Richard Perle
Presenter: Geraldine Doogue
Sunday, 11 April 2004
Geraldine Doogue talks with Richard Perle, an influential foreign policy advisor in Washington.
Transcript
Geraldine Doogue: Welcome to Sunday Profile – Geraldine Doogue inviting you to join me tonight as we journey to Washington to meet a highly significant player in the hothouse world that is American foreign policy these days – and to hear a complete defence of US decisions over Iraq, despite the headlines and the horror.
I'm glad you could join us this Easter Sunday, and happy Easter by the way, because we are about to get an insight into a man long used to power and influence at the highest levels in the world's Superpower. His name is Richard Perle: you might remember he came to prominence as assistant secretary of defence under Ronald Reagan, but he's never gone away as a force.
Until early this year, he was chair of the powerful Defence Policy Board which advises the Pentagon, and he's a Resident Fellow at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. He's believed to have been among the group intimately involved in advocating that Iraq go through regime change. He has also helped shape events in post communist Russia..
I spoke to him just before the recent killings of Americans in Faluja which produced those terrible pictures; and even though some analysts are reporting that underlying conditions are improving in Iraq, it's clear that the headlines will be dominated for some time by on-going violence against the coalition of the willing.
So given that likelihood, did he still believe that intervention was the right thing?
Richard Perle: Yes I think that the liberation of Iraq was the right thing to do. We are beginning to see the first spring budding of what I hope will be a future democracy, at least a benign government in Iraq. A constitution has been adopted that is unlike any other constitution in the region, it actually enshrines some individual freedom and liberty for its citizens in Iraq - we did the right thing.
Geraldine Doogue: Did you expect it to turn out as it has though, with more American soldiers lost in this campaign than in any since the Vietnam war?
Richard Perle: Well there hasn't been another major campaign since the Vietnam war. The numbers, although every life is a terrible loss, the numbers are relatively small. The war itself was over in three weeks with very few casualties – we've suffered losses since from acts of terror to be sure, but in relation to the magnitude of the undertaking and the importance of it, the losses have not been terrible, certainly nothing like Vietnam.
Geraldine Doogue: The fact that it seems poised on the brink of pre-civil war, all of that you more or less forsaw did you?
Richard Perle: Well I don't agree with the characterisation, the brink of civil war, indeed many people were assuming there would be a civil war as soon as Saddam was removed – that was President Chirac's view, it was the view of a great many people who expressed themselves – it hasn't happened and it is quite extraordinary how stable things have heen under the circumstances. The bombings have clearly been intended to stimulate a civil war and it hasn't happened. I look at that same glass and see it half full.
Geraldine Doogue: I know you are not one to mark your own country down in foreign affairs and I know America feels very much in the gun as it were, but did you feel that Americans behaved as well as they could as, in effect, a victorious military power as they were at the time, in those first 12 months after they won in Baghdad?
Richard Perle: You know immediately following the removal of Saddam Hussein we set about trying to provide as decent a life in the transition as we could for the Iraqi people. And Americans all over the country were busy on projects to get schools open, to get pipelines functioning, to get oil fields producing, so that the Iraqis would have some revenue in the future. We secured the ports, we secured the refineries, I think we did a great deal to help the people of Iraq under very difficult circumstances and it is beginning now to take hold. Business is resuming, the streets are full of people, the street markets are full, the electricity is back up and running – great progress has been made to get other basic infrastructure in decent shape – it is going to take time – for 35 years –
Geraldine Doogue: I suppose that's a very important question, Richard Perle, how much time – I wonder what you make of Dr Henry Kissinger's rather sobering analysis recently in which he reminded the US it took seven years for Germany and Japan to achieve what he called sovereignty after World War Two and they at least had had experience of it, whereas people were planning on seven months as a process in Iraq?
Richard Perle: I think we are on the right timetable in Iraq, it would be a mistake in my view to delay further the transfer of authority to the Iraqis. I think the Iraqis are going to surprise people with their ability to face up to the challenge that they now confront.
Geraldine Doogue: How long do you think the Americans will stay in Iraq? In February last year you told Australian Broadcasting's Four Corners that you had no doubt that the Americans would stay to see a successful regime in place, but does that clash with internal politics in America at the moment?
