New Boys in Town: The Neocon Revolution and American Militarism

[AG78]

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=5709

Failure on the part of the United States to sustain its imperium would inevitably result in global disorder, bloody, bitter, and protracted: this emerged as the second conviction animating neoconservatives after the Cold War. As a result, proposals for organizing the world around anything other than American power elicited derision for being woolly-headed and fatuous. Nothing, therefore, could be allowed to inhibit the United States in the use of that power.

By implication, neoconservatives were no longer inclined to employ force only after having exhausted all other alternatives. In the 1970s and 1980s, the proximate threat posed by the Soviet Union had obliged the United States to exercise a certain self-restraint. Now, with the absence of any counterweight to American power, the need for self-restraint fell away. Indeed, far from being a scourge for humankind, war itself – even, or perhaps especially, preventive war – became in neoconservative eyes an efficacious means to serve idealistic ends. The problem with Bill Clinton in the 1990s was not that he was reluctant to use force but that he was insufficiently bloody-minded. "In Haiti, in Somalia, and elsewhere" where the United States intervened, lamented Robert Kagan, "Clinton and his advisers had the stomach only to be halfway imperialists. When the heat was on, they tended to look for the exits." Such halfheartedness suggested a defective appreciation of what power could accomplish. Neoconservatives knew better. "Military conquest," enthused Muravchik, "has often proved to be an effective means of implanting democracy." Michael Ledeen went even further, declaring that "the best democracy program ever invented is the U.S. Army." "Peace in this world," Ledeen added, "only follows victory in war."

[hedda_foil]

1. This is stunning. It's an absolute must read!

I really feel as if I understand these madmen as human beings. Ye Gods!!!!


"Collective security is a mirage," he (Krauthammer) wrote. For its part, "the international community is a fiction." "‘The allies' is a smaller version of ‘the international community' – and equally fictional." "The United Nations is guarantor of nothing. Except in a formal sense, it can hardly be said to exist." As a result, "when serious threats arise to American national interests… unilateralism is the only alternative to retreat."

Or more extreme still, "The alternative to unipolarity is chaos." For Krauthammer the incontrovertible fact of unipolarity demanded that the United States face up to its obligations, "unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them." The point was one to which younger neoconservatives returned time and again. For Kristol and Robert Kagan, the choice facing Americans was clear-cut. On the one hand loomed the prospect of "a decline in U.S. power, a rise in world chaos, and a dangerous twenty-first century"; on the other hand was the promise of safety, achieved through "a Reaganite reassertion of American power and moral leadership." There existed "no middle ground."

A Military Transformation of the International Order

The third conviction animating second-generation neoconservatives related to military power and its uses. In a nutshell, they concluded that nothing works like force. Europeans, wrote Robert Kagan, might imagine themselves "entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's ‘Perpetual Peace.'" Americans of a neoconservative bent knew better. In their judgment, the United States remained "mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might." Employing that military might with sufficient wisdom and determination could bring within reach peace, prosperity, democracy, respect for human rights, and American global primacy extending to the end of time.

The operative principle was not to husband power but to put it to work – to take a proactive approach. "Military strength alone will not avail," cautioned Kagan, "if we do not use it actively to maintain a world order which both supports and rests upon American hegemony." For neoconservatives like Kagan, the purpose of the Defense Department was no longer to defend the United States or to deter would-be aggressors but to transform the international order by transforming its constituent parts. Norman Podhoretz had opposed U.S. intervention in Vietnam "as a piece of arrogant stupidity" and had criticized in particular the liberal architects of the war for being "only too willing to tell other countries exactly how to organize their political and economic institutions." For the younger generation of neoconservatives, instructing others as to how to organize their countries – employing coercion if need be – was not evidence of arrogant stupidity; it was America's job.

[Frederik]

3. Interesting

"For Kristol and Robert Kagan, the choice facing Americans was clear-cut. On the one hand loomed the prospect of "a decline in U.S. power, a rise in world chaos, and a dangerous twenty-first century"; on the other hand was the promise of safety, achieved through "a Reaganite reassertion of American power and moral leadership." There existed "no middle ground." "

Well, their ideas have been implemented and what is the result? A decline in U.S. power, a rise in world chaos, and a dangerous twenty-first century... way to go, pee-nackers!

[Wright Patman]

2. I've often wondered

if Krauthammer would have been this sick and twisted had he not been paralyzed in some sort of accident (car wreck, IIRC) when he was in his early 20s.

From reading him over the years, it seems as if he has never dealt with his status and is just lashing out at random at whatever evokes his ire from week to week.

As I have heard in sermons before, one can either become "bitter" or "better" as one reacts to the inevitable vicissitudes of life buffeting us day by day.

[Frederik]

4. PNAC, March 2003:

"The removal of the present Iraqi regime from power will lay the foundation for achieving three vital goals: disarming Iraq of all its weapons of mass destruction stocks and production capabilities; establishing a peaceful, stable, democratic government in Iraq; and contributing to the democratic development of the wider Middle East."

"Regime change is not an end in itself but a means to an end - the establishment of a peaceful, stable, united, prosperous, and democratic Iraq free of all weapons of mass destruction. We must help build an Iraq that is governed by a pluralistic system representative of all Iraqis and that is fully committed to upholding the rule of law, the rights of all its citizens, and the betterment of all its people. The Iraqi people committed to a democratic future must be integrally involved in this process in order for it to succeed. Such an Iraq will be a force for regional stability rather than conflict and participate in the democratic development of the region."

"Much of the long-term security presence, as well as the resources for reconstruction, will have to come from our allies in Europe and elsewhere"

From the PNAC's web site

[bemildred]

5. Ah, yes, faith-based foreign policy.

:puke: