Post by RPankn on Jan 3, 2006 19:44:46 GMT -5
Neoconservatism, the Israeli Lobby, and other Power Relations
Chapter 3 From the PhD Thesis of QFG member
Andrés Perez-Alonso
The discourse of the war on terrorism cannot be understood without the context in which it emerged. A series of power relations of specific groups of people with similar ideologies have converged in a point in time allowing the apparition of this specific discourse. This is not a cause and effect relationship; rather a network of power has made this discourse possible. Not one of these agents or groups is solely responsible for it, much less for its consequences, but all have had a part to play. This chapter traces such a network.
It will be noted that in the examination that follows, the current president of the United States, George W. Bush, is not mentioned as often as other less known characters. One of the reasons is that Bush was new to foreign policy when he became president in 2000, and as he has insisted himself, his decisions have been nurtured by a group of advisers with a long experience in the subject, both in the academy and policy making.[1] Another one is that it is possible to identify the influence that the men and women holding positions of power have had, to such an extent that Bush’s words and actions have followed previous documents prepared by these people almost exactly.
Neoconservatism
It is widely believed that a specific group of influence known as neoconservatism has had an enormous influence on the war on terror. Even self-proclaimed conservatives, such as Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke judge that the current brand of US policy against terrorism that allowed the war on Iraq "closely reflected the established neo-conservative position and neo-conservative interventions in the policy process." [2]
The most appropriate way to view neoconservatism is as a "special interest" or "faction". Special interests are associations "representing the interests of their members to secure for themselves a privileged seat at the national decision-making table". MIT professor Gene Grossman defines them as "any minority group of voters that shares identifiable characteristics and similar concerns".[3] The neoconservative faction consists of intellectuals and elitists who tend to be of Jewish or Catholic background, many of whom seem to have lapsed to secular humanism.[4] The group has also been identified as "unipolarism", "democratic globalism", "neo-Manifest Destinarianism", "neo-imperialism", "Pax Americanism", "neo-Reaganism", and "liberal imperialism".[5]
This special interest includes individuals who hold or have held positions in government, such as Chief of Staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, until his resignation in late 2005 after the investigation on the Valerie Plame affair resulted in charges against him; Special Advisor to President Bush, Elliott Abrams; Deputy Secretary of Defence with the Bush Administration, Paul D. Wolfowitz, later appointed head of the World Bank; and State Department officials John R. Bolton, later appointed US ambassador the UN, and David Wurmser. On governmental advisory bodies Eliot A. Cohen occupies a position on the Defence Policy Board, a position that was also held by Richard Perle until recently.
Perhaps most important are Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who would be better described as American nationalists than as neoconservatives, but whose careers and views, such as those concerning American exceptionalism and unilateralism, have run closely to those of neoconservatism. Both their signatures can be found on a key neoconservative document, the 1997 Statement of Principles by the Project for the New American Century.
Neoconservatives can also be found in the academy: for example Yale professor Donald Kagan, Princeton professors Bernard Lewis and Aaron Friedberg; in the media: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and most foreign policy editorialists on the Wall Street Journal and the Fox News Channel; in business: former CIA Director James Woolsey; and in research institutions: Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations, Norman Podhoretz and Meyrav Wursmer at the Hudson Institute, any member of the Project for the New American Century, and most foreign or Defence studies scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.[6] This list is not all inclusive, but it should serve to illustrate the range of positions held by neoconservatives.
An Introduction to Neoconservative Ideology
Neoconservatives have a tendency to see or depict the world of international politics in black and white: a struggle between good and evil. It is a doctrine specifically about the relation between Moscow and Washington in the late twentieth century,[7] and between the United States as the centre of democratic societies and rogue nations in the early twenty-first.
