I want to draw your attention to a good article at Vox.com by Max Fisher. The article chronicles the meteoric rise in influence of neoconservatives and their precipitous decline. In about twenty years they went from a fairly obscure clique of intellectuals to dominating Republican foreign policy thought back to the wilderness.
It’s amazing how unpopular you can become when your premises are demonstrably false.
For my money here’s the best quote in the piece:
In a mid-February debate, for example, Trump united the half-dozen other candidates against him by declaring that the Iraq invasion had been a disaster. A week later, he again said something that so outraged the other candidates that they once again all agreed Trump had gone beyond the pale: He declared that he would remain officially neutral on Israel-Palestine. Trump also drew objections for warning that regime change in Syria would risk exacerbating chaos there.
On the surface, these seem like banal and even mainstream positions, especially compared with Trump’s other statements. Official US policy on Israel-Palestine has been neutrality for decades. On Iraq, both foreign policy experts and voters largely consider the 2003 invasion a terrible mistake. Pentagon officials themselves often lament wasteful spending. And most Syria analysts agree that removing Assad by force would worsen the violence.
But Trump’s statements, reasonable though they might seem to many voters, appalled neoconservative-aligned writers and establishment candidates. And that may have been deliberate: Trump was directly challenging neoconservative orthodoxy, which states that the Iraq War was just and necessary, that intervention and regime change are desirable, and that the US must side unequivocally with Israel.
This put neoconservatives in the position of denouncing Trump for positions that are, in fact, quite mainstream. In those moments, as establishment candidates shouted down Trump for saying things that would be uncontroversial to most people, what you were seeing was the degree to which neoconservatives had estranged their party’s foreign policy from the actual preferences of its voters.
Read the whole thing.
Just one more bit of ‘conservative’ hypocrisy. The whole howling mob was after Mr. Obama for failing to lick Netanyahu’s shoes. But now, suddenly, they’re “neutral” in the Israeli-Palestinian fight.
The black man who vows support for Israel is evil, the white man who goes ten steps further and entirely abandons Israel, is just fine.
What allegedly deeply-held belief will conservatives surrender next? What frauds. What phonies and liars.
Sorry, I find the article unreadable and the use of the term “neocon” anymore is not something that sheds light on a topic, but a vehicle for disinformation. I would much prefer that if the Mead categories like Wilsonian were used.
What I think we are seeing is a nadir of Wilsonianism. Americans don’t want to be involved in foreign affairs, there is bipartisan disapproval of opening the country to refugees under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and there is not bipartisan support for closing Guantanamo despite Obama pushing for its elimination on international human rights grounds. The other night, Trump was bragging about torturing family members of terrorists. (If neocons tend to be Wilsonian/Jacksonian combos, Trump certainly talks the Jacksonian part.)
I’ve not read Goldberg’s piece on the Obama doctrine, but if the Iran deal was intended by him to further remove the U.S. from the Middle East, whereas the foreign-policy community insisted that the deal would require increased and vigilant engagement for it to work, then one of Obama’s signature “achievements” is not Wilsonian, but Jeffersonian.
All and all though, Clinton, a clear Wilsonian, is most likely to be elected, and most Republicans do not appear to want Trump as their nominee, so its hard to know what the long-term significance will be. Wilsonianism has never been popular, but the citizens allowed their leadership to pursue it so long as domestic concerns were satisfied adequately.
Unlike many who view “neoconservative” as a sort of swear-word or synonymous with “Republican”, I tend to see it as a collective noun for a relatively small number of individuals (Kagan, Kristol, etc.) who wielded enormous influence on the Bush II Administration, particularly in the early years.
” back to the wilderness.”
Really? I don’t see much daylight between neocons and Clinton and the GOP candidates, probably even including Trump. Several of them have promised to prioritize Israel’s safety. Yes, Trump will do stuff like criticize the Iraq War, but then he gets major pushback, showing that the neocon influence is still strong in the GOP. Then add in the fact that Trump just said that he would put troops on the ground in Syria, and how far away is he from conventional neocon thought? Part of Trump’s schtick is being a tough guy. He is going to end with advisors who will advise doing thought things, like putting troops in the ground and/or bombing new peoples. Heck, even Obama who has generally done a good job at not going overboard on intervention has Nuland working for him. I think that it will be almost impossible to find “serious” foreign policy advisers who are not interventionists, and most of those will be neocons.
Dave- I don’t know how big a group they are, but I think it pretty clear that they retain outsized influence.
Steve
The neocons are basically Trump, but they intersperse their calls for blood with references to the Enlightenment thinkers. He’ll be in it for the resources or for the vengeance. There will be no weird bow-tie dudes talking about Burke and the West while we flatten another Fallujah.
If you read the insane narrative of how we got into Libya, Hillary is the dumbass who was conned by a less corrupt Ahmed Chalabi.
I think there are two most likely explanations of why we bombed Libya, both of which may be correct. The first is that the Obama advisors who support the idea of of a “responsibility to protect” (R2P, i.e. Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Gayle Smith, Valerie Jarrett) got their way. The other is that we got snookered by the Brits and French (that’s what I argued early on).
“The other is that we got snookered by the Brits and French (that’s what I argued early on).”
Still partially true I think. However, there is a third explanation. The neocons wanted us to (big surprise) take a much more active role in Libya, including putting boots on the ground. Obama, as always, went for the middle way and lead from behind with bombing.
Steve
The other is that we got snookered by the Brits and French (that’s what I argued early on).
According to the Times article, Clinton was really impressed with the leader of the Libyan opposition:
Mrs. Clinton was won over. Opposition leaders “said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,†said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. “They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.â€
Some hope.
