Abstract
When Norman Podhoretz and Jeane Kirkpatrick, two veteran neoconservative Cold Warriors, made their first visit to the USSR in June 1989, they were stunned and bewildered by the freedom of expression and political dissent they heard in Moscow.1 Since 1979, most neocons had subscribed to what had become known as the “Kirkpatrick Doctrine” of totalitarianism. Writing in the seminal neoconservative journal, Commentary. Kirkpatrick had famously claimed that totalitarian states, like the USSR, were immune to all liberalizing tendencies. While authoritarian regimes may provide limited space for liberalizing influences to take root, state control in regimes like the USSR was so total that this was not possible. This meant that morally as well as strategically, the United States was justified in supporting anticommunist authoritarian regimes in an alliance against the greater evil of the Soviet communism. Her article had a wide readership, including Ronald Reagan who was so impressed that he offered Kirkpatrick a job in his administration.2
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Notes
Gary Dorrien, The Neoconservative Min.: Politics, Culture and the War of Ideology. (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1993): 200–01.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships&Double Standards,” Commentar. November 1979: 34–45.
Norman Podhoretz also wrote about this, though in less detail, in “Making the World Safe for Communism,” Commentary. April 1976: 31–41. On meeting with Yakovlev, see Dorrien, Neoconservative Mind. 200–01.
Nathan Glazer, “A Time for Modesty,” in Owen Harries (ed.), America’s Purpose: New Visions of U.S. Foreign Polic. (ICS Press, San Francisco, 1991): 135, 137. Berger cited in Dorrien, Neoconservative Mind. 319–20. Jeane Kirkpatrick, “A Normal Country in a Normal Time,” in Harries, Owen (ed.), America’s Purpose. 155–63.
On the defensive strategy of the first generation, see Maria Ryan, “Neoconservative Intellectuals and the Limitations of Governing: The Reagan Administration and the Demise of the Cold War,” Comparative American Studie., Vol. 4, No. 4, December 2006: 409–20.
Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax American. (Routledge, New York and London, 2004): 38–43, 92–101.
On this see Hal Brands, From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War Worl. (The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2008).
Interview with Richard Perle, PBS, Think Tank With Ben Wattenber., http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1017.html (29 January 2010). Francis Fukuyama, After the Neocons: America at the Crossroad. (Profile Books, London, 2006): 31–36.
Robert G. Kaufman, Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politic. (University of Washington Press, Washington, D.C., 2000).
See note 1 in Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment Revisited— United States World Dominance,” The National Interest. Winter 2002: 5–17.
Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America’s Future Grand Strategy,” International Security. Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 1997): 86–124.
On realism and global strategy, see Michael J. Mazarr, “George W Bush, Idealist,” International Affairs. Vol. 79, No. 3 (2003): 503–22.
See Stephen Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primac. (W. W. Norton&Co., New York, 2005): 109–79.
Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power. The Means to Success in World Politic. (Public Affairs, New York, 2004), especially 1–5.
Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power. Why the World’s Only Superpower Cant Go It Alon. (Oxford University Press, New York, 2003), especially 8–12.
G. John Ikenberry, “The End of the Neoconservative Moment,” Surviva., Vol. 46, No. 1, Spring 2004: 12.
Krauthammer, “Unipolar Moment”: 24. Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: Americas Search for a New Foreign Polic. (Hill and Wang, New York, 1996): 90.
The effects of globalisation on the “unipolar” moment and post-Cold War strategy in general are discussed in Richard Crockatt, “What’s the big idea? Models of Global Order in the Post-Cold War Era,” in Sergio Fabbrini, ed., The United States Contested: American Unilateralism and European Disconten. (Routledge, Oxon and New York, 2006): 69–91.
Richard Crockatt, America Embattled: September 11, Anti-Americanism and the Global Orde. (Routledge, London and New York, 2003): 108–35.
Charles Krauthammer, “How the Doves Became Hawks,” Time. 17 May1993, http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,978507,00.html (31 January 2010).
This formula for intervention is repeated in Charles Krauthammer, The 2004 Irving Kristol Lecture, “Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World,” AEI Annual Dinner, Washington, D.C., 10 February 2004, http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040227_book755text.pdf: 16.
Joshua Muravchik, “Losing the Peace,” Commentary. July 1992: 41.
Robert Kagan, “Books In Review—Global Democracy: Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destin. by Joshua Muravchik,” Commentary. Vol. 92, No. 2, August 1992: 54–56.
Paul Wolfowitz, “Our Goals for a Future Europe,” in Richard Perle (ed.) Reshaping Western Security: The United States Faces a United Europ. (AEI Press, Washington, D.C., 1991): 147–56.
For a profile of Zalmay Khalilzad, see John Lee Anderson, “American Viceroy,” The New Yorker. 19 December 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051219fa_fact2 (31 January 2010). On the Bush administration’s attempt to formulate a new post-Cold War global strategy, see Bacevich, American Empire. 55–78. Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaw.: 3–34, 65–96.
Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, A Soldier’s Way: An Autobiograph. (Arrow Books, London, 1995): 490.
James Mann, Rise of the Vulcan. (Viking, New York 2004): 190–94.
Paul Wolfowitz, “Crusade: The Untold Story of the Gulf War,” The National Interest. Spring 1994.
Richard Perle, “No Magnanimity Yet for Iraq,” Wall Street Journa. (henceforth WSJ). 28 February 1991.
Christian Alfonsi, Circle in the Sand Circle in the Sand: Why We Went Back to Ira. (Double Day, New York, 2006): 194.
Dilip Hiro, Iraq: A Report from the Insid. (Granta Books, London, 2003): 40–49.
Cited by Paul Wolfowitz in his essay “Statesmanship in the New Century,” in Robert Kagan and William Kristol (eds.) Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Polic. (Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2000): 309.
Charles Krauthammer, “What’s Wrong with the Pentagon Paper?” Washington Pos. (henceforth WP). 13 March 1992.
Joshua Muravchik, The Imperative of American Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationis. (AEI Press, Washington D.C., 1996): 136–37.
Lorna S. Jaffe, The Development of the Base Force, 1989–1992. (Joint History Office, Office of the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1993): 21–22. Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws. 28–34.
Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws. 130–69. David Callahan, “Saving Defense Dollars,” Foreign Policy. No. 96 (Autumn 1994): 94–112.
Lawrence J. Korb, “Our Overstuffed Armed Forces,” Foreign Affair., November/December 1995: 22–34.
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Michael Cox, US Foreign Policy After the Cold War: Superpower Without a Missio.? (Royal Institute of International Affairs, Pinter, London, 1995): 43–45.
Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Orde. (Atlantic Books, London, 2003): 107.
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© 2010 Maria Ryan
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Ryan, M. (2010). From Berlin to Baghdad: The Second Generation and the New World Order. In: Neoconservatism and the New American Century. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113961_2
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