Neoconservatism by Another Name
Is there anything American about “National Conservatism”?
In the thirty years since the end of the Cold War, conservatives of various stripes have, with decidedly mixed results, sought to shape the parameters of the national debate over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. These include such foreign policy blueprints as the Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992); the Project for the New American Century’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (2000); Condoleezza Rice’s “Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest” (2000); and Mitt Romney’s The Mantle of Leadership (2012).
The latest attempt to forge a conservative foreign policy paradigm comes by way of the former Trump national security advisor Robert O’Brien who, in a much-discussed essay in Foreign Affairs last month, laid out his vision for what US foreign policy might look like under a second Trump presidency. In his piece, O’Brien calls for the containment of China in order to deter it from threatening Taiwan. As for Middle East policy, O’Brien’s devotion to Israel rivals that of the most hawkish neocons. He believes a second Trump administration should launch a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran, which, he writes, is “the true source of tumult in the Middle East.”
Such a campaign would
mean deploying more maritime and aviation assets to the Middle East, making it clear not only to Tehran but also to American allies that the U.S. military’s focus in the region was on deterring Iran.
The O’Brien Doctrine (if indeed that’s what it is), particularly with regard to China and the Middle East, fits neatly within the foreign policy paradigm of the National Conservatives, or NatCons, who recently held a three day conference (confusingly, also “NatCon”) in downtown Washington, D.C.
As the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Senior Adviser Kelley Vlahos pointed out in a superb report on NatCon’s foreign policy prerogatives,
On the one hand the organizers and proponents rail against a globalism dominated by supranational neo-liberal institutions, and progressive litmus tests and ideas, but on the other they want borderless solidarity with other like minded nationalists across the globe…. It also means talking about Israel from a predominantly Israeli nationalist perspective.
Vlahos went on to note that the NatCon conference is the creation of the Edmund Burke Foundation, whose founder is the Israeli nationalist Yoram Hazony, a former speechwriter to Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu. An admirer of the violent Jewish supremacist Meir Kahane, Hazony and his family have made their home in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
In a 2019 speech unearthed by historian Suzanne Schneider, Hazony claimed that
In every country in the world where there is an uprising against the destruction, the endless revolution that liberal Enlightenment is causing...the nationalist leadership turns to Israel, turns to the Jews, turns to the Torah, and says “That’s our model for what we want to see in our country.”
Yet is ethno-nationalism in the form we now see on perfervid display in Israel under Netanyahu—whose actions have been slavishly endorsed by leading figures of the NatCon movement—a realistic (we’ll leave aside the question of whether it is good or just) model for the United States?
In the distant past, perhaps. But that ship, for better or worse, has sailed. A multiethnic, multi-confessional society that spans an entire continent requires solutions other than those on offer by nationalists like Hazony.
Writing in 2005, the historian John Lukacs made a useful distinction between nationalism and patriotism—and it is one to which NatCons might avail themselves. Lukacs defined patriotism as “the love of a particular land, with its particular traditions.”
“The love for one’s people is natural,” he wrote, “but it is also categorical; it is less charitable and less deeply human than the love for one’s country, a love that flows from traditions, at least akin to a love of one’s family.”
For ethno-nationalists like Hazony and his American disciples, the July 2018 adoption by the Knesset of the Israel Nation-State Law was a watershed moment. The law, among other things, says that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.” Such a declaration may be well within the boundaries of the Zionist political tradition, but few things could be more antithetical to the American political tradition.
Still more, a number of high profile NatCons have embarked on a campaign to toss out the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. At the aforementioned NatCon conference, the editor of First Things, R.R. Reno, urged the Roberts Court to “tear down that wall” between church and state.
So much for Luke 20:25; let’s gut the First Amendment to hasten the Second Coming.
National Conservatism has also been linked, not least by some of its proponents, to the so-called “American Greatness” conservatism of the late 1990s—a creation of the pundit David Brooks and the neoconservatives of the now defunct Weekly Standard.
The point of American conservatism would seem to be to conserve what past generations have bequeathed us—and in order to do so properly we need to understand what it is we have, and where it came from.
But Brooks had bigger things in mind; the quotidian tasks of government (like, say, border security) simply were not grand enough a task. “It almost doesn’t matter what great task government sets for itself,” he wrote, “as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness.” Brooks went on to claim that, “The quest for national greatness defines the word ‘American’ and makes it new for every generation.”
And here we come to another problem.
The appeal of America-as-Idea to ideologues on both the Left and Right is easy enough to understand—if America is merely an idea, then the interpretation of the country’s past and the charting of its future becomes the province of clever theoreticians, some of whom have peripheral or only very recent connections to the country whose destiny they now seek to shape. America, in other words, becomes whatever au currant ideologists and theorists want it to be. That said, in recent years Brooks has positioned himself as one of the foremost critics of the “national” brand of conservatism. But while he may not like the looks of the baby now, it would be hard for him to deny paternity.
There are also potential problems posed by the determination of the NatCons to internationalize the conservative movement. An internationalization of conservatism (which if conservatism is to mean anything at all, must put a premium on place) seems as practicable as the internationalization of socialist movements in decades past. At a minimum, American conservatives should encourage less foreign influence in our politics, not more.
The traditions and thinking that ought to animate a sane, ethical and responsible foreign policy ought to be, above all, American. Fortunately we have a rich history from which to choose, beginning not least with Washington’s Farewell Address (1796).
Contrary to the NatCons’ wish tie the U.S. to Israel indefinitely, George Washington understood all too well the danger of permanent alliances and counseled that
against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
Shouldn’t an American conservative foreign policy be founded out of the works of Washington, John Quincy Adams, and Dwight D. Eisenhower? Are not the works of Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Lippmann, George F. Kennan, and Patrick Buchanan the right ones on which to reform, renew and reshape America’s role in the world? References to these statesmen and thinkers seem notable for their absence—not only within O’Brien’s Foreign Affairs tract (the first U.S. president merits one mention)—but among those of some of the more high profile NatCon foreign policy figures. And perhaps for good reason; after all, these figures of the distant and not-so-distant past would no doubt object to the NatCon program of never-ending American meddling throughout the Middle East and Asia. Indeed, there is nothing in our history that suggests a “more perfect union” will come by way of dominion over the Persian Gulf or the South China Sea.
It is, we believe, deeply unfortunate that the good sense NatCons display when talking about NATO and Ukraine abandons them utterly when confronted with problems of Israel/Palestine, Iran, and China. In the end, National Conservatism is just another foreign import; another bit of intellectual scaffolding on which to hang another in a series of interventionist foreign policies on the American people.
National Conservatism is many things—but American it is not.
About The Authors
James W. Carden
James W. Carden is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and a former adviser to the U.S. State Department.