Andrew Sullivan has a post today addressing one of the central paradoxes of neoconservatism, or what’s left of it: If, as a large number of those who continue to support the war in Iraq now believe, Arabs are “completely immune to democratic life,” what in the world are we doing there?
By neoconservative logic, the U.S. has undertaken about the least viable, most intractable, self-defeating task on Planet Earth. Why? Once the WMD rationale was exposed as a delusion, why haven’t neoconservatives cited the pathologies of Arab culture to argue for withdrawal?
Sullivan answers his own question by guessing that neocons actually do believe in the idea of American empire - the necessity of empire, the fear-driven rationale for empire - and that Iraq has become a proving ground for that. Well, maybe.
But isn’t oil as rational a motive?
If you believe in a unipolar world, a world where the United States’ influence is to be expanded to every corner of the globe, where we are to be the unchallenged authority throughout - doesn’t oil play a role in that, in that we have a right (by this mentality) to ensure our access to it? American unipolarity cannot be sustained without a secure supply of that increasingly expensive commodity. Oh, we’ll gladly pay what the market demands, but we must ensure that it does come to market, that it’s not locked up in any sweetheart deals with China or any other rising, would-be hegemon. This empire runs on oil; and if we are the epitome of the benevolence, as neoconservatives would have it - aren’t we merely protecting what we need to perpetuate that?
And this, then, seems an exercise in mental gymnastics, a desperate attempt to come up with some sort of intellectual rationale for what the clear-eyed realist might say we have to do whether there’s any intellectual rationale or not. This is us covering our collective behinds, professing nobility when in fact there’s a cold-blooded calculus behind our actions. This is us pretending we aren’t what we are forced to be.
Neoconservatism was always about that. Even now, in its waning days, it appears it still is.
