Obama is The Only Conservative in the Room: The Dangerous Utopianism of Modern GOP Thinking

[This piece was originally published with Thee Westerner in January of 2016]

It may come as a surprise to many, but amongst the US political mainstream (i.e. speaking only of the members of the major parties) throughout much of the 20th century, those most concerned with the idea of the United States becoming an imperial power were on the right of the political spectrum rather than the left. From the formation of NATO to American engagement in Vietnam, an internationalist streak ran through the US centre-left which, when combined with the dynamics of the Cold War, meant that most hawkish voices were usually not the most rightward. Some of this derived from a kind of idealism from bygone liberal figures such as Woodrow Wilson, whilst there were also Keynesian economic arguments made in favour of higher military spending (which could also be used as a sweetener to pass social programs through Congress). All this is to say that it is something of a surprise to go back to find warnings against overextending American military power and a reluctance to involve the nation in the affairs of the world coming from such stalwart conservatives as Senator Robert Taft. Make no mistake, these men were not peaceniks or opposed to use of force per se. Rather, they took the same weary, dim view of grand foreign policy projects as they did to the domestic. Supporting such initiatives only when necessary and with the lightest possible footprint.

On a surface level, this can be used to demonstrate how much discourse on these issues has changed since the Reagan administration forged a modern right-wing ideology which united military hawks with fiscal conservatives (if often uneasily). Thought of in deeper terms, however, it speaks to a key tension which divides conservatives from their philosophical roots, particularly the emphasis on restraint in public policy and the preference for gradual, as opposed to dramatic, change espoused by Edmund Burke. Conservatives are, therefore, skeptical of the ability of top-down solutions crafted by policymakers to achieve the sorts of change they seek, often correctly. The belief that solutions designed by experts in isolation and filtered through a bureaucracy may not, for a host of reasons, work in the real world, councils a kind of restraint and reflection that should not be limited to the right of the political spectrum. Indeed, those on the left are often guilty of not fully thinking through the potential implications of policies which appear good on paper, and can have a temperamental preference for grand gestures and sweeping plans which borders on the reckless.

However, in the neoconservative variation of thought, this abundance of caution seems to stop at the border and not apply when it comes to bullets and bombs. If there is one thing which unites all of the GOP’s presidential contenders (with the exception of Rand Paul), it is the belief in the omnipotence of military force as a way of solving geopolitical problems. From their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal to a “punch them in the nose” approach to dealing with Russia, diplomacy or simple consideration of alternatives do not appear to have much truck with this group. When one considers that, at its heart, the military is a large, bureaucratic apparatus of the government which moves slowly and hierarchically resistant to change and new informational inputs, a belief in its efficacy as opposed to that of any other government agency becomes, at the very least, a tension of thought. One could accuse these politicians of being disingenuous, and indeed there is likely truth to that, but it remains the case that neoconservatism has a robust intellectual literature and pundit class ranging from William Kristol to John Bolton who do have a genuine passion for these beliefs.

A trope which floats about left-wing discourse in relation to this is that neoconservatives are simply greedy or mouthpieces for corporate interests, in particular those in the oil and mining sector who wish to obtain access to resource-rich Middle Eastern nations. There is some evidence to support this case, such as that Iraqi oil fields were some of the only infrastructural assets in the country which were properly defended in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion. However, such an analysis cannot account for a number of other things, from the fact that liberal hawks also supported the Iraq War, often on humanitarian grounds, and that neocons seem itchy to pick fights, such as with Russia where no chance of increased resource ownership is possible. The simpler conclusion to come to would be that the people espousing a belief that military force is the effective tool for shifting the geopolitical currents do genuinely believe that to be the case and are simply resistant to realist arguments about the limits of this effectiveness. That this failure to consider the possibility of complications which cannot be steamrolled over with yet more force leads to quagmire costing thousands of lives is true all the same.

Interestingly, during the Republican congresses of the mid-to-late 1990s, a variety of that Old Right skepticism towards wars of choice began to reenter the conversation. Most of the GOP opposed the Clinton administration’s involvement in the former Yugoslavia, many conservatives warned that further NATO expansion would be unduly provocative to Russia and it is often forgotten that George W. Bush ran in 2000 promising a “more humble foreign policy”. The post-9/11 overdrive into military engagements, complete with the sort of explicit “nation-building” efforts that conservatives had usually dismissed as humanitarian pipe dreams, in many ways represents an exceptional period in conservative thought and it is an interesting road-not-taken to consider if Bush had followed through on that campaign promise. A world in which the right offered a hard-nosed, realist assessment of foreign policy priorities combined with a belief that it is best to mind one’s own geopolitical business as a matter of course would be a better one. This is both because voters would have more genuine choices and because it would add a much needed humbleness to the self-belief that seems to come so naturally to many in the US. Sadly, all current signs indicate the right in America choosing the path of easy answers and bellicose fantasia over such a principled path.

Time and again, from Vietnam to the uniquely quixotic deployment of American marines in the Lebanese Civil War to Iraq, the hubris of America military power has become clear. Those who continue to believe in zero-cost conflicts or that boots on the ground will solve all problems are, at this point, either self-deceiving or just deceiving. Barrack Obama appears to grasp this lesson, at least rhetorically, even if he is surrounded by both more hawkish staff/advisors and a general public admonishment to do something that prevents his quietest tendencies from coming fully to the fore. His much-derided comments about the realities of disabled young veterans entering his thinking and causing him great reluctance to deploy troops into battle without a clear plan testifies to this. Simply put, if you want a truly conservative thinker on foreign policy today, right down to the appreciation of Reinhold Neihbur, look no further than the man currently in the Oval Office.