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Paul Wolfowitz

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Paul Wolfowitz

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political figure and academic. He currently serves as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and is President George W. Bush's nominee for President of the World Bank. Wolfowitz is the son of the statistician and information theorist Jacob Wolfowitz.

Prior to his appointment as Deputy Secretary of Defense, Wolfowitz was the dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He taught international relations at Johns Hopkins and Yale University. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Cornell University in 1965 and his doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1972.

During the Reagan administration, Wolfowitz served for three years as Ambassador to Indonesia. Some critics of Wolfowitz (including Indonesian human rights groups) have asserted that he was not critical of the Suharto regime that was in power at the time. Wolfowitz had publicly lauded the dictator, praising his "strong and remarkable leadership" in testimony on Indonesia before the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations in 1997. However, Wolfowitz's admirers, many of them Indonesian, point to his quiet support for human rights and dissidents during his tenure as ambassador. In addition, Wolfowitz's supporters point to his farewell remarks upon leaving Indonesia, in which he directly called for political reform, a statement which at the time was seen as giving direct support to Suharto's opponents.

Wolfowitz is considered a neoconservative and possibly a Straussian known for his hawkish views, passionate pro-Israel advocacy and staunch support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His recent nomination for President of the World Bank follows a tradition of an American leading the World Bank and a European leading the International Monetary Fund.

Political views

A military analyst under Ronald Reagan, Wolfowitz famously denounced U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in his conflict with Iran. Wolfowitz was later a leading participant in the Project for the New American Century. That think tank formed in 1997 during the Clinton presidency, and expressed a new foreign policy with regard to Iraq and other "potential aggressor states", dismissing "containment" in favor of "preemption"; strike first to eliminate threats and advocated the use of force in Iraq to "protect our vital interests in the Gulf", as evinced by the 1998 PNAC Letter to then President Bill Clinton. Clinton, along with George H. W. Bush, Colin Powell, and other former Bush administration officials, dismissed calls for "preemption" in favor of continued "containment." This was the policy of George W. Bush as well for his first several months in office (although former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill claims differently in Ron Suskind's book The Price of Loyalty). Many saw Wolfowitz's plan as a "blueprint for U.S. hegemony" and his "preemption" policy remained contained until the terrorist attacks of September 11 revived hawkish advocacy for defense through preemptive action.

Following the terrorist attacks of 9-11 debate began within the White House as to the degrees of action to take against Al Qaeda. Certain members of President Bush's cabinet, led by Wolfowitz, advocated preemptive strikes against Iraq alongside those against terror cells in Afghanistan. Out of this came the creation of what would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine, centering on preemption and a broad-based anti-terrorism campaign.

Despite his support for Israel (Wolfowitz has family, including a sister, in Israel), Wolfowitz is also one of the few neoconservatives in the Bush administration to have endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state. Wolfowitz has acknowledged the sufferings of the Palestinian people in their conflict with Israel, and in 2002 was heckled for expressing such views at a pro-Israel rally.

In addition, Wolfowitz has been a notable backer of Iranian dissidents for more than 15 years, leading Azar Nafisi to dedicate her bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran to him.

On October 26, 2003, he was in Baghdad, Iraq, for a brief official tour. While he was staying at the Al-Rashid Hotel, it was hit by several rockets fired at the building. Army Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring [1] was killed and 17 others wounded. There was nothing to indicate that Wolfowitz was the target of the attack. Wolfowitz and his DOD staffers escaped unharmed and Wolfowitz returned to the safety of the United States on October 28.

Wolfowitz was critical and dismissive of General Eric K. Shinseki during pre-war testimony before Congress when he called the Army Chief of Staff "wildly off the mark" [2] when asked for estimates of the size of the post war occupation force. Dr. Wolfowitz estimated that fewer than 10,000 troops would be necessary. He was equally dismissive of estimates that the cost would be between $65-$95 billion dollars, stating "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong" and "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction." As of March 2005 over 170,000 US military personnel are in Iraq with another 20,000+ in Kuwait and Qatar. Additionally it is estimated that as many as 30,000 private security personnel are in use in Iraq. The total cost for the war and reconstruction ranges from $250-$350 billion.

Personal life

Wolfowitz married Clare Selgin Wolfowitz in 1968. They had three children and reportedly divorced in 2002 (although his wife has refused to confirm this). She currently works for IRIS at the University of Maryland in the Governance Institutions Group, primarily on its projects in Indonesia and with the Programs and Policy Coordination office of USAID. He is currently involved with Shaha Riza, an Arab feminist born in Tunis and brought up in Saudi Arabia who works as a communications adviser in the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa department.

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See also

Further reading

  • Seymour Hersh. 2004. Chain of Command: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 0060195916.
  • James Mann. 2004. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet New York: Viking. ISBN 0670032999.
  • Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. 2004. America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521838347.
  • Stephen F. Hayes and D.A.H. Hirshey. 2005. The Brain: Paul Wolfowitz and the Making of the Bush Doctrine, HarperCollins. ISBN 0060723467.
  • Bob Woodward. 2004. Plan of Attack. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 074325547X.
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