A Neoconservative Plan That Will Cripple U.S. Interests
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) celebrated the release of a major foreign-policy paper on Monday, entitled “Extending American Power: Strategies to Expand U.S. Engagement in a Competitive World Order.” The paper, authored by a panel whose cochairs were Robert Kagan and James P. Rubin, is designed to “help shape the national conversation on America’s role in the world during the run-up to the presidential election in November 2016.” If the policy recommendations in this twenty-two-page report are followed by the next administration, the result won’t be to extend American power abroad. It would most likely cripple it.
The theme of the policy options and recommendations throughout this paper reflect the ambitions of an imperialist, domineering and expansive global power. The authors can’t, of course, describe their aspirations in those unpalatable terms. America would properly reject them immediately. Instead they seek to embed these concepts in pleasant, noble terms, explaining they seek to promote “the idea that American leadership is critical to preserving and strengthen the bedrock of today’s international order.” This highlights an important point up front. Definitions matter.
For too long now, the adherents of a hawkish school of foreign policy, often referred to as neocons, have repurposed the definition of “leadership” to mean international engagement, enabled by the stationing of combat forces or outright employing lethal military power abroad, to “shape” or coerce foreign governments to comply with American directives. At the same time, they have successfully stained any who advocate for a restrained use of force by deriding them as “neo-isolationists” who “fail to lead.” This militaristic foreign policy advocated by Kagan, Rubin and their coauthors, however, ultimately undercuts American interests and violates traditional American values in four major ways.
First is the premise upon which their theory rests: that the United States has an obligation, a right and the authority to unilaterally establish and enforce a set of norms of our choosing on the rest of the world. For example, the authors believe the American people must “accept their role as upholder and defender of the liberal world order.” In particular, the United States must “continue enforcing a rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific region” to check a modernizing China. On what authority they believe the United States has the right to enforce a liberal order on the rest of the world is not explained.
more; about 4 pages long
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/neoconservative-plan-will-cripple-us-interests-16271
Prominent neocon Robert Kagan the author of that piece has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president,
While many of Kagan’s observations about the Republican tolerance and even encouragement of bigotry are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies.
The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented an aggressive “regime change” strategy against governments and political movements that don’t toe Washington’s line or that deviate from Israel’s goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/02/25/neocon-kagan-endorses-hillary-clinton/
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