Neoconservatism has evolved into something I can no longer support

The US needs to reframe its foreign policy not as a military campaign but as a political contest for hearts and minds

By Francis Fukuyama

02/22/06 "The Guardian" --- -- As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems unlikely that history will judge the intervention or the ideas animating it kindly. More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratising Iraq and the Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that, in the coming months and years, will be the most directly threatened.

Were the US to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, but in the overmilitarised means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What US foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends.
How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals? How did a group with such a pedigree come to decide that the "root cause" of terrorism lay in the Middle East's lack of democracy, that the US had the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem, and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq? Neoconservatives would not have taken this turn but for the peculiar way the cold war ended.

The way it ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow and would crumble with a small push from outside. This helps explain the Bush administration's failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that emerged. The war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a default condition to which societies reverted once coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform. Neoconservatism, as a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

The administration and its neoconservative supporters also misunderstood the way the world would react to the use of American power. Of course, the cold war was replete with instances wherein Washington acted first and sought legitimacy and support from its allies only after the fact. But in the post-cold-war period, world politics changed in ways that made this kind of exercise of power much more problematic in the eyes of allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union, various neoconservative authors suggested that the US would use its margin of power to exert a kind of "benevolent hegemony" over the rest of the world, fixing problems such as rogue states with WMD as they came up.

The idea that the US is a hegemon more benevolent than most isn't absurd, but there were warning signs that things had changed in America's relationship to the world long before the start of the Iraq war. The imbalance in global power had grown enormous. The US surpassed the rest of the world in every dimension of power by an unprecedented margin.

There were other reasons why the world did not accept American benevolent hegemony. In the first place, it was premised on the idea that America could use its power in instances where others could not because it was more virtuous than other countries. Another problem with benevolent hegemony was domestic. Although most Americans want to do what is necessary to make the rebuilding of Iraq succeed, the aftermath of the invasion did not increase the public appetite for further costly interventions. Americans are not, at heart, an imperial people.

Finally, benevolent hegemony presumed the hegemon was not only well intentioned but competent. Much of the criticism of the Iraq intervention from Europeans and others was not based on a normative case that the US was not getting authorisation from the UN security council, but on the belief that it had not made an adequate case for invading and didn't know what it was doing in trying to democratise Iraq. The critics were, unfortunately, quite prescient.

The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the US from radical Islamism. Although the ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with WMD did present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem.

Now that the neoconservative moment appears to have passed, the US needs to reconceptualise its foreign policy. First, we need to demilitarise what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other policy instruments. We are fighting counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and against the international jihadist movement, wars in which we need to prevail. But "war" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle. Meeting the jihadist challenge needs not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world. As recent events in France and Denmark suggest, Europe will be a central battleground.

The US needs to come up with something better than "coalitions of the willing" to legitimate its dealings with other countries. The world lacks effective international institutions to confer legitimacy on collective action. The conservative critique of the UN is all too cogent: while useful for some peacekeeping and nation-building operations, it lacks democratic legitimacy and effectiveness in dealing with serious security issues. The solution is to promote a "multi-multilateral world" of overlapping and occasionally competing international institutions organised on regional or functional lines.

The final area that needs rethinking is the place of democracy promotion in American foreign policy. The worst legacy from the Iraq war would be an anti-neoconservative backlash that coupled a sharp turn toward isolation with a cynical realist policy aligning the US with friendly authoritarians. A Wilsonian policy that pays attention to how rulers treat their citizens is therefore right, but it needs to be informed by a certain realism that was missing from the thinking of the Bush administration in its first term and of its neoconservative allies.

Promoting democracy and modernisation in the Middle East is not a solution to jihadist terrorism. Radical Islamism arises from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalisation and terrorism. But greater political participation by Islamist groups is likely to occur whatever we do, and it will be the only way that the poison of radical Islamism can work its way through the body politic of Muslim communities. The age is long gone when friendly authoritarians could rule over passive populations.

