Neo-conservatism and the Future of American Foreign Policy.

• Author: Sempa, Francis P.

Neo-conservatism and the Future of American Foreign Policy

By Justin Vaisse, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

Text:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2010/0513_neoconservatism/20100513_neoconservatism.pdf

Audio:

http://www.brookings.edu/events/2010/0513_neoconservatism.aspx (click "Audio")

In a recent speech at the Brookings Institution, Justin Vaisse previewed his new book--an analysis of neo-conservatism and its impact on U.S. foreign policy.

Neoconservatives, though a small, elite group of intellectuals, have influenced U.S. foreign policy, Vaisse says, because "ideas have consequences ... [and] ideas, concepts and representations ... play an essential role in the [foreign] policy process." Neo-conservatism, Vaisse stated, "played a distinct role in making the intervention [in Iraq] possible and desirable."

Vaisse historically divides neo-conservatism into three families or branches: the original neoconservatives, who were liberals that dissented from the radical counterculture of the Left in the 1960s and wrote for The Public Interest and Commentary (Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Norman Podhoretz, James Q. Wilson); the Scoop Jackson Democrats, who reacted against the Left's takeover of the...