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Unexpected Affinities?
Neoconservatism's Place in IR Theory
Aaron Rapport
Published online: 14 Jun 2008.
To cite this article: Aaron Rapport (2008) Unexpected Affinities? Neoconservatism's Place in IR
Theory, Security Studies, 17:2, 257-293, DOI: 10.1080/09636410802098883
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Unexpected Affinities?
Neoconservatism’s Place in IR Theory
AARON RAPPORT
Is neoconservatism a coherent theory of international politics?

Downloaded by [Arizona State University] at 11:29 24 October 2014
Many previous efforts to illuminate what might be called the neo-

conservative worldview have been limited to descriptions of policies
favored by neoconservatives, while illumination of an underlying
ontology is largely absent. This article proceeds by drawing a series
of premises about the social world from authors who identify with
neoconservative political thought. Despite similarities with liberal-
ism and realism, the core assumptions of neocon theory collectively
represent a systemic constructivist account of IR. Neoconservatives
put forth a set of propositions which lead to generalizable conclu-
sions regarding the outcomes of state interactions in the interna-
tional system.
Individuals who have been labeled by either themselves or others as “neo-

conservatives” have been reluctant to embrace the idea that neoconservatism
offers a singular, coherent explanation of international politics.1 This denial
partially explains why some have described neoconservatism as nothing but a
relatively weak “movement” and dismissed the neocons’ alleged domination
of the Bush administration.2 Irving Kristol, one of neoconservatism’s acknowl-
edged founders, describes it not as a movement but a “persuasion” and elabo-
rates that there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy,
“only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience.”3 Andrew Flibbert
argues in his analysis of the Iraq War that the prevalent ideas within the Bush
Aaron Rapport is a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota.

I would like to thank Colin Kahl, Ronald Krebs, Jonathan Mercer, Lauren Wilcox, partic-
ipants in the Minnesota International Relations Colloquium, and anonymous reviewers from
Security Studies for their helpful comments and critiques of earlier versions of this article.
1 Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

2 Max Boot, “Myths About Neoconservatism,” in The Neocon Reader, ed. Irwin Stelzer (New York:
Grove Press, 2004), 45–52. Boot gives this opinion.

3 Irving Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion: What It Was, and What It Is,” in The Neocon Reader,
33–37.
257
258 A. Rapport
administration contradicted each other to such a degree that they did not
“constitute a coherent ideology, neoconservative or otherwise,” even though
they were embraced by putative neocons within the executive branch.4
While Flibbert leaves open the possibility that neoconservatism does
constitute a coherent ideology, Kristol and Francis Fukuyama stress the
presence of diversity among neoconservative thinkers while acknowledging
some common historical and theoretical roots. Similarly, Michael Williams
does an admirable job of tracing the foundations of neoconservative thought
while exploring how the neocon perspective relates to that of traditional
theories of international relations, most notably classical realism.5 Other de-
scriptions explicitly tie neoconservative thought to realism and liberalism:
neoconservatism has been described as “hyperrealism,” “hard-line realism,”
“democratic realism,” and “liberal imperialism.”6 Thinkers associated with
the neoconservative movement have advanced realist claims that the inter-
national system is one in which power in the form of violent compulsion is
the ultima ratio, while at the same time advancing the notion that democratic
states are peaceable in their relationships with one another.7 What is more,
Williams notes neoconservatism’s affinity for the power of ideas in politics,
perhaps making it a companion to constructivist accounts of social outcomes.
Though progress has been made in previous work, the questions of
whether neoconservatism is a coherent theory of international politics and, if
so, what kind of theory it represents have yet to be satisfactorily addressed.8
Many previous efforts to illuminate what might be called the neoconservative
worldview have been limited to descriptions of policies favored by neocon-
servatives, while illumination of an underlying ontology, which gives rise to
such preferences, is largely absent. Nick Ritchie and Paul Rogers, for example,
4 Andrew Flibbert, “The Road to Baghdad: Ideas and Intellectuals in Explanations of the Iraq War,”
Security Studies 15, no. 2 (2006): 348. For another article which challenges the alleged neoconservatism
of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, see Stephen Hurst, “Myths of Neoconservatism: George W.
Bush’s ‘Neo-conservative’ Foreign Policy Revisited,” International Politics 42, no. 1 (2005): 75–96.
5 Michael C. Williams, “What is the National Interest? The Neoconservative Challenge in IR Theory,”
European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 3 (2005): 307–37.

6 Andrew Sullivan, “Quitters,” in The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq, ed. Gary Rosen
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 61; Nick Ritchie and Paul Rogers, The Political Road to War
with Iraq (New York: Routledge, 2007), 138; Charles Krauthammer, “In Defense of Democratic Realism,”
in The Right War?, 188; and Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives
and the Global Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 18.
7 For a broad endorsement by neoconservatives of the democratic peace thesis (backed by American
power), see the symposium “American Power—for What?” Commentary 109, no. 1 (2000): 21–47. For a
conservative critique of neoconservatism and its advocation of democracy, see David C. Hendrickson and
Robert W. Tucker, “The Freedom Crusade,” National Interest, no. 81 (Fall 2005): 12–21.
8 John Guelke, “The Political Morality of the Neo-conservatives: An Analysis,” International Politics
42, no. 1 (2005): 108. Jim George, “Leo Strauss, Neoconservatism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Esoteric Nihilism
and the Bush Doctrine,” International Politics 42, no. 2 (2005): 176. Guelke contends that, while con-
temporary neoconservatives are not realists, “The question of what exact category they now fall into is a
far thornier issue.” Guelke holds that they are a variety of liberal internationalists. George, on the other
hand, portrays neoconservative thought as being characterized by “a disdain for modern IR orthodoxy
(liberal and conservative) and, ultimately, a different way of thinking about modern global life.”
Neoconservatism’s Place in IR Theory 259
state that neoconservatism “can best be described as a primacist grand strat-

egy that acknowledges America’s predominance in the international system.”
They continue that neoconservatives are motivated to spread democracy in
an effort to create a more peaceful world and eschew entanglements with
international institutions and multilateralism in general.9 However, the au-
thors do not delve further into why a strategy of primacy is preferred, why it
must be accomplished via unilateral means, or why neoconservatives believe
the spread of democracy leads to peace. Similarly, Mohammed Muruzzaman
states that the primary goal of what he terms “neo-conservative realists” is to
“impose the American form of order on societies averse to American values
and thus establish a global American empire.” This objective is argued to arise
from “American exceptionalism” and “the will to engage hostile regimes.”10
Once again, there is no explanation offered why the principle of American
exceptionalism could not lead to an isolationist strategy in which the U.S.’ acts
set an example for the rest of the world (a “city upon a hill”), or why such
primacy requires military engagements rather than an institutionalist strategy
of cooperative security.11 Others have explored neoconservative beliefs more
deeply, but their investigations were incomplete. Halper and Clarke define
neoconservatism partially by policy preferences and partially by ontology, in
the latter case basing neoconservative thought on the belief that “the human
condition is defined as a choice between good and evil” and the determinacy
of military power in interstate relations.12 I would not fundamentally disagree
with either of these characterizations, though I argue below that the binary
between good and evil arises out of a complex theory of human nature and
regime influence, and the determinacy of military power holds only in certain
circumstances.
Williams has perhaps done the most to uncover the theoretical premises
of neoconservatism, identifying similarities between neocon thought and
“wilful Realism” regarding concerns over the crises of liberal modernity while
noting important divergences in the realm of foreign policy.13 I seek to an-
swer Williams’ call to further engage the premises of neoconservatism from
the perspective of IR theory. The question motivating this piece is whether
or not the neoconservatism represents an explanatory theory of international
politics, one which posits a set of variables that fit in a causal chain, which
9 Ritchie and Rogers, Road to War with Iraq, 141–45.

10 Mohammed Nuruzzaman, “Beyond the Realist Theories: ‘Neo-Conservative Realism’ and the Amer-
ican Invasion of Iraq,” International Studies Perspectives 7, no. 3 (2006): 249.
11 On different strands of American exceptionalism, see Jonathan Monten, “The Roots of the Bush
Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy,” International Security 29, no.
4 (Spring 2005): 112-56. On primacy versus cooperative security, see Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross,
“Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996–97): 5–53.
12 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 11.
13 Michael C. Williams, The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 197–203.

260 A. Rapport
systematically gives rise to various phenomena of interest.14 Another pos-

sibility would be for neoconservatism to be mainly normative in nature. A
third would be for neoconservative to be a form of critical theory (CT). Not
all CT is incompatible with explanatory endeavors.15 Those who have sought
to create a conceptual framework for the wide range of work in IR, which
may be called “critical,” distinguish between “radical” theorists who deny
the possibility of explanatory theory and others who do attempt to uncover
causal and constitutive social mechanisms through “process-based” ontol-
ogy.16 Still, some critical theorists do not accept the proposition that modern
methods of social science can provide researchers access to objective truth.
Jim George, who does not claim neoconservatism is CT, does argue neocon-
servative thought is profoundly influenced by Leo Strauss. Strauss, according
to George, held that “all distinctions between good and evil are actually
matters of power and interpretation and political ideology”—not a position

unlike that of antifoundationalist thinkers.17 Likewise, Shadia Drury claims
that Strauss shares Nietzsche’s “nihilistic conception of truth” in which no-
tions of morality have “no transcendent or independent reality apart from
humans.”18 Additionally, Gary Schmitt and Abram Shulsky note that modern
social science methodology was roundly criticized by Strauss.19
To determine whether neoconservatism is an explanatory theory of in-
ternational politics, it is necessary to draw a series of premises about the
social world as articulated or implied by a host of authors who identify with
neoconservative political thought. These premises are laid out below. Collec-
tively, they portray a theory that is explanatory according to the criteria set
14 Theories of international politics explain outcomes that result from state-to-state interactions, inter-
actions governed in part by the structural order in which states find themselves. Theories of foreign policy
explain individualistic attributes such as the origins of a state’s preferences and strategies for satisfying
its preferences, but cannot fully account for outcomes produced by n-adic interactions. See Kenneth N.
Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979); and Fareed Zakaria, From
Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998), 14.
15 Richard Price and Christian Reus-Smit, “Dangerous Liaisons? Critical International Theory and
Constructivism,” European Journal of International Relations 4, no. 3 (1998): 276–78. Price and Reus-Smit
highlight how more than a few critical constructivists offer empirical explanations for various political
events or processes.
16 Along with Price and Reus-Smit, see John Gerard Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together?
Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge,” in Exploration and Contestation in the Study
of World Politics, eds., Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert O. Keohane, and Stephen D. Krasner (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1999), 240–42; and Emanuel Adler, “Constructivism and International Relations,” in Handbook of
International Relations, eds., Walter Carlsnaes, Beth A. Simmons, and Thomas Risse (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications, 2003), 95-118. For a discussion of process-based ontology, see Jennifer Sterling-Folker,
“Competing Paradigms or Birds of a Feather? Constructivism and Neoliberalism Compared,” International
Studies Quarterly 44, no. 1 (2000): 97-119, and Brent J. Steele, “Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique,”
International Studies Review 9, no. 1 (2007): 23–52.
17 George, “Leo Strauss, Neoconservatism and U.S. Foreign Policy,” 177.
18 Shadia B. Drury, “The Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss,” Political Theory 13, no. 3 (1985): 333–34.
19 Gary J. Schmitt and Abram N. Shulsky, “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We
Do Not Mean Nous),” in Leo Strauss, the Straussians and the American Regime, eds., Kenneth L. Deutsch
and John A Murley (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 407–12.
forth here, the propositions of which lead to generalizable conclusions re-

garding the outcomes of state interactions in the international system. While
neoconservatism exhibits similarities to several theories of international re-
lations, it is not wholly derivative of any of them. Despite similarities with
liberalism and realism, the core assumptions of neocon theory collectively
represent a systemic constructivist account of IR. The exemplar of systemic
constructivism is Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics.20
Reviewing literature on and by neoconservatives, one does not come across
citations of Wendt’s work, and one can be confident that neoconservatives do
not derive theory from it. What is more likely is that Wendt and those writing
in the neoconservative vein have drawn ideas from similar sources. For ex-
ample, Williams details how the work on social construction by Peter Berger
and Thomas Luckman influenced early neoconservative debate.21 Further, po-
litical theorists important to neoconservatives, such as Alexis de Tocqueville,

