CCDS FORUM & DISCUSSION BOARD

NAME: Harry Targ
EMAIL: Targ@polsci.purdue.edu
DATE: 01/29/2007
TITLE: On United States Foreign Policy in the Bush Era:
the Neoconservative Agenda

ON UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY IN THE BUSH ERA: THE NEOCONSERVATIVE AGENDA

Brief Remarks on a panel sponsored by the Committee on Peace Studies, Purdue University, entitled “The War in Iraq: Issues and Context.”

Monday, January 22, 2007

United States foreign policy has been shaped and infused with economic interest since the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. The concept, “economic interest” has a variety of components: promoting capitalism as a global system; enhancing the economic prospects of influential sectors of economic life at given times-agricultural, oil, financial, or manufacturing; and even from time to time promoting what President Eisenhower once called “the military-industrial complex.”

In support of economic interest, in my judgment, policymakers have reformulated U.S. foreign policy goals to make them more palatable to the citizenry. Woodrow Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy, Harry Truman warned of the diabolical threat of international communism, Ronald Reagan spoke of the need to defeat the evil empire, and in the post-cold war period Bill Clinton often referred to the goal of promoting market democracies and challenging failed and rogue states, those that rejected market democracies.

I would just like to say a few words about these various ideas; not economic interest. Loren Baritz, an historian, wrote a book about the propensity of Americans, particularly their leaders, to believe that the United States was “A City on a Hill.” Somehow we were special; the world looked to us for inspirations political and economic. Based on this view policymakers tried to convince the citizenry that the U.S. had a special obligation to transform the world because we were special. In the 1990s, a coalition of foreign policy influentials, the neoconservatives collectively lobbied the senior President Bush and President Clinton to use the US might as the “last remaining superpower” to remake the world in its image; ie. the contemporary version of “the city on the hill.”

Historically, some other foreign policy influentials, who shared the economic vision I referred to at the outset, have endorsed foreign policies that were, what we may call “pragmatic.” They said, “indeed we would like to make the world adapt to our economic interests, our political vision, our values, but we know that other countries and peoples have their own vision. We should try to convince them through diplomacy, economic exchange, collaboration in the United Nations and other ways short of war to accept our guidance and leadership. Sometimes we will even need to compromise with those we regard as enemies.” In other words, these foreign policy elites recognized countervailing power in the world. They tried to craft policies that reflected competing interests, visions, and political practices, at least to some degree.

President Bush in his speech January 10 indicated that he still embraces the neoconservative vision and policy agenda despite all the growing chaos and resistance that has emerged in the world over the last three years. He said that “the challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict.” For him and his neoconservative advisors the issue is the fundamental cultural and conceptual transformation of thinking and behavior that other peoples and nations must accept. He went on to suggest that in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf we are engaged in what “is the decisive ideological struggle of our time.” He said there were two sides to the struggle “freedom and moderation,” on one side and on the other extremists “who kill the innocent” and “have declared their intention to destroy our way of life.”

Subsequent to President Bush’s speech the Secretary of State Condolezza Rice reinforced the Bush vision. Washington, she said, now faces “a new alignment of forces” in the Persian Gulf and Middle East. “On one side are reformers and responsible leaders”- “Saudi Arabia and the other countries of the Gulf, Egypt, Jordan, the young democracies of Lebanon, the Palestinian territory led by Mahmoud Abbas and in Iraq.”

“But,” she went on, “on the other side of that divide are Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah and Hamas” who “…use violence to spread chaos, to undermine democratic governments, and to impose agendas of hatred and intolerance …”

In my view we must never forget about economic interest and its consequences. However, I believe, we must reflect in the short run on the negative consequences for the United States, and peoples around the world, particularly in the global south, of simplistic and arrogant worldviews that assume that U.S. material power gives moral superiority and the right to decide who are good and who are bad in the world.

---

Addendum for Discussion Prepared on Thursday, January 25, 2007

1. Both speeches on Iraq presented by George Bush, January 10, 2007 and January 23, 2007 reflect the language and conceptualization of the world shared by the neoconservatives.

