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Please Don’t Bring Back the Neocons
David Brooks, one of the pretend conservatives at the New York Times (Bret Stephens is the other), takes to the pages of The Atlantic (not widely known for publishing conservatives) to call for a return to power of — get ready — the neoconservatives. In his essay, titled (in the print edition) “Bring Back the Neocons,” Brooks claims we need them back in power because “[t]hey focused their attention on the bloody crossroads where morality and politics intersect” and “they asked the big questions — not just How can we win the next election? but How can we create a civilization we can be proud of?” The neocons write about politics, Brooks claims, with a “moral and spiritual tenor” that “could be a tonic for a society in moral and spiritual crisis.” (RELATED: Yes, New York Times, A Christian Can Be Both Pro-Life and Pro-Secure Borders)
While the neocons may ask big questions, they rarely supply the right answers.
Brooks provides a brief history of the political evolution of the neoconservatives from their Trotskyite days in the 1930s to their alignment with true conservatives near the end of the Cold War. Most of the Trotskyite future neocons, Brooks accurately writes, became FDR-style Democrats, and after World War II, they often pursued literary or academic careers. And he acknowledges that their literary and academic pursuits later contributed to President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs that were intended to “eliminate poverty and inequality.” They did neither, but did add significantly to the power and reach of the “managerial state” that former Trotskyite James Burnham warned about in the early 1940s. (RELATED: James Burnham Meets the Woke Editor)
The future neocons believed in increasing the power of the federal government to pursue liberal policies at home and interventionist policies abroad.
The future neocons believed in increasing the power of the federal government to pursue liberal policies at home and interventionist policies abroad. In foreign policy, those who became neoconservatives were, and still are, the intellectual disciples of Woodrow Wilson.
Brooks acknowledges the failures of the Great Society and the domestic disillusionment caused by political malfeasance and cultural decline in the 1960s. The future neocons called this the rise of the “New Left” to distinguish it from the Old Left — themselves. The future neocons criticized the New Left and moved temporarily, though not enthusiastically, toward the conservative movement, which was then becoming ascendant within the Republican Party and later took over the party with the candidacy of Ronald Reagan.
Brooks fails to mention that the neocons did not immediately embrace Reagan and his brand of conservatism. First, they formed the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and attempted to join the ranks of the Carter administration. It was only after Carter rejected their wooing that they turned on him and became part of the Reagan coalition, producing seminal intellectual works such as Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards” and Norman Podhoretz’s The Present Danger, which were highly critical of Carter’s foreign policy. Podhoretz transformed Commentary into a pro-Reagan magazine, and many of its contributors, including Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, and Richard Pipes, found positions in the Reagan administration, especially in the area of national security. Those neocons played an important role in helping Reagan win the Cold War. (RELATED: The Elusive ‘Conservative Consensus’)
But the neocons never seemed completely comfortable with the Reagan coalition, especially the Moral Majority, paleoconservatives, and libertarians. What kept the coalition together was Reagan’s leadership and anti-communism. Significantly, as the Cold War wound down in the last years of the Reagan administration, some neocons criticized Reagan’s deal-making with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was almost as if they didn’t want the Cold War to end. And when it did end, the neocons lost their enemy and the main reason for joining the conservative movement.
Some neocons, like Jeane Kirkpatrick, wanted the U.S. to become a “normal country” again. But others, like Paul Wolfowitz, looked for new enemies to slay, and they weren’t slow in coming forward. The first Gulf War brought the neocons to the fore again, but President George H. W. Bush’s settlement of that war — pushing Iraq out of Kuwait but letting Saddam Hussein’s regime survive — left the neocons unsatisfied. They wanted regime change, even though a weaker Iraq meant a stronger Iran. The terrorist attacks on 9/11, coupled with faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, provided the neocons with a second opportunity for regime change in Iraq. Ironically, the neocons’ instrument for “finishing the job” left undone by Bush 41 turned out to be his son, George W. Bush. (RELATED: The Unintended Consequences of War)
The attacks on 9/11 transformed Bush 43 into a Wilsonian neoconservative. Indeed, Bush 43 turned out to be more Wilsonian than Wilson. Wilson wanted to make the world safe for democracy. Bush 43 sought to transform ancient civilizations and tribes into small “d” democrats and launched a global crusade to do so. The result was endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Simultaneously, Bush 43 became the greatest champion of NATO enlargement. During his presidency, seven countries (Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Slovenia) joined NATO, two more countries (Albania and Croatia) took steps in that direction, and Bush publicly suggested that Ukraine and Georgia join the alliance. All of this was done despite Russian protests.
Then in 2014, the neocons in the Obama administration helped to engineer a “color revolution” in Ukraine that overthrew a pro-Russian regime and installed a pro-Western one. Russia reacted as George Kennan and other experts predicted — it invaded and seized Crimea in 2014, and eight years later invaded the eastern provinces of Ukraine. The neocons had another war to fight with Western arms and Ukrainian blood.
Brooks admits that he and the other neocons were wrong about Iraq. He is largely silent about NATO expansion and Ukraine. In fact, Brooks’s article mostly shies away from neocon foreign policy, instead highlighting academic abstractions that neocons are more comfortable with. Neoconservatism today, he writes, can help the U.S. by showing us that “character is destiny,” bourgeois virtues are important, “culture drives history,” and the “American dream is real.” Brooks expresses his disappointment that President Biden and his key advisers didn’t know how to wage a moral and cultural battle, while acknowledging that President Trump does it very well. Brooks wants the neocons to help Democrats become better culture warriors to politically defeat MAGA. (RELATED: Bush Republicanism Can’t Win the Votes We Need to Save America)
Today’s neocons are a far cry from their forebearers, like Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick. The neocons Brooks wants back in power are people like Max Boot (wrong about almost everything he writes about, including his recent biography of Reagan) and Bill Kristol (who endorsed Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City). There is nothing conservative about them. They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. For the sake of our country, please don’t bring the neocons back.
READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa:
Trump’s Post-Globalist ‘Flexible Realism’
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