Last of the Neo-cons

By Ian Buruma

Project Syndicate

NEW YORK ― With George W. Bush's presidency about to end, what will happen to the neo-conservatives? Rarely in the history of American politics has a small number of bookish intellectuals had so much influence on foreign policy as the neo-cons had under Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, neither of whom are noted for their deep intellectual interests.

Most presidents hope to attach some special meaning to their time in office. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave neo-con intellectuals the chance to lend their brand of revolutionary idealism to the Bush/Cheney enterprise.

Writing for such journals as The Weekly Standard, and using the pulpits of think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, neo-cons offered an intellectual boost to the invasion of Iraq. The logic of the American mission to spread freedom around the globe ― rooted, it was argued, in U.S. history since the Founding Fathers ― demanded nothing less.

Objections from European and Asian allies were brushed away as old-fashioned, unimaginative, cowardly reactions to the dawn of a new age of worldwide democracy, enforced by unassailable U.S. military power.

The neo-cons will not be missed by many. They made their last stand in the presidential election campaign of John McCain, whose foreign policy advisers included some prominent members of the fraternity (most were men). None, so far, seem to have found much favor in the ranks of Barack Obama's consultants.

Such clout as the neo-cons wielded under Bush is unusual in the political culture of the U.S., which is noted for its skepticism toward intellectual experiments. A certain degree of philistinism in politics is not a bad thing.

Intellectuals, usually powerless themselves outside the rarified preserves of think tanks and universities, are sometimes too easily attracted to powerful leaders, in the hope that such leaders might actually carry out their ideas.

But wise leaders are necessarily pragmatic, because messy reality demands compromise and accommodation. Only zealots want ideas to be pushed to their logical extremes. The combination of powerful leaders with authoritarian bent and intellectual idealists often results in bad policies.

This is what happened when Bush and Cheney took up the ideas promoted by the neo-cons. Both had previously been pragmatic men. Bush first ran for office as a cautious conservative, prepared to be moderate at home and humble abroad.

Cheney was better known as a ruthless bureaucratic operator than a man of bold ideas. But he was obsessed with the notion of expanding the executive powers of the president. The combustible mix of autocratic ambition and misguided idealism took hold soon after the terrorist attacks in September 2001.

Even if, by some miracle, Iraq were to evolve into a stable, harmonious, liberal democratic state, the price already paid in (mostly Iraqi) blood and (mostly American) treasure is already too high to justify the kind of revolutionary military intervention promoted by the neo-cons.

Another casualty of neo-conservative hubris might be the idea of spreading democracy itself. The very word ``democracy," when voiced by U.S. government spokesmen, has become tainted by neo-imperialist connotations.

Similar things have happened before, of course. The idealism of Japanese intellectuals in the 1930s and early 1940s was partly responsible for Japan's catastrophic war to ``liberate" Asia from Western imperialism.

The ideal of pan-Asian solidarity in a common struggle for independence was not a bad one; in fact, it was commendable. But the idea that it could be enforced by the Imperial Japanese Army running amok through China and Southeast Asia was disastrous.

Socialism, too, was a brave and necessary corrective to the social inequalities that emerged from laissez-faire capitalism. Watered down by the compromises without which liberal democracies cannot thrive, socialism did a great deal of good in Western Europe.

But attempts to implement socialist or communist ideals through force ended in oppression and mass murder. This is why many Central and Eastern Europeans now view even social democracy with suspicion. Even as Barack Obama is worshipped in Western Europe, many Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians think he is some kind of socialist.

The neo-cons, despite their name, were not really conservatives at all. They were radical opponents of the pragmatic approach to foreign strongmen espoused by people who called themselves ``realists."

Even though the arch-realist Henry Kissinger endorsed the war in Iraq, his brand of realpolitik was the primary target of neo-con intellectuals. They believed that aggressive promotion of democracy abroad was not only moral, and in the American tradition, but in the national interest as well.

There is a core of truth in this assertion. Liberals, too, can agree that Islamist terrorism, for instance, is linked to the lack of democracy in the Middle East. Realism, in the sense of balancing power by appeasing dictators, has its limits. Democracy must be encouraged, wherever possible, by the most powerful democracy on earth.

But revolutionary wars are not the most effective way to do this. What is needed is to find a less belligerent, more liberal way to promote democracy, stressing international cooperation instead of blunt military force.

Obama is unlikely to repeat the mistakes of the neo-cons. But, in order to succeed, he will have to save some of their ideals from the ruins of their disastrous policies.

Ian Buruma is professor of human rights at Bard College. His most recent book is ``Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance." For more stories, visit Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).

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