What is Neoconservatism?
Neoconservatism began as a mood among American thinkers in the 1960s. Many of them had been liberals or anti-Soviet socialists, and they felt the left was losing touch with reality. They doubted that large social programs always worked, disliked the counterculture, and thought America needed to stand up to Soviet power. Over time the label came to mean, above all, a foreign policy view: that America should keep its military lead, support allies, and help democracy grow around the world. Neoconservatives accept a modest welfare state and free markets. They stress that culture and character matter for a healthy society.
Core beliefs
- Democracies are safer and better partners, so America should support them.
- Strength and firm alliances deter aggressors better than weakness does.
- Markets work well, but a basic safety net is fine.
- Programs should be judged by what they actually achieve, and policy often has unintended effects.
- Family, community and moral habits underpin a free society.
- America has a special duty and ability to lead.
History
The movement grew in New York, among writers around the magazines Commentary and The Public Interest, which Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell founded in 1965. Kristol is often named its godfather. Sociologists and policy scholars like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and James Q. Wilson studied why well-meant programs often failed. In the 1970s many neoconservatives left the Democratic Party over the Vietnam War, defense policy and the counterculture, and joined the Reagan coalition. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a scholar who became ambassador to the United Nations, argued for firmness toward Soviet-backed regimes. The philosopher Leo Strauss is often linked to the movement, but how far he shaped it is disputed. After the Cold War ended, neoconservatives argued that America should use its power to promote democracy.
Variants
Early neoconservatism was mostly about domestic matters: crime, schools, welfare and the culture. Its later wing focused on foreign affairs and is sometimes called a hawkish or democratic internationalism. The word is also used loosely, outside America, for any hawkish center-right foreign policy, which blurs things. Many people use it as an insult, which makes it harder to say who counts as a neoconservative at all.
Criticisms
Critics on the left say its foreign policy led to costly wars and civilian deaths and overrated what force can do. Paleoconservatives and libertarians say it grows the state, drags the country into foreign quarrels and departs from older, more cautious conservatism. Realist scholars argue that democracy cannot easily be built from outside and that power balances matter more than ideals. Some critics also point out that supporters have, at times, backed friendly dictators, which sits oddly with their stated aims.
In practice
Neoconservative ideas shaped American policy in the late Cold War and the early 2000s. Officials linked to the movement were prominent in the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which became a lasting source of controversy. At home, the movement fed debates about welfare reform, "broken windows" policing and the cultural roots of success. It built influential magazines and think tanks. On the 12 axes it scores very high toward Strength on Foreign policy, moderately toward Order on Security and toward Global on Trade.