The Bush administration has been walking away from the legacy of its first term, as evidenced by the cautious multilateral approach it has taken toward the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea. But the legacy of the first-term foreign policy and its neoconservative supporters has been so polarising that it is going to be hard to have a reasoned debate about how to appropriately balance US ideals and interests. What we need are new ideas for how America is to relate to the world - ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of US power and hegemony to bring these ends about.

· This is an edited excerpt from After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads, published next month by Profile Books. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p (rrp £12.99) go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.

Francis Fukuyama will be appearing in conversation with the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland on March 23 (details to be advertised).

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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source: Information Clearing House

Rumsfeld Declares War on Bad Press

by Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON - Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld has signaled that he plans to intensify a campaign to influence global media coverage of the United States, a move that is likely to heighten the debate over press freedom and propaganda-free reporting. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last week, Rumsfeld said that Washington will launch a new drive to spread and defend U.S. views, especially in the so-called war on terror. He cited the Cold War-era initiatives of the U.S. Information Agency and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, widely viewed outside the United States as sophisticated propaganda outlets, as a model for the new offensive. If similar efforts over the past five years are any example, the campaign is likely to take place in two main areas -- the U.S. media and the press in the Arab and Muslim worlds, where Washington sees its strategic influence as pivotal. On Tuesday, Rumsfeld also said that the Pentagon is "reviewing" its practice of paying to plant good news stories in the Iraqi news media, contradicting a previous assertion that the controversial propaganda programme had been halted. Critics here say the new media blitz joins a long list of decisions by the George W. Bush administration, such as ordering the National Security Agency to spy on U.S. citizens without warrants, monitoring library records, and compiling databases on U.S. citizens who disagree with the administration's policies, that are leading the country down an authoritarian path -- ironically, one that is not far from those Middle Eastern regimes that have long clamped down on freedom of expression and independent journalism. And they note that the U.S. mainstream media already tends towards a conservative interpretation of events, with scant regard for opposing views. According to a study released this month by the U.S.-based media organisation Media Matters for America, conservative voices have considerably outnumbered liberal voices for the past nine years on the Sunday morning television news shows, considered among the pinnacles of U.S. journalism. The report analysed the content of influential shows such as NBC's Meet the Press, CBS' Face the Nation, and ABC's This Week. It classified each of the nearly 7,000 guests who appeared during the 1997-2005 period as either Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive, or neutral. It found that guests opposing the Bush administration's policies, during both terms, were given only enough space to maintain a veneer of fairness and accuracy. Congressional opponents of the Iraq war, for example, were mostly missing from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began in March 2003. "If conservative dominance in this major arena of (U.S.) public opinion-making continues as it has in the past nine years, it may have serious consequences for future policy debates and elections," said David Brock, president of the Washington-based NGO Media Matters for America. "This study should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who thinks they are seeing balanced discourse on Sunday mornings -- and to those responsible for producing this imbalanced programming," he said. Rumsfeld's plan would almost certainly seek to bolster such sympathetic reporting. In his speech, the U.S. military chief used war terminology to refer to the media. He said that "some of the most critical battles may not be in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq, but in newsrooms -- in places like New York, London, Cairo, and elsewhere." According to Jim Naureckas, editor of Extra!, a magazine put out by the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), "They see the mutilation of information that reaches the public as a key part of their war strategy, and I think that is a very dangerous way for the military to be looking at their job in a democracy." "When people talk about the ‘home front' they do not realise what sinister implications that has. The public is seen as another front that the military is fighting out." Rumsfeld recommended that the media be part of every move in the so-called war on terror, including an increase in Internet operations, the establishment of 24-hour press operations centres, and training military personnel in other channels of communication. He said the government would work to hire more media experts from the private sector and that there will be less emphasis on the print press. The State Department, under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is also stepping up its propaganda efforts. Last week, Rice asked for 74 million dollars to expand broadcasting and internet campaigns in Iran, as well as to promote student exchanges, in order to destabilise the regime there. But to many independent media analysts, the Bush administration has too often confused propaganda with facts and information. "I think that in the Pentagon world view, facts become instrumentalised," Naureckas said. "The point of putting out information is to achieve your military objectives. It's not to serve truth in some kind of abstract sense. And once you start looking at it this way, the difference between a true statement and false statement really becomes very little." The Bush administration has had some success in influencing the media at home in the United States, a country with generally sophisticated and discerning media operations. Last week, U.S. lawmaker Henry Waxman and other senior Democratic leaders released a new study by the Government Accountability Office, a Congressional oversight body, which found that the Bush administration spent a whopping 1.6 billion dollars in public relations and media over the last two and a half years to sway public opinion. "The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising," said Congressman Waxman. "Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States." The opposition Democrats had asked the GAO to conduct that study after evidence emerged last year that the Bush administration had commissioned "covert propaganda" from public relations firms that pushed video news releases that appeared to regular viewers as independent newscasts. The report found that the administration's public relations and advertising contracts spanned a wide range of issues, including message development presenting "the Army's strategic perspective in the Global War on Terrorism". The study found that the Pentagon spent the most on media contracts, with contracts worth 1.1 billion dollars. And all that money was before the new Rumsfeld plan. Copyright © 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service

