Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Defunct Neoconservatism (colloquially neocon) is a political movement which began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party along with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s.

[1][2] Many adherents of neoconservatism became politically influential during Republican presidential administrations from the 1960s to the 2000s, peaking in influence during the presidency of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

[3] The Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies were heavily influenced by major ideologues affiliated with neoconservatism, such as Bernard Lewis, Lulu Schwartz, Richard and Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, and Robert Kagan.

[18] Irving Kristol edited the journal The Public Interest (1965–2005), featuring economists and political scientists, which emphasized ways that government planning in the liberal state had produced unintended harmful consequences.

As the policies of the New Left made the Democrats increasingly leftist, these neoconservative intellectuals became disillusioned with President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society domestic programs.

After the anti-war faction took control of the party during 1972 and nominated George McGovern, the Democrats among the neoconservatives endorsed Washington Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson for his unsuccessful 1972 and 1976 campaigns for president.

In another (2004) article, Michael Lind also wrote:[31] Neoconservatism ... originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.'

[40][42] Strauss influenced The Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, William Bennett, Newt Gingrich, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as Paul Wolfowitz.

[43][44] A theory of neoconservative foreign policy during the final years of the Cold War was articulated by Jeane Kirkpatrick in "Dictatorships and Double Standards",[45] published in Commentary Magazine during November 1979.

[47] She wrote: "No idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime and anywhere, under any circumstances ... Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits.

During 1992, referring to the first Iraq War, then United States Secretary of Defense and future Vice President Richard Cheney said: I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today.

The report called for a new, more aggressive Middle East policy on the part of the United States in defense of the interests of Israel, including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria through a series of proxy wars, the outright rejection of any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would include a Palestinian state, and an alliance between Israel, Turkey and Jordan against Iraq, Syria and Iran.

Former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense and leading neoconservative Richard Perle was the "Study Group Leader", but the final report included ideas from fellow neoconservatives, pro-Israel right-wingers and affiliates of Netanyahu's Likud party, such as Douglas Feith, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks Jr., Jonathan Torop, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser, and IASPS president Robert Loewenberg.

On 19 February 1998, an open letter to President Clinton was published, signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with neoconservatism and later related groups such as the Project for the New American Century, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power.

Former Nebraska Republican U.S. senator and Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, who has been critical of the Bush administration's adoption of neoconservative ideology, in his book America: Our Next Chapter wrote: So why did we invade Iraq?

[65] In this context, disputes over the non-aggression principle in domestic and foreign policy, especially given the doctrine of preemption, alternatively impede and facilitate studies of the impact of libertarian precepts on neo-conservatism.

[68] John McCain, who was the Republican candidate for the 2008 United States presidential election, endorsed continuing the second Iraq War, "the issue that is most clearly identified with the neoconservatives".

The New York Times reported further that his foreign policy views combined elements of neoconservatism and the main competing conservative opinion, pragmatism, also known as realism:[69] Among [McCain's advisers] are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan ... [and] Max Boot... 'It may be too strong a term to say a fight is going on over John McCain's soul,' said Lawrence Eagleburger ... who is a member of the pragmatist camp, ... [but he] said, "there is no question that a lot of my far right friends have now decided that since you can't beat him, let's persuade him to slide over as best we can on these critical issues.Barack Obama campaigned for the Democratic nomination during 2008 by attacking his opponents, especially Hillary Clinton, for originally endorsing Bush's Iraq-war policies.

[79] Although neoconservatives have served in the Trump administration, they have been observed to have been slowly overtaken by the nascent populist and national conservative movements, and to have struggled to adapt to a changing geopolitical atmosphere.

[82] Although Trump was not reelected and the Republicans failed to retain a majority in the Senate, surprising success in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections and internal conflicts led to renewed questions about the strength of neoconservatism.

[84] In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, neoconservatives including the Cheney family (Dick & Liz) and Adam Kinzinger supported Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign.

[87] During January 2009, at the end of President George W. Bush's second term in office, Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and prominent critic of Neoconservatism, proposed the following as the "main characteristics of neoconservatism": "a tendency to see the world in binary good/evil terms", a "low tolerance for diplomacy", a "readiness to use military force", an "emphasis on US unilateral action", a "disdain for multilateral organizations" and a "focus on the Middle East".

[98] In the 1990s leading thinkers of this modern strand of the neoconservative school of thought, Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, published an essay in which they lay out the basic tenants of what they call a Neo-Reaganite foreign policy.

As opposed to advocates of Realpolitik, they argue that domestic politics and foreign policies are inextricably linked making it natural for any nation to be influenced by ideology, ideals and concepts of morality in their respective international conduct.

Hence, this archetypical neoconservative position attempts to overcome the dichotomy of pragmatism and idealism emphasizing instead that a values-driven foreign policy is not just consistent with American historical tradition but that it is in the enlightened self-interest of the United States.

Irving Kristol states that neocons are more relaxed about budget deficits and tend to reject the Hayekian notion that the growth of government influence on society and public welfare is "the road to serfdom".

Neoconservative ideology stresses that while free markets do provide material goods in an efficient way, they lack the moral guidance human beings need to fulfill their needs.

[108] What make neocons most dangerous are not their isolated ghetto hang-ups, like hating Germans and Southern whites and calling everyone and his cousin an anti-Semite, but the leftist revolutionary fury they express.

In a column on The New York Times named "Years of Shame" commemorating the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Paul Krugman criticized them for causing a supposedly entirely unrelated war.

[125][126] Former Republican Congressman Ron Paul (now a Libertarian politician) has been a longtime critic of neoconservativism as an attack on freedom and the Constitution, including an extensive speech on the House floor addressing neoconservative beginnings and how neoconservatism is neither new nor conservative.