Ousted from the Republican Party by Donald Trump, the neoconservatives have remade themselves into Democrats, hoodwinking the left into supporting their program of global military interventionism.

Condoleezza Rice may be a master of realpolitik, an international policy wonk, and a well-polished presenter of officialdom, but she is not a capable political theorist and certainly not a credible historian. 

If she were the former, in her essay in Foreign Affairs, (“The Perils of Isolationism,” September/October issue)  she would not equate, or conjoin at the hip, “democracy” and “the free market.” Nor would she conflate political “isolationism” and economic “protectionism.” If she were a historian, she (presumably) would not deride the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the halcyon days of the free market, as a time of economic stagnation. And if she were both a political theorist and a historian, she wouldn’t tout the Bretton Woods conference and the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as the preconditions for “the free movement of goods and services” that “stimulated international economic growth.” 

But Rice’s words are meant to be anything but precise. They intentionally blur political and economic categories. Does she expect us to believe that domestic economic welfare is equivalent to the expansion of state influence and power? Does she expect us to believe that economic globalization is the same as political globalism?  

Rice speaks not only for herself. She represents the outlook, not only of a segment of the political right, but also of the “left” as well. (I put “left” in scare quotes to denote the actually existing left and not some Platonic ideal left that supposedly preexists it.) 

Rice speaks the native language of the singular “uniparty” that includes the following front men and women: the Bushes, the Clintons, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. She speaks the language not only of the now-defunct right-wing neoconservative Project for a New American Century but also of the more circumspect and Democrat-supporting, but nonetheless fundamentally neoconservative think tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). 

The language of this contingent is more telling for what it hides than for what it reveals. It glosses over the tragic and costly mistakes of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. But, more fundamentally, through a now-familiar legerdemain, it presents the interests of the state as identical to the interests of the people who live under the state.

Nothing could be clearer than the distinction between these interests in the present moment, especially in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the ineffectual federal response to the disasters. Just prior to Helene’s landfall, the Biden-Harris administration approved military aid packages for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan totaling more than  $17 billion—with $8.7 billion earmarked for Israel, $8 billion for Ukraine, and $567 million for Taiwan. Most of this aid came in addition to the $95 billion package bundled for the same three recipients of U.S. foreign military aid in February 2024. 

After the disaster struck seven Southern states and damages had been estimated at over $100 billion, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “does not have the funds to make it through the season.” Kamala Harris soon promised those affected a measly $750 per family, reputedly for food, hotel rooms, and other immediate needs. (Has anyone in this administration bought groceries or stayed in a hotel lately?) Whether FEMA spent money on immigrants is beside the point. Except for social welfare entitlements and the billions earmarked for climate change mitigation in the Inflation Reduction Act, domestic spending on help for those who work for a living and pay taxes is anemic.

Two days after Mayorkas cried poor mouth, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on X an aid package for Lebanon: 

The U.S. is at the forefront of humanitarian response to the growing crisis in Lebanon, announcing nearly $157 million in assistance today. We are committed to supporting those in need and delivering essential aid to displaced civilians, refugees and the communities hosting them.

The U.S., we should remember, paid for and supplied the bombs dropped on southern Lebanon and Beirut. Now we must also pay for aid to the “recipients” of said bombs. And to the cost of these can be added that of maintaining U.S. ships, troops, and fighter jets deployed to the Middle East. 

In fact, on Sept. 30, at the height of the hurricane crisis, the Pentagon announced that it would send extra troops and fighter jets to aid Israel, only one day after Biden told reporters that no more U.S. troops would be sent. On Sept. 28, more than 700 soldiers from the Tennessee National Guard were sent to the Middle East on the first leg of a year-long deployment. Had they remained at home—had Defend the Guard efforts succeeded in Tennessee, that is— these National Guardsmen might have contributed to the Helene rescue and recovery efforts. But such domestic considerations must always take a back seat under neocon hegemony. 

The neocon agenda puts the welfare of the state above all else, and, as Randolph Bourne has written, “war is the health of the state.” It involves the maintenance and extension of U.S. influence backed by the threat of force, force which must be demonstrated from time to time for the threats to remain credible.

To justify the state’s enormous military expenditures in life and lucre to the domestic population, the neocons parade a continuous lineup of bogeymen—from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin to Xi Jinping—all of whom must be analogized to Hitler. As Murray Rothbard has argued (in a 1973 interview with Reason magazine): 

In foreign affairs you still have this mystique that the nation-state is protecting you from a bogeyman on the other side of the mountain. There are ‘bad’ guys out there trying to conquer the world and ‘our’ guys are in there trying to protect us.

That Condoleezza Rice extends this charade, considering the overwhelming evidence of neocon failure and deceit, is a testimony to her statesmanship, which requires that one be a consummate liar, especially where war is concerned. Yet the Foreign Affairs’ publication of Rice and her directorship at the Hoover Institution indicate that she has nevertheless retained the dignity of a professional statesperson. 

Not only has American interventionism proved ineffective, it has produced seemingly unintended consequences. I refer not so much to Ron Paul’s “blowback” theory as to the fact that neocon propaganda is rife with the kinds of internal “contradictions” Rice ascribes to Russia and China’s national narratives. As the Cato Institute’s Christopher Preble has argued in Peace, War, and Liberty (2019), interventionism leads foreign nations to associate the values neocons claim to spread to other peoples—democracy, capitalism, and individual rights—with U.S. military aggression against those same peoples. 