According to neoconservative Irving Kristol, there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience that can be summarized in four "theses": first, patriotism should be encouraged; second, international institutions should be regarded "with the deepest suspicion"; third, statesmen should make a clear distinction between friends and enemies, since it was a mistake for some to not count the Soviet Union as an enemy; and finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, but also an ideological one. Therefore,
Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defence of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.[8]
This Wilsonian notion of the spread of democracy is not pure idealism; it is also based on the supposition that if democracy and the rule of law are established in troubled countries around the world, they will cease to be threats. The promotion of democracy is not left to economic development and political engagement; if necessary, it is provided through military force. Some think-tank "fundamentalists" - as G. John Ikenberry identifies them - such as Tom Donnelly and Max Boot, go even further and argue for formal quasi-imperial control over strategically valuable failed states, backed up by new American bases and an imperial civil service.[9]
We could add to those theses the following common themes: a belief that the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil and that the former (themselves) should have the political character to confront the latter; a willingness to use military power; and a primary focus on the Middle East and global Islam as the principal theatre for American overseas interests.
In putting their ideas into practice, neoconservatives analyze international issues in absolute moral categories; focus on the "unipolar" power of the United States, seeing the use of force as the first, not the last option of foreign policy; disdain conventional diplomatic agencies such as the State Department and conventional country-specific, realist, and pragmatic analysis; and are hostile toward nonmilitary multilateral institutions and instinctively antagonistic toward international treaties and agreements.[10] If there is any good to multilateralism it is as a tool of American power. As Robert Kagan has famously put it, "multilateralism is a weapon of the weak". Or in Max Boot’s words: "Power breeds unilateralism. It is as simple as that".[11]
Based on the above beliefs and approaches neoconservatives tend to find themselves in confrontational postures with the Muslim world, with some U.S.' allies, with the need for cooperation in the United Nations, and with those within their country who disagree with them and their objectives.[12]
Emphasis on Military Might and US exceptionalism
Robert Kagan and William Kristol’s book of 2000, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunities in American Foreign and Defence Policy, which includes a wide range of contributions from fellow neoconservatives, provides something close to their canon. Kagan and Kristol speak of establishing the "standard of a global superpower that intends to shape the international environment to its own advantage," and decry a narrow definition of America's "vital interests" arguing that "America's moral purposes and national interests are identical."[13]
Their introductory chapter proposes to create a strong America capable of projecting force quickly and with devastating effect on important regions of the world. [An America which would act] as if instability in important regions of the world, and the flouting of civilised rules of conduct in those regions, were threats that affected us with almost the same immediacy, [and which] conceives of itself as at once a European power, an Asian power, a Middle Eastern power and, of course, a Western Hemisphere power.
A principal aim of American foreign policy should be to bring about a change of regime in hostile nations - in Baghdad and Belgrade, in Pyongyang and Beijing and wherever tyrannical governments acquire the military power to threaten their neighbours, our allies and the United States.
[W]hen it comes to dealing with tyrannical regimes... the United States should seek not coexistence but transformation.[14]
It is easy to identify this projection of neoconservative global intent as a blueprint for what was to become later known as the Bush Doctrine.[15]
The unipolarists emphasize that the United States is not like other nations but also maintain that other nations should be more like it, without a doubt supported in the long imagined idea that their country is an exception to history.[16] In turn, exceptionalism supports the argument that military power must be returned to the centre of American foreign policy. For early neoconservatives of the 1970s, foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era had become too liberal and soft, and unwilling to confront Soviet expansionism. Years later they argued that during the Clinton era the United States was not taken seriously as a global military power because of his reluctance to use real force in Iraq; and when enemies stop fearing the United States, they are emboldened to strike.[17]
Their promotion of force has also a certain degree of admiration and fascination with the capabilities of the U.S. military, as Irving Kristol’s words reveal:
Behind all [the neoconservative convictions about foreign policy there] is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. [...] With power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you.[18]
Max Boot looks forward to a new era when The United States, like the British Empire, will always be fighting some war, somewhere in the globe. Likewise, Professor Eliot Cohen of the Defence Policy Board and former CIA Director James Woolsey have suggested that the United States is now "on the march" in "World War IV". It should come as no surprise, then, that for neoconservatives, the applicability of force is the default measure against terrorism. David Frum and Richard Perle's book An End to Evil, sets out at full length the remedy for terror and tyranny that underlies the Bush foreign policy: using military force to overthrow noncooperative governments in troubled areas.[19]
The Middle East and Israel
Both Kagan and Kristol’s book and Frum and Perle’s are mostly dedicated to the Middle East, the need for a strong military and Islamic-inspired terrorism as the only foreign policy challenge to the United States. Similarly, scholars at the Project for the New American Century pour most of their energies into the Middle East and members of Americans for Victory over Terrorism do so completely.
