A college professor teaching a course on theories of international relations would not find it hard to prepare for his or her students an anthology of articles or book chapters written by authors representing the major schools of thought in the field. That would hold true for realism or idealism (in their traditional of “neo” versions), liberalism (including “neo” and “post”), or Marxism, or the various alternative approaches such a post-structuralism and post-modernism, as well as efforts to apply feminism or green theory.
So it’s not surprising that our enterprising IR professor, recognizing the extent to which a school of thought known as neoconservatism has shaped American foreign policy in recent decades—even transforming it in a dramatic way through the Iraq War and the Freedom Agenda—would also search for a major work written by a leading neoconservative thinker that could provide the students with a serious and coherent overview of the neoconservative theory of international relations in its most updated version.
... So where is our Great Neoconservative Foreign Policy Thinker and his or her magnum opus?
A historian of American intellectual thought would probably conclude that once there were actually serious neoconservative thinkers like Daniel Bell, Nathan Glaser, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Irving Kristol who published original and ground-breaking works on social and economic policy, some of which have become classics in the field.
But when it comes to the field of international relations, neoconservatism has failed to produce any great thinkers, and will instead be remembered for its many pundits and operators, or policy entrepreneurs, who did affect the debate and the crafting of American foreign policy but
who have never been able to ground the policies they advanced in any consistent and systemic theoretical framework that could stand the test of time.
One could make the argument that these neoconservative policy entrepreneurs were just a bunch of guys who, during the Cold War, seemed to agree that Washington wasn’t tough enough towards the Soviet Union or friendly enough towards Israel, and since the Cold War ended have been arguing that America needs to establish global dominance (Pax Americana) and control the Middle East, culminating with their push for ousting Saddam Hussein, for occupying Iraq, and for remaking the Middle East. Their policy recommendations came first, and only then did they tried to articulate the reasons why American policymakers should embrace them.
Some of these foreign policy entrepreneurs, like Robert Kagan or Charles Krauthammer, may have been more articulate than others, but much of what they and other neoconservatives have had to say and write about foreign policy has been quite predictable,
calling for the exertion of U.S. military power abroad in search of monsters to destroy. And their work was never aimed at discovering a great new idea in international relations, but rather at providing intellectual ammunition to political allies fighting the “war of ideas” in Washington’s think tanks and green rooms, while maligning political enemies, more often than not as “isolationists”.
From that perspective, Bret Stephens’ America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder fits the bill as another lightweight neoconservative foreign policy tome with quite a lot of intellectual pretension, if not arrogance, that could have been condensed into a short magazine article or even into an op-ed piece (saving at least this reader some time).
Devoid of any new ideas, America in Retreat recycles old clichés in a confused and misleading way as part of an effort to revive and advance the neoconservative agenda at a time when it seemed (at least for a while) to be in decline, while at the same time bashing and trying to marginalize current and potential enemies of the cause.
In this case, those enemies are the supposedly emerging “isolationist” wing in the Republican Party and the conservative movement, and its presumptive leader and potential presidential candidate, Sen. Rand Paul.
...
But now “isolationism” is gathering support among members of “the mainstream of the conservative movement,” with the upshot being that foreign policy in the United States “is now cutting across traditional divides.” It is no longer “a story of (mostly) Republican hawks versus (mostly) Democratic doves.” According to Stephens, it is now an argument between neoisolationists and internationalists, with “an increasing number of Tea Party and libertarian-leaning Republicans like Senator Rand Paul” joining Democrats and liberals in espousing this neoisolationist creed.
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The problem with this Great Spin is that it is ahistorical and has nothing to do with reality.
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What Stephens dubs “retreat” and “neoisolationism” are nothing more than a return to normalcy, to the sources of traditional American foreign policy as practiced by Republican and Democratic Presidents since World War II. It was President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors who abandoned those principles and decided to launch a costly unilateralist military adventure and war of choice—coupled with a ideological crusade to impose American values worldwide—that ran contrary to U.S. interests and traditions.
...
But in Stephens’ foreign policy universe there is no place for nuance, only crude binarism. His two villains, the alleged critics of his imaginary Pax Americana President Obama and Senator Paul, are compared to two historical figures and former presidential candidates, Democratic Vice President Henry Wallace and Republican Senator Robert Taft of Ohio.
...
Stephens doesn’t even try to confront the strategic catastrophe that the neoconservative agenda has created in the Middle East, and instead suggests that it is Obama that has been trying to advance a Bush Doctrine II in the Middle East by embracing the Arab Spring and abandoning Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. This is a legitimate criticism, but not a very credible one coming from Stephens, who now calls for using military power to depose Syria’s Assad and provide support to his opponents.
But then, America in Retreat, like other neoconservative foreign policy literature, isn’t supposed to make sense since it’s not based on any clear elucidation of how the world works and how to deal with it other than arguing for the need to show “resolve” and militarily threaten anyone who doesn’t share America’s values and interests (as defined by Stephens and Co).
In fact, by the time the book came out, many of its assumptions had already been overrun by events like the emergence of ISIS that actually played into the hands of the pro-interventionists in Washington, or the plunge in oil prices that weakened revisionist powers like Iran and Russia.
Actually, much of what the book argues has not been overrun by reality; it never corresponded to it in the first place.
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More:
http://www.theamericanconservative.c...ms-theory-gap/
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