"After Neoconservatism."

[theim]

I don't see anything wrong with coercive regime change, unilateralism, or American hegemony. /shrug

 

[musicman]

Ouch.

Although, I've got to respond to the last paragraph of the essay:

"Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about."

What is wrong with American power and hegemony?

Home run - bullseye - touchdown. Liberals will never get it through their heads that we're the good guys; they hate America.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

What is wrong with American power and hegemony?

"Blowback".

 

[CSM]

This thread leads me to believe that generalizations are generally misleading!

 

[Annie]

This has been building for awhile, I loved the bolded line. Links at site:


http://instapundit.com/archives/029391.php

And Kruthammer's 'speech' has been fact-checked, Fukuyama misrepresented what was said. You can read the entire speech here:

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.19912,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World
By Charles Krauthammer
Posted: Thursday, February 12, 2004
SPEECHES
2004 Irving Kristol Lecture
AEI Annual Dinner (Washington)
Publication Date: February 10, 2004

A Unipolar World

Americans have healthy aversion to foreign policy. It stems from a sense of thrift: Who needs it? We’re protected by two great oceans. We have this continent practically to ourselves. And we share it with just two neighbors, both friendly, one so friendly that its people seem intent upon moving in with us.

It took three giants of the twentieth century to drag us into its great battles: Wilson into World War I, Roosevelt into World War II, Truman into the Cold War. And then it ended with one of the great anticlimaxes in history. Without a shot fired, without a revolution, without so much as a press release, the Soviet Union simply gave up and disappeared.

It was the end of everything--the end of communism, of socialism, of the Cold War, of the European wars. But the end of everything was also a beginning. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union died and something new was born, something utterly new--a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe.

This is a staggering new development in history, not seen since the fall of Rome. It is so new, so strange, that we have no idea how to deal with it. Our first reaction--the 1990s--was utter confusion. The next reaction was awe. When Paul Kennedy, who had once popularized the idea of American decline, saw what America did in the Afghan war--a display of fully mobilized, furiously concentrated unipolar power at a distance of 8,000 miles--he not only recanted, he stood in wonder: “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power;” he wrote, “nothing. . . . No other nation comes close. . . . Charlemagne’s empire was merely western European in its reach. The Roman empire stretched farther afield, but there was another great empire in Persia, and a larger one in China. There is, therefore, no comparison.”

Even Rome is no model for what America is today. First, because we do not have the imperial culture of Rome. We are an Athenian republic, even more republican and infinitely more democratic than Athens. And this American Republic has acquired the largest seeming empire in the history of the world--acquired it in a fit of absent-mindedness greater even than Britain’s. And it was not just absent-mindedness; it was sheer inadvertence. We got here because of Europe’s suicide in the world wars of the twentieth century, and then the death of its Eurasian successor, Soviet Russia, for having adopted a political and economic system so inhuman that, like a genetically defective organism, it simply expired in its sleep. Leaving us with global dominion.

Second, we are unlike Rome, unlike Britain and France and Spain and the other classical empires of modern times, in that we do not hunger for territory. The use of the word “empire” in the American context is ridiculous. It is absurd to apply the word to a people whose first instinct upon arriving on anyone’s soil is to demand an exit strategy. I can assure you that when the Romans went into Gaul and the British into India, they were not looking for exit strategies. They were looking for entry strategies.

In David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, King Faisal says to Lawrence: “I think you are another of these desert-loving English. . . . The English have a great hunger for desolate places.” Indeed, for five centuries, the Europeans did hunger for deserts and jungles and oceans and new continents.

Americans do not. We like it here. We like our McDonald's. We like our football. We like our rock-and-roll. We’ve got the Grand Canyon and Graceland. We’ve got Silicon Valley and South Beach. We’ve got everything. And if that’s not enough, we’ve got Vegas--which is a facsimile of everything. What could we possibly need anywhere else? We don’t like exotic climates. We don’t like exotic languages--lots of declensions and moods. We don’t even know what a mood is. We like Iowa corn and New York hot dogs, and if we want Chinese or Indian or Italian, we go to the food court. We don’t send the Marines for takeout.

That’s because we are not an imperial power. We are a commercial republic. We don’t take food; we trade for it. Which makes us something unique in history, an anomaly, a hybrid: a commercial republic with overwhelming global power. A commercial republic that, by pure accident of history, has been designated custodian of the international system. The eyes of every supplicant from East Timor to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Liberia; Arab and Israeli, Irish and British, North and South Korean are upon us.

That is who we are. That is where we are.

Now the question is: What do we do? What is a unipolar power to do? ...

 

[NATO AIR]

And Kruthammer's 'speech' has been fact-checked, Fukuyama misrepresented what was said. You can read the entire speech here:

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.19912,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

One interesting aside from his speech... when describing America as a "commerical republic", he did not mention (perhaps its not worth mentioning until 5-10 years from now) that several nations of interest and influence are following the American route; India, South Africa, and to a lesser degree, Japan and Brazil.

We do have a replicable system, given the right circumstances and conditions. This is excellent news given the potential power and influence of the above nations.

 

[Psychoblues]

I've watched many a Republican and a few Democrats fall to Hell-Bent self interests and ill advised support of policy and/or legislation that undermines the very good general interests of American peoples.

This article only purports to warn against this rather common infraction of American ideology.

Psychoblues

 

[Gunny]

more and more of the ankle-biters are Republican. Take a look at the reviews of the Bruce Bartlett book that will be out in a couple of weeks, "Imposter." Or consider that the scathing review of Bush's handling of Katrina was delivered by 11 Republican congresspeople. And it's a fellow Republican who's refusing to play along with Bush's "I'll wiretap whoever I want" stance. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Mariner.

It has been quite obvious during this current Administration, and currently holding the power in Congress that Republicans are more than willing to sacrifice anyone the Dems point a finger at. The mentality behind that is mind-boggling.

We empowered the Republicans because we were dissatisfied with the Dems; yet, the Republican STILL react to every Dem attack as if they (the GOP) are still the minority.

The instances you use in your post are perfect examples.

1. I find it absurd that Republicans hold Bush responsible the Blanco's and Nagin's collective incompetence.

2. I find it just plain stupidity that detractors are willing to throw common sense and logic out the window in favor of partisan hackery over the wiretap issue.

I WANT to know who terrorists are calling, and I WANT to know who is calling them, and when it comes to terrorists, I could care less about their alleged "right" to conspire against the people of this Nation.

The Republicans need to wake up and do what they were put there to do and quit letting a political party that was voted out of power dictate their actions.