Slipping the Neocon Sucker Punch

The neocons thought they had the Bush administration just where they wanted. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice finally said the magic words. "It is time to abandon the excuses that are made to avoid the hard work of democracy," she declared right in the belly of the beast at the American University in Cairo. "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course."

The neocon Wall Street Journal editorialists immediately cheered the end of the "alleged hypocrisy" of advocating democracy in Iraq and Lebanon "but not for autocratic U.S. allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia," saying the next day that Rice's declaration was "among the most important delivered by any recent Secretary of State." For Egypt, they argued against "continuing" foreign aid for its autocratic leader and for opening discussion with his (admittedly terrorist) opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood; for Saudi Arabia, they suggested "markers" for good democratic behavior by its monarchy to continue good relations; and, for Syria, they demanded "maximum pressure."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who appeared with Rice, was not pleased with all of this and brushed off the secretary's remarks, saying totally open elections there were impossible for the time being. At a later press conference the same day, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal concurred, remarking "The row [she created] is really meaningless."

The perceptive Washington Post reporter, David Ignatius, liked the "glass house" dimension of the Rice speech as a means to control not foreign but U.S. actions such as prison abuses in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the treatment of the Palestinians, and the scope of operations in Iraq among other policies. Rice had "enunciated a pro-democracy position so forcefully that if the Bush administration deviates from it or undermines its credibility through belligerent, anti-democratic actions, it will be open to the charge of hypocrisy," on such matters from rule of law to even energy policy.

Secretary Rice saw the trap and slipped the sucker punch prepared for her. Asked by a reporter the next day if it was hypocrisy to meet with outlawed dissidents in Belarus and North Korea but not the Brotherhood in Egypt, she responded: "I hardly think the Egyptian government is either the North Korean government nor the Belarusian government"--even though he noted that the authoritative Freedom House rated Egypt as low on civil liberties as Belarus and scored Saudi Arabia even lower. When she went to Saudi Arabia, Rice raised the issue of its treatment of dissidents but not the more sensitive issues to them of oppression of Christians and women. In order to minimize the implications of her earlier words, officials in her traveling party told reporters "the speech was carefully written to provide a poke without undermining critical cooperation from key Middle Eastern nations on counter-terrorism, Arab-Israeli peace efforts and other issues" such as trade and business exchanges.

So it was not so revolutionary a speech after all. Reporters read President George W. Bush's address to the nation a few days later reacting to public unease with the military situation in Iraq in a similar manner. While still promoting the need to bring freedom and democracy to the region, the president for the first time set a practical goal for the disengagement of U.S. troops. "The principal task of our military is to find and defeat the terrorists, and that is why we are on the offense. And as we pursue the terrorists, our military is helping to train Iraqi security forces so that they can defend their people and fight the enemy on their own. Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

Even some neocons have seen the need to set the U.S. mission as something less than bringing America-like democracy to the whole world. As early as last summer, no less than Francis Fukuyama had declared the end of the "neoconservative moment" in the face of the hard realities of turning Iraq into a functioning democracy, calling for a more realistic standard for disengagement. Even Charles Krauthammer, who before 9/11 had his realist moments but had then turned full-bore to world democratization, last year called for "democratic realism" as opposed to "democratic globalism." The difference he specified in a July 2005 article for the neocon bible, Commentary, was between democratizing the world "sequentially" as opposed to overnight, "postponing radically destabilizing actions in places where the support of the current non-democratic regime is needed against a larger existential threat to the free world."

"Alliances with dictatorships were justified in the war against fascism and the cold war and they are justified now in the successor existential struggle, the war against Arab/Islamic radicalism." Practically, Krauthammer says, that means Afghanistan and Iraq first and then targeting Lebanon and Syria. But not, he says, action against Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which "would be a mistake," implicitly criticizing more extreme positions such as the Journal's. For these later nations, one should push but "gently," which he concludes is the current Bush policy. This policy represents "the maturing of neoconservative foreign policy" by public officials rather than simply by neocon intellectuals. He even notes that Rice's history was with former realist national security chief Brent Scowcroft. Krauthammer sees present policy as a neoconservative "compromise with reality," a matured strategy whose time has now come.

One can be thankful that a segment of journalistic neoconservatism has moved away from extremist democratic globalism and more toward reality without immediately popping the champagne. Is Western-style democracy still the goal for Afghanistan and Iraq? If so, the U.S. will be there a very, very long time. Perhaps that means Lebanon and Syria will never happen but why do they require American forces anyway? Ronald Reagan had the good sense to move the Marines when he saw the factions did not want to be reconciled. It is highly unlikely the situation is much better now. How long will Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and the rest remain as friends in the war on terror (and for trade and energy) when they realize they are on the list but merely "postponed" for transformation later?

It is perhaps a bore to return to earlier wisdom but did not John Quincy Adams get it just right? The architect of America's traditional foreign policy summed up the realist conservative view this way: " America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." As long as promoting democracy is mostly wishing well and action is primarily restricted to vindicating American's own self interests in protecting its own freedom, this is a traditional, realist conservative foreign policy. Unfortunately, even Krauthammer still seems too much in search of monsters to slay that do not threaten American interests.

Surely, there are many monsters in the world; but we do need some of them to help protect us against terrorism. If the U.S. targets even Krauthammer's smaller list in the short run, American military strength, which is already greatly strained, will be stretched to the breaking point and the U.S. position will be weaker, not stronger. If those regimes postponed for later overthrow, even by his neo-neoconism, turn against the U.S. because of this only partial return to realism, America will immediately lose critical resources necessary to deal effectively with the radical Islamist terrorism that real realism says is the true threat to American interests today.

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