2. This neoconservative vision involves escalating war in Iraq, threatening and/or engaging in war with Iran, or encouraging Israel to launch such a war. One of the clearest signals in the two speeches was the rejection of the Iraq Study Group recommendation that the U.S. engage in diplomacy with Iran and Syria to reduce tensions in the region and get these two countries to help the U.S. in Iraq. It also entails the application of force against “Islamic fundamentalism” or “terrorist forces” all across the mid-section of the globe; particularly in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and East Asia. In Iraq it is designed “to win the war.”

3. While the escalated troop commitment, 21,000 troops, cannot be seen as a military strategy to win in the sense of physically exterminating people regarded as enemies, the strategy may be patterned after the ”Vietnamization” program of the Nixon administration. That program involved a relatively rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam and an effort to train and turn the war effort over to the South Vietnamese military. Importantly, it included a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia and Laos, overthrowing the regime of Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia, invading Cambodia, and launching a huge bombing campaign hitting targets throughout North and South Vietnam. The Peace Movement must be ever vigilant to insure that future disengagement of U.S. troops not be coupled with mass slaughter in the region, such as what happened in the Indochinese peninsula in the late 1960s.

4. The neoconservative “class fraction” is increasingly being challenged by more “pragmatic” sectors of the ruling class who have turned against the war on Iraq. Again, by analogy with Vietnam, after the Tet Offensive, Clark Clifford, long-time adviser to presidents on foreign policy and the conduit from Wall Street tothe White House brought the message to Lyndon Johnson that the war policy in Vietnam was not working. LBJ reluctantly heeded Clifford’s counsel. The Iraq Study Group and others tried to send the same message this time but the neoconservatives convinced President Bush to reject their advice. What we see now is significant shifts away from support for war in both the Democratic and Republican Parties. Along with virtually all Democratic spokespersons are such Republicans as Chuck Hagel, John Warner, and Susan Collins

5. Resistance inside the military is up and many active duty soldiers are refusing to return for additional tours of duty in Iraq. GI resistance was a growing and significant force in the late 1960s and 1970s in Vietnam.

6. Poll data indicates that 2/3 to 70 percent of the American people want the U.S. to disengage from Iraq. A majority oppose the 21,000 “surge” and almost that many want Congress to end financial support for the war.

7. Every presidential candidate, except John McCain, has staked out an anti-Iraq escalation position. In the Congress several bills are being introduced to send a message to the President against the war or to try to restrict his ability to continue war. The most comprehensive, which should be endorsed by CCDS is being introduced by “the triad,” Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters, and Barbara Lee, with a host of other signatories. The bill called “Bring Our Troops Home and Sovereignty of Iraq Restoration Act of 2007” calls for a complete phased withdrawal of U.S. troops within six months; U.S. support for an international stabilization force, if requested by the Iraqis, including funds for economic reconstruction and humanitarian assistance; a rescinding of Congressional authorization to go to war; prohibition of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq; prohibitions of long-term U.S. control of Iraqi oil; and full funding of Veterans Benefits for U.S. personnel wounded or in other ways injured by the war in Iraq.

8. In addition to the sharpening of conflicting forces around the war, the peace movement seems energized, activated and determined to continue to escalate the struggle. Along with the traditional consciousness and commitments of peace activists is the recognition that this time our movement is the majority movement. To use the language of CCDS, a progressive majority exists on the war issue. The only question that remains is how to make it more effective. A final Vietnam reminder here tells the story: opposition to war overseas-Vietnam, in Europe, throughout the world was coupled with growing opposition to that war at home. The same constellation of forces of resistance exists today in reference to the war in Iraq, and perhaps global opposition and growing opposition in the U.S. legislature is greater now than in the late 1960s.

9. Returning to the issue of the collective consciousness of the U.S. people, the idea of the “City on the Hill,” and the various formulations of the special American mission around the world, is delusional, arrogant, racist, and leads inevitably to conflict with other peoples and nations. Addressing the ideological superstructure of United States foreign policy may be more compelling for people today than raising issues of political economy, imperialism, and empire. In sum, this means taking on the neoconservative worldview.

But finally there is no “magic bullet” to end the war now but the trajectory of progressive movement activism seems to be correct.

If you would like to respond to this article click here: Discussion Board

HOME ABOUT DONATE JOIN CONTACT US PUBLICATIONS CCDS STATEMENTS EMAIL US