Neoconservatism

Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American Conservatism that is most known for its advocacy of using American economic and military power to promote liberal democracy in other countries. The movement emerged during the early 1970s among Democrats who disagreed with the party's growing opposition to the Vietnam War and had become skeptical of the Great Society's welfare programs. Although neoconservatives generally endorse free-market economics, they often believe cultural and moral issues to be more significant, and so have tended to be less thoroughgoing in opposition to government intervention in society than more traditionally conservative and libertarian members of the Republican Party.^[1]^[2]

Terminology

The term neoconservative was initially employed as a criticism against proponents of American modern liberalism who had "moved to the right".^[3]^[4] Socialist Michael Harrington coined the current sense of the term neoconservative in a 1973 article concerning welfare policy.^[5] According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about."^[6] The term "neoconservative" was the subject of increased media coverage during the presidency of George W. Bush.^[7]^[8] with particular focus on a perceived neoconservative influence on American foreign policy, as part of the Bush Doctrine.^[9] The term neocon is often used as pejorative in this context.

The first major intellectual to embrace the term, Irving Kristol, is often dubbed the 'godfather' of neoconservatism. Kristol wrote of his neoconservative views in the 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative.'"^[3] His ideas have been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine.^[10] Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled "The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy".^[11]^[12] Kristol's son, William Kristol, founded the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.

History and origins

Great Depression and World War II

Most neoconservatives had been on the left in the 1930s and 1940s, then moved right in reaction to Stalinism and supported the Cold War. Many were Jewish and emerged from intellectual milieu of the mid-20th century New York City.^[13]^[14] Most were liberal Democrats into the 1960s, when they were confronted with the New Left and rethought their positions. Many became followers of Senator Henry M. Jackson, a liberal Democrat in domestic affairs who rejected détente and demanded a hard-line against the Soviet Union in the 1970s.^[15]

Initially, the neoconservatives were less concerned with foreign policy than with domestic policy. Irving Kristol's journal, The Public Interest, focused on ways that government planning in the liberal state had produced unintended harmful consequences. Norman Podhoretz's magazine Commentary, formerly a journal of the liberal left, had more of a cultural focus, criticizing excesses in the movements for black equality and women's rights, and in the academic left.^{[citation needed]} Through the 1950s and early 1960s the future neoconservatives had been socialists or liberals strongly supportive of the American Civil Rights Movement, integration, and Martin Luther King, Jr..^[16]^[17]

Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, inspiration for neoconservative foreign policy in 1970s

Rejecting the Democratic Party

Neoconservatives rejected the counterculture of the 1960s New Left, and what they saw as anti-Americanism in the non-interventionism of the movement against the Vietnam War. When the anti-war element took control of the party in 1972 and nominated George McGovern, the democrats among them followed the lead of Washington Senator Henry Jackson and revolted. Historian Justin Vaïsse calls this the "Second Age" of Neoconservatism, with its emphasis on the Cold War.^[18]

As the policies of the New Left pushed the Democrats to the Left, these intellectuals became disillusioned with President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society domestic programs. The influential 1970 bestseller The Real Majority by Ben Wattenberg expressed that the "real majority" of the electorate supported economic liberalism but social conservatism, and warned Democrats it could be disastrous to take liberal stances on certain social and crime issues.^[19]

Many supported Democratic senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson in his unsuccessful 1972 and 1976 campaigns for president. Among those who worked for Jackson were future neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Richard Perle. In the late 1970s neoconservative support moved to Ronald Reagan the Republican hawk who promised to confront Soviet expansionism.

Michael Lind, a self-described former neoconservative, explained:^[20]

Neoconservatism... originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' [After the end of the Cold War]... many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center... Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.

In his semi-autobiographical book, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, Irving Kristol cited a number of influences on his own thought, including not only Max Shachtman and Leo Strauss but also the skeptical liberal literary critic Lionel Trilling. The influence of Leo Strauss and his disciples on neoconservatism has generated some controversy, with Lind asserting:^[21]

For the neoconservatives, religion is an instrument of promoting morality. Religion becomes what Plato called a noble lie. It is a myth which is told to the majority of the society by the philosophical elite in order to ensure social order... In being a kind of secretive elitist approach, Straussianism does resemble Marxism. These ex-Marxists, or in some cases ex-liberal Straussians, could see themselves as a kind of Leninist group, you know, who have this covert vision which they want to use to effect change in history, while concealing parts of it from people incapable of understanding it.

William Kristol defends his father by noting that the criticism of an instrumental view of politics misses the point. When the context is a discussion of religion in the public sphere in a secular nation, religion is inevitably dealt with instrumentally. Apart from that, it should be borne in mind that the majority of neoconservatives believe in the truth, as well as the utility, of religion.^[22]

1980s

As the 1980s wore on, younger second-generation neoconservatives, such as Elliott Abrams, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators, who were at that time increasingly engaged in human rights abuses worldwide.^[23] This debate led to a policy shift in 1986, when the Reagan administration, demanding Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos step down, flew him to the U.S. Abrams also supported the 1988 Chilean plebiscite that resulted in the restoration of democratic rule and Augusto Pinochet's eventual removal from office.^[24] Through the National Endowment for Democracy, led by another neoconservative, Carl Gershman, funds were directed to the anti-Pinochet opposition.^[25]

1990s

During the 1990s, neoconservatives were once again in the opposition side of the foreign policy establishment, both under the Republican Administration of President George H. W. Bush and that of his Democratic successor, President Bill Clinton. Many critics charged that the neoconservatives lost their influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.^[26]

Neoconservative writers were critical of the post–Cold War foreign policy of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which they criticized for reducing military expenditures and lacking a sense of idealism in the promotion of American interests. They accused these Administrations of lacking both moral clarity and the conviction to pursue unilaterally America's international strategic interests.^[27]

The movement was galvanized by the decision of George H. W. Bush and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War in 1991. Many neoconservatives viewed this policy, and the decision not to support indigenous dissident groups such as the Kurds and Shiites in their 1991-1992 resistance to Hussein, as a betrayal of democratic principles.^{[citation needed]}

Ironically, some of those same targets of criticism would later become fierce advocates of neoconservative policies. In 1992, referring to the first Gulf War, then United States Secretary of Defense and future Vice President Dick Cheney said:

I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.... And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam [Hussein] worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.^[28]

Within a few years of the Gulf War in Iraq, many neoconservatives were pushing to oust Saddam Hussein. On February 19, 1998, an open letter to President Clinton appeared, signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with neoconservatism and, later, related groups such as the PNAC, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power.^[29]

Neoconservatives were also members of the blue team, which argued for a confrontational policy toward the People's Republic of China and strong military and diplomatic support for Taiwan.

In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this– along with support for religion generally– may have been a case of a "noble lie", intended to protect public morality, or even tactical politics, to attract religious supporters.^[30]

2000s

Administration of George W. Bush

The Bush campaign and the early Bush administration did not exhibit strong support for neoconservative principles. As a candidate Bush argued for a restrained foreign policy, stating his opposition to the idea of nation-building^[31] and an early foreign policy confrontation with China was handled without the vociferousness suggested by some neoconservatives.^[32] Also early in the administration, some neoconservatives criticized Bush's administration as insufficiently supportive of Israel, and suggested Bush's foreign policies were not substantially different from those of President Clinton.^[33]

Bush's policies changed dramatically immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks. According to columnist Gerard Baker,^[34]

It took, improbably, the arrival of George Bush in the White House and September 11, 2001, to catapult [neoconservatism] into the public consciousness. When Mr Bush cited its most simplified tenet—that the United States should seek to promote liberal democracy around the world—as a key case for invading Iraq, neoconservatism was suddenly everywhere. It was, to its many critics, a unified ideology that justified military adventurism, sanctioned torture, and promoted aggressive Zionism.

