'America
as the World’s Only Superpower Actually Detracts From Our National Security'
Interview with the Editor of The American Conservative,
Former Neocon, Scott McConnell
by
Kevin B. Zeese
by Kevin B. Zeese
Scott McConnell
is the editor of The
American Conservative, a magazine he founded with
Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos in 2002. McConnell has a Ph.D.
in history from Columbia University, and was formerly the editorial
page editor of The New York Post. He has been a columnist
for Antiwar.com and New York Press. His work has been
published in Commentary, Fortune, National Review, The New Republic,
and many other publications.
Kevin Zeese:
The views of "conservatives" on foreign policy and the use of the
military are broad including Robert Taft–style isolationism,
Dwight Eisenhower's prudent internationalism to George W. Bush's
unilateral militarism. As the editor of The American Conservative
magazine where do you see the views of conservatives on militarism
and foreign intervention? Where are you on these issues?
Scott McConnell:
You’re right that there are now radically divergent views among
people who, for the most part, supported Reagan during the eighties.
It can’t be denied that most "movement" conservatives
support Bush’s foreign policy, by which I mean people tied in some
way to the Republican establishment and the larger number of people
who identify with it. But there are significant pockets of dissent,
both among realists – prudent internationalists who on balance
would have found Eisenhower an excellent president and among the
heirs of the old isolationist tradition. I’ve learned quite a lot
from isolationists in the past few years; they are invariably a
repository of sharp insights and good polemics. But I’m probably
closer to the realist tradition myself. I basically respect what
the United States did after World War II to restore the Western
world. I don’t think we could have avoided the Cold War (or the
Second World War). But after the Soviet Union imploded, I began
to think it was time for the United States to pull back and become
(as I think Jeane Kirkpatrick said at the time, before her neoconservative
friends reminded her that she shouldn’t say stuff like that) a "normal
country" again.
My own thoughts
(because I had been a neoconservative, used to write for the magazine
Commentary, was comfortable and friendly with the Committee for
the Free World crowd) evolved fairly slowly, but by the late 1990’s
I thought we should not be bombing Serbia (though it hasn’t seemed
to have turned out disastrously) and I certainly opposed the attack
on Iraq in 2003. Our magazine is open to both the Taftian and Eisenhower
perspectives, but we are, over all, a minority faction within the
conservative movement.
KZ: The
Iraq War seems to be dividing both of the old parties. In my state,
Maryland, the most recent polls show that 52 percent of Republicans
oppose the Iraq War. Do you see a disconnect between the Bush Administration's
policies on Iraq and the views of American conservatives?
SM:
If you define conservative as a belief in some necessary link between
a country’s past traditions and its present conduct, yes there is
a disconnect. Many people have made the point that Bush’s policies
in Iraq are radical – this great sense that you can re-make the
world for the good by military force seems loony. Or if not loony,
at least Jacobin, reminiscent of the French revolutionaries so enthralled
by their own notions of freedom that they sent their armies everywhere
to export it. To their surprise, they eventually found most of Europe
resistant to this type of liberation.
But that said,
the belief that Bush’s foreign policy isn’t conservative at all
is something that makes sense to a certain number of intellectuals.
Probably a majority of Americans who call themselves conservatives
– even if they don’t actually believe it is conservative to invade
other countries to make them free – at least so identify with the
Republican Party that they are willing to give Bush the benefit
of the doubt.
A great deal
of this is due to conservatives who have bonded with the Republican
Party on social and cultural issues, and are willing to give the
President leeway in areas in which they assume that the president
knows more than they do. The 52 percent figure you cite surprises
me a bit, but perhaps Maryland has an unusual political culture.
KZ:
In a recent issue an article in your magazine entitled "Twilight
of Conservatism" the author quotes Robert Nisbet one of the
intellectuals of the American conservative movement as saying:
"War
and the military are, without question, among the very worst of
the earth’s afflictions, responsible for the majority of the torments,
oppressions, tyrannies, and suffocations of thought the West has
for long been exposed to. In military or war society anything
resembling true freedom of thought, true individual initiative
in the intellectual and cultural and economic areas, is made impossible
– not only cut off when they threaten to appear but, worse, extinguished
more or less at root. Between military and civil values there
is, and always has been, relentless opposition. Nothing has proved
more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms than
has war and the accompanying military mind."
Could you comment
on this sentiment? In particular, how do traditional conservatives
see the military industrial complex? Are they concerned that the
U.S. spends as much as the whole world combined on the military?
That the military budget makes up half of our discretionary spending?
