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But Neocons Don’t Exist, Do They?

Another important sign of the maturing of neoconservative foreign policy is that it is no longer tethered to its own ideological history and paternity. The current practitioners of neoconservative foreign policy are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. They have no history in the movement, and before 9/11 had little affinity […]

Another important sign of the maturing of neoconservative foreign policy is that it is no longer tethered to its own ideological history and paternity. The current practitioners of neoconservative foreign policy are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. They have no history in the movement, and before 9/11 had little affinity to or affiliation with it.

The fathers of neoconservatism are former liberals or leftists. Today, its chief proponents, to judge by their history, are former realists. Rice, for example, was a disciple of Brent Scowcroft; Cheney served as Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration. September 11 changed all of that. It changed the world, and changed our understanding of the world. As neoconservatism seemed to offer the most plausible explanation of the new reality and the most compelling and active response to it, many realists were brought to acknowledge the poverty of realism—not just the futility but the danger of a foreign policy centered on the illusion of stability and equilibrium. These realists, newly mugged by reality, have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers’ past experience, more mature.

What neoconservatives have long been advocating is now being articulated and practiced at the highest levels of government by a war cabinet composed of individuals who, coming from a very different place, have joined and reshaped the neoconservative camp and are carrying the neoconservative idea throughout the world. As a result, the vast right-wing conspiracy has grown even more vast than liberals could imagine. And even as the tent has enlarged, the great schisms and splits in conservative foreign policy—so widely predicted just a year ago, so eagerly sought and amplified by outside analysts—have not occurred. Indeed, differences have, if anything, narrowed.

This is not party discipline. It is compromise with reality, and convergence toward the middle. Above all, it is the maturation of a governing ideology whose time has come. ~Charles Krauthammer, Commentary

Hat tip to Justin Raimondo.

At least in their own circles, neocons can still admit to their own existence without an immense sense of humiliation or embarrassment. Krauthammer’s remark about the “realists mugged by reality” would be more accurate if anyone had ever bothered to demonstrate that realism in principle is a failed foreign policy approach. Undoubtedly, Bush and Rice have betrayed their former foreign policy positions and never looked back, and we have received permission from Neocon Central to recognise them as neocons.

It is axiomatic in the world of Commentary (a strange and hostile place far from any source of light) that 9/11 proved once and for all that seeking stability was a fool’s errand, even though the previous ten years of government policy had been dedicated to encouraging instability throughout the Near East, Balkans and Caucasus (what else can we call intervening for Kuwait, encouraging the breakup of Yugoslavia, backing Islamists in Europe and pushing Caucasian states to ally with us while winking at Chechen terrorism?). What sort of realist transforms the balance of power in a region to protect a country like Kuwait? “Arabia was saved,” Krauthammer assures us. But then the idea that any part of the Arabian Peninsula was in real danger of invasion in 1990 was one of those “truths” akin to the Iraq alliance with al-Qaeda, magical UAVs descending upon the eastern seaboard or other fantastic lies told by Krauthammer’s neophyte neocons.

One could show very clearly that a realism founded on the delusion that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are vital allies, Iraq our perpetual foe and India a nettlesome irritation to be ignored is a profound failure and the policies dedicated to the support of those “allies” have been misguided in the extreme. But this is not proper realism, which ought to take account of the realities of power in any given region and turn them to the best advantage for the nation. Continually taking the side of countries whose populations unremittingly loathe us, while spurning and undercutting countries with more obvious common interests is not a recipe for stability and thus not realism in any meaningful sense. Playing Great Power games and dabbling in geopolitical theory will not make these people into realists.

Naturally, Krauthammer’s view (as with all good neocon views) is the one that best suits the interests of the ideology at the moment, and at the moment it is convenient and useful to welcome the ‘converts’ to neoconservatism and acknowledge that neoconservatism does, in fact, exist in all its grim and terrible fury. What is more, Krauthammer has vindicated and endorsed everything we real conservatives have said about the neoconservative character of this administration from the early days of 2002.

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