A liberalism betrayed? American neoconservatism and the theory of international relations

Abstract

This article analyses the ideological and theoretical underpinnings of neoconservative discourses on international relations. It moves beyond recent polemics and debates over the Bush administration's foreign policy to offer a deeper look at the intellectual premises of the peculiar synthesis of realism and idealism which characterizes the neoconservative mode of political engagement with the world. Looking at the domestic and foreign policy dimensions of neoconservative political sociology, the article argues that neoconservatism is not the centrist ‘liberal’ conservatism that it pretends to be (and that many foreign policy analysts have diagnosed in recent years). It argues that to the extent that neoconservatism is committed to the Enlightenment narrative of human rights and liberal democracy, these commitments are predicated on an atavistic conservative philosophy that is in fact ferociously predatory on liberal values and liberal mechanisms of governance. The aim here is not to provide a normative defence of liberalism as such. Yet, situating neoconservatism within the broad church of liberal political theory tends to eclipse all that is specific to neoconservatism as an ideology. It endows this militaristic approach to social order with a progressive ethical gloss that it does not deserve, and it consequently muddles debates over the limits and desirability of liberal values and practices in world politics.