SM:
I think Nisbet is right. War is almost always a destructive and
revolutionary force. I don’t think it’s always avoidable, and I
recognize, without undergoing paroxysms of guilt, that a lot of
the power and wealth of the United States, which we all have benefited
from, are the fruits of war.
But I’ve come
to think the over-armament of the United States, and the concomitant
belief we can have a military option in dealing with almost every
global problem, actually poses a threat to our well being. It’s
undeniable that terrorists have potentially more power to kill and
maim than they have in the past, and the more we are involved militarily
in the world – occupying other countries, or attacking them, the
more people will see us as the cause of the their problems, and
the more will think that hurting us will help solve them.
So while I
don’t necessarily believe that our military budget (still much smaller
portion of our budget than it was during the height of the Cold
War) could be so transferred to solve all our social problems, I
think the idea of America as the world’s only superpower – an idea
that is the consequence of our comparably huge amount of military
spending – actually detracts from our national security.
KZ:
I found your editorial "The
Weekly Standard's War" to be particularly interesting; it highlighted
the conflict between conservatives and neo-conservatives, and the
competition between The American Conservative and The
Weekly Standard. What are your views on these conflicts and
competition?
SM:
The battle between different elements of conservatism is in part
a battle of ideas. I think if you took our magazine’s views on,
let’s say, foreign policy, immigration, and the economy – and put
them along side the positions of The Standard, and presented
them in a sort of blind taste test to the delegates at the last
Republican convention (as an example of a sample of politically
engaged and active conservatives) we’d do pretty well. (We are for
lower rates of immigration, and more skeptical about free trade
than the Standard.)
But it’s not
only a battle of ideas, it’s also an institutional battle. And the
neoconservatives (represented by the Standard) have about twenty
times the institutional heft of traditional conservatives. They
control a great number of think tanks, and other magazines and newspapers;
they can pay a lot of salaries, which means that for a great deal
of neoconservatives, ideological politicking can be a career, rather
than an avocation you might engage in with the time left over after
your day job. That gives them a large advantage. I don’t really
know the answer to this, but the success of the neoconservatives
in building institutions, which in effect means finding people who
have made a great deal of money to fund them, far outstrips their
ability to make cogent arguments for their case – and the latter
is not inconsiderable.
KZ: Your
recent obituary of Eugene McCarthy, "Peace
Candidate, 68 Vintage," you describe McCarthy as an "accidental
Buchananite." He is viewed as a liberal by many. How do you see
him? What did you mean by that phrase? Do you see connections between
the left and the right in the United States?
SM:
After I wrote the piece, I saw a quotation from Norman Mailer who
described (in 1968) McCarthy as the most conservative man to run
for president in his lifetime. During that time – much like today,
it was "liberals" who opposed the Vietnam war, conservatives
who backed it. But under the surface there were powerful cross currents
– both small government conservatives who opposed the war, and liberals
(the future neoconservatives, for instance, who were beginning their
march to the Right. There were pro-war socialists – Carl Gershman
and Joshua Muravchik, for instance, who have since emerged as leading
neoconservatives. )
McCarthy always
had a somewhat conservative sensibility, which perhaps impeded him
as a candidate. He had no talent as a populist, made no effort to
flatter "the people" in his campaign, which is why the
Left never was as comfortable with him as with Bobby Kennedy (who
actually was a latecomer in opposing the war.). I didn’t follow
Gene’s career much after 1968 – but in the 90’s became aware of
him as a fellow immigration restrictionist, one of those who for
a variety of reasons (environmental, impact on the class structure,
distrust of rapid demographic change) thought we should slow down
our immigration rates. Late in life he wrote a book about this,
and said some nice things about Pat Buchanan during the 2000 campaign.
He seemed to have, at least in part, one of those traditionalist
sensibilities that is skeptical of change. For instance, I remember
a piece he wrote in The New Republic, perhaps in the 1980’s,
in which he mocked the notion of playing baseball on artificial
turf, describing, in a humorous way, how it altered and corrupted
the game. There are good arguments for that, but also just an aspect
of the conservative esprit – that there is a kind of natural legitimacy
about the way things are, and ought to be changed at their peril.
Now obviously Gene was not resistant to all change; I suspect he
was liberal on most social issues, he was, after all, elected as
a Minnesota Democrat, in one of the most progressive regions of
the country. But he was traditionalist. He clearly would have found
it difficult to explain why it is "conservative" to show
contempt for the natural environment which God has given us – but
that is something I don’t understand about most modern day conservatives
either.
January
31, 2006
Kevin
Zeese [send him mail]
is Director of Democracy
Rising. You can comment on this article by visiting
the blog.
Copyright
2006 Kevin Zeese
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