Their views are very specific and tend to be hostile towards the peace process and Islam.
Since the 1970s, neoconservative publications have focused on defence of U.S. policies concerning Israel. For example, the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs was established following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, "partially at the prompting of the Pentagon for a counterbalance to liberal sniping at Defence spending." Podhoretz provided a pro-Israeli voice in what many neoconservatives of the time thought of as an intellectual community lacking in support for Israel as the only genuine democracy in the Middle East. He also maintained that anti-Zionism was simply a mask of anti-Semitism and that it was often found among anti-Americans and radicals. Thus, commitment to Israel's security and right to exist and a patriotic support of U.S. values were inextricably linked for many neoconservatives.
During the Cold War, intellectuals such as Midge Decter, Moynihan, and Podhoretz argued that the U.N., Communism, and much of the Third World was anti-Semitic, along with large portions of the U.S. intellectual community; therefore the United States and Israel shared a common ideological struggle against common enemies.[20]
The historical neoconservative commitment to Israel has been so pronounced that even traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk have charged them with mistaking "Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States". Similarly, Patrick Buchanan, who had been sceptical of the need for war with Iraq and challenged George Bush for the 1992 Republican presidential nomination, commented that neoconservative "tactics - including the smearing of opponents as racists, nativists, fascists, and anti-Semites - left many conservatives wondering if we hadn't made a terrible mistake when we brought these ideological vagrants in off the street and gave them a place by the fire." These comments sparked a debate over whether or not Buchanan was anti-Semitic.[21]
Philosophical and ideological origins
Leo Strauss
If we only read the above summary of neoconservative ideas we would be excused to believe with John Samples that neoconservatism has been "as much about politics as principles. ...They believed that the striving for national greatness would appeal to American idealism and create a new Republican majority."[22] Even if we do not accept those ideals, we would be forced to conclude that it is a form of idealism, and indeed, several commentators do so. Nonetheless, at least one interpretation of the philosophical origins of neoconservatism, which I believe to be more accurate, tells a rather different story - one which happens to disclose the will to power underneath the will to truth that Foucault wrote about.
While some political analysts think of the University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss as the intellectual inspiration for neoconservatives (some studied with him or with lecturers that followed his ideas in the 1960s), others claim that his influence is exaggerated and that there is no direct link between him and positions of power in Washington.[23] Modern neoconservatives generally write in good terms about Strauss, but they also deny that they owe any debt to him, and some even say they are not familiar with his work.
However, while his importance may indeed be overstated, it is a fact that his perspectives closely resemble those of neoconservatives, and so we would be committing a mistake by dismissing him altogether. This is not to suggest that all neoconservatives are following Strauss, but to recognize that some influential neoconservatives in, and with links to, the Bush administration, have fundamental connections to Straussianism in their published works, statements, attitudes and policy perspectives.[24]
Strauss used classical texts - not only the Greek, but also Christian, Jewish, and Muslim sacred writings - to comment on modern tyrannies, which he thought were the product of modernity's rejection of the values of classical societies that were hierarchically ordered and supported in religiosity. Strauss believed democracy could not enforce its own paradigm if it could not confront tyranny, which he believed was inherently expansionist. He argued that the European emphasis on human reason deriving from the Enlightenment represented a decline in religion-based values and not an advance, deploring a secular political order for its "movement away from the recognition of a superhuman authority - whether of revelation based on Divine will or a natural order - to a recognition of the exclusively human based authority of the State."[25]
Such a position reveals a concern for principles and would suggest a form of idealism. Nevertheless, the significance of these values may be exclusively pragmatic - even nihilistic. Jim George argues that to the emphasis on national and cultural unity and the simple religious and philosophical morality, we would have to add, as part of Strauss’s legacy to neoconservatism, a "war culture" as the basis for that unity, along with the notion that "elite rule is crucial" and the belief that "the neoconservative elite has the right and indeed the obligation to lie to the masses in order that the 'right' political and strategic decisions be made and implemented. Hence, the use of the so-called 'noble lie'."[26]
The reason is that Strauss was not the conventional conservative philosopher that he appears to be; instead, he was a philosophical nihilist influenced by Carl Schmitt, Heidegger and a particular reading of Nietzsche. For Strauss,
...the fundamental truth of the Western philosophical tradition is a nihilist truth: that all morality, all notions of justice, all distinctions between good and evil are actually matters of power and interpretation and political ideology - not metaphysical or theological irreducibility... Consequently, in the most natural and most just regimes, the cleverest and strongest should rule the weak, for the good of society as a whole. [The ancient scholars guarded and concealed this knowledge], hence their reliance on esoteric deception as a way of protecting themselves.[27] [emphases added]
It is precisely here where the will to power has been made explicit within philosophical thought itself; a most important point that cannot be stressed enough, for ‘noble lies’ have made their appearance in the context of the war on terror. It is now part of the historical record that the case for the war on Iraq was built on false connections to the 11 September attacks and fake evidence of weapons of mass destruction,[28] a contradiction that will be further explored in Chapter 5.
