The Eccentric Realist: Henry Kissinger and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy

4. The Domestic Critique of Kissinger

4 The Domestic Critique of Kissinger The influence of neoconservative intellectuals and advisors on the foreign policy of George W. Bush has, throughout the first years of the new millennium, stimulated renewed attention for neoconservatism: for its origins, its cultural and philosophical foundations, and its evolution . Many scholars and commentators have stressed the radical nature of neoconservatism, particularly the Trotskyist past of Irving Kristol and other fathers of the movement, or the influence of Leo Strauss on some important neocons like former undersecretary of defense and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. Some scholars have underlined the connections between neoconservatism and the religious Right, whereas others, more correctly, have emphasized the liberal, and in some instances, libertarian, matrix of neoconservatism. A great majority of these studies, however, have exaggerated the political and cultural homogeneity of the neoconservative movement and, as a consequence, the coherence of its projects and proposals.1 The Domestic Critique of Kissinger 111 The Genesis of Neoconservatism These studies have generally paid little attention to the crises the United States experienced during the 1960s and 1970s, and to the importance of the period in catalyzing political and cultural reactions that gave birth to neoconservatism. The crumbling domestic consensus, the questioning of liberal Cold War universalism, and the crisis of containment were some of the reasons behind a profound political and cultural realignment in the United States. Of this realignment, neoconservatives were one of the main protagonists and beneficiaries.2 Neoconservatism was a response to the crisis of the principles inspiring U.S. foreign policy during the first two decades of the Cold War. It was a reaction to the contestation of the liberal and reformist centrism that had provided the cognitive compass to read the international system and the tools, both analytic and prescriptive, for navigating the turbulent waters of world politics. The crisis of containment was first and foremost a crisis of the certainties and optimism that had marked Cold War liberalism. It was the collapse of a binary vision of the international order, which seemed to offer simple and coherent answers—both morally and strategically—to the challenges the United States had to face. Democracy, freedom, modernization , anti-Communism were just some of the basic terms and formulas of Cold War discourse that had been hegemonic in the United States, particularly among liberal democrats. During the 1960s such terms were increasingly questioned, domestically and internationally. Self-evident Cold War truths were suddenly open to discussion. Previously unquestionable codes were attacked and explicitly derided. Some of the taboos of U.S. foreign policy discourse and ideology were challenged and often shattered. The political and historiographical revisionism of the New Left, for instance, contested one of the most basilar axioms of the post–World War II consensus : the idea that the United States was a country committed to justice, peace, and order, and therefore that it represented a force for good in the international system.3 The New Left constituted a heterogeneous and composite movement, as well as a minority one. Its political and intellectual sources of inspiration were multiple and not always complementary. Its political outcomes were diverse in terms of contents, proposals, and, more so, analytical depth. In 112 The Eccentric Realist time, its ability to exert relevant political influence on the broader American Left would reveal itself to be mostly transitory and contingent.4 Nevertheless, the impact of this revisionist challenge and the reaction it provoked within the Democratic Party must not be underestimated. Variegated and politically weak, the New Left actually appeared united to its opponents through powerful as well as detestable common denominators: unacceptable cultural relativism; a refusal of the basic principles of U.S. liberalism; and a rejection of the foundations of U.S. foreign policy and belief that it was essential to promote a global containment of Communism.5 Far from casually, neoconservatism originated from within the Democratic Party as a reaction to the New Left. It was an attempt to promote the “conservation of liberalism” and a conviction that the “raw material” of liberalism , “the fraternal desires for freedom and equality,” was “intrinsically expansionist in character.” This effort was stimulated by a willingness to reaf firm values and principles that were now disputed and to defend foreign policy choices made by the United States in the previous two decades.6 Initially, the (soon to be called) neoconservatives tried to relaunch a form of internationalism...