American Foreign Policy as the Actualization of Neoconservative Intellectualism

Introduction

In January of 1998 the neoconservatives of Project for the New American Century (PNAC) wrote an open letter to then President William Clinton that called for the military removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. They were convinced that “the current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War”(PNAC 4). They continue on stating, “removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power . . . needs to become the aim of American foreign policy” (PNAC 4). Eighteen PNAC members signed the letter, including: Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz. Eleven of the total eighteen signers would soon hold government positions in the administration of George W. Bush. Their declaration could have been viewed as just the desperate ideological posturing and lobbying of a conservative think-tank, but in just five years it became a blueprint for American foreign policy concerning “the war on terror.”

Resisting the desire to dismiss the neoconservatives as simply lucky or perhaps even clairvoyant, the development of American foreign policy as actualization of neoconservative thought drew my interest into the subject. Who are these intellectual thinkers? What ideas do they think up? Are they intellectuals at all? If so, what type of intellectual do they fall into? How did these intellectuals gain influential political power in separate administrations spanning fifteen years? Admittedly, the answering of those questions is not an original undertaking. But during this fact-finding narrative, the commentary will be my own and original. The following will describe the major US foreign policy trends under the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, and discuss the influence of neoconservative intellectual thought during those periods.


Definitions: Know Your Subjective Terms

Since the two most widely used terms in this composition will be “intellectual” and “neoconservatism”, it would be best to define those terms before moving any further.
The definition of an “intellectual” is a widely debated issue which can also include defining certain types of intellectuals. One could probably spend months in a windowless room studying the meaning of the term. A possible definition comes from Sandy Vogelgesang: “men and women of ideas who explore and challenge the underlying values of society. Theirs is a normative function: to prescribe what ought to be” (Jennings, 271). Edward Said describes the intellectual as “the author of a language that tries to speak the truth to power” (Jennings, 11). Said might consider neoconservatives to be what he called “policy-oriented intellectuals” who internalized the norms of the state. This is plainly seen in “foreign policy where the necessity of American use of force and the ultimate justice of its cause was never to be questioned” (Jennings, 1). Julien Benda’s classic ideal model for an intellectual is one independent of passion and free to make ideas without connection to the state or politics. Obviously, neoconservative thinkers cannot live up to this definition taking into account the large contributions they receive from conservative foundations and the positions they hold in government. David Schalk admits that “few of us are absolutely certain that we know precisely what an intellectual is, even if we have sensitive antennae which tell us . . . whether he or she is a member of the species” (Jennings, 271). It is with these antennae which a broad and general definition can be made, for use in the context of this discussion only. Intellectuals are writers and thinkers who pose critical ideas and address them to an audience. In addition, neoconservatives are perhaps a specific type of intellectual, the professional political intellectual; a well educated, benevolently funded, and highly connected intellectual.

“Neoconservatism” is no more an easy term to define without going into great detail about its history. “Neoconservative” was originally a term coined by Michael Harrington to describe right-wing socialists. Later the term included liberals disillusioned by the “New Left” movement, an individual who had been a liberal but had since moved to the right. Many intellectuals, which the term applies to, claim that “neoconservative was invented as an invidious label to undermine political opponents, most of whom have been unhappy with being so described” (Ehrman, 46). They almost all universally agreed with James Q. Wilson’s opinion that it was impossible to put a label on them because “they shared no manifesto, credo, religion, flag, anthem or secret handshake” (Ehrman, 46). To the contrary, the first generation of neoconservatives shared a great anticommunist sentiment. In addition, they were all deeply patriotic, nationalistic, and militaristic.

Perhaps the only intellectual to welcome the label of neoconservative was proclaimed “godfather” (perhaps proclaimed by only himself and his son) of the movement, Irving Kristol. Kristol says neoconservative attitudes “can be summarized in the following ‘theses’: First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies” (Kristol 3, 25). If that assessment is less than helpful, Gary Dorrien best describes neoconservatism as “an intellectual movement originated by former leftists that promotes militant anticommunist, capitalist economics, a minimal welfare state, the rule of traditional elites, and a return to traditional cultural values” (Dorrien, 14). The only aspect which concerns this discussion is foreign policy. Thus, neoconservatism and neoconservatives will be applied to ideas and individuals which argue, in some form or another, a foreign policy advocating unilateral intervention and military buildup to insure America’s place as superpower (whether it be against communism, dictatorships, or radical Islam). The following sections will further elaborate on the specific foreign policy ideas of neoconservative intellectuals.


