'Neo-Liberals,' George W. Bush, and War in Iraq

We knew the neoconservatives. Now here we have the neo-liberals. September 11 and its aftermath, the war on terrorism, the intervention in Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq have prompted what one US liberal intellectual calls "a tectonic shift," not only in the Bush administration's foreign policy, but also in the conception of foreign policy in general.

They have provided the neoconservatives with a demonstration of the appropriateness of their arguments in support of robust and comprehensive action abroad against the champions of "realism," who, they say, have a narrow and cautious vision of US interests.

The neoconservatives believe that the United States must use its might, including military might, for the sake of the worldwide promotion of democracy. In their opinion, this expansion of democracy is consistent both with US values, conceived as universal values, and with long-term US strategic interests. Citing President Woodrow Wilson at the time of World War I, they want "to make the world safer for democracy" and, on that basis, for the United States.

Initially, the debate was between realist conservatives -- a good example of whom is George Bush Sr -- and the neoconservatives, interventionist and sometimes idealistic ideologues.

It is not over, and the post-conflict difficulties encountered in Iraq are providing ammunition to the "realists," particularly in an election year.

But the debate is not confined to the US right, basically the Republican Party. It also divides traditional left-wing sectors, and this is where the so-called neo-liberals -- by analogy with the neoconservatives -- are emerging.

In fact, this division is not entirely new. The crisis in the Balkans prompted an initial rift among liberals, traditionally opposed to the use of force, in any case since the Vietnam war. Confronted with the excesses of Greater Serbian nationalism, some of them adhered to their pacifist stances, while others wondered whether inaction was not more dangerous than intervention.

"Humanitarian" interventionism, based on the right of interference, ultimately rallied most US liberal intellectuals, who identified with the neoconservatives in criticizing former President Bush for his lack of interest in Bosnia's Muslims, and Bill Clinton for his prevarication.

"Suitable"

Initially, the 11 September attacks had the same rallying effect. So did the intervention in Afghanistan against Usama Bin Ladin and the Taliban. Apart from US security interests, it was possible to clothe it in "humanistic" arguments, against a regime that displayed little respect for human and women's rights.

The war in Iraq poses a more difficult problem of conscience for the liberals. A "war of choice" and not a "war of necessity," waged for reasons that were dubious at the outset and that have proved deceitful in retrospect, decided on by the "hawks," who had long planned Saddam Husayn's downfall, it does not meet the usual criteria of a "just war." Nevertheless numerous liberal intellectuals supported the war in Iraq, Saddam Husayn's overthrow, the plan to turn the country into an example of decent, if not democratic, government, and more generally the idea of reshaping the Middle East.

The problems encountered in this region by previous administrations, including the Clinton administration in its efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, explain the neo-liberals' conversion to a more offensive policy.

In an article entitled "Better Neo-Liberal" -- "than neoconservative," implied -- published in Aspenia, the journal of the Aspen Institute's Italian branch, two former Bill Clinton advisers write: for the neo-liberals, too, "the United States cannot win the war on terrorism without assigning a crucial role to the values and principles of the Western world. This role and these values have in the past been sacrificed in the name of a shortsighted realism that has subordinated long-term interests to the requirements of an immediate stability, ultimately supporting Arab regimes moderate only in appearance."

"Iraq's future will be crucial," Ronald Asmus and Kenneth Pollack continue. "It is only if a stable and pluralistic Iraq eventually emerges that the Iraqi paradigm will become a useful model for the region."

Another neo-liberal, Paul Berman, a contributor to the journal Dissent, rejects the six reasons that "make left-wingers incapable of understanding the antifascist nature of the war -- in Iraq: George W Bush is an "abnormally repugnant" politician, but, as Asmus and Pollack also observe, "the neo-liberals supported the campaigns in Afghanistan and against Saddam Husayn, not following George Bush, but against him"; second, to have believed that all the world's problems originate in the United States "would have prevented us, 60 years ago, from understanding the nature of fascism in Europe"; third, it is necessary to stop thinking that any anti-colonialist movement is "admirable, or at least acceptable"; fourth, cultural relativism.

"Deliberate Blindness"

Whereas the traditional left wing is universalist, Paul Berman writes, "it is now said to be animated by a spirit of egalitarian tolerance: social democracy for the Swedes! Tyranny for the Arabs!" As though, on the pretext of respecting cultural differences, they were satisfied for "the Arabs, for incomprehensible reasons of their own, to live under grotesque dictatorships and not to be really capable of anything else." The last two reasons have to do with a condemnation of Zionism and what Paul Berman calls "deliberate blindness with a regard to the anti-Semitism that exists in other cultures."

These six reasons can in fact be summed up in a single argument: the Ba'th Party and Muslim fundamentalism are "genuinely fascistic movements" and the 11 September 2001 attacks are "the product of a totalitarian tide."

"We had a choice," Paul Berman continues, "between supporting the war -- in Iraq -- for the sake of antifascism, or opposing it, in the name of a vague ideal of international law. Antifascism without international law, or international law without antifascism, a wretched choice, but unfortunately we had to choose!" Here we find an idea developed by the neoconservatives, according to whom the war on terrorism is of the same nature as the struggles waged by the democracies against the two totalitarianisms of the 20th century, Nazism and communism.

A book, "The Fight Is for Democracy," comprises a number of essays which, proceeding from different viewpoints, provide an overall idea of neo-liberal philosophy. According to George Packer, a contributor to the New Yorker these texts "have in common an attachment to the ideals of US democracy, a dissatisfaction with its current practice, and the conviction that we are involved in a war for the conquest of world opinion, a war of ideas."

Should the evident, and sometimes acknowledged, relationship of the arguments set out by the neo-liberals to neoconservative themes bother left-wingers? No, according to Laura Secor, a Boston Globe journalist, because "it is in the nature of foreign policy for the right things to be done only rarely for the right reasons."

In any case, Michael Tomask, editorialists for the New York Magazine, ads, "this is not to join the right, as some would suggest, but to adapt to the world as it is."

There are of course disagreements between the neo-liberals and the neoconservatives. The former give priority to states' internal development in relation to changes imposed from outside, which must only be a last resort. In an Internet chat, Kenneth Pollack said that he disapproves of the "the timing and manner" of the decision to go to war in Iraq.

"Fair" Settlement

The neo-liberals stress the importance of nation building, which they say the neoconservatives neglect. Most of them think that a "fair" settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be regarded as a priority, and not as a subsidiary outcome of a comprehensive change in the Middle East. They are uncomfortable with the concept of empire that some neoconservatives blithely nurture. They believe in alliances and have more confidence in the US leadership's strength of conviction that in military might.

Probably the neo-liberals, like their neoconservative counterparts, for that matter, do not constitute a school, still less than organized movement. They are, rather, a current of thinking that comprises, as Asmus and Pollack observe, moderate Republicans and particularly Democrats. Like the neoconservatives who found their herald in George W. Bush, they are speaking out to contribute ideas to the Democratic presidential candidate, in the hope that he will be able to implement them and that they -- at least some of them -- will have the opportunity to help him in this... at the White House.

(Description of Source: Paris Le Monde (Internet Version-WWW) in French -- leading left-of-center daily)