The piece by Martin Jacques in the Guardian that Trunk linked to below --"The Neocon Revolution" -- is less objectionable than I expected. For example, Jacques recognizes that President Bush's foreign policy is not driven by a single-minded ideological commitment either to unilateralism or to regime change. Rather, administration policy, though informed by certain basic principles, is formulated rationally on a case-by-case basis.

I do wonder, though, what Jacques and others mean when they characterize the administration as "neo-conservative." The people in charge -- President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld -- were not, to my knowledge, considered neo-conservatives in the past. And the administration's emphasis on the pursuit of democracy stands in contrast to the views of original neo-conservatives like Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who vigorously opposed “totalitarian” regimes but did not attach much importance to converting “authoritarian” regimes into democracies.

There's no inherent harm in calling the administration's policy neo-conservative. The mischief lies in the implication that the policy is not indigenous to the administrative, but instead results from a "hijacking" by "revolutionary" cosmopolitan intellectuals.

Posted by Paul at 11:09 PM  |    |  

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