Anyone claiming to know what Trump’s foreign policy will be does not understand Trump. Trump is a psychopath. Bold, uninhibited, manipulative, charming, dishonest, amoral and mean. He does not see and analyze the world the way ordinary people do. I’m a reformed psychopath myself and I feel his every move and every word. I find it almost reassuring – another person who sees the world in terms of opportunities and vulnerabilities. Another person for whom morality is a sort of after-market add-on. But Trump never had his come-to-Jesus moment, he never grew up. He remains pure, unmodified psychopath.
To Trump the whole world is a herd of wildebeest and he’s a hungry lion. He doesn’t see you, he sees the artery in your neck and calculates the distance between it and his teeth. He’ll promise you whatever you wish to be promised, even as he’s considering whether to grill, fry or roast you.
His promises mean absolutely nothing. His stated policies mean absolutely nothing. He has no beliefs. He stands for nothing but himself, and he never will, not by this age. His voters are utterly irrelevant to him except as tools. His world consists of himself and creatures he uses.
All these editorial writers, the other candidates, the reporters, they are ordinary people using ordinary tools of analysis to try to come to terms with someone who is completely outside their experience. They are continually surprised. The only thing that surprises me is just how stupid the wildebeest are. They’re milling around thinking, “Maybe the hungry lion will lead us to greener pastures.”
If the issue is that Trump is not giving adequate respect for the Manhattan Jewish Republican contingency, I think the larger point is being missed that Trump has no foreign policy advisers.
Trump has made one concrete promise that does not involve a wall, and that is to release the names of his foreign policy advisers. According to the Truman National Security clock, it’s been 172 days.
I’m thinking Jeffersonian/Jacksonian. Jeffersonian in practice, Jacksonian in rhetoric, and if anything happens on a theoretic Trump watch, Jacksonian retribution. More likely a neocon is elected though, those crafty bastards.
So does advocating vaporizing significant portions of the Middle East make one a neocon, psychopath………..reformed psychopath ??
@michael reynolds
… I’m a reformed psychopath myself …
I had you pegged for one a long time ago, but I ain’t buying the “reformed” crap one bit. You might be in remission, but that is it. I have always found it funny that your acolytes never realized that you are the perfect henchman and would put a bullet through their head as soon as they were no longer of any use.
I have had an actual “come-to-Jesus” moment, and it is still not easy.
… They’re milling around thinking, “Maybe the hungry lion will lead us to greener pastures.â€
Again, no. They are hoping the lion eats the elites that are running the place or, at least, scares the sh*t out of them. If he actually builds the wall and does something about trade with China, over 50% of the people in political, business, academic, legal, judicial, media, entertainment, or any other position of authority will go ape sh*t.
The game has changed. The old rules do not apply. The bottom on your side are slowly starting to wake-up. The days of one set of white men scaring black voters by calling another set of white men racist, and when it comes time for the winnings to be split, somehow the black voters are always the losers.
“When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.”
What allegedly deeply-held belief will conservatives surrender next? What frauds. What phonies and liars.
As the kids ask these days, “Why you mad, bro?”
You’re rich, Jewish, Democratic. You’re going to get everything you ever wanted from politics.
According to you EVERYTHING the Republicans have EVER stood for is evil, wrong and, worst of all, RACIST. Everything since Nixon got all the votes from all those racist Southern whites anyway. (I guess it was blacks that voted for Wallace.) Now they’re falling apart, and according to you it will be nothing but a Democratic Utopia from now on.
White people are about to be drowned in a flood of hundreds of millions of blacks and browns (with a few yellows allowed in here in there, if they’re rich).
You are going to get the dream Democratic economy, which means lots of support for millionaires and billionaires and lots of policy to hammer the middle class (especially the white middle class) into abject poverty.
Lots of government jobs to be handed out to those with the right connections.
It can’t be that the Republicans started wars. Obama has been hot & heavy for war and assassination since he got into office. Hell, not a week goes by when he doesn’t order more women and children killed. He sent his advisers out to leak all the information to the press in 2012, to brag about what a tough guy he was. The only difference is he doesn’t put boots on the ground.
But you can’t be upset that Americans got killed & maimed in Republican wars, since those folks are overwhelmingly the kind of non-rich whites that you despise for their racism. You hate all our guts anyway.
And now you will get a permanent Democratic majority, once Hillary gets in and declares that every poor person in the world should come to America.
So why you mad, bro?
“When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.â€
Yep, the people howling bloody murder now are shitting themselves over the possibility that Trump MIGHT mean what he says. I have no idea if he does or not, but I do know that he pisses off all the right people.
And as you say, I ain’t got nothin’ to lose.
And now Dems have taken to violence to stop Trump. No more bullshit about what a great group of guys you are. You’re nothing m,ore than a bunch of Stalinist thugs.
The most disgusting part is seeing the media try to shift blame. You come to someone else’s rally and start a riot, that’s on you, motherfuckers.
DailyKos is now banning people for saying they’ll vote for Trump if Sanders doesn’t win.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/03/04/1495813/-March-15-and-Daily-Kos-transition-to-General-Election-footing
Not surprising. There has always been a strong Stalinist streak among the Kos Kidz.
“DailyKos is now banning people for saying they’ll vote for Trump if Sanders doesn’t win.”
Ironically, the liberal left is far from liberal in allowing people to voice their differences in opinion. It should really be renamed the “Intolerant Left.” Furthermore, it’s more and more disturbing how unaware (stupid) the Intolerant Left has become in willfully acting out behavior that will eventually annihilate the very ability to openly dissent and be disobedient in the future. For them, it’s unfortunately all about short term, senseless rebellion, not the maintenance of long term civil rights for everyone.