[Reader-list] Fukuyama's moment: a neocon schism opens

[avinash kumar]

Fukuyama's moment: a neocon schism opens
  Danny Postel
28 - 10 - 2004

(The full html version of this report is available at
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-117-2190.jsp )

The Iraq war opened a fratricidal split among United States
neo–conservatives. Danny Postel examines the bitter dispute between
two leading neocons, Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer, and
suggests that Fukuyama's critique of the Iraq war and decision not to
vote for George W Bush is a significant political as well as
intellectual moment.
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Over the last two years, the term "neo–conservative" has come into
sharper focus than at any other point in its roughly thirty–year
history. The neo–conservative movement has exerted greater influence
on United States foreign policy since 9/11 than it was ever previously
able to do, the Iraq war being its crowning achievement.

Coinciding with this ascendancy has been an unrelenting stream of
criticism directed at neo–conservatism, from virtually every square on
the ideological chessboard. Such sorties have become something of a
rallying–cry among much of the left. Neo–conservatives either ignore
left–wing criticism (a luxury they can well afford) or else chew it up
and spit it out: the more vitriolic it is, the more emboldened it
makes them.

Some of the most savage reprisals against the neocons, however, have
come from the right. I have written elsewhere of the ensemble of
realists, libertarians, and "paleoconservatives" who opposed the Iraq
adventure and the doctrines that justified it, and of other
conservatives who fear that the neocons and their war will sink Bush's
presidency.

Neo–conservatives are no less sanguine about attacks from this
political direction: as if to say "bring it on", neocons are armed
with counterattacks about the variously amoral, isolationist,
nativist, unpatriotic, even anti–Semitic nature of the conservative
cases against them.

But the latest salvo against the war and its neocon architects has
stung its targets like none other has done. That's because the
critique Francis Fukuyama has advanced is an inside job: not only is
its author among the most celebrated members of the neo–conservative
intelligentsia, but his dissection of the conceptual problems at the
core of the Iraq undertaking appeared on the neocons' home ground.
"The Neoconservative Moment," his twelve–page intervention into the
Iraq debate, was published in the Summer 2004 issue of The National
Interest, a flagship conservative foreign–policy journal.

This, in short, is different. Fukuyama is – to use a phrase patented
by Margaret Thatcher – one of us. He's part of the club. Indeed, he's
played as prominent a role as any of his co–thinkers in fostering the
life of the neo-conservative mind since helping define the post–cold
war moment fifteen years ago with his famous "end of history" thesis.

That's why the neocon world is abuzz about Fukuyama's jab, and about
his decision not to support Bush for re–election. "I just think that
if you're responsible for this kind of a big policy failure," he tells
openDemocracy, "you ought to be held accountable for it."


Breaking ranks

In "The Neoconservative Moment," Fukuyama turns a heat lamp on the
cogitations of one thinker in particular, Charles Krauthammer, whose
"strategic thinking has become emblematic" of the neo-conservative
camp that envisaged the Iraq invasion. Krauthammer, one of the war's
most vociferous advocates, had somewhat famously fancied the end of
the cold war as a "unipolar moment" in geopolitics – which, by 2002,
he was calling a "unipolar era." In February 2004 Krauthammer
delivered an address at the neoconservative American Enterprise
Institute in Washington in which he offered a strident defense of the
Iraq war in terms of his concept of unipolarity, or what he now calls
"democratic realism."

Fukuyama was in the audience that evening and did not like what he heard.

Krauthammer's speech was "strangely disconnected from reality,"
Fukuyama wrote in "The Neoconservative Moment." "Reading Krauthammer,
one gets the impression that the Iraq War – the archetypical
application of American unipolarity – had been an unqualified success,
with all of the assumptions and expectations on which the war had been
based fully vindicated." "There is not the slightest nod" in
Krauthammer's exposition "towards the new empirical facts" that have
come to light over the course of the occupation.

Fukuyama's case against Krauthammer's – and thus the dominant
neo–conservative – position on Iraq is manifold.


