Wikipedia: Islamism

Islamism is a set of political ideologies that hold that Islam is not only a religion, but also a political system that governs the legal, economic and social imperatives of the state according to its interpretation of Islamic Law. For Islamists, the sharia has absolute priority over democracy and universal human rights: “The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this [Cairo] Declaration [on Human Rights in Islam].”

This usage is controversial. Islamists themselves may oppose the term because it suggests their philosophy to be a political extrapolation from Islam rather than a straightforward expression of Islam as a way of life. Some Muslims find it troublesome that a word derived from “Islam” is applied to organizations they consider radical and extreme. The terms “Islamist” and “Islamism” are used often in several publications within some Muslim countries to describe domestic and trans-national organizations seeking to implement Islamic law. The English website for Al Jazeera, for example, uses these terms frequently.

Islam and Islamism
There is intense debate about the differences between Islam and Islamism. The controversy is rooted in differing answers to questions about how Muslims should live, the sort of governments they should support, and the proper role of Islamic symbols, ideas, and tenets in the modern world. Those who are called Islamists argue that Islam is inherently a political religion, and that the rules and laws laid out in Quran and Hadiths mandate Islamic government.

While many experts on Islam reject this notion, some, including Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, and Andrew Bostom, concur, arguing that political stances characterized as Islamist are actually central to Islam as a faith. They also question the validity of the terms “Islamist” and “Islamism” themselves. Some Muslims also deny that there is a difference between Islamism and Islam, saying “If Islam is a way of life, how can we say that those who want to live by its principles in legal, social, political, economic, and political spheres of life are not Muslims, but Islamists and believe in Islamism, not Islam”?

Like other religions, Islam promotes a vision of society and provides guidelines for social life. The Quran and the hadith provide guidelines for Islamic government, including criminal law, family law, the prohibition of usury, and other economic regulations. A number of these topics are highly contentious in the Arab Muslim world.

Contemporary issues
The complex relationship between Islam and Islamism has intensified in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Since that time, Islamist movements, along with other political movements inspired by Islam, have gained increased attention in the Western media. Some Islamist groups have been implicated in terrorism and have become targets in the War on Terrorism. However, given the instability caused by the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it seems that in order to bring that region under control again, there will be some sort of cooperation between the West and Islamist groups. In Iraq, that has already happened since the government and the parliament are dominated by members and supporters of Islamist parties and organizations.

History
The term “Islamism” first appeared in eighteenth-century France as a synonym for Islam. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was being displaced by the latter, and by 1938, when Orientalist scholars completed the Encyclopaedia of Islam, had virtually disappeared from the English language.

It attained its modern connotation in late 1970s French academia, thence to be loaned into English again, where it has largely displaced “Islamic fundamentalism.”

Although Islamic states based on Shari’a law have existed since the earliest days of Islam, Islamism refers to modern movements that developed during the twentieth century in reaction to several forces. Following World War I, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the subsequent dissolution of the Caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (founder of Turkey), some Muslims perceived that Islam was in retreat, and felt that Western ideas were spreading throughout Muslim society, along with the influence of Western nations. During the 1960s, the predominant ideology within the Arab world was pan-Arabism which deemphasized religion and emphasized the creation of a socialist, secular state based on Arab nationalism rather than Islam.

The Deobandi Movement
In India, the Deobandi movement developed as a reaction to British actions against Muslims and the influence of Sayed Ahmad Khan, who advocated the Westernization of Islam. Named after the town of Deoband, where it originated, the movement expanded under the guidance of Maulana Qasim Nanotwi on the traditional methods of Fiqh (jurisprudence), Aqidah (theology). Now the foremost movement of traditional Islamic thought in the subcontinent, it lead to the establishment of many Madrasahs throughout India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Deobandi thought is defined foremost by its adherence to the Hanafi Fiqh (and to a lesser extent by many scholars, the Shafi’i Fiqh) and by its DE-emphasis on Tasawwuf.

The ‘Deobandi’ identity was initially thought important as a way of representing traditional Islamic jurisprudence and the purity of Aqidah from the increasing number of movements in India at the time that either aimed to Westernize Islam or introduce unorthodox beliefs such as grave-worshipping. In modern and more global times, use of this differentiation is given less and less importance with the view that with most differences of opinion with other schools of thought being arguing semantics, unity among Muslims is paramount.Though Deobandi thought has traditionally and continues to focus on purity of the heart, knowledge of Islamic tenets and jurisprudence and social cohesion and harmony,it doesn’t in any way renounce resistance against occupation or oppression. Darul Uloom Deoband was in fact the strongest voice of opposition in India to British-backed movements that attempted to renounce the struggle against British occupation, with its leaders and students actively engaged in the military resistance to the occupation.

Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi was an important early twentieth-century figure in the Islamic revival in India, and then after independence from Britain, in Pakistan. Trained as a lawyer he chose the profession of journalism, and wrote about contemporary issues. Most of his writings addressed topics of Islamic law, governance, and human rights. He was an inspirational figure for modern Islamist groups in Pakistan and India, and Muslims elsewhere.

Maududi advocated the creation of an Islamic state governed by sharia, Islamic law, as interpreted by Shura councils. Maududi founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941 and remained at its head until 1972. His extremely influential book, “Towards Understanding Islam” (Risalat Diniyat in Arabic), placed Islam in modern context and enabled not only conservative ulema but liberal modernizers such as al-Faruqi, whose “Islamization of Knowledge” carried forward some of Maududi’s key principles. Chief among these was the basic compatibility of Islam with an ethical scientific view. Quoting from Maududi’s own work:

Everything in the universe is ‘Muslim’ for it obeys God by submission to His laws... For his entire life, from the embryonic stage to the body’s dissolution into dust after death, every tissue of his muscles and every limb of his body follows the course prescribed by God’s law. His very tongue which, on account of his ignorance advocates the denial of God or professes multiple deities, is in its very nature ‘Muslim’... The man who denies God is called Kafir (concealer) because he conceals by his disbelief what is inherent in his nature and embalmed in his own soul. His whole body functions in obedience to that instinct… Reality becomes estranged from him and he gropes in the dark.

Maududi was both less revolutionary and less politically/economically populist than later Islamists like Qutb.

The Muslim Brotherhood
Maududi’s political ideas were a strong influence on Sayyid Qutb in Egypt, who also believed pagan ignorance (or jahiliyya) had reasserted itself in the Muslim world and must be vanquished. Qutb was one of the key philosophers in the Muslim Brotherhood movement, the first, largest and probably most influential modern Islamic political/religious organization. The Brotherhood was established by Hasan al-Banna in Ismailiyah, Egypt in 1928 who was assassinated in 1949 in retaliation for the assassination of Egypt’s premier Mahmud Fami Naqrashi three months earlier. It was banned in 1948 and again following confrontations with Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, who jailed Qutb and thousands of others for several years, but still exists with a status sometimes described as a “semi-legal.” The Muslim Brotherhood advocated a return to Shari’ah and used the motto “The Qur’an is our constitution.” Since only divine guidance could lead humans to peace, justice, and prosperity, it followed that Muslims should eschew Western values and man-made systems of governance and live according to the divine law of the Shari’ah. This, they believed, could be done by using as a model laws followed by the early Caliphates known for their harmony, stability, prosperity and protection of Muslim lives, interests and global influence. The Brotherhood also advocated Jihad against the European colonial powers, particularly the British and the French, and their allies, who ruled over virtually all of the Muslim world during al-Banna’s lifetime.

1979 events
1979 was a pivotal year for Islamic fundamentalism, with three huge events in the Muslim world:

On January 16, 1979 the Iranian Revolution began with the forced exile of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which then brought about the world’s first modern Muslim theocracy under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The November 20, 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure at Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia, occurred at the holiest site in Islam. The hostage-taking, two week siege, and bloody ending shocked the Muslim world, as hundreds were killed in the ensuing battles and executions. The event was explained as a fundamentalist dissident revolt against the Saudi regime. The Iran hostage crisis had begun only weeks earlier, on November 4, 1979 when a mob of students stormed and seized the U.S. embassy. Immediately following the Mecca event, Iran blamed the U.S., and angry Islamic mobs then burned two more U.S. embassies to the ground, in Islamabad, Pakistan, and at Tripoli, Libya.

On December 25, 1979 the Soviet Union, attempting to suppress an Islamic rebellion, deployed the 40th Army into Afghanistan, in support of advisers it already had in place there.

General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization of Pakistan
Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization of Pakistan was a socio-political process that was implemented in the country by the ruling military regime, beginning in the late 1970s and continuing throughout the 1980s. On December 2, 1978, the then-President of Pakistan General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq officially called for an Islamic system to be imposed in its totality.

