Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is a
visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, working on issues
of international economic development, Africa and
public-private partnerships.[6] A former academic, diplomat, political and military strategist and
policymaker, and former American government official, most
recently, he served as president of the World Bank Group for two years. As
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he was "a major architect of President Bush's
Iraq policy and, within the Administration, its most passionate and compelling advocate" (Boyer 1).[7][8][9][10] He resigned as president of the World Bank Group as
a result of an investigation by its board of executive directors, "ending a protracted and tumultuous battle over his
stewardship, sparked by a promotion he arranged for his companion."[2][3]
Personal history
The second child of Warsaw native Jacob "Jack"
Wolfowitz (1910–1981) and Lillian Dundes, Paul Wolfowitz "was born in Brooklyn, New
York, into a Polish Jewish immigrant family, and grew up mainly in the university town of
Ithaca, New York, where his father was a professor of statistical theory at
Cornell University."[11][12] "In
addition to being prolific in research" and "very well read," his father's friend and colleague Shelemyahu Zacks writes in a
tribute, Jacob Wolfowitz "fought at the time for the liberation of Soviet Jewry. He was a friend and strong supporter of the state of
Israel and had many friends and admirers there."[13] Strongly influenced by his father, according to Eric Schmitt, Paul Wolfowitz
became "A soft-spoken former aspiring-mathematician-turned-policymaker … [whose] world views … were forged by family history and
in the halls of academia rather than in the jungles of Vietnam or the corridors of Congress … [His father] … escaped Poland after
World War I. The rest of his father's family perished in the
Holocaust."[14] Such family trauma
led, David Dudley observes, to Jack Wolfowitz "liv[ing] in a world haunted by atrocities" and deeply affecting his son's personal
and intellectual development.[12][15] According to Peter J. Boyer, "Wolfowitz said
that he had learned little about Warsaw life, or the fate of his lost relatives, from his father. 'He hated to talk about his
childhood,' Wolfowitz said. As a boy, Wolfowitz devoured books ('probably too many') about the Holocaust and Hiroshima—what he
calls 'the polar horrors'" (2).[7] Speaking more
specifically of the influence of the Holocaust on his own later views to Eric Schmitt, Wolfowitz said:
"That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II
has shaped a lot of my views … It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities. It
doesn't mean you can prevent every such incident in the world, but it's also a mistake to dismiss that sort of concern as merely
humanitarian and not related to real interest."[14]
Before first moving to Ithaca, in the fall of academic year 1952–1953 for his father's new post, Wolfowitz told Sam Tanenhaus
in their interview, the Wolfowitzes lived in Manhattan: "I was born in Brooklyn but we grew up
in Manhattan, one block down on Morningside Drive in a house that no
longer exists. One block down from the President of Columbia who for part of that
time was Dwight Eisenhower. My sister tells me that she remembers seeing Eisenhower
go to his car as we were roller-skating on that block, but it didn't make any impression on me. I was probably three or
four."[16][17] After teaching at Cornell for that first
year, his father "immediately had a sabbatical ... and '53–'54 we spent half in Los
Angeles," while he was teaching at UCLA, "and half in
Urbana, Illinois," while he was teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Paul Wolfowitz's friend and later fellow Tellurider "Fred Baumann [Cornell] '66
remembers a familiar parental refrain in the Jewish community of Ithaca in the 1950s: 'Why can't you be like the Wolfowitzes?'
Jacob and Lillian Wolfowitz's two model kids were well known at Temple Beth-El, where Baumann attended Hebrew school and, at ten
years old, first met Paul and his older sister, Laura."[12] According to Dudley,
Paul was quick-witted and friendly, and a year older than the quiet and bookish Fred; he proved an irresistible role model. "I
was his protégé," says Baumann. "Paul had tremendous charm, along with real goodness. You wanted to follow him." Now a political
science professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, Baumann would follow Wolfowitz to
Ithaca High School and then to Telluride. "There was a kind of gravity to him. He was more like a grown-up than the rest of us."
It's a feeling that resonates with many Ithacans who grew up in Paul's shadow. "When you were with him, you felt a sort of
benignness radiating from him," remembers Daniel Fogel '69, now president of the
University of Vermont. "A masterly intelligence that had no malevolence."[12]
In 1957, when he was fourteen years old, Paul Wolfowitz also spent a year living in Israel,
while his father was a visiting professor at the Israel Institute of
Technology (Technion IIT), in Haifa; his elder sister, Laura, a biologist, later emigrated
to Israel and married an Israeli.[13][8]
Wolfowitz began taking classes at Cornell University while still a student at
Ithaca High School.[18] In the mid-1960s, while they were both undergraduate students at Cornell, he met Clare Selgin, who later became a well-known anthropologist.
