>
The Strategist And The Philosopher, By Alain Frachon et Daniel
>Vernet
>Le Monde: Translated by Mark K. Jensen. April 15, 2003
>
>Who are these neoconservatives who are playing an essential role in
>the U.S. president's choices, along with fundamentalist Christians?
>And who were the thinkers who inspired them, Albert Wohlstetter and
>Leo Strauss?
>
>It was said in a tone of sincere praise: "You are some of the best
>brains in our country"; so good, George W. Bush added, that "my
>government employs about twenty of you." The president was speaking
>on February 26 to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
>(Le
>Monde, March 20)
>
>He was paying homage to a think tank that is one of the bastions of
>the American neoconservative movement. He was saluting a school of
>thought that is marking his presidency, and he was stating how much
>he
>owes to an intellectual current which is today a predominant
>influence. He was taking note of the fact that he was surrounded by
>neoconservatives, and crediting them with a central role in his
>political decisions.
>
>At the beginning of the 1960s, John F. Kenney recruited some
>left-of-center professors, notably at Harvard University, chosen
>from
>among "the best and the brightest," to use author David Halberstam's
>phrase. President George W. Bush, for his part, has chosen to
>govern
>with those who have been in revolt since the 1960s against the
>centrist, mostly Social Democratic consensus that was dominant then.
>
>Who are they? What is their history? Who were their leading
>intellectual influences? Where are the intellectual origins of
>Bushite neoconservatism to be found?
>
>The neoconservatives must not be confused with the fundamentalist
>Christians who are also to be found in George W. Bush's entourage.
>They have nothing to do with fundamentalist Protestantism's
>renaissance, which comes from the southern Bible Belt, and is one of
>the growing forces in the Republican Party of today.
>Neoconservatism
>comes from the East Coast, and also to some extent from California.
>Its instigators have an "intellectual," often New York, often
>Jewish,
>profile, and often began on the left. Some of them still call
>themselves Democrats. They carry around literary or political
>magazines, not the Bible; they wear tweed jackets, not the petrol
>blue
>suits of southern televangelists. Most of the time, they profess
>liberal ideas on social and moral questions. They are trying
>neither
>to ban abortion nor to impose school prayer. Their ambition lies
>somewhere else.
>
>But, explains Pierre Hassner, what is singular about the Bush
>administration is that it has achieved the fusion of these two
>currents. George W. Bush causes neoconservatives and Christian
>fundamentalists to make common cause. The fundamentalists are
>represented in his government by a man like John Ashcroft, the
>Attorney General; the neoconservatives have one of their stars as
>assistant secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz. George W. Bush, who
>campaigned just right of center, with no very precise political
>ties,
>has concocted an astonishing - and explosive - ideological cocktail,
>marrying Wolfowitz and Ashcroft, neoconservatives and Christian
>fundamentalists, two opposite worlds.
>
>Ashcroft taught at Bob Jones University in South Carolina,
>academically unknown but a stronghold of Protestant fundamentalism.
>Positions bordering on anti-Semitism were common there. Jewish and
>from an academic family, Wolfowitz is a brilliant product of Eastern
>universities; he studied with two of the most eminent professors of
>the 1960s, Allan Bloom, who was the disciple of Leo Strauss, the
>Jewish philosopher of German origins, and Albert Wohlstetter,
>professor of mathematics and a specialist in military strategy.
>These
>are two names that will count. The neoconservatives have placed
>themselves in the tutelary shadow of the strategist and the
>philosopher.
