PNAC Opinions...

[Yaro]

I am curious as to how well understood PNAC is among the posters, and for those that do understand the nature of PNAC what there opinions are of it?

PNAC Website

[Yaro]

So nobody has an opinion on maybe the most important institution of the 21st century? (thus far)

I find that very interesting, and it raises a question as to what place do you think an independent Canada has in the future or whether people think there should be a merger with the US?

[mirror]

I spent a bit of time looking at their website. Why don't you give us a brief summary of what they are on about.

[Yaro]

Well... That’s pretty substantial.

I will try to summarize as best I can.

PNAC is an organization/set of guiding principles for the current US administration.

It is in essence an outline of the principles of creating a world that is dominated economically and militarily by the US. A initiative started under the auspices of the New Citizenship Project, it is a clearing house of papers on how the US can obtain and maintain economic superiority and how to undermine potential competitors including Europe and Canada (as outlined in Dick Cheney's 1991 brief on US foreign policy).

The Following is a list of the primary members/contributors to the doctrine:

Elliott Abrams

Gary Bauer

William J. Bennett

Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney

Eliot A. Cohen

Midge Decter

Paula Dobriansky

Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg

Francis Fukuyama

Frank Gaffney

Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan

Zalmay Khalilzad

I. Lewis Libby

Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle

Peter W. Rodman

Stephen P. Rosen

Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld

Vin Weber

George Weigel

Paul Wolfowitz

But essentially they are the holders of the central neo conservative doctrine in the US. They as a group hold more influence on US foriegn policy then any other group.

[mirror]

Yaro

Thanks.

Well there certainly is a lot of current US power brokers on that list, so it would be prudent to paid attention to, but not necessarily to agree with.

[mirror]

Circling China will lead to no good

The old line was that Beijing would not act militarily unless Taiwan formally declared itself independent from China - and even in a military confrontation, China would never use nuclear weapons first. But Zhu said something different. He said that China could not hope to win a conventional war against the United States, and that his government was under internal pressure to drop its "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons: "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

No senior Chinese official has talked like that since Mao Tse- tung's time - and the truth is that Beijing currently has no ability to do any such thing to the United States. Zhu was probably only talking crazy in the hope of bringing Washington's strategists to their senses. But in reality, it will only feed the mirror-image paranoia that is being nurtured inside the Beltway. The world is taking the wrong turn, and there is trouble down the road.

I wish I could say these people are raving lunatics, but they aren't, that it what makes this such a big problem. My goodness, what are these people thinking, and what will they come up with next?

[Yaro]

Gwynne Dyer is an excellent author and a brilliant political prognosticator; he has several extremely good books. If you can get your hands on an original copy of his book war he predicts the Iraq invasion as well as virtually every side effect of it stunningly 15(86' I believe) years before Bush came to office, its really quite frightening. His follow up book Ignorant armies is just as good. If you want to know where the world is headed he has as good an analytical mind for it as anyone on the planet.