By Hakan Köni*
Questions concerning neoconservatism have gained prominence especially after the US invasion of Iraq. This is because one of the determining causes of Iraqi invasion was the policy recommendations that the neoconservative advisors made to the US president George W. Bush. The neoconservatives, often called as neocons, are recognized with their influence on U.S. foreign policy, particularly under Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) and now George W. Bush (2001– continues) administrations.[1] After the inauguration of Bush as the US president, the Middle East region has encountered with intensive American foreign policy involvement in all military, political, economic and social aspects. The USA has perhaps increased its involvement in the region to the highest level in the history. I argue that the neoconservative movement in the USA has been a very influential factor on this process with its dominant role in US foreign policy making team and historical interests in the Middle East. The neocons characteristically argue that the USA must pursue an active foreign policy in its international relations, by using military means if necessary, to intimidate its real and supposed enemies.Therefore, in this paper, by investigating the origins of the neoconservative movement, its status in the Bush administration, its relationship with Israel and the Jews, and its role in the invasion of Iraq, I would like to show that this movement represents a major threat not only to the Middle East but also to the entire world. 1 The Origins of the Neoconservative Movement
1.1 Conservative Movement
The mere name neoconservative implies that there was a conservative movement in the past that gives the prefix “neo” to the former. The neoconservatism thus developed within a conservative movement that emerged as a grass-roots movement in the USA in 1930’s. The aim of this conservative movement was to defeat Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was nationalist in character and was against external expeditions and the New Deal. The conservative movement of 1930’s lost its power because of the Japanese challenge in Pearl Harbor, which rendered American military involvement in World War II necessary. However, in the post-World-War-II era, its appeal was in ascendance again. This time the movement assumed a political stance against Communism, Soviet Union and liberalism. It attracted millions of voters in the elections but because of the problems in the party structure, they were unable to have many representatives. Contrary to the conservative movement of 1930’s, it did not possess an intellectual leadership with organizations that promoted political reform. The movement had some publishing houses like Regnary, Devin-Adair, and Caxton, but these houses were not working on regular channels of distribution, and none of them had an appeal to the academic community except in the area of economic theory. In this area, Yale University publishing books by Ludwig von Mises between 1944 and 1957 and the economics faculty of University of Chicago was publishing books by use of their university press.[2] But economic theory on itself is not enough to make up a comprehensive worldview with an appeal for political, moral and social action. Regnary publishing house published The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk in 1953. This book was written in form of a PhD dissertation thouh Russell was not registered in a PhD program. The book is significant in the sense that it seeks the origins of American conservatism in Edmund Burke by stressing the antipathy of the traditions against the centralized political power. In order to decentralize the power, conservatives were in favor of free market. Conservatism has been a non-rational movement, in the philosophical sense, with its emphasis on tradition and intuition.[3]Some other media products of the grass-roots movements of American conservatism was the newspaper Human Events of 1950’s and 1960’s, and a weekly TV show by Dan Smoot, who was a constitutionalist, sponsored by a food company. In 1961, Smoot published an exposé about the Council on Foreign Relations that was bought by one million readers.[4] However, its appeal remained only as a grass-roots movement and it did not aspire to rally mass operations. The common point of all these initiatives was their opposition to the central power. Their audience was the people who did not trust the state.By the 1960’s and 1970’s, a number of think-tanks were established in Washington like the Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. They were primarily focused on putting pressure on the federal government. They were financed by business corporations which provided them with millions of dollars in return for their lobbying for the renunciation of certain regulations. Their attention thus gradually developed towards the goal of minimizing the state to the most possible degree. This is the general character of the conservative movement in the USA in which the neoconservatives had the opportunity to develop.
