Neo-conservatism

American Foreign Policy

 

Neo-conservatism, as the book notes, is an approach to American foreign policy that comes out of an ideology.  It is an ideology not associated with traditional conservatism, and as Fukuyama points out, was often tied to Jewish thinkers, making it seem to some like it was an Israel-centric policy.  Fukuyama denies that, and gives a very cogent and interesting explanation of what neo-conservatism is.

 

While the story of the individuals and their background is important, in class let’s talk about the main themes of neo-conservatism.   But first, philosophic context.

 

While we could spend weeks on a history of western thought, I’m going to focus on 20th century ideology, the context in which neo-conservatism arose.   Building on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy in the 20th century took aim at the enlightenment.  The enlightenment, the philosophical move that upended the church and replaced traditional authority with an appeal to reason and rationality, had at its core a belief that reason can lead to correct appreciation of “the good” and the best way to shape society.   The US is an enlightenment era creation, and many philosophical debates were about what is the best way to organize politics, or determine value.

 

But there is a problem with that, something Edmund Burke, a conservative, noted when he critiqued the French revolution in 1790, predicting disaster long before it went bad.   What if people disagree with each other about where reason leads?  Reason can’t ultimately prove what values are correct, it can’t really answer the question “is there a God.”  And if it tries, well, the best it can do is say that using reason, we have no evidence to prove a God exists.  That makes the “no God” as much a position taken on faith as “a God,” and of course doesn’t address the question of “which God.”

 

Nietzsche essentially tore it apart and said we really have no grounding with the enlightenment, all is appeal to reason, but reason has to build itself up on top of core unprovable beliefs about the world.  In the past we had that core with religious teachings, now we make them up based on whatever suits us.  We get multiple perspectives on truth, but the idea of “truth” is gone.

 

In the 20th century, as different versions of the truth started to go to war with each other: fascism, communism, capitalism, philosophers started to further tear apart the enlightenment notion.   Some said it was all culture and discourse, others said it was liberation from culture and reason, but overall there was a retreat from the idea one could identify, with reason and rational thought, any truth out there that was more than a perspective.  Pragmatists were the only ones with no problem with that – fine, we’ll just define our goals and decide whatever works (and realism as we’ve described it, ends up as a very pragmatist approach to world politics).

 

Enter Leo Strauss, and the neo-conservatives.  They confront this, as well as some libertarian arguments that try to use enlightenment thought to rationalize a radical individualist anti-statist ideal (esp., but not limited to Ayn Rand), and a collectivist, statist alternative of Marxism, with powerful states pushing the Marxist agenda.

 

They want to recapture the essence of reason as a way to make moral and normative distinctions in politics, fight against relativism and the idea of moral equivalence between regimes, and instead posit a rationale for a foreign policy that takes into account not just the national interest, but some kind of moral purpose for the United States, and foreign policy makers in general.

 

Note:  Ironically, the same motives were found on the left.  The left, from the neo-conservative perspective seemed lazy and in fact blind.  They didn’t like the kind of abuse of power and mistakes of the US establishment (which were at that time quite real, including racism, sexism, and acceptance of extreme poverty), so they simply embraced the most obvious critic: the left and Marxism.  That was true for the early Trotskyite neo-conservatives as well.   But the left in the US seemed to have blinders on when considering the horrors of the Soviet Union; many had defended Stalin, defended Mao, and seemed to sacrifice an embrace of freedom for an ideological rationale to attack problems in the US.  

 

So what did neo-conservatives argue.  First, the principles from back in the Cold War.

 

1.  Regimes matter.   A traditional conservative view of regimes tended to focus on the cultural and traditional underpinnings of society.  A government reflected those traditions, meaning there was a kind of relativism in play.  Consider, for instance, traditional conservatives in the US arguing for English as a primary language, Christian values, traditional morality, and the importance of the flag.  Muslim conservatives argue for Islamic values, the Koran, their notions of morality, and the importance of Islamic customs.  In each case you have very different cultural bases, and these lead to different regimes.  But conservatives can accept each as legitimate if they fit the culture (note: conservatives would make a distinction between dictatorships which claim cultural connection, and those whose rule really fits historical/cultural realities).

 

Neo-conservatives didn’t deny this, but going back to Aristotle recognized that democracies not only function better, but produce better citizens.  We should take into account the kind of regimes we encounter.

 

2.  Anti-Communism.  Here neo-conservatives broke with the Left (who often blamed the US more than the Soviet Union for the Cold War) and the Realist right, whose détente policies seemed to legitimize the Soviet position in the world.   They also were far more likely to see Communism as a clear and present threat to the US and the West, while realists believed that in the power game, the Communists had nuclear weapons, but otherwise had severe disadvantages vis-à-vis the West, and thus the threat was actually limited.  Also, neo-conservatives took ideology far more seriously than realists.  For most realists, the Soviet Union was a superpower first, communist second.  Neo-conservatives, to be glib, reversed that.

 

3.  Dislike of government social engineering.  Besides not likely to work, government efforts to shape society meant shifting power to a governmental bureaucratic class which not only likely did not have a good idea how society really should look, but didn’t even have a coherent way to try to reach those conclusions.  Moreover, the means used tended to both enhance government power, decrease liberty, and not solve the problems meant to solve.

