Neoconservatism: Not Idealism, Just a Sick Joke – by Anatol Lieven

[Time for change]

Arguing the World
By Bernard-Henri Lévy and Anatol Lieven
The American Prospect
April 8, 2006

The above article is the full transcript of a debate between Bernard-Henry Levy and Anatol Lieven, on the Neoconservative movement and related issues, with Lieven taking the anti-Neocon position and Henry Levy taking a position which is difficult to decipher, but which contends that the Neocon movement has at least some merit.

What I find most valuable about the article is the concise and biting arguments that Lieven makes against the Neocons, exposing their blatant hypocrisy and their devastating effect on our country. That is what I summarize here:


Lieven begins by stating that the success of the Neocon movement is based on strains of American national tradition, but with a radical twist. These strains of American tradition include the following:

1) American’s right and duty to spread its democratic model to the rest of the world.

2) Hatred, contempt, and fear directed at the rest of the world.

3) The needs of the military industrial complex that were endangered by the end of the Cold War.

4) A passionate defense of Israel (which Lieven agrees is a praiseworthy motive in itself, but believes that when it is translated into unconditional U.S. backing of Israel in their conflict with Palestinians, it is counterproductive to the goal of peace in the middle east and in the world.)


Of the four strains noted above, Lieven concentrates primarily on the first one (After all, there isn’t much need to argue against numbers 2 and 3, right?). With regard to American’s duty to spread its democratic model to the rest of the world, Lieven has this to say about the Neocon approach:

The problem with emphasizing democratization in this way is that it is radically incompatible with the actual policies of the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, as fully encouraged and supported by the neoconservatives. This contradiction between ideals and realpolitik was always there in U.S. policy. The neoconservatives and the Bush administration, however, have raised this contradiction to surreal, virtually Orwellian heights. They believe in spreading human rights and the rule of law? So they kidnap suspected terrorists and have them tortured in illegal U.S. prisons and in those of Muslim dictatorships whose human-rights records they publicly profess to despise. They want to bring democracy to the Muslim world? So they act with brazen contempt for the opinions of the vast majority of ordinary Muslims in democracies like Turkey and Indonesia.

The Bush administration and the neoconservatives believe in free elections? So every time this seems likely to bring victory for Islamist forces, they veer back to support for dictatorship. They respect ordinary Iraqis and believe they are ready for democracy? They respect them so much that they try to foist Ahmed Chalabi on them as a U.S.-backed dictator, and they share the general approach of the U.S. military, which respects them so much that it doesn't bother to count how many of them it accidentally kills.

This is not idealism, but a sick joke. And it reflects not real belief in democracy, but what might better be called democratism. It bears the same relationship to real democratic thinking as Soviet Communism did to the original ideals of Marxism.

In exposing the expressed idealism of the Neocons as nothing but hypocrisy, Lieven points out that when the Carter administration tried to make human rights the centerpiece of its international strategy, the Neocons denounced that strategy as hopelessly naïve and insisted instead that we continue to support dictatorships if that served our national interest. Lieven continues by making a parallel to the Napoleonic Wars:

What the neoconservatives see as American vital interests will always trump their professed ideals. This makes them not idealists, but a species of revolutionary realists. However, like most revolutionaries, they are realists whose capacity for ruthlessness is considerably enhanced by their genuine belief that they are deeply moral and that “the winds of history are in their sails,” to use the old Communist phrase. This is a classically Jacobin mixture, and, as Robespierre himself came belatedly to recognize, “no one likes armed missionaries.” The French attempt back then to spread a mixture of revolutionary values and French empire across Europe led not to a triumph for liberalism or democracy, but a series of dreadful wars ending in the triumph of European reaction…. People who sympathize with neoconservative ideas about changing the world by force while expanding American imperial power should watch out that this does not lead them, step after logical step, to Kissingerian or dare I say it even Napoleonic positions.

Lieven is not against foreign intervention to support democracy under all circumstances. However, he notes that the power of setting our own example is the best way to do this, and:

This means that we have to be careful that the local examples of democracy that we support are visibly better than their authoritarian neighbors. This is something that we have failed to do in much of Latin America in recent decades, resulting in a series of populist and semi-authoritarian backlashes against corrupt, brutal, oligarch-ruled pseudo-democracies.

But above all, we must preserve our own democratic model as one that visibly defends freedom at home, guarantees basic economic security to the mass of its population, defends the weakest elements of society, and pursues peace, cooperation, and development abroad. If we do this, then in the end people all over the world will want to abandon their own failed systems and adopt ours, just as the Eastern bloc peoples did.

And he ends with an excellent summary of the Bush administration’s five years worth of accomplishments:

And this, in the end, is my most bitter accusation against the neoconservatives and the Bush administration, one in which I believe you may well wish to join: that by a whole set of actions at home and abroad, they have badly damaged the image of American democracy in the world. By doing so, they have also damaged the attractiveness of democracy in general, and strengthened the arguments of democracy's enemies. This has been their fundamental betrayal of the ideals of which they profess to be the arch-defenders. For this, I believe, they will be cursed by posterity.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. I would roll up 1, 2 & 3 as "make the rest of the world CUSTOMERS for

US-based multinationals"

When they say "freedom" (a code word they use almost interchangeably with "democracy"), they mean ECONOMIC freedom (unrestrained capitalism) not PERSONAL freedom.

[mom cat]

2. You beat me to it. the only freedom they cherish is the freedom to force

repressive trade agreementsdown the throats of most of the world and the freedom of the mega rich to amass obscene wealth at the expence of the ever more impoverished masses. They aspire to a new feudalism and global domination for the new aristocracy, all bought and paid for by our sweat and toil and the degradation of the planet.

[Time for change]

5. Yes, they have a very perverse idea of the meaning of freedom

They demand the freedom of their corporate friends to run our elections without being accountable for the accuracy of their voting machines. These are sacred private property, so they use the "proprietary" nature of these machines, which count the votes in our public elections, to claim that the public has no right to examine them to verify that they weren't used fraudulently.

And they demand the freedom of their corporate friends to contribute unlimited money to their campaigns, which is really just a form of legalized bribery, but they justify it on the basis that "money is speech".

And they demand the freedom of their corporate friends to pollute the environment without being responsible for cleaning it up.

There is a very good book about this privatization movement, which they equate with freedom, which I discuss here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5531195&mesg_id=5531195

[Time for change]

4. How about this:

# 3 is one of their main goals.

# 2 is a mechanism that they use to achieve their goals.

and # 1 is the excuse they use to give themselves a moral window dressing and let themselves feel self-richeous and superior to everyone else.

And yes, they mean economic "freedom", but for themselves. I don't see that they care about the economic freedom of other countries.

[ninkasi]

3. Neocons take the definition

of "hypocrisy" to levels we never imagined before now.

[Time for change]

6. Yes, like Lieven says,

"...contradiction between ideals and realpolitik was always there in U.S. policy. The neoconservatives and the Bush administration, however, have raised this contradiction to surreal, virtually Orwellian heights."