Cons vs. Neo-Cons

A shoe that has taken a little while to drop; mainstream conservatives are finally beginning to point out in public that the neo-con project of remoulding the world sits uncomfortably with traditional Burkean notions of prudence and culture. In a forthcoming article in conservative house journal, _The National Interest_ (still to be published; hence no link), John Hulsman and Anatol Lieven argue that realism is not only more moral than neo-conservatism (it better reflects the moral duty to be prudent), but that it better reflects traditional conservative values as articulated by Burke and others. They have some harsh words for the neo-cons.

bq. an ethic of ultimate ends – especially when linked to the belief that one’s nation is the representative of all that is good – has a dangerous tendency to excuse its proponents from responsibility for the consequences of their actions. For if ideals and intentions are seen as spotlessly, self-evidently pure, then not only the grossest ruthlessness, but the grossest incompetence is of comparatively little importance. The Iraq War and its aftermath have been the first real test of the neoconservative approach in action. It is not an anomaly of the neoconservative philosophy as some have argued. Rather, it springs fully formed like Athena from neoconservatism’s head.

Hulsman and Lieven also give short shrift to those like Krauthammer who have tried to blend realism and neo-conservatism into an uneasy cocktail.

bq. Moreover, given America’s past historical record, the neoconservative combination of a professed belief in spreading democracy with a commitment to the limitless extension of American power and American interests in the Middle East is bound to be widely seen as utterly hypocritical. This is all the more so when – as advocated by Charles Krauthammer and others – the United States openly adjusts its public conscience according to its geopolitical advantage, talking loudly about democratic morality in cases that suit it, while remaining silent on others.

These tensions have been brewing for a while, and now appear to be breaking out “into”:http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000020.html “open”:http://www.sais-jhu.edu/pubaffairs/SAISarticles04/Fukuyama_NYT_082204.pdf “warfare”:http://www.sais-jhu.edu/pubaffairs/SAISarticles05/Fukuyama_NYT_031305.pdf. It’s a little surprising that this hasn’t gotten much attention from bloggers, given the obsessive debates over who was or wasn’t a neo-con last year. Some conservatives are clearly “worried”:http://www.gwu.edu/~elliott/faculty/articlenotes/Nau%20NI%20Article.pdf that these divisions may help the Democrats take back the White House in 2008, and are trying to get the different factions of the conservative-foreign-policy-wonkosphere to pull together rather than against each other. But this fight isn’t just reshaping the foreign policy debate among Republicans; Democrats too are being pulled in. On the one hand, people like “Peter Beinart”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=whKP5U%2BbbaxbirV9FQhQuh%3D%3D of the New Republic are trying to pull hawkish Democrats into closer cooperation with the neo-cons in the fight to spread democracy. On the other, people like Hulsman (who I heard speaking a couple of days ago), are looking to create a “Truman moment” with Democrats rather than their Republican brethren. They have quite a lot in common with centrist internationalists like Charles Kupchan and John Ikenberry, who believe that America’s power is best preserved through recreating the kind of international institutions and relationships that underpinned American hegemony during the Cold War. While this fight may well have partisan consequences, it isn’t in itself a partisan battle. I’ll be posting more on this as it develops.