The Death of a Movement

Neo-Conservatism is dead. At least, such is what Francis Fukuyama tells us, writing in the NY Times this past weekend. I've said as much before but I'm obviously not the first person to have thought so, and Fukuyama gives us not only reasons why neoconservatism is dead, but why what's been sold to us by the Bush administration doesn't exactly square with the precepts neoconservatism (we've covered before here at TWM how the "Bush Doctrine" isn't so much a doctrine as it is a grasping at various rationales that have been politically convenient for what the administration wanted to do.) His article is worth reading in full, for understanding exactly what neoconservatism was and how it was exploited by the Bush administration in the rush to war in Iraq, as well as Fukuyama's ideas on what we should be doing now (which I mostly agree with.) But more importantly in my opinion, and it's a point I've also raised before, is the backlash against neoconservatism and the Bush doctrine:

But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naïve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. The administration's second-term efforts to push for greater Middle Eastern democracy, introduced with the soaring rhetoric of Bush's second Inaugural Address, have borne very problematic fruits. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood made a strong showing in Egypt's parliamentary elections in November and December. While the holding of elections in Iraq this past December was an achievement in itself, the vote led to the ascendance of a Shiite bloc with close ties to Iran (following on the election of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in June). But the clincher was the decisive Hamas victory in the Palestinian election last month, which brought to power a movement overtly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In his second inaugural, Bush said that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," but the charge will be made with increasing frequency that the Bush administration made a big mistake when it stirred the pot, and that the United States would have done better to stick by its traditional authoritarian friends in the Middle East. Indeed, the effort to promote democracy around the world has been attacked as an illegitimate activity both by people on the left like Jeffrey Sachs and by traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan.

Such reactions may understandably push some Americans to embrace isolationism yet again:

The reaction against democracy promotion and an activist foreign policy may not end there. Those whom Walter Russell Mead labels Jacksonian conservatives — red-state Americans whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in the Middle East — supported the Iraq war because they believed that their children were fighting to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism, not to promote democracy. They don't want to abandon the president in the middle of a vicious war, but down the road the perceived failure of the Iraq intervention may push them to favor a more isolationist foreign policy, which is a more natural political position for them. A recent Pew poll indicates a swing in public opinion toward isolationism; the percentage of Americans saying that the United States "should mind its own business" has never been higher since the end of the Vietnam War.

Unfortunately, many reasonable people on the left and the right are reacting against not so much to an idealistic foreign policy, but the cynical use of idealistic language by the Bush administration. Many people on both the left and the right have come out against the Bush administration's pronouncements of democracy promotion and "spreading freedom", by regime change if necessary. But the fact is such a policy is not the Bush administration's approach. To be blunt there is no "Bush Doctrine" because there is no doctrine. The administration has never been interested in anything other than seizing a politically expedient reason to justify whatever actions they already sought to take. The invasion of Afghanistan was certainly not made for the purposes of spreading democracy. The invasion of Iraq was only been justified in that way after the fact, but the evidence is clear that key figures in the administration were pressing for action against Iraq long before even 9/11 took place, and long before any doctrine came into existence. North Korea is a continuing example of how the Bush doctrine could be utilized to provide both for our security and for democracy promotion, and yet the Bush administration is nearly silent on this issue. The Iraqi "democracy" has not come about as a result of the promotion of freedom by our administration; it's come about as a result of being the only possible way we can justify leaving. The Palestinians have embraced Hamas, which retains it's pledge-at least at this point-to destroy Israel. Was that promoted by this administration? Surely not. One could possibly make the argument that the Bush administration is closer to a "realpolitik" philosophy than anything else, but a realistic foreign policy would have planned for how difficult Iraq would have been and would surely not have invaded without preparation. The Bush doctrine embraces neither idealism nor realism; it embraces political expediency and incompetence, and as such there is no doctrine at all.

Unfortunately the reaction against the Bush administration's incompetence-thinly veiled as "doctrine"- is very real. I'm no isolationist. I believe that the United States should engage itself in the promotion of democracy, the preservation of human rights and personal liberty, and economic self-determination wherever it is not counter to our own significant interests. As a result I think I fall somewhere between idealism and realism. Actually, I think my personal beliefs embrace both, as all too often idealism has been an excuse to rush into something unprepared (Somalia), just as realism has been an excuse to perpetrate ineffective but wrongful acts against other nations supposedly in our own interests (the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war.) For me there is a third way, a middle way. Foreign policy need not gravitate to either pole. Instead, it may exist somewhere in the middle, in such a way that the idealistic spread of human freedom is guided by realistic principles and accurate perceptions of what our own best interests are. In other words, it must be both principled and competent. To me the most unfortunate effect of the failure of the Bush "doctrine" is to create a reaction against participating fully in the world, and intervening where possible and necessary. This is the most harmful legacy of the Bush administration in terms of foreign policy, and it will be some years before we can understand fully the effects of Bush's short-sighted acts on our ability and desire to control events of interests to us the world over.