Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda
Thursday, May 9, 2002

This extremely representative conference – about 500 prominent guests from all over the United States – discussed the most urgent problems of economic freedom, family, religion, law and justice; several high-ranking officials in the Bush administration made speeches and participated in panel discussions.

The problems in our national defense policy, naturally, have been the most important for the authors. And these problems, it seems, became the top issue of the conference.

The War Against Terrorism

Several major meetings in the conference were devoted, partly or entirely, to the U.S. war against terrorism and – a directly related problem – the Middle East conflict.

Such prominent specialists as Kenneth Timmerman (an expert on Iran and its support for world terrorism), Dr. Constantine Menges (an expert on the Chinese-Russian alliance and its influence on world terrorism), Rafael Barak (chargι d'affaires, Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C.), Ambassador Hank Cooper (chairman of CNP Defense and Foreign Policy session on the afternoon of May 3), Maj. Gen. John Singlaub (who delivered a major speech entitled "The War on Terrorism" at the same session), former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, Patrick Buchanan, and Dr. Frank Gaffney (president of the Center for Security Policy) did their best to determine ways to solve these life-or-death problems.

The major theses of the speeches and statements of these highly respectable gentlemen could be extracted as follows:

1. The Bush administration showed outstanding leadership – recognized by the entire world – in the war on terrorism after the 9-11 strikes. The first stage of the war, in Afghanistan, is won and mostly over. Now is the time for the next stage.

The war against terrorism should be finished successfully all over the world despite the possible expense in human lives and money. An unfinished war on terrorism would cost America incomparably more dearly. The entire terrorist network in several dozen countries should be exterminated.

2. In the Middle East conflict, U.S. support is naturally on the Israeli side. The U.S. is rigidly against – and should make its policy in this area even firmer against – Palestinian terrorists, who are undisputedly headed by Yasser Arafat.

This doesn't mean support for war against the Palestinian people, and such a war is not taking place in reality. If Israel is waging a war against Palestinians, then, according to the valued opinion of the military experts participating in the discussions, the Jenin refugee camp, the hotbed of suicide terrorists, would be leveled to the ground. But this is not the case.

3. Saddam's regime should be toppled as soon as possible, without waiting for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be resolved. After all, Saddam sends $25,000 checks to each suicide bomber's family and does his best in many other ways to extend the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Saddam is maximally using this conflict as a distracting factor, which complicates and delays U.S. strikes on Iraq.

(The authors, incidentally, reached a similar conclusion in one of their recent articles published by NewsMax.)

America should not wait for the fall of Saddam's regime, undermined by its internal problems. This won't happen, despite the fact that most of the Iraqi people are against Saddam. Ba'ath, the Iraqi ruling party and major tool of Saddam's dictatorship, is organized exactly along the lines of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party that ruled Germany in 1933-45. Saddam's regime – just like Hitler's – won't implode due to internal problems.

At the same time, America, in its strikes against Iraq, will not be the aggressor but the leader and the uniting force of all the opposition groups inside Iraq – the Kurds, Shia minority, etc. This will greatly facilitate the military operations against Saddam.

4. Strikes against other "rogue countries, including the members of the "axis of evil," Iran and North Korea, are not on the agenda. The use of non-military tools and pressure of a different kind are highly preferable here.

Particularly, in the case of Iran, the clerical leaders of this country are already dealing with the rising wave of openly active opposition – among the students and other youths forming half of the population, among businessmen, among the clerical circles themselves. Toppling Saddam's regime and establishing a democratic ruling system in Iraq will additionally complicate the problems of Iranian leaders and stimulate political changes in that country.

What's truly important is that most of the participants in the CNP discussions on foreign and military policy are related, directly or indirectly, to the administration, and the theses above are, obviously, reflections of the position of the administration.

It should be stressed that some contradictions over the last point emerged between the speakers and major participants at the CNP conference. Specifically, an acute dispute took place in the "Scope of U.S. War Efforts" session on May 4 between Mr. Buchanan and Dr. Gaffney.

Dr. Gaffney is generally committed to the points of view given above, while Mr. Buchanan demonstrated a somewhat "isolationist" approach of the following kind (major ideas only):

• The U.S. should limit to a minimum its military actions all over the world.

• America should not strike Iraq but should use non-military tools here – mostly or exclusively.

• If the administration is still committed to strikes on Iraq, it should get approval from Congress in advance. (As the authors understand, the voting in Congress would take place along party lines, so its outcome is far from definite; this is a nice method to delay the military action in Iraq ad infinitum.)

Position of China and Russia in Regard to Iraq and the Middle East Conflict

Some of the participants touched slightly on the positions of China and Russia differing greatly from the positions of the U.S. and its close allies. One of the speakers quoted the recent statement of Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, stressing the necessity to "take into account the interests of both Palestinians and Israel." Remarkably, Ivanov almost never mentions Palestinian suicide bombers, let alone condemns them.

While staying in D.C., one of the authors (Nemets) had a chance, on May 2, just before the CNP conference, to look through the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, the official newspaper of the Russian army, for April 2002. This paper shares – or, more exactly, spreads inside the Russian army – the REAL position (not the "Western-oriented" one produced by Moscow's propaganda machine) of the Russian Defense Ministry and of the Kremlin on major political and military problems.

Krasnaya Zvezda's position on the Middle East crisis is the openly pro-Palestinian one. On April 13 the paper published a statement by Nabil Abu Rudeina, the assistant to Yasser Arafat: "The recent statement of Israel about the troop withdrawal from 24 Palestinian villages is merely a maneuver designed for [cheating] the world community. In reality, Israel is still engaged in a policy of terrorism, in accomplishing plans targeted against our people, our sacred land."

It was one in a series of such statements from Arafat headquarters published in April 2002 by Krasnaya Zvezda. According to these statements and comments of newspaper observers, Israel itself is a source of terror and even a "terrorist state."

The same issue of Krasnaya Zvezda, April 13, 2002, published a long article by Vladimir Lukov entitled "Washington Is Ready to Strike Baghdad; The Question Is Only When It Will Happen." This article demonstrates (a) a strongly negative attitude toward the U.S. military action in Iraq and (b) the hope that it will fail in Iraq.

The article ends with an appeal: "The Northern Alliance helped Americans to win – though not entirely – in Afghanistan. However, there is no such opposition in Iraq. The Iraqi people will use all of their weapons to meet the enemy and fight him."

Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets is co-author of "Chinese-Russian Military Relations, Fate of Taiwan and New Geopolitics."

Dr. Thomas J. Torda has been a Chinese linguist specializing in science and technology with FBIS, and a Chinese/Russian defense technology consultant with the Office of Naval Intelligence.

You may contact Dr. Torda at ThomasJTorda@cs.com.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
War on Terrorism