Date

Feb 18, 1992

Description

From February to May 1992, Secretary of Defense Cheney, who portrayed himself as a “[s]elf-described and proud of it hawk… who never met a weapons system he didn’t vote for,”[11] oversaw the completion of the first post-Cold War Defense Planning Guidance. According to the detailed account by James Mann in a chapter titled “Death of an Empire, Birth of a Vision” in his book Rise of The Vulcans,[12] the lead author was Zalmay Khalilzad (now President Trump’s envoy to Afghanistan, but then an assistant to defense undersecretary for policy Paul Wolfowitz).

On March 8, 1992, a leaked draft of the document made front-page headlines in The New York Times, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Ensuring No Rivals Develop.” Wolfowitz and his drafters, led by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, recast the document so that it would pass public scrutiny while meeting Cheney's requirements for a strategy of military supremacy. In a March 31, 1992, cover memo of a draft, Libby wrote to Cheney that the latest draft had softened the phrases about acting “unilaterally” and “alone” to such phrasings as “with only limited additional help.” Foreshadowing 2003 Iraq War’s “Coalition of the Willing,” Libby justified the changes to Cheney by stating, “we believe these formulations are more defensible” because the U.S. would always “have at least political support from some limited number of countries.” Below his signature approving a May draft of the document, Wolfowitz wrote, “Scooter and his folks have done a remarkable job. We have never had a Defense Guidance this ambitious before.”

Although the Department of Defense’s release of these documents has been fragmentary, the National Security Archive has catalogued and analyzed every available draft of the guidance, including its official unclassified version. Expert Freedom of Information Act requesters will note that many sections have been blacked out, citing the pre-decisional Exemption Five. The 2016 FOIA Improvement Act Amendments have now forbidden such redactions for documents older than twenty-five years.

Source

Department of Defense Mandatory Declassification Review request. Published in William Burr, “’Prevent the Reemergence of a New Rival’: The Making of the Cheney Regional Defense Strategy 1991-1992,” National Security Archive Briefing Book 245

Document published in following posting(s):

The VICE File: Dick Cheney Declassified

Feb 22, 2019