Leo Strauss, Georg Hegel, and Alexandre Kojéve discuss the importance of
ideas in determining social outcomes while emphasizing how individuals and
the social structures in which they are embedded act in shaping one another.
Due partly to the influence of thinkers like Strauss and Tocqueville, both of
whom were interested in the relation between a state’s regime type and its cit-
izenry, neoconservatism adopts Wendt’s focus on the state.22 While there are
significant areas of overlap, neoconservatism diverges from Wendtian con-
structivism in important respects, especially in its portrayal of system durabil-
ity and its explicit examination of the role of powerful states within systems.
The implications of the above conclusions are two-fold. First, because
neoconservatism offers generalizable explanations of outcomes, researchers
may attempt to operationalize the theory’s ontological constructs, seek to
falsify its hypotheses, and compare its explanatory power to that of other
theories of international relations when they seek to explain the same out-
comes. Second, the arguments presented here highlight both empirical and
normative questions to which Wendt’s account of the state system, as well as
constructivist accounts of the democratic peace, have paid somewhat scarce
attention. These questions revolve around the probability of transitioning
from an international system predominantly characterized by one type of
“role identity” to a system predominantly characterized by another.23 More
20 In Price and Reus-Smit, “Dangerous Liaisons?” 268, they note that Wendt may be the only theorist
in the camp of “systemic constructivism,” which privileges the constitutive effects of the social interaction
between states at the international level over those generated by social interactions at the domestic or
transnational levels.
21 Williams, “What is the National Interest?” 328.
22 State-centrism is not a feature shared with the bulk of constructivist work, much of which highlights
how international institutions and activists embedded in transnational civil society influence world order.
See Richard Price, “Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy in World Politics,” World Politics 55, no. 4
(2003): 579–606.
23 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 227. Wendt defines a role identity as one that exists only in relation to others, such as “friend,”
“enemy,” and so forth.
262 A. Rapport
generally, there is considerable value in establishing the affinities of neo-

conservatism within other theories of international relations. Good theory
building often depends on different scholars starting with many overlapping
premises that nevertheless differ enough to create debates regarding the na-
ture of some social phenomena. Showing how theories relate to one another
facilitates dialogue between scholars of differing perspectives, encourages
refinement of propositions, and, hopefully, advances understanding of the
matter the scholars address.
NEOCONSERVATIVE PREMISES
Premise 1.1: Human action is a function of the beliefs imposed on individuals
by their social environment.
Premise 1.2: Human beings have basic, biologically determined wants

and needs.
Neoconservative theory conforms to what has been called the “standard
social science model” (SSSM) of human behavior.24 The SSSM holds that the
human mind lacks a specific nature or organization and as such plays a min-
imal role in generating human behavior. The brain is theorized to represent
a general learning machine that absorbs stimuli from its surrounding envi-
ronment; the cultural environments in which humans find themselves shape
human thoughts and desires rather than vice versa.25 The foremost implica-
tion of the SSSM is that the idea of human nature—supposedly innate qualities
that influence social behavior—is but a metaphor for the effect of “culture
thrown against a screen of nerves, glands, sense organs, etc.”26
Fukuyama most clearly demonstrates the neoconservative acceptance of
the SSSM in his work on “the end of history.”27 Fukuyama cites Hegel as “the
first philosopher to speak the language of modern social science, insofar
as man for him was the product of his concrete historical and social envi-
ronment and not . . . a collection of more or less fixed ‘natural’ attributes.”28
The Hegelian notion of “Geist” or Spirit, however, implies humanity has an
essential quality, and the contradictions within human society will be recon-
ciled during the course of history. The idea of Geist appears to contradict
the SSSM, yet one must recall that Fukuyama interprets Hegel via Kojéve.29
24 For a deeper presentation and critique of the SSSM, see J. H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John
Tooby, The Adapted Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 23; and Tooby and Cosmides,
“Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology,” in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, ed.
David Buss (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2005). Pinker refers to the SSSM as the “blank slate” theory
of mind. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002).
25 Pinker, The Blank Slate, 69. The thoughts and desires of human beings may in turn shape their
environment, but the effects of culture are analytically prior to these thoughts and desires.
26 Ibid., 25, citing Leslie White.
27 Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest, no. 16 (Summer 1989), 3-18; and
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
28 Fukuyama, “The End of History?” 4.
29 Ibid., 144.
Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel makes human action productive of social

relations; some ontologically prior “absolute truth” is not discovered through
reason, but created through work and the change this brings to the “real
given World.”30 To Kojéve it is the slave’s imagined “ideologies,” through
which he attempts to justify his condition, that lead to change at a cultural
and material level.31
Fukuyama appears to endorse Kojéve’s modified Hegelianism, criticiz-
ing the materialism of Marx while arguing that culture occupies a central
role in explaining differences in economic performance between societies.32
Fukuyama does not entirely privilege culture over “material” factors in the
“real world,” allowing that “the material world can clearly affect in return
the viability of a particular state of consciousness.”33 The key words in the
last quotation are “in return.” Paralleling Kojéve, the causal arrow runs from
humanity’s historical and cultural experiences to perceptions of the world,

which in turn may influence these initial perceptions: “Consciousness is
causes and not effect, and can develop autonomously from the material
world, indeed create the material world in its own image.”34 Fukuyama
extends this viewpoint beyond the economic realm, arguing that national
interest in general is not universal but a function of some “prior ideological
basis.”35
Fukuyama’s early perspective on human nature is divergent from both
his later work and that of traditional and “paleoconservatives.” In his analy-
sis of social trends since the mid-twentieth century, Fukuyama agrees with
William J. Bennett and other conservatives that the moral and social order in
the United States has decayed since the 1950s due to reinforcing disruptions
in modes of production and American culture.36 However, Fukuyama invokes
social scientists’ reliance on the blank-slate model of human nature as part
of the explanation for why such a decline was not foreseen. Social capital,
which leads to the trust and cooperation necessary to build strong social and
political orders, “will tend to be generated by human beings as a matter of
instinct.”37 This statement is important in that it both highlights and repu-
diates the modified Hegelianism in Fukuyama’s earlier work: he embraces
a much broader concept of human nature than Kojéve’s narrow account of
30 Alexandre Kojéve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 52. Robert
B. Pippin, “Being, Time, and Politics: The Strauss- Kojéve Debate,” History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993):
147. As stated by Pippin, for Kojéve the realization of human history “must be brought about . . . by the
deeds of finite historical agents; World Spirit does not necessarily unfold or manifest itself.”
31 Ibid., 53.
32 Patrick Riley, “Introduction to the Reading of Alexandre Kojéve,” Political Theory 9, no. 1 (1981):
17. Unlike Marx, Kojéve holds that the abstract desire for recognition is the primary driver of history rather
than material relations of production.
34 Ibid., 6.
35 Ibid., 16.
36 Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption (New York: The Free Press, 1999), 5.
37 Ibid., 155.
264 A. Rapport
biological “animal” desire and its “human” counterpart.38 Such a position is

more akin to that of Fleming and other conservatives who criticize modern
efforts to achieve social progress while ignoring human nature.39 Some ob-
servers have commented that Fukuyama’s recent work is an abandonment
of neoconservative thought, including neocons’ “unconstrained” view of a
malleable humanity.40
The premise that human beings are “natureless” sits comfortably with
virtually all prominent theories of international relations aside from classical
realism. Classical realists assert that international politics is necessarily
conflictual due to the aggressive nature of man, a “first level” explanation
of phenomena such as war and peace.41 Neorealism, conversely, is quite
amenable to the SSSM of humanity. Keith Shimko observes that American stu-
dents of international relations were reluctant to embrace the dark image of
human nature embedded in the classical realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans

Morgenthau, and George Kennan. In part, this aversion led structural realists
to replace the logic of domination emanating from within humanity with a
logic of fear imposed by the anarchical structure of the international system.42
Liberalism also portrays the causes of war and peace as arising from
domestic and international political environments, rather than from an in-
teraction between environment and innate human properties. International
organizations, economic interdependence, and democratic governance are
all theorized to make human interaction more harmonious.43 Other liberal
theorists have stressed that it is not so much political and economic insti-
tutions that condition state interactions as it is perceptions of other states’
political characters.44 Contrary to the underlying rationalism of neorealism
38 Kojéve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 39–40. Kojéve’s dichotomy is explored in greater
detail under premise 1.2 below.

39 Thomas Fleming, The Politics of Human Nature (New Brunswick, CT: Transaction Books, 1988), 22.
Fleming describes efforts to “transcend the human” as destructive of institutions with roots in innate human
characteristics such as family, community, and religion. For an additional conservative argument on the
biologically embedded nature of social order, see Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Conservatism (Charlottesville,
VA: Imprint Academic, 2005).
40 See Julian Sanchez, “A Concord of Visions,” 24 February 2006, http://www.reason.com/
news/show/117049.html. David Brooks, “Human Nature Redux,” New York Times, 18 February 2007,
D12. Brooks is another example of someone associated with neoconservative thought who has recently
taken up the question of human nature.
41 See, for example, Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: McGraw-Hill, [1948]
1985), 4, 10–11. For a thorough critique of this contemporary understanding of classical realism see
Williams, The Realist Tradition. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1959). The reference to “first level” explanations comes from Waltz’s three levels of analysis.
42 Keith Shimko, “Realism, Neorealism, and American Liberalism,” Review of Politics 54 (Spring 1992):
294.
43 See John Oneal and Bruce Russet, “The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdepen-
dence, and Conflict, 1950-1985,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1997): 267–94; Russet and
Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York:
W. W. Norton and Co., 2001); and Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism and
Socialism (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1997).
44 Good examples are John M. Owen IV, “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace,” International
Security 19, no. 2 (1994): 87–125; Owen, “Transnational Liberalism and American Primacy; or, Benignity
and institutional theories of liberalism, where actors’ identities and interests

are largely fixed, these theorists hold that the social interaction between
states at an international level can change preferences over outcomes and
strategies for achieving goals. This perspective is summarized by John Owen
who holds that a “state’s strategic preferences derive . . . from an interaction
between relative power and relative ideology,” the latter of which provides
states with “transnational group affiliations.”45 Human nature is not theorized
to be an insurmountable constraint on either institutional or ideational inter-
actions, in part because the liberal project has an inherently progressive view
of human nature and culture as malleable and perfectible. If humans were by
nature driven to dominate one another such a project would be impossible,
while if they were by nature peace-loving it would be unnecessary. Neo-
conservatives share with classical liberals a faith in humanity’s potential for
“progress.” At the same time, they reject Russell Kirk’s Burkean philosophy
that society and its accompanying institutions arose from the natural instincts
of humanity.46
The tenets of constructivism are, for all intents and purposes, equivalent
to those of the SSSM. Constructivism is not a theory of international politics but
a broad approach for investigating how actors are socially constructed and,
as such, does not specify what realms of social activity should be addressed.
One of the main assumptions of constructivism, as well as the aforementioned
“ideational” strands of liberalism, is that identities and interests of actors
are constructed by intersubjective understandings, ideas, and cultural factors
rather than given by nature.47
So far I have sought to establish that neoconservatism is based on the
SSSM, and this basis sits comfortably with other IR theories, with the exception
of classical realism. Other than the work of Fukuyama and Irving Kristol,
neoconservative writers do not explicitly state premise 1 as it has been artic-
ulated here.48 However, the premise that human behavior is a result of beliefs
derived from social interaction and not some innate biological or metaphys-
ical essence is consistent with the premises that follow, especially premise
sets 3 and 4, and a necessary assumption if those premises are to hold. Still,
an obvious challenge to premise 1.1 remains. One could reasonably claim
that neoconservatives or those influenced by neoconservative thought often
portray the values seen to be embodied by liberal democracy as universal.
The universality of democratic values is suggested by President Bush when
addressing national security: “People everywhere want to be able to speak
is in the Eye of the Beholder,” in American Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power, ed. G. John
Ikenberry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002) 239–59; and Thomas Risse, “U.S. Power in a Liberal
Security Community,” in America Unrivaled, 260–83.
45 Owen, “Transnational Liberalism,” 242.
46 See Adam Wolfson, “Conservatives and Neoconservatives,” in The Neocon Reader, 222; and Russell
Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, [1953] 2001).
47 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 1–7.
48 See Williams, “What is the National Interest?” 310–14, on the importance of ideas to Kristol.
266 A. Rapport
freely; choose who will govern them; worship as they please; educate their
children—male and female; own property; and enjoy the benefits of their
labor.”49 The view that American civic values are global values has been ar-
ticulated by many neoconservative writers in multiple contexts and observed
by others critical of the so-called persuasion.50
If neoconservatism endorsed the proposition that humanity is essentially
liberal at its core, the first premise would be negated. However, neoconser-
vatism adheres to the SSSM by making an austere set of assumptions regarding
the components of human nature, components that do not include innate po-
litical dispositions. While humans have no essential political nature, they are
universally constrained by very basic needs that must be met in order to
survive. If no basic human needs are theorized to exist than an unbound-
edly infinite set of ideologies are possible and no ideology would be at all
durable—the instant a person with no need for cognitive consistency was

