Fortunately, neoconservatives are a dying breed in American politics. At least in the Republican Party. Having achieved relevance in the latter stages of the Cold War by breaking with the Democratic Party (where most of them came from) and supporting President Ronald Reagan’s policies that won the Cold War, the neoconservatives spent much of the post-Cold War world finding new “monsters to destroy” (to use the famous phrase of John Quincy Adams).
They first picked Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But after the U.S. military achieved a quick victory on the battlefield in 1991 and forced Iraqi forces to leave Kuwait, the neoconservatives criticized the Bush 41 administration for not toppling the Iraqi regime. During the Clinton administration, the neocons were ardent champions of U.S. intervention in the Balkans.
Then, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the neoconservatives persuaded the George W. Bush administration not only to retaliate against our enemies in Afghanistan but to declare a “Global War on Terror” and launch a crusade to democratize the Arab regimes of the Middle East. Bush 43, backed by the neoconservatives and using Wilsonian rhetoric, pre-emptively attacked Iraq, overthrew the heinous Hussein regime, declared “victory,” and then needlessly expended the lives of American soldiers and American treasure in failed efforts to remake the Middle East in America’s image.
At the same time that the neoconservatives promoted the democratization of the Middle East, they also urged the Bush 43 administration to expand NATO closer to Russia’s border, ignoring the prudent counsel of Bush 41 Secretary of State James Baker (who told Russian leaders that NATO would not expand if Russia didn’t contest German reunification), and Russian expert and elder statesman George F. Kennan who presciently warned that NATO expansion would revive the worst aspects of Russian nationalism and imperialism.
R&I ~ MJM
DGM
Article URL : https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/04/ukraine-is-neocons-last-gasp/