Neoconservatism: Encyclopedia II - Neoconservatism - History and origins of neoconservatism

Neoconservatism - History and origins of neoconservatism

Neoconservatism - Great Depression and World War II

"New" conservatives initially approached this view from the political left, especially in reponse to key developments in modern American history.

The forerunners of neoconservativism were generally liberals or socialists who strongly supported the Second World War, and who were influenced by the Depression-era ideas of former New Dealers, trade unionists, and Trotskyists, particularly those who followed the political ideas of Max Shachtman (A number of future neoconservatives such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and Ken Adelman were Shachtmanites in their youth, while others were later involved with Social Democrats USA. Most neoconservatives, however, including those who have been close to SDUSA, will strenuously deny, even contrary to evidence, that they were ever Shachtmanites.

Opposition to Détente with the Soviet Union and the views of the the anti-Soviet and anti-capitalist New Left, which emerged in response to the Soviet Union's break with Stalinism in the 1950s, would cause the Neoconservatives to split with the "liberal consensus" of the early postwar years. The original "neoconservative" theorists, such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, were often associated with the magazine Commentary, and their intellectual evolution is quite evident in that magazine over the course of these years. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the early neoconservatives were anti-Communist socialists strongly supportive of the American Civil Rights Movement, integration, and Martin Luther King.

Neoconservatism - Drift away from New Left and Great Society

While initially, the views of the New Left became very popular among the children of hardline Communists, often Jewish immigrant families on the edge of poverty and including those of some of today's most famous neoconservative thinkers, some neoconservatives also came to despise the counterculture of the 1960s and what they felt was a growing "anti-Americanism" among many baby boomers, exemplified in the emerging New Left by the movement against the Vietnam War.

As the radicalization of the New Left pushed these intellectuals farther to the right, they moved toward a more aggressive militarism, while also becoming disillusioned with the Johnson Administration's Great Society.

Academics in these circles, many of whom were still Democrats, rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s, especially after the nomination of George McGovern in 1972. Many clustered around Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat derisively known as the "Senator from Boeing," but then they aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront charges of Soviet "expansionism."

Michael Lind, a self-described former neoconservative, wrote that 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.' When the Cold War ended, "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."[1]

In his semi-autobiographical book, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography Of An Idea, Irving Kristol cites 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 some neoconservatives has generated some controversy. Some argue that Strauss's influence has left some neoconservatives adopting a Machiavellian view of politics. See Leo Strauss for a discussion of this controversy.

Neoconservatism - Left-wing roots of Neoconservative organizations?

It is widely believed that the neoconservative desire to spread democracy abroad, often by force, parallels the Trotskyist dream of permanent revolution, and the influence of the Trotskyists perhaps left them with strong anti-Soviet tendencies, especially considering the Great Purges targeting alleged Trotskyists in Soviet Russia. Author Michael Lind argues that the neoconservatives are influenced by the thought of Trotskyists such as James Burnham and Max Shachtman, who argued that "the United States and similar societies are dominated by a decadent, postbourgeois 'new class'". He sees the neoconservative concept of "global democratic revolution" as deriving from the Trotskyist Fourth International's "vision of permanent revolution". He also points to what he sees as the Marxist origin of "the economic determinist idea that liberal democracy is an epiphenomenon of capitalism", which he describes as "Marxism with entrepreneurs substituted for proletarians as the heroic subjects of history." Few leading neoconservatives cite James Burnham as a major influence, as he differed with them on many issues.[2]

Critics of Lind contend that there is no theoretical connection between Trotsky's "permanent revolution", which is concerned with the pace of radical social change in the third world, and neoconservative support for a "global democratic revolution", with its Wilsonian roots.[3] But Wilsonianism does share with the theory of permanent revolution very similar concerns about the democratization of ostensibly backward parts of the world.

Lind argues furthermore that "The organization as well as the ideology of the neoconservative movement has left-liberal origins". He draws a line from the center-left anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom to the Committee on the Present Danger to the Project for the New American Century and adds that "European social democratic models inspired the quintessential neocon institution, the National Endowment for Democracy."

Another author who has focused extensively on this phenomenon is Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com. He explains the left-wing roots of neoconservatism thus:

As Raimondo and others see it, the Shachtmanites, from Social Democrats USA and into the Reagan Administration onward, were acting on a totally orthodox Leninist trajectory of entryism, and a massively successful one at that. The vintage Leninist staple of the front group was particularly evident, from the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and the Committee on the Present Danger in the 1970s to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies today. Any intellectual inconsistency in a merger with the Straussians - after all, both Trotsky and Strauss were firm believers in the power of an elite with esoteric knowledge to lead the masses - would therefore seem superfluous. Raimondo has therefore seconded the view of Seymour Hersh that neoconservatism is best understood as a cult.[4]

Some observers believe furthermore that there is a fundamental continuity of ideas from Trotsky to the present neoconservative movement. They point in particular to the French Turn, by which Trotsky advocated the belief in social democracy as a Leninist vanguard. This was indeed essentially the position for which Shachtman broke with Trotsky, and that position has remained throughout the essence of neoconservatism. Indeed, this view has only been embraced by neocon thinkers such as Paul Berman, Christopher Hitchens, and Stephen Schwartz.