Origins: Let There Be Light . . .

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the early neoconservatives were anticommunist socialists strongly supportive of the civil rights movement, integration, and Martin Luther King. Irving Kristol and fellow neoconservatives regarded themselves “originally as dissident liberals – dissident because we were skeptical of many of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives and increasingly disbelieving of the liberal metaphysics, the view of human nature and of social and economic realities, on which those programs were based” (Kristol 1, x). Neoconservatives also came to despise the counterculture of the 1960s and what they felt was a growing “anti-Americanism” among many baby boomers. Kristol describes, “as the counterculture engulfed our universities and began to refashion our popular culture, we discovered that traditional bourgeois values were what we had believed in all along” (Kristol 1, x). As the radicalization of the New Left pushed these intellectuals further to the right in response, they moved toward a more aggressive militarism.

Neoconservatives faced a rising tide of isolationism in the 1960s. Reaction to Vietnam and growing disenchantment with containment policies pushed liberal intellectuals and the general public back to American isolationism via pacifism. They argued that American foreign policy should be reduced to internationalism based on a peaceful response to human needs. Of course, Irving Kristol “led the attack against such thinking” (Ehrman, 48). As liberal intellectuals sought out new non-militaristic policies that would learn from mistakes of the past, “Kristol impugned both their motives and their goal. The role of intellectuals in foreign policy, he argued in 1967, is to provide ‘intellectual and moral guidance’”(Ehrman, 49). Interesting enough, leftist intellectuals would probably agree with his assessment. They saw that criticizing current US foreign policies was providing intellectual guidance. Neoconservatives saw criticism as rhetorical vilification which would not lead to any productive alternative policies. Kristol wrote in 1967, “The United States is not going to cease being an imperial power” (Kristol 2, 90). Kristol notes in his NY Times piece that “imperial” is only a synonym for “great” and does not mean to imply anything imperialistic. But then why not use “great” instead? Despite his comments to alleviate fears of forming Pax Americana, Kristol and early neoconservatives were laying the groundwork for a consistent neoconservative foreign policy theme of American hegemony. While not imperialistic in the colonial sense, spreading American values, exporting democracy abroad (with force if necessary), and supporting autocratic regimes was the preferred form of control.
Despite his intellectual skills and strengths as a journalistic essayist, “Kristol was not well suited to the role of chief neo-conservative theorist for international politics” (Ehrman, 50). The neoconservative movement needed accomplished political scientists to develop their ideas for foreign policy; enter Robert W. Tucker. Tucker, originally an advocate of new isolationist policy, quickly changed his tune after the 1973 Middle East war and oil embargo. In an article for Commentary, Tucker toyed with advocating military intervention to secure American control of a portion of the oil fields in the Persian Gulf. If this foreign policy stance towards the Arab world echoes with familiarity, it should. Tucker laid the foundation for the following generations of neoconservatives to build on. He developed two ideas which would become prominent in neoconservative thinking. Firstly, the use of force should always be considered a viable option for protecting America’s national interests. Secondly, the belief that the foreign policy makers had lost their resolve to use force. To Tucker, the oil crisis proved how dangerously unstable the world really was. For early neoconservatives, the thought of America venerable to the will of resource rich third-world countries was sickening; a weakness which future neoconservatives would work hard to resolve once they achieved power in government.


The Reagan Years: Rise and Decline

In the mid-1970s the neoconservative wing of the Democratic Party tried to retake the Party. Unfortunately, their presidential candidate, Henry “Scoop” Jackson was convincingly defeated by Jimmy Carter. The neoconservatives failed to cleanse McGovernism from the party platform. During his administration, hard-line neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz were incensed. He believed that Carter’s stance on Soviet communism “epitomized the stupidity and corruption of spirit that characterized America’s ‘culture of appeasement’”(Dorrien, 9). Podhoretz viewed Carter’s foreign policy as the surrendering of Soviet power throughout the world because leaders in the government secretly feared it. Prominent neoconservative intellectuals joined the Republican Party leaving old colleagues in the Democratic Party such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Daniel Bell. It was under this context that Jeane Kirkpatrick, a neoconservative political scientist, wrote arguably her most famous article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards.” In the article Kirkpatrick’s main theme “was a reiteration of her view that democracy is the result of a process of political evolution” (Ehrman, 120). She drew a distinction between authoritarian regimes (Argentina) and totalitarian regimes (Soviet Union), the latter being unable to ever evolve into democracy. Soon neoconservatives like Kirkpatrick and Elliot Abrams would apply their doctrine to foreign policy issues, with success and failure.