Bush laid out his vision of the future in his State of the Union speech in January 2002, following the September 11, 2001, attacks. The speech, written by (now) neoconservative David Frum, named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as states that "constitute an axis of evil" and "pose a grave and growing danger." Bush suggested the possibility of preemptive war: "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."^[35]^[36]

Some prominent defense and national security personalities have been quite critical of what they believed was neoconservative influence in getting the United States to war with Iraq.^[37] Retired general William Odom, who had once served as NSA Chief under Ronald Reagan, was openly critical of Neoconservative influence in the decision to go to war, having said, "It's pretty hard to imagine us going into Iraq without the strong lobbying efforts from AIPAC and the neocons, who think they know what's good for Israel more than Israel knows."^[38]

Nebraska Republican U.S. senator Chuck Hagel, who has been critical of the Bush administration's adoption of neoconservative ideology in his book America: Our Next Chapter, writes, "So why did we invade Iraq? I believe it was the triumph of the so-called neo-conservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence that took America into this war of choice. . . . They obviously made a convincing case to a president with very limited national security and foreign policy experience, who keenly felt the burden of leading the nation in the wake of the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil."

Bush Doctrine

The Bush Doctrine of preventive war was explicitly stated in the National Security Council text "National Security Strategy of the United States," published September 20, 2002. "We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed . . . even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack... The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."^[39]

The choice to not use the word 'preventive' in the 2002 National Security Strategy, and instead use the word 'preemptive' was largely in anticipation of the widely perceived illegality of preventive attacks in international law via both Charter Law and Customary Law^[40]

Policy analysts noted that the Bush Doctrine as stated in the 2002 NSC document bore a strong resemblance to recommendations originally presented in a controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft written in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz under the first Bush administration.^[41]

The Bush Doctrine was greeted with accolades by many neoconservatives. When asked whether he agreed with the Bush Doctrine, Max Boot said he did, and that “I think [Bush is] exactly right to say we can’t sit back and wait for the next terrorist strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman. . . . But I also argue that we ought to go further.”^[42] Discussing the significance of the Bush Doctrine, neoconservative writer William Kristol claimed: “The world is a mess. And, I think, it’s very much to Bush’s credit that he's gotten serious about dealing with it. . . . The danger is not that we’re going to do too much. The danger is that we're going to do too little.”^[43]

2008 Presidential election and aftermath

John McCain, who was the Republican candidate for the 2008 United States Presidential election, supported continuing the Iraq War, “the issue that is most clearly identified with the neoconservatives.” The New York Times further reports that his foreign policy views combine elements of neoconservative and the main competing view in conservative circles, pragmatism, also called realism:^[44]

Among [McCain’s advisers] are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan . . . Max Boot . . . John R. Bolton . . . [and] Randy Scheunemann.
“It may be too strong a term to say a fight is going on over John McCain’s soul,” said Lawrence Eagleburger . . . who is a member of the pragmatist camp, . . . [but he] said, “there is no question that a lot of my far right friends have now decided that since you can’t beat him, let’s persuade him to slide over as best we can on these critical issues.”
Mr. McCain, who is aware of the concerns, told reporters on his campaign plane early this week that he took foreign policy advice from a wide variety of people ... Mr. McCain has always promoted his reputation for departing from ideological orthodoxy in both foreign and domestic policy ... he talks to realists like ... Henry A. Kissinger and ... George P. Shultz.

Following the election, Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, expressed the view that:

“[i]n 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 such as 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. They themselves argue that they form part of the mainstream of American history. It seems more likely that they will come to be seen as an aberration.”^[45]

Obama campaigned for the Democratic nomination in 2008 by attacking his opponents, especially Hilary Clinton, for originally supporting Bush's Iraq war policies. He gave the impression he would reverse such policies. However, Obama adopted the main points of the Bush policy in Iraq, naming Clinton to the State Department and keeping Robert Gates (Bush's Defense Secretary), and David Petraeus (Bush's top general in Iraq), as well as implementing the Bush "surge" of military force. By 2010 U.S. forces had switched from combat to a training role.^[46]

Evolution of views

Usage and general views

The term has been used before, and its meaning has changed over time. Writing in The Contemporary Review (London) in 1883, Henry Dunckley used the term to describe factions within the Conservative Party; James Bryce again uses it in his Modern Democracies (1921) to describe British political history of the 1880s. The German authoritarians Carl Schmitt, who became professor at the University of Berlin in 1933, and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck were called "neo-conservatives".^[47] In "The Future of Democratic Values" in Partisan Review, July–August 1943, Dwight MacDonald complained of "the neo-conservatives of our time [who] reject the propositions on materialism, Human Nature, and Progress." He cited as an example Jacques Barzun, who was "attempting to combine progressive values and conservative concepts." In his essay "Two Concepts of Liberty", Isaiah Berlin uses the term to refer to those who look for their societal ideal in what has come before; "rooted in the past – la terre et les morts – as maintained by German historicists or French theocrats, or neo-Conservatives in English-speaking countries..."^[48]