They married in 1968, had three children (Sara, David, and Rachel), lived in Chevy Chase,
Maryland, separated in 1999, and, according to some sources, became legally separated in 2001 and divorced in 2002,
though, according to others, their marital status appears to be uncertain, and it is still not clear whether or not they have
been divorced.[11][12][8][19][20][4]
- Further information: Clare Selgin Wolfowitz
After separating from his wife in late 1999, Wolfowitz began dating Shaha Ali Riza,
according to "Turkish journalist Cengiz Candar, a friend of the couple" cited by Linton
Weeks and Richard Leiby. Their relationship led to controversy later, during his presidency of the World Bank Group.[8][4]
- Further information: #Wolfowitz's relationship with Shaha
Riza.
Wolfowitz speaks five languages in addition to English; according to John Cassidy's
New Yorker profile, "Wolfowitz taught himself Arabic in the nineteen-eighties, when he was working at the State Department," and "He also speaks
French, German, Hebrew, and Indonesian."[8]
He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.[3]
Post-secondary education
Cornell University
Wolfowitz won a full scholarship to Cornell University, where he matriculated in 1961 "to please his father," according to
Goldenberg.[11]
At Cornell, Wolfowitz was a member of the Telluride Association, a non-profit
organization founded in 1910, whose first female member was his elder sister, Laura.[12] "Promot[ing] no particular political or religious viewpoint ... [it]
creates and fosters educational communities that rely upon democratic participation ... aim[ing] to foster an everyday synthesis
of self-governance and intellectual inquiry that enables students to develop their potential for leadership and public service
... seek[ing] out young people with the desire and the ability to contribute to society, and help[ing] them develop
intellectually and as community members."[21] Its members receive free room and board in the Telluride House on the Cornell campus and
learn about democracy through the practice of running the house and organizing seminars.[22] Wolfowitz lived in the Telluride House through academic
year 1962 to 1963.[12]
That year philosophy professor Allan Bloom served as a Cornell faculty mentor living in
the house and had a major influence on Wolfowitz's political views with his assertion of the importance of political regimes in
shaping peoples’ characters.[12] Schmitt
observes that Wolfowitz first "became a protégé of the political philosopher Allan Bloom, and then of Albert Wohlstetter, the father of hard-line conservative strategic thinking at the University of
Chicago."[14] In August 1963, "when he was
nineteen, he and his mother attended the civil-rights march on
Washington organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others" (3).[8][12] But his father did not take well to his son’s new interest in politics or
his new mentor, Bloom.[8][12]
According to Schmitt, though he "majored in mathematics and chemistry ... he was profoundly moved by John Hersey's Hiroshima and shifted his focus toward
politics. 'One of the things that ultimately led me to leave mathematics and go into political science was thinking I could
prevent nuclear war,' he said."[14] His
friends found that shift "unexpected," and his father opposed it.[12]
During academic year 1964 to 1965, his senior year at Cornell, having moved from the Telluride House to an apartment,
Wolfowitz was a member of Quill and Dagger, a prestigious senior honor society.[12]
Wolfowitz graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor's degree degree in mathematics and chemistry, then worked as a management intern at the
U.S. Bureau of the Budget.[citation needed] Against his father's expectations
and wishes, Wolfowitz decided to go to graduate school to study politics.[12] Although "Paul's choice" to pursue political
science and a career in politics instead of mathematics "defied" his father's original expectations and wishes for him, Dudley
concludes that, eventually, "as Paul's career took him from Yale to the Pentagon and the State Department ... Jack Wolfowitz
seemed to make peace with his son's choice."[23]
University of Chicago
Wolfowitz chose the University of Chicago over Harvard University, according to James Mann, in Rise
of the Vulcans, because he wanted to study under Bloom's mentor, Leo Strauss.[citations needed] Wolfowitz enrolled in Strauss'
courses, on Plato and Montesquieu, but, according to Mann, they "did not become especially close"
before Strauss retired; nevertheless, Mann points out, "in subsequent years colleagues both in government and academia came to
view Wolfowitz as one of the heirs to Strauss's intellectual traditions."[citations needed]
According to Dudley, citing Wolfowitz's friend and fellow Tellurider Fred
Baumann, however, though "Bloom helped him find the courage of his own convictions ... [and] To that extent, Strauss matters ...
