political movement
A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some ...
that began in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
during the
1960s
File:1960s montage.png, Clockwise from top left: U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War; the Beatles led the British Invasion of the U.S. music market; a half-a-million people participate in the 1969 Woodstock Festival; Neil Armstrong and Buzz ...
among
liberal hawk
The term liberal hawk refers to a politically liberal person (generally, in the American sense of the term) who supports a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy.
Overview
Past U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Ken ...
s who became disenchanted with the increasingly
pacifist
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campai ...
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
and
counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...
, particularly the Vietnam protests. Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Universit ...
. Neoconservatives typically advocate the promotion of
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose g ...
peace through strength
"Peace through strength" is a phrase that suggests that military power can help preserve peace. It has been used by many leaders from Roman Emperor Hadrian in the second century AD to former US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The concept h ...
, and are known for espousing disdain for
communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
and
political radicalism
Radical politics denotes the intent to transform or replace the principles of a society or political system, often through social change, structural change, revolution or radical reform. The process of adopting radical views is termed radica ...
.
Prominent neoconservatives in the
George W. Bush administration
George W. Bush's tenure as the 43rd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2001, and ended on January 20, 2009. Bush, a Republican from Texas, took office following a narrow victory over Democratic ...
included
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and former dean of Johns Hopkins ...
,
Elliott Abrams
Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer, who has served in foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative. He is curren ...
,
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941) is an American political advisor who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He began his political career as a senior staff member to ...
and
Paul Bremer
Lewis Paul Bremer III (born September 30, 1941) is an American diplomat. He led the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, from May 2003 until June 2004.
Early life and education
Born on ...
. While not identifying as neoconservatives, senior officials Vice President
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former ...
and Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under Preside ...
listened closely to neoconservative advisers regarding foreign policy, especially the defense of Israel and the promotion of American influence in the Middle East. Many of its adherents became politically influential during the
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
presidential administrations of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, peaking in influence during the administration of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including ...
.
Critics of neoconservatism have used the term to describe foreign policy and
war hawk
In politics, a war hawk, or simply hawk, is someone who favors war or continuing to escalate an existing conflict as opposed to other solutions. War hawks are the opposite of doves. The terms are derived by analogy with the birds of the same name ...
s who support aggressive
militarism
Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...
or
neo-imperialism
In historical contexts, New Imperialism characterizes a period of colonial expansion by European powers, the United States, and Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Com
The period featured an unprecedented pursuit of over ...
. Historically speaking, the term ''neoconservative'' refers to those who made the ideological journey from the
anti-Stalinist left
The anti-Stalinist left is an umbrella term for various kinds of left-wing political movements that opposed Joseph Stalin, Stalinism and the actual system of governance Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953. Th ...
to the camp of
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy based on a belief in limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to U.S. states. Conservative ...
during the 1960s and 1970s. The movement had its intellectual roots in the magazine ''
Commentary
Commentary or commentaries may refer to:
Publications
* ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee
* Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
'', edited by
Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz (; born January 16, 1930) is an American magazine editor, writer, and conservative political commentator, who identifies his views as " paleo- neoconservative".
. They spoke out against the New Left and in that way helped define the movement.
Terminology
The term ''neoconservative'' was popularized in the United States during 1973 by the socialist leader
Michael Harrington
Edward Michael Harrington Jr. (February 24, 1928 – July 31, 1989) was an American democratic socialist. As a writer, he was perhaps best known as the author of '' The Other America''. Harrington was also a political activist, theorist, profess ...
, who used the term to define
Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell (May 10, 1919 – January 25, 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor at Harvard University, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He has been described as "one of the leading A ...
,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician, diplomat and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York in the United States Senate from 1977 until 2001 and served as a ...
, and
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectua ...
, whose ideologies differed from Harrington's. Cited in:
The ''neoconservative'' label was used by
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectua ...
in his 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative'". His ideas have been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited the magazine ''
Encounter
Encounter or Encounters may refer to:
Film
*''Encounter'', a 1997 Indian film by Nimmala Shankar
* ''Encounter'' (2013 film), a Bengali film
* ''Encounter'' (2018 film), an American sci-fi film
* ''Encounter'' (2021 film), a British sci-fi film
* ...
''.
Another source was
Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz (; born January 16, 1930) is an American magazine editor, writer, and conservative political commentator, who identifies his views as " paleo- neoconservative".
, editor of the magazine ''
Commentary
Commentary or commentaries may refer to:
Publications
* ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee
* Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
'', from 1960 to 1995. By 1982, Podhoretz was terming himself a neoconservative in ''
The New York Times Magazine
''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'' article titled "The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy".
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the neoconservatives considered that
liberalism
Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostilit ...
had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about", according to E. J. Dionne.
Seymour Lipset
Seymour Martin Lipset ( ; March 18, 1922 – December 31, 2006) was an American sociologist and political scientist (President of the American Political Science Association). His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union o ...
asserts that the term ''neoconservative'' was used originally by
socialists
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the econ ...
to criticize the politics of the
Social Democrats, USA
Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) is a small political association of social democrats founded in 1972. The Socialist Party of America (SPA) had stopped running independent presidential candidates and consequently the term "party" in the SPA's na ...
association.
Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Jacob Goldberg (born March 21, 1969) is an American conservative syndicated columnist, author, political analyst, and commentator. The founding editor of ''National Review Online'', from 1998 until 2019 he was an editor at '' National Revie ...
argues that the term is ideological criticism against proponents of
modern American liberalism
Modern liberalism in the United States, often simply referred to in the United States as liberalism, is a form of social liberalism found in American politics. It combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice and ...
who had become slightly more conservative (both Lipset and Goldberg are frequently described as neoconservatives). In a book-length study for Harvard University Press, historian
Justin Vaisse
Justin may refer to: People
* Justin (name), including a list of persons with the given name Justin
* Justin (historian), a Latin historian who lived under the Roman Empire
* Justin I (c. 450–527), or ''Flavius Iustinius Augustus'', Eastern Ro ...
writes that Lipset and Goldberg are in error, as "neoconservative" was used by socialist Michael Harrington to describe three men – noted above – who were not in SDUSA, and neoconservatism is a definable political movement.
The term "neoconservative" was the subject of increased media coverage during the presidency of George W. Bush,Fukuyama, F. (19 February 2006) After Neoconservatism ''The New York Times Magazine.'' Retrieved 1 December 2008. with particular emphasis on a perceived neoconservative influence on American foreign policy, as part of the
Bush Doctrine
The Bush Doctrine refers to multiple interrelated foreign policy principles of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. These principles include unilateralism, preemptive war, and regime change.
Charles Krauthammer first used ...
.
History
Through the 1950s and early 1960s, the future neoconservatives had endorsed the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
,
racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportuni ...
and
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
From the 1950s to the 1960s, liberals generally endorsed military action in order to prevent a communist victory in
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...
.
Neoconservatism was initiated by the repudiation of the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
, which
Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz (; born January 16, 1930) is an American magazine editor, writer, and conservative political commentator, who identifies his views as " paleo- neoconservative".
said was too sympathetic to the
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. H ...
and too alienated from the majority of the population; and "anti-
anticommunism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
", which included substantial endorsement of Marxist–Leninist politics during the late 1960s. Many neoconservatives were particularly alarmed by what they believed were the
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Ant ...
sentiments of Black Power advocates.
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectua ...
edited the journal ''
The Public Interest
''The Public Interest'' (1965–2005) was a quarterly public policy journal founded by Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, members of the loose New York intellectuals group, in 1965.Gillian Peele, "American Conservatism in Historical Perspective", in ...
'' (1965–2005), featuring economists and political scientists, which emphasized ways that government planning in the liberal state had produced unintended harmful consequences. Many early neoconservative political figures were disillusioned Democratic politicians and intellectuals, such as
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician, diplomat and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York in the United States Senate from 1977 until 2001 and served as a ...
, who served in the
Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
and
Ford
Ford commonly refers to:
* Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford
* Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river
Ford may also refer to:
Ford Motor Company
* Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
* Ford F ...
administrations, and
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a lo ...
, who served as
United States Ambassador to the United Nations
The United States ambassador to the United Nations is the leader of the U.S. delegation, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. The position is formally known as the permanent representative of the United States of America to the United Nation ...
in the
Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
administration. Many left-wing academics such as Frank Meyer and
James Burnham
James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was ''An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'' (1931). Burn ...
eventually became associated with the conservative movement at this time.
A substantial number of neoconservatives were originally moderate socialists who were originally associated with the moderate wing of the Socialist Party of America (SP) and its successor party,
Social Democrats, USA
Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) is a small political association of social democrats founded in 1972. The Socialist Party of America (SPA) had stopped running independent presidential candidates and consequently the term "party" in the SPA's na ...
(SDUSA).
Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman (; September 10, 1904 – November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.
Beginnings
...