This explains why Strauss regarded as vital the development of a new breed of ruling intellectuals - modern "philosopher kings" - that would project a hidden ("esoteric") truth based on simple moral precepts for modern societies to be able to face tyranny. The elite is a necessity, since in his view democracy
...had become little more than a vulgar and futile attempt to create equality in a naturally unequal world... This clearly troubled Strauss, to the extent that, among many other things, he shared with Nietzsche the belief that ‘the history of western civilization has led to the triumph of the inferior’. A prospect that terrified them both.[29]
Thus, the intellectual elite needs to tell "noble lies" not only to people but also to powerful politicians. In 2000, William Kristol implicitly recognized this when he explained that a major teaching of Strauss was that no political position was really based on the truth.[30]
Strauss also advocated a reawakening of "a reverence for myth and transcendental illusion among the masses." Again, this was confirmed by a neoconservative, Irving Kristol, who acknowledged that the neoconservatism movement had taken up the Straussian strategy of "explicit and strong support for religion - even if such support contradicted one's own atheism". Thus, according to Kristol, "neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers"; a position that has been described as "noble hypocrisy" by Ronald Bailey.[31]
Another commentator, Shadia Drury, notes that like Marx, Strauss believed that religion was the opium of the masses, but unlike him, Strauss believed that masses needed opium. The Editor of the Christian Journal, Chronicles, has put it this way, "Straussians in general believe that religion might be a useful thing to take in the suckers with." [32]
Another form of myth that needs to be created for the sake of the unity of the populace is that of an enemy to fight, "so that they can be reminded of the meaningfulness and precariousness of their culture and polity."[33] And here we see further parallels with the current discourse of the war on terror, a ‘war’ that from a Straussian perspective is not only waged against the external, but also against the domestic forces of individualism, historicism and relativism.[34]
Why should we prefer this interpretation of Strauss as consciously aware of the manipulation of society for the promotion of the elite rather than as an idealist? Because it explains better the behaviour of contemporary neoconservatives in power; and also because that is how Strauss interpreted the classics himself. Jim George writes:
f one reads Strauss in the way that he insists we must read philosophical texts - sceptically and always aware of esoteric strategies - he is very much what his detractors claim he is, a cynical manipulator of young minds, a right wing fundamentalist seeking to undermine liberal freedoms in the US and instigate an old world 'war culture' at the core of US foreign policy. In this reading of Strauss, his classically trained elite is little more than a reconstituted pre-modern aristocracy encouraged to believe that their intellectual superiority entitles them to rule over their fellow citizens and to use any duplicitous means at their disposal in this process.[35]
An argument could be made for a third possible interpretation: that Strauss did believe in the intrinsic value of ideals for the common good, but that it faced such a threat from tyrannical forces that the intellectual elite had no option but to make use of any means, even those that the people would not approve of. Maybe, but if so we would have to recognize that it would make absolutely no difference in practice. Thus, the idealistic aspect of Straussianism would have to be dismissed.
