Just what is neoconservatism anyway?

Crew members of US aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman work on fighter jets on the flight deck of the ship in the eastern Mediterranean Sea on May 8, 2018.  (Photo credit ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images)

A lot is being written about neoconservatives and how they are to blame for America’s forever wars.  But who are they?

‘Neoconservative’ is not just a fancy word for “warmonger” or “war hawk.”  Neoconservatism is a coherent set of ideas that people sincerely believe and are working hard to promote.  

That’s why the neocons have such influence.  Both elites and millions of Americans are sold on their ideas, or, rather, they just take them for granted.

The essence of neoconservatism is as follows: 

1. The United States of America is the embodiment of democracy and freedom.
2. U.S. American power is a force for good and supreme U.S. American power is a supreme good.
3. The USA, after its victory over Soviet Russia, found itself in a position of supreme power.
4. Anything or anyone that threatens this power is bad, and deserves to be suppressed by whatever means necessary.
5. The USA has the power to accomplish anything its leaders have the will to see through.
6. If the USA is ever defeated, it is because of weakness of will, lack of unity or treason, not the lack of the means to win.
7. Anyone who undermines American morale, whatever their motive, is, objectively speaking, an enemy.

You may think all this seems extreme, but there are individuals in the U.S. government and foreign policy establishment who literally believe all these things, many who believe in a weak form of these principles and few if any who would contradict them altogether.

They constitute a network journalists, academics, foreign policy and national security officials and a few politicians, all working together to promote their views and help each other advance. 

Outright opponents of their views are few.  Dissenters include the so-called “paleo-conservatives” and economic nationalists such as Pat Buchanan, who opposed intervention in Iraq and now think the United States should tend to its own problems rather than trying to reorder the world.

They also include the “realists” such as Henry Kissinger, who was ruthless in playing the Great Power game, but recognized that there were limits as to what American power can accomplish.  

I think the insiders who leak information to Seymour Hersh are in this category.  They don’t necessarily object to American foreign policy overall.  They just object to stupid and unproductive things, such as blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines. 

But nobody in a position of influence advocates peace as a goal.  Even Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other self-described progressive Democrats are silent.

The result is never-ending war.  This cannot go on forever and is bound to end in a bad way.

What’s the world coming to? A rant

Things are getting worse faster.  Some French movie director once said: Have the courage to believe what you know.  I keep hoping that what I know—what I think I know—won’t prove to be the case.

U.S. domestic policy is steered by a selfish financial oligarchy, which we can call the neoliberals.

U.S. foreign policy is steered by a murderous national security establishment, which we can call the neoconservatives.

Civilization faces two threats, nuclear war and global climate change.

Neoliberals and neoconservatives are making both worse.  Because of them, the U.S. has restarted the nuclear arms race and is stepping up fossil fuel production.

They also are soaking up resources needed to provide basic public services, maintain infrastructure and provide a social safety net.  Manufacturing capability and governmental capability are being hollowed out because of failures to invest.

The neoliberal and neoconservative elite maintain their power by corrupting the democratic process.  One way is by creating a dependence on big donors to conduct political campaigns.  Another is through gerrymandering, voter registration purges, creating artificial difficulties in voting and using hackable electronic voting machines.

This year the USA faces a near-perfect storm— (1) a pandemic that nobody really understands, (2) unemployment exceeding Great Depression levels and (3) the likelihood of more floods, storms, fires and other weather- and climate-related disasters.

The powers that be give us only two choices – (1) shut everything down and deprive millions of people of their livelihoods or (2) open everything up knowing that hundreds of thousands of people may die.

It’s possible that the coronavirus pandemic will ease off sooner than predicted, but it won’t be the last pandemic and may not be the worst.

We’re headed toward an election in which, as in 1876, there may be a dispute as to who really won.  I don’t expect a new civil war, but then the historic Civil War came as a surprise.

The Bernie Sanders campaign showed the near-impossibility of bringing about meaningful political change within an existing political party.

The Greens, Libertarians and other small parties have virtually no chance of coming to power, and probably wouldn’t know what to do with power if they got it.

Maybe a national reform movement can be created through grass-roots organizing, but this could take decades—barring a societal collapse, which is more likely to bring to power demagogues and dictators than new FDRs.

