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This article is about Neoconservatism in the United States, for neoconservatism in other regions, see Neoconservatism (disambiguation).

Neoconservatism is a political movement that emerged in the 1960s and which coalesced in the 1970s. Political operatives known as "neocons" have had a presence in the administration of George W. Bush.[1]

Neo- is Greek for "new." Neoconservatism is new in two ways: first, many of the movement's founders, liberals and people from socialist backgrounds, were new to conservatism; second, it was a fairly recent strain of conservative socio-political thought. Its intellectual roots occur in the decades of the late twentieth century following World War II, and they relate to contemporaneous movements in literary criticism and the social sciences.[citation needed]

The etymology of this type of conservatism (called "neoconservatism" and, to a lesser extent, "neoconservativism") is based on the work and thought of Irving Kristol, cofounder of Encounter and its editor from 1953 to 1958,[2] Norman Podhoretz,[3] and others, who described themselves as "neoconservatives" during the Cold War.

Neoconservative journalists, policy analysts, and politicians, are often dubbed "neocons" by supporters and critics alike; however, in general, the movement's critics use the term more often than their supporters.[4][5]

Neoconservatism is associated with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard, and with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

Definition and views

Three pillars of Neoconservatism

According to Irving Kristol, the founder and "god-father" of Neoconservatism, there are three basic pillars of Neoconservatism[6]:

1. Economics: "One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the "have-nots" and the "haves" engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability.
The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives. Neocons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy--because it seems to be in the nature of human nature--that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning."
2. Domestic Affairs: "This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his "The Man Versus the State," was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.
But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America. The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives--though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government's attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among people who consider themselves to be" religious", this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak."
3. Foreign Policy: "First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing.
Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns.

Usage and general views

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 term has been used before, and its meaning has changed over time. Writing in The Contemporary Review (London) in 1883, Henry Dunckley uses the term to describe factions within the Conservative Party; James Bryce again uses it in his Modern Democracies (1921) to describe British political history of the 1880s. The German authoritarians Carl Schmitt who became professor at the University of Berlin in 1933, the same year that he entered the Nazi party (NSDAP) and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck were called "neo-conservatives".[7] 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; critics from the left especially take issue with what they characterize as unilateralism and lack of concern with international consensus through organizations such as the United Nations.[8][9][10] 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.

Overview

Historically, neoconservatives supported a militant anticommunism [citation needed], tolerated more social welfare spending than was sometimes acceptable to libertarians and mainstream conservatives, 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 [citation needed]— 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 support terrorism. [citation needed]

The movement began to focus on such foreign issues in the mid-1970s [citation needed]. 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."[11] Norman Podhoretz agreed: "Revulsion against the counterculture accounted for more converts to neoconservatism than any other single factor."[12]

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.[13]

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."[14] 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 [citation needed].

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 non-interventionist 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.

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 non-interventionist 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.

Criticism of the term "neoconservative"

Some of those identified as neoconservatives refuse to embrace the term. Critics argue that it lacks coherent definition [citation needed], or that it is coherent only in a Cold War context. Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Institute, argues that the neoconservative label is used as a pejorative by anti-Semites:

"neo-conservative" is a codeword for Jewish; however, there are neoconservatives who are not Jewish, so while some may use the term or "neocon" to refer to Jews, a neoconservative is not necessarily a Jew, and the term is not always used negatively. Some claim that as antisemites did with big business moguls in the nineteenth century and Communist leaders in the twentieth, the trick here is to take all those involved in some aspect of public life and single out those who are Jewish. The implication made is that this is a Jewish-led movement conducted not in the interests of all the, in this case, American people, but to the benefit of Jews, and in this case Israel.[15]

The fact that the use of the term "neoconservative" has rapidly risen since the 2003 Iraq War is cited by conservatives as proof that the term is largely irrelevant in the long term. David Horowitz, a conservative author, offered this critique in a recent interview with an Italian newspaper:

[Neo-conservatism] is a term almost exclusively used by the enemies of America's liberation of Iraq. There is no "neo-conservative" movement in the United States. When there was one, it was made up of former Democrats who embraced the welfare state but supported Ronald Reagan's Cold War policies against the Soviet bloc. Today "neo-conservatism" identifies those who believe in an aggressive policy against radical Islam and the global terrorists.[citation needed]