Iranian Islamic Revolution/Khomeinism
The first Islamist state (with the possible exception of Pakistan) was established not among Sunni but among the Shia of Iran. In what was nothing short of a major shock to the rest of the world, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led an Islamic Revolution of 1979 to overthrow the oil rich, rapidly Westernizing and pro-American secular monarchy ruled by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi.

Khomeini’s beliefs were similar to those of Sunni Islamists like Mawdudi and Qutb:
He thought restoration of Sharia law and imitation of the first Muslim generation was essential to Islam, that secular, Westernizing Muslims were actually agents of Western interests, and that “plundering” of Muslim lands was part of a long-term conspiracy against Islam by the Christian West.

But they also differed:
as a Shiite, Khomeini had no interest in restoring the Caliphate but wanted the leading role in government to be taken by the ulama (clergy). His concept of velayat-e-faqih (“guardianship of the jurist”), held that the leading Shia Muslim cleric in society—which Khomeini and his followers believed to be himself—should serve as head of state to protect or “guard” Islam and Sharia law from “innovation” and “anti-Islamic laws” passed “by sham parliaments.”

Initial enthusiasm in Muslim world for the revolution waned—particularly during the course of the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini’s 8-year-long, enormously bloody and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to replace neighboring Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with an Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic has also not yet achieved many of its goals: raising standards of living; ridding Iran of corruption, poverty, political oppression and Westernization, or even protecting Sharia from innovation, but it has been successful in maintaining its hold on power in Iran and creating like-minded Shia Islamist groups in Iraq (SCIRI) and Lebanon (Hezbollah,) (two Muslim countries that also have large Shiite populations). Currently, the Iranian government has enjoyed something of a resurgence in popularity amongst the predominantly Sunni “Arab street,” due to its support for Hezbollah during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vehement opposition to the United States and call for the annihilation of Israel.

Islamic Jihad movements
While Qutb’s ideas became increasingly radical during his imprisonment prior to his execution in 1966, the leadership of the Brotherhood, led by Hasan al-Hudaybi, remained moderate and interested in political negotiation and activism. Fringe or splinter movements, however, did develop and pursued a more radical direction, perhaps inspired by final writings of Qutb in the mid-1960s (e.g. “Milestones,” aka Ma’alim fi-l-Tariq). By the 1970s, the Brotherhood renounced violence as a means to their goals. The path of violence and military struggle was however taken up by such movements as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organisation, responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Unlike earlier anti-colonial movements, Egyptian Islamic Jihad focused its efforts on “apostate” leaders of Muslim states, or those leaders who held secular leanings or introduced or promoted Western/foreign ideas and practices into Islamic societies. Their views were outlined in a pamphlet written by Muhammad Abd al-Salaam Farag, in which he states: “…there is no doubt that the first battlefield for jihad is the extermination of these infidel leaders and to replace them by a complete Islamic Order…” Another Islamic Jihad group emerged in Palestine as an offshoot of the Egyptian group, and began militant activity against the state of Israel, and consistently opposed itself to the policies of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasser Arafat.

Salafism/Wahhabism
An influential strain of Muslim thought came from the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabists, who emerged in the 18th century led by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, also believed that it was necessary to live according to the strict dictates of Islam, which they interpreted to mean living in the manner that the prophet Muhammad and his followers had lived in during the seventh century in Medina. Consequently they were opposed to many religious innovations such as grave worshipping. They were also opposed to the many superstitons that were beginning to spread in Arabia such as the wearing of talismans e.t.c. When King Abdul Aziz al-Saud founded Saudi Arabia, he brought the Wahhabists into power with him. With Saud’s rise to prominence, Wahhabism spread, especially following the 1973 oil embargo and the glut of oil wealth that resulted for Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabists were proselytizers and made use of their wealth to spread their interpretation of Islam. Some Salafis are against modern political Islamism, and many have sharply criticized Islamist figures such as Sayed Qutb, Abu A`la Maududi and Usamah bin Laden. They have also been critical of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and the methods they use, such as the political party system, and terrorism even though Osama Bin Laden and many Jihadis are Salafis.

Recent history
Islamism went through its major political and philosophical developments in the early part of the twentieth century, but it was not until the 1980s that it became active in an international arena and rose to great prominence in the 1990s.

The reasons for the rise of Islamism during this period are still disputed. The ideologies that had dominated the Middle East since decolonization such as Ba’athism, Arab Socialism, and Arab Nationalism had, by 1980, failed to attain the economic and political goals expected of them. By the late 1980s the distinct Shi’ite version of political Islam had been drained of its vigour in the Iran-Iraq War. During the conflict against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, many Islamists came together to fight what they saw as an atheist invading force and were heavily funded by the United States. In Pakistan, military dictators brought into power through coups (especially Zia-ul-Haq) exploited Islamist sentiments to consolidate their power, bringing Islamist political parties into prominence and all but destroying the traditional secularism that stemmed from the secular stance of the Muslim League and its leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan.

In his book Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam Gilles Kepel argues that the central importance of Islamism in the 1990s was a product of the Gulf War. Prior to 1990 organized political Islam had been mostly associated with Saudi Arabia, a nation founded on Wahhabism and an ally of Islamist groups in Egypt and in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia, as a close ally of the West and with a strong interest in regional stability, played an important restraining role on Islamist groups.

The Shi’ite clerics in Iran had long argued that Saudi Arabia was an apostate state, a puppet of the West that espoused a corrupted Islam. During the 1980s these accusations had little effect, largely because of their Shi’ite origin. However, Kepel argues that when Saddam Hussein turned on his former allies, he embraced this rhetoric, arguing that Saudi Arabia had betrayed its duty to protect the holiest sites of Islam. Kepel states that Saddam Hussein embraced Islamic rhetoric and trappings and tried to draw leading scholars and activists to his camp. Some of the main Islamist groups remained loyal to Saudi Arabia, but a number such as parts of the Muslim Brotherhood and Afghani mujahideen aligned themselves with Saddam. Far more groups declared themselves neutral in the struggle.

According to Kepel the rapid defeat of Saddam did not end this rift. As Saddam had likely predicted Saudi Arabia had found itself in a severe dilemma, the only way to counter the Iraqi threat was to seek help from the west, which would immediately confirm the Iraqi allegations of Saudi Arabia being a friend to the west. To ensure the regime’s survival Saudi Arabia accepted a massive western presence in the country and de facto cooperation with Israel causing great offence to many in Islamist circles.

After the war Saudi Arabia launched a two-pronged strategy to restore its security and leadership in Islamist circles. Those Islamist groups who refused to return under the Saudi umbrella were persecuted and any Islamists who had criticized Saudi regime were arrested or forced into exile, with most going to London. At the same time Saudi oil money began to flow freely to those Islamist groups who continued to work with the kingdom. Islamist madrassas around the world saw their funding greatly increased. More covertly Saudi money began to fund more violent Islamist groups in areas such as Bosnia and the former Soviet Union. Saudi Arabia’s western allies mostly looked the other way seeing the survival of their crucial ally as more important than the problem of more money and resources flowing to Islamist groups.

In the 1990s Islamist conflicts erupted around the world in areas such as Algeria, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, and Nigeria. In 1995 a series of terrorist attacks were launched against France. The most important development was the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1996. In the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan a number of anti-Saudi and anti-Western Islamist groups found refuge. Significantly, Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi influenced by Wahhabism and the writings of Sayed Qutb, joined forces with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad under Ayman al-Zawahiri to form what is now called al-Qaeda.

A considerable effort has been made to fight Western targets, especially the United States. The United States in particular was made a subject of Islamist fire because of its support for Israel, its presence on Saudi Arabian soil, what Islamists regard as its aggression against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its support of the regimes Islamists oppose. In addition some Islamists have concentrated their activity against Israel, and nearly all Islamists view Israel with hostility. Osama bin Laden, at least, believes that this is of necessity due to historical conflict between Muslims and Jews, and considers there to be a Jewish/American alliance against Islam.

There is some debate as to how influential Islamist movements remain. Some scholars assert that Islamism is a fringe movement that is dying, following the clear failures of Islamist regimes like the regime in Sudan, the Wahhabist Saudi regime and the Deobandi Taliban to improve the lot of Muslims. However, others (e.g. Ahmed Rashid) feel that the Islamists still command considerable support and cite the fact that Islamists in Pakistan and Egypt regularly poll 10 to 30 percent in electoral polls despite the fact they are prosecuted and that many believe the polls are rigged against them.

An alternative direction has been taken by many Islamists in Turkey, where the Islamist movement split into reformist and traditionalist wings in 2001. The reformists formed the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (Ak Party), which gained an overall majority in the Turkish parliament in 2002, and has sought to balance Islamic values with the requirements of a secular and democratic political system. Some in the Justice and Development Party see the Christian Democrat parties of Western Europe as a model, which has led some to question whether it is a genuinely Islamist movement.

Al-Qaeda members, from Bin Laden’s group, hijacked airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11.