In the early 1970s, democratic socialist Michael Harrington used the term in its modern meaning. He characterized neoconservatives as former leftists– whom he derided as "socialists for Nixon"– who had moved significantly to the right. These people tended to remain supporters of social democracy, but distinguished themselves by allying with the Nixon administration over foreign policy, especially by their support for the Vietnam War and opposition to the Soviet Union. They still supported the welfare state, but not necessarily in its contemporary form.

Irving Kristol remarked that a neoconservative is a "liberal mugged by reality", one who became more conservative after seeing the results of liberal policies. Kristol also distinguished three specific aspects of neoconservatism from previous forms of conservatism: neo-conservatives had a forward-looking approach drawn from their liberal heritage, rather than the reactionary and dour approach of previous conservatives; they had a meliorative outlook, proposing alternate reforms rather than simply attacking social liberal reforms; they took philosophical ideas and ideologies very seriously.^[49]

Political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was an important intellectual antecedent of neoconservativism. Strauss notably influenced Allan Bloom, author of the 1987 bestseller Closing of the American Mind.

In January 2009, at the close of President George W. Bush's second term in office, Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, proposed the following as the "main characteristics of neoconservatism":^[45]

"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 organizations
focus on the Middle East
an us versus them mentality".

Views on foreign policy

In foreign policy, the neoconservatives' main concern is to prevent the arrival of a new rival. Defense Planning Guidance, a document prepared in 1992 by Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, is regarded by Distinguished Professor of the Humanities John McGowan at the University of North Carolina as the "quintessential statement of neoconservative thought". The report says:^[50]

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power."

According to Lead Editor of e-International Relations, Stephen McGlinchey, "Neo-conservatism is something of a chimera in modern politics. For its opponents it is a distinct political movement that emphasizes the blending of military power with Wilsonian idealism, yet for its supporters it is more of a ‘persuasion’ that individuals of many types drift into and out of. Regardless of which is more correct, it is now widely accepted that the neo-conservative impulse has been visible in modern American foreign policy and that it has left a distinct impact" ^[51]

Historically, neoconservatives supported a militant anticommunism,^[52] tolerated more social welfare spending than was sometimes acceptable to libertarians and paleoconservatives, and sympathized with a nontraditional foreign policy agenda that was less deferential to traditional conceptions of diplomacy and international law and less inclined to compromise principles, even if that meant unilateral action.

The movement began to focus on such foreign issues in the mid-1970s^{[citation needed]}. However, it first crystallized in the late 1960s as an effort to combat the radical cultural changes taking place within the United States. Irving Kristol wrote: "If there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the counterculture."^[53] Norman Podhoretz agreed: "Revulsion against the counterculture accounted for more converts to neoconservatism than any other single factor."^[54] Ira Chernus argues that the deepest root of the neoconservative movement is its fear that the counterculture would undermine the authority of traditional values and moral norms. Because neoconservatives believe that human nature is innately selfish, they believe that a society with no commonly accepted values based on religion or ancient tradition will end up in a war of all against all. They also believe that the most important social value is strength, especially the strength to control natural impulses. The only alternative, they assume, is weakness that will let impulses run riot and lead to social chaos.^[55]

According to Peter Steinfels, a historian of the movement, the neoconservatives' "emphasis on foreign affairs emerged after the New Left and the counterculture had dissolved as convincing foils for neoconservatism . . . The essential source of their anxiety is not military or geopolitical or to be found overseas at all; it is domestic and cultural and ideological."^[56] Neoconservative foreign policy parallels their domestic policy.