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source: Common Dreams

Watchdogs Urge Full Probe of Bush Propaganda Spending

by Niko Kyriakou

SAN FRANCISCO - Media reform groups are calling for a deeper investigation of Bush administration advertising and propaganda efforts following the release of a report that concludes the White House has spun a web of public relations (PR) contracts larger than previously thought. At issue are agreements to produce everything from advertisements to video news releases--government-vetted spots designed to air alongside and to be indistinguishable from regular televised news reports. Critics of the state-sponsored content said it constitutes part of a broader government attack on press freedom and that it amounts to a subversion of democracy. ''When elected public servants use taxpayer dollars to manipulate or deceive the very people whose consent they require for their legitimacy, our public servants then become our masters,'' said Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies. The official Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported last week that government agencies have spent about $1.6 billion over the past 30 months on PR and advertising contracts. Investigators said they found no breach of the law and added that all spent funds came from the agencies' budgets. The document overlooked considerable government spending to cast President George W. Bush's policies in a favorable light, media reformists said, because it covered neither all types of PR spending nor all federal agencies. ''We need a full accounting of the Bush administration's spending on advertising, PR, and fake news,'' said Craig Aaron of advocacy group Free Press. ''It's time for Congress to reclaim its constitutional role as a counterweight to the executive branch and permanently cut off funding for covert propaganda. We must ensure that taxpayer money isn't being spent by the White House to secretly manipulate the American public.'' The administration's drive to shore up popular support for its self-styled ''war on terror'' and to keep up armed forces recruitment appears to have fuelled the spending, according to Diane Farsetta of the Center for Media and Democracy, publisher of the quarterly PR Watch. Of the $1.6 billion total outlined in the GAO report, the Pentagon spent $1.1 billion--much of it on recruitment, Farsetta said. The U.S. Army has failed to meet recruiting targets despite increasing the proportion of those accepted with problems in their background, the Baltimore Sun newspaper reported last week. In all, 73,000 men and women joined the Army last year, down from 77,000 in 2004, the daily said, adding that the Army reached its recruiting goal in 2004 but fell about 7,000 recruits short last year. To be sure, there is nothing new or unique about the Bush administration spending money to recruit warriors, said propaganda expert and author Nancy Snow. ''Historically, propaganda has always merged with recruitment because people must first be conditioned to become soldiers and fight strangers in distant lands,'' Snow said. ''It's not a natural condition but must be manipulated to get people to join unpopular realities.'' That kind of spending likely will remain largely hidden and is unlikely to shrink without public pressure for transparency and budget cuts, she said. ''The activities of these groups [contracted companies] should be out in the open, but unless and until the public clamors for hearings on the subject, we'll have to settle for occasional op-eds and white papers that have a short shelf life.'' For its report last week, the GAO surveyed seven of 15 government agencies and relied on self-reported information from them, critics said. The GAO did not mention task orders on existing contracts, subcontracts, or PR work done by government staffers without the use of outside contractors, and failed to investigate those agencies responsible for scandals that initially sparked the investigation, they added. But the Interior Department, the only one to respond to the report, said the GAO incorrectly flagged a number of legitimate contracts, for example ones covering the production of brochures and exhibits for National Parks. Congressional Democrats requested the GAO study last year after two scandals emerged. The first involved several government departments issuing illegal video news releases produced by outside firms to promote department initiatives. The second involved revelations, followed by an official acknowledgement, that the Bush administration had paid journalists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher to promote administration proposals. The GAO did not say whether government spending on PR had risen but earlier studies suggest they have. The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform Minority Office, in a report last year, said the Bush administration unloaded twice as much on PR in its first term as did the Clinton administration in its second term, with payments jumping from $128 million to $250 million. Conservative media watchdog Accuracy in Media faulted the report as based on an incomplete accounting of Clinton PR spending. The GAO would never undertake a more thorough study because the three-year statute of limitations governing such reviews has passed, the group said, adding that the democratic legislators had this fact in mind when they commissioned their study. Copyright © 2006 OneWorld.net

