WASHINGTON: The final Strategic planning document was signed by US defence secretary Richard Cheney after its principal author the undersecretary of defence for policy Paul Wolfowitz removed references in the earlier document to India and other countries as potential hegemons who have to be stopped if necessary by the use of force by the United States reports PTI.
India had been clubbed as posing a hegemonic threat to neighbors in language first used by the late Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in his India-baiting speeches along with Japan. Germany and Russia.
The strange world view of the Pentagon reportedly drafted in consultation with key White House officials and some state department officials despite state department denials became known when the New York Times leaked it extensively.
The dropping of the objectional portions also comes through the leak to The Washington Post of what the paper calls a near final draft. The actual document itself is classified secret and no forn (or no foreigners should be allowed to see it).
When the February 181992 draft was leaked by The New York Jimes and later by The Washington Post it drew a storm of public protest from India Japan and Germany.
The Indian foreign secretary J.N.Dixit officially raised it with key state department White House and Pentagon officials including Wolfowiz himself. The deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger told Dixit the state department had no hand in the draft that at least he and the secretary of state were totally unaware of its contents and he advised India to just ignore it.
However dropping the language that India has hegemonic aspirations in South Asia that US forces may have to be used to thwart any Russian aggression against the Baltic states and Poland that Germany and Japan are potential threats and other references docs not necessarily mean dropping some of the thoughts originally expressed will continue to guide the defence planners.
The Washington Post said while leaking the near final text the military services still is directed to base their budget requests on a set of seven classified scenarios depicting paternal roads to war.
However it said other changes are intended to do more than soften controversy reflecting changes of policy or disagreement by Cheney and his top aides with the authors of the earlier draft.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 5, 1992