Baumann recalls that Wolfowitz kept a discreet distance from the true believers. 'All these discussions around the dinner table
-- "Does the philosopher need friends?" That wasn't Paul. He didn't go through some deep Straussian conversion--this fit into
where he already was.'"[12]
Moreover, in May 2003, when Sam Tanenhaus asked Wolfowitz about "the question of ideas"
in their telephone interview for Tanenhaus's article "Bush's Brain Trust" later published in the July 2003 Vanity Fair: "That is, is there anything at all ... to the Straussian Connection?" Wolfowitz
replied:
It's a product of fevered minds who seem incapable of understanding that September 11th changed a lot of things and changed the way we need to approach the world.
Since they refused to confront that, they looked for some kind of conspiracy theory to
explain it.
I mean I took two terrific courses from Leo Strauss as a graduate student. One was on
Montesquieu's spirit of the laws, which did help me understand
our Constitution better. And one was on Plato's laws. The idea that this has anything to do with
U.S. foreign policy is just laughable.[16][17]
A few years later, in 2006, in a scholarly article published in the academic journal Comparative
American Studies, Richard H. King cites and contextualizes the opinion expressed on March 8, 2005 in his
weblog Altercation by Eric Alterman ––who had spoken
with Wolfowitz informally during a book launch "cocktail party" hosted by Tina Brown and her
husband Harold Evans––that "'Wolfowitz does not consider himself to be a
Straussian.'"[24][25] In developing his own argument, King also cites the views of
Clifford Orwin, who states that "'Wolfowitz is no ideologue, and neither 'Straussian' nor
'conservative' begins to describe him.'"[26] Ultimately,
however, King qualifies the emphases of both Alterman and Orwin and also qualifies the emphases of those who exaggerate the
"Straussian" influence on Bush administration foreign and defense policy-makers like Wolfowitz.[27]
Professor Albert Wohlstetter, who had studied mathematics with Wolfowitz's father at Columbia, and who ("Significantly") directed Paul Wolfowitz's
research at the University of Chicago,[12][24] instilled in
his students the importance of maintaining the supremacy of the United States through advanced weaponry.[28] Wohlstetter feared that plutonium produced as a by-product of U.S.-sponsored nuclear-powered desalination plants to be built near the
Israeli-Egyptian border could be used in a nuclear weapons
program. He returned from a trip to Israel with a number of Hebrew language documents on
the program that he handed over to Wolfowitz (who is fluent in Hebrew); these later became a basis of Wolfowitz's doctoral
dissertation on "water desalination in the Middle
East".[citations needed]
In the summer of 1969, Wohlstetter arranged for his students Wolfowitz and Wilson, as well as Richard Perle to join the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy
which was set up by Cold War architects Paul Nitze and
Dean Acheson to maintain support in the U.S.
Congress for the Anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.[citations needed] The opposition to the ABM system in
the U.S. Congress employed scientific experts to argue against the ABM system, so
Nitze and Acheson turned to Wohlstetter and his young protégés to counter these arguments. Together they wrote research papers
and drafted testimony for U.S. Senator Henry M.
Jackson. Nitze later wrote: "The papers they helped us produce ran rings around the misinformed papers produced by
polemical and pompous scientists."[citation needed] The U.S. Senate eventually
approved the ABM system by 51 votes to 50, but U.S. President
Richard Nixon later signed the ABM
Treaty, restricting the extent of deployment of such systems.[citations needed]
Yale University
From 1970 to 1972, Wolfowitz taught in the Department of Political Science at Yale
University, where one of his students was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.[29] In 1972 Wolfowitz earned a Ph.D. in political science, writing his doctoral
dissertation on "water desalination in the Middle
East".[30][31]
Career
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
-
In the 1970s Wolfowitz served as an aide to Democratic
Senator Henry M. Jackson, whose political
philosophies and positions have been cited as an influence on a number of key figures associated with neoconservatism, including Wolfowitz and Richard Perle; Jackson
"was the quintessential 'Cold War liberal.' He was an outspoken and influential
advocate of increased military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while
supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and the labor movement."[32]
In 1972 U.S. President Richard
Nixon, under pressure from Senator Jackson, who was unhappy with the SALT I strategic arms limitations talks and the policy of détente, dismissed the head of
the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and replaced him
with Fred Ikle. Ikle brought in a completely new team including Wolfowitz, who had been
recommended by his old tutor Albert Wohlstetter. Wolfowitz once again set to work
writing and distributing research papers and drafting testimony, as he had previously done at the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy. He also traveled with Ikle to strategic arms limitations
talks in Paris and other European cities. His
greatest success was in dissuading South Korea from reprocessing plutonium that could be diverted into a clandestine weapons program, a situation that would re-occur north of
the border during the George W. Bush administration.