Intellectual sources of Islamism
The foundation of modern Islamist thought is highly debated. Islamists, where they can be clearly identified, have many different positions. These perspectives can be defined in terms of their selection of sources from Islamic history and thought. Typically, an Islamist perspective will criticize certain periods of history and intellectualism, while expounding upon others. However, many Islamists combine two or more of these perspectives and formulate their own, unique reading of history and Islam.

Islamic History
Some perspectives, often considered radical, cite the source of their message as the early Islamic community founded by the Prophet. Proponents of this view hold only the central texts of Islam as important and tend to criticise centuries of scholarship and commentary. Thus, they identify themselves in opposition to a large body of history and theory (including the Fitna and Ottoman periods).

Other groups may seek a return to classical Islam, where religion played a dominant role in civil society and state affairs. These groups tend to cite sources and periods of history where Islam was the established social system. While this is historically typified in the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire, Islamists who proport this view may speak of doing away with an empire and reforming the Caliphate according to new principles of governance (such as democracy).

Common among virtually all Islamists is their reliance on contemporary, authors (such as Qutb), to articulate their views and direct their activities.

Islamism and modern political theory
The development of modern Islamism was also both a reaction to and influenced by the other ideologies of the modern world. Modern Islamism began in the colonial period, and it was overtly anti-imperialist. It was also opposed to the local elites who wanted independence, but who also supported adopting western liberal ideals. Writers like the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and the Pakistani Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi saw western style individualism as counter to centuries of tradition, and also as inevitably leading to a debauched and licentious society.

In the years after independence the most important ideological current in the Muslim world was socialism and communism. This influenced Islamism in two ways. Much Islamist thought and writing during this era was directly addressed to countering Marxism. For instance Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr’s main works are detailed critiques of Marxism, paying much less attention to capitalism and liberalism. Another option was to try and integrate socialism and Islamism. This was most notably done by Ali Shariati. At several points Islamist and leftist groups found common cause, such as during the early stages of the Iranian Revolution, and several organizations, such as the Islamic Socialist Front in Syria, were both overtly Marxist and overtly Islamist. While most Islamists reject Marxism, the influence of socialist ideologies during the formative period of modern Islamism means that Islamist works continue to be infused with Marxist language and concepts. For instance Qutb’s view of an elite vanguard to lead an Islamic revolution is borrowed directly from Lenin’s Vanguard of the Proletariat.

During the 1930s a number of fascistic groups arose in the Middle East. Some such as the SSNP and the Kataeb Party were mostly supported by Christians and other minority groups, others like the Egyptian Misr al-Fatat were mainly Sunni Arab. The fascist method of seizing power did inspire Islamist Hassan al-Banna, who founded organizations directly based on the Brownshirts and Blackshirts to try and seize power. This method proved ineffective, and since then most Islamists have used the cell based structure commonly used by leftist groups. Ideologically there is little evidence that fascism had much influence on the development of Islamism.

Wikipedia: Bush Doctrine

Bush Doctrine
The Bush Doctrine is a set of foreign policy guidelines first unveiled by President George W. Bush in his commencement speech to the graduating class of West Point given on June 1, 2002. The policies, taken together, outlined a broad new phase in US policy that would place greater emphasis on military pre-emption, military superiority (“strength beyond challenge”), unilateral action, and a commitment to “extending democracy, liberty, and security to all regions”. The policy was formalized in a document titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published on September 20, 2002. The Bush Doctrine is a marked departure from the policies of deterrence and containment that generally characterized American foreign policy during the Cold War and the decade between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11.

The Bush Doctrine provided the policy framework for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Initial formulation: No distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them
The term “Bush Doctrine” initially referred to the policy formulation stated by President Bush immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks that the U.S. would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”. The immediate application of this policy was the invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001. Although the Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan offered to hand over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden if they were shown proof that he was responsible for September 11 attacks and also offered to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan where he would be tried under Islamic law, their refusal to extradite him to the U.S. with no preconditions was considered justification for invasion. This policy implies that any nation that does not take a pro-active stance against terrorism would be seen as supporting it. On September 20, 2001, in a televised address to a joint session of Congress, Bush summed up this policy with the words, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Broader formulation: a muscular foreign policy
Unlike the initial “harboring terrorist” formulation of September 2001, which clarified rather than altered long-standing U.S. policy, the new statements marked a major shift in U.S. foreign policy. The new policy was fully delineated in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States issued on September 20, 2002 [1]. It included these elements:

Preemption
*A policy of preventive war, should the US or its allies be threatened by terrorists or by rogue states that are engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction

*The right of self-defense should be extended in order to authorize pre-emptive attacks against potential aggressors cutting them off before they are able to launch strikes against the US.

Unilateralism
*The duty of the US to pursue unilateral military action when acceptable multilateral solutions cannot be found.

Strength Beyond Challenge
*The policy that “United States has, and intends to keep, military strength beyond challenge”, indicating the US intends to take actions as necessary to continue its status as the world’s sole military superpower. This resembles a British Empire policy before World War I that their navy must be larger than the world’s next two largest navies put together.

Extending Democracy, Liberty, and Security to All Regions
*A policy of actively promoting democracy and freedom in all regions of the world. Bush declared at West Point, “America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for ourselves -- safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life.”

Roots of the Bush Doctrine
Paul Wolfowitz and the Defense Planning Guidance text of 1992
Tracing the history of the doctrine back through the Department of Defense it appears the first full explication of the doctrine was the initial “final draft” version of the internal Defense Planning Guidance guidelines written by Paul Wolfowitz, then in the role of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in 1992. When the guidelines, commonly termed the Wolfowitz Doctrine, were leaked to the press and a controversy arose, the George H. W. Bush White House ordered it re-written. The revised version did not mention pre-emption or unilateralism.

The debate within the Bush administration
In the months following September 11th two distinct schools of thought arose in the Bush Administration regarding the critical policy question of how to handle potentially dangerous countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea (“Axis of Evil” states). Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as US Department of State specialists, argued for what was essentially the continuation of existing US foreign policy. These policies, developed during the long years of the Cold War, sought to establish a multilateral consensus for action (which would likely take the form of increasingly harsh sanctions against the problem states, summarized as the policy of containment). The opposing view, argued by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a number of influential Department of Defense policy makers such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, held that direct and unilateral action was both possible and justified and that America should embrace the opportunities for democracy and security offered by its position as sole remaining superpower.
President Bush ultimately sided with the Department of Defense camp (also described as the neoconservatives), and their recommendations form the basis for the Bush Doctrine.

Comparison with previous US foreign policy
A doctrine permitting preventive war can be seen as a change from the practice of limiting preemptive strikes to the destruction of specific targets as a means of self-defense, and from focusing on the doctrine of deterrence (for instance, the Cold War policy of mutually assured destruction).

Preemptive military action to destroy specific targets, short of war, has long been a part of American practice. The Bush Administration, in its September 2002 National Security Strategy[2] paper wrote, “The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security.” The unilateral US blockade and boarding of Cuban vessels during the Cuban Missile Crisis[3] was a limited use of pre-emptive military force, as were the attack on Somali leader Mohamed Farah Aidid’s meeting-place in Mogadishu in 1993; four days of US bombing of Iraqi weapons facilities in 1998; and the cruise-missile destruction of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in August 1998, which was at that time thought to be in the control or service of Osama bin Laden. Many argue that these preemptive ideas stem back to President John Quincy Adams, who had General Andrew Jackson lead a strike on (and kill) many natives, escaped slaves, and two British subjects in the Florida territory.

While previous preemptive actions have been justified on the basis that the threat was imminent, the Bush Administration’s view, as stated in the strategy paper[4] is that “military preemption” is legitimate when the threat is “emerging” or “sufficient,” “even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.”

Supporters of the Bush Doctrine argue that the previous policy of deterrence assumes that a potential enemy is a coherent and rational state that would not launch an attack that would likely result in its own destruction, the core of the concept of mutually assured destruction, which helped keep an uneasy peace between the US and the Soviet Union for more than four decades after World War II. The Bush Doctrine takes the view that the potential results of the use of a weapon of mass destruction are so grave that preemption is warranted, especially when such weapons could be acquired by hostile armed groups “whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose most potent protection is statelessness”.

The Bush Doctrine is seen by advocates as an appropriate response to revised concepts of asymmetric warfare, in which a militarily inferior power or an insurgent movement claims the right to use normally prohibited tactics, such as attacks on civilian targets and other actions prohibited by the laws of war, while assuming that the superior power will still be bound by them.
With respect to the 2003 War in Iraq, a pre-emptive strike was launched, leading to argument over whether the strike was more of a preventive war than a pre-emptive attack.

