NEOCONSERVATISM: Origins, the Role in US Foreign Policy, and the Middle East
By Hakan Köni*
Questions concerning neoconservatism have gained prominence especially after the US invasion of Iraq. This is because one of the determining causes of Iraqi invasion was the policy recommendations that the neoconservative advisors made to the US president George W. Bush. The neoconservatives, often called as neocons, are recognized with their influence on U.S. foreign policy, particularly under Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) and now George W. Bush (2001– continues) administrations.[1] After the inauguration of Bush as the US president, the Middle East region has encountered with intensive American foreign policy involvement in all military, political, economic and social aspects. The USA has perhaps increased its involvement in the region to the highest level in the history. I argue that the neoconservative movement in the USA has been a very influential factor on this process with its dominant role in US foreign policy making team and historical interests in the Middle East. The neocons characteristically argue that the USA must pursue an active foreign policy in its international relations, by using military means if necessary, to intimidate its real and supposed enemies.Therefore, in this paper, by investigating the origins of the neoconservative movement, its status in the Bush administration, its relationship with Israel and the Jews, and its role in the invasion of Iraq, I would like to show that this movement represents a major threat not only to the Middle East but also to the entire world. 1 The Origins of the Neoconservative Movement
1.1 Conservative Movement
The mere name neoconservative implies that there was a conservative movement in the past that gives the prefix “neo” to the former. The neoconservatism thus developed within a conservative movement that emerged as a grass-roots movement in the USA in 1930’s. The aim of this conservative movement was to defeat Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was nationalist in character and was against external expeditions and the New Deal. The conservative movement of 1930’s lost its power because of the Japanese challenge in Pearl Harbor, which rendered American military involvement in World War II necessary. However, in the post-World-War-II era, its appeal was in ascendance again. This time the movement assumed a political stance against Communism, Soviet Union and liberalism. It attracted millions of voters in the elections but because of the problems in the party structure, they were unable to have many representatives. Contrary to the conservative movement of 1930’s, it did not possess an intellectual leadership with organizations that promoted political reform. The movement had some publishing houses like Regnary, Devin-Adair, and Caxton, but these houses were not working on regular channels of distribution, and none of them had an appeal to the academic community except in the area of economic theory. In this area, Yale University publishing books by Ludwig von Mises between 1944 and 1957 and the economics faculty of University of Chicago was publishing books by use of their university press.[2] But economic theory on itself is not enough to make up a comprehensive worldview with an appeal for political, moral and social action. Regnary publishing house published The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk in 1953. This book was written in form of a PhD dissertation thouh Russell was not registered in a PhD program. The book is significant in the sense that it seeks the origins of American conservatism in Edmund Burke by stressing the antipathy of the traditions against the centralized political power. In order to decentralize the power, conservatives were in favor of free market. Conservatism has been a non-rational movement, in the philosophical sense, with its emphasis on tradition and intuition.[3]Some other media products of the grass-roots movements of American conservatism was the newspaper Human Events of 1950’s and 1960’s, and a weekly TV show by Dan Smoot, who was a constitutionalist, sponsored by a food company. In 1961, Smoot published an exposé about the Council on Foreign Relations that was bought by one million readers.[4] However, its appeal remained only as a grass-roots movement and it did not aspire to rally mass operations. The common point of all these initiatives was their opposition to the central power. Their audience was the people who did not trust the state.By the 1960's and 1970's, a number of think-tanks were established in Washington like the Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. They were primarily focused on putting pressure on the federal government. They were financed by business corporations which provided them with millions of dollars in return for their lobbying for the renunciation of certain regulations. Their attention thus gradually developed towards the goal of minimizing the state to the most possible degree. This is the general character of the conservative movement in the USA in which the neoconservatives had the opportunity to develop.