I’ve pushed back against those who say Donald Trump is a new Hitler.  It is not just that he doesn’t have the political acumen or sense of purpose of a Hitler.  The Trump-as-Hitler meme ignores the degree to which the USA of 2016 had already adopted Nazi-like practices—unprovoked military aggression, contempt for international law, assassinations, torture, detention without trial.

Andrew Bacevich on the lessons of Iraq

Andrew Bacevich is a retired career Army officer, a combat veteran of Vietnam and a self-identified conservative.  I have great respect for him and for his views on American foreign and military policy and his recent interview by Bill Moyers is well worth watching.

Bacevich has been writing about military and foreign policy since the 1990s, and generally has been proved right by events.   It would be good if he was asked for his opinion by TV interviewers more often.

You can find links to transcripts of Bill Moyers’ interview of Bacevich by clicking on the following.

Full Show: Chaos In Iraq

Extended Interview: Andrew Bacevich

Next are articles on the pros and cons of neoconservative foreign policy.

Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire: what our tired country still owes the world by Robert Kagan in The New Republic.

A Letter to Paul Wolfowitz by Andrew Bacevich in Harper’s.

The fragility of domination

ALBERT WOHLSTETTER’S PRECEPTS

1.  Liberal internationalism is an illusion

2.  The system that replaces liberal internationalism must address the ever-present (and growing) danger posed by catastrophic surprise.

3.  The key to averting or at least minimizing surprise is to act preventively.

4.  The ultimate in preventive action is domination

5.  Information technology brings outright supremacy within reach.

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The late Albert Wohlstetter was an influential “defense intellectual,” a scholar little known to the public but highly influential in shaping U.S. military policy.  His philosophy was summarized in these five precepts by Andrew J. Bacevich in an article in the March issue of Harper’s magazine, which was about the efforts of Paul Wolfowitz, one of Wohlstetter’s chief disciples, to turn these precepts into U.S. government policy.

Wolfowitz, serving as an adviser to the Pentagon in 1992, drafted the controversial Defense Planning Guidance document.  According to Basevich, it said the “first objective” of U.S. policy is to maintain unquestioned military supremacy and “prevent the emergence of a new rival, by, if necessary, employing force unilaterally with an eye to “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”   Unfortunately for Wolfowitz, the document was leaked before the White House had a chance to review it, President George H.W.  Bush disavowed it, and Wolfowitz left the government.

He served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University until he returned to government in 2001 as deputy to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  He advocated preventive war against Iraq.  “We cannot wait until the threat is imminent,” he wrote.   This policy failed.  But why did it fail?  The answer is that domination does not make you stronger.  Rather the effort to maintain domination saps your strength.

I’ve written posts about the ideas of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on fragility and antifragility.  The high-technology U.S. military is fragile, according to Taleb’s definition.  U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan depended on a long supply chain and complex technologies which could fail at any point.  The insurgency, by Taleb’s definition, was antifragile.  The insurgents fought on their home ground, used simple technologies (explosives set off by garage door openers and TV remotes) and were embedded in the population of the country, not in walled outposts.  Every U.S. victory in battle or drone attack raised up more insurgents for every one that was killed.

The Roman Empire was strong as long as Roman citizens throughout the empire thought it was worth defending.  When the empire came to rest on mere domination, the very extent of the empire made it harder to defend.  Every attack in the West made it necessary to weaken defenses in the East, and vice versa.  Eventually it became necessary to create co-emperors, for West and East, and this made it possible for the eastern half to survive after the western half fell.

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Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers wrote about how strong nations have been weakened by “imperial overstretch.”  Great Britain in World War Two was weakened, not strengthened, by the need to keep troops in India.  The British Empire’s strength came from Canada, Australia and other territories that did not rest on domination.

By occupying Afghanistan, the United States has made its forces vulnerable to attacks from the tribal areas of Pakistan, which would otherwise be of no concern.  To safeguard the new government in Libya, U.S. policy-makers now seek to prevent unfriendly forces from controlling Mali.  Rather than creating security, our government has created a wider circle of threats.   And in so doing, it has sapped American strength and left us less able to cope with urgent problems at home.

A traditional conservative vs. neo-conservatives

Hat tip to The American Conservative.