Believing that America should "export democracy," that is, spread its ideals of government, economics, and culture abroad, they grew to reject U.S. reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish these objectives. Compared with other U.S. conservatives, neoconservatives take a more idealist stance on foreign policy; adhere less to social conservatism; have a weaker dedication to the policy of minimal government; and in the past, have been more supportive of the welfare state. According to Norman Podhoretz,

"the neo-conservatives dissociated themselves from the wholesale opposition to the welfare state which had marked American conservatism since the days of the New Deal" and . . . while neoconservatives supported "setting certain limits" to the welfare state, those limits did not involve "issues of principle, such as the legitimate size and role of the central government in the American constitutional order" but were to be "determined by practical considerations."^[57]

Aggressive support for democracies and nation building is additionally justified by a belief that, over the long term, it will reduce the extremism that is a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism. Neoconservatives, along with many other political theorists ^{[citation needed]}, have argued that democratic regimes are less likely to instigate a war than a country with an authoritarian form of government. Further, they argue that the lack of freedoms, lack of economic opportunities, and the lack of secular general education in authoritarian regimes promotes radicalism and extremism. Consequently, neoconservatives advocate the spread of democracy to regions of the world where it currently does not prevail, notably the Arab nations of the Middle East, communist China and North Korea, and Iran.

In July 2008 Joe Klein wrote in TIME magazine that today's neoconservatives are more interested in confronting enemies than in cultivating friends. He questioned the sincerity of neoconservative interest in exporting democracy and freedom, saying, "Neoconservatism in foreign policy is best described as unilateral bellicosity cloaked in the utopian rhetoric of freedom and democracy."^[58]

In February 2009 Andrew Sullivan wrote he no longer took neoconservatism seriously because its basic tenet was defense of Israel:^[59]

The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That's the conclusion I've been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into... But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.

Neoconservatives respond to charges of merely rationalizing support for Israel by noting that their "position on the Middle East conflict was exactly congruous with the neoconservative position on conflicts everywhere else in the world, including places where neither Jews nor Israeli interests could be found—not to mention the fact that non-Jewish neoconservatives took the same stands on all of the issues as did their Jewish confrères."^[60]

Views on Economics

While Neoconservatism is primarily concerned with foreign policy, there is also some discussion of internal economic policies. Neoconservatism is generally supportive of free markets and capitalism, favoring supply side approaches, but it shows several points of disagreement with classical liberalism and fiscal conservatism: Irving Kristol states that neocons are more relaxed about budget deficits and tend to reject the Hayekian notion that the growth of government influence on society and public welfare is "the road to serfdom".^[61] Indeed, to safeguard democracy, government intervention and budget deficits may sometimes be necessary, Kristol argues.

Further, neoconservative ideology stresses that while free markets do provide material goods in an efficient way, they lack the moral guidance human beings need to fulfill their needs. Morality can only be found in tradition, they say, and, contrary to the libertarian view, markets do pose questions that can't be solved within a purely economic framework. "So as the economy only makes up part of our lives, it must not be allowed to take over and entirely dictate to our society".^[62] Stelzer concludes that while neoconservative economic policy helped to lower taxes and generate growth, it also led to a certain disregard of fiscal responsibility.^[63] Critics consider neoconservatism a bellicose and "heroic" ideology opposed to "mercantile" and "bourgeois" virtues and therefore "a variant of anti-economic thought".^[64] Political scientist Zeev Sternhell states that "Neoconservatism has suceeded in convincing the great majority of Americans that the main questions that concern a society are not economic, and that social questions are really moral questions."^[65]

Distinctions from other conservatives

Some influential members of the early neoconservative movement, such as Elliot Abrams, were originally members of the Democratic Party, where they advocated for "cold war liberalism".^[66]^[67] They have been in electoral alignment with other conservatives and served in the same presidential administrations. While they have often ignored ideological differences in alliance against those to their left, neoconservatives differ from paleoconservatives. In particular, they disagree with nativism, protectionism, and non-interventionism in foreign policy, ideologies that are rooted in American history, but which have fallen out of the mainstream U.S. politics after World War II. Compared with traditionalist conservatism and libertarianism, which may be non-interventionist, neoconservatism emphasizes defense capability, challenging regimes hostile to the values and interests of the United States^{[citation needed]}. Neoconservatives also believe in democratic peace theory, the proposition that democracies never or almost never go to war with one another.