, a former Trotskyist theorist who developed a strong feeling of antipathy towards the
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
, had numerous devotees among SDUSA with strong links to
George Meany
William George Meany (August 16, 1894 – January 10, 1980) was an American labor union leader for 57 years. He was the key figure in the creation of the AFL–CIO and served as the AFL–CIO's first president, from 1955 to 1979.
Meany, the son ...
's AFL-CIO. Following Shachtman and Meany, this faction led the SP to oppose immediate withdrawal from the Vietnam War, and oppose George McGovern in the Democratic primary race and, to some extent, the general election. They also chose to cease their own party-building and concentrated on working within the Democratic Party, eventually influencing it through the
Democratic Leadership Council
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was founded in 1985 and closed in 2011. Founded and directed by Al From, prominent members include Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton (who was elected president in 1992 and 1996), Delaware Senator Joe Biden ( ...
. Thus the Socialist Party dissolved in 1972, and SDUSA emerged that year. (Most of the left-wing of the party, led by Michael Harrington, immediately abandoned SDUSA.) SDUSA leaders associated with neoconservatism include
Carl Gershman
Carl Gershman (born July 20, 1943) is an American civil servant who served as the president of the National Endowment for Democracy since its founding in 1984 until 2021. Gershman previously served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nat ...
,
Penn Kemble
Richard Penn Kemble (January 21, 1941 – October 15, 2005), commonly known as "Penn," was an American political activist and a founding member of Social Democrats, USA. He supported democracy and labor unions in the USA and internationally, and ...
,
Joshua Muravchik
Joshua Muravchik (born September 17, 1947 in New York City) is a neoconservative political scholar. A distinguished fellow at the DC-based World Affairs Institute. He is also an adjunct professor at the DC-based Institute of World Politics (since 1 ...
and
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin (; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an African American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights.
Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement, ...
.
Norman Podhoretz's magazine ''
Commentary
Commentary or commentaries may refer to:
Publications
* ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee
* Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
'', originally a journal of liberalism, became a major publication for neoconservatives during the 1970s. ''Commentary'' published an article by Jeane Kirkpatrick, an early and prototypical neoconservative, albeit not a New Yorker.
Rejecting the American New Left and McGovern's New Politics
As the policies of the
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
made the Democrats increasingly leftist, these intellectuals became disillusioned with President
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
's
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Universit ...
domestic programs. The influential 1970 bestseller ''
The Real Majority
''The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate'' was a 1970 bestselling analysis of United States politics by Ben Wattenberg and Richard M. Scammon. The book analyzed electoral data, especially from the 1968 president ...
'' by
Ben Wattenberg
Benjamin Joseph Wattenberg (born Joseph Ben Zion Wattenberg;Roberts, Sam New York ''Times'', June 29, 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-29. August 26, 1933 – June 28, 2015) was an American author, neoconservative political commentator and demographer, ...
expressed that the "real majority" of the electorate endorsed
economic interventionism
Economic interventionism, sometimes also called state interventionism, is an economic policy position favouring government intervention in the market process with the intention of correcting market failures and promoting the general welfare of ...
, but also
social conservatism
Social conservatism is a political philosophy and variety of conservatism which places emphasis on traditional power structures over social pluralism. Social conservatives organize in favor of duty, traditional values and social institut ...
; and warned Democrats it could be disastrous to adopt
liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
positions on certain social and crime issues.
The neoconservatives rejected the
countercultural
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
and what they considered
anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment) is prejudice, fear, or hatred of the United States, its government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general.
Political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Centr ...
in the
non-interventionism
Non-interventionism or non-intervention is a political philosophy or national foreign policy doctrine that opposes interference in the domestic politics and affairs of other countries but, in contrast to isolationism, is not necessarily opposed t ...
of the activism against the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. After the anti-war faction took control of the party during 1972 and nominated
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian and South Dakota politician who was a U.S. representative and three-term U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 pr ...
, the Democrats among them endorsed Washington Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson instead for his unsuccessful 1972 and 1976 campaigns for president. Among those who worked for Jackson were incipient neoconservatives
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and former dean of Johns Hopkins ...
,
Doug Feith
Douglas Jay Feith (born July 16, 1953) served as the under secretary of Defense for Policy for United States president George W. Bush, from July 2001 until August 2005. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.
F ...
, and
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941) is an American political advisor who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He began his political career as a senior staff member to ...
. During the late 1970s, neoconservatives tended to endorse
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
, the Republican who promised to confront Soviet expansionism. Neoconservatives organized in the
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
and
The Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presi ...
to counter the liberal establishment. Author Keith Preston named the successful effort on behalf of neoconservatives such as
George Will
George Frederick Will (born May 4, 1941) is an American libertarian-conservative political commentator and author. He writes regular columns for ''The Washington Post'' and provides commentary for NBC News and MSNBC. Gold, Hadas (May 8, 2017)." ...
and Irving Kristol to cancel Reagan's 1980 nomination of
Mel Bradford
Melvin E. Bradford (May 8, 1934 – March 3, 1993) was an American conservative political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas.
Bradford is seen as a leading figure of the paleoconservative wing of the conservativ ...
, a Southern
Paleoconservative
Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and variety of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the ...
academic whose regionalist focus and writings about
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...
and
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
* Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
alienated the more
cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan may refer to:
Food and drink
* Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo"
History
* Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953
Hotels and resorts
* Cosmopoli ...
and progress-oriented neoconservatives, to the leadership of the
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
in favor of longtime Democrat William Bennett as emblematic of the neoconservative movement establishing hegemony over mainstream American conservatism.
In another (2004) article,
Michael Lind
Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962) is an American writer and academic. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in a number of books, beginning with '' The Next American Nation'' (1995). He is currently a pro ...
also wrote:
Leo Strauss and his students
C. Bradley Thompson, a professor at Clemson University, claims that most influential neoconservatives refer explicitly to the theoretical ideas in the philosophy of
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss (, ; September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-American political philosopher who specialized in classical political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. ...
(1899–1973), although there are several writers who claim that in doing so they may draw upon meaning that Strauss himself did not endorse. Eugene Sheppard notes: "Much scholarship tends to understand Strauss as an inspirational founder of American neoconservatism". Strauss was a refugee from Nazi Germany who taught at the
New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSS ...
in New York (1938–1948) and the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
(1949–1969).
Strauss asserted that "the crisis of the West consists in the West's having become uncertain of its purpose". His solution was a restoration of the vital ideas and faith that in the past had sustained the moral purpose of the West. The
Greek classics
Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are ...
political philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, ...
and the Judeo-Christian heritage are the essentials of the Great Tradition in Strauss's work. Strauss emphasized the spirit of the Greek classics and Thomas G. West (1991) argues that for Strauss the
American Founding Fathers
The Founding Fathers of the United States, known simply as the Founding Fathers or Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the war for independence from Great Brita ...
were correct in their understanding of the classics in their principles of justice.
For Strauss, political community is defined by convictions about justice and happiness rather than by sovereignty and force. A classical liberal, he repudiated the philosophy of
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
as a bridge to 20th-century historicism and nihilism and instead defended
liberal democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into ...
as closer to the spirit of the classics than other modern regimes. For Strauss, the American awareness of ineradicable evil in human nature and hence the need for morality, was a beneficial outgrowth of the pre-modern Western tradition. O'Neill (2009) notes that Strauss wrote little about American topics, but his students wrote a great deal and that Strauss's influence caused his students to reject
historicism
Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely ...
and
positivism
Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
Michael P. Zuckert
Michael P. Zuckert (born July 24, 1942) is an American political philosopher and Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Zuckert earned a bachelor's degree in Cornell University in 1964, and completed his mast ...
, ''The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy'', University of Chicago Press, 2008, p. 4ff. They instead promoted a so-called Aristotelian perspective on America that produced a qualified defense of its liberal constitutionalism. Strauss's emphasis on
moral clarity
Moral clarity is a catchphrase associated with American political conservatives. Popularized by William J. Bennett's ''Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism'', the phrase was first used in its current context during the 1980s, in ...
led the Straussians to develop an approach to
international relations
International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such ...
that Catherine and Michael Zuckert (2008) call Straussian
Wilsonianism
Wilsonianism, or Wilsonian idealism, is a certain type of foreign policy advice. The term comes from the ideas and proposals of President Woodrow Wilson. He issued his famous Fourteen Points in January 1918 as a basis for ending World War I and p ...
(or Straussian
idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ...
), the defense of liberal democracy in the face of its vulnerability.
Strauss influenced ''The Weekly Standard'' editor
Bill Kristol
William Kristol (; born December 23, 1952) is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine ''The Weekly Standard''. Kristol is now ...
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy Gingrich (; né McPherson; born June 17, 1943) is an American politician and author who served as the 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U. ...
,
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia (; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectu ...
and
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1 ...
, as well as
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and former dean of Johns Hopkins ...
.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
A theory of neoconservative foreign policy during the final years of the Cold War was articulated by
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a lo ...
in "
Dictatorships and Double Standards "Dictatorships and Double Standards" is an essay by Jeane Kirkpatrick published in the November 1979 issue of ''Commentary Magazine'' which criticized the foreign policy of the Carter administration. It is also the title of a 270-page book written ...
", published in ''
Commentary Magazine
''Commentary'' is a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism, and politics, as well as social and cultural issues. Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945 under Elliot E. Cohen, editor from 1945 to 1959, ''Commentary'' magazine de ...
'' during November 1979. Kirkpatrick criticized the foreign policy of
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
, which endorsed
détente
Détente (, French: "relaxation") is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The term, in diplomacy, originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduce ...
with the Soviet Union. She later served the Reagan Administration as Ambassador to the United Nations.
Skepticism towards democracy promotion
In "Dictatorships and Double Standards", Kirkpatrick distinguished between
authoritarian
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic vot ...
regimes and the
totalitarian
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
regimes such as the Soviet Union. She suggested that in some countries democracy was not tenable and the United States had a choice between endorsing authoritarian governments, which might evolve into democracies, or Marxist–Leninist regimes, which she argued had never been ended once they achieved totalitarian control. In such tragic circumstances, she argued that allying with authoritarian governments might be prudent. Kirkpatrick argued that by demanding rapid
liberalization
Liberalization or liberalisation (British English) is a broad term that refers to the practice of making laws, systems, or opinions less severe, usually in the sense of eliminating certain government regulations or restrictions. The term is used m ...
in traditionally
autocratic
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except per ...
countries, the Carter administration had delivered those countries to Marxist–Leninists that were even more repressive. She further accused the Carter administration of a "double standard" and of never having applied its rhetoric on the necessity of liberalization to
communist governments
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comi ...
. The essay compares traditional autocracies and Communist regimes:
Kirkpatrick concluded that while the United States should encourage liberalization and democracy in autocratic countries, it should not do so when the government risks violent overthrow and should expect gradual change rather than immediate transformation. She wrote: "No idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime and anywhere, under any circumstances ... Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road o democratic governmenttook seven centuries to traverse. ... The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American policymakers".
1990s
During the 1990s, neoconservatives were once again opposed to the foreign policy establishment, both during the Republican Administration of President George H. W. Bush and that of his Democratic successor, President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
. Many critics charged that the neoconservatives lost their influence as a result of the end of the Soviet Union.
After the decision of George H. W. Bush to leave
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...
in power after the first
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
during 1991, many neoconservatives considered this policy and the decision not to endorse indigenous dissident groups such as the
Kurds ug:كۇردلار
Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian peoples, Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Ir ...
and Shiites in their 1991–1992 resistance to Hussein as a betrayal of democratic principles.
Some of those same targets of criticism would later become fierce advocates of neoconservative policies. During 1992, referring to the first
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
, then
United States Secretary of Defense
The United States secretary of defense (SecDef) is the head of the United States Department of Defense, the executive department of the U.S. Armed Forces, and is a high ranking member of the federal cabinet. DoDD 5100.1: Enclosure 2: a The se ...
and future
Vice President
A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...
Richard Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...
said:
Within a few years of the Gulf War in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
, many neoconservatives were endorsing the ousting of Saddam Hussein. On 19 February 1998, an open letter to President Clinton was published, signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with neoconservatism and later related groups such as the
Project for the New American Century
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservativeblue team", which argued for a confrontational policy toward the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
and strong military and diplomatic endorsement for the
Republic of China
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeas ...
(also known as Formosa or Taiwan).
During the late 1990s, Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views as an endorsement of
intelligent design
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for its bold attempt to ...
. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular origin, a few commentators have speculated that thisalong with endorsement of religion generally – may have been a case of a "
noble lie
In politics, a noble lie is a myth or a lie typically of religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in '' The Republic''.
In rel ...
", intended to protect public morality, or even tactical politics, to attract religious endorsers.
2000s
Administration of George W. Bush
The Bush campaign and the early Bush administration did not exhibit strong endorsement of neoconservative principles. As a presidential candidate, Bush had argued for a restrained foreign policy, stating his opposition to the idea of
nation-building
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According ...
. Also early in the administration, some neoconservatives criticized Bush's administration as insufficiently supportive of
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
and suggested Bush's foreign policies were not substantially different from those of President Clinton.
Bush's policies changed dramatically immediately after the
11 September 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...
.
During Bush's State of the Union speech of January 2002, he named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as states that "constitute an
axis of evil
The phrase "axis of evil" was first used by U.S. President George W. Bush and originally referred to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. It was used in Bush's State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, less than five months after the 9/11 attac ...
" and "pose a grave and growing danger". Bush suggested the possibility of
preemptive war
A preemptive war is a war that is commenced in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived imminent offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war ''shortly before'' that attack materializes. I ...
: "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons".
Some major defense and national-security persons have been quite critical of what they believed was a neoconservative influence in getting the United States to go to war against Iraq.
Former Nebraska Republican U.S. senator and Secretary of Defense,
Bush Doctrine
The Bush Doctrine refers to multiple interrelated foreign policy principles of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. These principles include unilateralism, preemptive war, and regime change.
Charles Krauthammer first used ...
of preemptive war was stated explicitly in the
National Security Council
A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...
(NSC) text "National Security Strategy of the United States". published 20 September 2002: "We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed ... even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. ... The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively".
The choice not to use the word "preventive" in the 2002 National Security Strategy and instead use the word "preemptive" was largely in anticipation of the widely perceived illegality of preventive attacks in international law via both Charter Law and Customary Law. In this context, disputes over the
non-aggression principle
The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference (violating or breaching conduct) against either an individual, their propert ...
in domestic and foreign policy, especially given the doctrine of preemption, alternatively impede and facilitate studies of the impact of
libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
precepts on neo-conservatism.
Policy analysts noted that the Bush Doctrine as stated in the 2002 NSC document had a strong resemblance to recommendations presented originally in a controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft written during 1992 by
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and former dean of Johns Hopkins ...
, during the first Bush administration.
The Bush Doctrine was greeted with accolades by many neoconservatives. When asked whether he agreed with the Bush Doctrine,
Max Boot
Max Alexandrovich Boot (born September 12, 1969) is an American author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He worked as a writer and editor for ''Christian Science Monitor'' and then for ''The Wall Street Journal'' in the ...
said he did and that "I think
ush is
Uqturpan County, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency or Uchturpan County ( transliterated from ; ), also Wushi County (), is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the administration of Aksu Prefecture and shar ...
exactly right to say we can't sit back and wait for the next terrorist strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman. ... But I also argue that we ought to go further". Discussing the significance of the Bush Doctrine, neoconservative writer
Bill Kristol
William Kristol (; born December 23, 1952) is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine ''The Weekly Standard''. Kristol is now ...
claimed: "The world is a mess. And, I think, it's very much to Bush's credit that he's gotten serious about dealing with it. ... The danger is not that we're going to do too much. The danger is that we're going to do too little".
2008 presidential election and aftermath
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two te ...
, who was the Republican candidate for the
2008 United States presidential election
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator fr ...
, endorsed continuing the second
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
, "the issue that is most clearly identified with the neoconservatives". ''The New York Times'' reported further that his foreign policy views combined elements of neoconservatism and the main competing conservative opinion,
pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
, also known as realism:
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
campaigned for the Democratic nomination during 2008 by attacking his opponents, especially
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
, for originally endorsing Bush's Iraq-war policies. Obama maintained a selection of prominent military officials from the Bush Administration including
Robert Gates
Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) is an American intelligence analyst and university president who served as the 22nd United States secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He was originally appointed by president George W. Bush a ...
(Bush's Defense Secretary) and
David Petraeus
David Howell Petraeus (; born November 7, 1952) is a retired United States Army general and public official. He served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 6, 2011, until his resignation on November 9, 2012. Prior to ...
(Bush's ranking general in Iraq).
2010s and 2020s
By 2010, U.S. forces had switched from combat to a training role in Iraq and they left in 2011. The neocons had little influence in the Obama White House,Robert Singh, "Neoconservatism in the age of Obama," in Inderjeet Parmar and Linda B. Miller, eds., ''Obama and the World: New Directions in US Foreign Policy'' (Routledge 2014), pp. 29–40 and neo-conservatives have lost much influence in the Republican party since the rise of the
Tea Party Movement
The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2009. Members of the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget def ...
.
Several neoconservatives played a major role in the
Stop Trump movement
The Never Trump movement, also called the #nevertrump, Stop Trump, anti-Trump, or Dump Trump movement, began as an effort on the part of a group of Republicans (known as Never Trump Republicans) and other prominent conservatives to prevent R ...
in 2016, in opposition to the Republican presidential candidacy of
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
, due to his criticism of interventionist foreign policies, as well as their perception of him as an "authoritarian" figure. Since Trump took office, some neoconservatives have joined his administration, such as
Elliott Abrams
Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer, who has served in foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative. He is curren ...
. Neoconservatives have supported the Trump administration's hawkish approach towards Iran and Venezuela, while opposing the administration's withdrawal of troops from Syria and diplomatic outreach to North Korea. Although neoconservatives have served in the Trump administration, they have been observed to have been slowly overtaken by the nascent
populist
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term develop ...
and
national conservative
National conservatism is a nationalist variant of conservatism that concentrates on upholding national and cultural identity. National conservatives usually combine nationalism with conservative stances promoting traditional cultural values, f ...
movements, and to have struggled to adapt to a changing geopolitical atmosphere.
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee (PAC) formed in late 2019 by former and current moderate Republicans. During the 2020 presidential election, it aimed to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump and defeat all Rep ...
, a political action committee consisting of current and former Republicans with the purpose of defeating Trump in the
2020 United States presidential election
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and the junior U.S. senator from California Kamala H ...
and Republican Senate candidates in the
2020 United States Senate elections
The 2020 United States Senate elections were held on November 3, 2020, with the 33 class 2 seats of the Senate contested in regular elections. Of these, 21 were held by Republicans, and 12 by Democrats. The winners were elected to six-year t ...
, has been described as being primarily made of neoconservative activists seeking to return the Republican party to Bush-era ideology. Although Trump was not reelected and the Republicans failed to retain a majority in the Senate, surprising success in the
2020 United States House of Representatives elections
The 2020 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 3, 2020, to elect representatives from all 435 congressional districts across each of the 50 U.S. states, as well as six non-voting delegates from the District of ...
and internal conflicts led to renewed questions about the strength of neoconservatism.
Evolution of opinions
Usage and general views
During the early 1970s, socialist
Michael Harrington
Edward Michael Harrington Jr. (February 24, 1928 – July 31, 1989) was an American democratic socialist. As a writer, he was perhaps best known as the author of '' The Other America''. Harrington was also a political activist, theorist, profess ...
was one of the first to use "neoconservative" in its modern meaning. He characterized neoconservatives as former leftistswhom he derided as "socialists for
Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
"who had become more conservative. These people tended to remain endorsers of
social democracy
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote s ...
, but distinguished themselves by allying with the Nixon administration with respect to foreign policy, especially by their endorsement of the Vietnam War and opposition to the Soviet Union. They still endorsed the
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equita ...
, but not necessarily in its contemporary form.
Irving Kristol remarked that a neoconservative is a "", one who became more conservative after seeing the results of liberal policies. Kristol also distinguished three specific aspects of neoconservatism from previous types of conservatism: neo-conservatives had a forward-looking attitude from their liberal heritage, rather than the reactionary and dour attitude of previous conservatives; they had a meliorative attitude, proposing alternate reforms rather than simply attacking social liberal reforms; and they took philosophical ideas and ideologies very seriously.
During January 2009 at the end of President George W. Bush's second term in office, Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is a New York City-based 501(c)3 public charity serving international affairs professionals, teachers and students, and the attentive public. Founded in 1914, and originally named ''Church ...
and prominent critic of Neoconservatism, proposed the following as the "main characteristics of neoconservatism": "a tendency to see the world in binary good/evil terms", a "low tolerance for diplomacy", a "readiness to use military force", an "emphasis on US unilateral action", a "disdain for multilateral organizations" and a "focus on the Middle East"."Viewpoint: The end of the neocons?" Jonathan Clarke,
British Broadcasting Corporation #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, 13 January 2009.
Opinions concerning foreign policy
In foreign policy, the neoconservatives' main concern is to prevent the development of a new rival. Defense Planning Guidance, a document prepared during 1992 by Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, is regarded by Distinguished Professor of the Humanities John McGowan at the
University of North Carolina
The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC S ...
as the "quintessential statement of neoconservative thought". The report says:
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.
According to Lead Editor of
e-International Relations
''E-International Relations'' (''E-IR'') is an open-access website covering international relations and international politics. It provides an academic perspective on global events. Its editor-in-chief iStephen McGlinchey The website has published ...
Stephen McGlinchey: "Neo-conservatism is something of a chimera in modern politics. For its opponents it is a distinct political ideology that emphasizes the blending of military power with Wilsonian idealism, yet for its supporters it is more of a 'persuasion' that individuals of many types drift into and out of. Regardless of which is more correct, it is now widely accepted that the neo-conservative impulse has been visible in modern American foreign policy and that it has left a distinct impact".
Neoconservatives claim the "conviction that communism was a monstrous evil and a potent danger". After 1996, many self-identified "neocons" endorsed ending the welfare state "as we know it," but did not advocate for its removal. The
Project for a New American Century
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservativeOperation Desert Fox
The 1998 bombing of Iraq (code-named Operation Desert Fox) was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from 16 to 19 December 1998, by the United States and the United Kingdom. On 16 December 1998, President of the United States Bill ...
, although the Clinton Doctrine's concluding iteration of what became a National Security Strategy proved pivotal as well. The "social welfare" associated with neoconservative ideas has been critiqued as a revival of
social imperialism
As a political term, social imperialism is the political ideology of people, parties, or nations that are, according to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, " socialist in words, imperialist in deeds". In academic use, it refers to governments that en ...
, particularly in the contexts of overseas assets, security interests, oil, oil technologies, and the doctrine of preemption. Disputes over the
non-aggression principle
The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference (violating or breaching conduct) against either an individual, their propert ...
in domestic and foreign policy, especially given the doctrine of preemption (related to, but distinct from, deterrence), impede and facilitate studies of the impact of
libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
precepts on neoconservatism. In a similar vein, disparate neoconservative conceptions of "social welfare" in foreign policy, or lack thereof, collided during the prolonged deployment in Iraq.
Neoconservative factionalism engulfed U.S. and world print cultures, most notably in a series of articles by
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama (; born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, international relations scholar and writer.
Fukuyama is known for his book ''The End of History and the Last Man'' (1992), which argue ...
(
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
) and
unitary executive theory
The unitary executive theory is a theory of United States constitutional law which holds that the President of the United States possesses the power to control the entire federal executive branch. The doctrine is rooted in Article Two of the U ...
statements by litigators such as
John Yoo
John Choon Yoo (; born July 10, 1967) is a Korean-born American legal scholar and former government official who serves as the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Yoo became known for his legal opinions ...
(
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
). Statements by
Wolfowitz Wolfowitz is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Jacob Wolfowitz, (1910–1981) American statistician and information theorist
* Clare Selgin Wolfowitz (born 1945), American anthropologist
* Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz ...
and additional members of the George W. Bush Administration revealed persistent disagreements as well. In 2004, for instance,
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first Africa ...
announced in the January–February ''
Foreign Affairs
''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy a ...
'' that "pundits claim that U.S. foreign policy is too focused on unilateral preemption. But George W. Bush's vision---enshrined in his 2002 National Security Strategy---is far broader and deeper than that. The president has promoted bold and effective policies to combat terrorism, intervened decisively to prevent regional conflicts, and embraced other major powers such as Russia, China, and India. Above all, he has committed the United States to a strategy of partnerships, which affirms the vital role of international alliances while advancing American interests and principles." Powell reiterated that pundits "exaggerated the centrality of preemption in U.S. strategy...the breadth of U.S. strategy transcends the war on terrorism." Powell resigned as Secretary of State later that year. In a 2012 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, former Secretary of State Colin Powell revised his position on “gay marriage.” Up until that year, Powell had only publicly endorsed one Democratic Party candidate,
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
, for President of the United States. Pundits subsequently interpreted Powell's shift as a neoconservative dialectic and another example of Republican Party control of television news channels. Yet he went on to publicly endorse
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
, and, at the end of his life, Joe Biden, without publicly registering for any political party. Powell also supported federal review of "
Don't ask, don't tell
"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people, instituted during the Clinton administration. The policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on Decembe ...
" policy, confessing that "attitudes and circumstances have changed" since his previous opposition to "gays in the military." Powell never protested his name listed among "allies" of
same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same sex or gender. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 33 countries, with the most recent being Mexico, constituting ...
until his death, yet he stopped short at explicit endorsement of the repeal process for "
Don't ask, don't tell
"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people, instituted during the Clinton administration. The policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on Decembe ...
."
Neoconservatism first developed during the late 1960s as an effort to oppose the radical cultural changes occurring within the United States. Irving Kristol wrote: "If there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. H ...
". Norman Podhoretz agreed: "Revulsion against the counterculture accounted for more converts to neoconservatism than any other single factor". Neoconservatives began to emphasize foreign issues during the mid-1970s.
In 1979, an early study by liberal
Peter Steinfels
Peter F. Steinfels (born 1941) is an American journalist and educator best known for his writings on religious topics.
A native of Chicago, Illinois, and a lifelong Roman Catholic, Steinfels earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University and joined th ...
concentrated on the ideas of
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectua ...
,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician, diplomat and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York in the United States Senate from 1977 until 2001 and served as a ...
and
Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell (May 10, 1919 – January 25, 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor at Harvard University, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He has been described as "one of the leading A ...
. He noted that the stress on foreign affairs "emerged after the New Left and the counterculture had dissolved as convincing foils for neoconservatism ... The essential source of their anxiety is not military or geopolitical or to be found overseas at all; it is domestic and cultural and ideological".
Neoconservative foreign policy is a descendant of so-called Wilsonian idealism. Neoconservatives endorse
democracy promotion
Democracy promotion, which can also be referred to as democracy assistance, democracy support, or democracy building, is a strand of foreign policy adopted by governments and international organizations that seek to support the spread of democra ...
by the U.S. and other democracies, based on the claim that they think that human rights belong to everyone. They criticized the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
and
détente
Détente (, French: "relaxation") is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The term, in diplomacy, originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduce ...
with the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. On
domestic policy
Domestic policy is a type of public policy overseeing administrative decisions that are directly related to all issues and activity within a state's borders. It differs from foreign policy, which refers to the ways a government advances its inter ...
, they endorse reductions in the
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equita ...
Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz (; born January 16, 1930) is an American magazine editor, writer, and conservative political commentator, who identifies his views as " paleo- neoconservative".
, "'the neo-conservatives dissociated themselves from the wholesale opposition to the welfare state which had marked American conservatism since the days of the New Deal' and ... while neoconservatives supported 'setting certain limits' to the welfare state, those limits did not involve 'issues of principle, such as the legitimate size and role of the central government in the American constitutional order' but were to be 'determined by practical considerations'".
In April 2006,
Robert Kagan
Robert Kagan (; born September 26, 1958) is an American neoconservative scholar, critic of U.S. foreign policy, and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism.
A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, he is a ...
wrote in ''The Washington Post'' that
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
may be the greatest "challenge liberalism faces today":
In July 2008,
Joe Klein
Joe Klein (born September 7, 1946) is an American political commentator and author. He is best known for his work as a columnist for ''Time'' magazine and his novel ''Primary Colors'', an anonymously written roman à clef portraying Bill Clinton' ...
wrote in ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' that today's neoconservatives are more interested in confronting enemies than in cultivating friends. He questioned the sincerity of neoconservative interest in exporting democracy and freedom, saying: "Neoconservatism in foreign policy is best described as unilateral bellicosity cloaked in the utopian rhetoric of freedom and democracy" as well as social welfare policy.
In February 2009,
Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ' ...
wrote he no longer took neoconservatism seriously because its basic tenet was defense of Israel:
Views on economics
While neoconservatism is concerned primarily with foreign policy, there is also some discussion of internal economic policies. Neoconservatism generally endorses
free market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any ot ...
s and
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
, favoring
supply-side economics
Supply-side economics is a Macroeconomics, macroeconomic theory that postulates economic growth can be most effectively fostered by Tax cuts, lowering taxes, Deregulation, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade. According to supply-sid ...
, but it has several disagreements with
classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, e ...
and
fiscal conservatism
Fiscal conservatism is a political and economic philosophy regarding fiscal policy and fiscal responsibility with an ideological basis in capitalism, individualism, limited government, and ''laissez-faire'' economics.M. O. Dickerson et al., '' ...
. Irving Kristol states that neocons are more relaxed about budget deficits and tend to reject the Hayekian notion that the growth of government influence on society and public welfare is "
the road to serfdom
''The Road to Serfdom'' (German: ''Der Weg zur Knechtschaft'') is a book written between 1940 and 1943 by Austrian-British economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. Since its publication in 1944, ''The Road to Serfdom'' has been popular among ...
". Indeed, to safeguard democracy, government intervention and budget deficits may sometimes be necessary, Kristol argues. After the so-called "reconciliation with capitalism," self-identified "neoconservatives" frequently favored a reduced welfare state, but not its elimination.
Neoconservative ideology stresses that while free markets do provide material goods in an efficient way, they lack the moral guidance human beings need to fulfill their needs. They say that morality can be found only in tradition and that markets do pose questions that cannot be solved solely by economics, arguing: "So, as the economy only makes up part of our lives, it must not be allowed to take over and entirely dictate to our society". Critics consider neoconservatism a bellicose and "heroic" ideology opposed to "mercantile" and "bourgeois" virtues and therefore "a variant of anti-economic thought". Political scientist
Zeev Sternhell
Zeev Sternhell ( he, זאב שטרנהל; 10 April 1935 – 21 June 2020) was a Polish-born Israeli historian, political scientist, commentator on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and writer. He was one of the world's leading theorists of the ...
states: "Neoconservatism has succeeded in convincing the great majority of Americans that the main questions that concern a society are not economic, and that social questions are really moral questions".
Views on gender roles
Neoconservatives support a restoration of traditional
gender role
A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cen ...
s and a strengthening of "traditional families" in order to adapt social structures to the free capitalism they demand. The
nuclear family
A nuclear family, elementary family, cereal-packet family or conjugal family is a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, the larg ...
is supposed to be an alternative to the welfare state, so that cuts to health care, education and social welfare budgets can be legitimized.
Friction with other conservatives
Many conservatives oppose neoconservative policies and have critical views on it. Disputes over the
non-aggression principle
The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference (violating or breaching conduct) against either an individual, their propert ...
in domestic and foreign policy, especially given the doctrine of preemption, can impede (and facilitate) studies of the impact of
libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
precepts on neo-conservatism, but that of course didn't, and still doesn't, stop pundits from publishing appraisals. For example,
Stefan Halper
Stefan A. Halper (born June 4, 1944) is an American foreign policy scholar and retired senior fellow at the University of Cambridge where he is a life fellow at Magdalene College. He served as a White House official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reaga ...
and Jonathan Clarke (a libertarian based at Cato), in their 2004 book on neoconservatism, ''America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order'',say that neocons "propose an untenable model for our nation's future" (p. 8) and then outline what they think is the inner logic of the movement: characterized the neoconservatives at that time as uniting around three common themes:
Responding to a question about neoconservatives in 2004, William F. Buckley Jr. said: "I think those I know, which is most of them, are bright, informed and idealistic, but that they simply overrate the reach of U.S. power and influence".Sanger, Deborah "Questions for William F. Buckley: Conservatively Speaking" interview in ''
The New York Times Magazine
''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'', 11 July 2004. Retrieved 6 March 2008
Friction with paleoconservatism
Starting during the 1980s, disputes concerning Israel and public policy contributed to a conflict with
paleoconservatives
Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and variety of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the ...
.
Pat Buchanan
Patrick Joseph Buchanan (; born November 2, 1938) is an American paleoconservative political commentator, columnist, politician, and broadcaster. Buchanan was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, ...
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried (born November 21, 1941) is an American paleoconservative political philosopher, historian, and writer. He is a former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is editor-in-chief of the paleoco ...
has written that the neocons' call for "
permanent revolution
Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and F ...
" exists independently of their beliefs about Israel,Fatuous and Malicious by Paul Gottfried. ''LewRockwell.com'', 28 March 2003. characterizing the neoconservatives as "ranters out of a Dostoyevskian novel, who are out to practice permanent revolution courtesy of the U.S. government" and questioning how anyone could mistake them for conservatives. by Paul Gottfried. ''LewRockwell.com'', 20 March 2003.
What make neocons most dangerous are not their isolated ghetto hang-ups, like hating Germans and Southern whites and calling everyone and his cousin an anti-Semite, but the leftist revolutionary fury they express.
He has also argued that domestic equality and the exportability of democracy are points of contention between them.
Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and author. He formerly held a sub-cabinet office in the United States federal government as well as teaching positions at several U.S. universities. He is a promoter of supply-side ...
, United States
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy
The Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy is the head of the Office of Economic Policy in the United States Department of the Treasury. The position is held by Ben Harris. President Joe Biden announced he would nominate Ben Ha ...
during the Reagan administration and associated with paleoconservatism stated in 2003 that "there is nothing conservative about neoconservatives. Neocons hide behind 'conservative' but they are in fact
Jacobin
, logo = JacobinVignette03.jpg
, logo_size = 180px
, logo_caption = Seal of the Jacobin Club (1792–1794)
, motto = "Live free or die"(french: Vivre libre ou mourir)
, successor = P ...
s. Jacobins were the 18th century French revolutionaries whose intention to remake Europe in revolutionary France's image launched the
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fre ...
".
Trotskyism allegation
Critics have argued that since the founders of neo-conservatism included ex-
Trotskyists
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...
, Trotskyist traits continue to characterize neo-conservative ideologies and practices. During the Reagan administration, the charge was made that the foreign policy of the Reagan administration was being managed by ex-Trotskyists. This claim was cited by , who was a neoconservative and former Trotskyist himself."A 1987 article in ''The New Republic'' described these developments as a Trotskyist takeover of the Reagan administration", wrote . This "Trotskyist" charge was repeated and widened by journalist
Michael Lind
Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962) is an American writer and academic. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in a number of books, beginning with '' The Next American Nation'' (1995). He is currently a pro ...
during 2003 to assert a takeover of the
foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration
The main event by far shaping the foreign policy of the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush (2001–2009) was the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terror. There ...
by former Trotskyists; Lind's "amalgamation of the defense intellectuals with the traditions and theories of 'the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement' n Lind's words was criticized during 2003 by University of Michigan professor Alan M. Wald, who had discussed Trotskyism in his history of " the New York intellectuals".
The charge that neoconservativism is related to
Leninism
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establish ...
has also been made by
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama (; born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, international relations scholar and writer.
Fukuyama is known for his book ''The End of History and the Last Man'' (1992), which argue ...
. He argued that both believe in the "existence of a long-term process of social evolution", though neoconservatives seek to establish
liberal democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into ...
instead of
communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
. He wrote that neoconservatives "believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support". However, these comparisons ignore anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist positions central to Leninism, which run contradictory to core neoconservative beliefs.
Criticism
Critics of neoconservatism take issue with neoconservatives' support for interventionistic foreign policy. Critics from the
left
Left may refer to:
Music
* ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006
* ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016
* "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album '' Curb'', 1996
Direction
* Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right
* ...
take issue with what they characterize as
unilateralism
__NOTOC__
Unilateralism is any doctrine or agenda that supports one-sided action. Such action may be in disregard for other parties, or as an expression of a commitment toward a direction which other parties may find disagreeable. As a word, ''un ...
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
and
war profiteering
A war profiteer is any person or organization that derives profit from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term typically carries strong negative connotations. General profiteering, making a profit criticized a ...
due to their association with
defense contractors
Defense or defence may refer to:
Tactical, martial, and political acts or groups
* Defense (military), forces primarily intended for warfare
* Civil defense, the organizing of civilians to deal with emergencies or enemy attacks
* Defense industr ...
.
Critics from both the left and right have assailed neoconservatives for the role Israel plays in their policies on the Middle East.
Neoconservatives respond by describing their shared opinion as a
belief
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to tak ...
that national security is best attained by actively promoting freedom and democracy abroad as in the
democratic peace theory
The democratic peace theory posits that democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Among proponents of the democratic peace theory, several factors are held as motivating peace between democratic s ...
through the endorsement of democracy, foreign aid and in certain cases
military intervention
Interventionism refers to a political practice of intervention, particularly to the practice of governments to interfere in political affairs of other countries, staging military or trade interventions. Economic interventionism refers to a diff ...
. This is different from the traditional conservative tendency to endorse friendly regimes in matters of trade and anti-communism even at the expense of undermining existing democratic systems.
Former
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
Congressman
Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American author, activist, physician and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, as we ...
(now a
Libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
politician) has been a longtime critic of neoconservativism as an attack on freedom and the Constitution, including an extensive speech on the House floor addressing neoconservative beginnings and how neoconservatism is neither new nor conservative.
In a column on ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' named "Years of Shame" commemorating the tenth anniversary of 9/11 attacks,
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...
criticized the neoconservatives for causing a war unrelated to 9/11 attacks and fought for wrong reasons.
University of North Carolina
The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC S ...
, states after an extensive review of neoconservative literature and theory that neoconservatives are attempting to build an American Empire, seen as successor to the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
, its goal being to perpetuate a "
Pax Americana
''Pax Americana'' (Latin for "American Peace", modeled after ''Pax Romana'' and ''Pax Britannica''; also called the Long Peace) is a term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later in the world after the end o ...
". As imperialism is largely considered unacceptable by the American media, neoconservatives do not articulate their ideas and goals in a frank manner in public discourse. McGowan states:
Notable people associated with neoconservatism
The list includes public people identified as personally neoconservative at an important time or a high official with numerous neoconservative advisers, such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Governor of Texas
The governor of Texas heads the state government of Texas. The governor is the leader of the executive and legislative branch of the state government and is the commander in chief of the Texas Military. The current governor is Greg Abbott, w ...
*
Jeb Bush
John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (born February 11, 1953) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. Bush, who grew up in Houston, was the second son of former President George H. W. Bush ...
– 43rd U.S.
Governor of Florida
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
, 2016 Republican presidential candidate
*
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former ...
– 46th
U.S. Vice President
The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice pr ...
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...
, former U.S. Secretary of Defense - described as a practitioner of neoconservative foreign policy or allied with neoconservatives but not one himself, and without a historical background in the ideological neoconservative movement
*
Liz Cheney
Elizabeth Lynne Cheney (; born July 28, 1966) is an American attorney and politician who has been the U.S. representative for since 2017, with her term expiring in January 2023. She chaired the House Republican Conference, the third-highest ...
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...
's
at-large
At large (''before a noun'': at-large) is a description for members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent a whole membership or population (notably a city, county, state, province, nation, club or association), rather than ...
district.
*
Chris Christie
Christopher James Christie (born September 6, 1962) is an American politician, lawyer, political commentator, lobbyist, and former federal prosecutor who served as the 55th governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018.
Christie, who was born in N ...
– 56th
Governor of New Jersey
The governor of New Jersey is the head of government of New Jersey. The office of governor is an elected position with a four-year term. There is a two consecutive term term limit, with no limitation on non-consecutive terms. The official r ...
, former
United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey
The U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey is the chief federal law enforcement officer in New Jersey. On December 16, 2021, Philip R. Sellinger was sworn in as U.S. Attorney. The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey has juris ...
, 2016 Republican presidential candidate; though he rejects the term
*
Tom Cotton
Thomas Bryant Cotton (born May 13, 1977) is an American politician, attorney, and former military officer serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States Senate, United States senator for Arkansas since 2015. A memb ...
– U.S. Senator from Arkansas, former U.S. Representative from Arkansas
*
Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee on ...
– U.S. Senator from South Carolina, former
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...
Colonel
Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations.
In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge ...
, former U.S. Representative from
South Carolina
)''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no)
, anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind"
, Former = Province of South Carolina
, seat = Columbia
, LargestCity = Charleston
, LargestMetro = ...
, 2016 Republican presidential candidate
*
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two te ...
– former U.S. Representative & U.S. Senator from Arizona, 2000 Republican presidential candidate, 2008 Republican presidential nominee
*
Mitch McConnell
Addison Mitchell McConnell III (born February 20, 1942) is an American politician and retired attorney serving as the senior United States senator from Kentucky and the Senate minority leader since 2021. Currently in his seventh term, McCon ...
– U.S. Senator from Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader, former Senate Majority Whip, former Senate Majority Leader
*
Mike Pompeo
Michael Richard Pompeo (; born December 30, 1963) is an American politician, diplomat, and businessman who served under President Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United State ...
– former U.S. Representative for
Kansas
Kansas () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its Capital city, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebras ...
’s
4th district
Fourth or the fourth may refer to:
* the ordinal form of the number 4
* ''Fourth'' (album), by Soft Machine, 1971
* Fourth (angle), an ancient astronomical subdivision
* Fourth (music), a musical interval
* ''The Fourth'' (1972 film), a Sovie ...
, 6th
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) is a statutory office () that functions as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, which in turn is a part of the United States Intelligence Community.
Beginning February 2017, the ...
, 70th
U.S. Secretary of State
The United States secretary of state is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The office holder is one of the highest ranking members of the president's Ca ...
.
*
Marco Rubio
Marco Antonio Rubio (born May 28, 1971) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from Florida, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the ...
– U.S. Senator from
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...
, 2016 Republican presidential candidate
*
Mike Turner
Michael Ray Turner (born January 11, 1960) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. Turner's district, numbered as the 3rd district from 2003 to 2013, is based in Day ...
Michael McCaul
Michael Thomas McCaul Sr. (born January 14, 1962) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2005. A member of the Republican Party, he chaired the House Committee on Homeland Security during the 113 ...
Adam Kinzinger
Adam Daniel Kinzinger (; born February 27, 1978) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for . The district covers eastern Rockford, most of Rockford's suburbs, and a swath of exurban territory around Chicago. He is a memb ...
Dan Crenshaw
Daniel Reed Crenshaw (born March 14, 1984) is an American politician and former United States Navy SEAL officer serving as the United States representative for Texas's 2nd congressional district since 2019. The district includes parts of northe ...
Elliot Abrams
Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer, who has served in foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative. He is curren ...
– foreign policy advisor
*
Kenneth Adelman
Kenneth Lee Adelman (born June 9, 1946) is an American diplomat, political writer, policy analyst and William Shakespeare scholar. Adelman has been a member of the board of directors of the global data collection company RIWI Corp. since June 2016 ...
– former Director of Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
* William Bennett – former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, former Director of the National Drug Control Policy and former U.S. Secretary of Education
*
John R. Bolton
John Robert Bolton (born November 20, 1948) is an American attorney, diplomat, Republican consultant, and political commentator. He served as the 25th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, and as the 26th United Stat ...
