After the Elections:  Forecasting the Neo-Con Future

by Dr. Robert D. Crane
 
  The Democratic rout of the Republicans in the mid-term 2006 elections in America raise more questions than answers.  Two important questions are the future roles of the NeoCons and Israel in Washington, now that American governance is no longer monolithic.  These have always been separate issues, but now may be more so.

  Will the influence of Israel decrease, or will Senator Lieberman garner support for his namesake in Israel, who thinks that current policies are too weak?  One of the world’s senior opinion leaders warned shortly before the elections that a sea-change may be in the making caused by forces that can not be controlled from Washington.

  Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn told the Jewish Federation of Chicago this week that the Lebanon war was an unprecedented test to Israel’s military and that within a year or two the Jewish State will no longer be Washington’s center of attention.

  He urged Diaspora Jews to support Israel over the next two years as energy shortages, Muslim demographic ascension, and the rise of China as an economic power could weaken Israel’s strategic allegiance with Washington.   

  This forecast raises three questions about an issue that many may consider now to be a non-issue.  This is the future of Neo-Conservatism as an ideology and as a political movement.

  First, what is the meaning of the vicious attacks by many Neo-Con leaders against their own gurus in the Bush Administration?  Is this fratricide merely a tactic to find scapegoats for the bankruptcy of their own policies?  Or, is it preparing the way for a strategic switch to support the Democrats with greater independence from the Millenarian Evangelicals, less emphasis on Israel, and a focus on America’s national security and prosperity?  Does this imply a rapid exit from Iraq and new initiatives toward both Iran and Hamas, all designed to resurrect the NeoCon ideology under different auspices and a more pragmatic and honest paradigm of thought?  Is it a way to say, look we had to switch, and we’re still here and we aim to manage the global future without the need for any do-good ideology about freedom and democracy.  Anyway, we were always Democrats and are merely returning to our roots. This would be Kissingerism at its best.

  Second, does this mean that Israel will have to attack Iran in order to force action by America to finish the job?  Does it mean that Israel will have to function as a catalytic trigger, which was the whole purpose of De Gaulle’s force de frappe.  Since France could have started a Third World War at the push of a button, this gave it a lot of power over America.  The relations were hostile, but America never really challenged a nuclear tiger willing to die for its independence under the American nuclear umbrella.

  This may all be too complicated for Bush, but it is grade-school stuff for the scions of the permanent American foreign policy establishment, epitomized by Kissinger.  If the elections go against the Republicans, as anticipated, the Council on Foreign Relations and its think-tank, The Aspen Institute, may replace the various NeoCon think-tanks as the center of power in setting both the paradigm and the ensuing agenda of U.S. foreign policy.

  As a long-range global forecaster, I would expect that there would no longer be any Axis of Evil and that Hamas would become a good guy provided that it responds appropriately to very pragmatic policies designed to disarm extremists by co-opting pragmatic Muslims who have a popular track record of principled defense of “Islam.”  There is no purpose nowadays in bothering to co-opt Arabs or anyone else who has no such record.

  Third question.  Would or could President Bush during his final two years in office as perhaps the last Republican president for decades abandon his autistic stance of “You are either with me or against me”?  Might he even glimpse the advantages of seeking justice rather than military power as the most reliable road to global stability and to American security, both economic, political, and military? 

  Such a paradigmatic revolution might bring about the most revolutionary shift in American foreign policy in a couple of centuries.  It might resurrect the Founders’ vision of America as a model for the world in pursuing the aims of the American Constitution’s preamble, which start with justice and conclude with freedom as its most important product.