Neoconservatism - Reagan and the Neoconservatives

During the 1970s political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick increasingly criticized the Democratic Party, of which she was still a member, since the nomination of the antiwar George McGovern. Kirkpatrick became a convert to the ideas of the new conservatism of once-liberal Democratic academics.

During Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign, he hired her as his foreign policy advisor and later nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position she held for four years. Known for her anti-communist stance and for her tolerance of right-wing dictatorships (her criticism of which was often tempered, calling them simply "moderately repressive regimes"), she argued that US policy should not aid the overthrow of right-wing regimes if these were only to be replaced by even less democratic left-wing regimes. The overthrow of leftist governments was acceptable and at times essential because they served as a bulwark against the expansion of Soviet interests.

Under this doctrine, known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, the Reagan administration initially tolerated leaders such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. As the 1980's wore on, however, younger, second-generation neoconservatives, such as Elliot Abrams, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators. Thus, while U.S. support for Marcos continued until and even after the fraudulent Philippine election of February 7, 1986, there was debate within the administration regarding how and when to oppose Marcos.

In the days that followed, with the widespread popular refusal to accept Marcos as the purported winner, turmoil in the Philippines grew. The Reagan administration then urged Marcos to accept defeat and leave the country, which he did. The Reagan team, and particularly the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliot Abrams, also supported the 1988 Chilean plebiscite that resulted in the restoration of democratic rule and Pinochet's eventual removal from office. Through the National Endowment for Democracy, led by another neoconservative, Carl Gershman, funds were directed to the anti-Pinochet opposition in order to ensure a fair election.

In this sense, the neoconservative foreign policy makers of the Reagan era were different from some of their more traditionalist conservative predecessors, and from the older generation of neoconservatives as well. While many of the latter believed that America's allies should be unquestionably defended at all costs, no matter what the nature of their regime, many younger neocons were more supportive of the idea of changing regimes to make them more compatible and reflective of U.S. values.

The belief in the universality of democracy would be a key neoconservative value which would go on to play a larger role in the post-Cold War period. Some critics would say however, that their emphasis on the need for externally-imposed "regime change" for "rogue" nations such as Iraq conflicted with the democratic value of national self-determination. Most neocons view this argument as invalid until a country has a democratic government to express the actual determination of its people.

For his own part, President Reagan largely did not move towards the sort of protracted, long-term interventions to stem social revolution in the Third World that many of his advisors would have favored. Instead, he mostly favored quick campaigns to attack or overthrow terrorist groups or leftist governments, favoring small, quick interventions that heightened a sense of post-Vietnam triumphalism among Americans, such as the attacks on Grenada and Libya, and arming right-wing militias in Central America, including backing the Contras seeking to overthrow the radical leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Most importantly, Reagan took the opposite course from the neocons in relation to the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, pursuing a conciliatory strategy toward disarmament and eventual liberalization as opposed to one of confrontation and rearmament. Reagan had made his most decisive break with the neocons in 1983 when he refused to remain engaged in the civil war in Lebanon and was at the same time generally indifferent to Israel. Many neocons became furious with Reagan for all of these reasons, most infamously, Norman Podhoretz came to liken him to Neville Chamberlain.

In general, many neocons see the collapse of the Soviet Union as having occurred directly due to Reagan's hard-line stance, and the bankruptcy that resulted from the Soviet Union trying to keep up the arms race. They therefore see this as a strong confirmation of their worldview, in spite of the great extent to which it is rewritten history.

Neoconservatism - Neoconservativism under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton

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 raison d'être and influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Others argue that they lost their status due to their association with the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration.

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.

Particularly galvanizing to the movement was the decision of George H.W. Bush and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War in 1991. Some neoconservatives viewed this policy, and the decision not to support indiginous dissident groups such as the Kurds and Shiites in their 1991-1992 resistance to Hussein, as a betrayal of democratic principles.

Within a few years of the Gulf War in Iraq, many associated with neoconservatism were pushing for the ouster of Saddam Hussein. On February 19, 1998, an open letter to President Clinton was signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with both neoconservatism and, later, related groups such as the PNAC, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power. [5]

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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History and origins of neoconservatism", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki