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From Geo to Neo: A Speculative Inquiry into the Unusual “Geo-Ethnic” Roots of Neoconservatism in US Foreign Policy

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14650040802203729

1557-3028

David G. Haglund, Joshua D. Kertzer,

Religion and Society Interactions

Abstract There has been much controversy over the role that ethnic diasporas (sometimes called “lobbies”) do or should play in shaping American foreign policy. This article looks at one particular ethnic group, American Jews, with a view to assessing the claim made by some authors, to the effect that “neoconservatism” has been influenced considerably by Judaism. The article mostly debunks that claim, at least if the suggestion is that something about Judaism as a religion can help account for the policy agendas espoused by neoconservatives in recent years. However, the authors do argue that a “geo-ethnic” link can be established between a Jewish diaspora in America and the evolution of neoconservatism. Their claim is that a “borderlands” tradition emanating originally on the Russian frontier in the latter part of the nineteenth century was exported to America, through the migration of peoples they refer to as “new borderers.” This folk community, the authors argue, coalesced with another, well-established, folk community of “borderers” (the Scotch-Irish), resulting in the formation of the coalition known in recent years as neoconservatism – a coalition representing a fusion of Jacksonianism and Wilsonianism. Notes 1. G. John Ikenberry, “The End of the Neo-Conservative Moment”, Survival 46 (Spring 2004) p. 7–22. 2. Among recent departees who, correctly or not, have been associated with a “neo-conservative” brand of interventionism in Washington have been Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Stephen Cambone, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Douglas Feith, and Robert Joseph. See David E. Sanger, ‘Sensing Shift in Bush Policy, Another Hawk Leaves’, New York Times (21 March 2007). Also see, for a commentary on neoconservatism's “comprehensive political failure,” Walter Russell Mead, ‘Sting of the WASP’, American Interest 2 (July/Aug. 2007) pp. 115–24, quote at p. 119. 3. American opinion on the war has come 180 degrees in four years. By late May 2007 a New York Times/CBS poll found that 61 percent of those surveyed thought America should have stayed out of Iraq (versus only 28 percent with that opinion in January 2003); some 76 percent now think the war is going “very” or “somewhat” badly. Dalia Sussman, ‘Poll Shows View of Iraq War at Most Negative Since Start’, New York Times (28 May 2007). 4. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, ‘The Israel Lobby’, London Review of Books (23 March 2006). 5. Quoted in Judy Dempsey, ‘Directing the Agenda in Poland's Drift to Right’, International Herald Tribune (27 July 2007) p. 2. 6. The literature is vast. For examples, see Tony Smith, Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2000); Alexander De Conde, Ethnicity, Race, and American Foreign Policy: A History (Boston: Northeastern University Press 1992); Denis Lacorne, La Crise de l'identité américaine: Du melting-pot au multiculturalisme (Paris: Fayard 1997); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W. W. Norton 1998); and Louis L. Gerson, The Hyphenate in Recent American Politics and Diplomacy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press 1964). 7. See William Weber, ‘Do the German-Americans Dictate Our Foreign Policy?’, American Review of Reviews 41 (March 1910) pp. 349–350. 8. For examples of how the two variables were combined in an earlier period, see Ray Allen Billington, ‘The Origins of Middle Western Isolationism’, Political Science Quarterly 60 (March 1945) pp. 44–64; Ralph H. Smuckler, ‘The Region of Isolationism’, American Political Science Review 47 (June 1953) pp. 386–401; Marian D. Irish, ‘Foreign Policy and the South’, Journal of Politics 10 (May 1948) pp. 306–326; and Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (New York: Harper & Bros. 1952) pp. 132–136. 