What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
It’s fascinating to watch conservatives split between optimists and pessimists, democratizers and democratization skeptics, neocons and realists (or however you want to put it) as they react to the changes convulsing the Middle East. This is a line that cross-cuts our ordinary political divisions. The left is also split between multiculturalists and universalists. In fact, individual left academics often shift inconsistently between those stances, depending on the political context. And the Obama administration has now broken into opposing camps of realists and universalist advocates of human rights.
Why do people fall out differently along these lines? One obvious answer is different attitudes toward the significance of culture. Democratization skeptics tend to see cultural differences as deep and difficult to overcome. The centers of conservative democratization advocacy: Bush administration veterans, the WSJ’s editorial page, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, tend to be the same places within conservatism that favor more open immigration laws. In other words, there is less worry about the difficulties of cultural assimilation.
Samuel Huntington gives culture the largest place in his vision of competing civilizations, whereas Frances Fukuyama largely discards cultural difference as an explanation for democratization, or the lack thereof. (I wrote about the Fukuyama/Huntington dispute here.) Edmund Burke’s conservatism turns around a rich sense of national tradition, while John Stuart Mill’s liberalism highlights universal liberties. In the nineteenth century, Burke and Mill spawned competing schools of colonial rule. (My take on the Burke/Mill division can be found here.)
Clearly, many conservative democratizers are aware of the importance of culture at home. Yet they do seem to have a very different sense than democratization skeptics of the depth and significance of divergent cultural traditions globally.
This split over the significance of culture is clearly a big part of the democratization debate, but it’s probably not the whole of it. How best to explain these divisions among conservatives? My sense is that a lot of people are asking themselves this question right now.
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Jun '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
What people forget is, the "neocons"--if there are any left--are the idealists. They believe that all humans are Puritan merchants at heart, and that the American Experiment is transferable. What every American generation learns for themselves is, it ain't true.
Oct '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Dec '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
I'll have to read the two linked essays, but my initial thoughts are as follows:
It seems impossible to separate the influence of culture and tradition from the probability of success in a nation building exercise or in a democratization movement. If there were no connection, then we should be seeing the world evolving into a liberal democratic Utopia instead of degrading into barbarism and tyranny.
I think another question involves the specific aspects of culture and civilization. Which aspects are required for a people to adapt and secure a lasting liberal democracy? If the majority of liberal democracies are either part of the West, or heavily influenced by the west (India, Hong Kong, Japan, parts of South America), then it's clear that there is something about the west's culture that is essential for liberalization.
Are there any liberal democratic countries that fall outside the "sphere" of western influence?
If the west was able to democratize countries as varied as Japan, Columbia and South Africa, surely there is hope for other countries and peoples. I do note though, that none of those countries (or really any liberal democratic country) are Muslim.
Edited on Mar 1, 2011 at 8:56amMay '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Are there really any pessimist conservatives left? Your post makes me think of the impression I had growing up of conservatives and Republicans as rich/affluent/Protestant, small-minded people who were trying to stave off the democratization of society.
Is any of that left? It's not that bright-line, but today, conservatives strike me as uniformly optimistic (if scared); and liberals and leftists are the pessimistic ones.
Forgive me if this is 82% of inciteful post, but I am in court, waiting to conference a case and needed to think and write fast...
May '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
<self-censorship: rant deleted>
Edited on Mar 1, 2011 at 9:15amMay '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
One final point: neocons love to write. That's why they dominate the Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. Realists have jobs that require them to do things with their time, so they write less.
Oct '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" demonstrates the dividing line between Conservatives and NeoCons. Mob rule, revolutions, and "potential" democracy/freedom are in conflict with the civil society and order (aka culture) that regular conservatives value.
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Dr. Kurtz,
As someone who has straddled this divide for a long time, I thoroughly appreciated your post. My heart is with the neocons -- who wouldn't want to dream of a worldwide flowering of consensual government recognizing inviolable rights? But my head is with the realists -- that's just not the way the world works.
As a result, I find myself planted firmly in the center of the Venn Diagram. I share the realists' concern for pragmatism until it drifts into the amoral. And I share the neocons' idealism until it slips the moorings of prudence. That strikes me as the only way to reconcile the desirable with the possible.
Jul '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Irving Kristol - the father of neoconservatism - defined a neocon as "...a liberal who has been mugged by reality."
But some neocons still carry old baggage, including the egalitarian delusion that it is within their power to reorder the world.
Dec '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Like some see a lamp and others, in the same picture, a pair of faces, like with the natural law of every man’s yearning to be free. It means to some, the freedom to be told what to do, for others, to do the telling.
But the world is populated by more than just sheep and sheepdogs; there are also wolves.
So as you expand your focus, as you see both the lamp and the faces surrounding it, you see in the midst of any human gathering predators threatening to disrupt with violence the assembly singing Kumbayah.
A major flaw of most visionaries of democratization consists of the more or less intentional transposition of the way of life in the West of law and order onto traditions that only have the experience of tribal order.
Visionaries of democratization ignore the wolves. They often feed the wolves. They wonder why the wolves bite their hands because all they want to see in the human flock are sheep.
