Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives

A key example is the belief that states, rather than individuals or groups, remain the essential force in international affairs. It is now widely known that the incoming Bush administration initially downgraded its predecessor's focus on al Qaeda and other nonstate terrorist groups. To the extent that it was concerned about unconventional weapons and asymmetric threats, its focus was on rogue states and state-centric policy solutions such as missile defense. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon altered those priorities overnight, putting al Qaeda and Islamist terrorism at the top of the nation's agenda. But according to the authors, the epochal events failed to alter how most high administration officials understood the world. The emphasis on states, for example, remained. As Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said, the reliance of terrorists on state sponsors was the "principal strategic thought underlying our strategy in the war on terrorism."

Another abiding characteristic of the administration's foreign policy, Daalder and Lindsay note, has been its belief that forceful U.S. leadership would cow the United States' enemies and bring wavering friends into line. Handwringing or grumbling from allies, the Bush team believed, stemmed not from too much American direction, but from too little. Vice President Dick Cheney summarized this view just before the outbreak of the Iraq war, when he told NBC's Tim Russert that he had no doubt that in the long run, after Saddam had been overthrown, "a good part of the world, especially our allies, will come around to our way of thinking." Readers can judge for themselves to what extent this prediction has been borne out.

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION

It is doubtful that another book will come along soon that covers all the important points of the administration's foreign policy with more clarity and evenhandedness. The authors' basic point, accordingly -- that the Bush approach deserves the label "revolutionary" -- strikes home with that much more force. Ironically, however, one of the book's few weak points lies in its attempt to explain just where the revolutionary fervor came from.

Placing great weight on Bush's personal world view and the influence of hard-line advisers such as Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Daalder and Lindsay argue that the role of neoconservative intellectuals in driving the administration's policies has been greatly overstated. The "neocons," they say -- referring to them as "democratic imperialists" -- may be powerful at magazines such as The Weekly Standard and think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, but key movement figures such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle actually missed out on the top appointments. Those plums went to people such as Cheney, Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who the authors claim are more properly classified as "assertive nationalists."

It is true that none of the administration's principals -- Bush, Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Rumsfeld, or Rice -- could fairly be called a neoconservative. But it is also true that despite being relegated to the second tier of executive branch appointments and various positions in the conservative foreign policy establishment outside of the government, the neocons have been peculiarly capable of advancing their views with their superiors. The defining characteristic of the Bush administration's foreign policy, in fact, has been the way the neocons in and out of office have been able to win so many of the key battles -- if not on the first go-round, then on the second or the third. The neocons have not always written the libretto, but the score has in most cases remained firmly in their hands, and particularly so in the case of Iraq.

At the Pentagon, for example, Rumsfeld may have played the key part in internal debates over defense transformation, but on foreign policy issues, his neocon lieutenants, Wolfowitz and Feith, were decisive, and managed to secure nearly total control of all aspects of policy surrounding the war and the subsequent occupation.

Something similar occurred with Vice President Cheney, a believer in hard power and aggressive leadership abroad and an opponent of constraints on the United States' ability to act in its own national interests. Cheney seems to have been transformed by the September 11 attacks more than any of the other administration principals. In the late 1990s, he had gone so far as to lobby for the loosening of sanctions against Iran and had stood apart from the Iraq hawks. After September 11, however, he became the crucial advocate of overthrowing Saddam, and it is clear that the shift was nurtured and guided by neocon voices both inside and outside of the administration. "Soon after the attacks," as Daalder and Lindsay note, "Cheney immersed himself in a study of Islam and the Middle East, meeting with scholars such as Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami who argued that toppling Saddam would send a message of strength and enhance America's credibility throughout the Muslim world." Having spent time with such tutors, and under the influence of his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president became the chief advocate of their positions.

THE GRAND EXPERIMENT