Similarly, many other supposed neoconservatives believe that the term has been adopted by the political left to stereotype supporters of U.S. foreign policy under the George W. Bush administration. Others have similarly likened descriptions of neoconservatism to a conspiracy theory and say the term is used to label Jews in a negative way, though not all neoconservatives are Jews. Paul Wolfowitz has denounced the term as a meaningless label, saying:

[If] you read the Middle Eastern press, it seems to be a euphemism for some kind of nefarious Zionist conspiracy. But I think that, in my view it's very important to approach [foreign policy] not from a doctrinal point of view. I think almost every case I know is different. Indonesia is different from the Philippines. Iraq is different from Indonesia. I think there are certain principles that I believe are American principles – both realism and idealism. I guess I'd like to call myself a democratic realist. I don't know if that makes me a neo-conservative or not.

Jonah Goldberg and others have rejected the label as trite and over-used, arguing "There's nothing 'neo' about me: I was never anything other than conservative." Other critics have similarly argued the term has been rendered meaningless through excessive and inconsistent use [citation needed]. For example, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are often identified as leading "neoconservatives" despite the fact that both men have ostensibly been life-long conservative Republicans (though Cheney has been vocally supportive of the ideas of Irving Kristol). Such critics thus largely reject the claim that there is a neoconservative movement separate from traditional American conservatism.

Other traditional conservatives are likewise skeptical of the contemporary usage of the term, and may dislike being associated with the stereotypes, or even the supposed agendas of neoconservatism. Conservative columnist David Harsanyi wrote, "These days, it seems that even temperate support for military action against dictators and terrorists qualifies you a neocon."[16]

During the 1970s, for example in a book on the movement by Peter Steinfels, the use of the term neoconservative was never identified with the writings of Leo Strauss. The near synonymity, in some quarters, of neoconservatism and Straussianism is a much more recent phenomenon, which suggests that perhaps two quite distinct movements have become merged into one, either in fact or in the eyes of certain beholders.

Pejorative use

The term is frequently used pejoratively by self-described paleoconservatives, Democrats, and by libertarians of both left and right.

History and origins

Great Depression and World War II

"New" conservatives initially approached this view from the political left, especially in response to key developments in modern American history.[citation needed]

The forerunners of neoconservatism were generally liberals or socialists who strongly supported World War II, and who were influenced by the Depression-era ideas of former New Dealers, trade unionists, and Trotskyists, particularly those who followed the political ideas of Max Shachtman[citation needed]. A number of future neoconservatives such as Jeane Kirkpatrick were Shachtmanites in their youth; some were later involved with Social Democrats USA[citation needed].

Some of the mid-20th Century New York Intellectuals were forebears of neoconservatism. The most notable was literary critic Lionel Trilling, who wrote, "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." It was this liberal "vital center," a term coined by the historian and liberal theorist Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., that the neoconservatives would see as threatened by New Left extremism. But the majority of "vital center" liberals remained affiliated with the Democratic Party, retained left-of-center viewpoints, and opposed Republican politicians such as Richard Nixon who first attracted neoconservative support.[citation needed]

Initially, the neoconservatives were less concerned with foreign policy than with domestic policy. Irving Kristol's journal, The Public Interest, focused on ways that government planning in the liberal state had produced unintended and harmful consequences. Norman Podhoretz's magazine, Commentary formerly a journal of the liberal left, had more of a cultural focus, criticizing excesses of the movements for black equality and women's rights and the academic left. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the early neoconservatives had been anti-Communist socialists or liberals strongly supportive of the American Civil Rights Movement[citation needed], integration[citation needed], and Martin Luther King[citation needed].

Opposition to Détente with the Soviet Union and the views of the anti-Soviet and anti-capitalist New Left, which emerged in response to the Soviet Union's break with Stalinism in the 1950s, was one factor that would cause the Neoconservatives to split with the "liberal consensus" of the early postwar years.

File:IrvingKristol.gif
Irving Kristol

Drift away from New Left and Great Society

While initially, the views of the New Left became very popular among the children of hard-line Communists, often Jewish immigrant families on the edge of poverty and including those of some of today's most famous neoconservative thinkers, some neoconservatives also came to despise the counterculture of the 1960s and what they felt was a growing anti-Americanism among many baby boomers, exemplified in the emerging New Left by the movement against the Vietnam War.

As the radicalization of the New Left pushed these intellectuals farther to the right, they moved toward a more aggressive militarism, while also becoming disillusioned with the Johnson Administration's Great Society.