Implications of the UN Charter for the Bush Doctrine
Critics of the Bush doctrine argue that the United Nations Charter has been ratified by the United States, thereby making it a treaty binding of the US government as domestic law. Therefore, they say, the doctrine is in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter, which states, “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.”

Supporters of the doctrine quote Article 1 of the UN Charter: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace.”

Critics note the use of the term “collective measures” invalidates this defense of the doctrine. Further, they claim, the United Nations is not a world government, the US is a sovereign nation with a Constitution that specifies the war powers of both the President and the Congress and is the supreme law of the US. As Article 2 of the UN Charter states: “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”

With particular regard to the Iraq War, both supporters and critics find further support in Article 41 and 42 of the UN Charter, which lay out the gradual approach to “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.”

Article 42 states that should the peaceful sanctions provided for by Article 41 be “inadequate or proven to be inadequate”, the Security Council may authorize the use of military force. Critics contend that, since no Security Council Resolution authorized the use of force against Iraq, article 42 cannot be used to give legitimacy to the war. Critics further claim that, under Article 51, the exercise of the right of self-defense is the only situation in which Member States have the right to engage in war without a mandate from the Security Council. Only in that specific case is unilateral action accepted by the Charter, and even in that situation the Member State has the duty to report the actions it has taken to the Security Council. This is one of the chief arguments of the critics of the Bush Government against the legality of a “pre-emptive war”.

However, supporters claim that no new Security Council resolution was needed, and that the war was legal under the Security Council resolutions passed during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. They claim that the Saddam Hussein regime violated not only the conditions of the ceasefire that put an end to that conflict, but also several resolutions passed by the Security Council in the postwar period, and that the use of force became automatically justified under the original resolution that allowed for the use of force.

Wikipedia: Wolfowitz Doctrine

The below quote comes from Wikipedia entry Wolfowitz Doctrine from December 2006

Wolfowitz Doctrine is a pseudo-name given to the initial version of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-99 fiscal years (dated Feb 18, 1992) authored by U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Scooter Libby.

Not intended for public release, it was leaked to The New York Times on March 7th, 1992 and sparked a public controversy about U.S. foreign and defense policy. The document was widely criticized as imperialist as the document outlined a policy of unilateralism and pre-emptive military action to suppress potential threats from rogue nations and prevent any other nation from rising to superpower status.

Such was the outcry that the document was hastily re-written under the close supervision of U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell before being officially released on April 16. Although the initial release was denounced at the time it was leaked many of its tenets have since re-emerged in the Bush Doctrine.

Doctrine Articles
Superpower Status
The doctrine announces the U.S’s status as the world’s only remaining superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War and proclaims its main objective to be retaining that status.

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power.”

This was substantially re-written in the April 16 release.

“Our most fundamental goal is to deter or defeat attack from whatever source... The second goal is to strengthen and extend the system of defense arrangements that binds democratic and like-minded nations together in common defense against aggression, build habits of cooperation, avoid the renationalization of security policies, and provide security at lower costs and with lower risks for all. Our preference for a collective response to preclude threats or, if necessary, to deal with them is a key feature of our regional defense strategy. The third goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the re-emergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies.”

U.S. Primacy
The doctrine establishes the U.S’s leadership role within the new world order.

“The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

This was substantially re-written in the April 16 release.

“One of the primary tasks we face today in shaping the future is carrying long standing alliances into the new era, and turning old enmities into new cooperative relationships. If we and other leading democracies continue to build a democratic security community, a much safer world is likely to emerge. If we act separately, many other problems could result.”

Unilateralism
The doctrine downplays the value of international coalitions.

“Like the coalition that opposed Iraqi aggression, we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished. Nevertheless, the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S. will be an important stabilizing factor.”

This was re-written with a change in emphasis in the April 16 release.

“Certain situations like the crisis leading to the Gulf War are likely to engender ad hoc coalitions. We should plan to maximize the value of such coalitions. This may include specialized roles for our forces as well as developing cooperative practices with others.”

Pre-emptive Intervention
The doctrine stated the U.S’s right to intervene when and where it believed necessary.

While the U.S. cannot become the world’s policeman, by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.

This was softened slighlty in the April 16 release.

“While the United States cannot become the world’s policeman and assume responsibility for solving every international security problem, neither can we allow our critical interests to depend solely on international mechanisms that can be blocked by countries whose interests may be very different than our own. Where our allies interests are directly affected, we must expect them to take an appropriate share of the responsibility, and in some cases play the leading role; but we maintain the capabilities for addressing selectively those security problems that threaten our own interests.”

Russian Threat
The doctrine highlighted the possible threat posed by a resurgent Russia.

“We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others....We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States.”

This was removed from the April 16 release in favour of a more diplomatic approach.

“The U.S. has a significant stake in promoting democratic consolidation and peaceful relations between Russia, Ukraine and the other republics of the former Soviet Union.”

Oil
The doctrine clarified the strategic value of the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

“In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil.”

The April 16 release was much more circumspect and reaffirmed U.S. commitments to Israel.

“In the Middle East and Persian Gulf, we seek to foster regional stability, deter aggression against our friends and interests in the region, protect U.S. nationals and property, and safeguard our access to international air and seaways and to the region’s oil. The United States is committed to the security of Israel and to maintaining the qualitative edge that is critical to Israel’s security. Israel’s confidence in its security and U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation contribute to the stability of the entire region, as demonstrated once again during the Persian Gulf War. At the same time, our assistance to our Arab friends to defend themselves against aggression also strengthens security throughout the region, including for Israel.”

Wikipedia: Neoconservatism

Neoconservative: Definition and views
Overview of Neoconservative views
Historically, neoconservatives supported a militant anticommunism, tolerated more social welfare spending than was sometimes acceptable to libertarians and mainstream conservatives, supported civil equality for blacks and other minorities, and sympathized with a non-traditional foreign policy agenda that was less deferential to traditional conceptions of diplomacy and international law and less inclined to compromise principles, even if that meant unilateral action.

There is a widespread impression that domestic policy does not define neoconservatism—that it is a movement founded on, and perpetuated by an aggressive approach to foreign policy, free trade, opposition to communism during the Cold War, support for Israel and Taiwan and opposition to Middle Eastern and other states that are perceived to support terrorism.

The movement began to focus on such foreign issues in the mid-1970s. However it first crystallized in the late 1960s as an effort to combat the radical cultural changes taking place within the United States. Irving Kristol wrote: “If there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the counterculture.” Norman Podhoretz agreed: “Revulsion against the counterculture accounted for more converts to neoconservativism than any other single factor.”

Ira Chernus, a professor at the University of Colorado, argues that the deepest root of the neoconservative movement is its fear that the counterculture would undermine the authority of traditional values and moral norms. Because neoconservatives believe that human nature is innately selfish, they believe that a society with no commonly accepted values based on religion or ancient tradition will end up in a war of all against all. They also believe that the most important social value is strength, especially the strength to control natural impulses. The only alternative, they assume, is weakness that will let impulses run riot and lead to social chaos.

According to Peter Steinfels, a historian of the movement, the neoconservatives’ “emphasis on foreign affairs emerged after the New Left and the counterculture had dissolved as convincing foils for neoconservatism . . . The essential source of their anxiety is not military or geopolitical or to be found overseas at all; it is domestic and cultural and ideological.” Neoconservative foreign policy parallels their domestic policy. They insist that the U.S. military must be strong enough to control the world, or else the world will descend into chaos.

Believing that America should “export democracy,” that is, spread its ideals of government, economics, and culture abroad, they grew to reject U.S. reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish these objectives. Compared to other U.S. conservatives, neoconservatives may be characterized by an idealist stance on foreign policy, a lesser social conservatism, and a much weaker dedication to a policy of minimal government, and, in the past, a greater acceptance of the welfare state, though none of these qualities are necessarily requisite.

Aggressive support for democracies and nation building is founded on a belief that, over the long term, it will reduce the extremism that is a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism. Neoconservatives, along with many other political theorists, have argued that democratic regimes are less likely to instigate a war than a country with an authoritarian form of government. Further, they argue that the lack of freedoms, lack of economic opportunities, and the lack of secular general education in authoritarian regimes promotes radicalism and extremism. Consequently, neoconservatives advocate the spread of democracy to regions of the world where it currently does not prevail, most notably the Arab nations of the Middle East, communist China, North Korea and Iran.

Neoconservatives also have a very strong belief in the ability of the United States to install democracy after a conflict - comparisons with denazification in Germany and installing a democratic government in Japan starting in 1945 are often made - and they have a principled belief in defending democracies against aggression. This belief has guided U.S. policy in Iraq after the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime, where the U.S. insisted on organizing elections as soon as practical.

