The neoconservatives dominating the foreign policy establishment, particularly in the figure of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, have hijacked America, making her a means to the ends of others rather than an end in herself. Wolfowitz’s supporters include journalists William Kristol and Robert Kagan, who outlined their vision in their book, Present Dangers. The book advances a bastardizedWilsonian idealism baptized with a GOP infusion, using realist language to cloak idealist commitments. As in other areas of American political life, there is no true “opposition,” and no alternative.
Wolfowitz writes in Present Dangers, “nothing could be less realistic than the version of ‘realism’ that dismisses human rights as an important tool of foreign policy,” unaware that there cannot be a true international law to underwrite this globocop position. A legal system requires a basis in common values and understandings. The world is too big and too different to achieve such commonality. Anybody can agree on abstracts like “peace” or “prosperity,” but the different expectations of how these goods translate into reality are irreconcilable. For the same reason diversity is not strength at home, diversity prevents the establishment of universal peace abroad. Failure to internalize this results in the kind of folly seen in JFK’s ridiculous mouthing that “we all breathe the same air.” Well, so do chickens and sheep.
When dispensed as if it were a McDonald’s hamburger on sale, freedom loses its value. Those who desire freedom must earn it for themselves, if it is to have a true basis and appreciable worth. Even in the United States, a citizen is primarily responsible for securing his own freedom and defense. The police merely show up after a crime has occurred to perform investigative work for the judiciary. Police cannot be everywhere at all times, nor should they be.
The desire to wield the U.S. as an instrument for world progress is hypocritical when considered in light of the American founding. Americans did not want a power 3,000 miles away to govern them. Why should we become the same distant governors of other far-flung peoples? As conservatives, we would object if the government said that the American homeowner should not own a firearm because of fears that it may harm an innocent person. Why then, do some conservatives not see the same hypocrisy when the U.S. says certain sovereign nations should not have weapons of mass destruction to prevent them from being used on the innocent? The Wolfowitzim have cast America as an international gun-grabber.
Kristol and Kagan see America’s mission as one of spreading its superior culture and “democratic” values. Their innate liberalism emerges here; they overlook the fact that human beings are not equal and interchangeable. One size does not fit all, globally. America is better than other modes of culture, and not “morally equivalent,” yet recognizing our superiority should not lead to imposing ourselves on lesser cultures, but distancing ourselves from them. Were America to succeed in remaking the world in her image, America might lose her distinctiveness in the process. America is a precious jewel; why cast her pearls before swine? The world is a nasty place. We should feel blessed to be Americans, and not be so eager to fight other people’s wars or select other people’s governments. Refraining from meddling in the affairs of others also lessens the likelihood that a botched job of “nation building” will create grievances justifying terrorism against us. The crowd that says America needs to crusade around “doing the Lord’s work” should think about this. Good conservatives oppose domestic welfare and entitlement programs, so why support the same odious concepts at the international level?
The neocons always talk about “global leadership” without clearly defining what interests America should be leading the world toward, or explaining how we came to have them. Nor do they cite where theauthority comes from to pursue them. All they are certain of is their desire to write themselves blank checks, drawn on our finite treasury and precious blood. America once knew better.
Conservatives should reconnect with their pre-WW2 Old Right foreign policy roots, grounded in realism, nationalism, and armed neutrality. Recommended readings include: Reclaiming the American Right, by Justin Raimondo; The Twenty Years Crisis, by E.H. Carr; Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, by Harry Elmer Barnes; A Republic, Not an Empire, by Patrick Buchanan; Isolationism Reconfigured, by Eric Nordlinger; The Paleoconservatives, by Joseph Scotchie; and Christopher Layne’s article, “Why the Gulf War Was Not in the National Interest.”