Inside Track: Rudy’s New Foreign Policy Posse

by Philip Giraldi

The naming of leading neoconservative Norman Podhoretz as one of Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani’s senior foreign policy advisers is disconcerting to those Americans who have hoped that the current disagreements with Iran might be resolved short of war. Giuliani—together with Mitt Romney and John McCain—has publicly advocated a military strike against Iran to keep it from acquiring nuclear weapons. He has also not ruled out the use of America’s own nuclear weapons if that should prove necessary to deter Tehran.

Depending on how the situation between Washington and Tehran develops, this pledge could conceivably mean a nuclear attack on a country that has not itself attacked the United States. This would shatter the policy of only using nuclear weapons as a deterrent that has been in effect since the Second World War. It would also establish a dangerous first-strike precedent for other nuclear powers like India, China and Pakistan that might in the future feel threatened. The acquisition of Podhoretz as an adviser confirms that Giuliani’s statements should be taken seriously and are not just political rhetoric designed to obtain the support of the influential Israeli lobby.

Podhoretz has recently called on the United States to bomb Iran and he describes the current situation—pitting Washington against what he describes as "the Islamofascist threat"—as World War IV. Podhoretz basically advocates a world-wide conflict not unlike World War II to defeat Islamists everywhere they are to be found. Giuliani is already the U.S. presidential hopeful who is perceived most favorably in Israel because of his uncompromising stance on issues like the Iranian threat and terrorism, and the addition of Podhoretz will certainly be viewed favorably by many influential neoconservatives. Podhoretz is himself an uncompromising advocate of what he sees as Israeli national security imperatives very much in the mold of the right-wing Likud party.

He continues to be a leading supporter of the Iraq War and is one of the few remaining apologists for the WMD claim, insisting that they were spirited away to Syria prior to the start of the fighting. In addition to Iran, Podhoretz advocates regime change policies for Syria and renewing warfare in the south of Lebanon to eliminate Hizballah. He has also supported regime change for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians. His advocacy of foreign policy positions for the United States will be decidedly Israel-centric. Even in Israeli terms, he is from the far right, advocating simplistic military solutions to solve what are complex and multifaceted international problems.

Podhoretz’s definition of the enemy as Islamofascism is itself a borrowing from right-wing Israeli think tanks that prefer to see an enemy in unitary terms that can be conflated with international terrorism. Most experts on Islam and on the many countries that have majority Muslim populations would reject that Islamofascism or anything like it really exists, just as the "global war on terrorism" is essentially a misleading simplification that has little meaning. The basically false depiction of a hostile and menacing global entity is done deliberately to help formulate a policy which perforce makes Israel’s enemies also the enemies of the United States, even when they are not.

Beyond terrorism, Podhoretz also does not see any difference between Israel’s broader security concerns and those of the United States, an assumption that is basically fallacious and which ultimately benefits neither Israel nor Washington. Of particular concern is the possibility that Rudy Giuliani has "bought in" to the world view expressed by Podhoretz and that his willingness to incorporate those positions will bring about a shift by Romney and McCain. As Giuliani is the front-runner, McCain and Romney might seek to outflank him in foreign policy by embracing even more hard-line positions that would be even less in the U.S. national interest.


Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is the Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance.

Giuliani, the Likud Candidate?

by Jim Lobe

Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani announced his foreign-policy advisory team Tuesday, and it looks from the membership as if he’s bidding for the Likud vote (for which he will no doubt receive tough competition from John McCain, Fred Thompson, and, eventually perhaps, Newt Gingrich).

Heading the team is Charles Hill, a retired career foreign service officer who worked as former Secretary of State George Shultz’s executive officer during the Reagan administration and is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hill’s paper trail is confined almost exclusively to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal where, among other things, he hailed the creation in 2004 of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), proposed the replacement of the UN by a new organisation of nations “committed to democracy,” criticized the 9/11 Commission for failing to sufficiently emphasize “the nature of the enemy” – “Islamist terrorism; Saddamist-style hijacked states; and regimes fearful of subversion, such as Saudi Arabia, whose policies have inflamed the situation and increased the danger to itself,” and decried the Commission’s suggestion that U.S. policies in the region might have something to do with anti-American sentiment there.

A big fan of Bernard Lewis’ theories about what ails the Arab Middle East, Hill was a signer of the Sep 20, 2001, letter from Bill Kristol’s Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that urged Bush to be sure to include Saddam Hussein, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Yassir Arafat, as well as al Qaeda and the Taliban, in his war on terror.

Of the seven other members of Giuliani’s “Senior Foreign Policy Advisory Board,” several have also been associated with PNAC and the CPD, most spectacularly, the legendary former editor of Commentary magazine, Norman “World War IV” Podhoretz, whose most recent contribution to Western-Islamic understanding was his article, “The Case for Bombing Iran” (an eight-minute “must-see” video version of which is available on YouTube. A founding father of neo-conservatism, Podhoretz is also, of course, the father-in-law of Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams whose own work in frustrating serious peace efforts between Israel and its Arab neighbors has been second only to Dick Cheney’s. Apparently relying on inside information, Podhoretz still believes that Saddam Hussein secreted his weapons of mass destruction to Syria for safe-keeping

Also noteworthy on the advisory board is Martin Kramer, a long-time Lewis disciple, who is also closely associated with Daniel Pipes and particularly his Campus Watch program which many in the Middle East studies field have denounced as McCarthyite. Kramer, a frequent contributor to The National Review Online, is a senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, which in turn is closely linked to former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Similarly, Peter Berkowitz, another Hoover fellow, has served on the policy advisory board of the neo-conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center (which, along with the Hudson Institute, served as Abrams’ primary institutional home for a number of years after his service in the Reagan administration) and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, a program that brings prominent U.S. academics and opinion-shapers to Tel Aviv University each year. {articipants in the program over the last few years have included former CIA director James Woolsey; former Asia specialist on Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff, Aaron Friedberg; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies Professor Ruth Wedgwood, Bill Kristol, Victor Davis Hanson, Jeremy Rabkin, and Eliot Cohen.

Rounding out the group are former Wisconsin Sen. Bob Kasten, who, along with his fellow-Wisconsonian, Rudy Boschwitz, was among the most pro-Likud members of the Senate during his service there between 1981 and 1993; Enders Wimbush, a senior fellow at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, protege of the late Albert Wohlstetter and long-standing disciple of the Pentagon’s Net Assessment guru, Andrew Marshall; Steve Rosen, a Harvard professor who contributed to PNAC’s 2000 report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses;” and Kim Holmes, a fixture at the Heritage Foundation’s foreign policy unit since 1985, who served during Bush’s first term as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.