Neocon Duet

I am amazed that a lot of things, especially the US clash with Iraq, Iran and North Korea, can be understood through logic. Ha! You might argue, what a discovery! Did you not know that before? Well, I did not. War and intimidation seems to me barbaric and illogical, beyond the grasp of the common man who would think twice before he harms even his enemy. Then why does the 'US' do it? It is a complex question, but the clever combatant seeks to understand his enemy first before taking up his weapon.

So we go back once more to the enemy camp (See the previous post). The Neocon Establishment that is in power in the Bush administration.

Question: What is the Bush administration? Is it a monolithic entity?

According to Thomas Risse (Beyond Iraq: The Crisis of the Transatlantic Security Community, Journal of International Peace and Organization, 78: 2-3, 2003) we need to distinguish between two versions of neocon thinking. It is subtle, I think, but crucial to understanding world battles.

Group A – US Vice-President Dick Cheney (the psychotic villain who makes Shakespeare's Shylock look like an angel) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

They believe in a) the dog eats dog world b) the supreme role of the US in playing God to keep the 'anarchic' countries in the international system from tearing each other (and the US) apart (meaning, if US does not play its part of supercop, the whole world will go to the North Koreans... illogical? Phew! Tough to answer). Oh, did I say 'international system'? Sorry, this is what makes them the target of disgruntled nations such as France and Germany, since both Group A and Group B do not believe in the UN which they feel 'shackles' their power! (shhhh...its a secret) More on that later...

Group B – If you think what is coming could be better, nopes. These guys are what I would call wolf in sheep's clothing. A prominent Group B member: Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (see, I told you there is a wolf in here). These neocons use US power to aggressively promote... democracy and capitalism.

Not everyone in the US admn is speaking about democracy. National Interest is primary to Group A (realist tradition of foreign policy), while Group B seeks to promote ideological causes (realist tradition again but with liberal vision). Group A is at least honest, but B trips over the self-contradictory idea of enforcing democracy.

Hmm, the familiar litany of the Chomskys and the Saids of this world comes to mind. But anyways, lets take them at their word – that they do indeed want democracy around the world (not one word about oil and multinationals!) and try to understand the positions they supposedly maintain before deconstructing them. From Bush's pathetic monologues one gets the idea that he sincerely believes he was ordained by God to bring the good news of democracy to the world's prisoners (doesn't Abu Gharaib come to mind?!) Let me finish this. To be fair to Bush, he is congenitally dumb. So, let's forget him and move on.

Now, I haven't written off one of the familiar television personalities of the Bush administration's foreign policy team. Secretary of State Colin Powell sees the world in slightly more moderate terms. He is party to the traditional conservatives who

a) are skeptical of the nation-building implications of the neocons (Iraq)
b) just as 20 years ago, they remain committed to at least taking the Europeans along with the US plans (minimal multilateralism)
c) they are the ones who pushed George W Bush to go to the UN to seek support for his Iraq policy
d) Powell's fellow conservatives at the State Department are supported by the disgruntled US military and by key players in the US Senate

There is what Risse calls a tug-of war between the Pentagon (Group A and B neocons) and the US State Department (traditional conservatives). Now we know why the US goes to the UN for approval (SD) and when its not forthcoming launches anyway into the war (Pentagon). (lolz)

This accommodation can be seen even in the controversial US document – National Security Strategy (NSS 2002) which is in many ways a compromise between the neoconservative unilateralists and traditional conservatives.

Several dichotomies in the administration's policies can be explained this way. In short, there is internal conflict over the who, why, where, what and hows.

To gain further insight into the Neocons refer to their inside journal which gained ideological influence under the editorships of Iriving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, two of neoconservatism's founding fathers: Commentary

A popular traditional conservative journal: The National Interest