Social engineering

Krauthammer's logic, Fukuyama argues, is "utterly unrealistic in its
overestimation of U.S. power and our ability to control events around
the world." "Of all of the different views that have now come to be
associated with neoconservatives, the strangest one to me was the
confidence that the United States could transform Iraq into a
Western–style democracy," he wrote, "and to go on from there to
democratize the broader Middle East."

This struck Fukuyama as strange, he explained, "precisely because
these same neoconservatives had spent much of the past generation
warning...about the dangers of ambitious social engineering, and how
social planners could never control behavior or deal with
unanticipated consequences." If the US can't eradicate poverty at home
or improve its own education system, he asked, "how does it expect to
bring democracy to a part of the world that has stubbornly resisted it
and is virulently anti–American to boot?"

He didn't rule out the possibility of the endeavour succeeding, but
saw its chances of doing so as weak. Wise policy, he wrote, "is not
made by staking everything on a throw of the dice." "Culture is not
destiny," but, he argued in tones echoing his former professor Samuel
Huntington, it "plays an important role in making possible certain
kinds of institutions – something that is usually taken to be a
conservative insight."


Nation–building

The only way for such an "unbelievably ambitious effort to politically
transform one of the world's most troubled and hostile regions" to
have an outside chance of working, Fukuyama maintained, was a huge,
long–term commitment to postwar reconstruction. "America has been
involved in approximately 18 nation–building projects between its
conquest of the Philippines in 1899 and the current occupations of
Afghanistan and Iraq," he wrote, "and the overall record is not a
pretty one."

The signs thus far in Iraq? "Lurking like an unbidden guest at a
dinner party is the reality of what has happened in Iraq since the
U.S. invasion: We have been our usual inept and disorganized selves in
planning for and carrying out the reconstruction, something that was
predictable in advance and should not have surprised anyone familiar
with American history." (There are, it should be noted, serious doubts
about whether democratisation is the real agenda of the
regime–changers. Click here and here for two skeptical views.)

But unlike many conservative critics of nation–building – the
aforementioned realists, libertarians, and paleocons, for example –
Fukuyama believes there are cases when it is necessary, indeed vital.
While he argues that America "needs to be more realistic about its
nation–building abilities, and cautious in taking on large
social–engineering projects in parts of the world it does not
understand very well," he sees it as inevitable that the US will get
"sucked into similar projects in the future," and America must be
"much better prepared," he warns, for a scenario such as the "sudden
collapse of the North Korean regime."


Legitimacy

Krauthammer and other neocon advocates of the war – Robert Kagan most
famously – have turned anti–Europeanism into a sport, arguing that
Europe's doubts about Iraq reflect a plate–tectonic shift in
consciousness and signal a cleft in transatlantic relations of epochal
significance.

Fukuyama doesn't dismiss this argument entirely, but sees a sleight of
hand at work in its rhetorical deployment in the Iraq debate. If
Krauthammer, rather than summarily spurning continental arguments as
just so much bad faith and responsibility–shirking, had instead
"listened carefully to what many Europeans were actually saying
(something that Americans are not very good at doing these days), he
would have discovered that much of their objection to the war was not
a normative one having to do with procedural issues and the UN, but
rather a prudential one having to do with the overall wisdom of
attacking Iraq."

Krauthammer's almost principled disdain for European sensibilities is
particularly problematic, Fukuyama argued, when one considers that
"the European bottom line proved to be closer to the truth than the
administration's far more alarmist position" vis–à–vis weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). "On the question of the manageability of postwar
Iraq, the more skeptical European position was almost certainly
right." Despite this, Krauthammer proceeds "as if the Bush
administration's judgment had been vindicated at every turn, and that
any questioning of it can only be the result of base or dishonest
motives."

Fukuyama, in contrast, exhorts the US to confront these errors
head–on, realising that they have "created an enormous legitimacy
problem for us," one that will damage American interests "for a long
time to come." "This should matter to us," he inveighs, "not just for
realist reasons of state (our ability to attract allies to share the
burden), but for idealist ones as well (our ability to lead and
inspire based on the attractiveness of who we are)." The US must
"spend much more time and energy" cultivating "like–minded allies" to
accomplish "both the realist and idealist portions" of its agenda.


