Review: They Knew They Were Right

Abstract

THEY KNEW THEY WERE RIGHT The Rise of the Neocons Jacob Heilbrunn New York: Doubleday, 2008. 336 pp, $30.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0385511810)Few political labels of recent vintage have simultaneously generated as much vitriol and as much confusion as In this well-researched, comprehensive account, self-confessed neocon apostate Jacob Heilbrunn sets out to illuminate neoconservatism's genesis, development on the fringes of government and academia, rise to prominence, and return to the wilderness following the debacle Iraq. The book's biggest contribution is its attention to detail and sprawling narrative that traces neoconservatism's origins to the earliest years of the 20th century.In constructing this account, however, Heilbrunn fails to clarify what, exactly, it means to be neoconservative. How much continuity exists between proponents of rolling back communism the 1950s and supporters of overthrowing Arab dictatorships the 21st century? Heilbrunn assumes that, because many of the names are the same, so too are the ideas. Is neoconservatism fundamentally American phenomenon, or, as he suggests at one point, does it exist in some form...in every society (22)? The failure to grapple with these questions makes the book more of chronicle than work of real historical analysis.Heilbrunn's own neocon pedigree is impeccable - and important, since one of his major arguments is that the neocon movement is ultimately as much about filial piety as it is about policy positions (107). The son of Jewish refugee and student of Leo Strauss, Heilbrunn was familiar with neocon luminaries like Melvin Lasky, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz while still high school. Heilbrunn's Jewish heritage is also important, since he argues that neoconservatism is largely Jewish movement, originating with American Jews who had escaped Nazism and saw powerful, selfconfident America as the only defence against the new totalitarian menace of the Soviet Union (14).Many neocons began as doctrinaire Trotskyists, eager to destroy the old order that had excluded and persecuted them (including America's WASP establishment). Unfortunately, Heilbrunn passes over the critical question of why so many Jewish Trotskyists followed Kristol into an unwavering defence of American foreign policy during the Cold War. This lack of attention to intellectual transformations is symptomatic of Heilbrunn's preference documentation over synthesis.The neocons came into their own the 1960s. Again, Heilbrunn sees their Jewishness as central, leading them to identify with the victorious post1967 Israel while feeling that the American left (encouraged by Moscow) was singling Israel out criticism. Meanwhile, they filtered the emergence of street radicalism at home through the prism of their fathers' experiences 1930s Germany. Heilbrunn quotes former Cornell professor Donald Kagan, who recalling the 1969 campus takeover by black radicals, said that for the first time I understood what happened Nazi Germany (215).Heilbrunn suggests that the 1970s some ways represented the neocons' apogee. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan vindicated their belief Moscow's aggressive intentions (137-8). They also remained uncorrupted by power, seeking rather to influence policy through network of magazines and think tanks such as National Review, Commentary, and the American Enterprise Institute (159-60). These groups served as a neoconservative employment service (155), but also created walled off, self-congratulatory echo-chamber where ideas could germinate free from skepticism (242). Here, the neocons mounted crusade against detente and favour of Israel and the Vietnam War.Countering much later mythmaking, Heilbrunn shows that Ronald Reagan was never enamoured with the neocons. …