America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order

Abstract

America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke Cambridge University Press, 2004 The scholarly background of these two authors shows in the encyclopedic knowledge they bring to bear on their subject. Stefan Halper is a Fellow at Cambridge University, and a Senior Fellow in the Centre for International Studies; Jonathan Clarke is a Foreign Affairs Scholar at the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C. The great merit of this book is that it provides a detailed account of neo-conservative themes, key documents, origins, personalities, and supporting media and organizations. Because Halper and Clarke are not neo-conservatives, but rather critics of it, a conscientious reader will want to supplement America Alone by a generous reading of neo-conservative writing per se. Halper and Clarke refer us to Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995); Robert Kagan and William Kristol (ed.s), Present Dangers: Cnsis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (2003), where contributions by several prominent authors make it "close to a neo-conservative canon"; David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (2003); and a good many other books as listed in their bibliography. The ideas have come to rest, too, in certain key neo-conservative policy statements. One of the most comprehensive of these is the 1997 "Statement of Principles by the Project for the New American Century." Because Halper and Clarke are critics rather than acolytes, their book is necessarily not merely about neo-conservatism. Since a criticism presupposes a position from which the criticism is made, the authors' own mindscape is evident in the book. They bring their own baggage, good or bad, to the table. We will discuss that after we see what they tell us about neo-conservatism. The neo-conservative movement as described in America Alone brings to mind the statement Shakespeare has Cassius make about Julius Caesar: "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs...." The neoconservatives are remarkable for their "presence." They command attention and exude intellectuality. Halper and Clarke tell how the early neo-conservatives - the "first generation" - got their start in a "brief association" with "the Trotskyist left in the 1930s." Alcove 1 of the cafeteria at the City College of New York was the site where "America's future neo-conservative intellectuals such as Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Seymour Martin Lipset, Seymour Melman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Philip Selznick received enduring parts of their education." During that and the ensuing generation, this group and those who have found common cause with them have engaged in the most remarkable "networking" - a web of interlocking organizations, journals, media outlets, books, articles, open-letter signings, etc., that is powerfully reminiscent of the similar networking that occurred within the Left during the 1930s. The strategy of the "front organization" has been replicated, with each individual lending his reputation to countless outlets. The effect is to make the neo-conservative voice ubiquitous, and necessarily to push other voices to the fringe. For most of the lifetime of this reviewer, the "liberal-Left" dominated American media, so that "liberal bias in the media" was a matter of perennial complaint by those outside the Left. In recent years, however, the situation has changed dramatically. Now, it is neoconservative media that stand "bestride the world like a Colossus." Here are just a few the details supplied by Halper and Clarke: the Weekly Standard, for whom William Kristol (son of first-generation neoconservative Irving Kristol) has been editor since it was founded in 1995, is the "neo-conservative flagship publication." The American Jewish Committee, publisher of Commentary, made Norman Podhoretz the chief editor of that journal in 1959. …