{"id":22517,"date":"2012-11-05T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=22517"},"modified":"2012-10-30T18:36:32","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T18:36:32","slug":"jeffrey-gedmin-the-democracy-promoting-iraq-war-supporting-pro-israel-neocon-who-influenced-merkels-eu-austerity-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/11\/jeffrey-gedmin-the-democracy-promoting-iraq-war-supporting-pro-israel-neocon-who-influenced-merkels-eu-austerity-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Gedmin: The Democracy-Promoting, Iraq War-Supporting, Pro-Israel Neocon Who Influenced Merkel\u2019s EU Austerity Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his latest New Europe column<\/a> entitled \u201cMerkel\u2019s real agenda: mugging the poor,\u201d David Cronin asks why the German Chancellor has cast herself as Europe\u2019s \u201cempress of austerity.\u201d The answer, he believes, is to be found by looking at those who have shaped the German leader\u2019s worldview. Having traced the influence of think tanks such as Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (INSM) and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) on Chancellor Merkel\u2019s harsh economic thinking, Cronin adds:<\/p>\n

Merkel has also been reported to have obtained informal advice from Jeffrey Gedmin. A former big-wig of the American Enterprise Institute, Gedmin has spent much time trying to convince Europe to become more like the US. In a 2005 opinion piece for The Financial Times, he wrote about the \u201cemployed and unemployed alike happily indulging themselves\u201d by sipping \u201cover-priced caf\u00e9 lattes\u201d. He mused about whether a changing economic situation might give \u201cpeople the swift kick they apparently need\u201d.<\/p>\n

While Jeffrey Gedmin may appear<\/a> to want Europeans to be more like Americans, he has in fact helped to make the U.S. more like Israel \u2014 to the great detriment of the former.<\/p>\n

As former resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, Gedmin didn\u2019t have to go too far<\/a> \u2014 either literally or metaphorically \u2014 to sign the Project for a New American Century\u2019s September 20, 2001 letter<\/a> to George W. Bush. That PNAC letter urged the ill-informed president to respond to the 9\/11 attacks not only by going after Al-Qaeda but also by removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, threatening retaliation against Iran and Syria if they didn\u2019t immediately cease support for Hezbollah, and ending assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it didn\u2019t do more to collaborate with expansionist Israel\u2019s \u201cfight against terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having played his small part in helping to bring \u201cfreedom\u201d to Iraqis, Gedmin went on to bigger and better things in the largely pro-Israel<\/a> \u201cdemocracy promotion<\/a>\u201d establishment. In 2007, he was named president<\/a> of Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty, a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress (many of whose members are of course in turn funded by pro-Israel PACs). In light of subsequent \u201crevolutionary<\/a>\u201d developments in the Middle East, the following snippet from the neocon\u2019s profile<\/a> at Right Web, which tracks \u201cmilitarists\u2019 efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy,\u201d is particularly intriguing:<\/p>\n

Observers at the time noted that even before Gedmin\u2019s appointment, the RFE had begun cutting its broadcasts to European countries while increasing the amount of its programming for Islamic countries[8], a process that began during the tenure of previous director Thomas Dine, former head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

Just as some of Radio Free Europe\u2019s new audience were rising up to overthrow their dictators in early 2011, Gedmin moved on<\/a> to the London-based Legatum Institute. Legatum, in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine, publishes Democracy Lab<\/a>, which they describe as \u201ca unique journalistic effort to cover the political and economic challenges facing countries that are striving to make the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.\u201d As Legatum\u2019s chief executive officer, he co-chaired a 2011 report on Egypt\u2019s democratic transition jointly published with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Apparently unfazed<\/a> by the rising tide of political Islam,<\/p>\n

the report characterized Egypt\u2019s uprising as part of a \u201ctransition toward democracy and a free market economy\u201d and said that the United States and Europe \u201cshould do much more to incentivise and support economic reforms, which, in turn, will support the political transition to democracy.\u201d Among other things, the report called for a U.S.-Egypt free-trade agreement.<\/p>\n

Given Gedmin\u2019s remarks about latte-sipping Europeans, Egyptians and other Arabs undergoing this \u201ctransition\u201d shouldn\u2019t expect these \u201creforms\u201d to be of much benefit to them. Likewise, Europeans shouldn\u2019t be too surprised<\/a> when the economic counsel of a pro-Israel<\/a> neocon who supported the invasion of Iraq on the basis of non-existent WMDs doesn\u2019t work out too well, either.<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n

Maidhc \u00d3 Cathail is an investigative journalist<\/a> and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog<\/a>, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thepassionateattachment.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his latest New Europe column entitled \u201cMerkel\u2019s real agenda: mugging the poor,\u201d David Cronin asks why the German Chancellor has cast herself as Europe\u2019s \u201cempress of austerity.\u201d The answer, he believes, is to be found by looking at those who have shaped the German leader\u2019s worldview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}