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source: Common Dreams

The State Of Denmark

Feb. 19, 2006

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(CBS) You would have to look hard for a country with a better brand-name than Denmark. It’s not only the home of Hans Christian Andersen, the country seems to live in one of his fairy tales. The people are pretty and prosperous, the land is green and fertile, and the towns are colorful and squeaky clean. Denmark’s queen is much beloved by her people and hails from the oldest monarchy in Europe.

Who could ever imagine that this lovely little land would spark riots sweeping the Islamic world? Is it a quirk, a coincidence? Correspondent Bob Simon traveled to Copenhagen to find out and discovered that there is something really strange in the state of Denmark and that it’s no accident the firestorm started here.

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The riots, reaching from Jerusalem to Jakarta, can all be traced back to the most unlikely of places: a cluttered work space in the apartment of Kare Buitgen, a writer of children’s books.

"Well, it’s sad to see what happens now," Buitgen says. "I wrote a book about the Prophet Muhammad to promote better understanding between cultures and religions here in Denmark."

Buitgen had trouble finding someone to illustrate his book. Muslims don’t permit representations of their prophet, and illustrators were afraid of offending the Muslim community in Denmark.

Buitgen’s problem became known to the editors of Denmark’s largest newspaper. Its cultural editor, Flemming Rose, said he was offended by what he called this self-censorship. He explained himself in an interview that aired on the BBC.

"It’s problematic if some Muslims require of me that I in the public space, in the public domain, have to submit myselves to their taboos. In that case I don’t think they are asking for my respect. I think they are asking for my submission," Rose said.

But Rose has said he wasn’t about to submit. Instead, as a challenge, he invited Danish cartoonists to submit cartoons about the Prophet and he printed twelve of them. One showed Muhammad wearing a turban that was really a bomb.

"Because in Denmark we do have a tradition of satire and humor, some of the cartoonists made satirical cartoons. But that’s what we do with Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, that’s what we do with other religions," Rose said.

Well, not exactly. The editors of the paper, the Jyllands-Posten, recently rejected a satirical depiction of the resurrection, saying it would cause a public outcry. But the paper did print the Muhammad cartoons: all 12 of them. And until last week, Rose defended his decision on just about every broadcast that would have him.

The newspaper insisted from the start that its purpose was to show that there are no higher values in a democratic society than free speech and free expression. And if Muslims want to live in Denmark, the paper insists, they’d better buy that. But as soon as events started careening out of control last week, the editors of this bastion of free speech responded by refusing to speak to anyone at all.

Not only that, Flemming Rose, that cultural editor, has been put on indefinite paid vacation and encouraged to leave Denmark. He’s currently resting at a five-star hotel in Washington, DC. But Rose and the newspaper have their defenders, including the editor of a rival paper, Toger Seidenfaden.

"The way I've put it, and we've been saying in our editorials for some time, is we are defending their right to be stupid. We think that being stupid is part of freedom of speech," says Seidenfaden.

