Arms Control and Disarmament Agency In the 1970s, Wolfowitz and Perle served as aides to proto-
neoconservative Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson. A
Cold War liberal, Jackson supported higher military spending and a hard line against the
Soviet Union alongside more traditional Democratic causes, such as social welfare programs, civil rights, and labor unions. In 1972, US
President Richard Nixon, under pressure from Senator Jackson, dismissed the head of the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and replaced him with
Fred Ikle. Ikle brought in a new team that included Wolfowitz. While at ACDA, Wolfowitz wrote research papers and drafted testimony, as he had previously done at the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy. He traveled with Ikle to strategic arms limitations talks in
Paris and other
European cities. He also helped dissuade
South Korea from reprocessing
plutonium that could be diverted into a clandestine weapons program. Under President
Gerald Ford, the American intelligence agencies came under attack over their annually published
National Intelligence Estimate. According to James 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." Attempting to counter these claims,
Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush formed a committee of anti-
Communist experts, headed by
Richard Pipes, to reassess the raw data. Based on the recommendation of Perle, Pipes picked Wolfowitz for this committee, which was later called
Team B. The team's 1976 report, which was 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 failed. 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." Team B's conclusions have faced criticism. They have been called "
worst-case analysis", ignoring the "political, demographic, and economic rot" already eating away at the Soviet system. Wolfowitz reportedly had a central role in Team B, mostly focused on analyzing the role that medium-range missiles played in Soviet military strategy.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs In 1977, during the
Carter administration, Wolfowitz moved to
the Pentagon. He was US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs for the
US Defense Department, under
US Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. In 1980, Wolfowitz resigned from the Pentagon and became a visiting professor at the
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at
Johns Hopkins University. Shortly after, he joined the
Republican Party. 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."
State Department Director of Policy Planning Following the 1980 election of President
Ronald Reagan, the new
National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen formed the administration's foreign policy advisory team. Allen initially rejected Wolfowitz's appointment but following discussions, instigated by former colleague
John Lehman, Allen offered Wolfowitz the position of
Director of Policy Planning at the
Department of State. President Reagan's foreign policy was heavily influenced by the
Kirkpatrick Doctrine, as outlined in a 1979 article in
Commentary by
Jeane Kirkpatrick entitled "Dictatorships and Double Standards". Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or another, no idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances ... (But) decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. Wolfowitz broke from this official line by denouncing
Saddam Hussein of
Iraq at a time when
Donald Rumsfeld 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." After Nixon and Kissinger had gone to China in the early 1970s, US policy was to make concessions to China as an essential
Cold War ally. The Chinese were now pushing for the US 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 US did not need China's assistance but that the Chinese needed the US to protect them against the far more-likely prospect of a Soviet invasion of the Chinese mainland. Wolfowitz soon came into conflict with
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 that "Paul D. Wolfowitz, the director of policy planning ... will be replaced", because "Mr. Haig found Mr. Wolfowitz too theoretical." Instead, on June 25, 1982, Haig was replaced by
George Shultz as US Secretary of State, and Wolfowitz was promoted.
State Department Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs In 1982, Secretary of State Shultz appointed Wolfowitz as
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, on a visit to the
Philippines, was welcomed by the dictator
Ferdinand Marcos who quoted heavily from her 1979
Commentary article
Dictatorships and Double Standards; 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
US military would lose its strongholds at
Clark Air Force Base and
Subic Bay Naval Station. Wolfowitz tried to change the administration's policy, stating in an April 15, 1985, article in
The Wall Street Journal that "The best antidote to Communism is democracy." Wolfowitz and his assistant
Lewis Libby made trips to
Manila where they called for democratic reforms and met with non-communist opposition leaders. 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." Following massive street protests, Marcos fled the country on a US Air Force plane and the US recognized the government of
Corazón Aquino.
Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia in 1987.|alt=|247x247px , during a visit to local School From 1986 to 1989, during the military-backed government of
President Suharto, Wolfowitz was the US ambassador to the
Republic of Indonesia. According to Peter J. Boyer, 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 because, 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. Sipress and Nakashima reported 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." In "The Tragedy of Suharto", published 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. After the
2002 Bali bombing, on October 18, 2002, 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."
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy . , Gen.
Norman Schwarzkopf, and Under Sec. Wolfowitz listen as Defense Sec.
Dick Cheney briefs reporters during the
Gulf War in February 1991 From 1989 to 1993, Wolfowitz served in the administration of
George H. W. Bush as
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, under then US Secretary of Defense
Dick Cheney. During the
1991 Persian Gulf War, Wolfowitz's team coordinated and reviewed military strategy, raising $50 billion in allied financial support for the operation. Wolfowitz was present with Cheney,
Colin Powell and others, on February 27, 1991, at the meeting with the President where it was decided that the troops should be demobilized. 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." 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 of 1992" (DPG), which came to be known as the
Wolfowitz Doctrine, to "set the nation's direction for the next century." 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. He also advised
Bob Dole on foreign policy during his
1996 US presidential election campaign, which was managed by Donald Rumsfeld. According to Kampfner, "Wolfowitz used his perch at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies as a test-bed for a new conservative world vision." Wolfowitz was associated with the
Project for the New American Century (PNAC); he signed both the PNAC's June 3, 1997 "
Statement of Principles", and its January 26, 1998, open letter to President Bill Clinton. In February 1998, Wolfowitz testified before a
congressional hearing, stating that the current administration lacked the sense of purpose to "liberate ourselves, our friends and allies in the region, and the Iraqi people themselves from the menace of Saddam Hussein." In September 2000, the PNAC produced a 90-page report entitled ''Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century'', advocating the redeployment of US troops in permanent bases in strategic locations throughout the world where they can be ready to act to protect US interests abroad. During the
2000 US presidential election campaign, Wolfowitz served as a foreign policy advisor to
George W. Bush as part of the group led by
Condoleezza Rice calling itself
The Vulcans.
Deputy Secretary of Defense , 2001 , Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz in March 2003 General
Richard B. Myers at
Andrews Air Force Base, May 14, 2004. i Emir
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, October 5, 2001 as he tours
Mosul, Iraq, July 21, 2003 testifying before the
9/11 Commission in March 2004 aboard the
USS Ronald Reagan in July 2004 From 2001 to 2005, during the
George W. Bush administration, Wolfowitz served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense reporting to U.S. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld. The
September 11 attacks in 2001 were a turning point in administration policy, as Wolfowitz later explained: "9/11 really was a wake up call and that if we take proper advantage of this opportunity to prevent the future terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction that it will have been an extremely valuable wake up call," adding: "if we say our only problem was to respond to 9/11, and we wait until somebody hits us with nuclear weapons before we take that kind of threat seriously, we will have made a very big mistake." In the first emergency meeting of the
National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, "Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?" with Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable," and, according to
John Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case." The idea was initially rejected, at the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but, according to Kampfner, "Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front—against Saddam. Powell was excluded." In such meetings they created a policy that would later be dubbed the
Bush Doctrine, centering on "pre-emption" and the
war on Iraq, which the
PNAC had advocated in their earlier letters. Sharon Samber and Matthew E. Berger reported for
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that Wolfowitz continued by saying that "Innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying as well. It is critical that we recognize and acknowledge that fact," before being booed and drowned out by chants of "No more Arafat." Following the invasion of Afghanistan the Bush administration had started to plan for the next stage of the
war on terror. According to
John Kampfner, "Emboldened by their experience in Afghanistan, they saw the opportunity to root out hostile regimes in the Middle East and to implant very American interpretations of democracy and free markets, from Iraq to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Wolfowitz epitomized this view." Wolfowitz "saw a liberated Iraq as both paradigm and linchpin for future interventions." The
