The Informationist

In Defense of Neocons

Over on TMPCafe’s America Abroad blog, G. John Ikenberry posted a thoughtful essay entitled ”Democratic Enlargement versus Liberal Order,” comparing and contrasting the philosophies of Republican and Democratic liberal internationlists:

My view is that Bush’s vision is distorted and incomplete. The big difference between Bush and the great liberal internationalist presidents is that Bush wants to promote democracy and freedom and Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton wanted to build liberal order. More precisely, they believed that you can’t really have one without the other – to spread democracy you must also deepen the liberal democratic order. . . .

This debate is useful. I think Bush and the neo-conservatives are wrong. But the debate does force liberal internationalists to think about how the liberal order should be reformed to better facilitate democratic enlargement.

It’s an important contribution to an important debate, but I find myself in only partial agreement. In particular, I think that he’s too hard on the Neocons. I intended to title my piece ”In Defense of Neocons,” but I hit the return button too quickly:

I agree wholeheartedly with the distinction that you draw between the promotion of democracy and the promotion of liberalism. Democracy is a critical ingredient in the liberal order, but it is hardly the only one. Liberalism rests upon a civic, legal, and cultural infrastructure that protects minority rights within a generally majoritarian democratic system. In the absence of such infrastructure, “democracy” can lead to atrocities like the Indonesian anti-Chinese riots following the free elections of 1998. I frequently explain to (particularly European) friends that the U.S. is not “a democracy,” but rather a “liberal, constitutional, democratic republic,” and that each of those terms conveys something distinct and important.

I quibble, however, with your notion of a view espoused by “Bush and the neo-conservatives.” The neocon press has consistently been much closer to the liberal-promotion arena than has the administration. The Weekly Standard has repeatedly criticized the administration for allocating insufficient resources and planning to reconstruction in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It was also supportive of the Clinton administration’s nation-building exercises in the Balkans, and always advocated entering Iraq to build a reasonable society rather than focusing on WMDs.

The administration, particularly Cheney and Rumsfeld, hew to an older Republican line of aggressive nationalism--not neoconservatism. This philosophy is the one that, in an earlier era, opposed both Truman’s policy of containment as insufficiently aggressive in promoting national security, and Truman’s Marshall Plan as an inappropriate use of American taxpayer dollars. While neocon philosophy might have urged a more aggressive posture, todays neocons consider themselves proud heirs to those who supported the Marshall plan.

The tendency to blame this administration’s policies on a small group of neocons is misplaced; it likely began as an antisemitic effort to blame all woes on folks with Jewish names, but has since worked its way into the mainstream shorn of such illicit motives. Nevertheless, it remains shocking to think that a cadre of second- and third-tier advisors bulldozed over strong personalities like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell.

More importantly, though, blaming neocons for this administrations lack of competence, commitment, and foresight, actually hurts the promotion of liberalism. Republican neocons and Clintonian nation builders are on the same side of this debate; their agreements dwarf their differences, with one key exception. In a recent issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz described his disagreements with his Israeli daughter over Bush’s Middle East policy. His candor in this article stripped away a lot of the fluff that typically obfuscates foreign policy debate. His point was simple: he trusts Bush, his daughter does not.

The gap between the Democrats and the Republicans who favor working towards a liberal orfer hinge upon a similar distinction. Bush has said many uplifting things about the issue--from his National Security Strategy through his second inaugural. Question: Do you trust him to carry through on his oratory? If the answer is yes, you end up with the neocon Republicans, issuing specific criticisms while remaining optimistic about the overall policy. If the answer is no, you’re probably a Clinton Democrat, approving of selected specifics while lamenting the overall policy failure.

Bottom line: Large parts of both parties oppose intervention to build liberal societies abroad. “Truman Democrats” and “Neocon Republicans” are the exceptions. If we continue to insult each other and refuse to work together, the venture has no chance of succeeding--a prospect that I suspect Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader would both relish, but that does little honor to the legacies of either Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan

Posted by Bruce Abramson from on 06/13 at 09:40 PM in Foreign Affairs and the World beyond Our Borders