Following Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has undertaken a remarkably ambitious foreign policy -- one radically different from the philosophy on which President Bush campaigned and a notable departure from the classic principles of conservative realism in which ends are ambitious but carefully calculated, and means are sufficient for success but prudently measured.
Some heartwarming successes have been achieved. America and the world are better off with the Taliban defeated and Saddam Hussein removed. But this is not the whole story: The long-term prospects in both Afghanistan and Iraq are exceedingly fragile, and the costs in U.S. lives and resources will remain high; in Asia, we now depend on Communist China for what little progress there is with North Korea; globally, one conservative commentator has noted, "for the first time since World War II, America faces a crisis of legitimacy." In other words, there is plenty for conservatives to ponder.
One group unlikely to join in this process of reflection happens to include the primary advocates of the current approach. This small corps of foreign and defense policy intellectuals -- often called neoconservatives -- are strangers to second thoughts.
In the crucial days following 9/11 they won approval for their ready-made plans for military intervention in the Middle East and subsequent regional nation-building. Today, they are proposing that the United States should not "rest on its laurels" but extend what has been a risky effort -- costly in lives and dollars -- to Syria, Libya, Iran and North Korea.
An important element of their position is the claim that they are the true heirs of President Ronald Reagan.
In 1996, William Kristol and Robert Kagan published a Foreign Affairs article setting out what they described as a "neo-Reaganite foreign policy." Richard Perle asserts that the policies in place today reflect those of a "bold president" like Reagan. The implication is that Reagan too would have attacked Iraq.
But would he? We make the case that the neoconservative interpretation of Reagan's foreign policy is, to be blunt, a travesty of Reagan's record. Moreover, Reagan's historic achievement -- the defeat of Soviet communism -- was secured largely because he rejected neoconservative policy recommendations, not because he embraced them.
The neoconservatives extract from Reagan's record those elements that suit their agenda (the defense buildup, the "evil empire," Grenada, Central America and Libya), exclude those that do not (arms control, China, arms for Iran, Lebanon, the USS Stark) and label the result to fit their own ideology. They then proceed to place that label on purposes that owe little or nothing to Reagan.
In no case is this more apparent than on the conditions and arrangements surrounding the use of force.
One of Reagan's first foreign policy acts was to lift the grain embargo against the Soviet Union, in a gesture he described as intended to bring about a "meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to find lasting peace."
In Eastern Europe, Poland provides another example of Reagan's caution. When Warsaw's Soviet satellite government imposed martial law in December 1981, in response to protests led by the non-Communist Polish labor union Solidarity, Reagan resisted intense pressure from anti-Communist hard-liners to impose an economic embargo and foreclose on the Polish debt.
The neoconservatives of the day were quick to criticize. As today, the neoconservatives wanted public pyrotechnics, leading them to miss the more subtle and eventually effective side of Reagan's response: financial assistance delivered to Solidarity via the AFL/CIO and moral suasion through Pope John Paul.
The Middle East provides a similar story of Reagan's pragmatism and neoconservative ire. "Carterism without Carter" was a typical accusation, when, for example, Reagan announced his opposition to Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.
To hear neoconservatives tell the story, Reagan's foreign policy was an uninterrupted series of confrontational demonstrations of American power. In fact, Reagan's actions were limited.
The three interventions conducted in his administrations, with troops deployed to Beirut in 1982 and Grenada in 1983, and the 1986 bombing of Libya, were limited operations of short duration. The one in Grenada was the only direct use of U.S. troops against a pro-Communist movement. The bombing of Libya was undertaken, in Reagan's own words, "as a last resort" and only after irrefutable proof of Libyan responsibility for the Berlin bombing.
For the rest, and certainly from 1983 onward, Reagan devoted more of his foreign policy time to arms control than to any other subject. There was no question within the West Wing that his purpose in accelerating the defense buildup was "to position the United States for successful negotiations with the Soviet Union."
The negotiations comprised both strategic and intermediate range missiles, with a treaty being reached on the latter. The intricacies -- the zero and double-zero options, the trade-off between SS-20s and Pershing IIs and so on -- go beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, neither in style nor substance did these negotiations conform to the neoconservative "no holds barred" interpretation. They reflected a muscular diplomacy, but were laced with adroit negotiating positions designed to extract maximum U.S. leverage. Distinct from today's environment, flavored by "hegemony," Reagan cooperated in the closest possible way with America's allies, not just the British but also the French and Germans.
The question of how and when force should be used to respond to terrorism produced fierce controversy throughout the Reagan administration. Once again, today's neoconservatives have drawn much broader lessons than the facts allow.
The multiple acts of terrorism in 1985 (TWA 847, the Achille Lauro, the Berlin discotheque bombing) prompted talks of preemptive action that foreshadow similar themes today. Yet only in the case of the Berlin attack, where irrefutable evidence of Libyan complicity was established, and when Reagan, in consultation with U.S. allies, believed all other avenues had been exhausted, did a military response take place -- one strictly controlled "to avoid any casualties or danger to civilians."
Otherwise, Reagan tended to side with the precautionary "six tests" established by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to define when the United States should use force -- and when it should not. These tests are a far cry from the force-friendly National Security Strategy (NSS) published with such neoconservative input and fanfare in September 2002. Thus the undifferentiated doctrine the neoconservatives put into being as their post-Cold War policy matrix did not derive from Reagan. If anything, the Reagan legacy points in the opposite direction.
When the technical analysis of Reagan's foreign policy philosophy and execution is laid aside, perhaps the more fundamental difference between him and today's neoconservatives is one of temperament. As George Shultz records, Reagan was optimistic; he "appealed to people's best hopes, not their fears." By contrast, the neoconservative vision is one that has mobilized fear as a binding political adhesive in support of a one-dimensional approach to global affairs.
We detect a deep pessimism among neoconservatives about human nature and human society -- and one that is much darker than the skepticism about human perfectibility often found in conservative thinking. They reject the notion -- implicit in Reagan's striving for accord with the Soviet Union -- that democracy can be brought to nondemocratic countries other than at the point of the bayonet or on the back of a Tomahawk cruise missile.
Thus, it is very hard to argue that there is a direct line of descent from Reagan's foreign policy to modern neoconservatism. Reagan was a conservative but never a neoconservative -- either in content or in personality. Reagan had presented the conflicts of international politics in essentially moral terms, and for this reason he looked like the president whom neoconservatives had long hoped for. But as his declaratory policies gradually moved toward pragmatism, those events -- for example, Poland -- that seemed to be disasters to neoconservatives appeared as major achievements to the moderates who were making the key decisions in the administration.
Neoconservatism is not updated Reaganism. The neo-Reaganite foreign policy drawn up by Kagan and Kristol is vastly more "neo" than it is "Reaganite." And it is certainly no service to the cause of true conservatism.
Stefan Halper, a senior fellow at Cambridge University's Centre of International Studies, was an official in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. Jonathan Clarke, a former British diplomat, is a foreign affairs scholar at the Cato Institute.
Excerpted from an article in the American Spectator, April 2004.