Richard Perle: No I really don't believe it does, because the President certainly has a political interest in a success in Iraq, and by the way the people who are setting off bombs by the side of the road understand that, and they want to see the President defeated, so I expect an intensification of that activity in the immediate future. No this President is committed to doing the right thing, and the right thing is to stick with this until we can depart Iraq with pride in what we have done, and I don't believe he is going to terminate our involvement for short term political reasons.
Geraldine Doogue: Therefore why are people persisting, as I heard Jack Straw the home secretary of Britain the other day – persisting with this June 30th timetable, when even Kofi Annan, the Head of the UN, are deeply sceptical that it can be met?
Richard Perle: I think there is a distinction to be drawn here between the handover to the Iraqis on the timetable that we have previously announced and the disengagement of the United States, we are going to continue to be engaged, but on a different basis. If we are there with military forces to help provide security, to help train the Iraqis, it will be at the invitation of the Iraqis – so it can't be unfairly described as an occupation force. We should be there with the full consent and at the invitation of the Iraqis themselves.
I think the single most important thing is that the people of Iraq are living a better more productive, more stable, freer and more progressive life. Behind all the ideology, behind all the ethnic divisions and tensions in history, people can look and see whether the fellow next door is doing better or worse than he was before, so it is important that Iraqis are doing better, that they are free from the fear that dominated that country during Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. That they are optimistic about their own future, that their economy is growing, that their kids are getting educated – that's going to tell the story.
Geraldine Doogue: And if they are not, Richard Perle, what will that story tell?
Richard Perle: Well if Iraq becomes a failure, if it disintegrates into civil war and the hope for a better life isn't realised, I think that will be a tremendous setback not only for the United States, although it will be a setback for the American role in the world, it will be a great setback for the people of the region, first of all for the people of Iraq and it will dash the hopes of hundreds of millions of people that there is a better life for them.
You know the world was much too ready to accept the appalling conditions under which Iraqis lived. I hope now there is some sense on the part of those who were quite content to see Saddam Hussein die of natural causes after handing power over to his two murderous sons – I hope people are now saying to themselves, was this the right thing for the international community to do, was this the right thing for the Arab League to tolerate. I think clearly it wasn't.
Geraldine Doogue: Richard Perle is my guest, the long standing policy commentator and major power force in the United States, and well known as a neo-con. Do you like that term by the way?
Richard Perle: Well I long ago gave up objecting to the terminology, there is not much you can do about it. I think it is not very enlightening, it is meant to describe a group of people that by implication all have the same idea, in fact the people referred to have many different ideas. What we all believe in is democratic values and institutions, free markets, and the importance of American leadership in the world in helping to protect those values and extend them.
Geraldine Doogue: Certainly in your latest book there is a line that you have that ‘we can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington – we sense the reversion to the bad old habits of complacency and denial' - it is quite a call to arms. Does that characterise the neo-conservatives that you like to mix with?
Richard Perle: I think that is my view and my fellow author, David Frum's view, I don't know that anyone else has used those words in quite that way. We looked around and we saw the natural reversion to business as usual – democracies don't like to be vigilant, especially when it is costly and inconvenient. And we are seized with the importance of recognising that the terror that we are opposing is deeply ideological it isn't a bunch of bandits who are being chased in the mountains of Afghanistan. We are contending with people who have a vision for the world and for us and for you Australians too, and it is an Islamic universe. We don't want an Islamic universe for ourselves, and I expect most Australians don't and so we are going to resist it. But they are intent on forcing their values, their ideals, their law on the rest of us and they will use terrible violence to accomplish that purpose. We want people to understand that.
Geraldine Doogue: So how far do you go in these ‘inconvenient steps' to use your phrase. North Korea is a total disgrace isn't it. Why for the sake of argument, don't we do something about that?
Richard Perle: Well I think we should do something about North Korea. There are two issues, one is the plight of the people of North Korea and it is pretty dismal, pretty awful, it is a subsistence economy, sometimes below subsistence. It is also a country that under a succession of dictators, has been acquiring nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and has been selling those things wherever they can find markets around the world, they are a menace, they are a danger to all of us.