By 1980 the neoconservatives were proud of the label they previously saw as a disparaging term used by opponents. “The term legitimized their place in the Republican Party while distinguishing the neocons from forms of conservatism that were less urbane, ethnic, and ideological than themselves” (Dorrien, 10). During Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 campaign, he hired Kirkpatrick as his foreign policy adviser and later nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position she would hold for four years. Many other neoconservatives were given high-ranking positions in the Reagan administration. These individuals gained influence over policy-making and in the case of Kirkpatrick, provided the intellectual ammunition for Reagan’s military expenditures, his anticommunist foreign policy, and his interventions in Central and South Americas.

Already known for her anticommunist stance and tolerance of right-wing dictatorships (“moderately repressive regimes”), Jeane Kirkpatrick used her theories on totalitarianism to construct a framework sometimes referred to as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine. She argued that third world social revolutions were illegitimate, and thus that the overthrow of leftist governments, even if replaced with right-wing dictatorships, was acceptable and at times essential because they served as a bulwark against the expansion of Soviet interests. This framework was effectively used to support the administration’s policies in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Following the invasion of Grenada “Kirkpatrick told the Security Council that ‘the UN Charter does not require that people submit supinely to terror, nor that their neighbors be indifferent to their terrorization” (Ehrman, 154). Kirkpatrick, like Moynihan before her, shows that the neoconservatives have never and will never fully respect or acknowledge a world governing body, even one as weak as the United Nations. In addition, the references to “terror” Kirkpatrick utilizes will see repeated use as the justifications for later unsanctioned, unilateral, US military interventions.

The greatest challenge to neoconservative ideology during the second Reagan administration came from a familiar source, Moscow, but in a very unlikely manner. Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and soon began to implement a series of domestic reforms and a more conciliatory policy towards the United States and her allies. The first term of the Reagan administration was marked by substantial foreign policy success (unless your name is Norman Podhoretz, then Reagan is just a liberal sheep in wolves’ clothing). But thanks to the new soviet leader, the same intellectual ideas which propelled neoconservatives to prominence, would ultimately contribute to their decline.

The neoconservatives were the last true believers in the value of Soviet totalitarianism. In the mid-1980s most neoconservatives brushed aside any suggestion that the Soviet system was disintegrating. They dismissed the dissident movements in the Eastern Bloc and saw Gorbachev as “a cunning Leninist who seduced American into lowering its guard” (Dorrien, 13). Soviet reforms were compared to Lenin’s NEP reforms in the 1920s. “Gorbachev opened the Soviet system just enough to entice Western aid and thereby save his totalitarian structure” (Dorrien, 13). Even one of the more moderate neoconservatives, Irving Kristol, confidently proclaims, “No such movement by the Soviet leaders, of an extent that would alter the basic nature of the system, is possible or imaginable. Not because they are wicked men or monstrous creatures, but simply because they are what they are, where they are: a bureaucratic, Communist, nationalist, mafia, ineffectual at governing except by coercion” (Kristol 2, 273). The neoconservatives view of the world assumed and required a stable, malevolent Soviet Union which was immune to any drastic change, in accordance with the doctrine of totalitarianism. But in the fall of 1989 the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed almost overnight and the neoconservatives’ cherished theory of totalitarianism crumbled with them. This controversy led to further divisions among the neoconservatives. “Led by Irving Kristol, they began debating the changing role of America in the world. By 1990 this group, clustered around Kristol’s new magazine, the National Interest, was consistently producing more interesting and relevant articles than Commentary” (Ehrman, 173). Norman Podhoretz and other neoconservative hard-liner intellectuals at Commentary were soon marginalized. When “asked in June 1990 why he had stopped writing, Podhoretz explained that he no longer knew what to think . . . he had lost his compass” (Dorrien, 14). Over the next decade a new generation of neoconservatives would adapt their intellectual ideologies to the post-Cold War world in the hopes of recovering the direction the old order had lost.