Neoconservatives are opposed to realist (and especially neorealist) theories and policies of international relations ^{[citation needed]}, often associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Though Republican and anti-communist, Nixon and Kissinger made pragmatic accommodation with dictators and sought peace through negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control. They pursued détente with the Soviet Union, rather than rollback, and established relations with the Communist People's Republic of China. On the other hand, American neoconservatives are often held up as exemplars of idealism (often, paradoxically, called liberalism) in international relations, on account of their state-centered and ideological (as opposed to systematic and security-centered) interpretation of world politics.

Unlike all other schools of conservative thought^{[citation needed]}, the neoconservatives are prepared to make war on the status quo, sometimes gaining them the name radical conservatives .^[68] Most recently they've been associated with advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein - something violently opposed by realists and mainstream conservatives as something that could cause instability. However, the neoconservative view says that instability for now will result in long term stability as a democracy will replace a dictatorial and totalitarian regime.

Criticism of terminology

Some of those identified as neoconservative reject the term, arguing that it lacks a coherent definition, or that it was coherent only in the context of the Cold War.

Conservative writer David Horowitz argues that the increasing use of the term neoconservative since the 2003 start of the Iraq War has made it irrelevant:^{[citation needed]}

Neo-conservatism is a term almost exclusively used by the enemies of America's liberation of Iraq. There is no 'neo-conservative' movement in the United States. When there was one, it was made up of former Democrats who embraced the welfare state but supported Ronald Reagan's Cold War policies against the Soviet bloc. Today 'neo-conservatism' identifies those who believe in an aggressive policy against radical Islam and the global terrorists.

The term may have lost meaning due to excessive and inconsistent use. For example, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld have been identified as leading neoconservatives despite the fact that they have been life-long conservative Republicans (though Cheney and Rice have supported Irving Kristol's ideas).

Some critics reject the idea that there is a neoconservative movement separate from traditional American conservatism. Traditional conservatives are skeptical of the contemporary usage of the term and dislike being associated with its stereotypes or supposed agendas. Columnist David Harsanyi wrote, "These days, it seems that even temperate support for military action against dictators and terrorists qualifies you a neocon."^[69] Jonah Goldberg rejected the label as trite and over-used, arguing "There's nothing 'neo' about me: I was never anything other than conservative."

Antisemitism

Some writers and intellectuals have argued that criticism of neoconservatism is often a euphemism for criticism of Zionist Jews, and that the term has been adopted by the political left to stigmatize support for Israel. In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Robert J. Lieber warned that criticism of the 2003 Iraq War had spawned^[70]

a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how [American] foreign policy... has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal. A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense intellectuals... has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on [Bush]... Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, "a product of the influential Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s" ([Michael] Lind)... has fomented war with Iraq... in the service of Israel's Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and [Eric Alterman).

Time magazine's Joe Klein has suggested it is legitimate to look at the religion of neoconservatives. He does not say there was a conspiracy but says there is a case to be made for disproportionate influence of Jewish neoconservative figures in US foreign policy, and that several of them supported the Iraq war because of Israel's interests, though sometimes in an unconscious contradiction to American interests:

"I do believe that there is a group of people who got involved and had a disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy. There were people out there in the Jewish community who saw this as a way to create a benign domino theory and eliminate all of Israel's enemies....I think it represents a really dangerous anachronistic neocolonial sensibility. And I think it is a very, very dangerous form of extremism. I think it's bad for Israel and it's bad for America. And these guys have been getting a free ride. And now these people are backing the notion of a war with Iran and not all of them, but some of them, are doing it because they believe that Iran is an existential threat to Israel."^[71]

David Brooks derided the "fantasies" of "full-mooners fixated on a... sort of Yiddish Trilateral Commission", beliefs which had "hardened into common knowledge... In truth, people labeled neocons (con is short for 'conservative' and neo is short for 'Jewish') travel in widely different circles..."^[72] Barry Rubin argued that the neoconservative label is used as an antisemitic pejorative:^[73]

First, 'neo-conservative' is a codeword for Jewish. As antisemites did with big business moguls in the nineteenth century and Communist leaders in the twentieth, the trick here is to take all those involved in some aspect of public life and single out those who are Jewish. The implication made is that this is a Jewish-led movement conducted not in the interests of all the, in this case, American people, but to the benefit of Jews, and in this case Israel.

