The question isn’t as silly as it seems at first blush – in fact, there’s a case to be made, if ultimately rejected.  Some intellectual leaders of the neoconservative movement, notably Robert Kagan, believe that neoconservatism is of a piece with values that have long been part of the American lexicon – moralism, idealism, exceptionalism, militarism, and the political will to impose these values on the rest of the world from time to time in the service of democracy and freedom.  As Kagan presents the neconservative movement, there is a deep continuity between America’s past and present approaches to foreign policy, and so, in an important sense there is nothing (fundamentally) new in neoconservatism.  Put simply, neoconservatism is good ole’ fashioned American values, albeit expressed in modern foreign policy.  And so, he reasons, we are all neocons (even if we won’t admit it).

So that’s what the high priest of neoconservatism preaches, but is Kagan right?  Consider, dear friends, the Bush Administration’s approach to Iraq and the “War on Terror.”  Neocons do not favor intervening to curb violence and spread democracy everywhere, but rather insist on taking action primarily in the Middle East, where, as Professor Ronald Steel of the University of Southern California astutely observes, a perfect storm of interests formed – the need to obtain control of vital commodities, the desire to further insinuate American power in a strategically critical part of the world, and the temptation of a cheap and easy victory.  The neocons, in other words, are not motivated primarily by defending liberal principles and traditions.  Instead, they feel compelled to act only when a narrow range of economic and political interests coalesce.  This is precisely why neocons have been consistently uninterested in intervening to protect “freedom” in places like Chile and El Salvador, resource-poor locales unable to enhance the geostrategic position of the United States.

Spurred to action more by opportunity than principle, the neocons are keen to cast everything they do as the faithful embodiment of liberal morality.  Their mantra is at once infectious and banal:  Saddam was a madman bent on destroying “freedom,” so cast out he must be.  Of course, as Kagan correctly notes, it cannot be that support for the Iraq war makes one a card-carrying neocon, since many members of the left who now publicly call for a quick withdrawal from Iraq once enthusiastically supported the war.  Yet this truth is offered to distract, not enlighten.  To a large degree, initial support for the Iraq war among non-neocons was predicated on fears about Saddam’s intentions to build and deploy weapons of mass destruction.  While it’s true that neocons, traditional liberals and the American public probably viewed democracy and freedom as welcome potential by-products of a successful intervention in Iraq, Americans would not have initially supported the Iraq war effort if the sole and exclusive purpose was to install a democratic republic in a Muslim country.

Neoconservatism is indeed something new and different.  While interventionists and isolationists have always argued about what circumstances justify using American power abroad, neocons act on (although with secrecy and deception) a new answer that neither camp would endorse:  American power can be deployed abroad whenever we can seize something valuable under cover of a moral or ethical pretext, preferably one predicated on democracy or justice (or both).  Neocons cloak themselves in the venerable ideals of democracy and freedom, yet their actions and omissions testify to their true character.  Make no mistake, fortunately we are not all neoconservatives.

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