[Continued in next post.]
Chapter 3 From the PhD Thesis of QFG member
Andrés Perez-Alonso
The discourse of the war on terrorism cannot be understood without the context in which it emerged. A series of power relations of specific groups of people with similar ideologies have converged in a point in time allowing the apparition of this specific discourse. This is not a cause and effect relationship; rather a network of power has made this discourse possible. Not one of these agents or groups is solely responsible for it, much less for its consequences, but all have had a part to play. This chapter traces such a network.
It will be noted that in the examination that follows, the current president of the United States, George W. Bush, is not mentioned as often as other less known characters. One of the reasons is that Bush was new to foreign policy when he became president in 2000, and as he has insisted himself, his decisions have been nurtured by a group of advisers with a long experience in the subject, both in the academy and policy making.[1] Another one is that it is possible to identify the influence that the men and women holding positions of power have had, to such an extent that Bush’s words and actions have followed previous documents prepared by these people almost exactly.
Neoconservatism
It is widely believed that a specific group of influence known as neoconservatism has had an enormous influence on the war on terror. Even self-proclaimed conservatives, such as Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke judge that the current brand of US policy against terrorism that allowed the war on Iraq "closely reflected the established neo-conservative position and neo-conservative interventions in the policy process." [2]
The most appropriate way to view neoconservatism is as a "special interest" or "faction". Special interests are associations "representing the interests of their members to secure for themselves a privileged seat at the national decision-making table". MIT professor Gene Grossman defines them as "any minority group of voters that shares identifiable characteristics and similar concerns".[3] The neoconservative faction consists of intellectuals and elitists who tend to be of Jewish or Catholic background, many of whom seem to have lapsed to secular humanism.[4] The group has also been identified as "unipolarism", "democratic globalism", "neo-Manifest Destinarianism", "neo-imperialism", "Pax Americanism", "neo-Reaganism", and "liberal imperialism".[5]
This special interest includes individuals who hold or have held positions in government, such as Chief of Staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, until his resignation in late 2005 after the investigation on the Valerie Plame affair resulted in charges against him; Special Advisor to President Bush, Elliott Abrams; Deputy Secretary of Defence with the Bush Administration, Paul D. Wolfowitz, later appointed head of the World Bank; and State Department officials John R. Bolton, later appointed US ambassador the UN, and David Wurmser. On governmental advisory bodies Eliot A. Cohen occupies a position on the Defence Policy Board, a position that was also held by Richard Perle until recently.
Perhaps most important are Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who would be better described as American nationalists than as neoconservatives, but whose careers and views, such as those concerning American exceptionalism and unilateralism, have run closely to those of neoconservatism. Both their signatures can be found on a key neoconservative document, the 1997 Statement of Principles by the Project for the New American Century.
Neoconservatives can also be found in the academy: for example Yale professor Donald Kagan, Princeton professors Bernard Lewis and Aaron Friedberg; in the media: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and most foreign policy editorialists on the Wall Street Journal and the Fox News Channel; in business: former CIA Director James Woolsey; and in research institutions: Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations, Norman Podhoretz and Meyrav Wursmer at the Hudson Institute, any member of the Project for the New American Century, and most foreign or Defence studies scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.[6] This list is not all inclusive, but it should serve to illustrate the range of positions held by neoconservatives.
An Introduction to Neoconservative Ideology
Neoconservatives have a tendency to see or depict the world of international politics in black and white: a struggle between good and evil. It is a doctrine specifically about the relation between Moscow and Washington in the late twentieth century,[7] and between the United States as the centre of democratic societies and rogue nations in the early twenty-first.
