"And that's the genius of
neoconservatism's frequently outlandish policy recommendations. They are
always calling for the United States to spend
excessive amounts of money on defense, to threaten potential enemies
with dire consequences if they don't bend to our will, and to use force
against just about anyone that the neocons don't like (and it's a long
list). No president -- not even George W. Bush -- has done everything the
neocons wanted, but by constantly pushing for more, it makes doing at
least part of what they want seem like a sensible, moderate course. And
as we saw after 9/11, every now and then the stars may line up and the
neocons will get what they're pushing for (See under: Iraq). Too bad it
never works out well when they do."
The 'genius' of
neoconservatism
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
As expected, the debate on Monday night was long on posturing and short
on specifics. I thought Romney did a good job of sounding like a less
well-informed Obama, while trying to suggest that he'd implement Obama's
foreign policy better than Obama has. For his part, Obama showed a
command of the issues worthy of a commander-in-chief, and worthy of
someone who has done a good job of implementing President George W.
Bush's second term foreign policy agenda.
But Romney's sudden lunge toward moderation raises the following obvious
question, which Bob Schieffer (and the president) didn't ask:
"Governor, you maintain that you're a tough-minded, smart manager
who knows how to pick good people. If so, why are you taking foreign
policy advice from all those discredited neoconservative retreads? There
are some sensible voices in your foreign policy brain trust, but also an
awful lot of people who played key roles getting us into Iraq and
generally screwing up our entire international position. Why in God's
name are you listening to them?"
To be fair, an awful lot of supposedly sensible Democrats supported the
war too, including a lot of senior officials in the Obama administration.
But they didn't dream up the war or work overtime to sell it from 1998
onward. They just went along with the idea because they thought it was
politically expedient, they couldn't imagine how it might go south, or
they were convinced that Saddam was a Very Bad Man and that it was our
duty to "liberate" the Iraqi people from him. They were right
about Saddam's character, of course, but occupying the entire country
turned out to be a pretty stupid way of dealing with him.
Nonetheless, the unsinkable resiliency of the neoconservative movement
remains impressive. Indeed, there is a certain genius to neoconservatism,
which one must grant a certain grudging respect. Unlike their liberal
interventionist counterparts, who are always looking for consensus and
eager to compromise, the neocons are both remarkably uncompromising and
notoriously unrepentant. They don't look back, if only because staring at
their record of consistent failure would be depressing. So they always
look forward, confident that their fellow citizens won't remember the
past and can be bamboozled into heeding their advice once again.
The success of neoconservatism can be traced to three key strategems. The
first and most obvious element is their relentless championing of America
as the model for the entire world, from which our duty to export
democracy supposedly follows. Never mind that neocons aren't very
consistent in applying that principle (e.g., you don't hear many of them
talking about using American power to advance the democratic rights of
Palestinians), and they routinely forget that their favorite tool --
military force -- is usually a very bad way to spread democracy. But
their brand of jingoistic rhetoric resonates with America's deep
political traditions and helps them portray their critics as
insufficiently devoted to America's liberal/Wilsonian ideals.
Second, and more importantly, neoconservatives understand the efficacy of
taking extreme positions and sticking to them. By recommending policies
that are at the very edge of what is acceptable (and sometimes a bit
beyond it), neoconservatives seek to gradually drag the consensus in
their direction. Just look at the slow-motion march toward preventive war
against Iran, where constant pressure from the right (and the Israel
lobby) has forced even a sensible leader like President Obama to
constantly reiterate his willingness to use military force if it becomes
necessary to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Such threats
merely increase Iran's interest in some sort of deterrent, of course, but
strategic consistency is less important than making sure Washington takes
a tough line.
Interestingly enough, this tactic has some grounding in behavioral
economics. In a justifiably famous experiment reported in the
Journal of Marketing Research, Itamar Simonson and Amos
Tversky showed that consumer choices were powerfully influenced by
"framing effects," and in particular, by the set of choices
that the test subjects were given. When the subjects were offered a
choice between a cheap camera with relatively few features and a more
expensive camera with lots of them, their choices divided more-or-less
evenly between the two. But when a similar group was given the same two
options plus a third -- an even more expensive camera with even more
features -- the percentage that preferred the middle choice rose
dramatically. Why? Because being presented with the option of a really
expensive camera made choosing the second most expensive seem less
extravagant: It became the sensible "compromise" choice.
And that's the genius of neoconservatism's frequently outlandish policy
recommendations. They are always calling for the United States to spend
excessive amounts of money on defense, to threaten potential enemies
with dire consequences if they don't bend to our will, and to use force
against just about anyone that the neocons don't like (and it's a long
list). No president -- not even George W. Bush -- has done everything the
neocons wanted, but by constantly pushing for more, it makes doing at
least part of what they want seem like a sensible, moderate course. And
as we saw after 9/11, every now and then the stars may line up and the
neocons will get what they're pushing for (See under: Iraq). Too bad it
never works out well when they do.
Neoconservatism's final strand of twisted genius is its imperviousness to
contrary evidence. Because most of their prescriptions are so extreme,
they can explain away failure by claiming that the country just didn't
follow their advice with sufficient enthusiasm. If we lost in Iraq,
that's because Bush didn't attack Iran and Syria too, or it's because
Obama decided to withdraw before the job was really done. (Such claims
are mostly nonsense, of course, but who cares?) If Afghanistan turned
into a costly quagmire on Bush's watch, it's because Clinton and Bush
refused to ramp up defense spending as much as the neocons wanted. If we
now headed for the exit with little show for our effort, it's because we
didn't send a big enough Afghan surge in 2009-2010. For neocons, policy
failure can always be explained by saying that feckless politicians just
didn't go as far as the neocons demanded, which means their advice can
never be fully discredited.
To be sure, neoconservatives are not the only people who employ the
latter tactic. Liberal economist Paul Krugman famously argues that
Obama's stimulus package failed to produce the desired results because
wasn't big or bold enough; the difference between Krugman and most
neocons is that Krugman may well be right. By contrast, there's hardly
any evidence to suggest that the United States would be better off if it
had done all of the things that neoconservatives advised; all we can say
with confidence is that the country would now be poorer, less popular
around the world, and more American soldiers would now be dead or
grievously wounded.
In this sense, neoconservatives are like someone who is constantly
telling you to jump off a twenty story building, and promising that if
you do, you'll fly. If you decide to be prudent and jump from the
10th floor instead, and find yourself plummeting toward earth,
they'll just say you failed because you didn't follow their advice to the
letter.
In the end, one can only admire the esprit de corps and resolve that has
kept neoconservatism alive and well despite its manifold failures. Of
course, it helps to have lots of supporters with deep pockets who are
willing to pay to keep them ensconced in safe sinecures at AEI or the
Council on Foreign Relations. And I suppose it also helps that
presidential candidates often know very little about foreign policy, and
thus can't tell the difference between a smart strategist and a snake oil
salesman.
Which brings us back where we started. If Mitt Romney is such a good
judge of character and policy advice, and really a moderate at heart,
what's he doing with all those neocons?
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/24/the_genius_of_neoconservatism
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