>
>Inappropriately named, they also have nothing about them of people
>whose aim is to conserve the established order. They reject just
>about all the attributes of political conservatism as this is
>understood in Europe. One of them, Francis Fukuyama, who made a
>name
>for himself with his essay "The End of History," says: "The
>neoconservatives have no interest whatever in defending the order of
>things as they are, founded on hierarchy, tradition, and a
>pessimistic
>view of human nature." (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 24, 2002)
>
>Idealistic and optimistic, convinced of the universal value of the
>American democratic model, they want to put an end to the status quo
>and its limp consensus. They believe in politics for the sake of
>changing things. On the domestic front, they sketch out a critique
>of
>the welfare state, the product of Democratic presidents (Kennedy,
>Johnson) as well as a Republican president (Nixon), which is
>struggling to cope with social problems. In foreign affairs, they
>denounced détente in the 1970s, which, according to them, benefited
>the USSR more than the West. As critics of the accomplishments of
>"the sixties" and opposed to the diplomatic realism of a Henry
>Kissinger, they are anti-establishment. Irving Kristol and Norman
>Podheretz, the founder of the magazine Commentary, are two of the
>New
>York godfathers of neoconservatism, and come from the left. They
>once
>drew up a leftist bill of indictment of Soviet communism.
>
>In *Ni Marx ni Jésus* [Neither Marx nor Jesus] (1970, Robert
>Laffont),
>Jean-François Revel offered a description of an America caught up in
>the tumultuous social revolution of the 1960s. Today, he explains
>neoconservatism as a sort of backlash. Above all on the domestic
>front. In the wake of Leo Strauss, the neoconservatives criticize
>the
>moral and cultural relativism of the 1960s. For them, relativism
>leads to the "political correctness" of the 1980s.
>
>There is another intellectual of the first rank who is directing the
>battle here, Allan Bloom, of the University of Chicago, who was
>portrayed by his friend Saul Bellow in his novel *Ravelstein*
>(Gallimard, 2002). In 1987, in *The Closing of the American Mind*
>(translated into French under the title *L'Ame désarmée* [The
>Helpless
>Soul]), Bloom skewers university milieux where everything is
>equated:
>"Everything has become culture," he writes; "drug culture, rock
>culture, street gang culture, and so on, without the slightest
>discrimination. The failure of culture has become a culture."
>[Reverse translation from French]
>
>For Bloom, a great interpreter of classic texts like his master
>Strauss before him, one part of the heritage of the 1960s "leads to
>a
>scorn for Western civilization in itself," explains Jean-François
>Revel. "In the name of the politically correct, every culture is as
>good as every other culture and Bloom wonders about those students
>and
>professors who are perfectly willing to accept non-European cultures
>that are often hostile to freedoms and that show at the same time an
>extreme harshness toward Western culture, refusing to admit that it
>is
>superior in any way."
>
>While "politically correctness" was seeming to hold sway, the
>neoconservatives were scoring points. Bloom's book was an enormous
>success. In foreign affairs, a veritable neoconservative school
>took
>form. Networks grew up. In the 1970s, a Democratic senator from
>the
>state of Washington, Henry Jackson (who died in 1983), criticized
>the
>grand treaties of nuclear disarmament. He prepared at that time a
>generation of young strategists, among them Richard Perle and
>William
>Kristol, who took Allan Bloom's courses.
>
>In and out of the administration, Richard Perle met up with Paul
>Wolfowitz, since both of them worked for Kenneth Adelman, another
>critic of the politics of détente, and Charles Fairbanks, under
>secretary of state. In strategic matters, they looked to Albert
>Wohlstetter. A Rand Corporation researcher and Pentagon consultant,
>as well as a great specialist in gastronomy, Wohlstetter (who died
>in
>1997) was one of the fathers of American nuclear doctrine.
>
>More precisely, he was at the origin of the rethinking of the
>traditional doctrine known as "mutual assured destruction" (MAD, in
>its English acronym), which was the basis for deterrence. According
>to this theory, two blocs capable of inflicting upon each other
>irreparable damages would cause leaders to hesitate to unleash the
>nuclear fire. For Wohlstetter and his pupils, MAD was both immoral
>-
>because of the destruction inflicted on civilian populations - and
>ineffective: it led to the mutual neutralization of nuclear
>arsenals.
>No statesman endowed with reason, and in any case no American
>president, would decide on "reciprocal suicide." Wohlstetter
>proposed
>on the contrary a "graduated deterrence," i.e. the acceptance of
>limited wars, possibly using tactical nuclear arms, together with
>"smart" precision-guided weapons capable of hitting the enemy's
>military apparatus.
