NEOCONSERVATISM
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Eu ropeans, who are thought to have no experience, for being some–
wha t cowardl y and re trograde, as Dr. Brzezinski sugges ted of the West
Germans and others.
On the other h and there's a kind of hard-headed realism expressed
by Robert T ucker, a p ro fessor of Interna tion al Rela tions a t Johns
Hopkin s, who several years ago p roposed the occupation of the sources
of oil in the Persian G ulf and the Middl e Eas t and argued tha t this was
in our n a ti on al interest. One of the asp ects of the deba te o f American
power is the extent to which it is no t so much about concrete issues of
foreign po li cies, defense policies, and so on , but about the na ture of
Ameri can Society. And the deba te about foreign po licy is reall y an
extension of the deba tes about America's position in the world.
Now if we look at the groupings that seem to be united in wh a t is
call ed neoconserva tism , or the p ubli cs to which this grouping appeals,
there are in fact very different groupings . T here are tradition al conser–
vati ves, generall y P ro tes tant, antisecul ar, committed to wha t could be
ca ll ed an individu alisti c and famili al model of a society , believing in
the free market, and an uncomplicated notion of American society.
T here are o thers, and I hope J ames Wilson will pardon me if I 've put
him in thi s ca tegory to some degree, whom one might call technocra tic,
or technocra ti c liberals, who think th at social experiment for the time
being demands no thing so much as a p ause for refl ection , and who
appear to precl ude much fUrLher social experimenta tion or institu–
tional ch ange and concentra te on trying to make the sys tem work .
Irving Kr isto l frightens businessmen with the "n ew class," who to
some extent are proponents of the radical social programs, but who are
qui te content to work in the pro fess ional and manageri al hierarchies of
our society, and who pose no danger. T here are also the theological
conserva ti ves, if we take theo logy in a philosophical sense, and I think
some of the ex-radi cals fit here. T h ey seek a coherent and enl arged
vision of Ameri can society, and th ey see not the sys tem tha t needed
changing when they were younger, but America as a realized utopia,
and they res ist even minor changes which might be in order from time
to time.
On our pos ition in the world, there's a group we might call the
libera l imperi alis ts, a word fi rs t used to descri be Max Weber and his
genera tion in Imper ial Germany. T hey are liberal insofa r as you find a
lo t o f them in the coalition for a democratic majority, and grouped
around fi gu res like John Kennedy or H u bert Humphrey, as well as in
some sections of the AFL and CIO . T here are also conserva tive realists
who don 't much care about the liberal or libertarian content o f fo reign