Criticism

The term neoconservative may be used pejoratively by self-described paleoconservatives, Democrats, liberals, progressives and by libertarians.

Critics take issue with neoconservatives' support for aggressive foreign policy. Critics from the left take issue with what they characterize as unilateralism and lack of concern with international consensus through organizations such as the United Nations.^[74]^[75]^[76] Neoconservatives respond by describing their shared view as a belief that national security is best attained by actively promoting freedom and democracy abroad as in the democratic peace theory through the support of pro-democracy movements, foreign aid and in certain cases military intervention. This is a departure from the traditional conservative tendency to support friendly regimes in matters of trade and anti-communism even at the expense of undermining existing democratic systems and possible destabilization. Author Paul Berman in his book Terror and Liberalism describes it as, "Freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for freedom for others."

In an essay in the New York Times Magazine in 2006 that was strongly critical of the Iraq invasion,^[8] Francis Fukuyama identified neoconservatism with Leninism.^[8] He wrote that neoconservatives:

…believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.^[8]

Republican Congressman and libertarian leaning former Presidential candidate Ron Paul has been a long time critic of the neoconservative movement as an attack on freedom and the U.S. Constitution, including an extensive speech on the House floor addressing neoconservative roots and how neoconservatism is neither new nor conservative. That speech can be seen in a variety of places online.^[77]

Foreign interventionism

Recently neoconservatives and military, in line with the Bush Doctrine, are speaking of cumulative and synergistic Effects-Based Operations to combat asymmetric warfare nature in the War on Terrorism and their Axis of evil supporters. Such proactive foreign interventionism has over time created some controversy as in the case of Operation Gladio, School of the Americas (WHINSEC), the Iraq War, the war in North-West Pakistan and over policies of low intensity conflict or other effects-based operations. Some conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh, say that parts of such demonizing controversy is fueling a culture of fear. Currently there are also controversies with Russia accusing the USA of interfering^[78] in the Russia-Georgia war, Bolivian president Evo Morales accusing the USA of supporting an insurrection against him^[79] and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez saying the USA has been plotting for overthrowing his presidency.^[80]^[81] Both Bolivia and Venezuela accuse the George W. Bush administration of interfering with their democratically elected governments. The 2004 award-winning documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore criticizes the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The 2007 documentary film The War on Democracy by Christopher Martin and John Pilger treats the subject of United States history of foreign interventionism in Latin America.

Imperialism and secrecy

John McGowan, professor of humanities at the University of North Carolina, states, after an extensive review of neoconservative literature and theory, that neoconservatives are attempting to build an American Empire, seen as successor to the British Empire, its aim being to perpetuate a Pax Americana. As imperialism is largely seen as unacceptable by the American public, neoconservatives do not articulate their ideas and goals in a frank manner in public discourse. McGowan states,^[50]

Frank neoconservatives like Robert Kaplan and Niall Ferguson recognize that they are proposing imperialism as the alternative to liberal internationalism. Yet both Kaplan and Ferguson also understand that imperialism runs so counter to American's liberal tradition that it must... remain a foreign policy that dare not speak its name... While Ferguson, the Brit, laments that Americans cannot just openly shoulder the white man's burden, Kaplan the American, tells us that "only through stealth and anxious foresight" can the United States continue to pursue the "imperial reality [that] already dominates our foreign policy", but must be disavowed in light of "our anti-imperial traditions, and... the fact that imperialism is delegitimized in public discourse"... The Bush administration, justifying all of its actions by an appeal to "national security", has kept as many of those actions as it can secret and has scorned all limitations to executive power by other branches of government or international law.

Tim Dickinson has accused the George W. Bush administration of political denialism.^[82]

Friction with paleoconservatism

Starting in the 1980s, disputes over Israel and public policy contributed to a sharp conflict with paleoconservatives, who argue that neoconservatives are an illegitimate addition to the conservative movement. For example, Pat Buchanan calls neoconservatism "a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology."^[83] The open rift is often traced back to a 1981 dispute over Ronald Reagan's nomination of Mel Bradford, a Southerner, to run the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford withdrew after neoconservatives complained that he had criticized Abraham Lincoln; the paleoconservatives supported Bradford.