Distinctions from other conservatives
Most people currently described as “neoconservatives” are members of the Republican Party, but while neoconservatives have generally been in electoral alignment with other conservatives, have served in the same Presidential Administrations, and have often ignored intra-conservative ideological differences in alliance against those to their left, there are notable differences between neoconservative and traditional or “paleoconservative” views. In particular, neoconservatives disagree with the nativist, protectionist, and isolationist strain of American conservatism once exemplified by the ex-Republican “paleoconservative” Pat Buchanan, and the traditional “pragmatic” approach to foreign policy often associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, which emphasized pragmatic accommodation with dictators; peace through negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control; détente and containment — rather than rollback — of the Soviet Union; and the initiation of the process that led to ties between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States.

Neoconservative writers have frequently expressed admiration for the “big stick” interventionist foreign policy of Theodore Roosevelt. In foreign policy, critics argue that neoconservatives tend to view the world in 1939 terms [citation needed], comparing the threat from adversaries as diverse as the Soviet Union, Osama bin Laden (and, more broadly, Islamic extremism, dubbed Islamofascism by many neoconservatives), and China to the threat then-posed by Nazi Germany and Japan, while American leaders “stand in” for Winston Churchill. In this analogy, leftists and others who oppose them are cast either as Neville Chamberlain-style appeasers or as an Anti-American fifth column. For example, Donald and Frederick Kagan’s book While America Sleeps argues, at book length, an analogy between the post-cold war United States and Britain’s post-World War I reduction in its military and avoidance of confrontation with other major powers.

As compared with traditional conservatism and libertarianism, which sometimes exhibit an isolationist strain, neoconservatism is characterized by an increased emphasis on defense capability, a willingness to challenge regimes deemed hostile to the values and interests of the United States, pressing for free-market policies abroad, and promoting democracy and freedom. Neoconservatives are strong believers in democratic peace theory.

Usage and general views
Neoconservatism is a political movement, mainly in the United States, which is generally held to have emerged in the 1960s, coalesced in the 1970s, and has had a significant presence in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

The prefix neo- refers to two ways in which neoconservatism was new. First, many of the movement’s founders, originally liberals, Democrats or from socialist backgrounds, were new to conservatism. Also, neoconservatism was a comparatively recent strain of conservative socio-political thought. It derived from a variety of intellectual roots in the decades following World War II, including literary criticism and the social sciences.

Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and others described themselves as neoconservatives during the Cold War. Today, however, the movement’s critics use the term more often than supporters [citation needed]. In fact, some people described as “neocons” today say that neoconservatism no longer exists as an identifiable movement.

Many associate neoconservatism with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard, along with the foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Neoconservative journalists, pundits, policy analysts, and politicians, often dubbed “neocons” by supporters and critics alike, have been credited with (or blamed for) their influence on U.S. foreign policy, especially under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
The original neoconservatives were a band of liberal intellectuals who rebelled against the Democratic Party’s leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s. At first the neoconservatives clustered around Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat, but then they aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront Soviet expansionism. The neoconservatives, in the famous formulation of one of their leaders, Irving Kristol, were “liberals mugged by reality.”

The meaning of the term has evolved over time. James Bryce offered it as a neologism in his Modern Democracies (1921). In “The Future of Democratic Values” in Partisan Review, July-August 1943, Dwight MacDonald complained of “the neo-conservatives of our time [who] reject the propositions on materialism, Human Nature, and Progress.” He cited as an example Jacques Barzun, who was “attempting to combine progressive values and conservative concepts.”
In the early 1970s, Socialist Michael Harrington prominently used the term in a manner similar to the modern meaning. He characterized neoconservatives as former leftists -- whom he derided as “socialists for Nixon” -- who had moved significantly to the right. These people tended to remain supporters of social democracy, but distinguished themselves by allying with the Nixon administration over foreign policy, especially by their support for the Vietnam War and opposition to the Soviet Union. They still supported the “welfare state,” but not necessarily in its contemporary form.

Critics take issue with neoconservatives’ support for aggressive foreign policy, especially what they characterize as unilateralism and lack of concern with international consensus through organizations such as the United Nations. Neoconservatives respond by describing their shared view as a belief that national security is best attained by promoting freedom and democracy abroad through the support of pro-democracy movements, foreign aid and in certain cases military intervention. This is a departure from the traditional conservative tendency to support friendly regimes in matters of trade and anti-communism even at the expense of undermining existing democratic systems. Author Paul Berman in his book Terror and Liberalism describes it as, “Freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for freedom for others.”
Irving Kristol remarked that a neoconservative is a “liberal mugged by reality,” one who became more conservative after seeing the results of liberal policies. The term “neoconservative” also refers more often to institutions like the Project for the New American Century (PNAC),Commentary and The Weekly Standard than to the Heritage Foundation, Policy Review or National Review.

Some observers name political philosopher Leo Strauss as a major intellectual antecedent of neoconservativism. For example, some of his ideas entered the political mainstream through his pupil Allan Bloom’s bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. Although Strauss rarely stated positions on foreign policy issues, some argue that he influenced neoconservative strategy, including attitudes some U.S. officials demonstrate towards international law in situations where terrorism is alleged.

Comment: Bush is Case Study "How Not To Be President"

Three comments from todays Sunday Washington Post

Move Over, Hoover
By Douglas Brinkley
Sunday, December 3, 2006; B01

Shortly after Thanksgiving I had dinner in California with Ronald Reagan’s best biographer, Lou Cannon. Like many historians these days, we discussed whether George W. Bush is, conceivably, the worst U.S. president ever. Cannon bristled at the idea.

Bush has two more years to leave his mark, he argued. What if there is a news flash that U.S. Special Forces have killed Osama bin Laden or that North Korea has renounced its nuclear program? What if a decade from now Iraq is a democracy and a statue of Bush is erected on Firdaus Square where that famously toppled one of Saddam Hussein once stood?

There is wisdom in Cannon’s prudence. Clearly it’s dangerous for historians to wield the “worst president” label like a scalp-hungry tomahawk simply because they object to Bush’s record. But we live in speedy times and, the truth is, after six years in power and barring a couple of miracles, it’s safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder. The reason: Iraq.

Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, are political sailors -- they tack with the wind, reaching difficult policy objectives through bipartisan maneuvering and pulse-taking. Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example, was deemed a “chameleon on plaid,” changing colors regularly to control the zeitgeist of the moment. Other presidents are submariners, refusing to zigzag in rough waters, preferring to go from Point A to Point B with directional certitude. Harry S. Truman and Reagan are exemplars of this modus operandi, and they are the two presidents Bush has tried to emulate.

The problem for Bush is that certitude is only a virtue if the policy enacted is proven correct. Most Americans applaud Truman’s dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they achieved the desired effect: Japan surrendered. Reagan’s anti-communist zeal -- including increased defense budgets and Star Wars -- is only now perceived as positive because the Soviet Union started to unravel on his watch.

Nobody has accused Bush of flinching. After 9/11, he decided to circumvent the United Nations and declare war on Iraq. The principal pretext was that Baghdad supposedly was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. From the get-go, the Iraq war was a matter of choice. Call it Mr. Bush’s War. Like a high-stakes poker player pushing in all his chips on one hand, he bet the credibility of the United States on the notion that Sunnis and Shiites wanted democracy, just like the Poles and the Czechs during the Cold War.

Bush wasn’t operating in a historical bubble. Other presidents had gambled on wars of choice and won. James K. Polk, for example, begged Gen. Zachary Taylor to start a border war with Mexico along the Rio Grande. An ardent expansionist, he wanted to annex land in what are now Arizona, California and New Mexico. Nearly half of the American population in 1846 screamed foul, including Henry David Thoreau, who refused to pay taxes for an unjust war. Yet in short order, Polk achieved his land-grab objective with a string of stunning military successes. Mr. Polk’s War was a success, even if the pretext was immoral. On virtually every presidential rating poll, Polk is deemed a “near great” president.

Half a century later, William McKinley also launched a war of choice based on the bogus notion that the USS Maine, anchored in Cuba, had been sabotaged by Spain. The Maine, in truth, was crippled by a boiler explosion. An imperialist, McKinley used the Maine as a pretext to fight Spain in the Caribbean and in the Philippines. A group of anti-imperialists led by Mark Twain and William James, among others, vehemently objected, rightfully accusing McKinley of warmongering. But McKinley had the last word in what his secretary of state, John Hay, deemed “a splendid little war.” In just six months, McKinley had achieved his objectives. History chalks up Mr. McKinley’s War as a U.S. win, and he also polls favorably as a “near great” president.

Mr. Bush’s War, by contrast, has not gone well. When you don’t achieve a stealth-like victory in a war of choice, then you’re seen as being stuck in a quagmire. Already the United States has fought longer in the Iraq war than in World War II. As the death toll continues to rise, more and more Americans are objecting. The pending Democratic takeover of Congress is only one manifestation of the spiraling disapproval of Bush.