introduced to a new worldview, they would adopt it or reject it in an entirely
random manner.
Premise 1.2 is evident in several neocon works, appearing clearly in (of
all places) an Irving Kristol essay against pornography.51 Kristol hypothesizes
the human condition is dichotomized into animal and human components.
Both components are innate, but the human capacities are unique to our
species. The evil of pornography, Kristol writes, is that it reduces the act of
sexual intercourse and its uniquely human emotions of romance, intimacy,
and love, to a vulgar functionalist act of reproduction. By encouraging the
baser instincts of mankind, pornography leads to decadence and moral de-
cay. One of the purposes of political society should then be to encourage
the humanistic component of the human condition while discouraging the
animalistic one. Political society is not natural, as evidenced by the contesta-
tion over censorship and the relative importance of freedom of speech and
human dignity, for example.
The separation of the natural, animal elements from those that give hu-
mans the capability for political action is also found in the work of Kojéve.
As he interprets Hegel, “Animal Desire” is filled “only with a natural, bio-
logical content,” whereas for human self-consciousness and “philosophy” to
exist desire must be directed at an abstract “non-Being.”52 Political life arises
from one human’s desire for another to recognize their rights and equal sta-
tus as human, and it is only this action that “creates, realizes, and reveals
49 One need not hold that George W. Bush is a neconservative to accept that aspects of his rhetoric
have been influenced by neoconservative ideas. The White House, “The National Security Strategy of the
United States of America,” September 2002, iv, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.
50 One example is William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “National Interest and Global Responsibility,”
in The Neocon Reader, 73-74. For criticisms of this attitude, see Robert F. Ellsworth and Dimitri K. Simes,
“Realism’s Shining Morality,” in The Right War? 204–11; and George Will, “The Slow Undoing: The Assault
on, and Underestimation of, Nationality,” in The Neocon Reader, 127–39.
51 Originally published in 1971, it can be found in The Neocon Reader, 167–80.
52 Kojéve, Reading of Hegel, 39–40.
a human, non-biological I.”53 This natural/human dichotomy offers a differ-

ent perspective to Fukuyama’s criticism of supporters of the Iraq war whom
he felt “believe[d] that democracy was a default condition to which soci-
eties would revert once liberated from dictators.” Human desire may give
rise to political action, but the forms political orders may take cannot be
deduced and will be indeterminate for much of human history. According
to Fukuyama, liberal political orders may arise through hundreds of years of
human action and are highly unlikely to be accomplished via brief “social
engineering” projects.54
If one examines other theories of international relations, it is clear that
Wendt makes a set of assumptions similar to premise 1.2, which he refers to
as “rump materialism”:
Despite [radical constructivists’] well-intentioned resistance to biological

determinism, there is an anthropic exceptionalism or human chauvinism
in the radical view that is hard to justify from the standpoint of evolu-
tionary theory. It is impossible to explain social action without making
at least implicit assumptions about human nature, since, without it, it is
hard to explain why our bodies move at all, let alone their direction or
resistance to societal pressures.55
Wendt recognizes that social action cannot be explained without

reference to some innate properties. Accordingly, Wendt constrains human
beings so they have universal and innate needs. These needs include the
physical security provided by food, water, sleep, protection, and so on;
stable expectations of the world; social contact; self esteem; and the need to
develop and improve one’s life conditions.56 While it is quite clear that other
theories of international relations would not reject the idea that individuals
have such needs, realism and liberalism do not use material factors as periph-
eral (but necessary) constraints, but rather as the key explanatory variables in
their causal frameworks. In this regard, then, neoconservatism most closely
resembles Wendt’s constructivism by rejecting a radical perspective on
materialism while still limiting materialism’s role as an explanatory variable.
Premise 2: Liberal democracies are capable of satisfying humanity’s most
basic wants and needs in both the short and long term.
While Fukuyama is right to argue that faith in social engineering is in-
compatible with neoconservatism, there are reasons to doubt his assertion
that neocons abandoned their skepticism toward social engineering prior to
the invasion of Iraq. First, neoconservative writers had observed that Iraq and
53 Ibid., 40.
54 Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 116.
55 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 131, emphasis added.
56 Ibid., 131–32.
268 A. Rapport
the Arab world in general did in fact have a history of pluralism and democ-
racy, and thus the extent of social engineering required might not have been
expected to be as great as Fukuyama would contend.57 Second, some polit-
ical ideologies are more adept at satisfying the natural desires of humanity
than others, and neoconservatives contend that liberal democratic political
systems are optimal in this regard. This is to say that neoconservatives ex-
pected the transformation of Iraq into a liberal society to be facilitated by the
fulfillment of basic human needs. As Bush stated, while human cultures are
vastly different, human beings all share “[the] desire to be safe from brutal
and bullying oppression.”58 In the Weekly Standard article “Liberating Iraq,”
Stephen Hayes does not devote any space to concrete discussions of polit-
ical philosophy. Rather, the focus is on the camaraderie between the Arab
members of the Free Iraqi Forces (FIF) and U.S. Marines; the torture various
members of the FIF suffered under Saddam Hussein and the fear his rule in-
stilled in the Iraqi people; the ways in which Hussein’s rule tore apart Iraqi
families; and the need of Iraqi citizens to be supplied with basic amenities
such as food and water. Hayes makes plain that the Americans and Iraqis he
depicts are not united by a common political philosophy, for in fact much of
the article tries to frame the Iraqis and (especially) Americans as politically
indifferent. Rather, it is the common desires rooted in the natural aspects of
the human condition that ties the two groups together, and the liberation of
Iraq will allow these desires to be satisfied. 59 No appeal to the virtues of rep-
resentative government must be made. The inability of authoritarian regimes
to satisfy natural desires is why Max Boot doubts that any North Korean or
Iranian does not wish to be free60 and why Kristol and Kagan argue that end-
ing the Baathist regimes brutal rule in Iraq was moral: “For the people of Iraq,
the war put an end to three decades of terror and suffering. The mass graves
uncovered since the end of the war are alone sufficient justification for it.”61
As Fukuyama summarizes nicely, “what is initially universal is not the
desire for liberal democracy but rather the desire to live in a modern society
with its technology, high standards of living, health care, and access to the
57 Krauthammer, “In Defense of Democratic Realism”; Norman Podhoretz, “World War IV: How It
Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win,” in The Right War? 154, 156, 166–68; and Fouad Ajami,
The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2006).
58 Cited in Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 116.
59 Stephen F. Hayes, “Liberating Iraq,” in the Weekly Standard: A Reader, 1995-2005, ed. William
Kristol (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005), 321. In a similar vein, Ledeen states that “we don’t
invoke profound philosophical principles when we ask others to help the poor; we say ‘we will all be
better off by improving their lot.”’ Michael A. Ledeen, Tocqueville on American Character (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2000), 128.
60 Boot, “Myths About Neoconservatism,” 50.
61 Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “The Right War for the Right Reasons,” in The Right War? 35;
Podhoretz, “World War IV,” 154. Similarly, Podhoretz asks “whether Muslims [are] so different from most
of their fellow human beings that they liked being pushed around and repressed and beaten by thugs
. . . really preferred being poor and hungry and ill-housed . . . .”
wider world.”62 Paul Wolfowitz agrees that material desires precede political
ones, saying “I think Frank Fukuyama is substantially right ... the evidence
is powerful that as nations become richer it becomes increasingly difficult to
govern them by non-democratic means.”63 Premise 2’s contrast between the
short-term and long-term satisfaction of human needs is necessary because,
as Fukuyama notes, liberal democracy is not necessary to satisfy material
wants in the short term. In fact, the “bureaucratic-authoritarian state” can
be more effective in attaining short-term economic growth.64 However, such
states do not provide human beings with the recognition or the abstract
need of man to be recognized “as man,” that Fukuyama and Kojéve stress
as being essential.65 Only liberal democracies allow for the social conditions
necessary for efficient economic needs while at the same time satisfying
humanity’s more abstract wants. According to neoconservative premises, an
authoritarian market state could only exist so long. Its inability to provide
its citizens with recognition would eventually lead to endogenous decay of
the regime once liberal regimes entered the international system, for reasons
that will be discussed under premise 4.66
Premise 3.1: The character of political regimes determines the political
character of their citizens.
Premise 3.2: The internal character of regimes is a predictor of their
external behavior.
States are the predominant political actors in neoconservative theory.
The characteristics of governing regimes affect both state citizens and influ-
ence external state behavior.67 Because human behavior is so susceptible to
the influences of the surrounding environment, it is only logical to conclude
that the ruling political regime will largely determine the political qualities
of the citizenry. This is an aspect of Straussian theory that neoconservatives
openly endorse and can be traced further back to the political philosophy

63 Paul Wolfowitz, “Managing Our Way to a Peaceful Century,” in Managing the International System
Over the Next Ten Years: Three Essays (New York: The Trilateral Commission, 1997).
64 Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 122–23.
65 Elliot Abrams, “American Power—for What? A Symposium,” Commentary 109, no. 1 (2000): 22.
Along these lines Elliot Abrams writes, “as always with ‘goulash Communism,’ whatever the local recipe,
people will like the goulash but not the Communism.”
66 Neoconservatives might also hold that an authoritarian market state would be unable to provide
for its citizens’ purely material needs in the long term. Such a regime would foster resentment, which
would lead to efforts to change the political order, thus requiring the ruling regime to exert more control
over society. This control would necessarily involve stymieing individual mobility and information flows,
thus hindering the efficiency of the state economy and undoing the regime’s ability to provide or allow
for the material needs of its citizens to be met—the very condition which made the regime acceptable
initially.
67 Neoconservatism does not hold that interstate relations may be reduced to the individual charac-
teristics of interacting states. This issue will be under premise set 4.

270 A. Rapport
of Plato and Aristotle.68 An oppressive, authoritarian regime that suppresses

free association and engagement in public affairs will produce a citizenry
that is fearful of engaging in public life. Because political authority and par-
ticipation in such regimes is based on the potential for violent compulsion,
the citizenry will exhibit violent tendencies as well. As the National Security
Strategy of 2002 argues, the strategy of propping up dictators for the sake of
stability lacks promise because repressive dictators will produce violent po-
litical opposition; in the contemporary environment this opposition takes the
form of militant Islam.69 According to Joshua Muravchik, the root of terrorism
in the Middle East is not the Muslim faith itself, but the political nature of the
regimes: “[Political culture] meant a habit of conducting politics by means
of violence. At the time of the attacks, not one of the region’s rulers (apart
from Israel’s) had been freely elected to his post. All relied on force and
intimidation.”70
The internal logic of regimes is bound to influence their external rela-
tions with other states. Irving Kristol holds that ideas “establish and define
in men’s minds the categories of the politically possible and the politically
impossible.”71 Likewise, Wolfowitz assesses future external relations of China
by saying that “a China that governs its own people by force is more likely
to try to govern its neighbors by force.”72 This perspective is consistent with,
and an unavoidable conclusion of, the SSSM of human behavior. The political
ideologies of states determine the menu of strategies they may select from in
their interaction with other polities. This form of “second level” theorizing,
logically deduced from neoconservatism’s image of human nature, was
prevalent in the lead-up to the Iraq War. It is also similar to the concept
of a “type” identity in rationalist and constructivist literature, referring to
actors who exhibit a particular characteristic—in this case, a behavioral
trait.73 Kristol and Kagan argued that there was “no separating the nature of
Saddam’s rule at home” from Hussein’s foreign policy;74 Boot advanced that
“rogue” states constitute the biggest threats to world peace;75 and Fukuyama,
in his criticism of the Iraq War, still noted regimes that treated their own
people unjustly would do the same externally and be willing to accept
68 Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 25–29; and Kenneth R. Weinstein, “Philosophic Roots, the
Role of Leo Strauss, and the War in Iraq,” in The Neocon Reader, 212.
69 This is not to say that liberal regimes do not produce internal political opposition, but this oppo-
sition is very unlikely to abandon the liberal principles of argument based on reasoned engagement and
will thus take the form of nonviolent political debate.
70 Joshua Muravchik, “Can the Neocons Get Their Groove Back?” The Washington Post, 19 November
2006, B3.
71 Cited in Williams, “What is the National Interest?” 327.
72 Wolfowitz, “Managing Our Way to a Peaceful Century,” 52.
73 See Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 225–27.
74 Kagan and Kristol, “The Right War for the Right Reasons,” 19.
75 Boot, “Myths about Neoconservatism,” 93.
great losses of life in the process.76 Alternatively, the peaceful character of