Yet, despite its abysmal track record, neocon interventionism continues to hold sway over the political establishment, and perhaps more surprisingly, over large swaths of the population. Its control over the political class can be explained with reference to the monetary influence of the military industrial complex and its various lobby groups, as well as to the ideological influence of the think tanks beholden to the military-industrial complex. Think tanks like CNAS take donations from military contractors and act as switching stations that convert monetary power into the “principles” the political class depends on for its justificatory rhetoric.

Its continued grip on segments of the public can be chalked up to effective state propaganda, as echoed and amplified by its media accomplices. State-sponsored propaganda directed at the domestic population has been a feature of American life for at least 100 years despite legal bans against it. That is, the American public pays for propaganda enforcing official state narratives. As we saw after 9/11, such propaganda has been very effective in inducing public support for military adventurism. That should come as no surprise. As Dr. Michael Nehls has shown in The Indoctrinated Brain (2023), incessant fear-mongering hijacks the executive functions of the neocortex and induces complicity in its targets. 

But propaganda is never merely an empty form of communication. It must always contain content. The content must change in some respect, depending on the case in question, and this is partly how the neocon establishment bamboozles the public. The neocon agenda is flexible and allows for new content. In fact, it requires new content.

The particularity of the content is what makes propaganda successful. In terms of neocon propaganda—given that its past mendacity has been exposed—the proximate war must be presented as different “this time.” This time, the enemy really is like Hitler. This time, Putin really aims to reestablish the extent of the Soviet empire. This time, China really seeks global hegemony. This time, our allies, and thus all the Western world, and all those who hold “our values” are really in danger. 

The content of neocon propaganda, as Rice herself suggests, relies on analogy—but analogy with a difference. In the case of China, we are locked in something like the Cold War, only something “more dangerous.” As with the Cold War, China is engaging in an arms race with the U.S. But unlike during the Cold War, we have no treaties or other agreements to constrain the opponent. Thus, with neocon propaganda there must be similarities with the past, but also differences. The differences are what make the difference. They make “this time” different from the previous threats.

By vilifying Trump, a new internal enemy, the neocon regime has been able to enroll the much of the “left” into its rank-and-file supporter base. This enrollment is nothing less than breathtaking, since the ideal left supposedly opposes military aggression and the “actually existing” left once despised neoconservatism. 

A new and different element of neocon propaganda involves Donald Trump, who serves as a foil against which the neocons rally their base. By vilifying Trump, a new internal enemy, the neocon regime has been able to enroll much of the “left” into its rank-and-file supporter base. This enrollment is nothing less than breathtaking since the ideal left supposedly opposes military aggression and the “actually existing” left once despised neoconservatism. 

Since, according to this left, Trump is intrinsically evil, any policy that he embraces must also be evil, including “isolationism,” the major bugbear for the neocon. Likewise, interventionism becomes good, according to Democratic voters, by virtue of being the opposite of the “isolationism” embraced by Trump. As such, Trump’s opposition to the ongoing war of NATO and Ukraine against Russia sanctifies the Ukrainian war effort.

Another indication of successful neocon enrollment strategies is the fact that over 700 current and former national security officials endorsed Kamala Harris. In a letter signed by former secretaries of state and defense, they stated that Trump poses a threat to national defense and the democratic system. And the chameleon-like nature of neocon propaganda was vividly demonstrated by the endorsement of Kamala Harris by Liz and Dick Cheney. But more telling is Harris’s welcoming of their endorsements, to the delight of Democratic voters. The love embrace of Dick Cheney by this contingent proves, like nothing else, the malleability of neocon propaganda. 

The enduring influence of neoconservatism, as articulated through figures like Condoleezza Rice, reveals a sophisticated yet deeply troubling manipulation of political and economic rhetoric to justify a militaristic and interventionist foreign policy at the expense of domestic welfare. This approach not only misaligns state actions with the interests of its citizens but also employs a malleable propaganda strategy that continuously reinvents threats and enemies to maintain public and political support.

The seamless integration of this ideology across the political spectrum, as evidenced by the unexpected alliances forged in the face of a supposed internal threat like Trump, illustrates neoconservatism’s adaptability. This not only challenges the integrity of democratic decision-making but perpetuates a cycle whereby the state’s interests, cloaked in the guise of national security and global leadership, consistently overshadow the pressing needs of the populace, undermining the very essence of democracy and the free market they claim to champion.

Yet, the opponents of neoconservatism are manifold. They include paleoconservatives, who emphasize tradition, localism, and skepticism towards globalism. They view neoconservative policies as a betrayal of true conservative values through prioritizing universal democratic principles over national interest and cultural heritage. These critics, like those from the Southern Agrarian tradition, see neoconservatism as not only misaligning with American conservative roots but also as a continuation of a Jacobin-like universalism that appoints the U.S. as the global enforcer of democracy, often ignoring the cultural and historical contexts of other nations.

Moreover, critics from various ideological backgrounds, including libertarians and some progressives, decry the neocon strategy for its imperial overreach and the economic costs it imposes domestically. They point out the irony in spending billions on foreign military engagements while neglecting domestic infrastructure and welfare. This is vividly illustrated by the lackluster federal response to the devastation wrought in North Carolina by Hurricane Helene, compared with its generous foreign aid allocations. They argue that such policies not only misalign state actions with the interests of its citizens but also perpetuate a cycle where the state’s interests, cloaked in the guise of national security and global leadership, consistently preempt the pressing needs of the populace.

But this multifarious opposition to neoconservatism must be wary of those who smuggle the neocon agenda into public discourse and legislation through the back door of unqualified support for the state of Israel. Only a consistent “America First” agenda that puts the needs of Americans over the interests of foreign nations, including Israel, has the slightest chance of uniting these discontents under a common umbrella.