Under President Gerald Ford, the
American intelligence agencies had come under attack from Wohlstetter, among others, over their annually published
National Intelligence Estimate. According to Mann: "The underlying issue
was whether the C.I.A. and other agencies were underestimating the threat
from the Soviet Union, either by intentionally tailoring intelligence to support Kissinger's policy of détente or by simply failing to give enough
weight to darker interpretations of Soviet intentions." In an attempt to counter these claims, the newly appointed
Director of Central Intelligence, George H.W. Bush authorized the formation of a committee of anti-Communist experts, headed by Richard Pipes (father of Daniel Pipes), to reassess the raw data. Richard Pipes picked Wolfowitz, " brilliant young weapons
analyst," who was still employed by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and about whom he was unfamiliar at the time, to
serve on this committee, which came to be known as Team B: "'Richard Perle recommended him,' Pipes says of Wolfowitz today [2003, as quoted by Tanenhaus]. 'I'd never
heard of him.'"[33] According to the IRC
profile of Pipes, citing an interview with former intelligence officer Anne Hessing
Cahn (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977–1980), "Pipes said, 'I picked Paul Wolfowitz [who at the time was working
as special assistant for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT] because Richard
Perle recommended him so highly'"; Cahn has been highly critical of the report.[34][35]
The team's report, delivered in 1976 and quickly leaked to the press, stated that "All the evidence points to an undeviating
Soviet commitment to what is euphemistically called the 'worldwide triumph of socialism,' but in fact connotes global Soviet
hegemony," highlighting a number of key areas where they believed the government's intelligence analysts had got it wrong.
According to Jack Davis, Wolfowitz observed later:
The B-Team demonstrated that it was possible to construct a sharply different view of Soviet motivation from the consensus
view of the [intelligence] analysts and one that provided a much closer fit to the Soviets' observed behavior (and also provided
a much better forecast of subsequent behavior up to and through the invasion of Afghanistan). The formal presentation of the
competing views in a session out at [CIA headquarters in] Langley also made clear that the enormous experience and expertise of
the B-Team as a group were formidable. Unfortunately, the bureaucratic reaction to the whole experience was largely negative and
hostile.[36]
There has been and is still much controversy about the work of Team B, the accuracy of its
conclusions, and its effects on U.S. military policies.[29][34][37]
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs
In 1977, during the administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Wolfowitz moved to The Pentagon, aiming to broaden his
experience of military issues, because, according to Mann, Wolfowitz believed that "The key to preventing nuclear wars was to
stop conventional wars."[citation needed] He was employed as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Regional Programs for the U.S. Defense
Department, under then U.S. Secretary of Defense
Harold Brown, where he was put to work on the Limited Contingency Study, charged with examining possible areas of threat to the U.S. in the
third world.[citations needed]
After taking up the post, Wolfowitz attended a seminar presented by Professor Geoffrey
Kemp of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, in
which Kemp argued that the U.S. was concentrating too much on defending against the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Europe through the Fulda
Gap in Germany and ignoring the far more likely possibility of them turning southward to
seize the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.[citations needed] "This warning struck a chord with
Wolfowitz," according to Mann, as it "fit well with the conclusion he had just reached in the Team B intelligence review."
