(Fukuyama has been one of the leading neoconservatives. But recently, he has begun to
question the neocon agenda .
His article (excerpts below, with link to the complete article), is a very good history,
summary, and analysis of neocon ideas. The article carefully examines neocon ideas and their
implications. It also looks at the reaction towards/against neocons, and the implications of
those reactions. Fukuyama acknowledges that the neocon agenda has stalled and will not go
any further. This realization is shared among many leading neocons.
It's a must-read if you want to understand neocons and the situation in which they now find
themselves, and where things will go. -- andreas)
After Neoconservatism From "America at the Crossroads" by Francis Fukuyama New York Times Magazine February 19, 2006
"The End of History" is in the end an argument about modernization. What is initially universal is not the desire for liberal democracy but rather the desire to live in a modern - that is, technologically advanced and prosperous - society, which, if satisfied, tends to drive demands political participation. Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time.
"The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.
(...)
After the fall of the Soviet Union, various neoconservative authors like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and Robert Kagan suggested that the United States would use its margin of power to exert a kind of "benevolent hegemony" over the rest of the world, fixing problems like rogue states with W.M.D., human rights abuses and terrorist threats as they came up. Writing before the Iraq war, Kristol and Kagan considered whether this posture would provoke resistance from the rest of the world, and concluded, "It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power."
It is hard to read these lines without irony in the wake of the global reaction to the Iraq war, which succeeded in uniting much of the world in a frenzy of anti-Americanism.
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Complete article at http://www.champress.net/english/index.php?page=show_det&id=2405
See also http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=266122006
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