Exporting virtue: neoconservatism, democracy promotion and the end of history

Abstract

Changes in neoconservative foreign policy thought in the post-Cold War period have often been downplayed. Interested observers seem content to emphasise continuities or merely changes in personnel with a second generation of neoconservatives replacing an earlier cadre, rather than shifts in the ideology itself. By interrogating the early post-Cold War years, this article argues that neoconservatism as an ideology underwent significant changes, with a cautious form of realism, even isolationism, replaced by a much more expansive and ambitious worldview. Humanitarian interests and the promotion of democracy abroad assumed more central roles in neoconservative discourse in a way they had not hitherto achieved. These concerns when combined with the frequent advocacy of American hegemony shifted neoconservatism in a direction which was not anticipated in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. The structural decline of bipolarity in the international system; the impact of democracy promotion discourses including Francis Fukuyama's ‘End of History’ thesis; and a religious ‘turn’ in neoconservative thought all contributed to this new direction, laying the ideological groundwork for many of the ideas which underpinned the 2003 Iraq War.