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Why the Neoconservatives Just Keep Winning
One of the inescapable messages emerging from the Sept.
11, 2001 attacks was the vitality of the US neoconservative
critique. Neocons not only proved to be the most adept
at explaining the mass homicides, they also offered decisive
solutions to the problems that entailed. And up to now
these appear to have worked.
It’s never easy for a libertarian who fundamentally
mistrusts state power to approve of the state-centered
neo-Wilsonianism of many neoconservatives, or for an advocate
of free markets to sanction their glorification of an
uncompetitive form of US domination. Yet the neocons have
caught their critics in a vise whether isolationist
libertarians, conservative realists, old-left liberals
or Clintonian multilateralists.
The triumph of the neoconservative worldview came in
September 2002, when the Bush administration issued a
new National Security Strategy. The document was a bureaucratic
compromise that placed the neocon dogma of the Pentagon
and its White House allies alongside conventional State
Department multilateralism. Reading the document, anyone
could see the power was in its innovation most prominently
its promotion of US security and global supremacy and
its defense of pre-emptive strikes to preserve this. In
that context the State Department’s multilateral
impulses were redefined by neocon priorities.
The success of the neocon message resulted from two processes:
one involving definition, the other solutions. Underlining
this was the fact that Washington neoconservatives make
up a compact group of true believers who rarely let bureaucracy
divide them. For example, a prominent neocon is Undersecretary
of State John Bolton, who works under Colin Powell. However,
he was appointed at the insistence of a neocon ally, Vice-President
Dick Cheney. That’s why Bolton is still seen by many
of his colleagues as a neoconservative Trojan horse.
Where the neocons were most effective after Sept. 11
was in defining the problem created by the attacks in
a way that was both accessible and accepted. They argued,
with reason, that what had occurred was the opening shot
in a fight between good and evil. The evil was not Islam,
but Muslim extremism, and the only way to overcome this
was to attack America’s enemies before they again
did the same to America. Since there were many such enemies
around the world, what was required was a worldwide strategy
to eliminate the threat.
This led to a distinctive facet of the neocon critique:
the need to overcome and reshape countries menacing the
US in effect to engage in nation building. While
not embraced by all neocons, this approach posed a problem
for their ideological adversaries. The reason was that
neocons were advocating spreading US values such as democracy
and free markets. Liberals and isolationist libertarians
were outmaneuvered by this determined neo-Wilsonianism
the former because it approximated traditional Wilsonianism,
with its focus on the moral aims of foreign policy, albeit
minus the deference to international institutions; the
latter because they could not defend free minds and markets
in the US while neglecting this overseas.
The last line of defense came from conservative realists,
who always scorned the inflated aspirations of any kind
of Wilsonianism, old or new, and who were too anchored
in the traditional state system based on a balance of
power to sanction US unilateralism. Yet they were neutralized
because they, too, advocated force when the international
system demanded it, and the post-Sept. 11 world fit the
bill. Moreover, the neocons had been their allies during
the last years of the Cold War and there was an ideological
affinity there, even if realists had a different sense
of priorities when dealing with the former USSR.
The realists collapsed when it came time to offer a policy
rejoinder to Sept. 11. The realist belief in an international
system built on state sovereignty was irrelevant to the
retaliation US President George W. Bush and the US public
demanded, one that involved undermining the sovereignty
of enemy states. The process began in Afghanistan and
continued in Iraq. Worse, the realists were compelled
to support such actions, though they tried to save face
by criticizing the clumsy preparations for war.
Their adversaries routed, the neocons may yet be undone
by the details. Many of the Bush administration’s
critics would like to see the US fail in Iraq, largely
as it would let them score a rare point against the neocons.
It is far too early to assume that the US is trapped in
an Iraqi quagmire, and it is, again, underestimating the
neocons to suppose they will sit by and allow a disaster
to happen.
However, the real battleground on which the neocons’
adversaries will have to fight is that of ideas. There
are alternatives to American triumphalism and unilateralism,
whose end-result would also be freedom and open markets.
The only problem is that the neocons’ ideas are the
only ones that sound convincing today, partly because
they were so well adapted to the anxious post-Sept. 11
mood of Americans, most of whom did not care about what
the neocons actually said.
When a body of principles so effortlessly conforms to
a country’s sensitivities, it becomes extremely powerful.
That’s why it is pointless to criticize neoconservatives.
What would be far more useful is to offer self-sustaining
and relevant policy alternatives to theirs, and ensure
the US public agrees.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR
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