green_tara
16.08.04, 13:46
The Vision Thing
Reviewed by Stanley I. Kutler
Sunday, August 15, 2004; Page BW05
AMERICA ALONE
The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order
By Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke
Cambridge Univ. 369 pp. $28
Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke are experienced, conservative foreign
policy experts. Halper served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the
Reagan administration, and Clarke had extensive service in the British
diplomatic corps. In America Alone they document the neoconservative capture
of American (and British) foreign policy, under the guise of a War on Terror,
to reorder Middle East politics and initiate a newly proclaimed doctrine of
preemptive war. Halper and Clarke are insiders who know the players and the
sources. Their thoughtful, insightful work spans ideological and partisan
differences, a rare phenomenon in these times.
The authors understand the two-centuries-long history of American foreign
policy. Detente, bipartisanship and respect for the views of allies are at
the center of that history; they are not, as the neocons would have it,
notions of weakness best replaced by a militant American world view and
unilateralism. Halper and Clarke blend realism and idealism. For them,
victory in the Cold War resulted from a firm U.S. adherence to the doctrine
of containment and a moral authority rooted in fostering the idea of a free,
open society. Now, the authors contend, President George W. Bush and a band
of ideological zealots have put that moral authority at risk.
America Alone levels a broad indictment against the Bush administration,
which in the name of the war on terror has launched the Iraq war, mounted an
assault on personal liberties at home, engaged in a purposeful deceit of the
media and the public (both of which suspended any critical judgment) and,
above all, has inflicted terrible damage on U.S. moral authority and
international legitimacy. The chief culprits for the authors are the neocons,
who are depicted as conspirators who hijacked American foreign policy.
This is not exactly news, but the argument never has been put together so
persuasively, so conclusively and so effectively. The authors' conservative
critique is part of a steadily growing chorus of opposition. The Democrats
now are emboldened to challenge the president. The Internet offers numerous
libertarian Web sites that, for more than two years, have consistently
exposed the fallacy of the Bush administration's arguments. Patrick Buchanan,
too, has spoken out from the right, though some are uneasy with his overt
hostility to Israel. The authors reflect the views of these and other critics
from traditional Republican and conservative camps.
What Halper and Clarke have done is to meticulously dissect the neocon world
view. They trace the neocons' beginnings to their roots as Democratic
dissidents, uneasy with a perception of their party's growing isolationism,
softness toward national defense and reluctance to assert America's moral
authority. The neocons saw the Vietnam War as an unduly paralyzing event.
They began as an intellectual movement, and their adherents moved from the
academy and the media into positions of power and policy influence,
particularly in the Reagan administration.
Today neocons are the key players in the Bush administration, including Vice
President Dick Cheney; his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld; and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz. They are seconded
by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and influential academic
intellectuals and writers who preach warnings and celebrate their alleged
triumphs. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute has somberly
described the French as a "strategic enemy." Max Boot, author of a book
celebrating the United States' "splendid little wars," said that the American
sweep through Iraq made "Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively
incompetent by comparison." (Well, they were not fortunate enough to fight
Saddam's vaunted Republican guard.) Boot loves war so much that he envisions
a United States like the British Empire of old, always fighting some war,
somewhere, against someone. And we thought that the British Empire collapsed
under the weight of all that white man's burden.
The neocons have exalted values over interests in shaping American policy. To
further their agenda, they have masked themselves as the true keepers of the
Reagan flame, but Halper and Clarke will have none of that. The neocons, they
bluntly charge, have "falsified history" and have inflicted a "historical
mugging" on Reagan. Like George Orwell, the authors understand that those who
control the past control the present and, eventually, the future.
The neocons have ignored Reagan's strong commitment to arms control, his
summitry, his minimal use of military power and his rejection of the nuclear
doctrines of their mentor, Albert Wohlstetter. They similarly ignore Reagan's
China policy, his arms deal with Iran and his failed Lebanon intervention.
They love Reagan's invasion of Grenada, which made the Caribbean safe for
American medical students, but they insist that in doing so he thwarted a
rising communist power. They were decidedly unhappy when Reagan lifted the
grain embargo on the Soviets, a decision that he hoped would result
in "meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling
our joint obligation to find lasting peace."
The neocons' mobilization for the Iraq war lies at the heart of this book.
Saddam Hussein's tyranny apparently gave them no pause during his 10-year war
with Iran, waged with arms provided by the United States and England. But
George H.W. Bush's Persian Gulf War in 1991 left them embittered when Bush
prudently decided that occupying Baghdad would only complicate the American
role and endanger the grand alliance he had constructed. The neocons were
convinced that toppling Saddam would enable the United States to make Middle
East politics more responsive to American wishes