At first, you’d want to compare Bush’s Iraq predicament to that of Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. But LBJ had major domestic accomplishments to boast about when leaving the White House, such as the Civil Rights Act and Medicare/Medicaid. Bush has virtually none. Look at how he dealt with the biggest post-9/11 domestic crisis of his tenure. He didn’t rush to help the Gulf region after Hurricane Katrina because the country was overextended in Iraq and had a massive budget deficit. Texas conservatives always say that LBJ’s biggest mistake was thinking that he could fund both the Great Society and Vietnam. They believe he had to choose one or the other. They call Johnson fiscally irresponsible. Bush learned this lesson: He chose Iraq over New Orleans.

So Bush’s legacy hinges on Iraq, which is an unmitigated disaster. Instead of being forgiven, like Polk and McKinley, for his phony pretext for war (WMD and al-Qaeda operatives in Baghdad), he stands to be lambasted by future scholars. What once were his two best sound bites -- “Wanted dead or alive” and “Mission accomplished” -- will be used like billy clubs to shatter his legacy every time it gets a revisionist lift. The left will keep battering him for warmongering while the right will remember its outrage that he didn’t send enough battalions to Iraq.

There isn’t much that Bush can do now to salvage his reputation. His presidential library will someday be built around two accomplishments: that after 9/11, the U.S. homeland wasn’t again attacked by terrorists (knock on wood) and that he won two presidential elections, allowing him to appoint conservatives to key judicial posts. I also believe that he is an honest man and that his administration has been largely void of widespread corruption. This will help him from being portrayed as a true villain.

This last point is crucial. Though Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock, he won’t have the zero-integrity factors that have kept Nixon and Harding at the bottom in the presidential sweepstakes. Oddly, the president whom Bush most reminds me of is Herbert Hoover, whose name is synonymous with failure to respond to the Great Depression. When the stock market collapsed, Hoover, for ideological reasons, did too little. When 9/11 happened, Bush did too much, attacking the wrong country at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president.

He’s Only Fifth Worst
By Michael Lind
Sunday, December 3, 2006; B05

It’s unfair to claim that George W. Bush is the worst president of all time. He’s merely the fifth worst. In the White House Hall of Shame, Bush comes behind four other Oval Officers whose policies were even more disastrous: James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and James Madison.

What makes a president horribly, immortally bad? Poor luck is not enough. Some of the greatest presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, have inherited crises and risen to the occasion. The damage must be largely self-inflicted. And there’s another test: The damage to the nation must be substantial. Minor blunders and petty crimes do not land a president in the rogues’ gallery.

Doing nothing can be even worse than doing something wrong. Take the worst president of all time, Buchanan. In office when Lincoln’s election in 1860 triggered the secession of one Southern state after another, Buchanan sat by as the country crumbled. In his December 1860 message to Congress, three months before Lincoln was inaugurated, he declared that the states had no right to secede, but that the federal government had no right to stop them. By the time he left office, seven states had left the Union, and the Confederates had looted the arsenals in the South. If Buchanan had exercised his powers as commander in chief, the rebels might have been stopped at far less than the eventual cost of the Civil War -- more than half a million American dead and the ruin of the South for generations. (After he left the White House, Buchanan explained that he did not stop secession for fear that hostile blacks would overrun the North.)

The Civil War era also gave us the second-worst president: Johnson, Lincoln’s vice president and successor, a Tennessean who vetoed civil rights acts and blocked the 14th Amendment because he didn’t like blacks, of whom he declared, “It is vain to deny that they are an inferior race -- very far inferior to the European variety.” Johnson’s policies led to his impeachment and forced the Republicans in Congress to create a quasi-parliamentary system marginalizing the president. While Lincoln had his own racial prejudices, he was a model of enlightenment next to Johnson and Buchanan.

The third-worst president is Nixon, a criminal in the White House who is still the only commander in chief ever to resign. Many presidents have abused their power, and the “imperial presidency” existed long before Nixon. But he was the only president to run a criminal gang out of the Oval Office engaging in spying and burglary while he sought to corrupt the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA. (By contrast, Bush’s misguided authorization of torture, secret CIA prisons and illegal eavesdropping were at least directed at suspected terrorists, not at his personal and political opponents.)

The damage Nixon inflicted might have endured had he established the principle that the president is above the law. As he told David Frost in a famous 1977 television interview, “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Because of the exposure of Nixon’s criminality during Watergate, we still live in a constitutional republic rather than a banana republic with an elective dictatorship.

Refusing to enforce the law while the country disintegrates, trying to re-enslave emancipated blacks, and doubling as chief magistrate and gangster -- what could rival these presidential misdeeds? Well, how about unnecessary and catastrophic wars?

To qualify a president for the Worst of All Time list, a war must be catastrophic as well as unnecessary. Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama and Bill Clinton’s invasion of Haiti don’t cut it -- they were unnecessary, but minor. And presidents can be forgiven costly wars that were necessary or hard to avoid, such as Harry S. Truman’s stalemated war in Korea and Lyndon B. Johnson’s failed war in Vietnam, each of which was a Cold War battle more than a separate conflict. After 1950, U.S. strategy required Washington to go to war to prevent Soviet bloc proxies from taking over South Korea, Indochina and Taiwan -- the amazing thing is that the Cold War ended without a battle for Taiwan, too. Future historians are likely to be as kind to LBJ as they have been to Truman.

The two big, unjustified wars on my list are the War of 1812 and the current conflict in Iraq, and the first was far worse than the second. Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” was a great patriot, a brilliant intellectual -- and an absolutely abysmal president. In his defense, the world situation during the Napoleonic Wars was grim. The United States was a minor neutral nation that was frequently harassed by both of the warring empires, Britain and France. But cold geopolitics should have led Washington to prefer a British victory, which would have preserved a balance of power in Europe, to a French victory that would have left France an unchecked superpower. Instead, eager to conquer Spanish Florida and seize British Canada, Madison sided with the more dangerous power against the less dangerous. It is as though, after Pearl Harbor, FDR had joined the Axis and declared war on Britain, France and the Soviet Union.

It might have been worse. In 1812, Madison wrote Thomas Jefferson to ask what the former president thought of waging war simultaneously against Britain and France. Alarmed, Jefferson replied that this was “a solecism worthy of Don Quixote.” Instead, the United States fought only the British, who torched Washington, D.C., while Madison and first lady Dolley fled to Virginia. Gen. Andrew Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans (waged two weeks after the United States and Britain, unknown to Jackson, had signed a peace treaty) helped Americans pretend that the War of 1812 was something other than a total wipe-out.

By contrast, George W. Bush has inadvertently destroyed only Baghdad, not Washington, and the costs of the Iraq war in blood and treasure are far less than those of Korea and Vietnam. Yet he will be remembered for the Iraq conflict for generations, long after tax-cut-driven deficits, No Child Left Behind and comprehensive immigration reform are forgotten. The fact that Bush followed the invasion of Afghanistan, which had sheltered al-Qaeda, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, will puzzle historians for centuries. It is as though, after Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, FDR had asked Congress to declare war on Argentina.

Why did Bush do it? Did he really believe that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Was it about oil? Israel? Revenge for Hussein’s alleged attempt on Bush’s father’s life? The war will join the sinking of the USS Maine and the grassy knoll among the topics to exercise conspiracy theorists for generations, and the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib will join images of the napalmed Vietnamese girl and executed Filipino rebels in the gallery of U.S. atrocities.

Like all presidents, George W. Bush wants to be remembered. He will get his wish -- as the fifth-worst president in U.S. history.

lind@newamerica.net

Michael Lind is the Whitehead senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

He’s The Worst Ever
By Eric Foner
Sunday, December 3, 2006; B01

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from “great” to “failure,” such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.

Changes in presidential rankings reflect shifts in how we view history. When the first poll was taken, the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War was regarded as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote. As a result, President Andrew Johnson, a fervent white supremacist who opposed efforts to extend basic rights to former slaves, was rated “near great.” Today, by contrast, scholars consider Reconstruction a flawed but noble attempt to build an interracial democracy from the ashes of slavery -- and Johnson a flat failure.

More often, however, the rankings display a remarkable year-to-year uniformity. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt always figure in the “great” category. Most presidents are ranked “average” or, to put it less charitably, mediocre. Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon occupy the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them. A look at history, as well as Bush’s policies, explains why.

At a time of national crisis, Pierce and Buchanan, who served in the eight years preceding the Civil War, and Johnson, who followed it, were simply not up to the job. Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues). Even after being repudiated in the midterm elections of 1854, 1858 and 1866, respectively, they ignored major currents of public opinion and clung to flawed policies. Bush’s presidency certainly brings theirs to mind.