1.2 Neoconservative Movement
In the beginning, the focus of the neocons was more on economic policy than foreign policy. Their first significant literary product was The Public Interest that started to make publications in 1965.[5] It was publishing academic essays by scholars who were against certain programs of the Federal government such as those concerning the elimination of poverty, crime, racial discrimination, and similar domestic problems. Commentary was another publication that the same authors were writing skeptically about the government policies. But Commentary was distinguished from the former by the fact that it was the product of the American Jewish Committee.[6]
The early concerns of the movement are seen in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was indicating that the re-establishment of the disintegrating family structure of blacks was much more necessary than any other policies of the government to remove the poverty.[7] He gave many other lectures on poverty and out-of-target policies of the government’s war on poverty. He later collected the notes of his lectures in his book Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding.[8]Today, the concerns of the neocons are not with economic policy but with foreign policy and military. This represents a major change in their focus. Though ýt started as a scholarly protest against fruitless bureaucratic experiments of the Federal government, its attention has now shifted to expanding democracy by means of military intervention especially in the Middle East.In comparison to traditional conservatism and libertarianism, which usually tends to be isolationist, neoconservatism is famous for its increased emphasis on the usage of military methods, a willingness to confront regimes which are considered to be hostile to the values and interests of the US, spreading the policies of free-market to the world, and promoting democracy and freedom.[9] However, the neocon movement is inconsistent in the sense that while on the one hand its proponents are claiming to promote democracy and freedom in the world, they also support undemocratic states for realpolitical reasons.The so-called motivation behind this new enthusiastic support for democracy is that democratic transitions from authoritarianism will gradually eliminate radicalism which is thought to be the breeding ground for religious terrorism. The neocons also think that democratic countries are less likely to wage wars against each other than the countries with authoritarian regimes. In support of this argument, they claim that no two democratic states have fought each other since the War of 1812. In addition to these, they advocate that the absence of freedoms, free-market opportunities, secular general education in the authoritarian states are the main causes of radicalism and extremism. These are the main arguments behind their aggressive tendencies for spreading democracy in the regions where it is not the only game in the town, especially the Middle East.But I do not think that this is a valid argument because the authoritarian character of a state must not necessarily give any other state the right to wage a war against it. Though democracies do not tend to fight each other we have seen many times in the history that they do tend to fight other regimes without any legitimate reason. If the specific character of a regime gives it the right to fight all other regime, we can say that the countries with Communist or Islamic character can also feel like to do the same. In addition to this, while the US is supporting some undemocratic states for its own interest relations, we cannot accept that the neocons are sincere in their argument.Concerning the Middle East, the liberals were pleased with defending Israel, funding its experiments to settle in the region, and maintaining the Arabian oil since 1948. Nevertheless, conservatives think that in order to defend Israel it is necessary to change Islamic states into democracies. By this way, it is assumed that democracies will not give way to theocratic and anti-Zionist regimes. Because the Middle Eastern states are not willing by themselves to transform their regimes into democracies, American military power is needed to persuade them to do so. Accordingly, the USA must have a permanent presence in the region. Neocons are eager to pay the costs of such a policy, and they want that American taxpayers and troops also pay for it.[10] Today, this policy is being executed in the name of war on terrorism and struggle against the proliferation of WMDs. Liberal foreign policy specialists were in support of the idea that the attempts to democratize the Islamic states in the Middle East will prove fruitless and will be highly risky for the American military. They often preferred the “butter and guns” policy, according to which the butter should always precede the guns. But the neocon foreign policy appears in “guns and butter” model, according to which the butter should always follow the guns.[11] Among the founders of the neoconservative movement are Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell, James Q. Wilson, and Seymour Martin Lipset. They were frequently showing up in The Public Interest with their essays. Leo Strauss, who died in 1973, was the invisible hero of the movement. He was lecturing political philosophy at he University of Chicago. Irving Kristol venerates him greatly because of Strauss’s contributions in shaping her thinking. Now there are many Straussian specialists in Bush’s foreign policy team of advisors. Not surprisingly, many of the founders of the neocon movement were Jews.[12]During the Reagan era in 1980s, neocons acquired some positions in the administration as a harbinger of their active role in politics. One of them was Jeanne Kirkpatrick who became the US Ambassador to the UN between the years 1981 and 1985. He was formerly lecturing at Georgetown University as a professor. This was something common for many neocons: Before emerging in the political arena, they lectured in prominent American universities. A second common feature of the movement was that it was not a grass-roots movement, but rather a movement of elite intellectuals. Thirdly, the founders had spent the early years of their careers as democrats or sometimes as Trotskyites. And lastly, they came to influential positions during the Reagon administration as conservatives.Their publications in the 1960’s provided ammunition for old conservatives and libertarians. The latter group had been arguing that the centralization of power is immoral and destructive of liberty. The role of the neocons had been to provide case studies about the failures of the Federal government. But the neocons possessed some other extras that the old conservatives did not, namely, academic career and public fame. They were teaching at such major universities as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Georgetown.
Furthermore, neocons have always found positions in the governmental offices. They always succeeded in securing ways to ranks of power to support their specific policies. But the conservatives were unable to do so. They were like outsiders to bureaucracy with very weak channels of influence on policies.
