Elliott Abrams unsurprisingly gives a completely self-serving and misleading definition of neoconservatism:

Now we are getting closer. Omit the negative value judgments in some of these definitions and one is left with patriotism, American exceptionalism, a belief in the goodness of America and in the benefits of American power and of its use, and a conviction that democracy is the best system of government and should be spread whenever that is practical.

This is not a very useful definition for understanding what neoconservative foreign policy is, but it is valuable as statement of what neoconservatives think of themselves. The only thing here that might count as a preferred policy is that democracy “should be spread whenever that is practical,” but that ultimately tells us very little. How do they think it is appropriate to spread democracy, and what do they mean by “whenever that is practical”? A common neoconservative answer to the former would be “by any and all means,” including military strikes, arming insurgencies, and even forcible regime change. As for the latter, they usually believe that it is almost always practical to do this, and if the U.S. “fails” to do so the “failure” is attributed to a lack of will and a lack of conviction on the part of the incumbent president.

Critical descriptions of neoconservatism are written off by Abrams as “negative value judgments” that can be ignored, and there is little or no discussion of specific policies favored by neoconservatives. Instead, Abrams retreats behind abstractions and platitudes as if these are what define neoconservatism. Some of these, such as patriotism and “belief in the goodness of America,” are so broad that they might very easily apply to almost the entire population, and as such they are virtually useless in defining what neoconservatism is. American exceptionalism sounds unobjectionable, but it doesn’t mean the same thing to neoconservatives and other hard-liners that it means to most of the rest of us. As they see it, American hegemony is inextricably linked to this idea, and to question or criticize the one is to reject the other. The more specifically one identifies what neoconservatives want the U.S. to do abroad, the less credible and popular their views usually are, so it probably seems safer to keep things as generic and vague as possible. One can believe all the things Abrams lists and still reject neoconservative foreign policy as dangerous and reckless.