Wolfowitz hired Kemp and Dennis Ross, a Soviet specialist from the University of California, to work with him on preparing the study. "We and our major
industrialized allies have a vital and growing stake in the Persian Gulf region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and
because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli conflict," the report
stated, going on to conclude that Soviet seizure of the Persian Gulf oil field would "probably destroy NATO and the US-Japanese alliance without recourse to war by the Soviets."[citations needed]
According to Mann [?], Wolfowitz enlarged the purview of the Limited Contingency Study by questioning what would happen
if another country in the region were to seize the oil fields.[citations needed] He argued that "Iraq has become the
militarily pre-eminent in the Persian Gulf," which was "a worrisome development" because of its "radical-Arab stance, its
"anti-Western attitudes," its "dependence on Soviet arms sales," and its "willingness to foment trouble in other local
nations."[citations needed]. He concluded that "Iraq’s
implicit power will cause currently moderate local powers to accommodate themselves to Iraq" and that "Iraq may in the future use
her military forces against such states as Kuwait or Saudi
Arabia."[citations needed] To confront these perceived threats, he believed that the United States
must "be able to defend the interests of Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia and ourselves against an Iraqi invasion or show of force" and to make manifest its "capabilities and commitments to
balance Iraq’s power," requiring "an increased visibility for U.S. power." As Mann explains, "Iraq was a subject to which
Wolfowitz would return over and over again during his career."[citations needed]
According to Ross, "no one believed that Iraq posed a serious or imminent threat to the Saudis," but Wolfowitz had told him:
"When you look at contingencies, you don’t focus only on the likelihood of the contingency but also on the severity of its
consequences."[citations needed] In contrast to Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Brown worried that if the
report were leaked, it would damage U.S. relations with Iraq and destabilize Saudi Arabia.[citations needed] "The whole thrust of the study,"
according to Ross, "was to say that [the U.S.] had a big problem, that it would take us a long time to get any significant
military force into the area."[citations needed] The study’s recommendations laid the groundwork for what would become the
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), conceived as Rapid Deployment Forces for the Persian Gulf. It played a key role in the
1991 Gulf War, after the Bush administration argued that the study’s predictions had come true,
and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq, for which Wolfowitz was a major driving
force.[citations needed]
In late 1979 Jeane Kirkpatrick began a migration of
neoconservatives from their traditional base in the U.S. Democratic Party over to the U.S. Republican Party and its Presidential candidate
Ronald Reagan.[citations needed] Wolfowitz joined this exodus after receiving a phone call from his old
boss Fred Ikle, then working on the Reagan campaign, in which he said "Paul, you’ve got to get
out of there. We want you in the new administration."[citations needed] A short time later, in early 1980, Wolfowitz resigned from the Pentagon
and went to work as a visiting professor at the Paul H.
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins
University.[citations needed] According to the Washington
Post; "He said it was not he who changed his political philosophy so much as the Democratic Party, which abandoned the
hard-headed internationalism of Harry Truman, Kennedy and Jackson."[38] Nevertheless, the The Times observed in March 2005, in
the context of discussing his suitability as president of the World Bank Group, that
"he has not ceased being a registered Democrat."[1]
State Department Director of Policy Planning
In 1980, following the election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the newly appointed U.S.
National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen was put in charge of putting together
the administration's foreign policy advisory team. Allen initially rejected Wolfowitz’s appointment: "He had worked for Carter. I
thought he was a Carter guy," Allen later recalled, adding: "He was goner, as far as I was concerned"; but following discussions,
instigated by former colleague John Lehman, Allen offered him the position of
Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department.[citations needed] In this position Wolfowitz and his newly selected staff, which included
Lewis Libby, Francis Fukuyama, Dennis Ross, Alan Keyes, Zalmay
Khalilzad, Stephen Sestanovich and James
Roche, would be responsible for defining the administration's long-term foreign goals.[citations needed]
President Reagan’s foreign policy had been heavily influenced by a 1979 article in Commentary by Jenne Kirkpatrick entitled "Dictatorships and
Double Standards". In the article, written in the aftermath of the Iranian
Revolution, Kirkpatrick had argued that "We seem to accept the status quo in Communist nations (in the name of 'diversity'
and national autonomy) but not in nations ruled by 'right-wing' dictators or white oligarchies," pointing out that the regimes
that the Carter administration had pushed for democratic reforms "turn out to be those in which non-Communist autocracies are
under pressure from revolutionary guerillas," such as key Cold War allies Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran and
Anastasio Somoza Debayle, dictator of Nicaragua. "Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or
another, no idea hold greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize
governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances," a belief which Kirkpatrick disagreed with because "Decades, if not
centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits." This is known as the
Kirkpatrick Doctrine.
Notably, Wolfowitz broke from this official line by denouncing Saddam Hussein of
Iraq at a time when Donald Rumsfeld, acting as Reagan's
official envoy, was offering the dictator support in his conflict with Iran. James Mann points out: "quite a few
neo-conservatives, like Wolfowitz, believed strongly in democratic ideals; they had taken from the philosopher Leo Strauss the notion that there is a moral duty to oppose a leader who is a 'tyrant.'" Other areas where
Wolfowitz disagreed with the administration was in his opposition to attempts to open up dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and to the sale of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to Saudi Arabia. "In both instances," according to Mann, "Wolfowitz demonstrated himself to be one of the
strongest supporters of Israel in the Reagan administration."
