that we would act too fast, but "that we'll be too slow." Kristol's parting thought fit the script nicely: "The world is better off because America is powerful."
When it was all over I asked Mr. Kristol a question. What did he think about the 12 years of sanctions that had killed over half a million Iraqi children? "It was a tough choice," he said. Then he left the room.
By Stephen Post, Collegian columnist
October 29, 2004
When William Kristol speaks, Washington listens. More to the point, the Bush administration listens. Kristol is the man behind the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the neo-conservative think-tank that pushed regime change in Iraq years before 9/11. After the 1991 Gulf War, Kristol was a one-man drum and fife corps, keeping Iraq on the agenda when others had lost interest.
He kept pressing, and in 1998, PNAC sent a letter to President Clinton, urging him to unseat Saddam, and fast. If Clinton did not act, the letter read, "the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard." Among the undersigned were such lights as Francis Fukuyama, as well as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's DoD counterpart in the current administration).
Kristol's magazine, the Weekly Standard, subsidized by Rupert Murdoch, published opinion piece after opinion piece harping on the Iraq issue. Doggedly, and through eight years of a democratic administration, Kristol carried the torch, and when Bush came into office in 2000, the stage was set for Saddam's take-down.
On Wednesday night, I stood face to face with William Kristol. He was in town to debate Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, about America's role in the world. Should it use "hard power" or "soft power" to get its way? Military force or moral suasion? "Shock and Awe" or "winning hearts and minds"?
The venue, Cole Assembly Room at Amherst College, was packed. Students, assorted Political Science faculty, VIPs and others crammed themselves into every available inch of space, filling the aisles and sitting cross-legged in front of the polished wooden debate table. The scene reminded me of the 9/11 commission hearings, journalists squatting en masse, trying to get the best shot of Condoleezza Rice or Madeline Albright as they testified. Two spotlights, one in each corner of the room, converged on the table. Two cameramen, filming the debate for C-SPAN 2, took their positions.
Nye started. 9/11, he said, had been like a flash of lightning, briefly illuminating the outlines of a new landscape, and then leaving us in darkness. Terrorism itself was nothing new, but it had become "more lethal and more agile." 9/11 ushered in a change in U.S. foreign policy. Suddenly we had new goals, and we needed the means to reach these goals. And it is the means that disturb Nye, not the ends. For him, it is a question of strategy.
In pursuing what Charles Krauthammer had called the "New Unilateralism," the Bush administration had become "one dimensional thinkers in a three-dimensional world." If we think of international relations as a three-dimensional chess game, he argued, the Bush administration, by pursuing military force as a means, was only playing on the top board. They completely ignored "soft power" as an option; they weren't concerned enough with winning hearts and minds.
Kristol took the stage. Where Nye had been soft-spoken and a bit pedantic, Kristol was loose. He cracked jokes. We laughed. After the banter, he opened his bag of tricks and started the show. He talked about the Cold War, "the 90s," and now. "The 90s ended on Sept. 11," he said. We are now in a new era, "a new moment." Before 9/11, foreign policy was barely on the radar at all. It made nothing more than a cameo appearance in the October presidential debates.
9/11 changed everything. It called for new thinking, new tactics. Bush has made mistakes. "It's hard when you're in a new moment," Kristol said. We live in a dangerous world with threats on all sides, and Bush "reacted appropriately" by launching wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Bush," he said, "does not get enough credit." Kristol went on to say that terrorism had decreased as a result of Bush's policies; that the Afghan elections are "impressive"; that what is now happening in the Middle East is "hopeful." Hard power is still necessary, especially when you're trying to "promote democracy and freedom."
I watched and listened, sitting in my black leather swivel chair, clutching my tape recorder and I felt sick.
Kristol finished his statement with a riff about Iraq. "We all thought he had weapons," he said with a smile. "He certainly had connections to terrorists." With someone like Saddam, Kristol explained, we couldn't afford to do nothing: "We had to make a choice." We had to get rid of him; we had to give him a taste of America's hard power. The risk was not that we would act too fast, but "that we'll be too slow." Kristol's parting thought fit the script nicely: "The world is better off because America is powerful."
When it was all over I asked Mr. Kristol a question. What did he think about the 12 years of sanctions that had killed over half a million Iraqi children? "It was a tough choice," he said. Then he left the room.