2. Neocons and George W. Bush Administration
After the demise of the Soviet Union, some were arguing that neoconservative movement lost its raison d’étre. But whatsoever, they lost their effective position in foreign policy making because of their involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.[13] In the 1990s, they were in the opposition side of foreign policy establishment and were against the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s foreign policy orientation. These two presidents were, in view of neocons, insufficiently idealistic because they were reducing military expenditures.[14] Their foreign policy was lacking moral clarity and the courage to push forward the strategic interests of the US unilaterally if it was necessary. Many neocons like Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Boot, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, William Bennett, Peter Rodman and some others, who are in an influential position concerning foreign policy making of the second Buch administration, were often citing the appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938 and its results.[15] In this context, one thing that came invigorating for the movement was the decision of George H.W. Bush and Colin Powell to leave Saddam in his place, though Dick Cheney had also supported this idea at the time.The Neocons were also affiliated with the blue team, which was known for its confrontational policy against China and big diplomatic and military support for Taiwan. When the administration changed from Bill Clinton to George W Bush, the neocons were more than ready to develop a new foreign policy. The first foreign policy test of neocons came in the early months of the Bush administration which is known as China spy plane incident: When an EP3-C spy plane was conducting a watching mission over China on April 1 2001, it was intercepted by a Chinese aircraft. The spy plane hit the Chinese aircraft and its pilot died. However, the spy plane was forced to make an emergency landing on a Chinese Island in the South China Sea and 24 members of its crew were taken hostage. The hostages were interrogated and the spy plane was taken under examination by the Chinese. Finally, after some diplomatic initiatives and the delivery of an apology to the Chinese Foreign Ministry for flying over Chinese territories without permission and for the death of the pilot, the hostages were released and the spy plane was returned but in pieces.[16] While many specialists praised US diplomacy during this crisis, some neocons were not pleased with Bush’s policy of non-confrontation with the PRC. According to Frank Gaffney, a former assistant of defense secretary during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, was arguing that Bush “should use this occasion to make clear to the American people that the PRC is acting in an increasingly belligerent manner. Mr. Bush needs to talk about these threats as well as his commitment to defend the American people, their forces overseas and their allies.”[17] Moreover, some neocons were with the idea that the Bush Administration was not supporting Israel sufficiently. Therefore, they did not initially think the foreign policy of Bush to be so much different from that of Clinton.The September 11, 2001 attacks on the WTO and the Pentagon gave the neocons the opportunity that they needed to steer the orientation of the foreign policy. The threat of Communism had passed away, but now a not-lesser important threat has emerged. The neocons have thus found their purpose to push forward and to exercise realpolitik. Max Boot maintains that in order to deal with the threat of terrorism in a realistic way, the US must reassume its imperial role. He is totally opposed to such ideas which state that the United States must try to become a kinder, gentler state, must shirk unrealistically romantic external missions, must become a republic rather than an empire: “In fact this analysis is exactly backward: The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation.”[18]The neocons thus obtained a watershed victory after the 911 attacks with the Bush Doctrine. Thomas Donnelly has written in one of his American Enterprise Institute work that “the fundamental premise of the Bush Doctrine is true: The United States possesses the means – economic, military, diplomatic – to realize its expansive geopolitical purposes. Further, and especially in light of the domestic political reaction to the attacks of September 11, the victory in Afghanistan and the remarkable skill demonstrated by President Bush in focusing national attention, it is equally true that Americans possess the requisite political will-power to pursue an expansive strategy.”[19]
The Bush Doctrine represents a digression from former US foreign policy. It declares that the USA has the right to wage pre-emotive wars if it is under the threat of attack by terrorists or rogue states. This is clearly a departure from the doctrine of deterrence for self-defense. Moreover, the doctrine also indicates that the United States “will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”[20]
The main protagonists of neocon standing in Bush administration today are Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who is now the head of the World Bank.
3. Neocons, Jews and Israel
One thing intrinsic in the neoconservative movement is its heritage of Jewish intellectual traditions. In one view, it has primarily been a movement for advancing Jewish interests in such a way that Jews try to acquire power by way of intellectually dominating the national leaders. One of the authors who support this idea is the evolutionary psychologist Kevin B. MacDonald, who attracts attention to major similarities between neoconservatism and some influential Jewish-led intellectual and political movements. He states that “taken as a whole, neoconservatism is an excellent illustration of the key traits behind the success of Jewish activism: ethnocentrism, intelligence and wealth, psychological intensity, and aggressiveness.”[21] The conclusion he arrives is that neoconservatist movement is in close relationship with patterns of Jewish intellectual and political activism in the 20th century. He considers Leo Strauss as a central figure in the neocon movement, like many others, and depicts him as “the quintessential rabbinical guru with devoted disciples.”[22]MacDonald argues that neoconservatism develops arguments that have attractions to non-Jews, rather than arguments that directly favor Jewish interests. He states that although there are many important non-Jewish neo-con figures in the movement, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, they are a part of an important strategy: “it makes excellent psychological sense to have the spokespeople for any movement resemble the people they are trying to convince.”