After the Cold War: Pax Americana as Theory

Neoconservatism faded in the 1990s for three reasons: “it was identified with bygone debates, it was out of power, and to a considerable degree it merged with the mainstream of American conservatism” (Dorrien, 15). Even Irving Kristol agreed that the movement, if there ever was one, had faded into mainstream conservatism by succeeding in toppling the Soviet Union. His 1995 collection of essays Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea queries, “What will future historians of American politics make of the neoconservative episode, now drawing to a conclusion?” (Kristol 1, xi). In fact, this would not be the death of the idea as Kristol implies. The first generation of neoconservative leaders gave way to the succeeding generation. Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert Tucker, and Norman Podhoretz would continue on to be important voices within the movement, but the post-Cold War adaptation of neoconservatism rested upon younger intellectuals such as William Kristol (son of Irving), Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Charles Krauthammer, and Elliot Abrams. The next generation of neoconservatives and new converts to the neoconservative cause needed to revitalize the school of thought. They proudly maintained the most important and distinguishing idea in neoconservative thought, expansive faith in American power. This imperialist view needed to be fine-tuned into a coherent view of America’s role in a post-Cold War world. Once that was accomplished, John Ehrman aptly predicted that these younger intellectuals, who were politically experienced from the Reagan and Bush administrations, “would soon play major roles in any future conservative administration” (Ehrman, 192).

During the final months of Soviet Union, shortly before the superpower all but dissolved, a group of neoconservative intellectuals and policymakers led by Charles Krauthammer began to make a case for an American-dominated world order. To some, this was known as the “unipolarist imperative.” The neoconservative unipolarists emphasize that the United States is not like other nations but also maintained that other nations should be more like the US. A truly American unipolarist policy had to advocate global democracy. Instead of reducing military spending, “they contended, the United States needed to expand its military reach to every region of the world, using America’s tremendous military and economic power to create a new Pax Americana” (Dorrien, 1). In reaction to their fading influence, the neo-isolationist nationalism of the Republican legislature, and the liberal internationalism of the Clinton administration, neoconservatives were anxious to find a new model for American foreign policy. In this context, “William Kristol and Robert Kagan glimpsed an ideological opportunity. Writing in the establishment policy journal Foreign Affairs, they issued a manifesto titled ‘Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy’” (Dorrien, 125).

“Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” was a challenge to what Kristol and Kagan viewed as a weak foreign policy, “an indifferent America, and a confused American conservatism” (Dorrien, 126). Neoconservatives within the Republican ranks needed to offer a braver and bolder strategy. Kristol and Kagan called this a “benevolent global hegemony.” Interesting enough, Wolfowitz had advocated for the same unipolar hegemony four years prior to Kristol and Kagan, but his vision of an unipolarist foreign policy almost destroyed his political career. Kristol and Kagan were free to write in the Weekly Standard and appear regularly on Fox News precisely because they were intellectuals externally criticizing the government. In 1997, Kristol founded an unipolarist policy think-tank, the Project for the New American Century. A close relationship with the American Enterprise Institute and generous funding from the Bradley Foundation allowed neoconservative intellectuals to refine their strategies for foreign policy, and bide their time.


The War on Terrorism: Pax Americana Actualized

The years leading up to the 2000 Presidential election, neoconservative intellectuals, led by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, understood that to see their ideas realized in the next Republican administration a more unified conservative coalition had to be created. They partially converted and forged alliances with non-intellectual hard-line conservatives such as Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, while working closely with non-neoconservative unipolarists led by Condoleezza Rice. A campaign advisory group on foreign policy was created for George W. Bush’s run for the White House. The self-proclaimed “Vulcans” understood that their foreign policy rhetoric needed to be moderated in order to pay lip-service to the traditional conservatives.

In the winter of 2000, George W. Bush was appointed President of the United States. Thanks to Cheney and Rumsfeld, approximately two dozen neoconservative intellectuals and pundits were appointed to high-ranking positions within the administration. As previously mentioned, “of the eighteen figures who signed the PNAC’s 1998 letter to Clinton calling for regime change in Iraq, eleven took key positions in the Bush administration” (Dorrien, 143). The Vice-President’s office, the Pentagon, and the Defense Policy Board became neoconservative strongholds. It seemed as if the neoconservatives were once again the driver’s seat of a new administration. Their political salivary glands frothed with the prospect of influencing US foreign policy towards the unipolar, imperial American hegemony. “By the time Bush and Cheney were inaugurated, they shared the neocon fixation with overthrowing Iraq; at Bush’s first National Security Council meeting he put regime change in Iraq at the top of his foreign policy agenda” (Dorrien, 3).
Unfortunately for neoconservative hawks, they were disappointed in the first eight months of the administration. On the biggest of all issues, the Pentagon budget, “the early Bush administration stunned its supporters by announcing that it would live with Clinton’s defense budgets for 2001 and 2002” (Dorrien, 144). Robert Kagan saw this as Bush’s first major broken campaign promise. Kristol was incensed and believed that Bush cared more for his tax cut initiative than for the defense of national security. In addition, Bush was outwardly continuing Clinton’s containment policy towards Iraq. Kristol’s intellectual dissent over Bush’s foreign policies grew after the administration’s handling of a diplomatic situation involving China in April 2001. In the Weekly Standard, Kristol proclaimed, “they tested the mettle of the new president, and Bush failed the test” and railed against “the profound national humiliation that President Bush has brought upon the United States” (Dorrien, 146). Unlike the Clinton years, Kristol and Kagan could no longer criticize government policies, because they were now apart of it. To a degree, they were alienated by Bush’s closer conservative advisors. Neoconservative disillusionment over the new administration was building. There may have been more serious attacks by leading neoconservative intellectuals yet to come, if not for the policy changing events of September 11, 2001.