Harding and Coolidge are best remembered for the corruption of their years in office (1921-23 and 1923-29, respectively) and for channeling money and favors to big business. They slashed income and corporate taxes and supported employers’ campaigns to eliminate unions. Members of their administrations received kickbacks and bribes from lobbyists and businessmen. “Never before, here or anywhere else,” declared the Wall Street Journal, “has a government been so completely fused with business.” The Journal could hardly have anticipated the even worse cronyism, corruption and pro-business bias of the Bush administration.

Despite some notable accomplishments in domestic and foreign policy, Nixon is mostly associated today with disdain for the Constitution and abuse of presidential power. Obsessed with secrecy and media leaks, he viewed every critic as a threat to national security and illegally spied on U.S. citizens. Nixon considered himself above the law.

Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court’s unprecedented rebukes of Bush’s policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.

One other president bears comparison to Bush: James K. Polk. Some historians admire him, in part because he made their job easier by keeping a detailed diary during his administration, which spanned the years of the Mexican-American War. But Polk should be remembered primarily for launching that unprovoked attack on Mexico and seizing one-third of its territory for the United States.

Lincoln, then a member of Congress from Illinois, condemned Polk for misleading Congress and the public about the cause of the war -- an alleged Mexican incursion into the United States. Accepting the president’s right to attack another country “whenever he shall deem it necessary,” Lincoln observed, would make it impossible to “fix any limit” to his power to make war. Today, one wishes that the country had heeded Lincoln’s warning.

Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history.

efoner@aol.com

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton professor

of history at Columbia University.

Limits to Growth: Overshoot

Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows. Here is a systemic analysis of the challenges we face in the 21st century.

Preface
The project that produced Limits to Growth took place in the System Dynamics Group of the Sloan School of Management within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1970 to 1972. Our project team used system dynamics theory and computer modeling to analyze the long-term causes and consequences of growth in the world’s population and material economy. We addressed questions such as: Are current policies leading to a sustainable future or to a collapse? What can be done to create a human economy that provides sufficiently for all?

A major foundation of our project was the “World3” computer model, which we constructed to help us integrate data and theories related to growth. With the model we can produce scenarios of world development that are internally consistent.

1972: The Limits to Growth reported that global ecological constraints (related to resource use and emissions) would have significant influence on global developments in the twenty-first century. The end of growth, in whatever form, seemed to us to be a very distant prospect in 1972. All World3 scenarios in LTG showed growth in population and economy continuing well past the year 2000. Even in the most pessimistic LTG scenario the material standard of living kept increasing all the way to 2015.

1992: Beyond the Limits is a 20 year update of our original study. Already in the early 1990s there was growing evidence that humanity was moving further into unsustainable territory. For example, it was reported that the rain forests were being cut at unsustainable rates; there was speculation that grain production could no longer keep up with population growth; some thought that the climate was warming; and there was concern about the recent appearance of a stratospheric ozone hole.

The past 30 years have produced many positive developments. In response to an ever growing human footprint, the world has implemented new technologies, consumers have altered their buying habits, new institutions have been created, and multinational agreements have been crafted. In some regions food, energy, and industrial production have grown at rates far exceeding population growth. In those regions most people have become wealthier. Population growth rates have declined in response to increased income levels. Awareness of environmental issues is much higher today than in 1970. There are ministries of environmental affairs in most countries, and environmental education is commonplace. Most pollution has been eliminated from the smoke stacks and outflow pipes of factories in the rich world, and leading firms are pushing successfully for ever higher eco-efficiency.

The past decade (this update was written in 2004) has produced much data that support our suggestion in BTL that the world is in overshoot mode. It now appears that the global per capita grain production peaked in the mid-1980s. The prospects for significant growth in the harvest of marine fish are gone. The costs of natural disasters are increasing, and there is growing intensity, even conflict, in efforts to allocate fresh water resources and fossil fuels among competing demands. The United States and other major nations continue to increase their greenhouse gas emissions even though scientific consensus and meteorological data both suggest that the global climate is being altered by human activity. Fifty-four nations, with 12 percent of the world population, experienced declines in per capita GDP for more than a decade during the period from 1990 to 2001.

The past decade also provided new vocabulary and new quantitative measures for discussing overshoot. For example, Mathis Wackernagel and his colleagues measure the ecological footprint of humanity and compared it to the “carrying capacity” of the planet. They defined the ecological footprint as the land area that would be required to provide the resources (grain, feed, wood, fish, and urban land) and absorb the emissions (carbon dioxide) of global society. When compared with the available land, Wackernagel concluded that human resource use is currently some 20 percent above the global carrying capacity. Measured this way humanity was last at sustainable levels in the 1980s. Now it has overshot by some 20 percent.

The global challenge can be simply stated: To reach sustainability, humanity must increase the consumption levels of the world’s poor, while at the same time reducing humanity’s total ecological footprint. There must be technological advance, and personal change, and longer planning horizons. There must be greater respect, caring and sharing across political boundaries. This will take decades to achieve even under the best of circumstances. No modern political party has garnered broad support for such a program, certainly not among the rich and powerful, who could make room for growth among the poor by reducing their own footprints. Meanwhile, the global footprint gets larger day by day.

We are not trying to predict the future. We see our research as an effort to identify different possible futures. We are sketching alternative scenarios for humanity as we move toward 2100.

The concept of global ecological constraints is not absurd. There truly are limits to physical growth, and they have an enormous influence on the success of policies we choose to pursue our goals. And history does suggest that society has limited capacity for responding to those limits with wise, farsighted, and altruistic measures that disadvantage important players in the short term.

Resource and emission constraints have created many crises since 1972, exciting the media, attracting public attention, arousing politicians. The decline in oil production within important nations, the thinning of stratospheric ozone, the mounting global temperature, the widespread persistence of hunger, the escalating debate over the location of disposal sites for toxic wastes, falling groundwater levels, disappearing species, and receding forests are just a few of the problems that have engendered major studies, international meetings, and global agreements. All of them illustrate and are consistent with our basic conclusion—that physical growth constraints are an important aspect of the global policy arena in the twenty-first century.

Our most important statements about the likelihood of collapse do not come from blind faith in the curves generated by World3. They result simply from understanding the dynamic patterns of behavior that are produced by three obvious, persistent, and common features of the global system: erodible limits, incessant pursuit of growth, and delays in society’s responses to approaching limits. Any system dominated by these features is prone to overshoot and collapse.

Overshoot
To overshoot means to go too far, to go beyond limits accidentally­—without intention. People experience overshoots every day. If you turn on the hot-water faucet too far in the shower, you may be scalded. At a party you may drink much more alcohol than your body can safely metabolize; in the morning you will have ferocious headache. Construction companies periodically build more condominiums than are demanded, forcing them to sell units below cost and confront the possibility of bankruptcy. Too many fishing boats are often constructed. Then fishing fleets grow so large that they catch far more than the sustainable harvest. This depletes the fish population and forces ships to remain in harbor.

The three causes of overshoot are always the same, at any scale from personal to planetary. First, there is growth, acceleration, rapid change. Second there is some form of limit or barrier, beyond which the moving system may not safely go. Third, there is a delay or mistake in the perceptions and the responses that strive to keep the system within its limits. These three are necessary and sufficient to produce an overshoot.

Overshoot is common, and it exists in almost infinite forms. The change may be physical—growth in the use of petroleum. It may be organizational—an increase in the number of people supervised. It may be psychological­—continuously rising goals for personal consumption. Or it may be manifest in financial, biological, political, or other forms.

The limits are similarly diverse—they may be imposed by a fixed amount of space; by limited time; by constraints inherent in physical, biological, political, psychological, or other features of a system.

The delays, too, arise in many ways. They may result from inattention, faulty data, delayed information, slow reflexes, a cumbersome or quarreling bureaucracy, a false theory about how the system responds, or from momentum that prevents the system from being stopped quickly despite the best efforts to halt it.

Throughout this text we will grapple with the difficulties of understanding and describing the causes and consequences of a population and economy that have grown past the support capacities of the earth.

Overshoot can lead to two different outcomes: Crash or Correction, a deliberate turnaround, a careful managed easing down. We believe a correction is possible and that it could lead to a desirable, sustainable, sufficient future for all the world’s peoples. We also believe that if a profound correction is not made soon, a crash of some sort is certain. And it will occur within the lifetimes of many who are alive today.

We have approached these issues in four ways—in effect using four different lenses to focus on data in different ways, just as the lenses of a microscope and a telescope five different perspectives. Three of these viewing devices are widely used and easy to describe (1) standard scientific and economic theories about the global system; (2) data on the world’s resources and environment; and (3) a computer model to help us integrate that information and project its implications.

Our fourth device is our ‘worldview’, an internally consistent set of beliefs, attitudes and values—a paradigm, a fundamental way of looking at reality. Everybody has a worldview; it influences where they look and what they see. It functions as a filter. When people look out through a filter, such as a pane of colored glass, they usually see through it, rather than seeing it—and so , too, with worldviews.