According to neoconservative Irving Kristol, there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience that can be summarized in four "theses": first, patriotism should be encouraged; second, international institutions should be regarded "with the deepest suspicion"; third, statesmen should make a clear distinction between friends and enemies, since it was a mistake for some to not count the Soviet Union as an enemy; and finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, but also an ideological one. Therefore,
Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defence of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.[8]
This Wilsonian notion of the spread of democracy is not pure idealism; it is also based on the supposition that if democracy and the rule of law are established in troubled countries around the world, they will cease to be threats. The promotion of democracy is not left to economic development and political engagement; if necessary, it is provided through military force. Some think-tank "fundamentalists" - as G. John Ikenberry identifies them - such as Tom Donnelly and Max Boot, go even further and argue for formal quasi-imperial control over strategically valuable failed states, backed up by new American bases and an imperial civil service.[9]
We could add to those theses the following common themes: a belief that the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil and that the former (themselves) should have the political character to confront the latter; a willingness to use military power; and a primary focus on the Middle East and global Islam as the principal theatre for American overseas interests.
In putting their ideas into practice, neoconservatives analyze international issues in absolute moral categories; focus on the "unipolar" power of the United States, seeing the use of force as the first, not the last option of foreign policy; disdain conventional diplomatic agencies such as the State Department and conventional country-specific, realist, and pragmatic analysis; and are hostile toward nonmilitary multilateral institutions and instinctively antagonistic toward international treaties and agreements.[10] If there is any good to multilateralism it is as a tool of American power. As Robert Kagan has famously put it, "multilateralism is a weapon of the weak". Or in Max Boot’s words: "Power breeds unilateralism. It is as simple as that".[11]
Based on the above beliefs and approaches neoconservatives tend to find themselves in confrontational postures with the Muslim world, with some U.S.' allies, with the need for cooperation in the United Nations, and with those within their country who disagree with them and their objectives.[12]
Emphasis on Military Might and US exceptionalism
Robert Kagan and William Kristol’s book of 2000, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunities in American Foreign and Defence Policy, which includes a wide range of contributions from fellow neoconservatives, provides something close to their canon. Kagan and Kristol speak of establishing the "standard of a global superpower that intends to shape the international environment to its own advantage," and decry a narrow definition of America's "vital interests" arguing that "America's moral purposes and national interests are identical."[13]
Their introductory chapter proposes to create a strong America capable of projecting force quickly and with devastating effect on important regions of the world. [An America which would act] as if instability in important regions of the world, and the flouting of civilised rules of conduct in those regions, were threats that affected us with almost the same immediacy, [and which] conceives of itself as at once a European power, an Asian power, a Middle Eastern power and, of course, a Western Hemisphere power.
A principal aim of American foreign policy should be to bring about a change of regime in hostile nations - in Baghdad and Belgrade, in Pyongyang and Beijing and wherever tyrannical governments acquire the military power to threaten their neighbours, our allies and the United States.
[W]hen it comes to dealing with tyrannical regimes... the United States should seek not coexistence but transformation.[14]
It is easy to identify this projection of neoconservative global intent as a blueprint for what was to become later known as the Bush Doctrine.[15]
The unipolarists emphasize that the United States is not like other nations but also maintain that other nations should be more like it, without a doubt supported in the long imagined idea that their country is an exception to history.[16] In turn, exceptionalism supports the argument that military power must be returned to the centre of American foreign policy. For early neoconservatives of the 1970s, foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era had become too liberal and soft, and unwilling to confront Soviet expansionism. Years later they argued that during the Clinton era the United States was not taken seriously as a global military power because of his reluctance to use real force in Iraq; and when enemies stop fearing the United States, they are emboldened to strike.[17]
Their promotion of force has also a certain degree of admiration and fascination with the capabilities of the U.S. military, as Irving Kristol’s words reveal:
Behind all [the neoconservative convictions about foreign policy there] is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. [...] With power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you.[18]
Max Boot looks forward to a new era when The United States, like the British Empire, will always be fighting some war, somewhere in the globe. Likewise, Professor Eliot Cohen of the Defence Policy Board and former CIA Director James Woolsey have suggested that the United States is now "on the march" in "World War IV". It should come as no surprise, then, that for neoconservatives, the applicability of force is the default measure against terrorism. David Frum and Richard Perle's book An End to Evil, sets out at full length the remedy for terror and tyranny that underlies the Bush foreign policy: using military force to overthrow noncooperative governments in troubled areas.[19]
The Middle East and Israel
Both Kagan and Kristol’s book and Frum and Perle’s are mostly dedicated to the Middle East, the need for a strong military and Islamic-inspired terrorism as the only foreign policy challenge to the United States. Similarly, scholars at the Project for the New American Century pour most of their energies into the Middle East and members of Americans for Victory over Terrorism do so completely.