Academics in these circles, many of whom were still Democrats, rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s, especially after the nomination of George McGovern in 1972. Many of their concerns were voiced in the influential 1970 bestseller The Real Majority by future television commentator and neo-conservative Ben Wattenberg. Many clustered around Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat derisively known as the "Senator from Boeing," during his 1972 and 1976 campaigns for President; but later came to align themselves with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront charges of Soviet "expansionism." Among those who worked for Jackson are Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Richard Perle and Felix Rohatyn.

Michael Lind, a self-described former neoconservative, wrote that neoconservatism "originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' When the Cold War ended, "many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center… Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists."[17]

Senator Henry M. Jackson, influential neoconservative forerunner.

In his semi-autobiographical book, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, Irving Kristol cites a number of influences on his own thought, including not only Max Shachtman and Leo Strauss but also the skeptical liberal literary critic Lionel Trilling. The influence of Leo Strauss and his disciples on some neoconservatives has generated some controversy. Some argue that Strauss's influence has left some neoconservatives adopting a Machiavellian view of politics.

Far Left-wing past of some neoconservatives

The neoconservative desire to spread democracy abroad has been likened to the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution. Author Michael Lind argues that the neoconservatives are influenced by the thought of former Trotskyists such as James Burnham and Max Shachtman, who argued that "the United States and similar societies are dominated by a decadent, postbourgeois 'new class'". He sees the neoconservative concept of "global democratic revolution" as deriving from the Trotskyist Fourth International's "vision of permanent revolution". He also points to what he sees as the Marxist origin of "the economic determinist idea that liberal democracy is an epiphenomenon of capitalism", which he describes as "Marxism with entrepreneurs substituted for proletarians as the heroic subjects of history." However, few leading neoconservatives cite James Burnham as a major influence.[18]

Critics of Lind contend that there is no theoretical connection between Trotsky's "permanent revolution", and that the idea of a "global democratic revolution" instead has Wilsonian roots.[19] While both Wilsonianism and the theory of permanent revolution have been proposed as strategies for underdeveloped parts of the world, Wilson proposed capitalist solutions, while Trotsky advocated socialist solutions.

Lind argues furthermore that "The organization as well as the ideology of the neoconservative movement has left-liberal origins". He draws a line from the center-left anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom to the Committee on the Present Danger to the Project for the New American Century and adds that "European social-democratic models inspired the quintessential neocon institution, the National Endowment for Democracy."

1980s

During the 1970s political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick increasingly criticized the Democratic Party, of which she had been a member since the nomination of the antiwar George McGovern. She accused the Jimmy Carter administration of using a double standard by tolerating human rights abuses in Communist states, while withdrawing support of anti-communist autocrats on the basis of human rights. She joined Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign as his foreign policy advisor and later became the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position she held for four years.

During this period, the United States increased its support for anti-communist governments engaged in human rights abuses as part of its general hard line against communism. As the 1980s wore on, younger second-generation neoconservatives, such as Elliot Abrams, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators. This debate led to a policy shift in 1986, when the Reagan administration urged Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos to step down amid turmoil over a rigged election. Abrams also supported the 1988 Chilean plebiscite that resulted in the restoration of democratic rule and Pinochet's eventual removal from office. Through the National Endowment for Democracy, led by another neoconservative, Carl Gershman, funds were directed to the anti-Pinochet opposition in order to ensure a fair election.

1990s

During the 1990s, neoconservatives were once again in the opposition side of the foreign policy establishment, both under the Republican Administration of President George H. W. Bush and that of his Democratic successor, President Bill Clinton. Many critics charged that the neoconservatives lost their raison d'être and influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.[citation needed] Others argue that they lost their status due to their association with the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration.

Neoconservative writers were critical of the post-Cold War foreign policy of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which they criticized for reducing military expenditures and lacking a sense of idealism in the promotion of American interests. They accused these Administrations of lacking both "moral clarity" and the conviction to pursue unilaterally America's international strategic interests.[citation needed]

Particularly galvanizing to the movement was the decision of George H. W. Bush and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War in 1991. Some neoconservatives viewed this policy, and the decision not to support indigenous dissident groups such as the Kurds and Shiites in their 1991-1992 resistance to Hussein, as a betrayal of democratic principles.[citation needed]

Ironically, some of those same targets of criticism would later become fierce advocates of neoconservative policies. In 1992, referring to the first Gulf War, then United States Secretary of Defense and future Vice President Dick Cheney, said:

"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home..."

"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."