Israelpolitik

Finally, Fukuyama argues, Krauthammer and other neo–conservatives
misconstrue the nature of the threat facing the US today, in part
because they view American foreign policy through the prism of the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Krauthammer's hard line, Likudnik
position on Israel "colors his views on how the United States should
deal with the Arabs more broadly." Krauthammer once quipped in a radio
interview that the only way to earn respect in the Arab world is to
reach down and squeeze between the legs. (His exact wording was
slightly less delicate.)

Fukuyama questions the logic of transposing this Ariel Sharon style of
thought to US strategy: "Are we like Israel, locked in a remorseless
struggle with a large part of the Arab and Muslim world, with few
avenues open to us for dealing with them other than an iron fist?" In
an argument echoed by Anatol Lieven in his book America Right or
Wrong, Fukuyama asks: "does a strategic doctrine developed by a small,
vulnerable country surrounded by implacable enemies make sense when
applied to the situation of the world's sole superpower…?"

Calling for a "more complex strategy" that "recalibrates the
proportion of sticks and carrots," Fukuyama argues that "an American
policy toward the Muslim world that, like Sharon's, is largely stick
will be a disaster: we do not have enough sticks in our closet to
'make them respect us'. The Islamists for sure hated us from the
beginning, but Krauthammerian unipolarity has increased hatred for the
United States in the broader fight for hearts and minds."

In his response to Fukuyama, published in the current (Fall 2004)
issue of The National Interest, Krauthammer polemically dismisses
Fukuyama's arguments with words like "bizarre," "ridiculous,"
"absurd," "silly," and "odd in the extreme." Fukuyama, he writes, has
"enthusiastically joined the crowd seizing upon the difficulties in
Iraq as a refutation of any forward–looking policy that might have
gotten us there…" As for Fukuyama's claim that the fecklessness of the
reconstruction effort was "predictable in advance," Krauthammer
writes: "Curiously, however, Fukuyama never predicted it in advance.
He waited a year to ascertain wind direction, then predicted what had
already occurred."

On Fukuyama's argument about the role of Israel, Krauthammer accuses
his interlocutor of "Judaizing" neo–conservatism. "His is not the
crude kind, advanced by Pat Buchanan and Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad,
among others, that American neoconservatives (read: Jews) are simply
doing Israel's bidding, hijacking American foreign policy in the
service of Israel and the greater Jewish conspiracy." "Fukuyama's
take," he writes, "is more subtle and implicit."

What makes Fukuyama's argument "quite ridiculous," Krauthammer
contends, is that at the vanguard of the policies in question are
Bush, Blair, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. "How," he asks, "did they come to
their delusional identification with Israel?" "Are they Marranos, or
have they been hypnotized by 'neoconservatives' into sharing the
tribal bond?"


Inside or out?

Just how deep into the body of neo-conservatism did Fukuyama's knife
go? Is he himself still a neocon? Fukuyama is ambiguous on this point.
Others are less so.

On the one hand, Fukuyama claims he's starting from faithful
neo–conservative axioms and simply drawing different conclusions about
their application in the specific case of the Iraq war. "One can start
with premises identical to Krauthammer's…and yet come up with a
foreign policy that is very different from the one he lays out," he
writes.

"I still consider myself to be a dyed–in–the–wool neoconservative," he
told an audience in August.

In the same stroke of the pen, however, he writes (in "The
Neoconservative Moment") that "it is probably too late to reclaim the
label 'neoconservative' for any but the policies undertaken by the
Bush administration" and doubts whether the vision he proposes as an
alternative to Krauthammer's "will ever be seen as neoconservative."
Then again, he concludes, "there is no reason why it should not have
this title."

In his National Interest response, Krauthammer (who declined
openDemocracy's request for an interview) writes that Fukuyama's
"intent is to take down the entire neoconservative edifice." Indeed,
Krauthammer's counterpunch is shot through with the conviction that,
notwithstanding his interlocutor's pronouncements to the contrary,
this is anything but a family quarrel: Fukuyama's train, he believes,
has pulled out of the neoconservative station.


