The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are fundamentally “neocon” wars. They were shaped by the neoconservative belief that American military might can replace rogue regimes with Western-style democracies that won’t threaten US security.
President Obama may be a pragmatist, but he’s now in charge of one fundamentally neoconservative wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Today, these wars are being led by a commander in chief, Barack Obama, whose views on foreign policy amount to a polar opposite of neoconservatism.
The neocons’ grand ambitions are now in the hands of a pragmatist.
Today, Dick Cheney is probably the most famous neocon, so lots of people assume that neoconservatism is a right-wing movement that took root after 9/11. Not so.
The resulting tension will shape much of Mr. Obama’s work in foreign affairs. And it will also check two of America’s most enduring claims: its commitment to spreading democracy abroad.
They associated themselves with the perceived more muscular liberalism of the first half of the 20th century, concerning foreign policy. In a 1995 Foreign Affairs piece, John Judis writes that neocons “were Cold War liberals who searched for a Truman in the 1970s and found Reagan.”
Neoconservatism was founded in the 1960s and ’70s when Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and other Democrats came to view their party – with its demands for an expanding welfare state and a less militaristic approach to the USSR – as a bastion of naive and destructive policies. They were liberals who despised hippies.
The neocons’ shift rightward initially brought them to the offices of Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Washington senator and Democratic hawk on Vietnam. Later, lots of flocked to the Reagan administration. George W. Bush didn’t campaign as a neocon, but his staff was dominated by neocon thinkers. After 9/11, neoconservatism was virtually synonymous with Republican foreign policy.
Across those decades, neoconservatives have supported myriad, sometimes contradictory policies. For this reason, Mr. Kristol describes his creed as neither a social movement nor full-bodied ideology, but a “persuasion.” Still, there exist core neocon values, all of which relate to a notion of imperialistic democracy.
The most crucial feature of neoconservatism is its Manichean worldview, wherein the Earth is pitted in an urgent struggle between purely nice and purely dreadful nations. As George W. Bush famously told then Sen. Joe Biden: “I don’t do nuance.”
Obama opposes them all.
During the cold war, this perspective was understandably commonplace, but neocons clung to it dogmatically, even railing against Reagan’s overtures to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. From their view, the USSR was dreadful, finish of story. It is this dualistic mindset that led to Bush’s designation of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the “axis of dreadful.”
Obama, conversely, does nuance and they does a lot of it. Consider his tactic to reach out to “good” Taliban, militants presumed to be more worried about their salary than global jihad.
A second core feature of the neocon “persuasion” involves a commitment to the military as the ultimate device of foreign policy. Neocons are skeptical of diplomacy and international institutions. President Bush sent an ambassador to Germany who did not speak Italian. And they nominated John Bolton, irascible critic of the idea of the United Nations, as ambassador to the UN.
Obama has staked his foreign policy on a return to American diplomacy, renewing discussions with Iran, Syria, and Russia, and sending Susan Rice, two of his closest advisers, to the UN. But diplomacy doesn’t equal pacifism and Obama is no dove, as his Afghanistan troop surge shows.
Related to the neocon’s militarism is their abrasive foreign policy tone. Neocons fear for the future of Western masculinity and pride, maybe understably so, but they project power in a paradoxically juvenile manner, employing the silent treatment and name-calling, among other tactics. They seemingly view aggression in speech and act as intrinsically valuable; whether it leads to the best result often seems beside the point. Obama delivers a markedly calmer and more respectful approach to allies and enemies alike. The result is a icy confidence more genuine than the neocon brashness…
President Obama may be a pragmatist, but he’s now in charge of one fundamentally neoconservative wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Today, these wars are being led by a commander in chief, Barack Obama, whose views on foreign policy amount to a polar opposite of neoconservatism.
The neocons’ grand ambitions are now in the hands of a pragmatist.
Today, Dick Cheney is probably the most famous neocon, so lots of people assume that neoconservatism is a right-wing movement that took root after 9/11. Not so.
The resulting tension will shape much of Mr. Obama’s work in foreign affairs. And it will also check two of America’s most enduring claims: its commitment to spreading democracy abroad.
They associated themselves with the perceived more muscular liberalism of the first half of the 20th century, concerning foreign policy. In a 1995 Foreign Affairs piece, John Judis writes that neocons “were Cold War liberals who searched for a Truman in the 1970s and found Reagan.”
Neoconservatism was founded in the 1960s and ’70s when Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and other Democrats came to view their party – with its demands for an expanding welfare state and a less militaristic approach to the USSR – as a bastion of naive and destructive policies. They were liberals who despised hippies.
The neocons’ shift rightward initially brought them to the offices of Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Washington senator and Democratic hawk on Vietnam. Later, lots of flocked to the Reagan administration. George W. Bush didn’t campaign as a neocon, but his staff was dominated by neocon thinkers. After 9/11, neoconservatism was virtually synonymous with Republican foreign policy.
Across those decades, neoconservatives have supported myriad, sometimes contradictory policies. For this reason, Mr. Kristol describes his creed as neither a social movement nor full-bodied ideology, but a “persuasion.” Still, there exist core neocon values, all of which relate to a notion of imperialistic democracy.
The most crucial feature of neoconservatism is its Manichean worldview, wherein the Earth is pitted in an urgent struggle between purely nice and purely dreadful nations. As George W. Bush famously told then Sen. Joe Biden: “I don’t do nuance.”
Obama opposes them all.
During the cold war, this perspective was understandably commonplace, but neocons clung to it dogmatically, even railing against Reagan’s overtures to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. From their view, the USSR was dreadful, finish of story. It is this dualistic mindset that led to Bush’s designation of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the “axis of dreadful.”
Obama, conversely, does nuance and they does a lot of it. Consider his tactic to reach out to “good” Taliban, militants presumed to be more worried about their salary than global jihad.
A second core feature of the neocon “persuasion” involves a commitment to the military as the ultimate device of foreign policy. Neocons are skeptical of diplomacy and international institutions. President Bush sent an ambassador to Germany who did not speak Italian. And they nominated John Bolton, irascible critic of the idea of the United Nations, as ambassador to the UN.
Obama has staked his foreign policy on a return to American diplomacy, renewing discussions with Iran, Syria, and Russia, and sending Susan Rice, two of his closest advisers, to the UN. But diplomacy doesn’t equal pacifism and Obama is no dove, as his Afghanistan troop surge shows.
Related to the neocon’s militarism is their abrasive foreign policy tone. Neocons fear for the future of Western masculinity and pride, maybe understably so, but they project power in a paradoxically juvenile manner, employing the silent treatment and name-calling, among other tactics. They seemingly view aggression in speech and act as intrinsically valuable; whether it leads to the best result often seems beside the point. Obama delivers a markedly calmer and more respectful approach to allies and enemies alike. The result is a icy confidence more genuine than the neocon brashness…
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