Within a few years of the Gulf War in Iraq, many associated with neoconservatism were pushing for the ouster of Saddam Hussein. On February 19, 1998, an open letter to President Clinton was signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with both neoconservatism and, later, related groups such as the PNAC, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power.[20]

Neoconservatives were also members of the blue team, which argued for a confrontational policy toward the People's Republic of China and strong military and diplomatic support for Taiwan.

Administration of George W. Bush

Thus, neoconservative thinkers were eager to implement a new foreign policy with the change in Administrations from Clinton to George W. Bush. Despite this, the Bush campaign and then the early Bush Administration did not appear to exhibit strong support for neoconservative principles, as candidate Bush stated his opposition to the idea of "nation-building" and an early foreign policy confrontation with China was handled without the vociferous confrontation suggested by some neoconservative thinkers. Also early in the Administration, some neoconservatives criticized Bush's Administration as insufficiently supportive of the State of Israel, and suggested Bush's foreign policies were not substantially different from those of President Clinton.

China spy plane incident

The Bush Administration was criticized by some neoconservatives for their non-confrontational reaction during the U.S.-China spy plane incident. On April 1, 2001, a Chinese J-8 fighter collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3E spy plane over the South China Sea, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the EP-3E to make an emergency landing on the Chinese island of Hainan, where the twenty-four members of the American crew were held and interrogated for eleven days while their plane was searched and photographed by the Chinese. The Bush Administration conducted diplomacy and then issued a statement of regret to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.[21] President Reagan's former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Frank Gaffney, wrote in an article in National Review Online that President Bush "should use this occasion to make clear to the American people that the PRC is acting in an increasingly belligerent manner. Mr. Bush needs to talk about these threats as well as his commitment to defend the American people, their forces overseas and their allies."[22]

September 11, 2001

View of the burning World Trade Center from the water, with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground on September 11, 2001

The influence of neoconservatism in the Bush administration appeared to have found its purpose in the shift from the threat of Communism to the threat of Islamic terrorism. The administration undertook an invasion of Afghanistan shortly after the September 11 attacks, to remove the al-Qaeda-supporting Taliban from power. The administration also began planning and obtaining political and diplomatic support for an invasion of Iraq, citing Iraq's dictatorial government, support for terrorism, purported links to al-Qaeda, work on chemical and nuclear weapons, and refusal to abide by U.N. resolutions regarding inspection of weapons programs.

Neoconservative identification with the State of Israel's struggle against terrorism was furthered by the September 11 attacks, which served to create a perceived parallel between the United States and Israel as democratic nations under the threat of terrorist attack. Moreover, some neoconservatives have long advocated that the United States should emulate Israel's tactics of pre-emptive attacks, especially Israel's strikes in the 1980s on nuclear facilities in Libya and Osirak, Iraq.

"Bush Doctrine"

The Bush Doctrine, promulgated after September 11, incorporates the concept that nations harboring terrorists are themselves enemies of the United States. It also embraces the Clinton Doctrine, which is the view that pre-emptive military action is justified to protect the United States from the threat of terrorism or attack. Both doctrines state that the United States "will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."

This doctrine can be seen as the abandonment of a focus on the doctrine of deterrence (in the Cold War through Mutual Assured Destruction) as the primary means of self-defense. While there have been occasional preemptive strikes by American forces, until recently preemptive strikes have not been an official American foreign and military policy.

Neoconservatives won a landmark victory with the Bush Doctrine after September 11. Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the influential conservative think-tank, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has been under neoconservative influence since the Reagan Administration, argued in "The Underpinnings of the Bush doctrine" that

"the fundamental premise of the Bush Doctrine is true: The United States possesses the means—economic, military, diplomatic—to realize its expansive geopolitical purposes. Further, and especially in light of the domestic political reaction to the attacks of September 11, the victory in Afghanistan and the remarkable skill demonstrated by President Bush in focusing national attention, it is equally true that Americans possess the requisite political willpower to pursue an expansive strategy."

In his well-publicized piece "The Case for American Empire" in the conservative Weekly Standard, Max Boot argued that "The most realistic response to terrorism is for America to embrace its imperial role." He countered sentiments that the "United States must become a kinder, gentler nation, must eschew quixotic missions abroad, must become, in Pat Buchanan's phrase, 'a republic, not an empire'," arguing that "In fact this analysis is exactly backward: The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation."

