Quote:
Originally Posted by mackinac81
Hello Politics forum! 
So while surfing this forum, I've heard a lot of self described conservatives blast people called "neocons" I've heard the term before, but I thought "neocon" was just a generic word for "conservative." Can any of you explain to me what a neoconservative is, and how that differs from other types of conservatism? And what are different types of conservatism anyway?
Thanks!
Mackinac |
With respect to foreign policy and geo-strategy, there are a number of viewpoints:
1) Radical: Few in number and fewer still in government they incorporate Marxist view of history into their foreign policy.
2) Constructivist: We are the largest group outside of the main stream. When considering foreign policy, you have to consider geography, demographics and history, because those are the driving forces that shape how states act. Think of Iceland and its quest for fishing rights, Russia's quest for warm-water ports, their protection of Slavs and the Eastern Orthodox, and so on. For that reason, the US will ultimately fail in Iraq and Afghanistan, because while both countries have many nations within them, neither is a nation-state (and won't be for centuries).
3) Liberals: View states as basically good and wanting to do the right, but sometimes require a little pressure, and that pressure is best exerted through collective security agreements, like ANZUS, SEATO (now defunct), NATO and the Warsaw Pact (now defunct). Some well known liberals would be Alexander Haig and Colin Powell. Even though NATO and the Warsaw Pact were diametrically opposed, liberals would argue that peace was maintained for 4 decades.
4) Neo-Liberal Institutionalists: They came about in the late 1980s and have taken the liberal view and expanded it. They see collective security agreements as having outlived their usefulness and now rely on Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs), like the UN and EU, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Doctors Without Borders and others, and Multi-National Coprorations (NMCs) like Proctor & Gamble, GE, Chevron, BP, Coca-Cola, the CremerGruppe and others to maintain peace. They place a very heavy emphasis on MNCs. Some examples of "neo-libs" would be George H Bush, George W Bush, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
5) Conservatives: They see each state as acting in its own selfish interest, and when a state steps out of line, you use whatever means are necessary and expedient to maintain order, including the use of force. They are willing to work within the framework of a collective security agreement, but see them as often being to bureaucratic to act quickly enough. Some examples would be Johnson and Reagan, and a lot of senators, like Jake Garn, Jesse Helms and others. Most military officers are either conservatives or liberals.
6) Neo-Conservatives: Originally, they were members of the Young People's Socialist League, then they merged with the Social Democrat Party of America. After co-opting the leadership, it became simply the Social Democrat Party. Politically and socially they were welfare liberals, but with respect to foreign policy they were conservatives. That changed in 1976 when they came out of the closet with a new look. They've shifted from welfare liberalism to neo-Marxism. Essentially, capital should be controlled not by government or the people, but by oligarchies (the corporations). You can read
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Daniel Bell, their economic guru (it's dry reading and difficult to follow if you don't have a background in economics). You can also read
Two Cheers for Capitalism by Irving Kristol, the "godfather of neo-conservatism" in which he says, "Capitalism deserves two cheers, but not three." They're for open markets but oppose free markets. Their foreign policy is conservatism with a twist, that is the hold the conservative view but also believe that pre-emptive force is justified.
Although the majority of neo-conservatives are Jews (like Bell and Kristol), and ardently support Israel, many are not and don't support Israel. Jimmy Carter was the first and only neo-con president. Many falsely accuse Bush of being a neo-con, but he isn't, and the fact that he endorses or supports neo-conservative viewpoint and has neo-cons in his White House doesn't make him a neo-con.
Consider the fact that Clinton had neo-cons like Tony Lake (national security advisor) and others in his White House, but no one accuses Clinton of being a neo-con, even though he endorsed and supported neo-con policies, like the clandestine "illegal wars of aggression" (as the idiot Kucinich would put it) in Central Asia or violating US laws by shipping weapons and ammunition from Iran to Bosnia and Kosovo.
The fact that Obama has neo-cons Zbigniew Brzezinski, his son Mark Brzezinski, Tony Lake (once again he was Clinton's national security advisor), Dan Shapiro and a few other neo-cons on his foreign policy team doesn't make Obama a neo-con.
Brzezinski was one of the co-authors of the MECAS strategy (Middle East-Central Asia-Siberia) and given Lake's involvement in Central Asia, you should expect the US to engage in military action in Iran to gain control of Central Asia in order to set up military bases to force US hegemony on the eastern Russian republics (Siberian region) so that the US can dismember and castrate Russia in the same way it did Yugoslavia to create Kosovo.
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