Asked if he thinks Jyllands-Posten realized the fallout the publication of these cartoons might cause, Seidenfaden says, "No, I don't think they had any idea that there would be an international crisis. Certainly not one of this size. But, of course, they were doing it to get a reaction from the local Muslim religious minority. And they said so very explicitly. They explained on their front page that they were doing this, and I quote, 'To teach religious Muslims in Denmark that in our society, they must accept to be scorned, mocked and ridiculed.'"

"They were stirring it up?" Simon asked.

"It was very much stirring it up," Seidenfaden replied.


If the paper was trying to stir it up, it succeeded.

"Muhammad is our leader. Muhammad is our prophet. Muhammad is the perfect man," Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban preached in a recent sermon.

"That’s why we believe in him, we love him, and we keep on defending him," the imam intoned.

"What do you think was on the minds of the editors of the newspaper when they published the cartoons? What were they trying to accomplish?" Simon asked the imam.

"They were trying to be teachers, to teach us democracy, the values of democracy, and most important, how to abide to those values. Love it or leave it, this is the way it goes. My dear student pupil, listen carefully. I try to help you," Abu-Laban replied.

The imam says he found the cartoon of the turban and the bomb most objectionable.

Abu-Laban and his followers asked the newspaper for an apology, which they didn’t get. A group of ambassadors from eleven Muslim countries asked Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a meeting, which they didn’t get.

Asked why he refused to meet with the ambassadors, Prime Minister Rasmussen says, "Well, we have not refused dialogue. On the contrary."

"But you didn't meet with the Arab ambassadors," Simon said.

"No. But I have to stress that the foreign minister has had meetings with ambassadors and foreign ministers and others," Rasmussen replied.

But newspaper editor Toger Seidenfaden has his own view as to why the prime minister didn’t meet the ambassadors.

"Because sadly enough, in the domestic political situation in Denmark, the logic was simple. As conflict between the biggest newspaper in the land and religious Muslims. On whose side am I on? It's very simple for a prime minister to answer: ‘I'm with the big newspaper,’" Seidenfaden says.

And that’s exactly how the Muslim leaders understood it.

"You are on record as defending the paper, defending its right to publish. And your critics have said that defending them so strongly has served to further inflame the Muslim world. What’s your view on that, sir?" Simon asked Rasmussen.

"Well what I’ve done is to insist on the principle of free speech, the principle of free press. And I have made it clear that the government has no means whatsoever to interfere with a free and independent newspaper," the prime minister replied.

The Muslims felt totally rebuffed at home in Denmark. So the imam sent a delegation to the Middle East with a dossier of pictures, not only of the published cartoons, but of others that were even more offensive. One showed the prophet with the head of a pig.

Abu-Laban told 60 Minutes he had received these in anonymous threatening letters. But the dossier left the impression that those pictures had been printed in the newspaper.

"I guess what I'm getting at, imam, didn't you include these obscene cartoons as a way of really stirring up the pot?" Simon asked.

"We didn't give it to media. Don't forget this point," the imam said.

"I'm the media. And I have it," Simon replied.

It was the dissemination of that dossier which ignited the flames that are still burning today.

"You weren't getting any attention here before you spread the word. Now, you're getting attention and engagement. Do you think your mission was a success?" Simon asked.

"Yes. The whole world is engaged. I'm so positive," Abu-Laban replied.

Asked if he thought the casualties are worthwhile, the imam said: "I feel sorry. But we make cars and they make accidents. We build skyscrapers, but they collapse in an earthquake. This is life. We have maybe unexpected tragedies. And we have to live with them."


Meanwhile, Denmark was plunging into its deepest crisis, its only crisis, in more than half a century. Ever since the second World War, the Danes have been pleased with their country, pleased with their generous welfare system and, above all, pleased with themselves.

The lines between fantasy and reality aren’t sharply defined around Denmark. The elite troops guarding the royal palace look like toy soldiers, the national symbol is a bare-breasted mermaid luxuriating in Copenhagen’s harbor and the capital’s streets are lined with homes that could be gingerbread houses.