>
>He criticized the politics of nuclear arms limitations conducted
>together with Moscow. It amounted, according to him, to
>constraining
>the technological creativity of the United States in order to
>maintain
>an artificial equilibrium with the USSR.
>
>Ronald Reagan listened to him, and launched the Strategic Defense
>Initiative (SDI), dubbed "Star Wars," which is the ancestor of the
>anti-missile defense taken up by Wohlstetter's pupils. These
>individuals are the most enthusiastic partisans of a unilateral
>renunciation of the ABM treaty, which, in their eyes, prevents the
>United States from developing its systems of defense. And they have
>also convinced George W. Bush.
>
>Following the same path as Perle and Wolfowitz is Elliott Abrams,
>today responsible for the Middle East on the White House's National
>Security Council, and Douglas Feith, one of the under secretaries of
>defense. Both agree on unconditional support for the policies of
>the
>state of Israel, no matter what government is in place in Jerusalem.
>This advocacy of constant support explains why they endorse Ariel
>Sharon with no hesitation. President Ronald Reagan's two terms
>(1981
>and 1985) were the occasion for many of these figures to hold their
>first government positions.
>
>In Washington, the neoconservative wove their web. Creativity was
>on
>their side. Over the course of many years, they marginalized
>Democratic centrist or center-left intellectuals and took up
>predominant positions in the places where the ideas that dominate
>the
>political scene are formulated. These are reviews like "National
>Review," "Commentary," "The New Republic," which was edited for a
>time
>by the young "Straussian" Andrew Sullivan; "The Weekly Standard,"
>owned by the Murdoch group, whose Fox television network ensures the
>diffusion of the mass-media version of neoconservative thought.
>There
>are also the editorial pages like that of the "Wall Street Journal,"
>which, under the direction of Robert Bartley, conveys
>neoconservative
>militancy unabashedly. There are research institutes, the famous
>"think tanks," such as the Hudson Institute, the Heritage
>Foundation,
>and the American Enterprise Institute. There are families, too: the
>son of Irving Kristol is the very urbane William Kristol, the
>editor-in-chief of "The Weekly Standard"; one of Norman Podheretz's
>sons worked in the Reagan administration; the son of Richard Pipes -
>an émigré Polish Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1939,
>became a professor at Harvard, and was one of the most important
>critics of Soviet communism - is Daniel Pipes, who denounces
>Islamism
>as the new totalitarianism threatening the West.
>
>These men are not isolationists. To the contrary. They are
>generally
>extremely cultured and knowledgeable about foreign countries, whose
>languages they often speak. They are not at all like the
>reactionary
>populism of a Patrick Buchanan, who is in favor of America turning
>inward to address her domestic problems.
>
>The neoconservatives are internationalists, partisans of a role of
>resolute global activism for the United States. They are not,
>however, in the mold of the old Republican Party (Nixon, George Bush
>senior), who trusted to the merits of a Realpolitik that cared
>little
>about the nature of the regimes with which the United States made
>alliances in the defense of its interests. For them, Kissinger is a
>sort of anti-model. But they are also not internationalists in the
>Democratic Wilsonian tradition (named after Woodrow Wilson, the
>unfortunate father of the League of Nations), which was the
>tradition
>of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, who are dismissed as angelic or
>naïve
>figures who trust to international institutions to spread democracy.
>
>Let us turn to the philosopher. There were no direct links between
>Albert Wohlstetter and Leo Strauss (who died in 1973) before the
>official appearance of neoconservatism. But in the network of
>neoconservatives, some have built bridges between the teachings of
>the
>two men, even though their areas of research were fundamentally
>different.
