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This Week on the Right
The Neoconservatives and Political Aid: The New Crusade of the Democratic Globalists
By Tom Barry
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from new Right Web analysis, available in
full online at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0508crusade.php)
One of the major achievements of the neoconservatives over the past two
decades has been to integrate the missionary impulses of liberal internationalism
with right-wing interventionism. Not only have the democratic globalists succeeded
in setting the ideological foundations of a new U.S. foreign policy, they have
also played a central role in directing that policy.
Hard-liners they certainly are, but neoconservatives like
Elliott Abrams—who
directs the Bush administration’s Global Democracy Initiative—come
armed with an internationalism that preaches values and mission, as well
as military might. Their foreign policy is neo-Reaganite. Like Reagan’s
policy agenda, which he said was based on “moral clarity” and “peace through
strength," the Bush agenda has sought to merge idealism and militarism.
Nowhere else is the “soft side” of the U.S. government’s global
vision so clearly on display as at the
National Endowment for
Democracy (NED). Not even in the Pentagon are the delusions about American might
and right so shamelessly exhibited.
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the birth of NED, President Bush in a November
2003 speech delivered at NED headquarters reaffirmed the U.S. government’s
role as international provocateur in a “global democratic revolution.” Aside
from those attending the speech at the NED offices and the neoconservatives
who coined the term “global democratic revolution,” the speech was
largely ignored. But for those listening, it was the sound of the second
shoe dropping.
The entire world had already heard the loud and clear message of the Bush administration’s
embrace of a new militarism in international affairs after September 11. At a
June 2002 speech at West Point, President Bush spelled out the defining
principle of a new national security strategy: a commitment to preventive
war and the use of U.S. military supremacy to order the globe.
Neoconservative military strategists such as
Paul
Wolfowitz had long argued—most
explicitly in the draft
Defense Policy
Guidance that he coauthored with
I. Lewis Libby in
1992—that the post-Cold War order should be shaped
by the exercise of overwhelming U.S. military power. Other neoconservatives,
especially those operating out of the
American Enterprise Institute,
shared the Wolfowitz vision. However, they argued that the unapologetic use
of U.S. military superiority should be accompanied by social engineering strategies
that would politically restructure key parts of the globe. Among the more prominent “democratic globalists” is
Carl Gershman,
the neoconservative who has presided over the NED since 1984.
But just as the Reagan foreign policy had a soft side in its promotion of “free-market
democracies” through new political aid programs funded by the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA),
the George W. Bush administration coupled its aggressive military policies
with a renewed but very selective commitment to democracy building. [Read entire article]
Featured Profiles
Democracy for Whom, by Whom, of Whom?
The NED, created by Ronald Reagan the in the early 1980s, has made
an art of using “democracy” as a weapon at the service of
U.S. interests.
Right Web Profile National
Endowment for Democracy
The Neo-Right Trajectory
At one time a leading member of the Socialist Party-USA, Carl Gershman has
spent the last 30 years as head of the NED.
Right Web Profile Carl Gershman
Freedom’s Just Another Word ...
Created by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1941, Freedom House today epitomizes the
selective approach to human rights that is a hallmark of neoconservatism.
Right Web Profile Freedom House
Venezuela, Haiti ... What’s Next?
The International Republican Institute, a key conduit of NED funds to U.S.-friendly “democrats” across
the globe, has been in the middle of a series of recent coups in America’s
backyard.
Right Web Profile International
Republican Institute
Letters From Our Readers
(Editors Note: We encourage feedback and comments, which can
be sent for publication through our feedback page, at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/form_feedback.html.
We reserve the right to edit comments for clarity and brevity. Be sure
to include your full name. Thank you.)
Re: Whose Side Are You On
Tom Barry essentially classifies all those in favor of immigration
restrictions as being on the right. This is wrong. Many people concerned
with population control in the United States are concerned with maintaining
a healthy natural environment and do not consider themselves as rightists.
Barry underplays this significant group, which also includes a number
of leftists. The difficult question is whether we should have totally
open borders, and if not, how to control those borders as well as legal
immigration. Those are thorny questions, not helped by ignoring or
downplaying the difficulties. That people sympathetic to immigrants'
problems necessarily have to be for unrestricted immigration is a PC
position, one too common in the discussion.
- Morton K. Brussel
Re: John R. Bolton, UN Ambassador-designate
I enjoyed your article on John Bolton, despite its negative slant.
Bolton is obviously the best man for the UN job. We, the public,
like plain-speaking criticism of the UN and most Americans consider
the organization a wasteful, useless entity which exists just to embarrass
and shackle the United States. If we won't dump the UN, then
let Bolton try to reform it from the inside. Time for a wake up call.
- Mike Bowens