President Bush has expressed praise for Natan Sharansky's book, The Case For Democracy, which promotes a foreign policy philosophy nearly identical to neoconservatives'. President Bush has effusively praised this book, calling it a "glimpse of how I think".[23]

At the same time, there have been limits in the power of neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The former Secretary of State Colin Powell (as well as the State department as a whole) was largely seen as being an opponent of neoconservative ideas. However, with the resignation of Colin Powell and the promotion of Condoleezza Rice, along with widespread resignations within the State department, the neoconservative point of view within the Bush administration has been solidified. While the neoconservative notion of tough and decisive action has been apparent in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, it has not been seen in U.S. policy toward China and Russia or in the handling of the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Impact of 2003 Iraq War

Charges of appeasement

Neoconservative proponents of the 2003 Iraq War likened the conflict to Winston Churchill stand against Adolf Hitler. Former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld[24] likened Hussein to Joseph Stalin and Hitler. President George W. Bush singled out Iraq's dictator as the "great evil" who "by his search for terrible weapons, by his ties to terrorist groups, threatens the security of every free nation, including the free nations of Europe."

In the writings of Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Boot, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, William Bennett, Peter Rodman, and others influential in forging the foreign policy doctrines of the Bush administration, there are frequent references to the appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938, to which are compared the Cold War's policies of détente and containment (rather than rollback) with the Soviet Union and the PRC.

While more conventional foreign policy experts argued that Iraq could be restrained by enforcing No-Fly Zones and by a policy of inspection by United Nations inspectors to restrict its ability to possess chemical or nuclear weapons, neoconservatives considered this policy direction ineffectual and labeled it appeasement of Saddam Hussein.

Criticism

Jacobinism, Bolshevism

The "traditional" conservative Claes G. Ryn has argued that neoconservatives are "a variety of neo-Jacobins." Ryn maintains that true conservatives deny the existence of a universal political and economic philosophy and model that is suitable for all societies and cultures, and believe that a society's institutions should be adjusted to suit its culture, while Neo-Jacobins

are attached in the end to ahistorical, supranational principles that they believe should supplant the traditions of particular societies. The new Jacobins see themselves as on the side of right and fighting evil and are not prone to respecting or looking for common ground with countries that do not share their democratic preferences. (Ryn 2003: 387)

Further examining the relationship between Neoconservatism and moral rhetoric, Ryn argues that

Neo-Jacobinism regards America as founded on universal principles and assigns to the United States the role of supervising the remaking of the world. Its adherents have the intense dogmatic commitment of true believers and are highly prone to moralistic rhetoric. They demand, among other things, "moral clarity" in dealing with regimes that stand in the way of America's universal purpose. They see themselves as champions of "virtue." (p. 384).

Thus, according to Ryn, neoconservatism is analogous to Bolshevism: in the same way that the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy established ways of life throughout the world to replace them with communism, the neoconservatives want to do the same, only imposing free-market capitalism and American-style liberal democracy instead of socialism.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, had the following to say in a December, 2005 interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel: "They are not new conservatives. They're Jacobins. Their predecessor is French Revolution leader Maximilien Robespierre."[25]

Conflict with Libertarian conservatives

There is also conflict between neoconservatives and libertarian conservatives. Libertarian conservatives are ideologically opposed to government programs and regard neoconservative foreign policy ambitions with outspoken distrust. Rep Ron Paul, a Republican libertarian who holds a Texas district, and 2008 Presidential candidate, has spoken out harshly against the Bush Administration's foreign wars on both a fiscal point and as a moral point on non-intervention.[26]

Friction with paleoconservatism

Main article: Neoconservative - Paleoconservative Conflict

Disputes over Israel and public policy contributed to a sharp conflict with "paleoconservatives," starting in the 1980s. The movement's name ("old conservative") was taken as a rebuke to the "neo" side. The "paleocons" view the neoconservatives as "militarist social democrats" and interlopers who deviate from traditional conservatism agenda on issues as diverse as federalism, immigration, foreign policy, the welfare state, and in some cases abortion, feminism and homosexuality. All of this leads to a debate over what counts as conservatism.[citation needed]

The paleoconservatives argue that neoconservatives are an illegitimate addition to the conservative movement. Pat Buchanan calls neoconservatism "a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology."[27] The open rift is often traced back to a 1981 dispute over Ronald Reagan's nomination of Mel Bradford, a Southerner, to run the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford withdrew after neoconservatives complained that he had criticized Abraham Lincoln; the paleoconservatives supported Bradford.

