The Neoconservative Moment

Summary: Francis Fukuyama
"The Neoconservative Moment"
The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq.
Cambridge University Press (2005). pp. 170-85.

In "The Neoconservative Moment," Francis Fukuyama argues that Charles Krauthammer's "democratic globalism" brand of neoconservativism is too realist and too idealist by turns.  Democratic globalists, according to Krauthammer, believe that American military supremacy should be used to "support U.S. security interests and democracy simultaneously."  

Fukuyama argues that Iraq was hardly a strategic threat, even less a global, existential threat to freedom.  But even if it had been it was clear from the beginning that neither the nature of Iraqi society nor the United States' past experience with regime change lent themselves well to the prospects of success. Finally, Fukuyama argues that democratic globalism fails to appreciate the value of legitimacy, and overlooks the fact that many of our allies "did not trust us...to use our huge margin of power wisely and in the interests of the world as a whole."  The US can no longer count on post facto legitimacy as it did during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was a competing power, and the United States and its allies agreed that frequent demonstrations of resolve, in the form of military action, could be beneficial.  

Focus now is on the Middle East, and a pre-emptively and frequently intervening superpower is as unlikely to coax the Arab world into democracy as force is unlikely to drag them into it. Fukuyama advocates a gentler, more multilateral brand of democratic globalism: reinstate diplomacy and coalition-building, promote democracy “through all of the available tools,” be more realistic about our abilities, be better prepared for nation-building when the need arises, and build institutions.  Whether this can be called ‘neoconservativism,’ Fukuyama does not know.