Why Fukuyama Matters

John Mearsheimer thinks Krauthammer is on to something.

"Fukuyama understands, quite correctly, that the Bush doctrine has
washed up on the rocks," the University of Chicago political scientist
and author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics tells
openDemocracy. Fukuyama's essay provides a "great service," he says,
in making plain that the neo-conservative strategy for dealing with
Iraq has "crashed and burned." Fukuyama is "to be admired for his
honesty here. He is confronting reality."

The significance of Fukuyama's intervention, says Mearsheimer, goes
beyond its being the first in–house, intra–neocon dispute over Iraq.
"It's not only that he's a member of the [neoconservative] tribe going
after another member of the tribe; [Fukuyama] is one of the tribe's
most important members." Indeed, he says, Fukuyama and Krauthammer are
without a doubt "the two heavyweights" of the neoconservative
intelligentsia, and their debate is about "terribly important issues,
issues of central importance to American foreign policy."

Mearsheimer agrees with Krauthammer that Fukuyama's critique threatens
to dismantle the neo-conservative project. First, he says, Fukuyama is
challenging "the unilateralist impulse that's hard wired into the
neoconservative worldview." Second, Fukuyama disputes the argument
that the Iraq war would create a democratic domino effect in the
Arab–Islamic world. These, says Mearsheimer, are "two of the most
important planks" in the Bush doctrine and in the neo-conservative
Weltanschauung.

Fukuyama also possesses what Mearsheimer calls a "very healthy respect
for the limits of military force." "I think you cannot bring about
democracy through the use of military force," he told the Cairo–based
weekly Al–Ahram. Then there is Fukuyama's point about the limits of
social engineering and his argument regarding the neocon tendency to
conflate Israel's security threats with those of the United States.

Taken together, says Mearsheimer, this band of criticisms makes
Fukuyama's case nothing less than devastating. "This is not just a
minor spat within the camp. This is consequential."


High stakes, hard words

The Fukuyama–Krauthammer exchange has generated considerable buzz
within Washington. "The foreign policy establishment are paying
attention," National Interest editor John O'Sullivan tells
openDemocracy. The exchange, he says, is "generating debate and
discussion more generally" as well.

"It was about time somebody out of this circle broke out and dealt
with reality," says Gary Dorrien, author of The Neoconservative Mind
and Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana, of
this "first crack in the dyke." "I'm not surprised that he's the one
who did," Dorrien tells
openDemocracy. "He was never the hard–line ideologue that most of them 
are."

David Frum, a daily National Review Online columnist for and former
Bush speechwriter currently at work on a history of foreign–policy
decision–making in the Bush administration, thinks l'affaire Fukuyama
will take on greater significance in the event of a Bush defeat. "If
Bush loses and Republicans turn against the war and decide to blame
somebody for [it]," he tells
openDemocracy, "then intellectually they're going to end up unraveling
the chain of reasoning that led them to Iraq. At that point, they're
going to start looking for some kind of alternative. I don't think
right now you can point to Fukuyama and say, 'it'll take them here',"
but Fukuyama's arguments "may become more attractive," he says.

Frum, who continues to support the war and thinks Krauthammer makes
"intellectual mincemeat" of Fukuyama in their exchange, says he "would
find it hard to believe" if the two men were still friends. (Fukuyama
tells
openDemocracy that he and Krauthammer have not spoken since the
shootout began.) Frum attributes the rather rancorous tone of the
debate – particularly, one must say, in Krauthammer's reply – to the
magnitude of the issues. "We're fighting right now over who's going to
control the fate of the [Republican] party. There are large stakes."


Fallout

Fukuyama does plan to respond to Krauthammer's essay, in a forthcoming
issue of The National Interest. "There's a little bit of an
implication that I'm being anti–Semitic and I really do think I need
to talk about that," he tells
openDemocracy.

He admits to being "a little bit disappointed" that Krauthammer didn't
employ "a more neutral tone," he says of his old friend. "On the other
hand," he says, "that's his style. He does this to everybody. I don't
know why I would be exempted."

