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Dr. Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943), son of the statistician/information theorist Jacob Wolfowitz, is an American political advisor and United States Deputy Secretary of Defense.
He is a conservative and possibly a Straussian known for his "hawkish" views, passionate pro-Israel advocacy and staunch support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Wolfowitz is currently United States Deputy Secretary of Defense—second in charge of the defense department, under the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
Prior to his Pentagon appointment, Wolfowitz was Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. He taught international relations at Johns Hopkins and Yale University. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Cornell University and a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago.
Political views
A military analyst under Ronald Reagan, 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 evidenced by the 1998 (PNAC Letter (http://www.theindyvoice.com/index.blog?entry_id=417960)) 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 conservatives 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 lobby rally.
Although Wolfowitz never served in the military, he had one encounter more frightening than Zionist heckling. 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. An U.S. army colonel was killed and 17 others wounded. Wolfowitz and his DOD staffers escaped unharmed and Wolfowitz returned to the safety of the United States on October 28.
External links
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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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