[Peace-discuss] Neocons and Liberals Together, Again

Fri Feb 4 13:24:17 CST 2005

	Liberal Hawks Ally with Project for the New American Century:
	Neocons and Liberals Together, Again
	By Tom Barry | February 3, 2005

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has
signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national
security strategy with a new public letter stating that the "U.S. military
is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume."  
Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security
strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the
letter's signatories call for increasing the size of America's global
fighting machine.

The January 28th PNAC letter advocates that House and Senate leaders take
the necessary steps "to increase substantially the size of the active duty
Army and Marine Corps."

Joining the neocons in the letter to congressional leaders were a group of
prominent liberalsâ-- giving some credence to PNAC's claim that the "call
to act" to increase the total number of U.S. ground forces counts on
bipartisan support.

After an initial spate of public pronouncements after September 11th and
during the onset of the Iraq occupation, the Project for the New American
Century is again positioning itself as the policy institute that will set
the second Bush administration's security agenda. Although PNAC's 1997
statement of principles included only prominent right-wing figures -- many
of whom later joined the first Bush administration -- the neocon policy
institute has repeatedly reached out to liberals to give its public
letters to the Congress and the president the gloss of bipartisanship.

Its new call for congressional leaders to increase overall U.S. troop
levels includes endorsement of key liberal analysts. Among the signatories
are the leading foreign policy analysts at the Brookings Institution and
the Progressive Policy Institute, which are closely associated with the
Democratic Party. The endorsees of the letter are largely neoconservatives
who are principals in such neocon-led institutes as PNAC, American
Enterprise Institute (AEI), Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and
the Center for Security Policy. However, this call for a larger
expeditionary force was also signed by prominent liberal hawks, including
Michael O'Hanlon, Ivo Daalder, James Steinberg, and Will Marshall -- all
of whom have signed previous PNAC letters and policy statements.

Support for a "Generational Commitment" in Middle East

PNAC's "Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces"  endorses
Secretary of State Rice's assessment that U.S. military engagement in the
Middle East is a "generational commitment." To meet that commitment, the
PNAC signatories call on Congress to fulfill its constitutional obligation
to raise and support military forces -- which they say means increasing
the number of ground forces by at least 25,000 troops annually over the
next several years.

PNAC, which has repeatedly called for increases in the military budget and
for military-backed "regime change" around the world, is concerned that
the "United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are
asking it to assume." The neoconservative policy institute, which produced
the blueprint for the national security strategy of the first Bush
administration, echoes the recent assertion by the chief of the Army
Reserve that the "overuse" of U.S. ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
could be result in a "broken force."

Given that the military's reenlistment rates are declining and recruitment
goals are not being met, PNAC's call for Congress to increase troop levels
implies either reintroducing the draft or dramatically increasing the pay
for volunteer enlistees. The latter option would in effect create a global
mercenary force deployed to meet the new responsibilities of preventive
war, regime change, and political restructuring of the Middle East.

Liberal Hawks Fly with the Neocons

The recent PNAC letter to Congress was not the first time that PNAC or its
associated front groups, such as the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq,
have included hawkish Democrats.

Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that
the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it
was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction. PNAC and the
neocon camp had managed to translate their military agenda of preemptive
and preventive strikes into national security policy. With the invasion
underway, they sought to preempt those hardliners and military officials
who opted for a quick exit strategy in Iraq. In their March 19th letter,
PNAC stated that Washington should plan to stay in Iraq for the long haul:
"Everyone -- those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood
aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi
people and their neighbors -- must understand that we are committed to the
rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will
remain for as long as it takes."

Along with such neocon stalwarts as Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Joshua
Muravchik, James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, a half-dozen Democrats were
among the 23 individuals who signed PNAC's first letter on post-war Iraq.
Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a
member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk,
Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy
Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton's top
adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg,
Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy
studies at Brookings. A second post-Iraq war letter by PNAC on March 28
called for broader international support for reconstruction, including the
involvement of NATO, and brought together the same Democrats with the
prominent addition of another Brookings' foreign policy scholar, Michael
O'Hanlon.

In late 2002 PNAC's Bruce Jackson formed the Committee for the Liberation
of Iraq that brought together such Democrats as Senator Joseph Lieberman;
former Senator Robert Kerrey, the president of the New School University
who now serves on the 9/11 Commission; PPI's Will Marshall; and former
U.S. Representative Steve Solarz. The neocons also reached out to
Democrats through a sign-on letter to the president organized by the
Social Democrats/USA, a neocon institute that has played a critical role
in shaping the National Endowment for Democracy in the early 1980s and in
mobilizing labor support for an interventionist foreign policy.

The liberal hawks not only joined with the neocons to support the war and
the post-war restructuring but have published their own statements in
favor of what is now widely regarded as a morally bankrupt policy agenda.
Perhaps the clearest articulation of the liberal hawk position on foreign
and military policy is found in an October 2003 report by the Progressive
Policy Institute, which is a think tank closely associated with the
Democratic Leadership Council. The report, entitled Progressive
Internationalism: A Democratic National Security Strategy, endorsed the
invasion of Iraq, "because the previous policy of containment was
failing," and Saddam Hussein's government was "undermining both collective
security and international law."