democracies allows them to form secure alliances and stable relationships
with other benign, liberal democracies.77
At first glance, premises 3.1 and 3.2 seem to rest most comfortably with
liberal theories of international relations. However, it is not clear what variety
of liberalism this aspect of neoconservative thought most resembles. It does
not rest on the foundations of “commercial liberalism,” which specifies eco-
nomic interdependence as the principal mechanism facilitating peace. For
one, commercial liberalism only requires liberal economic principles to be
predominant for peace to exist, but premise 2 does not allow for states that
feature only liberal economies and not democracy to maintain a legitimate
political order in the long term. William Kristol most explicitly rejects the
commercial version of the liberal paradigm, citing what he views as an un-
fortunate tendency to “reduce the business of America to business” in the

foreign policy realm and rejecting the hope that by itself commerce will
produce peaceful international relations.78 Neoconservatism also does not
fit well with Andrew Moravcsik’s republican liberalism.79 Republican liber-
alism presents a pluralistic image of democratic regimes in which interest
groups compete among one another under the constraints imposed by do-
mestic political institutions. These institutions do not constitute the interests
of competing groups, but rather regulate competition through durable sys-
tems of norms, rules, and decision-making procedures. The interests of the
state emerge from the bottom-up; domestic institutions are arenas for power
competition, which may be restructured as powerful individuals and groups
see fit.80 Neoconservatism, conversely, depicts a process in which state in-
stitutions take precedence over the actors they socialize. The state, not its
constituents, is central to explaining political outcomes—individual prefer-
ences do not arise exogenously.
It might be argued that neoconservatism most closely resembles liberal
republicanism (as opposed to republican liberalism), a perspective Michael
Doyle attributes to Immanuel Kant. At the international level of state inter-
actions, the two do seem similar. From this liberal vantage point, states—not
individuals within states—are the key actors in international politics. Un-
like realist theorists who saw the prevention of power imbalances as crucial
for peace, Kant held that only a state system based on mutual respect for

77 Krauthammer, “In Defense of Democratic Realism,” 185.
78 William Kristol, “American Power—for What?” 36.
79 Andrew Moravscik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” In-
ternational Organization 51, no. 4 (1997): 513–53.

80 For examples of such arguments in regard to the U.S. Congress, see Keith Krehbiel, Information
and Legislative Organization (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1991); and Gary W. Cox and Matthew
D. McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House (Berkley: University of California
Press, 1993).
272 A. Rapport
Westphalian sovereignty and individual rights could produce a pacific world

order.81 This order would be possible among liberal regimes, not between
liberal and illiberal states.82 An ontological commitment to state primacy and
the proposition of liberal peace accord with neoconservative views.
However, the congruence between liberal republicanism and neocon-
servatism breaks down when the two perspectives are examined at the do-
mestic level. Kant theorized that republican forms of government would arise
through a process of “asocial sociability,”—the tendency for socially dissim-
ilar individuals to separate from one another and like individuals to attract
and form discrete political entities. The tendency of individual preferences
within these entities to be in agreement with one another would facilitate the
construction of liberal-democratic institutions that would defend against ex-
ternal threats while upholding individual rights. In this view, liberal regimes
arise out of the exogenously given preferences of citizens, the harmonious

nature of which makes the formation of republican institutions possible. Just
like liberal theories that privilege individual actors over the state, then, lib-
eral republicanism depicts polities in which agents are entirely productive of
structure at the domestic level. What is more, structure is produced through
a mechanism that is autonomous from human consciousness:
And how does nature guarantee that what man ought to do by the laws
of freedom (but does not do) will in fact be done through nature’s com-
pulsion, without prejudice to the free agency of man? . . . [T]his does not
mean that nature imposes on us a duty to do it, for duties can only be im-
posed by practical reason. On the contrary, nature does it herself, whether
we are willing or not: facta volentem ducunt nolentem tradunt.83
Unlike theories that highlight pluralistic interest group competition,

Kantian liberalism does not posit a mechanism by which state preferences or
identities change via human agency. The political character of states, once
they become liberal democracies, are for all intents and purposes static. This
lack of dynamism makes it possible for a perpetual peace to exist among
them. Contrary to arguments that neoconservatives perceive America’s
political order as static, neocons in fact hold that the “republican virtue”
of democratic societies is by no means impervious to cultural decay.84 One
81 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999). The concept of “Westphalian sovereignty” used here is that of Krasner.

82 For an argument challenging the notion that Kant held peace was only possible among liberal
regimes, see John MacMillan, “A Kantian Protest Against the Peculiar Discourse of Inter-Liberal State
Peace,” in The Globalization of Liberalism, eds., Eivind Hovden and Edward Keene (London: Palgrave,
2002), 57–72.
83 Cited in Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, 278. Emphases added, with the exception of the Latin.
84 John Brenkman, The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought Since September 11
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 11. Brenkman posits that neoconservatives “conceive of the
nation’s liberal order and rule of law as an unalterable internal feature of American democracy.”
of the formative influences on neoconservative thought was the American

“counterculture” of the 1960s and the threat it represented to traditional
liberal values.85 Reflective of this influence is Irving Kristol’s response
to Fukuyama’s thesis: “... our American democracy, though seemingly
triumphant, is at risk, and it is at risk precisely because it is the kind of
democracy it is, with all the problematics ... that fester within such a democ-
racy.”86 In short, exogenously given preferences, bottom-up accounts of state
identity and regime inertness are all characteristics of liberal republicanism,
and they are all incompatible with neoconservative conceptions of the
state.
It has been demonstrated that liberal theories of IR which are materialist
and individualist do not accord well with neoconservatism. To understand
the neoconservative perspective, especially on the instability of domestic
regimes, one must turn to ideational strands of liberalism, and Tocqueville in

particular. Neoconservative theory adopts Tocqueville’s perspective on Amer-
ican democracy, namely that the nature of the American regime would tend
to create citizens who were more inwardly focused on their own parochial
affairs than the public ethos and vitality of the polity.87 One of the impulses of
liberalism is to advance the narrow interests of small groups rather than pro-
moting the general welfare, an impulse that serves to delegitimize the national
political order. As Michael Ledeen interprets Tocqueville, “The first fatal step
on the road to tyranny is self-indulgence, and the consequent abandonment
of our collective national mission.”88 Williams observes that it is axiomatic
among neoconservatives that unbridled individualism is “destructive of com-
munal ties and values . . . leaving a corrupted society lacking any viable sense
of the public good.”89
An important point to take from Tocqueville’s work and the neoconser-
vative interpretation of it is that political structures and the citizens within
them are coconstituting. Liberal government produces individualistic citizens,
who in turn shape the character of that government, the result often being
that liberal states possess weak collective identities. This is why a commit-
ment to shared ideals that motivate righteous collective action is so critical
both domestically and internationally.90 Neoconservatives reconcile the ap-
parent contradiction between liberal values of freedom and individualism,
85 Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion,” 35; Kirkpatrick, “Neoconservatism as a Response to
the Counter-Culture,” in The Neocon Reader, 235–40; Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1979), 53-58; and Mark Gerson, The Neoconservative Vision: From the Cold War to
the Culture Wars (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1996), 73–135.
86 Allan Bloom, “Responses to Fukuyama,” The National Interest, no. 16 (Summer 1989): 28.
87 Adam Wolfson, “Conservatives and Neoconservatives,” in The Neocon Reader, 223.
88 Ledeen, Tocqueville on American Character, 167.
89 Williams, “What is the National Interest?” 312.
90 This commitment is noted by others who have examined neoconservative thought, including
Williams, “What is the National Interest?” 317, as well as by Henry Kissinger, “Intervention with a Vision,”
in The Right War? 49–53.
274 A. Rapport
on the one hand, and the need for cohesive community on the other, with
the concept of “collective individualism.” The term, coined by Ralph Barton
Perry, refers to the initiative of individuals to associate and form organiza-
tions to address the problems that affect them collectively.91 These initiatives
are undertaken independently of extant political institutions. Reliance on ex-
isting institutions indicates a willingness to allow third party control of one’s
life and reflects a selfish individualism akin to free-riding. This reliance is
ultimately self-defeating, for eventually one’s actions come to be dominated
by the institutions to which power has been granted. Mark Gerson, a director
at the Project for the New American Century, defines the “republican virtue
tradition” of Tocqueville in much the same way: “Freedom and community
are sometimes posited in both liberal and conservative thought as opposing
forces .... The republican virtue tradition rejects this notion; it maintains that
individual freedom is nourished and maintained by the voluntary commit-

ments of individuals.”92 Collective individualism also comes to the fore in the
work of David Frum and Richard Perle, who declare the need for Americans
to reject the “1970s cynicism that sneered ... at the joiner and volunteer—and
reacquire our admiration for the citizen who does his or her part.”93
To avoid the pitfalls of individualism it is necessary not only for cit-
izens to engage in collective individualism, but for there to be a shared
understanding that such action is the underpinning of an effective political
order. Gerson, drawing from Jeff Weintraub, refers to the social production
of this understanding as a “willed community.”94 The perceived importance
of shared political understandings for such a community to exist suggests
why neoconservative writers have insisted that American foreign policy be
infused with a moral emphasis: such emphasis is necessary if policy is to hold
the attention of, and be supported by, U.S. citizens, while at the same time re-
inforcing their understanding of the state’s political order.95 Neoconservatism
does not hold humans are by default beings endowed with republican virtue,
nor is a society that has largely achieved such virtue immune from decay.
91 See Ledeen, Tocqueville on American Character, 103–6; and Ralph Barton Perry, Characteristically
American (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1949).

92 Gerson, The Neoconservative Vision, 9–10.
93 David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random
House, 2003), 78, emphasis in the original.

94 Ibid., 11. Jeff Weintraub, “Varieties and Vicissitudes of Public Space,” in Metropolis: Center and
Symbol of Our Times, ed. Philip Kasinetz (New York: New York University Press, 1995).
95 Woodrow Wilson would have agreed with this proposition as well. Was he a neoconservative?
The answer is no, for two principal reasons. Krauthammer, “In Defense of Democratic Realism,” 15. First,
as Krauthammer observes, Wilson believed that the cause of liberalism could be advanced primarily
through international institutions composed of politically heterogeneous members. Such faith is at odds
with neoconservative thought, as will be discussed in greater detail below. Second, as McDougall notes,
Wilson merely wanted to make the world safe for democracy, meaning the democratic states that existed
in the early years of the 20th century. It is unlikely he thought all other nations had to be converted
to democracies to accomplish this goal. See Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The
American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 174, 213–14.
Part and parcel of this perspective is that the strength of a state is a func-
tion of the morality and coherence of the state’s ideology. States without a
broadly accepted political ideology will lack internal order save for pluralis-
tic competition among narrowly self-interested groups, or the order that may
be imposed from above by a tyrant. The parochial citizens produced by lib-
eral regimes are dangerous to national security in that they are inattentive to
ideological threats coming from outside the polity. Liberalism by no means
insures the permanence of the regime or the regime’s ideology. Citizens of
liberal regimes must be reminded of their shared ideological background if
they are to value it and be vigilant against competing ideologies that threaten
their political order. This shared interest must be actively constructed through
social exchange.
The importance of shared ideals is another point of departure between
liberal republicanism and neoconservatism, though this time the incongruity

arises at the international level. Kant reasoned that peace would arise be-
tween liberal states because such entities were likely to be restrained by
their citizens, who would be unwilling to shoulder the costs of war and
could be confident that citizens of other democracies would be of the same
mind.96 This is to say that war between liberal states would be avoided due
to rational self-interest at an individual level. As elaborated here, however,
neoconservatives argue policy that is overly reliant on self-interest is unsus-
tainable in the long run. The prospect of international peace will dim as
narrow self-interest leads to the decay of liberal domestic political orders.
Premise 4.1: Political ideologies are in constant competition with one an-
other; at the extreme this competition may take the form of existential conflict.
Premise 4.2: The distribution of ideologies among states determines the
severity of conflict levels, which is to say the distribution of state identities
defines the character of the international system’s structure.
The first three sets of premises presented here constitute the construc-
tivist components of neoconservatism, as they highlight its ideational base
and the production of political orders through state-civil interaction. Realism,
specifically the structural variety of realism, is compatible only with premise
1. Liberalism is compatible with all three premises, but only if one consid-
ers liberal theories of IR whose ontologies are primarily ideational. Premise
3.2 is insufficient to explain systemic change within neoconservative theory
because it fails to describe the outcomes of interactions between different
types of states. Premise set 4 details the systemic nature of neoconservatism’s
constructivist theory of international politics.
Because human beings are blank slates, they are susceptible to being
persuaded to adopt many different political ideologies, ranging from the
96 See Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, 280–81.

