Neoconservatism

12 March 2018

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 Key Points
• Neoconservatives commonly viewed as ex-liberals and/or
Trotskyites who’ve been “mugged by reality” (I. Kristol)
• A broad “church” covering a wide array of interests and agendas.
Not a coherent movement: no common “manifesto, credo,
religion, flag, anthem or secret handshake” (J.Q. Wilson)
• Shared features: 1) moralist/evangelical disposition; 2)
internationalist foreign policy; 3) belief in democracy at home
and abroad; and 4) belief in military force and its use to achieve
national interests
• However, not true that attributes like: 1) a pro-war stance, 2)
foreign policy hawkishness, 3) an all-Jewish conspiracy, and/or
4) a disillusioned liberalism, are essentially neocon
characteristics, since others share these too (J. Goldberg)

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 US Neoconservatism

• From Trotskyism (anti-Stalinism)

in the 1930s, to democratic
socialism, to liberalism, to
neoconservatism?
• 1970s: reexamination of Great
Society & welfare programs in
U.S., of U.S. Cold War foreign
policy (Vietnam War, détente
with USSR)
• 1980s: clash and convergence
between “neo-cons” & “paleo-
cons” over new cold war. Parts
played by: Committee on Present
Danger and “Team B” (to
“second-guess the CIA”), etc.
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 US Neoconservatism (continued)
• 1990s: Focus on joined forces with other conservatives in support of
Gulf War I (1990–91) but split over G.H.W. Bush’s decision not to enter
Baghdad; clashed with realists and liberals over Bosnia policy
• 2001–2004: Initiator of U.S. foreign policy based on pre-emption, regime
change, unilateralism, and benevolent hegemony
• Future: “neo-conservatism remains the only game in town” as GWOT
strategy because the U.S. is warring against an “evil enemy” on a global
scale, etc. (J. Muravchik). What about China?

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 Has History Ended? Yes
“The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the
willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological
struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be
replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems,
environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.
In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the
perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and
see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed.
Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the
post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its
inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been
created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps
this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get
history started once again.”

—F. Fukuyama, “The End of History?”

The National Interest (Summer 1989)

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 “The Truman Show” (1998) (Weber 2001)
• Allegory of ideological struggle between
good/Liberalism (Truman) and
evil/Totalitarianism (Christof)
• Truman’s shift from false to true consciousness
via a rash of discrepancies (Marx: capitalism
containing seeds of its own destruction?) and
an emerging awareness of unmet desires
• Truman finally succeeds in breaking out of his
“prison”. He “exits history”, i.e., end of history.
• Outside world is a post-historical, de-
ideological world without internal
contradictions. It’s a world where daily
existence is dull and inhabitants long for the
old days of history and ideology – Fukuyama’s
liberalized world?
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 Has History Ended? No
“History has not ended. The world is not one. Civilizations unite and
divide humankind. The forces making for clashes between civilizations can
be contained only if they are recognized. In a ‘world of different
civilizations,’ as my article concluded, each ‘will have to learn to coexist
with the others.’ What ultimately counts for people is not political
ideology or economic interest. Faith and family, blood and belief, are what
people identify with and what they will fight and die for. And that is why
the clash of civilizations is replacing the Cold War as the central
phenomenon of global politics, and why a civilizational paradigm provides,
better than any alternative, a useful starting point for understanding and
coping with the changes going on in the world.”
—S.P. Huntington, “If Not Civilizations, What?
Samuel Huntington Responds to His Critics”,
Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 1993)

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 “Independence Day” (1996) (Weber 2001)
• World’s nations cooperate to defeat new threat – aliens in post-Cold War era
(like other civilizations unlike ours?)
• Morally upright heroes. Assumption of moral goodness of humans not
incongruous with justification to destroy those judged to be morally bad or
weak (so long as they are demonized or dehumanized?)

• Fear is necessary to unite (our) people around common goal of survival.

• U.S. leadership paramount. Its presumed necessity raises question regarding
the type of international community advocated (e.g. Pax Americana?)
• Globalization as global extension of U.S. values, principles, power, and
practices? Assumes American democracy is what the world needs and wants
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 Neoconservatism, 9/11 & the Clash of Civilizations
• Framed by existing academic & policy discourse on world affairs
as defined by “clash of civilizations”, fueled by prominent neo-con
voices (e.g. Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes)

• Intolerant of dissent even difference: “colleges and university

faculty have been the weak link in America’s response [to 9/11] …
when a nation’s intellectuals are unwilling to defend its
civilization, they give comfort to its adversaries.” (Defending
Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America, American Council of
Trustees and Alumni, 2001)

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 Criticisms re Post-9/11 Neoconservatism
• On Iraq War: (1) exaggerated threat assessment of WMD ; (2) indifference to
international public opinion, underestimation of global backlash and detriment
to U.S. interests; (3) over-optimism of U.S. ability to win war, stabilize and
reshape Iraq
• U.S.’s pro-Israel policy

• On Clash of Civilizations mindset: (1) states, not civilizations, remain primary

actors; (2) future conflicts more likely to be within civilizations than between
them; (3) culture/civilization is ideology; (4) idea of the “West” remains locus
of new cold war: maintaining U.S. war-time status, looking for new enemies
(rogue states, axis of evil, al-Qaeda, etc.)
• “I'm a neoconservative who's been mugged by reality.” -John Agresto, tasked to
rehabilitate Iraq's university system, 2004, cited in R. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: In
Baghdad's Green Zone (Bloomsbury, 2006), IR6003_AY16-17_tanseeseng
p.4 10
 Discussion Questions
1. A neo-con is “a liberal mugged by reality” (Irving
Kristol). Discuss.
2. “As an ideological driver of post-9/11 U.S. foreign
policy, neo-conservatism more or less fizzled out by
the end of Bush’s first term in office.” Agree or
disagree?
3. Was GW Bush’s foreign policy offensive-realist in
orientation? Discuss in view of J Mearsheimer’s
response to neo-conservatism.

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