5 minute read
America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy
aegis 2007
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. 264 pp.
Cassi Smith
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
actual neoconservatives” (40). While politically minded Americans may see neoconservatives as Bush and Iraqi war supporters, Fukuyama strays from this stereotype. The second portion of America at the Crossroads contains Fukuyama’s critique of the Bush administration’s dealing with the Iraq war. He believes that the threat that Suddam Hussein posed was exaggerated and America took a high risk chance when it decided to add a new dimension to foreign policy: preemptive strike. Fukuyama explains that preemptive action has always been a possibility in American foreign policy, but Bush’s National Security Strategy of the United States takes this concept a step further than previous administrations. “Preemption is usually understood to be an effort to break up an imminent military attack; preventive war is a military operation designed to head off a threat that is months or years away from materializing” (83). Changing the national security strategy was not the eminent mistake the Presidency made, the reasoning behind the Iraq war was the historical mistake. “The problem with NSS doctrine was that in order to justify stretching the definition of preemption to include preventive war against nonimminent threats, the administration needed to be right about the dangers facing the United States. As it turned out, it overestimated the threat from Iraq specifically, and from nuclear terrorism more generally” (84). Throughout his critique of the Bush administration Fukuyama points to the National Security Strategy of the United States as the basis for his negative opinion about Operation Iraqi Freedom. The second major mishandling of the war Fukuyama focuses on is the rebuilding process. This was another facet of the Iraq war that was not fully thought through before invading because as neoconservatives see democracy promotion as the American moral duty, they distrust ambitious social programs.
It is the area of political and economic development that two important neoconservative principles potentially collide. On the one hand, neoconservatives rightly believe that internal character of regime is important: liberal democracies tend to respect the basic human right of their citizens and are less externally aggressive than dictatorships…On the other hand, another strand of neoconservative thought has emphasized the dangers of overly ambitious social engineering (114).
So once democracy is promoted by military force in places such as Iraq there is no set of social plans to get democracy stabilized and an economy started. Fukuyama suggests that America should invest more organization into soft power that promotes democracy through social engineering and development rather than military forces that focus only on regime change. “Foreign policy has revolved around activities like fighting wars, balancing threats, or negotiating agreements. Development has always come as an afterthought, a kind of mop-up activity pursued when the ‘serious’ players left the stage” (139). Fukuyama’s major idea seems to lay in his analysis of America’s role as a force that promotes democracy through military force. His major suggestion is to develop more programs within foreign policy that help countries develop socially, not only militarily. America at the Crossroads is a worthwhile read for anyone who hates neoconservatives or the hard headed military force that America seems content on using. Fukuyama provides a fresh look at what neoconservatism used to be and what it has become; he then dismantles President Bush’s administration’s reasoning behind Iraq and view of American military might. The foreign policy changes Fukuyama suggests are worthwhile ideas that hopefully future generations will employ to nations finding themselves in need of social change.
