In today's BBC NEWS Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs looks back at the rise and fall of the neocons, who encouraged George Bush to invade Iraq in an article entitled: Viewpoint: The end of the neocons? I hope we are not scapegoating here. I have detested these people's ideology as much as anyone, yet they alone did not have the power to send us to war in Iraq. they alone did not have the power to spend us into the deep pit of debt that now stands like a wall in front of any effort to make this a decent society. They alone did not culture a mentality that sees violence and military action as the way we need to use our resources and young people. It goes much deeper than that and will not disappear with them. But let us see what their contribution was. Come look below the break for more.
Clarke starts out by asking whether or not their philosophy is about to vanish from the scene. His answer is:
The answer seems likely to be Yes.
But the epitaph of neoconservatism has been written before - prematurely, as it turned out, in the 1980s.
Having been apparently headed for extinction at the end of the Reagan Administration a second generation emerged in the mid-1990s.
This was period of post-Cold War overwhelming US military dominance which the neocons anointed as the "unipolar moment". It acted as the incubator for the ideas of modern neoconservatism.
According to Clarke:
The main characteristics of neoconservatism are:
a tendency to see the world in binary good/evil terms
low tolerance for diplomacy
readiness to use military force
emphasis on US unilateral action
disdain for multilateral organisations
focus on the Middle East
Being one of the people who was alive when Israel was born and when the Cold War started, I have to ask whether we should buy this whole story. It is worth at least a full diary reviewing the history of the effects of Israel on the left in this country, but that is for another time. Suffice it to say that McCarthyism and Cold War ideology did not need Israel to fuel the fires. Israel was convenient and did interface with a very large and influential constituency in this country. But then we managed quite well with Korea and Vietnam did we not? The neocons were more than the list Clarke provides would have us believe. The attempt to provide philosophical groundwork for a set of sentiments already dominant in American culture has always seemed a bit odd to me. There is almost a Schizophrenic quality to this scenario. The right wing World View has always been one that seemed shallow intellectually to me. But then, is my World View that more sophisticated? I get put down as naive and weak because I abhor violence as a solution to problems. I seek cooperation and collective efforts even when they may be less "efficient". Efficiency has always had a strange taint to it after the Nazis.
Clarke also has this to say:
In many ways, the 2008 election represented a direct repudiation of the neocon style of foreign policy based on military-centred, unilateralist overreaching.
At first sight, the incoming Obama administration appears to be the polar opposite of neoconservatism.
Its instincts are multilateralist, being committed, for example, to adhering to the Kyoto Protocol and to international agreements like the Geneva Convention.
It places a high priority on diplomacy, with President-elect Obama being open to direct talks with long-ignored countries like Iran and Cuba. Defense Secretary Gates, who is remaining in office, has made it clear that he regards military intervention as the genuinely last option.
Furthermore, the financial meltdown and the drains of the Iraq and Afghan wars have chipped away at the pre-eminence of US power. It is difficult to argue today that the US enjoys a unipolar advantage.
The safest bet, therefore, is that we can bid adieu to the neocons and leave their role to be adjudicated by history.
Well that may be true. On the other hand, does it mean that if we fix the economy and become capable of forcing our will on other people that we no longer will be prone to do so? There, to me, is the crucial question. History has a strange way of mixing causes up when they are phrased simplistically. Are we merely going to wait and retrench or are we going to genuinely change? Look at hoe Clarke ends his article:
The neocons are arguing that Iran is the defining issue for US foreign policy and that, short of an abandonment by Tehran of its apparent nuclear weapons program, the US must use force.
Once again, the early signs are that, for the Obama team, military force is well down the agenda and a new form of engagement is under consideration.
Should this change - possibly on the back of intransigence from Tehran - the neocons will be back in business and will crow that they have survived yet another premature obituary.
The only thing I dispute about this warning is that it will not take the neocons to bring back the violence and the hubris. It has been there from the beginning. The neocons simply were another manifestation of something deeply embedded in our national character. It is the part of being a citizen that prevents me from relaxing and feeling complacent. There is that alpha male character to our psyche that does not go away. It makes me sure that I will die in the same struggle I was born into.