2003 invasion of Iraq began on March 19. Prior to the invasion, Wolfowitz actively championed it, as he later stated: "For reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason" The job of finding WMD and providing justification for the attack would fall to the intelligence services, but, according to Kampfner, "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed that, while the established security services had a role, they were too bureaucratic and too traditional in their thinking." As a result, "they set up what came to be known as the 'cabal', a cell of eight or nine analysts in a new
Office of Special Plans (OSP) based in the U.S. Defense Department." According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh, the OSP "was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to
Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States." By October of that year, "
Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said 'prewar estimates that may be borne out in fact are likelier to be more lucky than smart.' [He] added that earlier estimates and statements by Mr. Wolfowitz and others 'oozed with uncertainty.'" Di Rita's comments came as a much less optimistic secret Pentagon study—which had been complete at the time of Wolfowitz's testimony—was coming to public light, and when actual production results in Iraq were coinciding with those projected in the less optimistic Pentagon study. During Wolfowitz's pre-war testimony before Congress, he dismissed General
Eric K. Shinseki's estimates of the size of the post war occupation force which would be needed. General Shinseki testified to the
US Senate Armed Services Committee on February 25, 2003, that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for postwar Iraq. By contrast, Wolfowitz estimated that fewer than 100,000 troops would be necessary in Iraq. Two days after Shinseki testified, Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:There has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army—hard to imagine. Army Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring was killed and seventeen other personnel resident in the hotel - including soldiers and civilians - were wounded. Wolfowitz and his DOD staffers escaped unharmed and returned to the United States on October 28, 2003.
President of the World Bank In March 2005, Wolfowitz was nominated to be president of the World Bank by US President
George W. Bush. Criticism of his nomination appeared in the media.
Nobel Laureate in Economics and former chief economist for the World Bank
Joseph Stiglitz said: "'The World Bank will once again become a hate figure. This could bring street protests and violence across the developing world.'" In a speech at the U.N. Economic and Social Council, economist
Jeffrey Sachs also opposed Wolfowitz: "It's time for other candidates to come forward that have experience in development. This is a position on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their lives ... Let's have a proper leadership of professionalism." In the US, there was some praise for the nomination. An editorial in
The Wall Street Journal stated: Mr. Wolfowitz is willing to speak the truth to power ... he saw earlier than most, and spoke publicly about, the need for dictators to plan democratic transitions. It is the world's dictators who are the chief causes of world poverty. If anyone can stand up to the
Robert Mugabes of the world, it must be the man who stood up to Saddam Hussein.He was confirmed and became president on June 1, 2005. He soon attended the
31st G8 summit to discuss issues of
global climate change and the
economic development in
Africa. When this meeting was interrupted by the
July 7, 2005 London bombings, Wolfowitz was present with other world leaders at the press conference given by
British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Several of Wolfowitz's initial appointments at the bank proved controversial, including two US nationals (Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems) formerly with the Bush administration, whom he appointed as close advisors with $250,000 tax-free contracts. Another appointee,
Juan José Daboub, faced criticism, including from his colleagues, for attempting to bring policies on climate change and
family planning towards a more conservative position. Wolfowitz gave special emphasis to two particular issues. Identifying Sub-Saharan Africa as the region most challenged to improve living standards, he traveled widely in the region. He also made clear his focus on fighting corruption. Several aspects of the latter program raised controversy. Overturning the names produced by a formal search process, he appointed a figure linked to the US Republican party to head the bank's internal watchdog. Member countries worried that Wolfowitz's willingness to suspend lending to countries on grounds of corruption was vulnerable to selective application in line with US foreign policy interests. In a debate on the proposed Governance and Anti-Corruption Strategy at the bank's 2006 Annual Meetings, shareholders directed Wolfowitz to undertake extensive consultations and revise the strategy to show how objective measures of corruption would be incorporated into decisions and how the shareholders' representatives on the bank's Board would play a key role. Following the consultations and revisions, the Board approved a revised strategy in spring 2007. ==Controversies==