It’s the coziest of kingdoms, where even the runway models of Fashion Week, which was happening in Denmark while Danish embassies were burning, are all unmistakably Danish.

The Muslim quarter of Copenhagen is ten minutes away from all this and on a different planet. Many Muslims say they’ve been made to feel like aliens. They may benefit from Denmark’s welfare system, but there isn’t a real mosque in the entire country; they have to make do with converted factories. There may be a shwarma joint downtown, but there’s no Muslim cemetery anywhere.

These things deeply trouble Dr. Kamal Qureshi, the first Muslim immigrant to be elected to Denmark’s parliament. He’s troubled, but he’s not going anywhere.

"This is my country. I love my country. I hate when people burn the flag. It hurts in my stomach and guts to see my kids get scared when they see the Danish flag burn. For God's sake, this is a flag we have on the table when my children have their birthdays," Dr. Qureshi says.

Muslims make up only two percent of the population. Not much, perhaps, but enough to have spawned a backlash. Denmark now has the toughest immigration laws in Europe. And in the last five years, Danes have voted the ultra-rightwing People’s Party into the ruling majority. Since the cartoon controversy, support for this anti-Muslim party has grown to almost 20 percent.

Dr. Qureshi acknowledges there has been a crisis in recent weeks involving Danes and Muslims.

Asked if he thinks the crisis is going to make things better or worse, Dr. Qureshi says, "Being where I am, I have to be optimistic."

"You have to be. But what are you?" Simon asked.

"I'm scared," Qureshi replied. "I think there are a lot of Muslims that are afraid that they could be turned into scapegoats, and people would say that the reason that the world hates us is because you people are telling bad stories of Denmark. We have to take the ball away from the extreme groups in Denmark and put it in the middle where the rest of us are."

But that middle is fast disappearing into fantasies of fear. Many Muslims are afraid of being victimized. Many Danes are afraid their culture is under siege. Already, people with foreign values are converging on Denmark’s national symbols.

So what to do? If you ask those Danes responsible for the country’s traditional image of civility and manners, a Dane like former foreign minister and newspaper editor Uffe Elleman, he’ll tell you that a little self-censorship is not always a bad thing.

"When you use the freedom of speech to make jokes of other people's religions and you do it with the single purpose of demonstrating that you have the right to do so, then you are undermining the freedom of speech as I see it," Elleman says.

"Is that what you think the newspaper was doing? Do you think they were deliberately provoking just to show that they had a right to do it?" Simon asked.

"Yes. And I reacted very strongly because Muslims in Denmark -- well, that's a minority, and you don't treat a minority that way. You don’t stamp on other people’s religious feelings. That’s bad taste," Elleman said.

Freedom of speech versus religious sensitivities. Conflicting forces which are doing battle everywhere. The Danes, in their picture perfect world, may have thought they were immune. Now they know better.

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source: CBS News

Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down'

By Alex Massie

02/21/06 "The Scotsman" -- -- NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects.

Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies.

In an extract from his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads, Mr Fukuyama declares that the doctrine "is now in shambles" and that its failure has demonstrated "the danger of good intentions carried to extremes".

In its narrowest form, neoconservatism advocates the use of military force, unilaterally if necessary, to replace autocratic regimes with democratic ones.

Mr Fukuyama once supported regime change in Iraq and was a signatory to a 1998 letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to the then president, Bill Clinton, urging the US to step up its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was also signed by neoconservative intellectuals, such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and political figures Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the current defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

"The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism," he argues.

"Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally."

Mr Fukuyama, one of the US's most influential public intellectuals, concludes that "it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly".

Going further, he says the movements' advocates are Leninists who "believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States".

Although Mr Fukuyama still supports the idea of democratic reform - complete with establishing the institutions of liberal modernity - in the Middle East, he warns that this process alone will not immediately reduce the threats and dangers the US faces. "Radical Islamism is a by-product of modernisation itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalisation and - yes, unfortunately - terrorism," he says.

"By definition, outsiders can't 'impose' democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective."

©2006 Scotsman.com

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source: Information Clearing House