We cannot avoid being influenced by our own worldview. But we can do our best to describe its essential features to our readers. Our worldview was formed by the Western industrial societies in which we grew up, by our scientific and economic training, and by lessons from traveling and working in many parts of the wold. But the most important part of our worldview, the part that is least commonly shared, is our systems perspective.

Our training concentrated on dynamic systems—on sets of interconnected material and immaterial elements that change over time. Our training taught us to see the world as a set of unfolding behavior patterns, such as growth, decline, oscillation, overshoot. It has taught us to focus not so much on single pieces of a system as on connections. We see the many elements of demography, economy, and the environment as one planetary system, with innumerable interactions. We see stocks and flows and feedbacks and thresholds in the interconnections, all of which influence the way the system will behave in the future and influence the actions we might take to change its behavior.

Overview of the book Limits to Growth
The structure of this book follows the logic of our global systems analysis. We have already made the basic point. Overshoot comes from the combination of (1) rapid change, (2) limits to that change, and (3) errors or delays in perceiving the limits and controlling the change. We will look at the global change, then at planetary limits, then at the processes through which human society learns about and responds to those limits.

We start in the next chapter with the phenomenon of change. Absolute, global rates of change are greater now than ever before in the history of our species. Such change is driven mainly by exponential growth in both population and the material economy. Growth has been the dominant behavior of the world socioeconomic system for more than 200 years. For example the growth rate of the human population, which is still surging upward despite dropping birth rates. Industrial output is growing, too, despite dips from oil price shocks, terrorism, epidemics, and other short-term influences. Industrial production has risen faster than population, resulting in an increase in the average material standard of living.

A consequence of growth in population and industry is change in many other features of the planetary system. For example, many pollution levels are growing. Graphs throughout this book illustrate growth in food production, urban populations, energy consumption, materials use, and many other physical manifestations of human activity on the planet. Not everything is growing at the same rate or in the same way. Some growth rates have come down, but they still produce significant annual increments in the underlying variable. Often a declining growth rate still produces a rising absolute increment, when a smaller percentage is multiplied by a much larger base.

After World War II, from 1950 to 1975, there was a massive rise in the consumption base of several key factors in the system. Human Population grew 160%; Registered vehicles grew 470%; Oil consumption 540%; Natural gas consumption 680%; Coal 230%; Electrical generation capacity 1040%; Corn production 260%; Wheat 250%; Rice 240%; Cotton 230%; Wood pulp 830%; Iron 350%; Steel 350%; Aluminum 800%. The base has remained the same since 1975 while the growth rate has dropped to 120%-220% on these activities. Over the past half century human beings have multiplied their own population, their own physical possessions, and the material and energy flows they utilize by factors of 2, 4, 10 or even more, and they are hoping for more growth.

Individuals support growth-oriented policies, because they believe growth will give them an ever increasing welfare. Governments seek growth as a remedy for just about every problem. In the rich world, growth is believed to be necessary for employment, upward mobility, and technical advance. In the poor world, growth seems to be the only way out of poverty. Government and corporate leaders do all they can to produce more and more growth.

For these reasons growth has come to be viewed as a cause for celebration. Just consider some synonyms for that word: development, progress, advance, gain, improvement, prosperity, success.

Those are psychological and institutional reasons for growth. There are also what systems people call structural reasons, built into the connections among the elements of the population-economy system.

Growth can solve some problems, but it creates others. That is because of limits, the subject of chapter 3. The Earth is finite. Growth of anything physical, including the human population and its cars and houses and factories, cannot continue forever. But the limits to growth are not limits to the number of people, cars, houses, or factories, at least not directly. They are limits to throughput­—to the continuous flows of energy and materials needed to keep people, cars, houses, and factories functioning. They are limits to the rate at which humanity can extract resources (crops, grass, wood, fish) and emit wastes (greenhouse gases, toxic substances) without exceeding the productive of absorptive capacities of the world.

The population and economy depend upon air, water, food, materials, and fossil fuels from the earth. They emit wastes and pollution back to the earth. Sources include mineral deposits, aquifers, and the stock of nutrients in soils’ among the sinks are the atmosphere, surface water bodies, and landfills. The physical limits to growth are limits to the ability of planetary sources to provide materials and energy and to the ability of planetary sinks to absorb the pollution and waste.

In chapter 3 we examine the status of the earth’s sources and sinks. The data we present there make two points. One point is bad news; the other is good.

The bad news is that many crucial sources are emptying or degrading, and many sinks are filling up or overflowing. The throughput flows presently generated by the human economy cannot be maintained at their current rates for very much longer. Some sources and sinks are sufficiently stressed that they are already beginning to limit growth by, for instance, raising costs, increasing pollution burdens, and elevating the mortality rate.

The good news is that current high rates of throughput are not necessary to support a decent standard of living for all the world’s people. The ecological footprint could be reduced by lowering population, altering consumption norms, or implementing more resource-efficient technologies. These changes are possible. Humanity has the knowledge necessary to maintain adequate levels of final goods and services while reducing greatly the burden on the planet. In theory there are many possible ways to bring the human ecological footprint back down below its limits.

But theory does not automatically become practice. The changes and choices that will bring down the footprint are not being made, at least not fast enough to reduce the growing burden on the sources and sinks. They are not being made because there is no immediate pressure to make them, and because they take a long time to implement. That is the subject of chapter 4. There we discuss the signals that warn human society about the symptoms of its overshoot. And we examine the speed with which people and institutions can respond.

In chapter 4 we turn to our computer model, World3. It permits us to assemble many data and theories, putting the whole picture—growth, limits, response delays—into an explicit and coherent whole. The result of those simulations is, in nearly every scenario, overshoot and collapse of the planet’s economy and population.

But not all scenarios show collapse. In chapter 5 we tell the best story we know about humanity’s ability to look ahead, sense a limit, and pull back before experiencing disaster. We describe the international response to the news in the 1980s of a deteriorating stratospheric ozone layer. The story is important for two reasons. First it provides a strong counterexample to the pervasive, cynical belief that people, governments, and corporations can never cooperate to solve global problems requiring foresight and self-discipline. Second, it illustrates concretely all three features required for overshoot: rapid growth, limits, and delayed response (in both science and politics).

In chapter 6 we use the computer for its primary purpose—not to predict what will result from current policies, but to ask what could happen if we make various changes. We build into the World3 model some hypotheses about human ingenuity. We concentrate on two mechanisms for problem solving—technology and markets—in which many people have placed great faith. Important features of those two remarkable human response capacities are already contained within World3, but in chapter 6 we strengthen them. We explore what would happen if the world society began to allocate its resources seriously to achieve pollution control, land preservation, human health, materials recycling, and much greater efficiency in the use of resources.

We discover from the resulting World3 scenarios that these measures help considerably. But by themselves are not enough. They fall short, because technology-market responses are themselves delayed and imperfect. They take time, they demand capital, they require materials and energy flows, and they can be overwhelmed by population and economic growth. Technical progress and market flexibility will be necessary to avoid collapse and bring the world to sustainability. They are necessary, but they are not enough. Something more is required. That is the subject of chapter 7.

In chapter 7 we use World3 to explore what would happen if the industrial world were to supplement cleverness with wisdom. We assume the world adopts and begins to act upon two definitions of enough, one having to do with material consumption, the other with family size. These changes, combined with the technical changes we assumed in chapter 6, make possible a sustainable simulated world population of about eight billion. Those eight billion people all achieve a level of well-being roughly equivalent to the lower-income nations of present-day Europe. Given reasonable assumptions about market efficiency and technical advance, the material and energy throughputs needed by that simulated world could be maintained by the planet indefinitely. We show in this chapter that overshoot can ease back down to sustainability.

Sustainability is a concept so foreign to our present growth-obsessed culture that we take some time in chapter 7 to define it and to outline what a sustainable world might be like—and what in need not be like. We see no reason why a sustainable world needs to leave anyone living in poverty. Quite the contrary, we think such a world would have to provide material security to all its people. We don’t think a sustainable society need be stagnant, boring, uniform, or rigid. It need not be, and probably could not be, centrally controlled or authoritarian. It could be a world that has the time, the resources and the will to correct its mistakes, to innovate, to preserve the fertility of its planetary ecosystems. Sustainability could focus on mindfully increasing the quality of life rather than on mindlessly expanding material consumption and the physical capital stock.

The global economy is already so far above sustainable levels that there is very little time left for the fantasy of an infinite globe. We know that adjustment will be a huge task. It will entail a revolution as profound as the agricultural and industrial revolutions. We appreciate the difficulty of finding solutions to problems such as poverty and employment, for which growth has been, so far, the world’s only widely accepted hope. But we also know that reliance on growth involves a false hope, because such growth cannot be sustained. Blind pursuit of physical growth in a finite world ultimately makes most problems worse; better solutions to our real problems are possible.