Besides Buchanan and Bradford, the most prominent paleoconservatives include Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Gottfried, Thomas Fleming, Chilton Williamson, Joseph Sobran, and Clyde N. Wilson. The two leading paleoconservative publications are Chronicles and The American Conservative, which Buchanan helped create. In addition, paleolibertarianism is a parallel movement that stresses free market economics;

Institutions

Publications

Political magazines featuring neoconservative ideas:

Music

Parodies

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Neoconservatism.

Notes

  1. ^ "End of the neo-con dream". BBC News. 21 December 2006. Retrieved 22 March 2007.
  2. ^ Kristol, Irving (1999). Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. Ivan R. Dee. pp. passim. ISBN 1-56663-228-5.
  3. ^ Gerson, Paul (Fall 1995). "Norman's Conquest". Policy Review.
  4. ^ See discussion of this matter at some length in Jonah Goldberg (May 20, 2003). "The Neoconservative Invention". National Review Online. Retrieved 2006-12-25.
  5. ^ Kinsley, Michael (April 17, 2005). "The Neocons' Unabashed Reversal". Washington Post. p. B07. Retrieved 2006-12-25. "When people say that the selection of Paul Wolfowitz… marks the triumph of neocons… they are generally not indicating pleasure. Cynics say they are indicating anti-Semitism: A neocon is a Jewish intellectual you disagree with."
  6. ^ Irving Kristol (August 25, 2003). "The Neoconservative Persuasion". Retrieved 2007-03-29. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |publication= ignored (help)
  7. ^ Fritz Stern: Five Germanies I Have Known (2006 hc), p.72
  8. ^ Kinsley, Michael (April 17, 2005). "The Neocons' Unabashed Reversal". Washington Post. p. B07. Retrieved 2006-12-25. Kinsley quotes Rich Lowry, whom he describes as "a conservative of the non-neo variety", as criticizing the neoconservatives "messianic vision" and "excessive optimism"; Kinsley contrasts the present-day neoconservative foreign policy to earlier neoconservative Jeane Kirkpatrick's "tough-minded pragmatism".
  9. ^ Martin Jacques, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1448960,00.html, The Guardian, March 31, 2005. Accessed online 25 December 2006. (Cited for "unilateralism".)
  10. ^ Rodrigue Tremblay, The Neo-Conservative Agenda: Humanism vs. Imperialism, presented at the Conference at the American Humanist Association annual meeting Las Vegas, May 9, 2004. Accessed online 25 December 2006 on the site of the Mouvement laïque québécois.
  11. ^ Kristol, “What Is a Neoconservative?” 87
  12. ^ Podhoretz, 275.
  13. ^ Chernus, chapter 1
  14. ^ Steinfels, 69.
  15. ^ Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Institute, Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya, in a letter from Washington for Sunday, April 6, 2003
  16. ^ FrontPageMagazine.com August 13, 2002
  17. ^ Lind 2004. The particular quotation can be found on page 2 of the online version.
  18. ^ Muravchik 2002.
  19. ^ Muravchik 2003.
  20. ^ Solarz et. al. 1998
  21. ^ Prueher 2001.
  22. ^ Vernon 2001.
  23. ^ Bush, Schroeder, et. al. 2005.
  24. ^ Battle 2003.
  25. ^ Mascolo 2006.
  26. ^ Antiwar.com: Antiwar GOP Rep. Ron Paul Running for President!.
  27. ^ Tolson 2003.
  28. ^ [1]

References

Further reading

  • The NeoCon Reader, edited by Irwin Stelzer, ISBN 0-8021-4193-5
  • The Neoconservative Vision, Mark Gerson, ISBN 1-56833-100-2.
  • Neocon Middle East Policy: The 'Clean Break' Plan Damage Assessment, edited by Grant F. Smith, ISBN 0-9764437-3-2
  • Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, Douglas Murray, ISBN 1-59403-147-9
  • The Neoconservative Mind, Gary Dorrien, ISBN 1-56639-019-2
  • Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin, Ira Chernus, ISBN 1-59451-276-0
  • John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectual and Foreign Affairs 1945—1994, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-3000-6870-0.
  • Murray Friedman. The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy. Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0521545013.

History of Neoconservatism

Who is Neoconservative

Explanations of neoconservative ideas

Critiques of Neoconservative ideas


Conservative Criticism of NeoConservatism


Neoconservatism, Leo Strauss, and Trotskyism

Neoconservatism and Jews

Documentaries

  • Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares (BBC), [2]
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