Before the events of September 11th, President Bush “struck his neocon and hardline conservative supporters as a half-hearted unipolarist” (Dorrien, 2). But he quickly needed a defined and militant policy after the attacks, so Bush opened his ears to the unipolarist ideas of his administration. The US-led attack on the al Qaeda harboring Taliban regime in Afghanistan was the logical and necessary first step in the “war on terror.” But for neoconservatives, the real goal was regime change and democratization in the heart of the Arab world. In the aftermath of September 11th, neoconservatives and unipolar hawks “urged Bush to respond to al Qaeda’s fiendish attacks by invading Iraq; Bush pressured counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to find a link between Saddam and 9/11; and less than two months after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, Bush secretly ordered a war plan to smash the Iraqi government” (Dorrien, 3). The events mentioned should come to no surprise to any individual moderately versed in current events; therefore the discussion will avoid detailing the invasion and instead focus on the reasons behind the war in Iraq with respect to neoconservative control over foreign policy decisions.
With any foreign policy decision, the government must take into consideration public opinion. This is why the purpose of the war was originally clouded in trumped up intelligence reports and assumptions about weapons of mass destruction. It is much easier to discuss invading Iraq because it held chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons; than it was to explain that the war was a form of social engineering to ensure American preeminence in the Middle East. Weapons of mass destruction translated easily into “clear and present danger” to America, while the consolidation of American power in a hostile region was a more complicated discussion. To anyone who knew the PNAC or read Commentary, these imperial designs were out in the open. William Kristol notes, “If [the unipolarist group] is a cabal, it’s the most visible cabal ever . . . We write articles” (Dorrien, 4). The second reason given for invasion drew closer to the real neoconservative designs for war. Bush proclaimed it was to liberate the Iraqi people from a tyrant and bring the gift of democracy to them. This reasoning was popular among the American public, in part because they already view Saddam Hussein as a genocidal, soap-box dictator who once tried unsuccessfully to assassinate George Bush Sr. In any case, to uncover the truth, all which is needed is to make a small step to connect the foreign policy of Bush Jr. with the neoconservative unipolarist presence in the Pentagon and Vice President’s office.

After the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Hussein’s regime, it became more and more clear that the reasons given for invasion did not pan out. Weapons of mass destruction did not exist, ties with al Qaeda did not exist, and the liberation of the Iraqi people was only the desperate reasoning of an administration trying to save face. In fact, as eluded to before, the invasion of Iraq was a neoconservative initiative dating back to before the W. Bush administration, with roots dating back to the neoconservative intellectual Robert Tucker. It was clear that Saudi Arabia could not in the long-term provide a secure base for American political influence or a stable source of Middle East oil. In fact, “fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis; the Saudi people despised the pro-American ruling regime of their country; and they deeply resented the presence of American troops there” (Dorrien, 180). Furthermore, neoconservatives could never stand having third-world, oil producing, non-democratic nations controlling the lubrication of American capitalism. Pax Americana could not survive if it was forced to submit to the whims of OPEC. American interests in the Middle East needed to be expanded. The new generation of neoconservative unipolarists ignored the later writings of Irving Kristol and Jeane Kirkpatrick advocating for realism in American foreign policy. Unipolarist ideology was more relevant than ever at this point in history. They wanted to change the Middle East; so Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Kagan, and others convinced the administration it was in Pax Americana’s best interest for “creating a pro-American Iraq that gave the United States a direct power base, ensured the oil supply, set off a wave of political reform in the region, gave relief to Israel, and got rid of a thuggish enemy” (Dorrien, 181). Well, purposed that way, how can one possibly be against preemptive unilateral warfare?