276 A. Rapport
totalitarian to the anarchic. Ideological struggles are largely determinant of

the future course of politics;97 Irving Kristol notes that nations have extensive
ideological interests in addition to material concerns.98 By advancing its own
political ideology, a state reinforces the validity of the beliefs and norms that
constitute that ideology and produce an international ideational structure in
which its political system may thrive. Certain ideologies are incompatible with
one another, and in situations where the values of two colliding ideologies are
mutually exclusive, there is the potential for existential threat to the respective
political communities embracing the opposing viewpoints. As Bloom noted
in his concurrence with Fukuyama’s 1989 article, the idea of freedom had
largely triumphed throughout the globe, and “the challenge to the West from
fascism and communism were also ideas, formulated to oppose the success
of the historical embodiments of Enlightenment principles.”99 As states are
the primary political actors in international relations, it is the state that serves
as the vehicle for the advancement of certain political orders over others.
Nowhere is the potential for extreme ideological conflict via state in-
teraction more apparent than in neoconservative accounts of the Cold War.
Neoconservatives were unswayed by Realpolitik arguments proposed under
the Nixon Administration favoring détente with the USSR, instead recognizing
Soviet ideology as a destructive force with which compromise was impos-
sible.100 Neoconservatives such as Albert Wohlsetter and his students, Paul
Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, lined up against realists and moderates who fa-
vored negotiations in the form of strategic arms control, reasoning such com-
promise would weaken deterrence in the face of an enemy who had shown
a willingness to accept massive casualties to advance its political agenda.101
Ledeen refers to détente as a deception by the Soviet regime, and Muravchik
alleges that American liberals came to believe the United States was bur-
dened by an “inordinate fear of communism. By contrast, neocons held to
the conviction that communism was a monstrous evil and a potent danger.”102
Though the USSR is defunct, Islamic radicalism represents a new existen-
tial threat to America. According to Frum and Perle, “The war against extrem-
ist Islam is as much an ideological war as the cold war ever was.”103 Radical
Islam, according to Norman Podhoretz, is “dedicated to the destruction of
97Williams cites Irving Kristol as a clear proponent of this statement. Irving Kristol, Reflections of a
Neoconservative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 253.
98 Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion,” 36.
99 Bloom, “Responses to Fukuyama,” 19.
100 Gary Rosen, “Introduction,” in The Right War? 3; Steinfels, The Neoconservatives, 67-69; and
George, “Leo Strauss, Neoconservatism and U.S. Foreign Policy,” 184–87.

101 Fukuyama describes the development of this outlook in Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads,
33-34. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 120.
Mann describes Perle as “Washington’s most determined opponent of détente.”
102 Michael A. Ledeen, Freedom Betrayed (Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 1996), 50; and Muravchik,
“Can the Neocons Get Their Groove Back?”.

103 Frum and Perle, An End to Evil, 147.
everything good for which America stands.” Much like the Stalinist ideology
that preceded it, Podhoretz holds that militant Islam is inexorably expan-
sive, and a refusal to confront it aggressively will be perceived as weakness
and increase American vulnerability to attack.104 Charles Krauthammer por-
trays those who claim militant Islamists are materially weak in relation to the
United States, and thus not a threat, as equivalent to the Western European
powers who failed to see the rising danger of Nazism in the 1930s.105 Kris-
tol and Robert Kagan assert that evil regimes have to be opposed, and the
notion that stability follows engagement is a myth.106 Ideologues, then, are
not necessarily status quo “security seekers,” but revolutionary types bent
on domination. Eliot Cohen was the first neoconservative to label the con-
flict with militant Islam “World War IV.” According to Cohen, the Cold War
represented World War III, and like that clash the current one is rooted in
ideology: “I believe we are locked in a long-term war with the radicalized

branches of Islam which are deeply hostile to the United States, but I think
more probably to the West.”107 Ledeen, while affirming premise 3.1 with his
argument that states are the “terror masters” that must be dealt with for terror-
ism to be overcome, further asserts that the best way to fight political Islam
is to use the Cold War to remember there is primarily an ideological element
to the conflict.108 This approach echoes Wolfowitz’s claim in the 1980s that
“the best antidote to communism is democracy.”109
The claim by Irving Kristol that ideology defines the realm of the possi-
ble is one counter to the claim that neoconservatives view liberal ideology as
universal. A response to such a line of defense might be that tyrannical state
leaders, corrupted absolutely by power, impose illiberal ideologies on their
unwilling subjects. Lift away the veil of tyranny, neocons might argue, and hu-
manity’s natural inclination toward democratic values will spring forth. Such
a stance would contradict the first premise of neoconservatism posed above,
which denies that liberalism could arise directly from an essential human
nature. This view is not representative of neoconservative thought, however.
While neoconservatives do not believe the Muslim faith is incompatible with
democratic forms of governance—Podhoretz argues that Muslim countries
gradually developed a democratic culture, but this culture was warped by
years of Ottoman, British, and French imperialism—neoconservatives do not
104 Podhoretz, “World War IV,” 103, 113.

105 Krauthammer, “In Defense of Democratic Realism,” 189.
106 Kristol and Kagan, “National Interest and Global Responsibility,” 59.
107 Eliot A. Cohen, “World War IV; Let’s Call This Conflict What It Is,” WSJ.com Opin-
ion Journal, 20 November 2001, http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001493;

and Panorama: The War Party, BBC, 18 May 2003, transcript available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/
nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/thewarparty.txt.
108 Michael A. Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now.
How We’ll Win (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 148–50.
109 Cited in Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 136.
278 A. Rapport
treat Islamic faith, political Islam, and militant Islam as the same constructs.110
Political Islam, which does not adopt separation of church and state or other
Enlightenment values, is considered incompatible with liberalism. Krautham-
mer recognizes that Islam is a “venerable” religion with wide global appeal,
but that “radical” Islamists may take advantage of its one billion global adher-
ents by exploiting Islam’s traditions of religious zeal, messianic expectation,
and culture of martyrdom.111
It is thus possible for other cultures to have an appeal that can rival that
of liberal civic culture if the liberal states do not strongly make a case for
their own political system, reinforcing the shared ideals of their inhabitants.
Again, this is why neoconservatives reject pure power politics and adopt an
idealistic position “that sees America’s national interest as an expression of
values.”112 Power projection, by itself, is insufficient to advance the cause
of liberalism globally or consolidate it domestically. In regard to neoconser-

vatism’s first premise set, the animalistic component of the human condition
is part of the reason why liberal ideology is not necessarily hegemonic, and
why liberal society is vulnerable to moral decay. Competing ideologies that
appeal to the baser qualities of human nature may be readily accepted by
individuals who are inwardly focused on narrow personal affairs, a tendency
Tocqueville theorized was descriptive of citizens in liberal regimes. Because
human beings do not have some innate liberal yearning, it is essential the
principles of republican virtue be consistently and effectively articulated if the
uniquely good aspects of the humanity are to dominate over darker animal
urges, thus allowing the liberal polity to persevere.
As mentioned above, for the collective identities of liberal states to re-
main strong they must be constantly reinforced through the social production
of willed community. The importance of shared political understandings for
the existence of the willed community is also why neoconservatives have a
problem with “anti-American” thought. Ideologies that cast doubt on the po-
litical order in turn weaken the citizenry’s commitment to defending the state,
leading its citizens to privilege their own interest over that of the community
and leaving the country vulnerable to infiltration by ideologies that repre-
sent an existential threat. Ledeen argues that “a highly individualistic society
is a tyrant’s dream ... Dividing us makes it easier to conquer us and force
us to submit to his will.”113 Podhoretz wonders if, in comparison to the at-
tacks on liberalism emanating from within the United States during the Cold
War, the “confidence in America, and American virtue, that spontaneously
materialized on 9–11 is strong enough to withstand [anti-Americanism] this
110See Podhoretz, “World War IV,” 154. If neoconservatives thought Muslim faiths were incompatible
it would be difficult to explain any neoconservative support to democratize predominantly Muslim states
in the Middle East.
111 Krauthammer, “In Defense of Democratic Realism,” 189–90.
112 Ibid., 13.
113 Ledeen, Tocqueville on American Character, 103.
time around?”114 This sentiment is similar to Podhoretz’s discussion of Amer-

ica’s “culture of appeasement” following Vietnam, a culture Cohen presents
as partially responsible for civilian politicians’ inability to confidently lead
the military.115 Immediately following September 11, 2001, the Weekly Stan-
dard praised America’s new found unity that allowed politics to operate
“with supranormal efficiency and effectiveness” and confidently predicted
that “the United States has no reason whatsoever to suspect that the real-life
hero’s role it now assumes might wobble into ambiguity.”116 David Brooks,
in an aptly titled 2002 article “The Fog of Peace,” protested the attempts of
public intellectuals to interpret and reinterpret the meaning of September 11,
efforts that would serve only to inhibit American confidence and obscure
what clearly needed to be done in regard to Iraq.117 A few months later, the
Weekly Standard noted that a reassuring byproduct of the Al Qaeda attack
was an American abandonment of the parochial and individualistic language

of victimhood, replaced by a realization of common purpose:
Americans [have] a sense of themselves as a people, countrymen, united

by something that is precisely not private. The red, white and blue were
a product of a sudden sense of solidarity, the felt need to express the
view that an attack on one is an attack on all. It wasn’t that nearly 3,000
individuals died in the Twin Towers. It was that they died in an attack
on the United States. American Solidarity wasn’t born that day; it was
revealed. After a long absence, Americans returned to the public square
they had left for their private gardens.118
The closest approximation to neoconservatism’s emphasis on ideological

threat and ideological struggle within IR theory can be found in the work of
Raymond Aron. Aron recognized that all political units are driven to survive
at a minimum, but advanced the claim that they also seek to spread their
own political ideologies—to convert others to their worldview. 119 That each
collective political community seeks to prevail ideologically among its rivals
can be partially explained in that it facilitates the accumulation of subjects
and territory, but the pursuit of ideological domination is also an end in
itself. “Sometimes the desire for glory will be satisfied only by the diffusion
114 Podhoretz, “World War IV,” see esp. 139–53.

