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Ambition is no sin in a book. Nor, heaven knows, is brevity. But a book of fewer than 300 pages that proposes to reorder so much of both the American system and the wider world is bound to skimp on detail. America's relations with the UN are settled in a brisk seven pages; those with Russia in fewer than three. This makes the reader wonder whether the boldness of the neo-conservative agenda is rooted—as they see it—in clear thinking, plain talking and moral courage, or whether it arises from a reckless disregard for complexity, shades of grey or the possibility of unintended consequences.
Certainly, this book contains plain talking. No tiptoeing around Muslim sensibilities for Mr Perle and Mr Frum: America, they aver, is at war with a radical strain of Islam that is intent on destroying western civilisation. This enemy does not consist just of a small group of conspirators, since the small group enjoys popular support and is backed by sundry rogue states, including nominal American allies such as Saudi Arabia. Though conceding that the Middle East may be complicated, the authors do not want the complications to blur the big picture. "Religious extremists and secular militants; Sunnis and Shiites; communists and fascists—in the Middle East, these categories blend into one another. All gush from the same enormous reservoir of combustible rage. And all have the same target: the United States."
So Muslim extremism is America's principal enemy. But in some passages the State Department seems to run the Islamists a close second. Mr Perle, a Reagan-era official, evidently has scores to settle. In Middle East policy, the authors complain, the State Department has deviated from "moral principles and common sense" and needs to be "yanked back into line".
The authors do not quite specify where the department's sins lie, but provide hints. The fellows at Foggy Bottom seem to have pushed too hard for a Palestinian state. This book argues that, whatever its other merits, Palestinian statehood would have little impact on terrorism because no possible compromise in Palestine will end the terrorists' insatiable demands. They are also cross with State for stinting on support for Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi opposition leader who in exile became Mr Perle's friend. Or maybe State's crime is a want of patriotism. Often, Mr Perle and Mr Frum allege, State represents the world to America instead of America to the world.
Is that really such a bad thing to do? It is no job of the State Department to obstruct a president's foreign policy. In making policy, however, a president can use the advice of people with a feel for how the world might react to what America does. Perhaps this explains the animus of the neo-cons. They care little about the world's reaction to their agenda of global regime change and behaviour modification. The world, they say, brims with "hypocrites and scoff-laws", notably the French, who are out to sabotage the necessary use of America's righteous power in Iraq and beyond. The best way to deal with such people is to ignore or, better, punish them.
George Bush has been accused of letting his foreign policy be steered by super-hawks such as Mr Perle. Some of their breezy optimism about America's ability to right all the world's wrongs, by force if necessary, has indeed rubbed off on policy. Yet this book also shows the limits of their influence. Its authors barely acknowledge that America's own power may be constrained. Mr Bush, since Iraq, seems shrewder on this. Nor, probably, does he think that the war on terror can be the sole organising principle of American policy—right down to what attitude to take to Britain's relations with Europe. The president finds it convenient to pose as the leader of a nation engaged since September 11th in a total war analogous to the war against Hitler. The neo-cons really believe it. |
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