The coming foreign policy civil wars: Part Two – The Republicans

A friend who lives in London spoke to me recently about the column I am about to write. “It’s always hardest writing about something you care about passionately,” he wryly said, knowing that I live the coming Republican foreign policy civil war every day.

Click here for part one of John Hulsman’s assessment of foreign policy debates inside the United States, looking at the Democrats

Like everybody else in Washington, my career will rise and fall on the outcome of this battle. I do not claim to be neutral and unbiased about the realist / neo-conservative joust for the soul of the Republican party. But I do claim to know my enemy, the neo-conservatives, very well. And I do not, as so many Europeans stupidly do, underestimate them.

For until now, the neo-conservatives have won. Their adherents – Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, and his young and aggressive staff; Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense; John Bolton, undersecretary of state – have made most of the intellectual running during President Bush’s administration. Again, the neo-cons worry me not because they are dumb. I am opposed to them because they are smart – very, very wrong, and very, very smart.

In this, they remind me – an echo heard also by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke in their recent openDemocracy article – of no one so much as the bright young things (McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, Ted Sorensen) clustered around the Kennedy White House, who led us ever deeper into the tragedy of Vietnam.

Like the JFK boys, too often the neo-cons don’t let facts get in the way of their theory – for the Kennedy administration it was counterinsurgency, for the Bush administration the notion that democracy can be quickly and effectively spread around the world. These were silver bullets that would somehow undo the laws of history – that change does not proceed in a straight line, that it is often maddeningly slow, and that the world is not a blank slate fit for the Americans to write on.

The power of simplicity

But I get ahead of myself. What have the neo-cons done that’s been so effective?

The simple answer is this: On 12 September 2001, the neo-cons had an answer for this brutal new reality: America is uniquely powerful; America is uniquely vulnerable. From this basic assessment the highlighting of the pre-emption doctrine flowed logically. In the approach to war in Iraq, many Europeans asked, “Where is the smoking gun?” Neo-conservative thinking made a mockery of this. If a smoking gun was found, it would mean we’d all been shot.

America after11 September 2001 as simply not prepared to wait for the next cataclysm to befall it. Instead, the neo-cons offered a dynamic alternative: we would attack problems waiting to happen in a manner that had been disgracefully lacking during the latter days of the Clinton administration regarding Osama bin Laden. We would do so, moreover, in the name of democracy; for it did not escape the White House’s attention that the states lying at the possible nexus between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – Iraq, North Korea, and even Iran (let alone Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) – were not western-style democracies.

The spread of democracy would drain the swamp, as democracies have an impressive record of not going to war with one another. The genius of the neo-cons was to fuse in a new way two permanent features of American foreign policy thinking - idealistic quasi-Wilsonian missionary zeal and hard-headed Jacksonian Realpolitik. This was something new (although the basis of the idea goes back to Irving Kristol in the 1930s) that was at the same time undeniably, organically, American.

All this made realists, traditionally dominant in the party, extremely nervous. If the neo-cons thought the world is one of American empire, realists saw it in a more complex way; for them, the US was “chairman of the board” whatever the issue, but other board members existed, and at least some of them needed to be persuaded if global problems were to be addressed.

In other words, neo-cons are drawn to the MacArthur view of how to lead, while realists favour the Eisenhower model. Where neo-cons were enthusiastically for war with Iraq, realists were far more divided, with leading realists such as Brent Scowcroft (former national security adviser) against, while Henry Kissinger (former secretary of state) was only tepidly in favour. The problem for realists was not that Iraq did not pose a legitimate threat, or that the American military could not crush the Republican Guard. It was rather a real hesitation about the efficacy of imposing democracy, something the neo-cons wholeheartedly supported.

Realists were sceptical that the Iraqi people would welcome Americans as liberators and pose no political challenge, as neo-conservatives so confidently predicted. Realists had two primary objections to the neo-con analysis. First, in the Middle East, democratic outcomes did not necessarily signal pro-American outcomes. A contemporary Middle East that became instantly democratic would lead to the end of the pro-American King Abdullah of Jordan, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, and President Mubarak of Egypt. The US would likely face instead radical Islamists in Algeria, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Wahhabi extremists in Saudi Arabia. From an American point of view, this would be a disaster.

Second, realists were not sure that Iraq was ready for democracy, as it had no organic history of producing such an outcome. Realists believe that culture is often a tragic factor that limits all forms of universalist, utopian ideologies, even the democratic ideology. It cannot be simply, quickly, or easily transcended. Realism has proved itself gloomily prescient in the chaos that has characterised the nation-building efforts in the wake of the Iraq war.

An idea in overstretch?

In addition to Iraq, neo-conservatism’s other weakness is its distance from the base of the Republican party. Neo-conservatism is a creed where leaders can outnumber followers. It has support among decision-makers in the executive branch and is espoused by creative, articulate opinion-formers such as Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Charles Krauthammer . What is does not have is a lot of grassroots support at the Republican base.

This popular base, made up of Jacksonians and Jeffersonians, traditionally favours small government, balanced budgets, civil and individual liberties, and has an ingrained suspicion of Washington. The neo-conservative Bush administration has brought it record budget deficits, larger government (the new department for homeland security), possible assaults on civil liberties with the adoption of the Patriot Act - and the promise of such changes continuing on into the future. Empires require emperors. This is not what ordinary Republican members want. It may be the single greatest factor, foreign or domestic, limiting the staying power of neo-conservatism.

I saw the outlines of the coming civil war in May 2004 , when (along with Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard) I was invited to speak to members of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee by the German Marshall Foundation. Kristol elegantly laid out the neo-conservative position – it’s the implementation, not the idea, that’s gone wrong in Iraq. In other words, all that’s needed is a few tactical changes on the ground and the strategic neo-conservative project can go on.

I, of course, argued the exact opposite; nation-building in post-war Iraq has been flawed from the beginning as, despite confident assertions to the contrary, the Iraqis did not welcome us as liberators, but rather many saw us as oppressors. Imposing democracy on people was not bound to make them grateful, but, as they were not stakeholders in the process, was likely to make them feel disenfranchised and act accordingly. I was saying, it’s the idea, not the implementation that at root is what’s wrong in Iraq.

Watch for forms of this argument to crop up in the days leading to November, and the argument to explode after the election. If the president loses, the civil war will colour the answer to the perennial question of election losers – “who and what lost us the presidency?” The answer to this will determine whether, despite Iraq, and a devastating election loss, the neo-cons can remain dominant within the party.

The civil war will prove even more nasty with a Bush victory. Then, emboldened by an electoral mandate, the neo-cons will push their agenda even further. For realists, the argument will be that Bush won in spite of, not because of, Iraq, and the time has come to return foreign policy to positions more in line with the party’s roots. The litmus test as to which side has won out will be over whether Paul Wolfowitz, leading intellectual advocate of the Iraq war, is promoted to national security adviser. If he is, the neo-cons are in the driver’s seat. If not, it’s all to play for.

Either way, in the words of Bette Davis: “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night”.