9. One of four schools (or paradigms) Mead says constitute the basis of American strategic culture, and have done so ever since the early days of the republic. The others are the Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, and Wilsonian schools, respectively standing for: a focus upon close Anglo-American relations in the pursuit of American economic and world-order interests; an emphasis upon perfecting democracy at home and refraining from active foreign policy initiatives save when absolutely necessary; and a willingness to promote the spread abroad of American democratic political practices, if need be even by force. Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2001); and David H. Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press 1989). 10. For a non-American usage of the term, see journalist Richard Gwyn's caricatural (and in the context, misplaced) reference to a centrist Canadian newspaper, the Toronto-based Globe and Mail, as the “house organ of the neoconservatives,” in his Nationalism without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1995) p. 60. 11. David Grondin, ‘Mistaking Hegemony for Empire’, International Journal 61 (Winter 2005–2006) p. 228. Also see Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) p. 10, where the assertion is made that neoconservatism “is not a card-carrying organization.” 12. Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Free Press 1995) p. ix. 13. John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs (New Haven: Yale University Press 1995) p. 2. 14. Dan Himmelfarb, ‘Conservative Splits’, Commentary 85 (May 1988) pp. 54–58, quote at p. 56. 15. Claes G. Ryn, America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 2003). 16. Jeane Kirkpatrick, ‘Dictatorships and Double Standards’, Commentary 68 (Nov. 1979) p. 37. 17. Ehrman (note 13) p. 121. 18. Which is in profound contrast with the imperialist phase of American foreign policy that occurred a bit more than a century ago, epitomised by the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, for which the process of “civilising” and uplifting benighted peoples was regarded as anything but a speedy or easy one; see John B. Judis, The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006). 19. William Kristol and Robert Kagan, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (San Francisco: Encounter Books 2000); cited in Francis Fukuyama, ‘After Neoconservatism’, New York Times Magazine (19 Feb. 2006) pp. 62–67, quote at p. 64. 20. McCain had been an ardent supporter of the 1999 war in Kosovo, while Bush had spoken of his disdain for unnecessary international interventions, as well as for nation-building. See James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking 2004) p. 259. 21. Kalle Lasn, ‘Why Won't Anyone Say They're Jewish?’, Adbusters 52 (March/April 2004). 22. Kristol (note 12) pp. 380–381. 23. See John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New York: Atheneum 1971). 24. Schlesinger (note 6); Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster 2004). 25. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City (Cambridge: MIT Press and Harvard University Press 1964). 26. Charles Krauthammer, ‘In Defense of Democratic Realism’, National Interest 77 (Fall 2004) pp. 15–25, quote at p. 19: “What is interesting about Fukuyama's psychological speculation is that it allows him a novel way of Judaizing neoconservatism. His is not the crude kind, advanced by Pat Buchanan and Malaysia's Mahatir Mohamad … that American neoconservatives (read: Jews) are … hijacking American foreign policy in the service of Israel and the greater Jewish conspiracy.” For Fukuyama's rejoinder to the not-so-veiled accusation of anti-Semitism, see ‘Fukuyama Responds’, National Interest 78 (Winter 2004/2005) p. 11. 27. Joshua Muravchik, ‘The Neoconservative Cabal’, Commentary 116 (Sept. 2003) p. 29. 28. James D. Besser, ‘Bush Gets 24 percent of Jewish Vote – Less than GOP Hoped For’, J.: The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California (5 Nov. 2004) available at www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story. 29. We mean “liberalism” here in the American usage, which takes it to be a dispensation of the Left; in much of Europe by contrast, and certainly in France, liberalism is regarded as a rightwing orientation. 30. Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1939) p. 71. 31. Bill McKibben, ‘The Christian Paradox’, Harper's (Aug. 2005) pp. 31–37. 32. Arthur Liebman, Jews and the Left (New York: John Wiley and Sons 1979). 33. See note 9. 34. Huntington (note 24) pp. 39–66. 