115 Norman Podhoretz, “The Culture of Appeasement,” Harper’s, October 1977, 25–32; and Eliot A.
Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: The Free Press,
2002), esp. 184–207.
116 David Tell, “The United State of America,” in The Weekly Standard: A Reader, 254–55.
117 David Brooks, “The Fog of Peace,” in The Weekly Standard: A Reader, 290–98.
118 Tod Lindberg, “Valor and Victimhood After September 11,” in The Weekly Standard: A Reader,
258.
119 Raymond Aron, Peace and War (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1966), 74.
280 A. Rapport
of an idea,” Aron writes, “of which each community wants to be the unique
incarnation.”120
Aron provides two basic categories of ideological systems that in part
govern the relations among states. In homogeneous systems, states share
the same conception of the appropriate political order and, as such, enjoy
stable relations. Though they may be divided by national interests—material
pursuits of subjects and territory—their ideologies correspond, and thus in-
terstate violence does not threaten the existence of the prevailing political
order. Heterogeneous systems, conversely, are characterized by states that
are organized along different political principles and appeal to contradictory
political values.121 In these systems, states may fight not only for material
gain, but for the survival of their own political systems. Interstate violence in
such systems presents an existential threat, as compromise between ideolog-
ical opponents is considerably less viable than among ideological peers.122

In situations of heterogeneous conflict, the opposing political collectives will
attempt to sow ideological discord within the other polity. The purpose of
such a tactic is to create internal conflict within the enemy camp, producing
ideological allies residing inside the opposing state who do not desire the
victory of their fellow citizens. Ideological discord thus weakens the political
collective and serves the interests of the external enemy.
Nationalistic competition for men and territory, or indivisible material
goods, is a given in Aron’s world, hence ideological affinity does not
preclude the possibility of violent conflict but merely lessens its scope.
Neoconservative theory goes beyond Aron to posit the possibility of an
international system characterized by an absence of violence. It does so by
de-emphasizing the materialist aspects of Aron’s theory of homogenous and
heterogenous systems while retaining the ideational components. Neocon-
servatism’s assumption of natural constraints on human behavior, in the form
of material requirements, allows for an infinite number of ideologies, but
these ideologies will have a definite range. Within this infinite yet bracketed
set, certain ideologies will embrace a view of the world that allows for
peaceful relations among states while still effectively satisfying basic human
needs. Liberal political ideology falls within this last category and represents
the “end of history” theorized by Fukuyama: while ideological conflict will
continue for the foreseeable future, there has come to be a “total exhaustion
of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.”123
A homogeneous system of a liberal nature will be characterized by
peaceful relations among its constitutive elements. Muravchik summarizes
the neoconservative position in saying that “the more democratic the world,
120 Ibid., 77.

121 Ibid., 100.
122 Ibid., 101.
the friendlier America’s environment will be.”124 Kagan argues such a system
is already forming among the liberal regimes of Western Europe, and these
states are “entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity,
the realization of Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace.”’125 While the differences between
the “strategic cultures” of the United States and Europe is partly explained by
material power differentials, it is also largely because of the ideals of these
states. The historical experience of Europe in the twentieth century has led
to the development of “a set of ideals and principles regarding the utility and
morality of power different from the ideals and principles of Americans, who
have not shared that experience.”126 The difference between Americans and
Europeans cannot be explained by characteristics of their regimes.127 Instead,
it arises from how they perceive the world outside the so-called transatlantic
security community. Europe, Kagan argues, perceives it as less threatening
for both material reasons and, just as importantly, ideational ones.128

Clearly, the proposition that international systems are characterized by
their ideational content and can transition from relations dominated by a
logic of violence to one of friendship accords with Wendt’s constructivism.
According to Wendt, states define their interests based on their identities,
which in turn are constituted with their relationships with other state actors.
Thus, “anarchy is what states make of it.”129 Accordingly, there are various
logics of anarchy that may broadly be broken into three types: a “Hobessian”
or realist anarchy in which states characterize external others as existential
threats and security is scarce; a “Lockean” anarchy, perhaps most similar to
neoliberal theories of international relations, in which states view each other
as competitors but coordination and cooperation is possible; and a “Kantian”
anarchy in which states form pluralistic security communities based on trust
and an understanding that violence within the community is inappropriate.130
Where neoconservatism most clearly departs from Wendt’s systemic con-
structivism is its emphasis on the importance of liberal hegemons for the
creation and maintenance of system structures. This follows from the im-
portance of willed community at the domestic level, which is transposed by
neoconservative theory to the international level as well. Similar to construc-
tivist theories of democratic peace, neoconservative theory relies on shared
understandings of a systemic liberal political order to neutralize the logic of
124 Cited in Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 79–80.

125 Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness,” Policy Review 113 (June and July 2002): 3.
126 Ibid., 6.
127 Ibid., 11–12.
128 Ibid., 18–19. Disagreement between a neoconservative, American view of the world outside the
transatlantic community and the perception ascribed to Europeans is articulated further by Podhoretz,
“World War IV,” 150–52.
129 Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” Interna-
tional Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391–425.

130 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics.
282 A. Rapport
power politics. Interstate peace may be disturbed by the decline of a liberal

state, as such a decline will alter its foreign policy. More importantly, how-
ever, peace will be disrupted systemically if the community of liberal states
fails to undertake the activities that reinforce the understanding of that com-
munity. This is most clearly seen in neoconservative arguments regarding U.S.
commitment to NATO. With the decline of the Soviet empire, Perle urged that
“the West—the United States in particular—must continue to ensure a secure,
new era in Europe.”131 Perle was alarmed by the reluctance of the NATO states
of Europe to organize themselves to address issues off the Continent, and
particularly dismayed by their attitude toward military action against Iraq in
1991.132 Egoistic behavior in this context by important members of NATO was
in turn an abandonment of collective individualism, which jeopardized the
liberal community at an international level. Wolfowitz, writing in the same
volume as Perle, concurred that it would be dangerous for members of the

alliance to adopt the attitude that it would be best for each to “go it alone”
or, in other words, adopt an overly individualistic stance.133 This is consis-
tent with Wolfowitz’s feelings toward the liberal community six years hence:
“A commitment to larger political purposes should be part of the glue that
binds the advanced democracies together and allows them to share a future
that can assure their continued safety and prosperity.”134 The same opinion
was given by neoconservatives after NATO expanded eastward. Douglas Feith
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “the United States and its
European and Canadian allies indeed are a community. We aren’t just a col-
lection of members of a multinational forum.”135 Indeed, contrary to those
who worried the enlargement of NATO would harm the post-Cold War peace,
neoconservatives argued it was necessary for NATO to add new members to
reinvigorate the alliance and solidify a shared conception of a liberal political
order across Europe.136
Another common theme running through the neoconservative dis-
cussion of NATO is the necessity of enlarging that community beyond its
current borders. The preference for enlargement can be encapsulated by
the concept of “democratic contagion.” Though not explicitly stated by
Fukuyama, the idea of democratic contagion could be argued to have
had its genesis in his work. Fukuyama’s theory exhibits the same type of
131 Richard Perle, “Introduction,” in Reshaping Western Security: The United States Faces a United
Europe, ed. Richard Perle (Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 1991), 6–7.
132 Ibid., 2.
133 Paul Wolfowitz, “Our Goals for a Future Europe,” in Reshaping Western Security, 152.
134 Wolfowitz, “Managing Our Way to a Peaceful Century,” 54.
135 Douglas Feith, prepared remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1 May 2002.
136 Wolfowitz testified in his prepared remarks that the United States’ “moral imperative calls us to
help new democracies formerly subjected to the yoke of tyranny to consolidate and secure their own
freedom and sovereignty. The strategic imperative suggests that a united Europe of common values will
help avoid the major wars that the Continent experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries.” Paul Wolfowitz,
Prepared Remarks Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 10 April 2003.
teleological underpinnings as Marxism and, like Marxism, does not propose

that history needs to be “helped along.” However, Fukuyama implies that
such a strategy of regime change could be successful when he insists
that while illiberal regimes may continue to exist, the ideology of such
states cannot compete with Western liberalism. Whether this ideology is
introduced via passive means or by political actors making a concerted effort
to intervene in illiberal regimes, the logical outcome should be the same—an
international system composed entirely of liberal states. The success of such
a strategy is contingent upon the intervening actors first ensuring that the
formerly oppressed populations of illiberal states perceive that a liberal
order satisfies their basic needs (premise 2), rather than expecting that they
will naturally have an ideational affinity with liberal forms of government.
Once a liberal hegemon has a foothold in a state and has satisfied the
needs of the populace, the liberalization process may begin. As Muravchik

states, democracy does not spontaneously arise but is created “as a result
of political, cultural, or intellectual structures” that are “manifestly subject
to influence” of powerful states.137 U.S. leadership is not only important to
the maintenance of the liberal international community, but crucial for the
growth of the community as well. Collective efforts to expand the reach of
liberalism in turn solidify shared political understandings within “the West.”
The importance of liberal hegemons to engage in the vigorous exercise of
power is widely cited in neoconservative thought.138
Kristol and Kagan most clearly articulate the notion of democratic conta-
gion spread by a powerful liberal state. Arguing that dictatorships had been
replaced by democratic regimes at an “unprecedented rate” from the 1970s
onward, in countries where conventional wisdom held that regime change
was unlikely, the authors query whether it is realistic to doubt the feasibil-
ity of further liberalization.139 To insure that democracy continues to spread,
the United States should seek to turn the unipolar moment into a unipolar
era.140 American power, properly exercised, can be used to establish a moral
order based on liberal principles that extend beyond the West. Contra real-
ist thinking, a strategy of “off-shore balancing” was the surest way to create
instability because it would allow democratization to stall, weakening inter-
national understandings of a shared political order while providing illiberal
regimes the opportunity to regain power within the international system.141
137 Cited in Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 80.

138 Ellsworth and Simes, “Realism’s Shining Morality,” 205; Fouad Ajami, “Iraq May Survive, but the
Dream is Dead,” in The Right War? 71; Podhoretz, “World War IV,” 112, 120, 138; and Irving Kristol, “The
Neoconservative Persuasion,” 36–37.
139 Kristol and Kagan, “National Interest and Global Responsibility,” in The Neocon Reader, 70–71.
140 The reference to the “unipolar moment” comes from Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,”
Foreign Affairs 70, no. 1 (1990/1991): 23–33.

141 Kristol and Kagan, “National Interest and Global Responsibility,” 64–67. For a realist argument in
favor of offshore balancing see Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will
Rise,” International Security 17, no. 4 (1993): 5–51.
284 A. Rapport
The argument that democracy will prove contagious in the Middle East has
been made by Ajami as well as Frum and Perle, who posited that U.S. efforts
in Iraq would reform the “ideological and moral climate of the whole Middle
East.”142 Ledeen concurred with Reuel Marc Gerecht that creating a liberal
and democratic Iraq would lead to revolution in Iran, a continuation of the
former’s prior work on the essential role of the United States in spreading
democracy.143
By advancing the notion of democratic contagion and arguing this will
lead to peaceful international relations, neoconservatives reject the static re-
alist model of the international system in which the potential for violent con-
flict between political groups is omnipresent. Further, by stressing ideological
conflict as the root cause of political outcomes, neoconservative thought pins
its flag to an ideational mast. As Gerson contends, political systems are the
products of culture, and the ideas composing these systems are the determi-
nants of reality; succinctly put, “neoconservatives are, if anything, ideological
determinists.”144 The importance of ideas in the construction of the national
interest is especially clear when neoconservative theorists fault realism for
conceiving of the national interest too narrowly.145 It is the spread of liberal
ideas and principles, then, rather than the solidification of democratic institu-
tions, which does neoconservatism’s explanatory work in regard to interstate
peace. Rather than stressing institutional characteristics of democratic states,
which may increase the credibility of commitments and the clarity of sig-
naling,146 ideational theories of the democratic peace emphasize the liberal
cultures of democratic states that create images of self and other. Rather than
individualist liberal theories in which the exogenous demands of interest
142 For a recent, concise example see Ajami, “Bush Country,” WSJ.com Opinion Journal, 22 May
2005, http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006721; and Frum and Perle, An End

to Evil, 33.
143 Cited in Ritchie and Rogers, Road to War with Iraq, 158. In Ledeen, “American Power—for What?”
36-37, Ledeen argues that “the only truly realistic American foreign policy is an ideological one that seeks
to advance the democratic revolution wherever and whenever possible.” For more on the role of liberal
hegemons in his work see Ledeen, Freedom Betrayed, esp. 144–50.
144 Gerson, The Neoconservative Vision, 18. On the importance of ideas to neoconservatives in gen-
eral, see Hurst, “Myths of Neconservatism,” 81–82.

