[Mb-civic] The NeoCon's Last Gasp? Not So Fast!

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-heilbrunn17nov17.story

COMMENTARY

The Neocons Last Gasp? Not So Fast
 By Jacob Heilbrunn
 Jacob Heilbrunn is an editorial writer at The Times.

 November 17, 2004

 For months, critics of the administration have been crowing that if
President Bush won reelection, he would dump the neoconservatives and
replace them with cautious, realist foreign policy thinkers.

 Writing in the Financial Times, James Mann, a former Los Angeles Times
reporter and author of a book about the Bush administration, dismissed
neocon doctrine as a "spent force" and said that the foreign policy realism
of big shots such as Henry Kissinger is "again ascendant."

 The editor of Foreign Policy magazine, Moises Naim, scoffed that
neoconservative ideas "lie buried in the sands of Iraq." On the right,
Patrick J. Buchanan gloated that the "salad days" of the neocons were over.

 There is only one problem with the critics' scenario: The opposite of what
they predicted is actually occurring. Bush hasn't retreated an inch
rhetorically and is stepping up the battle in Iraq. Vice President Dick
Cheney is ensuring that the neocons are being promoted everywhere in the
administration.

 With Secretary of State Colin Powell gone, Cheney no longer faces even
token opposition. Far from being headed for the political graveyard,
neoconservatives are poised to become even more powerful in a second Bush
term, while the "realists" ‹ those who believe that moral crusading is
costly and counterproductive in foreign policy ‹ are sidelined.

 The strengthening of the neocons' position begins but does not end with
Bush's appointment of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of State. Though Rice is
not a birthright neocon ‹ indeed, she began her political ascent as a
disciple of realist national security advisor Brent Scowcroft ‹ she has
burnished her credentials by championing Bush's sweeping push for democracy
in the Middle East.

 With the departures of Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, the State
Department, long seen by the administration's hawks as an alien force that
is pro-Arab and anti-Israel, is going to be turned upside down.

 Undersecretary John R. Bolton, who is a hard-liner on confronting Iran and
North Korea and has made no secret of his contempt for the United Nations ‹
three classic neocon positions ‹ is likely to be named deputy secretary of
State. Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute,
the citadel of neoconservative thought, is in line to become the assistant
secretary for East Asian affairs.

 Sweeping changes won't be necessary at the Defense Department. It is
already well-stocked with neocons, including Undersecretary of Defense
Douglas J. Feith and his deputy, William J. Luti. The real question mark is
what promotion is in store for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D.
Wolfowitz. Could he end up replacing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld?

 At the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams ‹ the ultimate
second-generation neoconservative, son-in-law of proto-neocons Midge Decter
and Norman Podhoretz ‹ has been hugely influential in pushing the United
States into the corner of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

 Will the continued sway of the neocons lead Bush into fresh disasters?
Hardly. I predict Bush will successfully stabilize Iraq, and that the
election there will surprise the world by being conducted openly and fairly.
In all, he is far better off relying on the neocons than a crabbed, amoral
realist doctrine. Abandoning Iraq and Afghanistan, as the realists counsel,
would be a prescription for disaster.

 In fact, the administration is in the process of creating the most
harmonious foreign policy team in decades. Rice, who will be a formidable
secretary of State, has a golden opportunity to insist on competence, not
just utopian dreams, in implementing the president's pro-democracy vision.

 Bush will face most opposition not from the Democrats but from moderate
Republicans, who recoil at nation-building and human rights. They loathe the
neoconservative stance, seeing it as a new incarnation of liberal
interventionism. Big deal.

 No doubt the new conventional wisdom will be that the longer Bush sticks to
his hawkish course, the more disastrous his second term will become. But
that prediction may prove just as false as the conviction that the neocons
were headed for the ash heap of history.







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