1.2 Neoconservative Movement
In the beginning, the focus of the neocons was more on economic policy than foreign policy. Their first significant literary product was The Public Interest that started to make publications in 1965.[5] It was publishing academic essays by scholars who were against certain programs of the Federal government such as those concerning the elimination of poverty, crime, racial discrimination, and similar domestic problems. Commentary was another publication that the same authors were writing skeptically about the government policies. But Commentary was distinguished from the former by the fact that it was the product of the American Jewish Committee.[6]
The early concerns of the movement are seen in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was indicating that the re-establishment of the disintegrating family structure of blacks was much more necessary than any other policies of the government to remove the poverty.[7] He gave many other lectures on poverty and out-of-target policies of the government’s war on poverty. He later collected the notes of his lectures in his book Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding.[8]Today, the concerns of the neocons are not with economic policy but with foreign policy and military. This represents a major change in their focus. Though ýt started as a scholarly protest against fruitless bureaucratic experiments of the Federal government, its attention has now shifted to expanding democracy by means of military intervention especially in the Middle East.In comparison to traditional conservatism and libertarianism, which usually tends to be isolationist, neoconservatism is famous for its increased emphasis on the usage of military methods, a willingness to confront regimes which are considered to be hostile to the values and interests of the US, spreading the policies of free-market to the world, and promoting democracy and freedom.[9] However, the neocon movement is inconsistent in the sense that while on the one hand its proponents are claiming to promote democracy and freedom in the world, they also support undemocratic states for realpolitical reasons.The so-called motivation behind this new enthusiastic support for democracy is that democratic transitions from authoritarianism will gradually eliminate radicalism which is thought to be the breeding ground for religious terrorism. The neocons also think that democratic countries are less likely to wage wars against each other than the countries with authoritarian regimes. In support of this argument, they claim that no two democratic states have fought each other since the War of 1812. In addition to these, they advocate that the absence of freedoms, free-market opportunities, secular general education in the authoritarian states are the main causes of radicalism and extremism. These are the main arguments behind their aggressive tendencies for spreading democracy in the regions where it is not the only game in the town, especially the Middle East.But I do not think that this is a valid argument because the authoritarian character of a state must not necessarily give any other state the right to wage a war against it. Though democracies do not tend to fight each other we have seen many times in the history that they do tend to fight other regimes without any legitimate reason. If the specific character of a regime gives it the right to fight all other regime, we can say that the countries with Communist or Islamic character can also feel like to do the same. In addition to this, while the US is supporting some undemocratic states for its own interest relations, we cannot accept that the neocons are sincere in their argument.Concerning the Middle East, the liberals were pleased with defending Israel, funding its experiments to settle in the region, and maintaining the Arabian oil since 1948. Nevertheless, conservatives think that in order to defend Israel it is necessary to change Islamic states into democracies. By this way, it is assumed that democracies will not give way to theocratic and anti-Zionist regimes. Because the Middle Eastern states are not willing by themselves to transform their regimes into democracies, American military power is needed to persuade them to do so. Accordingly, the USA must have a permanent presence in the region. Neocons are eager to pay the costs of such a policy, and they want that American taxpayers and troops also pay for it.[10] Today, this policy is being executed in the name of war on terrorism and struggle against the proliferation of WMDs. Liberal foreign policy specialists were in support of the idea that the attempts to democratize the Islamic states in the Middle East will prove fruitless and will be highly risky for the American military. They often preferred the “butter and guns” policy, according to which the butter should always precede the guns. But the neocon foreign policy appears in “guns and butter” model, according to which the butter should always follow the guns.[11] Among the founders of the neoconservative movement are Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell, James Q. Wilson, and Seymour Martin Lipset. They were frequently showing up in The Public Interest with their essays. Leo Strauss, who died in 1973, was the invisible hero of the movement. He was lecturing political philosophy at he University of Chicago. Irving Kristol venerates him greatly because of Strauss’s contributions in shaping her thinking. Now there are many Straussian specialists in Bush’s foreign policy team of advisors. Not surprisingly, many of the founders of the neocon movement were Jews.[12]During the Reagan era in 1980s, neocons acquired some positions in the administration as a harbinger of their active role in politics. One of them was Jeanne Kirkpatrick who became the US Ambassador to the UN between the years 1981 and 1985. He was formerly lecturing at Georgetown University as a professor. This was something common for many neocons: Before emerging in the political arena, they lectured in prominent American universities. A second common feature of the movement was that it was not a grass-roots movement, but rather a movement of elite intellectuals. Thirdly, the founders had spent the early years of their careers as democrats or sometimes as Trotskyites. And lastly, they came to influential positions during the Reagon administration as conservatives.Their publications in the 1960’s provided ammunition for old conservatives and libertarians. The latter group had been arguing that the centralization of power is immoral and destructive of liberty. The role of the neocons had been to provide case studies about the failures of the Federal government. But the neocons possessed some other extras that the old conservatives did not, namely, academic career and public fame. They were teaching at such major universities as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Georgetown.
Furthermore, neocons have always found positions in the governmental offices. They always succeeded in securing ways to ranks of power to support their specific policies. But the conservatives were unable to do so. They were like outsiders to bureaucracy with very weak channels of influence on policies.
2. Neocons and George W. Bush Administration:
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