[[link removed]]

FROM EXECUTIVE OVERREACH TO UNDECLARED WARS, WE ARE LIVING IN THE
WORLD CHENEY MADE  
[[link removed]]


 

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos; Jim Lobe
November 4, 2025
Responsible Statecraft [[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Dick Cheney midwifed the emergence of a new warfare marked by
extrajudicial killing, torture, secrecy, and endless war that
transformed American society and politics, perhaps forever. _

Former President George W. Bush and Former American Vice President
Dick Cheney ride in the Presidential Limousin in an image courtesy of
the George W Bush/National Archives, 2015., Smith
Collection/Gado/Getty Images

 

Dick Cheney [[link removed]] has died,
according to reports Tuesday morning, at the age of 84.

A formidable White House
[[link removed]] and defense department
aide (under Presidents Richard Nixon
[[link removed]] and Gerald Ford) who
left to head an equally formidable Texas-based oil
[[link removed]] company (with vast federal
contracts) and then back in Washington
[[link removed]] as vice president to
George W. Bush [[link removed]],
Cheney is probably the most symbolic figure of the failure of the
post-9/11 wars. In particular, the Iraq
[[link removed]] War. It was his amassed power
and special cadre of operators known as neoconservatives
[[link removed]]
inside the Old Executive Office building and E Ring at the Pentagon
[[link removed]], who with strategic
treachery dominated the politics and intelligence necessary to march
Washington into the invasion of 2003 and to proliferate a Global War
on Terror [[link removed]] that lasted
well beyond his tenure in office.

By all accounts it was his midwifed lies over WMDs that got us there,
followed by the blunders (not anticipating the Iraqi insurgency); the
loss of life (millions
[[link removed]]);
the cost to our treasury; and the emergence of a new warfare marked by
extrajudicial killing, torture
[[link removed]], secrecy, and endless war
that transformed American society and politics, perhaps forever.

For it was the exploitation of American grief, fear, and patriotism
after 9/11 [[link removed]] to pursue
neoconservative wars in the Middle East
[[link removed]] that zapped
the people’s faith in government institutions. It pretty much
destroyed the Republican Party
[[link removed]] and gave rise to
populist movements on both sides of the aisle. It created a generation
of veterans [[link removed]] harboring more
mistrust in elites and Washington than even the Vietnam War
[[link removed]] era. On the other end
of the spectrum, it unleashed mercenary warfare, killer drones
[[link removed]], civil wars, and police
[[link removed]] powers in the United States
[[link removed]] that have only served
make the people less free and more fearful of their government. Thanks
in part to Dick Cheney, the Executive, i.e. the president, has more
power than ever [[link removed]]—to
bomb, detain, and “decapitate” any government leader he does not
like.

There will be many obituaries written for Dick Cheney, all will be
scarred with his role in the Iraq War
[[link removed]]. For a time he was a very,
very powerful man and then he went away to retire and help raise his
grandchildren. How many hundreds of thousands of American families
were unable to do the same, plagued by death, disease, mental
injuries, sterility, divorce, addiction, suicide—because of a war
that he so relentlessly pushed but should never have been.

Cheney’s Quest for More Executive Power and ‘Machtpolitik’

Cheney first came to national prominence when he served as White House
chief of staff (1975-77) to President Gerald Ford. In that position,
he worked closely with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to counter
and eventually derail Henry Kissinger’s strategy of “detente”
with the Soviet Union.

In that initiative, Cheney and Rumsfeld also worked closely with the
Washington-based leaders of the emergent neoconservative movement, a
number of them, including Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams, working in
the office of Washington State Democratic Senator and Senate Armed
Services Chairman Henry “Scoop” Jackson, to promote, among other
things, Jewish emigration to Israel
[[link removed]] and in persuading Ford
to convene an ultra-hawkish “Team B” outside the intelligence
community to hype the alleged military threat posed by Moscow
[[link removed]].

Their mutual interest in pursuing a massive US arms buildup and an
aggressive foreign policy more generally would form the basis of an
alliance between the aggressive nationalism and Machtpolitik of Cheney
and Rumsfeld on the one hand, and the Israel-centered neoconservatives
on the other that created the infamous Project for the New American
Century in 1998 and ultimately became dominant in the post-9/11
“global war on terror” (GWOT) and the Iraq invasion for which he
always remained unrepentant.

In the 1980s, Cheney, who chafed at the post-Watergate restrictions on
presidential power, particularly regarding foreign policy, served as
Wyoming’s single congressman in the House of Representatives where
he became a staunch and powerful defender both of Ronald Reagan’s
anti-Soviet policies and of the “Reagan Doctrine” of rolling back
leftist regimes and movements in the Global South
[[link removed]], notably in Central
America [[link removed]] and
southern Africa [[link removed]]. A
staunch defender of the protagonists of what became the Iran-Contra
[[link removed]] scandal, a secret
operation to sell weapons to Iran
[[link removed]] and use the proceeds to
fund the Nicaraguan contras (for whom Congress
[[link removed]] had prohibited any US
assistance), he later prevailed on President George H.W. Bush, for
whom he served as defense secretary, to issue pardons to those, like
Abrams, convicted as a result of the affair.

In the wake of the first Gulf War, Cheney commissioned his
undersecretary of defense for policy, Paul Wolfowitz
[[link removed]], to draft a
long-term US strategy, called the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG)
[[link removed]],
whose global ambitions, when leaked to the _Washington Post_
[[link removed]], provoked a flurry
of controversy about the future US role in the world.

Among other things, the draft called for Washington to maintain
permanent military dominance of virtually all of Eurasia to be
achieved by “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a
larger regional or global role” and by preempting, using whatever
means necessary, states believed to be developing weapons of mass
destruction. It foretold a world in which US military
[[link removed]] intervention would
become a “constant fixture” of the geopolitical landscape, and
Washington would act as the ultimate guarantor of international peace
and security.

One of the document’s principal drafters was I. Lewis “Scooter”
Libby, who would later become Vice President Cheney’s highly
effective chief of staff and national security adviser during George
W. Bush’s first term until he was indicted for perjury.

The draft DPG would essentially become the template for what became in
1997 the Project for New American Century, a letterhead organization
launched by neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan that in
some ways formalized the coalition of Machtpolitikers like Cheney,
Rumsfeld, and John Bolton
[[link removed]]; pro-Israel
neoconservatives like Perle, Abrams, Libby, Eliot Cohen, and Frank
Gaffney; and Christian Zionists, such as Gary Bauer and William
Bennett.

PNAC subsequently published a series of hawkish statements and open
letters demanding substantial increases in the US defense budget
[[link removed]] and stronger US action
against perceived adversaries, notably Iraq, Iran
[[link removed]], and China
[[link removed]]. Led by Cheney as vice
president and Rumsfeld as defense secretary, many PNAC associates,
particularly neoconservatives, took key posts in the George W. Bush
administration in 2001, while PNAC became the leading group outside
the administration banging the drum for invading Iraq and prosecuting
the “global war on terror.” A legacy that leads directly to the
current moment where Cheney’s hard won Executive powers rule over a
landscape of unauthorized US military interventions and undeclared
wars all over the globe.

===

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute and
Contributing Editor at Responsible Statecraft.

Jim Lobe is a contributing editor of Responsible Statecraft. He
formerly served as chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press
Service from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 2015.

===

* Dick Cheney; Iraq War; War on Terror;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]