Their views are very specific and tend to be hostile towards the peace process and Islam.
Since the 1970s, neoconservative publications have focused on defence of U.S. policies concerning Israel. For example, the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs was established following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, "partially at the prompting of the Pentagon for a counterbalance to liberal sniping at Defence spending." Podhoretz provided a pro-Israeli voice in what many neoconservatives of the time thought of as an intellectual community lacking in support for Israel as the only genuine democracy in the Middle East. He also maintained that anti-Zionism was simply a mask of anti-Semitism and that it was often found among anti-Americans and radicals. Thus, commitment to Israel's security and right to exist and a patriotic support of U.S. values were inextricably linked for many neoconservatives.
During the Cold War, intellectuals such as Midge Decter, Moynihan, and Podhoretz argued that the U.N., Communism, and much of the Third World was anti-Semitic, along with large portions of the U.S. intellectual community; therefore the United States and Israel shared a common ideological struggle against common enemies.[20]
The historical neoconservative commitment to Israel has been so pronounced that even traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk have charged them with mistaking "Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States". Similarly, Patrick Buchanan, who had been sceptical of the need for war with Iraq and challenged George Bush for the 1992 Republican presidential nomination, commented that neoconservative "tactics - including the smearing of opponents as racists, nativists, fascists, and anti-Semites - left many conservatives wondering if we hadn't made a terrible mistake when we brought these ideological vagrants in off the street and gave them a place by the fire." These comments sparked a debate over whether or not Buchanan was anti-Semitic.[21]
Philosophical and ideological origins
Leo Strauss
If we only read the above summary of neoconservative ideas we would be excused to believe with John Samples that neoconservatism has been "as much about politics as principles. ...They believed that the striving for national greatness would appeal to American idealism and create a new Republican majority."[22] Even if we do not accept those ideals, we would be forced to conclude that it is a form of idealism, and indeed, several commentators do so. Nonetheless, at least one interpretation of the philosophical origins of neoconservatism, which I believe to be more accurate, tells a rather different story - one which happens to disclose the will to power underneath the will to truth that Foucault wrote about.
While some political analysts think of the University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss as the intellectual inspiration for neoconservatives (some studied with him or with lecturers that followed his ideas in the 1960s), others claim that his influence is exaggerated and that there is no direct link between him and positions of power in Washington.[23] Modern neoconservatives generally write in good terms about Strauss, but they also deny that they owe any debt to him, and some even say they are not familiar with his work.
However, while his importance may indeed be overstated, it is a fact that his perspectives closely resemble those of neoconservatives, and so we would be committing a mistake by dismissing him altogether. This is not to suggest that all neoconservatives are following Strauss, but to recognize that some influential neoconservatives in, and with links to, the Bush administration, have fundamental connections to Straussianism in their published works, statements, attitudes and policy perspectives.[24]
Strauss used classical texts - not only the Greek, but also Christian, Jewish, and Muslim sacred writings - to comment on modern tyrannies, which he thought were the product of modernity's rejection of the values of classical societies that were hierarchically ordered and supported in religiosity. Strauss believed democracy could not enforce its own paradigm if it could not confront tyranny, which he believed was inherently expansionist. He argued that the European emphasis on human reason deriving from the Enlightenment represented a decline in religion-based values and not an advance, deploring a secular political order for its "movement away from the recognition of a superhuman authority - whether of revelation based on Divine will or a natural order - to a recognition of the exclusively human based authority of the State."[25]
Such a position reveals a concern for principles and would suggest a form of idealism. Nevertheless, the significance of these values may be exclusively pragmatic - even nihilistic. Jim George argues that to the emphasis on national and cultural unity and the simple religious and philosophical morality, we would have to add, as part of Strauss’s legacy to neoconservatism, a "war culture" as the basis for that unity, along with the notion that "elite rule is crucial" and the belief that "the neoconservative elite has the right and indeed the obligation to lie to the masses in order that the 'right' political and strategic decisions be made and implemented. Hence, the use of the so-called 'noble lie'."[26]
The reason is that Strauss was not the conventional conservative philosopher that he appears to be; instead, he was a philosophical nihilist influenced by Carl Schmitt, Heidegger and a particular reading of Nietzsche. For Strauss,
...the fundamental truth of the Western philosophical tradition is a nihilist truth: that all morality, all notions of justice, all distinctions between good and evil are actually matters of power and interpretation and political ideology - not metaphysical or theological irreducibility... Consequently, in the most natural and most just regimes, the cleverest and strongest should rule the weak, for the good of society as a whole. [The ancient scholars guarded and concealed this knowledge], hence their reliance on esoteric deception as a way of protecting themselves.[27] [emphases added]
It is precisely here where the will to power has been made explicit within philosophical thought itself; a most important point that cannot be stressed enough, for ‘noble lies’ have made their appearance in the context of the war on terror. It is now part of the historical record that the case for the war on Iraq was built on false connections to the 11 September attacks and fake evidence of weapons of mass destruction,[28] a contradiction that will be further explored in Chapter 5.