– former Ambassador to the United Nations, and former
National Security Advisor A national security advisor serves as the chief advisor to a national government on matters of security. The advisor is not usually a member of the government's cabinet but is usually a member of various military or security councils.
National sec ...
; though he rejects the term
*
Eliot A. Cohen
Eliot Asher Cohen (born April 3, 1956 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American political scientist. He was a counselor in the United States Department of State under Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009. In 2019, Cohen was named the 9th Dean of t ...
– former State Department Counselor, now Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University
*
Douglas J. Feith
Douglas Jay Feith (born July 16, 1953) served as the under secretary of Defense for Policy for United States president George W. Bush, from July 2001 until August 2005. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.
...
– former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
*
Frank Gaffney
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. (born April 5, 1953) is an American anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for the federal government in multiple posts, including ...
– former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy
*
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a lo ...
– former Ambassador to the United Nations under Ronald Reagan
*
Bill Kristol
William Kristol (; born December 23, 1952) is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine ''The Weekly Standard''. Kristol is now ...
– former
Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States
The chief of staff to the vice president of the United States is the Chief of staff (politics), chief of staff position within the Office of the Vice President of the United States, Office of the Vice President, part of the Executive Office of th ...
, co-founder and former editor of ''
The Weekly Standard
''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "re ...
'', professor of political philosophy and American politics and political adviserDaniel W. Drezner Who belongs in the anti-Trump coalition? ''Washington Post'' (12 December 2017): " ristolis hardly the only neoconservative to fall into this category; see, for example, Peter Wehner or Jennifer Rubin."
*
Scooter Libby
Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby (born August 22, 1950) is an American lawyer and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney known for his high-profile indictment.
From 2001 to 2005, Libby held the offices of Assistant to the Vice President ...
– former Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States
*
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941) is an American political advisor who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He began his political career as a senior staff member to ...
– former Assistant Secretary of Defense and lobbyist
*
Randy Scheunemann
Randall James "Randy" Scheunemann (born January 12, 1960) is an American neoconservative lobbyist. He is the President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was created by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), of which he i ...
– foreign policy advisor and lobbyist
*
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and former dean of Johns Hopkins ...
– former State and Defense Department official
*
R. James Woolsey Jr.
Robert James Woolsey Jr. (born September 21, 1941) is an American political appointee who has served in various senior positions. He headed the Central Intelligence Agency as Director of Central Intelligence from February 5, 1993, until January 1 ...
– former Undersecretary of the Navy, former Director of Central Intelligence, green energy lobbyist
Academics
*
Nathan Glazer
Nathan Glazer (February 25, 1923 – January 19, 2019) was an American sociologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and for several decades at Harvard University. He was a co-editor of the now-defunct policy journal ''The Pu ...
– Professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and Harvard, columnist and author.
*
Donald Kagan
Donald Kagan (; May 1, 1932August 6, 2021) was a Lithuanian-born American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece, notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. He formerly taught in the Departm ...
– Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University.
* Andrew Roberts – Professor of History at King's College in London.
Public figures
* Fred Barnes – co-founder and former executive editor of ''
The Weekly Standard
''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "re ...
''
*
Max Boot
Max Alexandrovich Boot (born September 12, 1969) is an American author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He worked as a writer and editor for ''Christian Science Monitor'' and then for ''The Wall Street Journal'' in the ...
– author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian; though wishes to retire label
* David Brooks – Columnist
*
Midge Decter
Midge Decter (née Rosenthal; July 25, 1927 – May 9, 2022) was an American journalist and author.
*
Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh Joseph D'Souza (; born April 25, 1961) is an Indian-American right-wing political commentator, author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. He has written over a dozen books, several of them ''New York Times'' best-sellers.
In 2012, D' ...
– filmmaker and author
*
David Frum
David Jeffrey Frum (; born June 30, 1960) is a Canadian-American political commentator and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, who is currently a senior editor at ''The Atlantic'' as well as an MSNBC contributor. In 2003, Frum a ...
– journalist, Republican speechwriter and columnist
*
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Reuel Marc Gerecht is an American writer and political analyst focused on the Middle East. He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing primarily on the Middle East, Islamic militancy, counterterrorism, and intell ...
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
*
Robert Kagan
Robert Kagan (; born September 26, 1958) is an American neoconservative scholar, critic of U.S. foreign policy, and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism.
A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, he is a ...
– senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, scholar of U.S. foreign policy, founder of the '' Yale Political Monthly'', adviser to Republican political campaigns and one of 25 members of an advisory board to
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
at the State Department (Kagan calls himself a "liberal interventionist" rather than "neoconservative")
*
Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer (; March 13, 1950 – June 21, 2018) was an American political columnist. A moderate liberal who turned independent conservative as a political pundit, Krauthammer won the Pulitzer Prize for his columns in '' The Washingt ...
– Pulitzer Prize winner, columnist and psychiatrist
*
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectua ...
– publisher, journalist, columnist and former Marxist
*
Eli Lake
Eli Jon Lake is an American journalist and the former senior national security correspondent for ''The Daily Beast'' and ''Newsweek''. Currently, he is a columnist for the Bloomberg View. He has also contributed to CNN, Fox, CSPAN, Charlie R ...
– journalist and columnist
*
Michael Ledeen
Michael Arthur Ledeen (; born August 1, 1941) is an American historian, and neoconservative foreign policy analyst. He is a former consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United St ...
– historian, foreign policy analyst, scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray may refer to:
* Douglas Murray (author) (born 1979), British political journalist, author and commentator
* Doug Murray (comics) (born 1947), American comic book writer
* Douglas Murray (ice hockey)
Douglas Thomas Lars Murray (bo ...
– British writer, journalist and political commentator
* Danielle Pletka – American Enterprise Institute vice president
*
Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz (; born January 16, 1930) is an American magazine editor, writer, and conservative political commentator, who identifies his views as " paleo- neoconservative".
– editor-in-chief of ''
Commentary
Commentary or commentaries may refer to:
Publications
* ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee
* Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
National Affairs
''National Affairs'' is a quarterly magazine in the United States about political affairs that was first published in September 2009. Its founding editor, Yuval Levin, and authors are typically considered to be conservative and right-wing. The m ...
'' (2009–present) and director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
.
*
Tom Rogan
Tom Rogan (; born 8 February 1986) is a political journalist based in Washington, D.C.
Career
Rogan grew up and was educated in London, in the United Kingdom. He attended St John's School, Leatherhead for secondary school/high school before a ...
– journalist and political analyst
* Jennifer Rubin – (former neoconservative) journalist and political analyst
*
Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin (born 1971) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He previously worked as an official at the Pentagon, where he dealt with issues relating to the Middle East, and as political adviser to the Coalition Provis ...
– resident scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
*
Gary Schmitt
Gary James Schmitt (born 1952) is an American political scientist who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Early life and education
Schmitt graduated from the University of Dallas in 1974 with a B.A. in Politics and the Univ ...
– resident scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
*
Ben Shapiro
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an American attorney, businessman, columnist, conservative political commentator, and media personality. At age 17, he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. ...
– political commentator, public speaker, author, lawyer, founder and editor emeritus of
The Daily Wire
''The Daily Wire'' is an American conservative news website and media company founded in 2015 by political commentator Ben Shapiro and film director Jeremy Boreing. The company is a major publisher on Facebook, and produces podcasts such as ...
.
*
Bret Stephens
Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He began working as an opinion columnist for ''The New York Times'' in April 2017 and as a senior contributor to NBC News in June 2017.
...
– journalist and columnist for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''
*
Irwin Stelzer
Irwin M. Stelzer (born 22 May 1932) is an American economist
who is the U.S. economic and business columnist for ''The Sunday Times'' in the United Kingdom and was for ''The Courier-Mail'' in Australia. In the United States, he was a contributin ...
– economist and writer
Related publications and institutions
Institutions
*
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
Henry Jackson Society
The Henry Jackson Society (HJS) is a trans-Atlantic foreign policy and national security think tank, based in the United Kingdom. While describing itself as non-partisan, its outlook has been described variously as neoliberal and as neoconser ...
*
Hudson Institute
The Hudson Institute is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Co ...
*
Project for the New American Century
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservativeCommentary
Commentary or commentaries may refer to:
Publications
* ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee
* Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
'';
* ''
National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief ...
'' (neoconservative opinion pieces);
* ''
The Washington Free Beacon
''The Washington Free Beacon'' is an American conservative political journalism website launched in 2012.
The website is financially backed by Paul Singer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and conservative activist.
History
The ...
The Public Interest
''The Public Interest'' (1965–2005) was a quarterly public policy journal founded by Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, members of the loose New York intellectuals group, in 1965.Gillian Peele, "American Conservatism in Historical Perspective", in ...
'' (1965-2005);
* ''
The Weekly Standard
''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "re ...