Mann stresses: "It was on China that Wolfowitz launched his boldest challenge to the
established order."[citations needed] After Nixon and Kissinger had gone to China in the early 70s, U.S. policy
was to make concessions to China as an essential Cold War ally. The Chinese were now pushing
for the U.S. to end arms sales to Taiwan, and Wolfowitz used the Chinese incentive as an
opportunity to undermine Kissinger's foreign policy toward China. Instead, Wolfowitz advocated a unilateralist policy, claiming
that the U.S. did not need China’s assistance but that the Chinese needed the U.S. to protect them against the far-more-likely
prospect of a Soviet invasion of the Chinese mainland. Wolfowitz soon came into conflict with U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who had
been Kissinger’s assistant at the time of the visits to China. On March 30, 1982, The New York Times predicted, it turned out falsely, that
"Paul D. Wolfowitz, the director of policy planning … will be replaced," because "Mr. Haig found Mr. Wolfowitz too
theoretical."[citations needed] Instead, on June 25, 1982, George Schultz replaced Haig as U.S. Secretary of State, and
Wolfowitz was promoted.[citations needed]
State Department Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
In 1982 the new U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, who would become an influential mentor to Wolfowitz, appointed him as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs. At that time, the Reagan’s foreign policy was beset with difficulties caused by conflict between Schultz and
U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger. Wolfowitz was able to turn this to his favor by forming a powerful alliance with Weinberger’s Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Asia Richard Armitage and Gaston
Sigur of the National Security Council. Between them,
these three men controlled the administration’s policy for Asia.[citations needed]Jeane Kirkpatrick, on a visit to the Philippines, had been
eagerly welcomed by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos who quoted heavily from her 1979
Commentary article Dictatorships and Double Standards and although
Kirkpatrick had been forced to speak-out in favor of democracy the article continued to influence Reagan’s policy toward Marcos.
Following the assassination of Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. in
1983 many within the Reagan administration including the President himself began to fear that the Philippines could fall to the
communists and the U.S. military would
lose its strongholds at Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station. Wolfowitz took this opportunity to re-orient the administration’s
policy, stating in an April 15, 1985 article in
The Wall Street Journal that "The best antidote to Communism is
democracy." This was already the administration’s policy in Eastern Europe and Wolfowitz
has since argued that "You can’t use democracy, as appropriately you should, as a battle with the Soviet Union, and turn around
and be completely hypocritical about it when it’s on your side of the line."[citations needed]
Wolfowitz claims that this policy did not deviate from that lain out by Kirkpatrick in her 1979 article as the "necessary
disciplines and habits" she wrote of were already in place. "When we went to work on Marcos, it was not to dismantle the
institutions of the Philippines; it was actually to get him to stop dismantling them himself," Wolfowitz later argued of the
specifics of the policy; "Military reform, economic reform, getting rid of crony capitalism, relying on the church, political
reform: It was very institutionally oriented."[citations needed] In pursuance of this policy Wolfowitz and his assistant Lewis Libby made trips to Manila where they called for democratic reforms
and met with non-communist opposition leaders but the approach was still very soft. As Wolfowitz later explained: "If we had
said, ‘We are enemies of the Marcos regime. We want to see it’s demise rather than reform,’ we would have lost all influence in
Manila and would have created a situation highly polarized between a regime that had hunkered down and was prepared to do
anything to survive and a population at loose ends," that would have strengthened the communists.[citations needed] So at the same time Wolfowitz also
fought against moves by the U.S. Congress to end military aide to the Marcos
regime.[citations needed]
Mann points out that "the Reagan administration’s decision to support democratic government in the Philippines had been
hesitant, messy, crisis-driven and skewed by the desire to do what was necessary to protect the American military installations";
but, , that decision did eventually pay off when, following massive street protests, Marcos fled the country on a U.S. Air Force
plane and Reagan reluctantly recognized the government of Corazón Aquino. Wolfowitz has
since claimed that this demonstrates that democracy "needs the prodding of the U.S." Wolfowitz’s commitment to democracy would be
put to the test in his next posting.[citations needed]
Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia
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From 1986 to 1989, "during the military-backed government of former President Suharto,"
Wolfowitz was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia.[39]
According to Peter J. Boyer, in his New Yorker profile of Wolfowitz,
Wolfowitz’s appointment to Indonesia was not an immediately obvious match. He was a Jew
representing America in the largest Muslim
republic in the world, an advocate of democracy in Suharto's dictatorship. But Wolfowitz’s tenure as Ambassador was a notable success, largely owing to the fact that,
in essence, he went native. With tutoring help from his driver, he learned the language, and hurled himself into the culture. He
attended academic seminars, climbed volcanoes, and toured the neighborhoods of Jakarta. (3)[7]
Sipress and Nakashima report that "Wolfowitz's colleagues and friends, both Indonesian and American" pointed to the "U.S.