35. Mark Bassin, ‘Politics from Nature’, in John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, and Gerard Toal (ed.), A Companion to Political Geography (London: Blackwell 2003) pp. 19–22; Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’, in George Rogers Taylor (ed.), The Turner Thesis: Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History (Boston: D.C. Heath 1956) pp. 1–18. 36. Schlesinger (note 6) p. 17. 37. Mead, Special Providence (note 9) p. 226. 38. Fischer (note 9) pp. 605–782. Because many had resided in Northern Ireland, the group is sometimes referred to in America as the “Scotch-Irish” (or “Scots-Irish”), even though many of these immigrants were neither Scottish nor Irish. 39. The region comprises three zones, running from east to west: the Blue Ridge Belt, the Greater Appalachian Valley, and the Cumberland Belt; it covers portions of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, as well as all of West Virginia. See John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (New York: Russell Sage Foundation 1921). 40. Fischer (note 9) p. 617. Also see James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1962). 41. Mead, Special Providence (note 9) p. 229. 42. Fukuyama, ‘After Neoconservatism’ (note 19) p. 63. 43. David C. Hendrickson and Robert W. Tucker, ‘The Freedom Crusade’, National Interest 81 (Fall 2005) p. 15. 44. See Gerard Toal, ‘Problematizing Geopolitics: Survey, Statesmanship and Strategy’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 19/3 (1994) pp. 259–72. On the definitional ambiguity of the concept, see Leslie W. Hepple, ‘The Revival of Geopolitics’, Political Geography Quarterly 5 (Oct. 1986) pp. 21–36. 45. Bassin, ‘Politics from Nature’ (note 35) p. 15. 46. Joseph L. Wieczynski, The Russian Frontier: The Impact of Borderlands Upon the Course of Early Russian History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia 1976). 47. Mark Bassin, ‘Turner, Solov'ev, and the “Frontier Hypothesis”’, Journal of Modern History 65 (Sept. 1993) pp. 473–511; also see Bassin, ‘Politics from Nature’ (note 35) pp. 13–29. 48. Salo W. Baron, The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets (New York: Macmillan 1976) p. 10. 49. Thomas Seifrid, ‘Getting Across: Border-Consciousness in Soviet and Emigré Literature’, Slavic and East European Journal 38 (Summer 1994) pp. 245–60; Anna Reid, Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997) p. 1. 50. Smith (note 9) pp. 51–52. 51. As a result, the new borderers were markedly different from their old-borderer predecessors, for whom even centuries after assimilation, the myths of the borderland occasionally yield an impressive salience, with prominent figures like James Webb, the former Reagan secretary of the Navy and now Democratic senator, publishing a book in 2004, as much auto-ethnography as ethnology, entitled Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. See Peter J. Boyer, ‘Southern Discomfort’, New Yorker (30 Oct. 2006). 52. Liebman (note 32) p. 29. 53. Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2004) p. 6. 54. Hiroaki Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998) p. 47. 55. Thomas G. Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia, trans. by Eden and Cedar Paul (London: George Allen & Unwin 1919) pp. 2–6. 56. Liebman (note 32) p. 30. 57. Stephen C. Feinstein, ‘Jewish Communities and the Outside World: The Experience in Eastern Europe and America’, in Charles A. Ward, Philip Shashko, and Donald E. Pienkos (eds.), Studies in Ethnicity: The East European Experience in America (New York: Columbia University Press 1980) p. 142. 58. Cited in Brown (note 53) p. 4. 59. Quoted in Liebman (note 32) p. 78. 60. Nathan Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World 1961) pp. 80–130. 61. Mead, Special Providence (note 32) p. 181, terms Wilsonians the “Trotskyites of the American Revolution; they believe that the security and success of the Revolution at home demands its universal extension through the world.” 62. Fukuyama, ‘After Neoconservatism’ (note 19) p. 64. 63. Joshua Muravchik, ‘Comrades’, Commentary 121 (Jan. 2006) p. 57. 64. Fukuyama, ‘After Neoconservatism’ (note 19) p. 65. 65. Hans Kohn, ‘The Permanent Mission: An Essay on Russia’, Review of Politics 10 (July 1948) p. 273. 66. Louis Menand, ‘Breaking Away: Francis Fukuyama and the Neoconservatives’, New Yorker (27 March 2006) pp. 83–84.