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I'm sympathetic to the neo-conservative vision. It's a liberal idea -- something that could have been suggested by the Left of the pre-Vietnam War era.

The neo conservative vision is sweeping: Democracy spread around the globe, civil liberties established in every nation, decisions made by presidents and parliaments. There would be no more pariah states, embargoes would end, and trade ships would connect the cities of the world.

I'm attracted to that vision -- even if I'm not sure it's one I share -- and there is a logic to it: America can advance her strategic interests, and the spread of democracy, at the same time. Whoever controls oil controls the world. That's still true, and has been true since at least World War I. Oil is still -- by far -- the cheapest and most plentiful source of energy on the planet. The largest concentration of that oil is in the Middle East.

At least three major areas need to important enormous amount of oil: Europe, East Asia, and America. Europe and Japan are much more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than America, since we're also a major oil producer. American strategic thought -- since the end of the Cold War -- has been that if America doesn't use her military to ensure the flow of oil, Europe and Japan will feel pressured to develop their own armed forces.

So, America protects the world's energy, while Europe uses that oil. Europe broadly agrees with American views regarding liberal democracy and the functioning of the nation state system, and is reduced to whining about the details on which they disagree -- since Europe, like Japan, doesn't want spend the extraordinary amount of money it takes to develop a strong military.

The neo-conservatives combined this strategic preservation of unique American military might -- where Europe and Japan get steady oil in return for not developing militaries -- with a vision of democratic nations. The United States would topple rogue and enemy states and rebuild them as liberal democracies. Economies would strengthen in these new economies, which would act as a carrot to invite increased economic liberty and democracy in surrounding countries, even as the American military provided the stick to this carrot.

Maybe it would have worked.

The neo-conservatives have been used -- used by a Bush administration that had a more traditional American approach to American foreign policy. While the neo-conservatives believe in a Middle East -- and a world -- of free nations, free trade, and civil liberties; the top people in the Bush administration have focused almost entirely on simply ensuring that these new countries are friendly to America. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's an incomplete goal, one that doesn't follow neo-conservative thought on how best to serve America's long term interests.

I don't think the Bush administration abandoned neo-conservatism's lofty goals because any opposition to democracy. The Bush administration simply cares less about nation building than it does about having allies in these new countries. The other problem is that the neo-conservative vision is just too expensive.

Rebuilding countries is expensive. It cost enormous amounts of money to rebuild Japan and Germany, and they had both been developed industrial powers for over half a century before the war. With government revenues down because of recession, the 9/11 attack, and tax cuts, the Bush administration is unwilling to spend the resources necessary to reconstruct a country; nor have they been willing to send the number of troops necessary to maintain the peace that would be necessary for such a reconstruction effort. Even if government revenues were higher, it's unlikely this president would have committed our country to such an expensive endeavor; just as Kerry is unlikely to, and just as no American leader since the World War II presidents has been willing to.

The neo-conservatives have been played. They threw their intellectual and moral weight behind the occupation of Iraq, when they should have known that neither Bush nor the American taxpayers is willing to bear the true cost of making Iraq a thriving liberal democracy.

Comments
on Oct 15, 2004
What exactly is a "neo-conservative"? Am I a "neo conservative" because I support US foreign policy? Are the millions of Americans who support US foreign policy neo-conservatives too?
on Oct 15, 2004
For awhile there, I thought you'd had an epiphany, blogic, but I should have known better.

You conveniently mischaracterize what is happening in Iraq, as well as what was intended. Making Iraq a colony, which is what the neo-conservative goal you impute to them amounts to, was never part of the plan. Creating a sufficiently stable & safe environment for the Iraqis themselves to establish and develop a sovereign and democratic government is and has been the post-invasion objective, along with providing aid to rebuild the economic infrastructure. This is happening, despite the fact that the mainstream media report only the bombings (since only bad things are "news," only bad things get significant air time & ink, for the most part) and want desperately to hang the President, especially a Republican, using the war as the rope.

There is a certain romantic notion of nobility attached to the Watergate investigation that still infects much of the media - those were the salad days, the great days in the history of journalism when a President was toppled by 2 newsroom grunts, and the media has come to believe that crisis-mongering works, is good for business, and stands a better chance of adding another notch to the journalistic gun handle, maybe even a Pulitzer Prize. There are no bigger fish to catch, so the media follows Willie Sutton's law. They stand drooling over their desks waiting, hoping desperately to taste the blood of their victims. I'm not talking about some "vast left-wing conspiracy" BS, just the mainstream media mindset, which amounts to an answer in search of a question. And many folks, like yourself, blogic, buy right in. Fortunately, the mainstream media no longer have a stranglehold on the sources and flow of information. Thank goodness for cable, satellite and the internet.

Cheers,
Daiwa
on Oct 15, 2004
Draginol: The original neoconservatives were social liberals who came to believe in a hawkish foreign policy. I'm talking about them. Irving Kristol is usually considered the founder of neoconservatism. You may know of his son, William Kristol. I guess Paul Wolfowitz is currently the most prominent member. I guess I would say you believe in neoconservatism if you're socially liberal but believe the US should spend lots of money and effort to build liberal democracies around the world, with a focus on regions that are strategically important. The neo-conservatives believe in nation building. They're more like pre-Vietnam War liberals than they're like traditional conservatives (who are skeptical of nation building and the idea that you can introduce liberal democratic culture to areas with very different cultural histories than Europe).

Daiwa: I'm not sure how your second paragraph relates to what I wrote here. Regarding the first paragraph, I never said that the neo-conservatives want Iraq -- or any other American build liberal democracy -- to be an American colony. I said that they believe America should be nation building liberal democracies -- that is, sovereign nations. I think the neo-conservatives assume that democracies are relatively friendly to each other -- historically, democracies almost never fight wars against other democracies. You've described the Bush administration approach to rebuilding Iraq, but the neo-conservative vision is a much grander one: it involves putting enormous resources into building a full western-style liberal democracy with a vibrant free economy. As I've said, this is very expensive, and I think that some of the neo-conservatives hoped that Iraq's oil would pay for much of the work. That said, the neo-conservatives think that building these liberal democracies is so stratgically important that America should bear the large nation building cost, if necessary. The Bush administration has gone against neo-conservative theory to try to do it on the cheap, which at best will result in a partially democratic country with a weak economy, at least in the short term. That is not a neconservative approach to (or goal in) liberal democratic nation building.