envoy's quiet pursuit of political and economic reforms in Indonesia."[40] According to the Associated
Press, however, in their opposition to Wolfowitz's later appointment to the presidency of the World Bank, "Analysts in Indonesia ... say the candidate has a poor track record in other areas crucial
to the World Bank, such as fighting graft and respect for human rights."[39] While Dewi Fortuna Anwar, "a former foreign policy adviser to B J
Habibie, Suharto's successor as head of state" (1998–1999), agreed with others "that Wolfowitz was a competent and popular
envoy," saying, "'He was extremely able and very much admired and well-liked on a personal level,'" Anwar qualified that, adding:
"'but he never intervened to push human rights or stand up to corruption.'"[39] The head of the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission, Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, "who
at the time headed the Legal Aid Institute Lembaga Bantuan Hukum (LBHI)] that defended dissidents and sought to free political prisoners" elaborated: "'Of all former U.S. ambassadors, he was
considered closest to and most influential with Suharto and his family, but he never showed interest in issues regarding
democratization or respect of human rights. Wolfowitz never once visited our offices. I also never heard him publicly mention
corruption, not once.'"[39] Anwar generalized
further about Wolfowitz's tenure: "'at the time, Washington didn't care too much about human rights and democracy; it was still
the Cold War and they were only concerned about fighting communism.'"[39] As Suzanne Goldenberg observes,
some who acknowledge his popularity also discount the argument that Wolfowitz used his influence as an envoy to press for
change. ... "It is really too much to claim that he played any kind of role in leading Indonesia to democracy," says Jeffrey
Winters, an expert on Indonesia at Chicago's Northwestern University, who was in the country at the time. ... "The real record
when you dig into it is that he was very slow to respond to Indonesia's movement for democracy. Indonesia's citizens across the
spectrum had been struggling against authoritarian rule. They had been tortured. They had been jailed. They had been ruined in
various ways, and the Wolfowitz embassy didn't speak up for them - not once. ... He adds: "He had his chance, and he toed the
Reagan hawkish line." The World Bank will be watching for far more than that from Wolfowitz.[11]
After Suharto was "ousted in 1998 by pro-democracy protests," according to the AP, Wolfowitz himself stated that the former
president was guilty "'of suppressing political dissent, of weakening alternative leaders and of showing favoritism to his
children's business deals, frequently at the expense of sound economic policy'"; yet, "at the time, thousands of leftists
detained after the 1965 U.S.-backed military coup that brought Suharto to power were still languishing in jail without trial ...
[and] tens of thousands of people in East Timor, a country Suharto's troops occupied in 1975,
died during the 1980s in a series of army anti-insurgency offensives."[39] Opposing Wolfowitz's World Bank appointment, Binny Buchori, Director of the International NGO
Forum on Indonesian Development ("a coalition of 100 agencies promoting democracy in Indonesia"), told the AP that Wolfowitz
"'went to East Timor and saw abuses going on, but then kept quiet.'"[39] While, "during his 32-year reign, Suharto, his family and his military and business cronies
transformed Indonesia into one of the most graft-ridden countries in the world, plundering an estimated $30 billion ... Wolfowitz
[Buchori said] 'never alluded to any concerns about the level of corruption or the need for more transparency....'"[39]
Officials involved in the AID program during Wolfowitz's tenure told Alan Sipress and Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post that he "took a keen personal interest in development, including health
care, agriculture and private sector expansion" and that "Wolfowitz canceled food assistance to the Indonesian government out of
concern that Suharto's family, which had an ownership interest in the country's only flour mill, was indirectly
benefiting."[40] According
to Sipress and Nakashima, Wolfowitz gave a farewell speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Jakarta in which he stated that
"the cost of the high-cost economy remains too high, for the private sector to flourish, special privilege must give way to equal
opportunity and equal risk for all."[40] Yet, in "The Tragedy of Suharto", published earlier, in May 1998, in
The Wall Street Journal, Wolfowitz states:
Although it is fashionable to blame all of Asia's present problems on corruption and the failure
of Asian values, it is at bottom a case of a bubble bursting, of too many imprudent lenders chasing too many incautious
borrowers. But the greed of Mr. Suharto's children ensured that their father would take the
lion's share of the blame for Indonesia's financial collapse. The Suharto children's favored position became a major obstacle to
the measures needed to restore economic confidence. Worst of all, they ensured that the economic crisis would be a political
crisis as well. That he allowed this, and that he amassed such wealth himself, is all the more mysterious since he lived a
relatively modest life.[41]
In "The Tragedy of Suharto", Wolfowitz also asserts that, following the Indonesian 1998 Revolution, Suharto blamed this "plea for greater political openness" as
"the cause of the violent incidents that marked Indonesia's largely stage-managed elections in 1997."[41] In his May 1989 farewell remarks at Jakarta's American Cultural
Center, Wolfowitz stated, as quoted by Sipress and Nakashima, that "'if greater openness is a key to economic success, I believe
there is increasingly a need for openness in the political sphere as well.'" Sipress and Nakashima observe that "this single,
unexpected sentence stunned some members of Suharto's inner circle."[40]
In 1997 Wolfowitz was still publicly praising Suharto's "strong and remarkable leadership" in testimony on Indonesia before
the U.S.