If the neoconservative ideology holds true, they have no intention of stopping with Iraq. After the US brought down the Taliban, Podhoretz argued that, “the United States had to continue by killing the regimes in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea; that Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and the Palestinian Authority had to be overthrown as soon as possible; and that Egypt and Saudi Arabia belonged on the list of enemy regimes” (Dorrien, 243). Podhoretz’s ideas are certainly extreme within the neoconservative movement, it is doubtful that there will be an American blitzkrieg across the Arab world, but there are similar, less extensive lists floating about in neoconservative circles. Krauthammer’s list consisted of Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Kristol and Kagan had Iraq, Iran, and Hezbollah. Variations continue on, but the important thing to note is that these are just not “Neoconservative Invasion Wish-lists”, but could foreshadow future American foreign policy decisions in the Middle East. Certainly, the US military must recuperate its strength and ability to wage war before continuing to other wars; but if the neoconservatives in the second term of Bush’s administration continue to exert their influence of foreign policy, it should not be surprising to anyone if US troops are occupying Damascus in the next four years.


Conclusion

What is the “war on terror”? How can a nation wage war against an idea? Apparently, more easily than one might imagine. Those are the questions which neoconservative intellectuals in positions of government must answer in order to see their foreign policy realized. Comparisons can be drawn between the current “war on terror” and the “Cold War/war on communism” of twenty-five years ago. Threatening ideas and ideologies cannot alone warrant unilateral military interventionism; neoconservatives need existent and substantive foreign entities which conflict with the interests of the United States. If not for the third-world Latin American socialist revolutions permeating the Reagan Era landscape, the war against communism could have been reduced to ideological posturing, national propaganda, and non-interventionist Cold War containment policy. Substituting for the totalitarian communism of old is the frightening image of radical Islamic fundamentalism consuming the modern world. Even more so than communism, radical Islam is an abstraction, an idea which cannot have any obvious geopolitical agenda in mind aside from destroying the infidels in the name of Allah. This is when “rogue states” harboring terrorist organizations become most useful to the neoconservative cause. Nation-states and large organizations can be physically attacked and destroyed. One can conclude that the unwavering neoconservative belief in Pax Americana relies upon a perpetual war, wars with vague beginnings and inconceivable endings.

The Reagan Era neoconservative intellectuals who inhabited the public and government spheres never saw the collapse of Soviet communism coming. As previously mentioned, they even refused to see it when it was staring straight at them. Their entire foreign policy framework as well as their ideological origins rested on the continued existence of an adversarial communist power. Perhaps the W. Bush Era neoconservatives similarly truly believe that there is no end to the “war on terrorism.” Unipolar unilateralism as a policy is dependent upon an active threat to American values, democracy, and hegemony. The “terrorists” and their benefactors provide all three and an alternative model to American foreign policy cannot reached until the allure of neoconservative ideology is defeated.

The previous narrative has discussed the brief history of Neoconservative intellectualism. It is characterized as a deeply ideological movement with the critical ability to rise to political relevance, regroup in times of decline, and rise again with increasing influence. Finally we end by returning the issue of neoconservatives as intellectuals. Problems defining the term “intellectual” may have its solution in Irving Kristol’s own opinion on the term: “an intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject which he has no particular competence . . . the authority is real enough, just the lack of specific competence is crucial” (Kristol 1, 75). If Kristol’s definition holds any validity, most would hope that neoconservatives are in fact not intellectuals. Their distinctive geopolitical ideologies and theories of foreign policy are now being actualized like never before. One would hope that neoconservatives have some competence concerning these issues, for they are the chief controllers of Pax Americana in the immediate future.






Works Cited


1. Kristol, Irving. Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. The Free Press; New York, 1995.

2. Kristol, Irving. Reflections of a Neoconservative. Basic Books; New York, 1983.

3. Irving Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion: What It Was, What It Is,” Weekly Standard 8 (August 25, 2003), p.23-25.

4. Project for the New American Century, “An Open Letter to President Clinton: ‘Remove Saddam from Power’” (January 26, 1998).

5. Jennings, Jeremy. Intellectuals in Politics. Routledge; New York, 1997.

6. Dorrien, Gary. Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana. Routledge; New York, 2004.

7. Ehrman, John. The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs 1945-1994. Yale University Press; New Haven, 1995.