>
>Whether as a source or as an incidental influence (Allan Bloom, Paul
>Wolfowitz, William Kristol.), Strauss's philosophy has served as the
>theoretical substrate of neoconservatism. He is read and recognized
>for his immense erudition about classical Greek texts or Christian,
>Jewish, or Muslim Scripture. He was hailed for the power of his
>interpretive method. "He succeeded in grafting classical philosophy
>with German depth in a country that lacks a great philosophic
>tradition," says Jean-Claude Casanova, whose intellectual mentor,
>Raymond Aron, sent him to study in the United States. Aron greatly
>admired Strauss, whom he met in Berlin before World War II. He
>advised several of his students, like Pierre Hassner or, several
>years
>later, Pierre Manent, to take an interest in him. [Translator's
>note:
>Raymond Aron (1905-1983) was one of the France's preeminent
>intellectuals in the twentieth century, and was also important in
>the
>political realm, where he played a considerable role as an advisor
>to
>French statesmen, including Charles de Gaulle.]
>
>Leo Strauss was born in Kirchhain, in Hesse, in 1899, and left
>Germany
>on the eve of Hitler's accession to power. After brief stays in
>Paris
>and in England, he arrived in New York, where he taught at the New
>School of Social Research before founding the Committee on Social
>Thought at the University of Chicago, which would become the
>crucible
>where "Straussians" were formed.
>
>It would be simplistic and reductionist to sum up Leo Strauss's
>teaching as the few principles upon which the neoconservatives who
>surround George W. Bush draw. And neoconservatism has roots in
>traditions other than the Straussian school. But the reference to
>Strauss forms a relevant background for the neoconservatism that is
>presently at work in Washington. It permits one to understand to
>what
>extent neoconservatism is not simply a caprice of a few hawks; and
>also to what extent is relies on theoretic bases, which, while
>perhaps
>doubtful, are certainly not mediocre. Neoconservatism situates
>itself
>at the junction of two lines of thought in Strauss.
>
>The first is linked to his personal experience. As a young man he
>lived through the decrepitude of the Weimar Republic battered by
>both
>Communists and Nazis. He concluded that democracy had no chance of
>prevailing if it remained weak and refused to rise up against
>tyranny,
>expansionist by nature, even if this meant resorting to force: "The
>Weimar Republic was weak. It had only one moment of strength, if
>not
>greatness: its violent reaction to the assassination of the Jewish
>minister of foreign affairs Walther Rathenau in 1922," writes
>Strauss
>in a preface to *Spinoza's Critique of Religion*. "On the whole, it
>presented the spectacle of a justice without strength or of a
>justice
>incapable of resorting to force."
>
>The second line of thought is the result of his readings of the
>ancients. For us, as for them, the fundamental question is that of
>the political regime, which shapes the character of human beings.
>Why
>did the 20th century engender two totalitarian regimes that,
>reverting
>to Aristotle's term, Strauss prefers to call "tyrannies"? Strauss's
>answer to this question, which obsesses contemporary intellectuals,
>is: because modernity provoked a rejection of the moral values and
>the
>virtue that must be at the base of democracies, and a rejection of
>European values, which are "reason" and "civilization."
>
>According to Strauss, this rejection finds its source in the
>Enlightenment, which almost necessarily produced historicism and
>relativism, that is, the refusal to admit the existence of a higher
>Good that is reflected in the concrete, immediate, and contingent
>goods, but not reducing itself to them, an unattainable Good which
>must be the standard by which real goods are measured. Translated
>into the language of political philosophy, relativism's extreme
>consequence was the theory of the convergence of the United States
>and
>the Soviet Union, which was much in vogue in the 1960s and the
>1970s.
>It led in some cases to an acknowledgement of the moral equivalence
>of
>American democracy and Soviet communism. Now, for Leo Strauss,
>there
>are good and bad regimes; political reflection should not refrain
>from
>making judgments of value, and good regimes have the right - and
>even
>the duty - to defend themselves against bad regimes. It would be
>simplistic to effect a direct transposition between this idea and
>the
>"axis of Evil" denounced by George W. Bush. But it is clear that
>it
>proceeds from the same origin.
>
>This central notion of a regime as the matrix of political
>philosophy
>has been developed by Straussians, who have taken an interest in the
>Constitutional history of the United States. Strauss himself - an
>admirer of the British Empire and of Winston Churchill as an example
>of a strong-willed statesman - thought that American democracy was
>the
>least bad political system. Nothing better had been found for the
>flourishing of humanity, even if interests tended to replace virtue
>as
>the foundation of the regime.
