Fukuyama, Francis. America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. 264 pp. Cassi Smith
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In light of this current presidential administration, criticism has become easy. This criticism is easy when it is so obvious to the American public that the Iraq war has become a major blunder, if not a historical mistake on account of Bush and company. The connections between Iraq and Al Quida were small, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and Operation Iraqi Freedom is taking longer and is more costly in American life than previously expected. When things are going obviously wrong, it is easy for the media to criticize and the American people follow suit. When it became apparent that September 11 was an excuse for America’s leaders to act on an Iraq invasion plan that has existed long before Bush’s election, it became easy to criticize neoconservatives as a whole for a plan only a few drafted. The media defined neoconservatives as those within the American conservatism that sought it as America’s moral duty to enact democratic government around the world, with little regard to international organizations. Therefore with all the easily criticized ideas that the Iraq war has produced it has become easy to criticize neoconservatives without any knowledge of what neoconservatism entails. In fact, neoconservatism contains its own Iraqi war and Bush administration dissenters. Former neoconservative, Francis Fukuyama’s book, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, provides a history and a definition of neoconservatism as well as a critique of the Bush administration’s meddling in Iraq. According to Fukuyama, the beginnings of neoconservatism came in the 1930s out of anti-communist reaction to the Soviet Union, these first neoconservatives were from both sides of the aisle, and current conservatism has recently taken up neoconservative ideas. Fukuyama seems to characterize neoconservatives as individuals with varying ideas, but have four main principles in common: “that the internal character of regimes matters and that foreign policy must reflect the deepest values of liberal democratic societies,” “American power has been and could be used for moral purposes, and that the United States needs to remain engaged in international affairs,” “a distrust of ambitious social engineering projects,” and “skepticism about the legitimacy and effectiveness of international law and institutions to achieve either security or justice” (48-49). While the ideas perpetuated in The Weekly Standard, or The National Interest may differ to some extent, these four characteristics make up neoconservatives, or at least used to. These four characteristics are much more viable and less extreme than the common perception of neoconservatives as a group of right wing extremists who create democracy across the globe by violating the sovereignty of other countries in the name of just moral purposes. In fact, this perception is a new concept perpetuated by neoconservative William Kristol and Robert Kagan in the late 1990s’ issues of The Weekly Standard. Fukuyama explains, “The Kristol-Kagan effort to redefine neoconservatism in this fashion has been immensely successful, insofar as most people around the world now perceive it this way; such people will not be persuaded to change their minds regardless of the facts about the diverse views of