'' (1995-2018);
See also
*
British neoconservatism
British neoconservatism is an ideology that is a strong proponent of foreign intervention in the Arab world and beyond, supports the role of the private sector in military contracts and is in favour of an alliance with Israel. It shares a world v ...
*
Democratic peace theory
The democratic peace theory posits that democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Among proponents of the democratic peace theory, several factors are held as motivating peace between democratic s ...
*
Factions in the Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party in the United States includes several factions, or wings.
During the 19th century, Republican factions included the Half-Breeds, who supported civil service reform; the Radical Republicans, who advocated the immediate and t ...
*
Globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...
*
Intellectual dark web
The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a label which has been applied to some commentators who oppose what they regard as the dominance of identity politics, political correctness, and cancel culture in higher education and the news media within Wes ...
*
Interventionism (politics)
Interventionism refers to a political practice of intervention, particularly to the practice of governments to interfere in political affairs of other countries, staging military or trade interventions. Economic interventionism refers to a diffe ...
*
Liberal conservatism
Liberal conservatism is a political ideology combining conservative policies with liberal stances, especially on economic issues but also on social and ethical matters, representing a brand of political conservatism strongly influenced by ...
*
Liberal hawk
The term liberal hawk refers to a politically liberal person (generally, in the American sense of the term) who supports a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy.
Overview
Past U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Ken ...
*
Liberal internationalism
Liberal internationalism is a foreign policy doctrine that argues two main points: first, that international organizations should achieve multilateral agreements between states that uphold rules-based norms and promote liberal democracy, and, se ...
Neoconservatism in Japan
Neoconservatism in Japan, also known as the neo-defense school, is a term used by Asian media only recently to refer to a hawkish new generation of Japanese conservatives. They are distinguished from older Japanese conservatives in that they ...
*
Neoconservatism in the Czech Republic The Czech Republic, like other post-communist European states, has had a fairly consistent pro-American foreign policy. This pro-Americanism makes Neoconservatism ( cs, neokonzervatismus) in Europe more likely in post-communist European states. ...
*
New Conservatism (China)
Neoauthoritarianism ( zh, s=新权威主义, p=xīn quánwēi zhǔyì), also known as Chinese Neoconservativism or New Conservatism () since the 1990s,Peter Moody (2007), p. 151. Conservative Thought in Contemporary China. https://books.google. ...
*
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism (also neo-liberalism) is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent f ...
New Right in the United States
New Right is a term for various right-wing political groups or policies in different countries during different periods. One prominent usage was to describe the emergence of certain Eastern European parties after the collapse of the Soviet Un ...
*
Paleoconservatism
Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and variety of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the ...
*
Project for a New American Century
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservativeTory socialism
''Tory socialism'' is a term used by some historians, particularly of the early Fabian Society, a socialist British organization, to describe the governing philosophy of the prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. It has been used by Vernon Bogdanor ...
*
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief ...
'', 7 April 2003. Retrieved 16 September 2006.
* Gerson, Mark, ed. ''The Essential Neo-Conservative Reader'', Perseus, 1997. (paperback), (hardback).
* Gerson, Mark. Norman's Conquest: A Commentary on the Podhoretz Legacy , ''Policy Review'', Fall 1995, Number 74. Retrieved 16 September 2006.
* Gray, John. ''Black Mass'', Allen Lane, 2007. .
* Hanson, Jim ''The Decline of the American Empire'', Praeger, 1993. .
* Halper, Stefan and Jonathan Clarke. ''America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order'', Cambridge University Press, 2004. .
* Kagan, Robert, et al., ''Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy''. Encounter Books, 2000. .
* Kristol, Irving. ''Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea: Selected Essays 1949-1995'', New York: The Free Press, 1995. (10). (13). (Hardcover ed.) Reprinted as ''Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea'', New York: Ivan R. Dee, 1999. (10). (Paperback ed.)
* Kristol, Irving. "What Is a Neoconservative?", ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', 19 January 1976.
* Lara Amat y León, Joan y Antón Mellón, Joan, "Las persuasiones neoconservadoras: F. Fukuyama, S. P. Huntington, W. Kristol y R. Kagan", en Máiz, Ramón (comp.), ''Teorías políticas contemporáneas'', (2ªed.rev. y ampl.) Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, 2009. Ficha del libro * Lara Amat y León, Joan, "Cosmopolitismo y anticosmoplitismo en el neoconservadurismo: Fukuyama y Huntington", en Nuñez, Paloma y Espinosa, Javier (eds.), ''Filosofía y política en el siglo XXI. Europa y el nuevo orden cosmopolita'', Akal, Madrid, 2009. Ficha del libro * Lasn, Kalle. Why won't anyone say they are Jewish? , ''Adbusters'', March/April 2004. Retrieved 16 September 2006.
* Lewkowicz, Nicolas. Neoconservatism and the Propagation of Democracy , ''Democracy Chronicles'', 11 February 2013.
*
* Mann, James. ''Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet'', Viking, 2004. (cloth).
*
* Mascolo, Georg , Spiegel Online, 6 December 2005. Retrieved 16 September 2006.
* Muravchik, Joshua. "Renegades", ''Commentary'', 1 October 2002 Bibliographical information is available online, the article itself is not.
* Muravchik, Joshua. "The Neoconservative Cabal", ''Commentary'', September 2003 Bibliographical information is available online, the article itself is not.
* Prueher, Joseph 11 April 2001. Reproduced on sinomania.com. Retrieved 16 September 2006.
* Podoretz, Norman. ''The Norman Podhoretz Reader''. New York: Free Press, 2004. .
* Roucaute Yves. ''Le Neoconservatisme est un humanisme''. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005..
* Roucaute Yves. ''La Puissance de la Liberté''. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004..
* Ruppert, Michael C.. ''Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil'', New Society, 2004. .
* Ryn, Claes G., ''America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire'', Transaction, 2003. (cloth).
* Stelzer, Irwin, ed. ''Neoconservatism'', Atlantic Books, 2004.
* Smith, Grant F. ''Deadly Dogma: How Neoconservatives Broke the Law to Deceive America''. .
* Solarz, Stephen, et al. Open Letter to the President , 19 February 1998, online at IraqWatch.org. Retrieved 16 September 2006.
*
* Strauss, Leo. ''Natural Right and History'', University of Chicago Press, 1999. .
* Strauss, Leo. ''The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism'', University of Chicago Press, 1989. .
* Tolson, Jay. The New American Empire? , '' U.S. News & World Report'', 13 January 2003. Retrieved 16 September 2006.
* Wilson, Joseph. ''The Politics of Truth''. Carroll & Graf, 2004. .
* Woodward, Bob. ''Plan of Attack'', Simon and Schuster, 2004. .
Further reading
* Arin, Kubilay Yado: ''Think Tanks: The Brain Trusts of US Foreign Policy''. Wiesbaden: VS Springer 2013.
* Balint, Benjamin V. ''Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine that Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right'' (2010).
* Dorrien, Gary. ''The Neoconservative Mind''. , n attack from the Left.
* Ehrman, John. ''The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectual and Foreign Affairs 1945 – 1994'', Yale University Press, 2005, .
* Eisendrath, Craig R. and Melvin A. Goodman. ''Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting The World at Risk'' (Prometheus Books, 2004), .
* Franczak, Michael. 2019. Losing the Battle, Winning the War: Neoconservatives versus the New International Economic Order, 1974–82 "''Diplomatic History''
* Friedman, Murray. ''The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. .
* Grandin, Greg."Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism." Metropolitan Books Henry Holt & Company, 2006..
* Heilbrunn, Jacob. ''They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons'', Doubleday (2008) .
** Heilbrunn, Jacob "5 Myths About Those Nefarious Neocons" ''The Washington Post'', 10 February 2008.
* Kristol, Irving "The Neoconservative Persuasion"
* Lind, Michael "How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington" ''
Salon
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (P ...
'', 9 April 2003.
* MacDonald, Kevin "The Neoconservative Mind" review of ''They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons'' by Jacob Heilbrunn.
* Vaïsse, Justin. ''Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement'' (Harvard U.P. 2010), translated from the French.
* McClelland, Mark, The unbridling of virtue: neoconservatism between the Cold War and the Iraq War.
* Shavit, Ari "White Man's Burden" Haaretz, 3 April 2003.
* Singh, Robert. "Neoconservatism in the age of Obama." in Inderjeet Parmar, ed., ''Obama and the World'' (Routledge, 2014). 51–62 online
* Fukuyama, Francis ''The New York Times'', 2006.
* Thompson, Bradley C. (with Yaron Brook). ''Neoconservatism. An Obituary for an Idea''. Boulder/London: Paradigm Publishers, 2010. .
External links
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Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker.
Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of ''Pandora's Box (British TV series), ...
, ''
The Power of Nightmares
''The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear'' is a BBC television documentary series by Adam Curtis. It mainly consists of archive footage, with Curtis narrating. The series was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom in 200 ...
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BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and ...
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and ...
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and ...