145 The conflict between realism and neoconservatism played out in government as well as in more
academic arenas. Mann’s history of Bush’s war cabinet documents Paul Wolfowitz’s opposition to the
Realpolitik of Henry Kissinger, the former choosing to place moral values above an American interest in
the balance of power. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 76. The neoconservative critique of realists’ concept of
the national interest is also made by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign
Policy,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 4 (1996): 18-32; in Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “Surrender as
‘Realism’,” The Weekly Standard 12, no. 12. See also Charles Krauthammer in “In Defense of Democratic
Realism”; and Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World
(Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2004), 13.
146 Examples include Charles Lipson, Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate
Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); and James Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and
the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review 88, no. 3 (1994): 577–92.
groups are “analytically prior” to political activity,147 interests are treated as

endogenous by liberal constructivists (and constructivists in general) in that
the ideational structure of the international system and state interests are co-
constituting. Contrary to Aron or Moravcsik, then, neoconservatism disavows
the belief that the material interests of a community can ever be independent
from the political culture in which that community is embedded. Contrary
to Wendt and constructivist theories of democratic peace, it emphasizes the
utility of force and regime change wrought by liberal hegemons.148
EXPLAINING STATE BEHAVIOR
What types of predictions regarding international politics can be drawn from

the premises of neoconservatism? First, it is in the interest of states to ad-

vance their political ideologies as such efforts will secure the legitimacy of
regimes both domestically and internationally. The parochial tendencies of
liberal states, however, preclude such efforts in the absence of determined
leadership. A second primary conclusion is that “friend” role identities will
predominate in a system of liberal states, and thus the logic of a Kantian sys-
tem will govern relations. A corollary is that an ideologically heterogeneous
international system will be more prone to violence than a homogeneous
one. It might seem that a homogeneous system composed of illiberal states
would be the most conflictual. However, in such a system state leaders would
have to fear material losses at the hands of external foes, but their form of
domestic governance would not be threatened by the mere presence of other
states; in fact, it would be enhanced. Liberal regimes, however, threaten the
leaders of illiberal states by their mere presence due to the inherent appeal of
democracy. Unlike realist theorists, who argue that violence will arise more
often than not due to liberal regimes overreacting to perceived threats from
illiberal states, neoconservatism envisions active threats arising entirely from
the illiberal end of the spectrum. This threat arises even if liberal states do
not consciously try to spread their ideology, and thus liberal regimes may
be said to be passively threatening. Cohen surmises the problem faced by
illiberal states when addressing China, which by his estimation is “tolerating
(or unable to resist) the gradual spread of some political as well as economic
freedoms.” The lure of Western culture creates tension within the Chinese
147 Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously,” 517.

148 The hegemonic aspect of neoconservatism superficially resembles the work of Gilpin in that
it posits a powerful international actor whose provision of collective goods is necessary for stability.
However, the collective goods provided by hegemons in Gilpin’s world are primarily economic, while
the collective good that neoconservatives theorize liberal hegemons provide is ideational. It is difficult to
reconcile the belief of neoconservatives that liberal hegemons will be regarded by other liberal states as
largely benevolent with Gilpin’s proposition that the uneven growth of state power as the predominant
source of conflict in international relations. On this last point, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in
World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 230.
286 A. Rapport
regime, leading to “nationalism and paranoia.”149 Ledeen gives a more general

assessment: “tyrants hate [the United States] because their legitimacy is un-
dermined by our very existence.”150 Neoconservative theorists would predict
that illiberal states would engage in comprehensive efforts to censor external
sources of information. “External censorship” is not an inherent quality of il-
liberal government, but is made necessary by the availability of liberal culture.
Liberal regimes may censor both internal and external sources of infor-
mation, but for different reasons than illiberal regimes that engage in this
behavior. Overtly illiberal ideology is not in itself threatening to liberal states
because it will not be absorbed by their citizens; a cursory glance will reveal
it to be inferior. A greater danger emanates from within the liberal polity it-
self. Because liberalism has a tendency to create citizens who focus on their
own narrow affairs rather than the communal good, appeals to the baser
instincts of humanity may weaken the morality of the citizenry and thus the
cohesiveness of the polity. Illiberal political agents must actively exploit this
tendency if they are to ideologically penetrate liberal states. Illiberal actors
could also appeal to liberal values such as humanitarianism in order to at-
tract supporters to their ideology while hiding the tyrannical nature of their
regimes. Such efforts may create subpopulations of subversives in liberal
states, thus sowing internal dissent and weakening the state.
It is an important point to note that illiberal states must exert the effort
to systematically engage in such ideological assaults upon vulnerable liberal
states if their ideals are to gain traction there. Furthermore, such regimes must
engage in this type of behavior if their leadership and form of government is
to survive. Thus, external censorship and external propagandizing on the part
of illiberal regimes is a response to the passive threat represented by the mere
presence of democracies. The same type of behavior by liberal regimes will
only come after an active (that is, effortful and deliberate) policy designed
to undermine their unity has been initiated by another state.
Interstate interaction is not limited to the realm of propaganda and
counterpropaganda, of course. The more prevalent the penetration of liberal
ideology into illiberal regimes, the more likely the latter will pursue violent
means in order to counteract the effects. Violence will not necessarily be di-
rected at liberal states, however. It may be just as effective for illiberal leaders
to engage in diversionary tactics, attacking the easiest target within reach in
order to distract their citizens with promises of conquest or perceived exter-
nal threat. Indeed, the supposed presence of external threat is most likely to
be emphasized. The nature of illiberal regimes as “rent-seekers” may not al-
low any gains from conquest to be widely distributed among the populace.151
149
Eliot A. Cohen, “American Power—for What?” 24.
150
Michael Ledeen, “American Power—for What?” 36.
151 On rent-seeking states, see David A. Lake, “The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Russian Empire:
A Theoretical Interpretation,” in The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative
Further, the number of easy targets may be limited, thus constraining the
number of times such a strategy may be employed. Both these factors serve
to negate the effectiveness of conquest as a diversionary tactic over the long
term. External threat, however, can more easily be portrayed as omnipresent.
Leaders of illiberal regimes, then, will use violence and scare tactics to
prevent the penetration of liberal ideology. As stated by Kristol and Kagan:
. . . in today’s environment American interests and those of tyrannical

regimes inevitably clash. For the force of American ideals and the influ-
ence of the international economic system ... tend to corrode the pillars
on which authoritarian and totalitarian regimes rest. To bolster their legit-
imacy, such regimes therefore resort frequently to provocation ... or by
regional conquest.152
Another notable prediction of neoconservatism is that, in the face of an

active liberal hegemon, illiberal states will engage in “quasi-bandwagoning”
behavior. I refer to this behavior as quasi-bandwagoning because the mo-
tives driving the actions of the leaders of illiberal states and those of their
citizens diverge. While realists stress that nationalism is the most universally
valid ideational construct, neoconservatives contend that liberalism is the
most widely appealing.153 Rather than predicting that illiberal states will bal-
ance against liberal power, then, neoconservatives deduce that the leaders
of said states will be coerced into altering their behavior to coincide with
the interests of an active liberal hegemon. This is traditional bandwagoning
behavior, and it occurs for two reasons. First, states facing the focused en-
mity of a hegemon may believe they have no choice but to acquiesce, for
in the absence of submission they will be crushed. This is a realist reason to
expect bandwagoning. However, as realism contends, a great power cannot
Perspective, eds., Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrot (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 47-53. The con-
tention that illiberal states illegitimately expropriate wealth in order to maintain authority is probably not
one that neoconservatives would argue with, as it fits with the premise that regime type reflects external
and internal behavior. However, one of the major shortcomings of neoconservatism is that aside from
broadly contesting the violent nature of illiberal regimes and the peaceful nature of liberal ones, it does
not clearly specify the ways in which illiberal states are “bad.” Thus, any normatively undesirable form
of behavior can be ascribed post hoc to the nature of the regime.
152 Kristol and Kagan, “National Interest and Global Responsibility,” 68.
153 This argument is made by John J. Mearsheimer, “Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War: Realism
Versus Neo-conservatism,” Open Democracy, 19 May 2005, http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-

americanpower/morgenthau 2522.jsp. It should be noted that liberalism and nationalism need not be at
odds. For example, neoconservatives would argue that nationalism is healthy and would not contend that
nationalism and liberalism fail to coexist in the United States. See Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconserva-
tive. However, liberalism and nationalism do conflict when one state tries to impose a liberal system of
government on another without the target’s consent.
288 A. Rapport
credibly promise it will forgo crushing a bandwagoning, weak power in the

future if it so suits the great power’s interests.154
Bandwagoning on the part of illiberal leaders must further be explained
by the motives neoconservatism ascribes to the citizens of illiberal states.
If nationalism were the most important identity in international relations,
then liberal hegemons who tried to spread democracy would be resisted
by the populace of the targeted states, who would be unwilling to sacrifice
the sovereignty of their governments. Even tyrannical leaders, who may be
politically vulnerable in the absence of external threat, would be buoyed
domestically by an imposing liberal regime. This increased political support
will be contingent upon the leader taking a strong stance against the
threatening liberal state; the audience costs of “backing down” may be
great.155 This dynamic will work against any inclination a leader may have to
bandwagon with an opponent. However, neoconservatism assumes that the

appeal of liberalism will dominate that of nationalism. Thus, illiberal leaders
faced with an imposing liberal state will become even more vulnerable to
internal political threats. The military resources of the state that an illiberal
leader normally has at his discretion to combat domestic threats will be
unavailable, as every asset will be needed to defend against the military of
the liberal regime. Further, they will not be able to rely on their population
to resist an invading liberal force nor subvert it during an occupation period.
This lack of resistance by the population removes a possible deterrent
facing the liberal invader and can strain the resources of the illiberal state
if state’s inhabitants, in fact, revolt. In other words, illiberal leaders will be
faced with an intractable problem of resource scarcity. Those being targeted
by the liberal hegemon will not bandwagon, of course: no matter what
they do they are going to lose power and probably their lives, and in these
desperate circumstances they will choose to fight with the slim hope that
resistance may allow them to escape capture. Illiberal regimes observing the
fate of those targeted, however, will take heed of the scarcity problem and
acquiesce to future demands by the hegemon in the hope that submission
will prevent military conflict and allow them to maintain domestic control.
The neoconservative emphasis on ideological coherence as a compo-
nent of strength in part explains the skepticism neocons exhibit toward inter-
national institutions and law.156 The United Nations, for example, is portrayed
as an agglomeration of states with different political cultures and values.
Lacking a common political ethos, the member states of this international
154 See John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton and Com-
pany, 2001); and James Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49, no. 3
(1995): 379–414.
155 Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences.”
156 See Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 49, 64–65; and Krauthammer, Democratic Realism, 12,
15.
body cannot be expected to do more than pursue their own narrow self-
interests as they have no common frame of reference that defines the general
welfare. Collective action within a political order based on the minimization
of conformity costs will be sluggish at best. Collective action in a multilateral
institution based on shared democratic principles, however, is quite feasible
and, in fact, crucial for the social production and maintenance of the inter-
national liberal community. As discussed above, it is for this reason that neo-
conservatives do not shy away from multilateral action through organizations
such as NATO or ad hoc coalitions of ideologically correspondent states.157
John Bolton spells out the difference between ideologically congruent
multinational institutions and regimes from Feith’s mere “multinational fo-
rum,” while seeking to debunk analogies between the International Criminal
Court (ICC) and the international regime arising from the Nuremberg trials.
Nuremberg was an activity conducted by “allies who shared juridical and

political norms, and a common vision for reconstructing the defeated Axis
powers as democracies,” while the ICC, which would include input from
states regardless of ideology, would be little more than a forum for “political
‘score settling.”’158 It should be noted that liberal multilateral organizations
are not the only feasible international institutions. Any ideologically similar
coalition will be more effective at achieving a given set of aims than an ide-
ologically dissimilar one, though it should be noted that illiberal multilateral
organizations will be most effective in the face of a superordinate threat from
liberal regimes.159 Participants may be more confident that the decisions of
the coalition will represent their own interests and thus perceive those de-
cisions as legitimate. Further, such coalitions will operate more efficiently
because members will be more willing to sacrifice control to organization
leaders, who may then act without having to constantly consult all member
states.160
POINTS OF DEPARTURE (THEORETICAL AND OTHERWISE)
Neoconservatism’s four core premises link together in a logical fashion to

form an explanatory theory of international politics, which yields predic-
tions about interstate interactions. Neoconservatives stress the presence of
ideological conflict in the international system, explicitly posit ideological

158 John Bolton, prepared remarks before the House Committee on International Relations, 25 July
2000.
159 Illiberal regimes are theorized to be threatening by their nature, and so any coalition of illiberal
regimes would have to fear being exploited by their so-called partners. However, liberal regimes present
a grave threat to illiberal states, and in the face of such threat it is more likely organizations will adopt a
structure which will impose a cooperative equilibrium on its members.
160 For a similar argument in an American domestic context, see David W. Rhode, Parties and Leaders
in the Postreform House (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