What does Fukuyama make of Krauthammer's claim that "The
Neoconservative Moment" amounts to an attempt to raze the Neocon
Palace? "The zealousness of many people who wear the neoconservative
label for the war in Iraq has done more to undermine neoconservatism
than anything I possibly could have said," he rejoins, adding that a
dose of introspection might do them well.

"That's the thing that strikes me – it's the same thing that strikes
me about President Bush, as well," he says. "I would forgive a lot if
any of these people who were very strong advocates of the war showed
any reflectiveness about what's happened or any acknowledgement that
maybe there was something problematic in what they were recommending.
Krauthammer doesn't do that, and President Bush doesn't do that. I
take that as a big flaw. It seems to me it's not going to help their
case to keep insisting that they were right about everything."

Absent from Krauthammer's reply, says Fukuyama, "was any
acknowledgement that any of my points had any validity, or that the
way the war developed led to any rethinking of anything."

Neo–conservatism faces a test, says Fukuyama. Either it will adapt in
the face of changing realities on the ground or "stick to a rigid set
of principles." The outcome, he says, will "mean either the death or
the survival of this movement."


A paradigm shift?

Why didn't Fukuyama voice the doubts he says he had about the war in
the months leading up to it, when the debate was in full stride? "I
didn't think it would do any good for me to come out against it
because everybody was so determined to do it," he says. And so I
thought, 'well, let them have their chance.' I was not certain about
the outcome. I thought the probabilities of it working out were not
sufficient to justify taking that kind of a risk."

For Fukuyama, the prospects of a Bush victory in the presidential
election are troubling. In the Financial Times (14 September 2004) he
wrote: "The Republican convention outrageously lumped the September 11
terrorist attacks and the Iraq war into a single, seamless war on
terrorism – as if the soldiers fighting [militant Iraqi Shi'a cleric
Muqtada al–Sadr] were avenging the destroyers of the twin towers. This
has, in fact, become true, but only because mismanagement of the war
has created a new Afghanistan inside Iraq." He concluded: "if Mr Bush
is returned with a large mandate in November, the administration will
have got away with a Big Lie about the war on terrorism and will have
little incentive to engage in serious review."

Though Fukuyama says he will not be voting for Bush, he refuses to
affirm whether he'll cast his ballot for Kerry. "There are things I
really don't like about Kerry, either," he says. While the Bush people
"have been much too willing to use force and to use it recklessly,"
the Democrats, he says, "still have this big problem about using it at
all. I wish there were someone who had a better balance between the
two positions. "

And yet, Fukuyama told the Jerusalem Post in March 2004 that electing
a Democrat to the White House "will make a difference." "[S]ince it is
not the Democrats' war," he said, "if they have to face a really
stressful situation a few years from now, it would be easier for them
to walk away than it would be for a second Bush administration."

In April 2005, Fukuyama will give a series of lectures in which he
intends to address "more systematically" his criticisms of the Iraq
adventure and its neo–conservative architects.

Does Fukuyama regard the recent turn of events – his critique of the
war, his debate with Krauthammer, his opposition to Bush's reelection
– as signaling something of a paradigm shift in his
self–understanding? "I don't know whether it's going to prompt the
shift so much as reflect the shift," he explains. "I've been moving
towards an interest in development questions over the last few years,"
he says.

Indeed, he explores the politics and economics of international
institutions at some length in his recent State Building: Governance
and World Order in the 21st Century and will continue to do so in 2005
when he takes over as head of the International Development Program at
SAIS (Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies), where he is currently a professor of
international political economy.

"I think one of the big divides in the world is between people who
primarily do security studies and people who do development. And I
think one of the reasons the Bush people got into so much trouble is
they put people who knew security in charge of what was really a big
development project. These are people who had not spent a lot of time
in East Timor or Somalia or Bosnia, watching how these things are
done," he says. "I think that was one of the big problems."

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Copyright ©Danny Postel 2004. Published by openDemocracy Ltd. You may
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