May '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Thanks. I happen to be reading The Clash of Civilizations now, and this is a great primer.
Like Steyn, I'm deeply pessimistic about the future of America and the West. But the end of civilization as we know it is not the end of civilization. Government and nations rise and fall. Whatever is lost can be rebuilt.
Human nature is constant. Know that, and you know that war and tyranny will forever be a part of human existence. Democracy does not provide safety from either.
Sep '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
I think one of the real problems is that neocons, along with many others, can't wrap their heads around just how fundamentally different Muslim-based cultures are from modern Judeo-Christian derived culture. It took me a year of living in Cairo, along with constant reflection, to begin to understand that they are not operating on the same basis as we are.
It is one thing to acknowledge people have different cultures, but if a person doesn't understand what the fundamentals are, they end up projecting a fantasized version of their own culture onto the other.
Feb '11
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
I'll go with Huntington and Burke any day over Fukuyama or Mill. Culture is an adaptation to circumstances that has been proven through history. Middle Eastern culture is the way it is because of historical circumstance. The same of Western culture. If anyone really thinks that the Middle East is going to wind up democratic, they are delusional. And all of our efforts to make it so are a waste.
Governments in the Middle East are about the control of graft and corruption, i.e., whose pocket is being lined. All the happy talk about anything else is exactly that -- happy talk. The Iranian revolution that so many neocons were in such a dither about was about who was going to get the under-the-table money -- the clerics or the security forces. I know Iran because of relatives. I don't know Egypt or Libya, but you can bet your bottom dollar it is again about who controls the graft and particularly the oil money. Until we face up to this game, we will have a foreign policy that is simply stupid.
Jun '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
"Hang On,"
Exactly. When Dennis Prager came back from his trip to Asia, he concluded, again, that the biggest obstacle to progress in the third world was the rampant corruption. In some places, they pay their police almost nothing, and expect officers to supplement their income by shaking down the public. It keeps individuals from improving their family's circumstances by their own merit. If you're poor, you're stuck where you are, and if you're rich, you don't have to worry about competition. It destroys an economy. Who wants to play a rigged game?
Dec '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Aaron Miller: Thanks. I happen to be reading The Clash of Civilizations now, and this is a great primer.
Like Steyn, I'm deeply pessimistic about the future of America and the West. But the end of civilization as we know it is not the end of civilization. Government and nations rise and fall. Whatever is lost can be rebuilt.
Human nature is constant. Know that, and you know that war and tyranny will forever be a part of human existence. Democracy does not provide safety from either. · Mar 1 at 11:33am
I agree with your point, but I'm less caviler with the prospect of our civilization falling. When Rome fell, the former Romans lived for centuries amidst the ruins of a great civilization of which they had neither the ability to rebuild or even the knowledge of what they lost.
You are right that humanity will most likely go on--absent a full scale nuclear exchange--but I'd rather not be around "apres le deluge" (in the foreboding words of Louis XV).
Edited on Mar 1, 2011 at 2:33pmMay '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Me too, but I put in on pause to read Doug Feith's War and Decision, which I then put on hold to read Atlas Shrugged before the movie comes out.
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Thanks to all for these comments. I didn't get what I was hoping for here, which was for someone to explain to me what really does make the two sides tick. Guess that will have to remain a mystery. But I am impressed by how the comments seem to vary between realist skepticism and a middle-ground position, with no-one clearly on the side of democratizing optimism. That confirms my sense that, despite a relatively even division of opinion among conservative pundits, rank-and-file conservatives lean realist.
Michael, I agree with you that the world has not been evolving toward a liberal democratic utopia. But some democratizers don't see it that way (a case of Charles' lamp and faces). From the standpoint of many democratization advocates, the world is on a gradual, if bumpy, course toward more democracy. Until the recent blow up in the Middle East, democracy exporters conceded that things have been slipping a bit in the last few years. But they still claim the long-term trend is toward democracy, and many see the current changes as proof that the most resistant part of the world is now on board the democratic bandwagon.
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Troy, having been trained as a social anthropologist of the old school (ie. before the takeover of the discipline by post-modernism), my heart is with the democratization skeptics. On the other hand, I recognize the claims of your more balanced position. Broadly speaking, in the two pieces I linked in my original post, I argue for a willingness to shift between universalist and culturalist stances, depending on circumstances. In the end, that may be the most realistic sort of realism.
Dec '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Sounds just like the one-party "democracy" in Chicago and Cook County.
Oct '10
Re: What Makes Neocons and Realists Tick?
Democratization can be successfully be imposed when a country has totally lost a war, such as Japan and Germany. But unless some pre-conditions exist such as a rising, growing middle class, I'm inclined to ironically agree with the late Sen. Moynihan. He said roughly "Over the course of my life I learned the conservative truth that it is the culture of a society that determines its success."
Mark Steyn has repeatedly noted that the spread of British democratic values via British colonialism created most of the best functioning democracies: America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica etc.The French, Spanish and Italians left a much poorer record of democratic ex-colonies ( and for the record, I am not a WASP)
Edited on Mar 2, 2011 at 1:40am