 

4.  A growing distrust of Europe.  In Europe many neo-conservatives saw the 20th century trends in philosophy which they saw as dangerous move towards a political reality.  The Europeans by the eighties trusted Gorbachev more than Reagan, had publics that seemed to have no desire to make difficult decisions to confront the evil of communism, and instead built pipelines to bring in gas from Siberia, continued détente, and built their own countries on statist social welfare policies.  In short, Europe was soft, spoiled, and lacked a moral core.  Most neo-conservatives thought by the eighties that they could look to Asia or other allies, rather than Europe, as a main partner for the US.

 

Kristol-Kagen

 

Fukuyama notes that after the Cold War the “next generation” of neo-conservatives emerged, led by William Kristol and Robert Kagen, who took issue with those who wanted a more “normal” post-Cold War America.

 

This “Hard Wilsonianism” or “Wilsonianism on steroid” essentially accepted the idealism of Wilson, but made it a national cause more than an international one.  Wilson argued that democracy was the key to a peaceful future.  Later liberal scholars argued that democratic free market states don’t fight each other.  They’ll fight illiberal states, and illiberal states will fight each other, but liberal democracies do not.    Like Wilson, the goal of international relations and foreign policy should be to promote these moral goals.  Wilson savaged the Realpolitik of the Europeans before WWI, blaming their bloody war on power politics, and an inability to see that the way people are governed and the ethical content of their regimes does more to assure peace and prosperity that geopolitical calculations.

 

But Wilson failed, didn’t he?  For realists, WWII meant idealism was dead – idealism was the appeasement policy, realism was a stark consideration of power.

 

For neo-conservatives, that was the wrong lesson.  For them, Wilsonianism failed because Wilson thought the key was international institutions and the development of international law.  For neo-conservatives, the key would be national greatness, and the US being able to operate based on principle, without being tied down or limited by international agreements and organizations. 

 

They realized that the US after the Cold War had not only defeated one very powerful foe, but emerged as the only real force for trying to spread democracy out there.

 

Moreover, they were convinced that what was lacking was not an international consensus or capacity to act, but nerve.  The US was unwilling to simply become aggressive in trying to combat dictatorial regimes.  Just as the Soviet Union, we now know, was crumbling from within and needed only a small shove to go from being apparently a great, powerful state to total collapse, so to do dictatorial regimes from Iraq to Iran to states all over the world rest on flimsy foundations.    We should be willing to confront these regimes, some firm use of American power, combined with successful transitions towards democracy, would start a kind of domino effect, and re-shape the global balance of power.

 

Critiques (not including the Iraq war):

 

1.  “The Best and the Brightest”:  Similar ideas were held by the Kennedy administration when it came to power, and elite ivy league intellectuals were brought in to run the country.  The idea that we had the power and the knowledge to use it made it so that theory and intellectual expectations became accepted conventional wisdom in many circles.   Area experts, those with practical experience, and people preaching caution were ignored and considered to simply ‘not understand.’  In the 60s that led to Vietnam, and a dramatic move away from Kennedy’s idealism (which has a lot in common with neo-conservatism) to Nixon and Kissinger’s realism.

 

2.  Where does culture end, and regime begin?  In Fukuyama we see both concern for regime types and a desire to promote certain regimes alongside a dislike of social engineering.   It seems that neo-conservatives distrust social engineering as a leftist venture, but didn’t fully appreciate how much of what they were planning to accomplish would require social engineering.

 

That’s what made the Kagan piece I e-mailed you so interesting.  While Kagan retains that concern about regime type, he recognizes that the idea that people would drift towards liberalism ignored the power, and sometimes popularity of authoritarianism.   Yet he still sees it as a kind of battle.  Note what says near the conclusion:

 

The focus on the dazzling pageant of progress at the end of the Cold War ignored the wires and the beams--the actual historical scaffolding--that had made such progress possible. It failed to acknowledge that progress toward liberalism was not inevitable, but was contingent on events--battles won or lost, social movements successful or crushed, economic policies implemented or discarded. The spread of democracy was not merely the unfolding of certain ineluctable processes of economic and political development. We do not know whether such an evolutionary process--with predictable stages, with known causes and effects--even exists.

 

Thus there remains this sense that they are fighting for a cause – democracy and liberalism.  Moreover, this cause is seen as inherently just; we know our way of life is better because of our enlightenment values embracing freedom, human rights, and secular perspectives on the issues of the day.  Yet we have to recognize, he argues, that there isn’t a kind of evolutionary or natural progression to democracy (a big lesson from Iraq!), and indeed, in China, Russia and other places there seems to be strong arguments for authoritarianism.

 

He ends with a this:

 

The world's democracies need to begin thinking about how they can protect their interests and advance their principles in a world in which these are, once again, powerfully contested.

 

Discussion question:  Consider how a realist might agree with much of Kagan’s analysis, yet conclude that we really shouldn’t worry about regime types, rather just our national interest.  Regime types might be relevant if they yield a revolutionary approach that challenges international stability, but not because we are trying to spread our own type. 

 

1.  Who is more convincing, the realist or Kagan?

 

2.  Even if you agree with Kagan on the goal of spreading democracy, there are real questions about tactics.  Implicit in Kagan’s argument is a sense that one has to rethink the kind of tactics used in the past.  This seems to mesh a bit with Fukuyama’s approach; could we see a new kind of neo-conservatism emerging, one that might not be as aggressive as that of  Kristol, Krauthammer, etc?