The Neocons Last Gasp? Not So Fast

For months, critics of the administration have been crowing that if President Bush won reelection, he would dump the neoconservatives and replace them with cautious, realist foreign policy thinkers.

Writing in the Financial Times, James Mann, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and author of a book about the Bush administration, dismissed neocon doctrine as a “spent force” and said that the foreign policy realism of big shots such as Henry Kissinger is “again ascendant.”

The editor of Foreign Policy magazine, Moises Naim, scoffed that neoconservative ideas “lie buried in the sands of Iraq.” On the right, Patrick J. Buchanan gloated that the “salad days” of the neocons were over.

There is only one problem with the critics’ scenario: The opposite of what they predicted is actually occurring. Bush hasn’t retreated an inch rhetorically and is stepping up the battle in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney is ensuring that the neocons are being promoted everywhere in the administration.

With Secretary of State Colin Powell gone, Cheney no longer faces even token opposition. Far from being headed for the political graveyard, neoconservatives are poised to become even more powerful in a second Bush term, while the “realists” -- those who believe that moral crusading is costly and counterproductive in foreign policy -- are sidelined.

The strengthening of the neocons’ position begins but does not end with Bush’s appointment of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of State. Though Rice is not a birthright neocon -- indeed, she began her political ascent as a disciple of realist national security advisor Brent Scowcroft -- she has burnished her credentials by championing Bush’s sweeping push for democracy in the Middle East.

With the departures of Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, the State Department, long seen by the administration’s hawks as an alien force that is pro-Arab and anti-Israel, is going to be turned upside down.

Undersecretary John R. Bolton, who is a hard-liner on confronting Iran and North Korea and has made no secret of his contempt for the United Nations -- three classic neocon positions -- is likely to be named deputy secretary of State. Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, the citadel of neoconservative thought, is in line to become the assistant secretary for East Asian affairs.

Sweeping changes won’t be necessary at the Defense Department. It is already well-stocked with neocons, including Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and his deputy, William J. Luti. The real question mark is what promotion is in store for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz. Could he end up replacing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld?

At the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams -- the ultimate second-generation neoconservative, son-in-law of proto-neocons Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz -- has been hugely influential in pushing the United States into the corner of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Will the continued sway of the neocons lead Bush into fresh disasters? Hardly. I predict Bush will successfully stabilize Iraq, and that the election there will surprise the world by being conducted openly and fairly. In all, he is far better off relying on the neocons than a crabbed, amoral realist doctrine. Abandoning Iraq and Afghanistan, as the realists counsel, would be a prescription for disaster.

In fact, the administration is in the process of creating the most harmonious foreign policy team in decades. Rice, who will be a formidable secretary of State, has a golden opportunity to insist on competence, not just utopian dreams, in implementing the president’s pro-democracy vision.

Bush will face most opposition not from the Democrats but from moderate Republicans, who recoil at nation-building and human rights. They loathe the neoconservative stance, seeing it as a new incarnation of liberal interventionism. Big deal.

No doubt the new conventional wisdom will be that the longer Bush sticks to his hawkish course, the more disastrous his second term will become. But that prediction may prove just as false as the conviction that the neocons were headed for the ash heap of history.