290 A. Rapport
unity among a state’s citizenry as an aspect of power, and emphasize the

possibility of ideological conflict escalating to the level of existential threat.
Unlike realists, who posit that liberal states will have a tendency to overreact
to the perceived threat of illiberal regimes, the assumptions of neoconser-
vatism lead to the prediction that illiberal states will react aggressively to the
passive threat represented by liberal ideology. That the premises detailed
here attempt to explain international outcomes and lead to unique predic-
tions about politics should allow and encourage their empirical analysis by
IR scholars.
Perhaps more importantly, neoconservatism represents another variant
of systemic rather than holist constructivism in the field of IR.161 Further, neo-
conservative theory presents theoretical challenges to Wendt’s strain of sys-
temic constructivism. Neoconservative thought shares several commonalities
with Wendt’s systemic constructivism: state-centrism, the importance of states’

collective, type, and role identities, the possibility of transcending realist log-
ics of anarchy, and the “rump materialism” of human nature. The statecentric
aspect of neoconservatism has received the least amount of explicit attention
above, and may be the most contestable assertion presented. While Williams
notes neoconservatism’s general affinity with constructivism and the possi-
bility of engagement between the two, it remains difficult to see the former
as consistent with much existing constructivist work, which highlights the
importance of transnational social networks and international institutions.162
As with the FIF in Iraq, groups at a domestic level are important in inter-
national politics as far as they may complement the efforts of strong liberal
states. Conversely, illiberal regimes may produce terrorist groups, intention-
ally or otherwise, which threaten international security. Political groups at
the substate level cannot affect systemic change in the absence of state ac-
tion, however, nor can they be understood outside of the context of their
production by state regimes. This argument aligns with the tendency of neo-
conservatives such as Ledeen to view terrorism as the result of state policies,
and the observation of Halper and Clarke that the Bush administration’s focus
on states, rather than nonstate actors, after September 11 “closely reflected
the neoconservative position and neoconservative interventions in the policy
process.”163
The key points of departure between Wendt and neoconservative
thought is the durability of system structure, the focus on hegemons, and
the status of the current culture of anarchy. Wendt contends that it is difficult
161On holist constructivism, see Price and Reus-Smit, “Dangerous Liaisons?” 268–69.
162Williams, “What is the National Interest?” 328. Williams’ conversation of how the work on social
construction by Berger and Luckman influenced early neoconservative debate. Peter L. Berger and Thomas
Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books, 1966).
163 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 32; and Ledeen, Terror Masters.
to alter the structure of international politics.164 For neoconservatives, this is

not so. Illiberal states have incentives to propagate internal dissent within
their liberal counterparts, and citizens of the latter are susceptible to such
interventions. As Kristol and other neoconservatives drawing on the work
of Tocqueville contend, the republican virtue and legitimacy within liberal
states is threatened with dissolution due to their own internal dynamics, and
illiberal interference can augment this threat. Likewise, citizens in illiberal
states are prone to interventions by liberal forces due to a desire for modern-
ization, or the satisfaction of material wants and the alleviation of deprivation
at the hands of authoritarian regimes. More importantly, the susceptibility of
the international system to violent conflict depends on the ideational struc-
ture of the system and, in particular, the constant social reproduction of the
ideals of liberal community by states committed to collective individualism.
The prospect of a shared understanding of community is weak without de-

termined leadership by powerful states in the system. The only effective way
to escape this instability is to reach a Kantian state of anarchy where friend-
role identities are predominant. The perceived instability of the international
system creates an underlying anxiety or fear in neoconservative thought, and
given militant Islam’s succession to the seat once occupied by Soviet com-
munism, neoconservatives are more likely to perceive the current system of
anarchy as Hobbesian rather than Lockean in nature.165
One might argue that an emphasis on state characteristics prevents neo-
conservatism from being a systemic theory. For Wendt, a political entity’s type
does not have causal effects, at least at the systemic level. Rather, the prevail-
ing culture of anarchy determines whether various entities are recognized as
legitimate actors or not. Conversely, one might argue that neoconservatives
hold that domestic changes alter states’ types and thus have causal effects
on international politics. However, it must be remembered that changes in
regime type occur in the context of international interaction. States interna-
tional actions in turn reproduce domestic ideological structures. Liberal states’
parochialism and illiberal states’ denial of human needs are the permissive
factors, which allow outside political entities to alter state identities. These un-
wanted influences, in turn, produce conflictual role identities between states
of differing ideologies. To borrow Wendt’s terms, because neoconservatives
hold that states’ collective identities are generally unstable, “microstructural”
interactions can quickly come to have “macrostructural” effects. Systemic the-
ories must make assumptions about lower-level units, which in turn affect
164Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 339–40.

165Wendt states that while there are and have always been exceptions to the norms of Lockean
anarchy, “nevertheless almost all states obey those norms almost all the time, which poses even harder
questions to any other interpretation of the system.” Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 285–86.
292 A. Rapport
the content of said theories. Wendt and Waltz, for example, assume states
have strong collective identities, while neoconservatives do not.166
While Wendt’s work focuses more on exploring the construction and
logic of different international systems, the malleability of structure leads neo-
cons to focus on the role of powerful liberal states within the international
system. In a context of unipolarity, the United States is compelled to use its
position to take advantage of the fluid nature of the international system. The
United States and other liberal states are faced with revolutionary powers that
do not respect international law or the very international institutions in which
they sit. As a result, the institutions that are meant to ameliorate international
enmity are weak, if not utterly hollow. Whatever friendship or nonmilitary
rivalries exist among liberal democracies is outweighed by the instability
wrought by opposing forces. The system has not tipped from Hobbesian
to Lockean anarchy, and even if it does a neoconservative would be more

confident in the possibility of reversion than would a Wendtian. These im-
portant divergences from Wendt’s theory portray a system whose units face
a situation of crisis, in which action is crucial to combat existential threats.
These divergences carry both empirical and normative implications.
First, one must question whether or not the social norms and identities the-
orized to govern state behavior are durable or transient. What is more, it
should be questioned whether the durability of systems of anarchy is more
or less constant over time or if it is historically contingent.167 Further, systemic
constructivist theory leaves unspecified whether transitioning from anarchy A
to anarchy B is more or less difficult than moving from B to C, or even from C
to A. To borrow from the language of statistics, might these different cultures
of anarchy be characterized as “interval,” in which there is a definite ordering
in the steps of transition and moving from one step is no different than mov-
ing from another; “ordinal,” in which the cultures are still ordered but moving
from, say, Hobbesian to Lockean anarchy is considerably easier than moving
from Lockean to Kantian; or “nominal,” in which the cultures cannot be log-
ically ordered and the transition to one does not necessarily have to be pre-
ceded by another? Wendt appears to describe a more or less interval system
where there is an ordered progression from one culture to another, the transi-
tions between each of roughly equal difficulty. Neoconservatives, conversely,
seem to describe an ordinal system in which it is ever harder to progress up
from a Hobbesian state of affairs, yet relatively easy to revert back from mixed
or Lockean systems. Unlike neoconservatism, with its conception of a liberal
international system as an end-state in political affairs, constructivist accounts
166
Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics.
167
Constructivist theories of international institutions have examined the factors that may affect the
pace at which norms and identities are altered. See, for example, Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, “A
Framework for the Study of Security Communities,” in Security Communities, eds., Emanuel Adler and
Michael Barnett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 29-66. Such work could be applied to the
study of change in collective identities at the level of the international system as a whole.
of the democratic peace that focus on state perceptions appear amenable to

the idea that collective liberal identities may change.168
Different characterizations of system durability have normative implica-
tions for policy. If transitioning from one type of anarchy to another is quite
difficult, as Wendt suggests it is, the utility of an active policy of regime change
becomes doubtful if the end sought is more peaceful international relations.
Further, one must question whether or not a system of liberal states really
does represent the “end of history,” so to speak, or if shared understandings
of the other’s benign intent are changeable even in a Kantian environment.
What, in other words, are the long-term repercussions of liberal states failing
to engage in individual collectivism to reproduce a willed community at the
international level in the absence of illiberal states? This too has implications
for the long-term utility of regime change and, in fact, represents a normative
quandary to neoconservatism. If liberal regimes tend toward decadence and

political decay, as Tocqueville suggests, and neoconservatives transpose this
dynamic to the international level, it is not difficult to understand Fukuyama’s
melancholic outlook on the end of history, or question the notion that a Kan-
tian international system based on liberal political order would be solvent in
perpetuity. This apparent tension in neoconservative thought is reminiscent
of the debate between Strauss and Kojéve on whether a historical end-state
could be mutually satisfying or, for that matter, possible.169 In this regard,
neoconservatism contains a normative tension the systemic constructivism
of Wendt lacks. Both empirically and normatively, then, neoconservatism
highlights the distinctive characteristics of Wendt’s systemic constructivism,
while representing a challenge to the field of IR as a whole.
168 On the contestability of a state’s democratic status, see Ido Oren,“The Subjectivity of the ‘Demo-
cratic’ Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany,” International Security 20, no. 2 (Autumn
1995): 147–84. See Cox and Pouliot for a recent exchange on the durability of liberal security communities:
Michael Cox, “Beyond the West: Terrors in Transatlantia,” European Journal of International Relations
11, no. 2 (2005): 203–33; Vincent Pouliot, “The Alive and Well Transatlantic Security Community: A Theo-
retical Reply to Michael Cox,” European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 1 (2006): 119–27; and
Michael Cox, “Let’s Argue about the West: Reply to Vincent Pouliot,” European Journal of International
Relations 12, no. 1 (2006): 129–34.
169 See Pippin, “Being, Time, and Politics,” 158.

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Is neoconservatism a coherent theory of international politics?

Many previous efforts to illuminate what might be called the neo-

Individuals who have been labeled by either themselves or others as “neo-

Aaron Rapport is a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota.

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

Grove Press, 2004), 45–52. Boot gives this opinion.

European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 3 (2005): 307–37.

state that neoconservatism “can best be described as a primacist grand strat-

9 Ritchie and Rogers, Road to War with Iraq, 141–45.

Cambridge University Press, 2005), 197–203.

systematically gives rise to various phenomena of interest.14 Another pos-

matters of power and interpretation and political ideology”—not a position

forth here, the propositions of which lead to generalizable conclusions re-

litical theorists important to neoconservatives, such as Alexis de Tocqueville,

generally, there is considerable value in establishing the affinities of neo-

Premise 1.2: Human beings have basic, biologically determined wants

Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel makes human action productive of social

humanity’s historical and cultural experiences to perceptions of the world,

biological “animal” desire and its “human” counterpart.38 Such a position is

human nature embedded in the classical realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans

detail under premise 1.2 below.

and institutional theories of liberalism, where actors’ identities and interests

durable—the instant a person with no need for cognitive consistency was

a human, non-biological I.”53 This natural/human dichotomy offers a differ-

Despite [radical constructivists’] well-intentioned resistance to biological

Wendt recognizes that social action cannot be explained without

62 Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 54.

teristics of interacting states. This issue will be under premise set 4.

of Plato and Aristotle.68 An oppressive, authoritarian regime that suppresses

great losses of life in the process.76 Alternatively, the peaceful character of

fortunate tendency to “reduce the business of America to business” in the

76 Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 29.

ternational Organization 51, no. 4 (1997): 513–53.

Westphalian sovereignty and individual rights could produce a pacific world

arise out of the exogenously given preferences of citizens, the harmonious

Unlike theories that highlight pluralistic interest group competition,

81 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1999). The concept of “Westphalian sovereignty” used here is that of Krasner.

of the formative influences on neoconservative thought was the American

regimes, one must turn to ideational strands of liberalism, and Tocqueville in

85 Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion,” 35; Kirkpatrick, “Neoconservatism as a Response to

individual freedom is nourished and maintained by the voluntary commit-

American (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1949).

House, 2003), 78, emphasis in the original.

liberal republicanism and neoconservatism, though this time the incongruity

96 See Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, 280–81.

totalitarian to the anarchic. Ideological struggles are largely determinant of

George, “Leo Strauss, Neoconservatism and U.S. Foreign Policy,” 184–87.

“Can the Neocons Get Their Groove Back?”.

ideology: “I believe we are locked in a long-term war with the radicalized

104 Podhoretz, “World War IV,” 103, 113.

ion Journal, 20 November 2001, http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001493;

of liberalism globally or consolidate it domestically. In regard to neoconser-

time around?”114 This sentiment is similar to Podhoretz’s discussion of Amer-

was an American abandonment of the parochial and individualistic language

Americans [have] a sense of themselves as a people, countrymen, united

The closest approximation to neoconservatism’s emphasis on ideological

114 Podhoretz, “World War IV,” see esp. 139–53.

ical opponents is considerably less viable than among ideological peers.122