This explains why Strauss regarded as vital the development of a new breed of ruling intellectuals - modern "philosopher kings" - that would project a hidden ("esoteric") truth based on simple moral precepts for modern societies to be able to face tyranny. The elite is a necessity, since in his view democracy
...had become little more than a vulgar and futile attempt to create equality in a naturally unequal world... This clearly troubled Strauss, to the extent that, among many other things, he shared with Nietzsche the belief that ‘the history of western civilization has led to the triumph of the inferior’. A prospect that terrified them both.[29]
Thus, the intellectual elite needs to tell "noble lies" not only to people but also to powerful politicians. In 2000, William Kristol implicitly recognized this when he explained that a major teaching of Strauss was that no political position was really based on the truth.[30]
Strauss also advocated a reawakening of "a reverence for myth and transcendental illusion among the masses." Again, this was confirmed by a neoconservative, Irving Kristol, who acknowledged that the neoconservatism movement had taken up the Straussian strategy of "explicit and strong support for religion - even if such support contradicted one's own atheism". Thus, according to Kristol, "neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers"; a position that has been described as "noble hypocrisy" by Ronald Bailey.[31]
Another commentator, Shadia Drury, notes that like Marx, Strauss believed that religion was the opium of the masses, but unlike him, Strauss believed that masses needed opium. The Editor of the Christian Journal, Chronicles, has put it this way, "Straussians in general believe that religion might be a useful thing to take in the suckers with." [32]
Another form of myth that needs to be created for the sake of the unity of the populace is that of an enemy to fight, "so that they can be reminded of the meaningfulness and precariousness of their culture and polity."[33] And here we see further parallels with the current discourse of the war on terror, a ‘war’ that from a Straussian perspective is not only waged against the external, but also against the domestic forces of individualism, historicism and relativism.[34]
Why should we prefer this interpretation of Strauss as consciously aware of the manipulation of society for the promotion of the elite rather than as an idealist? Because it explains better the behaviour of contemporary neoconservatives in power; and also because that is how Strauss interpreted the classics himself. Jim George writes:
f one reads Strauss in the way that he insists we must read philosophical texts - sceptically and always aware of esoteric strategies - he is very much what his detractors claim he is, a cynical manipulator of young minds, a right wing fundamentalist seeking to undermine liberal freedoms in the US and instigate an old world 'war culture' at the core of US foreign policy. In this reading of Strauss, his classically trained elite is little more than a reconstituted pre-modern aristocracy encouraged to believe that their intellectual superiority entitles them to rule over their fellow citizens and to use any duplicitous means at their disposal in this process.[35]
An argument could be made for a third possible interpretation: that Strauss did believe in the intrinsic value of ideals for the common good, but that it faced such a threat from tyrannical forces that the intellectual elite had no option but to make use of any means, even those that the people would not approve of. Maybe, but if so we would have to recognize that it would make absolutely no difference in practice. Thus, the idealistic aspect of Straussianism would have to be dismissed.
[Continued in next post.]