>
>But it was above all his students, like Walter Berns, Hearvey
>Mansfield, or Harry Jaffa, who enriched the American Constitutional
>school. This school sees in American institutions the realization
>of
>higher principles, even, for a man like Harry Jaffa, of Biblical
>teachings, more than it sees in these institutions the application
>of
>the thought of the Founding Fathers. In any case, religion, perhaps
>civil religion, must serve as the glue that holds together
>institutions and society. This appeal to religion is not foreign to
>Strauss, but this Jewish atheist "liked to cover his tracks," to use
>Georges Balandier's expression; he thought that religion was useful
>to
>maintain the illusions of the masses, illusions without which order
>could not be maintained. On the other hand, the philosopher was to
>maintain his critical mind and address the initiated in a coded
>language, something that needs to be interpreted, but is
>intelligible
>to a meritocracy founded on virtue.
>
>Advocating a return to the Ancients as a way of avoiding the
>pitfalls
>of modernity and the illusions of progress, Strauss is nonetheless a
>defender of liberal democracy, that child of the Enlightenment - and
>of American democracy, which seems to be its quintessence. Is this
>a
>contradiction? No doubt it is, but it is a contradiction that he is
>willing to live with, like other liberal thinkers (Montesquieu,
>Tocqueville). For the critique of liberalism is indispensable for
>its
>survival, since it runs the risk of getting lost in relativism - if
>everything can be expressed, the search for Truth loses its value.
>For Strauss, the relativism of the Good results in an inability to
>react against tyranny.
>
>This active defense of democracy and of liberalism reappears in
>political doctrines as one of the favorite themes of the
>neoconservatives. The nature of political regimes is much more
>important than all institutions or international arrangements for
>keeping peace in the world. The greatest danger comes from states
>that do not share the (American) values of democracy. To change
>those
>regimes and encourage the spread of democratic values constitutes
>the
>best means of strengthening the security (of the United States) and
>peace.
>
>The importance of the political regime, praise for militant
>democracy,
>the quasi-religious exaltation of American values, a firm opposition
>to tyranny: there are quite a few themes that are the mark of the
>neoconservatives populating the Bush administration which can be
>derived from the teaching of Strauss, sometimes revised and
>corrected
>by the "Straussians" of the second generation. One thing separates
>them from their putative master: the optimism tinged with messianism
>that neoconservatives deploy to bring freedoms the world (to the
>Middle East tomorrow, yesterday to Germany and Japan), as if the
>belief in political will was capable of changing human nature. This
>is also an illusion, which it may be good to spread for the sake of
>the masses, but by which philosophers, for their part, ought not to
>allow themselves to be deceived.
>
>There remains an enigma: how did "Straussianism," which was first
>founded upon an oral transmission that was mostly the result of the
>charisma of the master and was expressed in books of an austere
>character, texts about texts, establish its influence over a
>presidential administration? Pierre Manent, who directs the Centre
>de
>recherches Raymond-Aron in Paris, proposes the idea that the
>ostracism
>to which the students of Leo Strauss were subjected in American
>university milieux pushed them toward public service, think tanks,
>and
>the press. There they are relatively over-represented.
>
>Another, complementary, explanation cites the intellectual vacuum
>that
>ensued upon the conclusion of the Cold War, which the "Straussians,"
>and in their wake the neoconservatives, seemed to be the best
>prepared
>to fill. The fall of the Berlin Wall proved them right to the
>extent
>that Reagan's muscular policy vis-à-vis the USSR led to its
>downfall.
>The attacks of September 11, 2001, confirmed their thesis concerning
>the vulnerability of democracies confronted with different forms of
>tyranny. From the war on Iraq, they will be tempted to draw the
>conclusion that the overthrow of "bad" regimes is possible and
>desirable. As an alternative to this temptation, the appeal to
>international law can claim a certain moral legitimacy. But until
>further notice, it lacks the power of conviction and coercion.
>
>-- Translated by Mark K. Jensen
>
>http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3230--316921-,00.html
>