We are trying to persuade the Chinese, who are thought to have a lot of influence, they certainly pay a lot of Kim Jung Il's bills. We are trying to persuade them to put a lot of pressure on the government to at lease alter their external policies as a place to start and I certainly don't have a problem with that.
Geraldine Doogue: If you think also about how you make a decision about what to fix up a la Iraq, or for the sake of argument, Syria. There's been a build up of forces on the borders with Syria recently and the President has been accusing Syria of allowing people to come through in order to create terrorism in Iraq, so should Syria in your logic, be the next cab off the rank?
Richard Perle: Well we ought be talking to the Syrians and we ought to be inviting them to consider their options.
Geraldine Doogue: What's that mean?
Richard Perle: Well they've got a couple of options that I can think of. One is they could go the way of Colonel Gaddafi, who looked around and decided there is now a cost attached to behaviour that is menacing to the United States, and he saw the Taliban regime and Saddam Hussein's regime pay that cost and I think he decided that he didn't want to follow suit. So one model would be some serious reform on the part of the Syrians, so that we no longer have a quarrel with them. The other model is the Saddam Hussein model.
Geraldine Doogue: What do you think they'll opt for?
Richard Perle: Well I hope they'll start to co-operate with us, they'd be well advised to do so, they no longer have a lot to gain by not co-operating with us and I would think they've got quite a lot to lose.
One of the things that current American policy has done is to cause people who have been ready to support terror in the past, to offer sanctuary to terrorists, to turn a blind eye to terrorists and their activities on their territory, it's caused them to think whether it is in their best interests. I've often asked myself why would the Taliban regime which had been receiving a lot of assistance from the United States, humanitarian assistance, why would they invited Osama bin Laden to set up his terrorist network on their territory – didn't they think that it would produce a reaction from us? And the sad answer is that they must have concluded that it wouldn't produce a reaction and indeed it didn't produce much of a reaction. So I'm afraid we almost encouraged regimes like the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to receive aid with one hand and operate against us with the other, confident that we weren't going to force them to choose.
Geraldine Doogue: But there are limits, you are speaking as if there are in effect no limits to what American power can achieve. There is a mismatch there - you forswear US as an imperial power, and yet in a way speak as if it is.
Richard Perle: But we are not, as you would expect from an imperial power, eager to protect anyone else's territory we just want to protect our own. What does it mean to be an imperial power, what it has meant historically is that as much of the world as the imperialists can control is governed from their home country, as much as the world was governed from Rome during the Roman Empire, we don't want to govern the rest of the world, we want to discourage leaders elsewhere in the world from making their territory available to terrorists, building chemical or biological or nuclear weapons, possibly making them available to terrorists. Our ambitions from a security point of view are rather modest in fact. No of course we don't have unlimited power, and I'm not suggesting that we should always use military power, I think we have now earned some credibility.
Geraldine Doogue: Moving on to the business of managing the democracies that run these things, which has become really rather challenging hasn't it, is that because, and I'm not just seeking to ask a simple question about weapons of mass destruction, is it because a lot of the political elites knew at the time that weapons of mass destruction didn't pose a clear and present danger, at that time, nevertheless they had to be put forward as the reason why the war was waged, and that that little problem is now distorting politics for both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair?
Richard Perle: Well I don't agree with the premise in the question, when you say 'at that time', I don't know what you mean by ‘at that time'. Our intelligence isn't good enough to wait until the last possible moment, because if your strategy is to wait until the last possible moment then you run the very real risk of waiting too long.
The point is that Saddam Hussein had a history of weapons of mass destruction, and everyone knew that, he actually used them. Now do you wait until you have absolute evidence of exactly what he has and where it is located?
Geraldine Doogue: Well maybe you do need that in a democracy, I'd like to quote Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector. He suggested that it would prove paradoxical and absurd if 250,000 troops were to invade Iraq and find very little, he suggested, and he told Mr Blair and George Bush this. But he did wonder whether both men, religious men, felt strengthened in their political determination by the feeling that they were fighting evil, not only arms proliferation. I wonder what you make of that verdict.