[23] The movement however continues to save its Jewish core and its commitment to Jewish interests.Consequently, the neocons try to ensure the maintenance of a strong American support for Israel. The Project for New American Century, which is a highly neocon influenced project, insists on an Israel no more dependent on American aid. This is expected to occur by the removal of major threats to Israeli existence in the region. Large proportion of Jewish neocons who are acting on a dual loyalty are indeed blamed on putting Israeli Interests above the US interests. Some people, like Pat Buchaman, who are labeled as anti-Semites, accuse them of playing the role of a Trojan horse against the American interests.The neocons try to settle the idea that Israel is the strongest ally of the US in the Middle East as the only democracy in the region. Another US ally in the region is Turkey, but compared to Israel Turkey is in a secondary position, to whom also some important roles are given. In addition, for a long time they have been arguing that the US must follow pre-emptive strike tactics of Israel, which Israel made a substantial use in the 1980s against nuclear facilities in Libya and Iran. The US seems to have far exceeded this tactic with its invasion of Iraq.Long-lasting alliance that the neocons are vying to establish between the US and Israel is further strengthened by the September 11 terrorist attacks. These attacks are exploited to emphasize the similarities between the US and Israel as both democratic countries being under the attack of terrorism. One of the important forces in the Israeli politics is the Soviet immigrant parties on the secular right which often participate in Likud coalitions because of their agreement on matters and policies concerning national security. There are a lot of resemblances between the US neoconservatism and and these immigrant parties. In addition to their similar foreign policiy and national security orientations, the members of the two bodies have important commonalities with regard to their biographical details: The neocons’ alienation from the left-wing politics of 1960s is very similar to the Israeli immigrants’ alienation from Labor Zionism due to their experience during the Soviet Communism.[24] A prominent figure among the immigrant politicians is Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and currently a minister in Israel, wrote a book on foreign policy that suggests an orientation so similar to foreign policy philosophy of the neocons.[25] US President Bush has mentioned about this book with praise.
4. Neocons and the Invasion of Iraq
Not so later than the Gulf War in Iraq which started in 1991, many neocons set out to devise strategies to overthrow Saddam Hussein. On February 19 1998, a high number of specialists uniformly sent a letter to Bill Clinton insisting on decisive measures for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. Many of these specialists were either explicitly neocon or from related groups such as PNAC.[26] Nevertheless, though Bill Clinton maintained policies of sanctioning, encouraging rebellion, and no-fly zone enforcement, no direct action concerning the removal of Saddam was taken until the Iraq WMD crisis of 2003.Protagonists of a war of invasion against Iraq tried to resemble their war to Churshill’s war against Hitler. For example, Donald Rumsfeld was speaking very often with themes comparing Saddam to Hitler, and by equating the tolerance displayed towards Saddam to the appeasement of Hitler. Donald Rumsfeld had once again met Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz before in 1983, but at that time he was saying that “the US and Iraq shares many common interests.”[27] And similarly, Bush matched Saddam to Hitler and Stalin when he said that “like the Nazis and Communists, the terrorists would like to kill people and control all life.”[28] But the vision of evil that he invoked during his European visit was not that of Usama bin Ladin, but Saddam Hussein. Saddam was labeled as the “great evil” who “by his search for terrible weapons, by his ties to terrorist groups, threatens the security of every free nation, including the free nations of Europe.”[29]After the publication, in June 2004, of the preliminary findings of the members of the bipartisan commission inspecting the 911 terrorists attacks, it appeared that there is no evidence showing that Iraq had connection with the attacks. But the commission claimed to have found that;“Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein’s secular regime”,
“A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994”,
“There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan”[30]In addition, the commission claimed to have found that,
“With al Qaeda as its foundation, Bin Laden sought to build a broader Islamic army that also included terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia and Eritrea. Not all groups from these states agreed to join, but at least one from each did.”[31]US Vice President Dick Cheney, criticizing the depiction of the 911 Commission, argued, during an interview on CNBC, that “there clearly was a relationship. It has been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming.”[32] Dick Cheney was here reflecting the neocon approach to Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, I tried to explain the role of the neoconservative movement in the shift of US foreign affairs towards more aggressive foreign policy preferences by analyzing its historical background, how it exploited the conservative movement of the 1930s and the Reagan administration, how it has come to form the leading mentality in the foreign policy team of Bush administration, how it is related to Israel and the Jews, and how its protagonists exploited the September attacks to invade Iraq.[33] In my view, the neoconservative movement in the US is a great danger for the now and the future of the world. While they claim that promoting democracy is their utmost priority in assuring the peace and stability in the USA, they support undemocratic regimes for realpolitik reasons. In the name of promoting democracy and human rights in the Middle East, the neocons play the leading role in supporting the terrorist state Israel thanks to the Jewish heritage dominant in the movement. The democratic discourse is no more than a pretext for Jewish support in the Middle East and imperial policies in the world. If their effective position in the Bush administration continues, which seems so, the world will most likely continue to witness the conduct of evil empire in either Iran, or Syria, or North Korea, or Central Asia, or in South American Countries.
Posted by Ahmed Ismail 
Posted by Ahmed Ismail 
Posted by Ahmed Ismail 