House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations ....[citations needed] In "The Tragedy of Suharto", Wolfowitz writes: "The tragedy for Mr.
Suharto and his country is that he would have been widely admired by his countrymen if he had stepped down 10 years ago," adding
that "achieving peace among a population so diverse requires a strong leader and a unified military."[41] After the 2002 Bali
bombing, on October 18, 2002, according to Scott
Burchill, a Lecturer in International Relations, at the School of Social and International Studies, Deakin University, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz observed that "'the reason the
terrorists are successful in Indonesia is because the Suharto regime fell and the methods that were used to suppress them are
gone.'"[42]
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
From 1989 to 1993, serving in the administration of George H.W. Bush, Wolfowitz was
U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, under then
U.S. Defense Secretary Dick
Cheney, and was responsible for realigning U.S. military strategy in the
post-cold war environment.[citations needed]
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Wolfowitz’s team co-ordinated and reviewed military
strategy, raising $50 billion in allied financial support for the operation. Wolfowitz was present, alongside Cheney,
Colin Powell and others, on 27 February
1991 at the meeting with the President at which all agreed that the mission had been accomplished
and the troops should be demobilised. At that time he did not believe it appropriate for US soldiers to push forward into
Iraq to bring about regime change but did support the policy of encouraging Kurdish and Shiite revolutionaries to rise up against their dictator.[citations needed]
On February 25, 1998, Wolfowitz testified before a
congressional committee that he thought that "the best opportunity to overthrow Saddam was, unfortunately, lost in the month
right after the war."[43] Wolfowitz added
that he was horrified in March as "Saddam Hussein flew helicopters that slaughtered the people in the south and in the north who
were rising up against him, while American fighter pilots flew overhead, desperately eager to shoot down those helicopters, and
not allowed to do so." During that hearing, he also stated: "Some people might say—and I think I would sympathise with this
view—that perhaps if we had delayed the ceasefire by a few more days, we might have got rid of [Saddam Hussein]."
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Wolfowitz and his then-assistant Scooter Libby wrote the Defense Planning Guidance to "set the
nation’s direction for the next century" that many saw as a "blueprint for U.S. hegemony."[citations needed] At that time the official administration line was one of "containment",
and the contents of Wolfowitz’s plan calling for "preemption" and "unilateralism" proved
unpalatable to the more-moderate members of the administration, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin
Powell and President Bush.[citations needed] Defense Secretary Cheney produced a revised plan released in
1992.[citations needed] After the election of
U.S. President Bill Clinton in
1992, Wolfowitz fell out of favor and left government until the restoration to power of the U.S. Republican Party in 2000.[citations needed] During the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, from 2000 to 2007,
many of the ideas outlined in Wolfowitz's initial plan re-emerged as what is called the Bush
Doctrine.[citations needed]
Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
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From 1994 to 2001, Wolfowitz served as Professor of International Relations and Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at
Johns Hopkins University. He was instrumental in adding more than $75 million
to the university's endowment, developing an international finance concentration as part of the curriculum, and combining the
various Asian studies programs into one department. Drawing upon his political and defense experience, he also served as a
foreign policy advisor to Bob Dole