PPI President Will Marshall said that the progressive internationalism
strategy draws "a sharp distinction between this mainstream Democratic
strategy for national security and the far left's vision of America's role
in the world. In this document we take issue with those who begrudge the
kind of defense spending that we think is necessary to meet our needs,
both at home and abroad; with folks who seem to reflexively oppose the use
of force; and who seem incapable of taking America's side in international
disputes." Among the other liberal hawks who contributed to the
Progressive Internationalism report were Bob Kerrey; Larry Diamond of the
Hoover Institution and the National Endowment for Democracy; and Michael
McFaul of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The repeated willingness of influential liberal leaders and foreign policy
analysts, such as Marshall, O'Hanlon, and Daalder, to join forces with the
neoconservative camp has bolstered PNAC's claim that its foreign policy
agenda is neither militarist nor imperialist but one that is based on a
deep respect for human rights, democracy, and universal moral values.
Other liberal hawks signing the recent PNAC letter include New Republic
editor Peter Beinart; Steven Nider, director of security studies at the
Progressive Policy Institute; James Steinberg, director of Brookings'
foreign policy studies program and former director of the State
Department's Policy Planning office during the Clinton administration;
Craig Kennedy, president of the German Marshall Fund and former program
officer at the Joyce Foundation; and Michelle Flournoy, a self-described
"pro-defense Democrat" who is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and
served in the Clinton administration in the DOD's strategy secretariat.
Having Yale historian Paul Kennedy, the author of The Rise and Fall of
Great Powers, sign the new letter was a major coup for PNAC.

Not surprising is the list of neocons signing PNAC's new letter. In
addition to PNAC's founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan, other PNAC
principals included as signatories were its deputy director Daniel
McKivergan, executive director Gary Schmitt, military strategist Thomas
Donnelly, Middle East associate Reuel Marc Gerecht; and board members
Bruce Jackson and Randy Scheunemann. Signatories from the closely
associated American Enterprise Institute include Daniel Blumenthal, Joshua
Muravchik, Danielle Pletka, and Elliot Cohen. Other neocon luminaries
among the 34 signatories include pundit Max Boot; Clifford May, executive
director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; and Frank
Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy.

One striking difference marking the new PNAC letter was its inclusion of
several high-ranking retired military officers, including Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, former SouthCom commander and Drug Czar and Lt. Gen. Buster
Glosson, who directed air strategy during the Gulf War.

Mugging and Hugging

Irving Kristol, known as the "godfather of neoconservatism," famously
defined neoconservatives as "liberals who have been mugged by reality."  
That political mugging occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the
rise of the counterculture, the anti-war movement, and progressive New
Politics of the Democratic Party.

Former Trotskyite militants and Cold War liberals like Kristol, Norman
Podhoretz, and Midge Decter switched their loyalties to the Republican
Party. The "reality" that mugged the neocons was the progressive turn in
the Democratic Party led by such figures as Jesse Jackson, Bella Abzug,
George McGovern, and Jimmy Carter. In contrast, the neoconservatives found
the militant anticommunism and social conservatism of the Ronald Reagan
faction in the Republican Party invigorating. In the neocon lexicon,
liberalism became synonymous with secularism, women's liberation,
anti-Americanism, and appeasement.

Over the past quarter century, the neocons have sought, with increasing
success, to rid the Republican Party of its isolationists, its
anti-imperialists, and its realists. The younger neocons, such as William
Kristol (son of Irving) and Elliott Abrams (son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz
and Midge Decter), have promoted a new right-wing internationalism that
holds that America should be both a global cop and a global missionary for
freedom.

Traditional conservatives and Republican Party realists say that the
neocons' foreign policy agenda is, respectively, neo-imperialist and
unrealistic about the capacity of U.S. military power to remake the world.
Apart from their militarist friends in the Pentagon and defense
industries, the neocons are finding that their closest ideological allies
are the internationalists in the liberal camp. Having recuperated from
their mugging, the neocons are now reaching out to liberals who share
their idealism about America's global mission. To the delight of the
neocons at PNAC and AEI, an influential group of liberal hawks share their
vision of a U.S. grand strategy that will create a world order based on
U.S. military supremacy and America's presumed moral superiority.

(Tom Barry is policy director of the International Relations Center,
online at http://www.irc-online.org, and author of numerous books on
international relations.) For more information about the liberal hawks,
see the following Right Web profiles from the IRC:

	Project for a New American Century
	Will Marshall
	Progressive Policy Institute
	Democratic Leadership Council
	Social Democrats/USA

Recommended citation: Tom Barry, "Neocons and Liberals Together, Again,"
IRC Right Web (Silver City, NM: International Relations Center, February
3, 2005).

Web location: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0502ally.php

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