Richard Perle: Well it sounds like pop psychology to me. Look Hans Blix wasn't threatened in the way that the US was threatened, so maybe he could afford to be more casual about it. What evidence does he need, and when is the evidence sufficient for him to act? Clearly we could have acted against Al Quaeda before September 11, couldn't we. We could have gone after those camps, we knew they were plotting against us, but we waited, and we waited too long. Unless you have perfect intelligence you always run the risk of waiting too long. If you are going to err on one side or the other, acting too soon or acting too late, given what's at stake, I would much rather we act too soon.
Look, all that we have discovered since is that the stockpiles of WMDs that the UN had led us to believe existed, cannot be found, but that doesn't mean that there was no threat from weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein, on the contrary, his demonstrated capacity to produce those had to be responded to in one way or another, and doing nothing was not a very attractive option.
Geraldine Doogue: I wonder how you characterise your power and influence, or the neo-conservatives as a group. I notice an article in the Nation magazine recently by Michael Lind, who I think you have know for many years, suggesting that these days the notion of scheming masterminds seems to have been replaced by scheming blunderers, and he suggests that for at least two decades in foreign policy, the neo-cons have been wrong – ‘when the Soviet Union was on the point of collapse the Hawks such as yourself declared it was on the verge of world domination, in the 1990s you exaggerated, you and people like you, the threat of China, after 9/11 you pushed the irrelevant panaceas of preventive war and missile defence as solutions to the problems of hijackers and suicide bombers', and he goes on and on. I mean where do you site yourself in the debate in the US at the moment?
Richard Perle: Well I think Lind is wrong on all of these points, including attributing to me views that I never held and don't hold now, but that isn't the point. I think that the positions that ultimately prevailed in the Cold War were positions that were broadly reflected by people that were referred to as neo-conservatives, although in those days it was a pretty broad national consensus. I think that we managed that awfully well. The Soviet Empire ended without a war. It was a huge accomplishment, and thank you very much Michael Lind, you didn't do that, and your philosophy wouldn't have done that.
Geraldine Doogue: Wouldn't it? Do you fundamentally believe that there was a strand of what, appeasement in the United States, that you think would not necessarily have led to the end of the Cold War?
Richard Perle: There was certainly a strand of thinking that said that the principal task of the United States is to find a way to get along with the Soviet Union, and those that believed that it was worth trying to see if we couldn't be rid of the Soviet Union altogether, were in a distinct minority for a long period of time. It took Ronald Reagan to breathe life into that view, the view that there was nothing inevitable about the Soviet Union, in fact that a totalitarian state of its character was vulnerable and should be confronted and contested. That had not been the policy that a Michael Lind would have endorsed.
Geraldine Doogue: And look I must ask you given that you have talked about Islamic totalitarianism, do I take it from what you've been saying that you come down on the side of Samuel Huntingdon's ‘Clash of Civilisations' thesis, that that is the great drama of the first half of this coming century?
Richard Perle: Well I don't think it is yet a clash of civilisations and I hope it won't become one. I think what we are contending with is a fringe element, an extremist element in the Muslim world, it's not mainstream Muslims, a lot of it fuelled by lavish Saudi funding behind the Wahabi sect. It's very unfortunate that this fringe element has had so much money at its disposal that it has established extremist institutions all over the world. Ultimately this isn't going to be won on some battlefield, it is going to be won by ordinary Muslims who want a decent life for themselves and their children, who are not animated by hatred and a desire to force their views on the rest of the world, standing up to the small fringe element that is preaching jihad or holy war.
Geraldine Doogue: And have you yourself looked deep into the heart of Islam and studied it and ever had any misgivings about whether there is a genuine modus vivendi possible between the West and Islam?
Richard Perle: Most of my experience with Islam has been in the experience I've had over many years with Turkey. I was once the American representative to the US Turkish bilateral group, and I've stayed involved with Turkey ever since. There's a Moslem country that is secular and democratic and there's no problem, none at all. I don't see any reason why we can't enjoy very good relationships with the Moslem world. You obviously can't enjoy constructive relationships with those who accept the concept of holy war.
Geraldine Doogue: So a few more Attaturks are needed are they?
Richard Perle: A few more Attaturks would be a very good thing.
Geraldine Doogue: Richard Perle, thank you very much for joining us on Sunday Profile.
Richard Perle: Not at all, all the best to you.
Geraldine Doogue: Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of defence for Ronald Reagan. His book, An End To Evil: how to win the war on terror, is just out and is published by Random House.
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